Wisdom from the Trenches

I look back on photos of a slimmer, slightly less wrinkled version of myself and I don’t wish I was her all over again. But I do wish I could talk to her. I wish I could sit with her and listen as she unpacked her pain. I wish I could help her make heads or tails of her life so she could understand what smashed it into a million pieces. The things I would hear. The tears I would shed. All the words that need to be spoken…

Dear Younger Me,

I see your smile and hear your boisterous laugh, but I know what lurks in the shadows behind that facade. Your eyes try to sparkle, but the light within has long died out. You feel hollow because you have become a shell of a person. You are the walking dead, ever moving but constantly in decay. You are a brick wall made of styrofoam and you are crumbling inside. Your smile hides your vulnerability and weakness, but your eyes betray you.

If I asked you to tell me about your world, you would giggle and talk excitedly about all the distractions you’ve drawn around you to cope. You are trying desperately to find life in the smoldering wreckage of a train crash, to decorate and dress up a home demolished by a tornado, to put a positive spin on the demons that feed off you like a cancer. You are courageous for daring to live. You are strong because you move forward under the tremendous weight you bear. You are exhausted from fighting the constant blows that life cruelly deals you time and again, but still you rise every morning and face your days. You are a valiant warrior, a steadfast soldier and…you are losing the battle.

If ever you would sit a moment to talk, if ever you would risk being real, I know I would hear your tragic story spoken robotically. You might talk about trauma as if you had watched it happen in a movie once. You might tell of a crime against your body, mind, and soul – a violent crime that shattered you – as if it happened to a stranger you never knew lifetimes ago. Certainly not to you. Definitely not yesterday. Tears would not fall, at least not yours. Because you still aren’t safe and so, you must remain strong. Or at least look the part. Trauma destroyed you, but you buried the broken pieces and sit atop its grave, smiling blankly to hide the grief that is slowly crushing you. No one can ever know. Your very life depends upon it.

In this life, we grieve the loss of loved ones when they die…but how do we grieve the death of ourselves when we must continue to live?

Allow me to cry for you and I would drown in tears over the bottomless depths of sorrow in your soul. I would help you dig up the pieces of your shattered reality and make sense of the mess someone else created in your life. Your life…not a stranger’s. I would sift through the devastation and mourn each of your losses with you. I would help carry the weight of the pain you never should have been forced to carry. I would tenderly hold what remains of your heart and hand it to the One who can breathe life back into it. I would find the storm raging inside your head and call upon the One who can calm the worst of weather. I would fight my way into the middle of your battlefield with the One who can rescue the wounded warrior you are before you collapse in defeat, surrounded and overwhelmed by your enemies. Most importantly, I would sit with you so you would not suffer alone.

Ah, but I already did. You opened your heart to me and death spilled out. I did not shrink back in fear because I knew life could be resurrected. You chose to trust me with your pain and together, we faced one of the worst experiences humanity can deliver. We walked through the ruins of our life. You told me the story of how destruction laid waste to the beauty that existed before and I told you about the sun rising to shine upon a new creation, a life rebuilt but purposefully pieced together like a mosaic, a gorgeous work of art.

We sat and cried over what was forever lost – our innocence, our belief that all of mankind is good, our ignorance about the evils that plague our world. We celebrated what had survived – our desire to live, free will, love. We marveled over what could be saved – our peace, our ability to forgive, our heart. We were grateful for what led us through the restoration process – our God. We triumphed over evil with the help of Jesus and we struck back at our foe with the word of our testimony.

I want to say so many things to you, the much younger me, because I know how you struggle. I want to pass down the advice that you need to know to make it through your greatest time of need. I want to relay all the wisdom I have accumulated to ease the burden of living the life you are cruelly forced to live. But you learned it all along the way because you became the person I am today. For all it is worth, I want to thank you for choosing life, for deciding to soldier on, for seeking help, for putting in the effort to heal. You did not choose this path, but you also did not give up when things were at their very worst. I would not exist if you had not pressed bravely on. I would not be the person I am today had it not been for you.

Thank you.

May I live in a way that honors the choices you made to bring me to where I am today.

May I live in a way that a future me respects when they look back on all I’ve done with the time I am given.

Much love, Me.