A few weeks ago, I was driving home from the grocery store and decided to listen to some Christmas music. I turned on the stereo and heard a woman ask:
"Who were you before Satan rained down his blows upon you?"
To my complete and utter shock, tears immediately welled up in my eyes. My husband had reset my car stereo recently and had added a Christian station that he thought I'd enjoy listening to but I had forgotten about it. Until that question boomed through my speakers.
Who knew that one sentence could evoke such a powerful emotional response from me? I couldn't
get those words out of my head. Who WAS I before Satan rained down his blows upon me?
I didn't even know the answer. Raised in a dysfunctional household and an even more dysfunctional world the blows came hard and heavy at a very young age. By the time I reached my teen years I barely recognized myself.
And things only spiraled downwards from there.
Oh, I can easily answer this question from my head. I can reel off a "pat" answer about how I am a child of God, created in His likeness and image. I can rattle off to you just what God has done for me and how much He loves me. My mind knew who I was.
But my heart doesn't always know.
"Who were you before Satan rained down his blows upon you?"
I think that one of the reasons this question troubled (and continues to trouble) me so much is because I often ask God who He created me to be. The answer "yourself" is not one that makes a whole lot of sense to me. Sometimes it feels as if I've spent half my life just trying to understand exactly who I am. Or to put it more precisely: who I am in Him.
And who God is, for that matter.
Here is something that I do know about myself:
God sees me far differently than I see myself. I am already healed in eternity. How do I know this? Because I've seen it a number of times. A perfect picture of me - healthy, whole, and smiling at God. Full of peace and joy. I can see it shining through my eyes in this future vision. I see this picture often, especially when I go before The Blessed Sacrament during Adoration. As much as I like seeing myself in this way...I can't really relate.
At least, not here in time. Oh no, here in time I am not at all like the picture of me in eternity. I am a caricature of my true self. As a matter of fact, it boggles my mind when I see the other picture.
The reason I am writing about this is because I believe that most of us are in great need of spiritual healing and I think, to start, it would be good to ask these questions:
"Who was I before Satan rained down his blows upon me?"
and
"Heavenly Father? How do you see me in Christ?"
There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.
C.S. Lewis
