Christin Lyle is currently in Uganda with limited internet, so she had to email me her blog and I’m posting on her behalf… Enjoy!
Cascada sings this crazy song of passion, love and intense emotion. So much energetic synergy is channeled into this dude that He must be pretty cool. I wanna bang my head in the air and fist pump as I sing along to “everytime we touch” rooting for the romance and hoping she wins. but in the next breath she starts in on a little number about “what hurts the most” and how devastated she is that mister perfect is…wait for it…a disappointment.
It’s sad. She puts so much stock into a human. When the relationship fails like so many do, what will become of her? Where will her identity lie? I’ve been in love and lust. I’ve been happy and hurt, lost and broken. I’ve been that girl and I’ve done those things. Honestly, I’m not ashamed. It’s who I was and not who I am so that I can share the pain in the story of utter brokenness that led to complete healing and total redemption.
The pain of a heart broken by lost dreams and failed promises is horrendous. It feels like your insides are burning coals and the intense ache in the depths of your being can be equated to pulling your fingernails out with pliers.
Simply put- it sucks.
Over the past year I’ve left my family and friends and a dog as black as midnight to trudge around the world sharing some Jesus love with anyone who will listen. In the process, the crusty dried blood of personal heartache has been twitched. People, places and things have triggered different arrows that have stabbed at me, reopening wounds that are scars but still sensitive.
There are a million different pieces to my heart and Jesus has taken me on a whirlwind romance with him that has left me breathless and speechless. Often not even sure how to express the depth of his love for me yet still I try.
As much as love intrigues me, it terrifies me. The vows, the dress, the man. All of it’s fancy. All is romantic and what girl doesn’t love to be dazzled?
so what the heck is my problem?
Instead of loving well, I often recoil. Where a sweet smile would do, behind my Ray Bans lies a pair of eyes that betrays my fears.
Help me jesus. Being the sweet redemption you are. Help me. Do I think so highly of myself that I can’t ask for help? Where is grace for myself in allowing full healing to take place?
Sexual abuse stinks like the Tondo River especially when you wait years to process or even feel the pain of it. Verbal abuse is an even harder nut to crack on your own. The God of my heart and of all mankind and I have tangoed as he oozes love and I sit under the waterfall. But as tragedies have occurred out here in the third world, I’ve questioned what love really is. As possibilities loom after the Race of my happily ever after, I can’t help but try to understand the trust dance I’m waltzing to.
I was walking in the grocery store parking lot earlier when it occurred to me that I was the issue. I was the biggest problem that stood between me and the rest of my life. If I choose to not love, to not trust, then the issue is me.
I lose.
So what if I choose yes. What if I choose love and passion and the dress and the man. Is there a chance for heartache? Is there a chance that it might not work out and I could wind up hurt again?
Possibly.
But the difference is this time Jesus is my focus. Jesus is my identity and he is the reason that I move and breathe. The reason I live and love. So as I enter this next season; this next phase. I choose to dream. To hope. To live life alive. To not settle in the land of the past and brokenness but rather to embrace the now, the gift of the present instead of nurturing the pain of years gone by.
I am who I am because of the Jesus in me. Nothing can separate me from His love and because of that, I can rest.
Christin Lyle. Former church snob turned party girl turned radical Jesus follower. Her heart was shattered for the broken people she met during the World Race. She’s currently still on her journey sharing Jesus to whoever will listen and refusing to settle for anything less than God’s best.