Thursday, January 14, 2010

Soul twin?

I have just finished reading "Purpose for the Pain", a collection of journal pages by Renée Yohe.
Testimonies I have heard from others generally run along the lines of "amazing" and "inspiring", but for me, I found it eerie.

In those pages, illegible and legible, written in neat handwriting and spattered with blood and tears, I saw me.

I saw my diary from when I was suffering from depression and living with the shame of abuse. I saw my diary from when I was angry that no one saved me. I saw my diary from when I didn't know how to feel and in order to preserve what was left of my sanity was to flick that switch to turn myself off and distract myself with my addiction to death. I saw my diary from the time of relapses back into self-destructive and soul-killing cycles. I saw my diary from when I cried out to God after I realized I couldn't do it anymore, and He began to piece back together my unrecognizable heart.

It makes me wonder now, how many others have read this and felt the same way? How many soul twins do Renée and I have out there in our broken world?

It also dares me to ask: how many of our brothers and sisters will lose this battle if we don't have the courage to stand up, jump into those bloody trenches and reach out our hands to those who simply can't do it anymore?

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