"HANNAH! Where's my sunshine this morning? Are you okay, dear?"
A regular customer finally got me to break my trance behind the giant, silver espresso machine.
"Oh, hi! Yeah, I'm totally fine; thanks."
I wasn't.
I had been wrestling for days. The pain from my past fifteen years ago, ten years ago, one year ago, one month ago, and anything in between was behind me. I knew that. But for some reason, the intensity of those small moments of regret had grown into a giant monster that had started to defeat me. The monster's name was SHAME.
But I couldn't stop listening, believing, and letting him dig his way even deeper into my head.
It was as if I had let him set up camp in my heart, build a castle, and reign as the king.
He specializes in crippling us. Crippling our joy, our motivation, our hope, our future, our growth, our dreams, our progress, and any bit of Truth we know.
He gives us a lot of names too. Often they sound like Stupid, Disgusting, Dirty, Useless, Object, Not enough, Unworthy, Unwanted, and Unlovable.
I got to the point where I believed him so much, I didn't think I could ever have a different name. Unless maybe, I worked hard enough to deserve one.
Thank you Jesus, for chasing us constantly with your love and being greater than the Enemy.
Jesus sprinted after my heart as I sprinted through the dark on a late Sunday night. In our desperation, He fulfills His promises. ALWAYS. He always finds me and brings me back into His arms. That night was a mark of freedom for me. I felt like I lived David's words in Psalm 18 yet again in a whole new way:
"He reached down from Heaven and rescued me; he drew me out of deep waters. He rescued me from my powerful enemies, from those who hated me and were too strong for me. They attacked at a moment when I was in distress, but the Lord supported me. He led me to a place of safety; he rescued me because he delights in me."
Our Healer never tires of rescuing us because He delights in us. The moment we step away, run astray, or wander off, He chases us until we have no other choice than to embrace Him back with our tears and exhausted legs.
In Luke 8, Jesus is pushing his way through a jam packed crowd to reach the home of a dying girl. Innumerable bodies pushing up against his, trying to get his attention, but he kept moving forward to his destination. But suddenly he stops, "Who touched me?"
A seemingly silly question considering EVERYONE is touching him as he pushes through a sea of people. But a woman falls at his feet weeping. She tells him her past story. How she bled for 12 entire years-- considered a disgusting, shameful outcast-- hopeless. Everyone heard her. But what does Jesus say after immediately healing her?
"DAUGHTER..."
The first word out of his mouth, the word that no one had probably said to her in over 12 years, the word that defeated all other names she had believed herself to have, the word that delivered her from orphan and outcast to loved and enough.
"Your faith has made you well. Go in peace."
Jesus took the time to heal, encourage, and free this shameful woman rather than taking time for the most righteous of people in the crowd. He didn't see her for the filth that people saw pour out of her, He saw her for who she was. He claimed her as HIS own. His daughter.
But she had to have the courage to leave her bed... the place she had been forced to stay with such a disease in her day and age. She had remained chained there for 12 years, while shame chanted all the names of hopelessness over her. But her desperation led her to try one more thing.
But she left that prison. She let her disease be seen, she pushed past the crowd, she kept her eyes fixed on Jesus as her final destination, she refused to let the monster win. And she touched just one thread of Jesus' robe, and it healed her.
Now all other names lost their power, because she now had the only name she ever needed-- the only name she ever really longed for:
Daughter.
-Han
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