What Was Done to You Is Not Who You Are
Living in a house where you learned to brace — and the God who was in the room when nobody else was.
I Learned to Brace
There was a season of my growing up that I have spent most of my life trying not to look at directly. It was just the two of us. My mother was struggling with money, and the whole weight of that house fell on me. I was the cook. I was the cleaner. I cut the grass. I managed the household. Whatever needed doing, I was the one who did it, because there was no one else.
She loved that house. I hated it. To her it was home. To me it was a prison, and I was the child locked inside it, keeping it running. And there was a night in that house when my mother put a gun between my eyes.
I am not going to tell you the whole of that story here. It is in my memoir, and it belongs there. What I will tell you is what came after. She did not speak to me for a month. Maybe two. The only words she gave me were orders. Cook my food. Bring me water. Wash my clothes. Go start the car. As though nothing had happened at all. I survived it. Obviously, I survived it. But I never forgot those eyes.
What Bracing Does to a Person
Maybe you learned young that love in your house could turn. Into a raised voice. A locked jaw. A cold silence. A weapon. And you have spent a lifetime quietly wondering whether you were the problem.
The silence is where a child does her worst thinking. In the quiet, with no explanation and no apology, a child will always build the same conclusion, because it is the only one available to her. It must have been me.
Children do this because it is actually less terrifying than the alternative. If it was my fault, then I can fix it. If it was not my fault, then I live with someone unpredictable and I am not safe. So a child will take the blame just to keep a sense of control. And then she grows up, and she is fifty years old, and she is still taking the blame for things that were never hers.
And the bracing never fully stops. You apologize before anybody is upset. You read tone in a text message. You feel a change in a room and start managing it before anyone speaks. That is not a character flaw. That is a nervous system that learned its job in a house where it needed to.
What God Says Over You
You were not the problem. I was not the problem. Ezekiel 18 is a whole chapter God devoted to this. The people had a proverb: the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge. And God says, "As I live, ye shall not have occasion any more to use this proverb. The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father." God went out of His way to say it. The sin belongs to the one who committed it. It does not transfer to the child who was standing there.
And He was in the room. Genesis 16 tells of Hagar, a mistreated woman, running into a wilderness. God finds her there, and she gives Him a name nobody had ever given Him before: Thou God seest me. Psalm 56:8 says, "Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book?" Every tear you cried in a room where nobody was coming, God was recording it.
And I want to tell you something that came out of that house. I learned to cook in that kitchen, and a great deal of what I was given to work with was scraps. And I learned to make something out of it that people would ask for by name. That is Romans 8:28 — God works all things together for good. And Genesis 50:20: what was meant for harm, God makes nourishing anyway.
Living Free of It
Name it honestly before God.
Do not minimize what happened to seem spiritual. The Psalms are full of people telling God exactly what was done to them, in detail, with feeling. God preserved them so you would know you are allowed to be honest.
Stop answering a charge nobody filed.
Some of you are still living like you are on trial. Romans 8:1 says there is no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus. Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? The case is closed. Stop arguing it.
Let your body learn safety again.
Be patient with the bracing. 2 Timothy 1:7 says God has given us a sound mind — a mind being restored. When you catch yourself bracing over nothing, do not shame yourself. Say: That was then. This is now. I am not in that house.
Be careful what you become.
The greatest danger of that house is not what it did to you — it is what it could make of you. Ephesians 4:31-32: put away bitterness, be kind, tenderhearted. What was done to you does not get to decide who you become.
A Prayer for the One Who Learned to Brace
Father, You were in the rooms where nobody came. You saw it. You collected every tear I cried alone. Help me put down what was never mine to carry. The sin belonged to the one who committed it, not to the child who was standing there.
Where I have been living like I am on trial, close the case. There is no condemnation for me in Christ. Be patient with me as my body learns that I am safe now.
Take what was handed to me and make something good out of it, something worth savoring. Keep my heart tender. Do not let what was done to me decide who I become.
In Jesus' name. Amen.
Speak These Declarations Over Your Life
I was not the problem. The sin belonged to the one who committed it, not to me.
God saw it. He was in the room. He collected every tear.
There is no condemnation for me. So I will stop arguing a closed case.
That was then. This is now. I am not in that house anymore.
I can make something good out of scraps. I have been doing it my whole life.
What was meant for evil, God is making into something that feeds people.
What was done to me does not get to decide who I become.
I survived it. And by the grace of God, I get to decide what I make of it.
Open Your Bible
Key Scriptures to Study:
- •Ezekiel 18:2-4, 20 — The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father
- •Genesis 16:13 — Thou God seest me
- •Psalm 56:8 — Put my tears into Your bottle
- •Romans 8:1, 33-34 — No condemnation
- •Ephesians 4:31-32 — Be tenderhearted
- •Psalm 27:10 — When my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will take me up
The Full Story
The full account of that night, and the house it happened in, is told in Chapter Five of the memoir "I'm Still Here". Available now.
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