You have taken account of my miseries; Put my tears in Your bottle. Are they not in Your book? –Psalm 56:8 (NASB)
For most of us (truthfully, all of us), the wounds of our childhood have many forward reaching effects, for this is the game plan of our enemy. Whether the soul injuries came through the sin of another, the fallenness of the world, and our specific cultures (family, geographic region, ethnicity, church, etc.), or via direct enemy assault, Satan’s strategy has always followed a predictable plan: if you can’t prevent life, wound it early so that it doesn’t function in its intended glory. Once wounds have been sustained, our enemy works to strike those same sore spots again and again over the course of our lives. It is a very effective strategy.
Your heart’s story matters to God; you matter. It’s why He keeps all of your tears in a bottle (Psalm 56:8). Notice that He doesn’t just wipe them away, but keeps them in remembrance. God honors our pain, and asks that we do the same. Pain is not the end of our stories, and it does not define us. But a large part of making sense of your life and finding your way in the story God is writing, will involve giving your heart space and time to tell what it has experienced. It is in this telling, and in the inviting of God and trusted others into the story, that we find healing.
