Later everything changed. I replayed the scene in my mind. Perhaps I should say scenes, because it's not like this only happened once or even a hundred different times. I replayed the scenes repeatedly as a self-directing actor who just knew he could do it better, get it powerfully perfect. But no, replayed isn't quite the right word either. I rewrote the scene. The imaginary confrontation went differently than the painful reality. I show no mercy and no hesitation as I turn my words into razor-edged swords, sharper and sharper, and the space between what they did and my response is timed perfectly. Everyone who sees gasps or cheers or is stunned to silence as I boldly, with power and brilliance, shred those that dared to damage me and treat me as though I have no value and no significance.
It may not seem like such a big deal, these imaginary but epic battles within. Sure, they are a waste of time, but no one is really getting hurt. It's not like the swords, I mean words, are ever wielded aloud. Except I am wrong. The damage is extensive and crippling. What? How? Rewrites of the painful past are more damaging than the original draft. I discovered in examining the bitterness and resentment poisoning my heart that I had cultivated and created the very toxins that caused my peace and my joy and my ability to love and forgive to shrivel and die. A sword is not sharpened on something soft, but on a stone, and so it is with words. In order to make those words sharp enough to defend and avenge I hardened my heart. As my retorts sharpened, my anger grew. I won a battle I had lost or hadn't even fought, and as I put words in the mouths of my foes and imagined their side of the fight like a master puppeteer, it is my own strings I pull, manipulating myself into surety that I am justified in my red hot rage heating the steel and forming and sharpening the weapons I wield.
But what is the fuel for the fire within me? I do not have anything to burn but myself, my own life, and as the coals heat up and the flames flicker, I am consumed from within. I am like the town where everyone has fled because of the coal fires burning in the mines below. On the surface things look pretty, almost idyllic, but don't get too close or you'll feel the heat rising and choke on the fumes seeping from fires underground that no one can extinguish. My life became like that as my wounders transformed pieces of my heart into coal which I gladly sacrificed to the flames. I could not escape the pit that I had dug for myself. Daydreaming of power I made myself weaker and weaker and sick with bitterness, resentment and hate, and the scenes stuck on repeat kept my focus and my life tuned to what they did to me. I wrapped myself in a cocoon and emerged a victim of my own making.
I have learned that I am much better served turning away from false and imaginary conversations in my mind to talking to Daddy about the wounds and fears that cause my distress. But learning that lesson doesn't make it easy. I find an embarrassing truth, that I am not a very good writer. While I can create a never ending litany of angry comebacks that grow wittier with each rendition until I am assured of my own genius, when it comes time to pray, so often I am stumped and at a loss. So like any hack writer I plagiarize. When my own words won't come or fall woefully short I look to the laments of the Psalms. The beautiful and brutally honest expression of David and others as they turned to God and expressed fear, bitterness, rage against enemies and feelings of abandonment from God Himself serve as a great starting place, a writing prompt for my own conversations with Daddy.
And I have experienced a difference,whether I write my own words, prompt myself with Psalms or never alter anything, quoting songs of sorrow from scripture as a prayer of suffering. My imaginary confrontations kept my focus on my wounds and my wounders and turned my heart to stone, but although my words may continue to be expressions of my pain and fear, when I pray my eyes are turned away from my soul bleeding out and the ones who did the cutting to the One who does the healing. As I replay and rewrite battles of old my anger grows and the fires burn, but as I hold nothing back and expose my wounds to Daddy, the conversation turns as I see who He is, His love for me and the sweet comfort of the Spirit soothes my soul and smothers the coals.
Perhaps you think me foolish, with my imaginary conversations and fantasies of fighting my wounders and rehearsing revenge I will never take. Maybe you don't talk to yourself like that. Maybe you cast friends and fellow victims as supporting cast in your personal drama. Your words are real. You don't play around with imagination but speak them, often. Only to others and not your wounders. You tell the story again and again, rewriting and tweaking the scene until the villain is a caricature, wholly wrong and unrealistically motivated by pure evil toward you, and you are shown as the innocent lamb that was slain by their sin. You invite the world to your pity party and pin the tail of revenge on the donkeys that kicked and bit you. And the fires may burn differently, but the toxic fumes of bitterness and resentment are still rising and shriveling peace and joy and the ability to love and receive love. Whether the conversations remain within or you invite all who will come to your vicious displays of unforgiveness, brewing bitterness is drinking poison and expecting someone else to die. We turn our hearts to stone with our magic potions, creating and enlarging, intensifying and deepening the craters in the stone caused by exposing our wounds repeatedly to ourselves and or everyone but the One who can heal and restore the damage that has been done.
Today, let us stop feeding the flames consuming our hearts, minds and souls and making our emotions seethe. Let us turn to Daddy, telling Him the truth of the pain and fear seeping from our wounds rather than rewriting or reenacting the scene of our wounding for ourselves or others. Let us allow the Spirit access to the shafts of our hearts where the buried coals still burn and let Him smother them and kill the sparks that reignite our rage whenever a reminder comes of the pain of the past. Flames die down as we turn our attention from them to Him, and in the fertile soil of ash, the fruits of the Spirit grow large and tasty and before long a beautiful landscape stretches out over a life that had previously been a desolate, burnt up wasteland.
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