Estrella Dale: Pouring Out My Heart to Abba

Dear Abba,

I want to talk to you, but my voice seems to have become broken. It feels as though my voice is lost somewhere on the inside of me and talking to you will break the rest of me with it. You created me with words flowing through my bloodstream so I know that as I write, you are reading. Let me speak to you with this letter.

Abba, this daughter of yours is tired. 

It feels like I am always fighting one battle after the other and there is no respite, a space where I can come up for air before I am plunged back again into the darkness of my mind, my past, my present, my future. It is dark inside me. The type of darkness that I cannot seem to light up. I feel like I am drowning, but there is no water in my lungs. Like I am gasping for air, but there is no weight sitting on my larynx. Like I am being drained of life, but there is no fatal wound that leaves me bleeding out. 

You and I have had days like this. You have sat down in the dark with me and enlightened my darkness with your light. You have let me know that I am not alone, and you have held my hand through the toughest times of my life. I know that you are with me now even though I am turning away from you in agony, in anger, in fear. I know that you are with me now. I know that you love me, that you want the best for me. I am simply terrified of what that best might look like. 

I am sorry, Abba, that I still struggle to trust you as Father. 

I am sorry that I still doubt that your love comes from a place of purity, that I still think that you will ask me for something I cannot give, and I will have to give it because you have given me your love first. The give and take shroud still covers my eyes. I still see you through the eyes of my earthly father, and while I know that you are nothing like him, a part of me is afraid that you will let me fall to teach me a lesson, that you will let me fail to keep me tied to you.

Abba, you did not save your little girl.

I was broken. I wanted to find safety in the harbour of a marriage that was not your making. I was in pain and I was looking for a way to stop it. But you have saved other girls like this before; you stopped them before they went to the altar, you stopped some at the altar, you stopped some before the thought of marriage was solid enough to become an altar in their minds.

But you did not save me.

You let me walk into something that nearly killed me. Yes, it didn’t, but it nearly did. I read testimonies of daughters whom you saved and a part of me is hurt. A part of me feels like I deserved it and you let me go through with it because I deserved it. I was not worthy of saving then, and even now, I struggle. I struggle with believing that I am worth saving now.

Are you saving me now? When you did not save me then? How is this time different? How do I know that stepping out with faith in you will not leave me in another ditch fighting for my life? Back then, I thought I was stepping out in faith, but I fell hard. What will be different about this time? Things happen that make me doubt that I have grown or healed in the past one year. 

For the past two weeks, my voice seems to have been locked up in my chest. I am battling with wanting more and being more. I feel like there are things I should be saying but don’t know how to. I feel trapped inside myself. I am a civil war raging in my own body.

Dear Abba, my heart is full of fear.

Am I truly free? What does that mean to be truly free? Can I move forward and not worry about the ghosts whooshing behind me? Can I walk into a future and not worry about the snares of the past? Can my son truly be saved? Did I save him? Or did I just create a prison for him?

You know my fears and you know my hopes.

I desire peace. The kind that is unfazed by whatever ghosts or snares are active around me. I desire wholeness. The kind that can stare brokenness in the eye and speak with compassion and not judgement. I desire fulfilment. The kind that comes with knowing that I am doing what I have been designed to do and to do that wholeheartedly. I desire that my son will never feel abandoned or rejected. That he will not struggle with the abyss of depression as I did, that he will never be in doubt whose son he is. That he will not be hurt by the inconsistencies of his natural father, but he will be stayed and strengthened by the consistency of his creator, his maker, you Abba.

These days, I walk with the stench of shame around me. I want to straighten my back, but shame is a lingering stranger with accusing eyes I cannot shake. It is the kind of shame that makes me want to rewrite events. Maybe I was not abused. Maybe I deserved it. I have not had the time to feel like a victim and feeling like a victor feels like I am being too much, asking for too much. 

Sometimes, I want to crawl back to what is familiar, to what nearly killed me. It is like being caught between two devils: My son will have a father, but I might lose my mind or my life; my son will not have a father, but I might lose my son.

Abba, I am tired of reaching into this darkness again and again. I need light. There has to be more than this. This is not all my life is meant to be, is it? I keep fighting to take off the labels and define myself by your word. But each victory comes with such a fight that I am mentally and physically exhausted by the time it is done. This is the longest and I feel like I am being caged.

Let me out God. Let me out. Let me out or take me out. Broken people cannot make other people whole, and I am tired of fighting.

Yours,

Estrella.

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