When we hear the term “foundational years,” our minds tend to think of the period of time in childhood where behavioral habits, personalities, and academic fundamentals are formed. The reality is that these crucial years in development encompass so much more. Specifically, the foundation for one’s impression of who God is.
Typically, our parents are our first example of love, and thus they offer to us our first earthly example of God’s love. A delicate and significant charge, the consequences of the fall and the tendencies of the flesh often cloud our judgment and dampen our ability to love as God does. The outcome of a home not filled with the love of Christ can be deadly, both spiritually and physically.
Such were the intended consequences of Alexandra’s childhood home. Her adoptive mother was a cross woman who chose to take her anger out on her only adopted daughter, Alexandra, and on the revolving door of foster children that passed through her home.
On Sunday mornings, Alexandra expected to be beaten.
Whether it was being struck with a belt, a metal cane, or an extension cord; pummels to the knuckles with the handle of butter knives; or the hyperextension of each of her fingers, Alexandra knew that she would suffer at the hands of her adoptive mother in some way. And she knew that immediately afterward, she would be primped to perfection and sent off to church as if none of it had ever happened.
She always wore a pristine white dress, which hid the bruises from the cane. Her broken knuckles were concealed in the white gloves that clothed her hands. Her ankles, which wore the frilly white socks every girl coveted, were crossed. And her shiny white shoes were still, because you should never make a sound in church. After being robbed of her dignity that morning, she was clothed in all white in attempts to be presentable to the God the woman who beat her taught her about.
The vile truth that Alexandra lived through that morning and many like it remained hidden from everyone beneath the costume she was forced to wear. Everyone, that is, but God.
God knew that beneath the crisp white dress, under the bruised skin, there was a little girl who was angry and despondent. He knew that the little girl who sat in that pew, Sunday after Sunday, was forced to pretend she was living a life that was starkly different than the one she actually lived. He felt her growing hatred toward Him, as she couldn’t grasp the concept of loving a God who she was unable to be herself in front of. He grieved alongside her as she endured beatings year after year. He sensed her resentment, and He understood that the false perception of love given to her by her adoptive parents muddied her view of the One who IS love.
He saw all of it. He saw the lies, the hurt, the anger, and He never wanted any of it to be hidden. Not the pain, not the shame, not the beautiful soul that existed in that bruised body. Our God–the Alpha and Omega, the Creator of each of us and of this world we live in—exposes darkness so He can overcome it with His light. When we are willing to release it, He takes away the pain so He can replace it with joy. He wants the lies to be revealed so He can speak His beautiful truths.
When darkness surrounds us, we have a choice. We either overcome it, or we succumb to it. Alexandra knew there was no way out of the situation, and consequently she chose to overcome, to fight. The hardest part about that choice is that it wasn’t a decision she could make just once. With every traumatic episode, Alexandra had to again choose to fight…and not in the sense that most would be quick to infer; fighting meant that she had to close her eyes and wait for it to be finished, to walk away with her eyes fixed on the day of her freedom: her eighteenth birthday.
When that day arrived, she left the place that couldn’t break her and never returned.
I first saw Alexandra from across the room at church. I watched as she helped her four young children settle in with their lunches while tending to her newborn and I was just drawn to her. There was a peace about her, an inherent tenderness that was undeniably from God. I wanted to know about it. I wanted to know about her, about her story.
Through our conversations, I learned of the heartache Alexandra endured as a child. As I listened to the recitation of each and every trauma, I was reminded of the story of Joseph. I was reminded that God is always there; through abuse, imprisonment, wrongful accusations, judgment, abandonment…through it all, He is there. He was for Joseph, He was for Alexandra, and He is for all of us.
Sometimes I think it just takes us a while to realize that. Sometimes we wrestle with God, wondering why He allows things to happen to us, why we have to endure so much. And sometimes, we struggle to trust. We struggle to trust that the words of Genesis 50:20 weren’t just for Joseph. We struggle to believe that a God who allows strife in our lives would do so in order to love and lavish us so richly, and to use that strife to bless others. And once we accept the thought of God leading our lives, we struggle with the urge to put that pristine white dress back on, to wait until we are pure or perfect or complete before allowing Him to have all of us.
The truth is that we won’t ever be pure or perfect or complete on our own.
God never intended us to be; it is precisely why we need Him. He rescues us from the dark places so we can see that we need Him in order to not return to that darkness. He loves and lavishes us so that we can not only bask in the beauty that is He, but also so that we have an overabundance of love to fill the depths of our souls and pour over into others. He uses our rescue stories to bless others, to encourage them, and to break generational curses so that our children and our children’s children don’t have to experience what we did.
He interlaces the evil intentions of others with His grace, mercy, and goodness, creating a divine masterpiece that is always more perfect than anything we could have imagined.
Genesis 50:20 wasn’t just for Joseph. It is for each of us, too. And last Sunday, Alexandra added her name to the list of lives saved by our always amazing, always flawless, always loving God.
You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. Genesis 50:20