In All Our Life’s Circlings

This life really is a circle.

I just turned 60, but I’m realizing I’m still the same person I was when I was 8. In grade school, there had been a major hurt and disappointment in my life as a little girl. Looking back, I see how much it shaped all my thinking and doing. That event locked me into patterns of focus and behavior that have lasted for all these 52 years. I’ve had to face that pain and those fears over and over again in various scenarios over the years, including lately.

The most recent time has been the hardest as it brought me full circle back, face to face, with the same pain and trauma in a new situation that tied directly together with the childhood one. God is such a magnificent Counselor though! Such cleansing and freedom of seeing in that one. I am so thankful, though it has been extremely pain-filled to walk through.

There were also other situations in high school and college that were pivotal lessons back then between he and I, which he’s still circling me back to in new situations in the here and now. I’ve also seen there are ways I’ve been feeling recently which are nothing new. The same circular pattern exists there too. Like, how I felt 10 years ago at times is exactly the same as I feel today at times. Looking back through my journals, it exists in almost the exact words each time. I see I felt that way multiple, multiple times over the years. Yet, somehow I always think it’s new.

It all makes me wonder, do we ever really grow? Do we ever really get past our hurts and hang ups and foibles? Of course, I know we do, but how perfectly Jesus knows us. He knows how fast we can go, he knows what events have to take place in what order to help us see our hearts better. He knows how to delicately peel back the layers of our souls to expose the pain and hurt and trauma at just the right moment so that it doesn’t reopen the wound, but rather heals.

He understands that we human beings are circular folks, and each of us individually has our circular patterns from childhood and up; patterns that make up “us” and “who we are”. And he’s constantly working with us. Patiently working to prune, mend, water, fertilize and bring us out to wholeness and abundant peace.

Sometimes that does have to involve “tough love” on his part, but we have to trust in the process; trust HIM in that process.

So then, if we see these things, why be so hard on ourselves in all our processes? It really is a circle of life. We condemn ourselves; act in shame, get frustrated cuz we’re always dealing with the same stupid thing over and over…. But, this is normal. All our life is a circular pattern just like all of history is a circular pattern. It’s normal human life, for everybody, and God accepts that. Now, I’m not saying there isn’t a place to deal with sin and self-will. We shouldn’t accept missing the mark as okay, but hanging onto our sense of having to be perfect by our own standard of perfectly perfect perfectionism …is something that Jesus doesn’t expect us to do.

He just wants our little child’s heart to return to him again and again ..and again.. infinity ♾️.. in all our life’s circling. And he walks with us. That’s perfection to him.

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