“Mom”, he tapped my arm urgently. “meme, baba”.

His two sleep props. A pacifier and a sippy cup. I didn’t mind. After all, it was me that taught him to like a pacifier. As usual with my babies who love pacifiers, I wait for that odd instinctive feeling that it’s now holding them back, and then we get rid of it. It’s not hard at all, its just a thing that must be done.

When I hand him his meme, he pops it in his mouth with a sigh of relief. I laugh and kiss his soft cheek as he snuggles down, pulling the blanket up to his ears and the pacy bobs comically up and down in his mouth.

But now he is two and a half years old, and more attached to the thing than ever. He doesn’t talk very much which is expected for a bilingual child, however, I also suspect he has simply become lazy with that pacifier in his mouth.

I prepare myself mentally and emotionally to handle this little problem, then gathering up my underwear all the way up like the big girl I am, I do it.

“Sweetie, you no longer need your meme” I lay it out there baldly.

He looked at me alarmed. He already knows I don’t say things just for the fun of hearing myself talk, and he suspects something is in the air.

I explain further, “I want you to throw your meme in the trashcan because you don’t need it anymore.”

“No Mom, no no no no” he scolded.

“Yes baby,” I said gently. I know how hard this is for him.

He climbed off my lap and walked to the trashcan in resignation, lifting the lid he threw it in.

Then coming back to me, he climbed into my lap and started to sob, which turned into anguished howls as he keened and mourned the loss of his beloved pacifier. It lasted only minutes before he wiped his tears on his sleeve, hopped off my lap and merged back into toddler traffic.

A bit later he shouted with surprise, “meme” and came running to me holding another pacifier he had found. His brothers and sisters stopped what they were doing, “Are you going to put it in the trashcan?” one of them asked.

He briskly marched over to the trash and threw it in and then glowed with delight as everyone clapped and cheered.

That afternoon when we snuggled down for his nap he told me sadly “no mo meme, just baba”. I sympathetically hugged him and said “baby doesn’t need his meme anymore”. “ok”, he agreed with me.

And that was the end of that.

Even though he is too young to know that had I let him have a pacifier indefinitely, it would eventually have negatively impacted his life in many ways, at the top of the list, his speech. Nearly at the top, his behavior. He would never have chosen to go through the pain of loss, but because he trusts me, he trusts it was the right decision to throw away that very important thing.

I couldn’t help but think about this in connection with the blog post I have been wrestling with. So many stories of pain and regret have been coming my way. So many souls that crave freedom, but don’t know how exactly to reach out and press the button. Their struggle is valid and I ache.

“There has to be a way,” I told my husband.

“Surely there has to be a formula that at least starts the process.”

I picked up my computer in the safety of my ocean and with my fingers poised, I waited.

Nothing

Nothing at all

So I closed it again, over and over.

When this happens, I know what’s about to happen. I can feel it in the ripples that reach me all the way down in the deep blue sea. And so I wait with my mouth shut, watching and listening because I know what is coming. I am about to be taught something. The Lord is about to take me on a trip around the outer edges of my perspective, so he can rip the sheets off the next layer.

It’s his greatest pleasure to walk me right up to my most dreaded memories, and with him standing beside me, we look together at what has been done. “Perfect love casts out fear”. he tells me.

“Maybe so, but I am still human and therefore I am destined to fight this the rest of my life”. I replied as I shrank back, staring at my 18 yr old self in an Amish dress, working on a farm, who was screaming and shaking as I ran into the house after having almost pushed someone into an auger after being so intensely triggered I lost control of myself.

He didn’t reply, he didn’t need to. Scripture stands for itself. “It casts out ALL fear?” I quavered?

Again there was silence. But not alienating silence, this was a silence of someone who does not need to make more words, knowing my humanity as I break, dissolving beside him, pregnancy making me weak, without my normal fortitude gained from a lifetime of struggle.

“I want all of it,” he told me. “Every single piece of your past, every trigger, every trauma, every word. I want to pull the root and replace it with fearless strength”.

With the sheets ripped off, my eyes opened, there was only one place to go.

Forward.

I no longer cared about what I had to give up or lose. I no longer cared about justice and agenda. I only cared about the next step. The next time fear rose up like a thick black cloud that threatened to suffocate me, to turn away from the darkness and walk determinedly in the light, fearless.

And so I healed.

As my baby grew, so did I.

As I grew, I found assumptions falling away.

Being easily offended fell off.

I took a boundaries class that taught me, ironically, to have boundaries with myself.

How to parent me better, being more aware of the truth. Not my truth. THE truth.

And the light. Walking in the light with all of my being.

Because victimhood is not walking in the light. Victimhood is darkness, depression, and bondage. Triggers, offenses, and assumptions are not light-walking or rights. Those things are bondage.

Light-walking is easy. It’s as easy as turning your heart to your Father and saying “I am willing”.

Because you see, the victimhood and darkness is a vital part of freedom.

YES. I repeat that.

Not until you realize the thick, blackness, do you realize the availability of the light where nothing can hide and the all-consummate freedom that walking in the light is.

NOTHING can hide.

Light is safety, truth and rest.

It's having a comforter live inside you, teaching you, giving you wisdom. Its knowing your worth and value to the king of the universe and resting furiously in that truth.

Even when you fall.

It makes no difference to him.

Its as easy as walking “over here” in the light, rather than there, where shadows and fear lurk around every corner.

Ps. I was recently given the greatest compliment of my life.

“By the way you talk, I can tell you have never been molested or abused, physically, spiritually, or emotionally”.

I threw my head back and laughed as tears choked my throat.
You see, yes, I have. All of those!

“JESUS you are SO worthy and good, your healing is so utterly complete” I breathed.

Like my son, I did nothing special. I only chose obedience without caring where that took me.