To understand this post, you will want to first read “‘What’s Done Is Done’…Right?”

I spent Sunday afternoon facing the death of my wounds and mourning them. I sat in my car across the street from the house I lived in when I was seven. Ironically, I was parked between a graveyard and a church.

The house in front of me, the church to my right, and the graveyard on my left. I didn’t even realize the irony of where I’d parked until I’d been there about thirty minutes. I was the separating factor between my two deepest wounds and a burial place.

When I first started thinking about facing that house, I planned to take a friend with me. I didn’t want to go alone. The more I thought about it, I realized I had to go alone. No one else could face my wounds for me; no one else would be able to understand my grief.

Well-intentioned comfort would’ve only drowned out the words God wanted me to hear.

My friend, Lynn Morrissey, encouraged me to name my grief, own it, then let it go. I sat in the car, windows down, listening to the song of a single bird. I grabbed my notebook and pen, and started making my list. It’s far too personal to share here, but almost every item on the list was a result of one of two sources: the gun incident and religion. And there I sat with the symbol of one in my face, and the other to my right.

I wanted so badly to walk over to the house and ask the man outside if I could peer into the kitchen. I thought a glimpse of it would take away the memory, or at least relieve the pain of it. I rationalized that he wouldn’t be likely to let a weepy woman with notebook and pen in hand look into his house.

It was then that I realized something: what’s done IS done. It can’t be changed. Even if I had peered into the kitchen, the past couldn’t be undone. The scene in my mind would be the same. Every moment of my life that led to me sitting there was done. Over. No amount of wishing or hoping would change one, single second.

I escaped to my usual source from pain: words. I began to write what I was experiencing. While I don’t normally post unfinished lyrics, I find these pertinent to share:

Tried to go back

But what’s done is done

Tried to relive it

Wanted to see the smoking gun

But memory only serves

To leave me alone and on the run

 

Tried to name my grief

And leave it there

Listed all the reasons

Life seems so unfair

Mourned all my losses

Wondered if God was anywhere

 

Come to me and weep

Heal the wounds that cut so deep

Break the chains off this slave

Raise the dead from the grave

 

Through my tears, I cried out from my depths, God, where are you?! He replied, I am here in your words. You are loved. Trust me.

There was no moment of epiphany. No magical healing. No woundrous sign. No symbolic burial. It was just a beautiful afternoon with a warm breeze blowing through the windows as the bird sang.

I peered out over the graveyard, and wondered what it would be like to bury my wounds. Truth is…I did. I’ve been burying them for thirty years.

I wondered what it would be like to see the dead resurrected out of those graves. I thought about new bodies, new life.

After an hour and a half, or maybe two, I felt I could slowly drive away. I spent the next hour driving around, debating the next thing to do. I drove by other houses I’d lived in, and by schools I’d attended. I finally decided it was best to go home. As I drove west, the sun was beginning to set in a most glorious display behind a monster of a gray cloud.

As I snapped picture after picture of sun rays beaming through the dark cloud, a peace that passes understanding settled on me. I can’t describe or explain it…just peace…perhaps a lifting of a heavy load.

While the past can’t be changed, perhaps it is through peace that He makes me new…resurrecting the innocence that was killed and buried in me so long ago.