How to Never Get Burned Again

Earlier this year, I had an intimate worship experience with God one morning over some scorched hash browns. I had been struggling hard to “embrace” my incredibly-limited (medically-necessary) food plan, and that morning, He tenderly and tangibly reminded me that I can worship Him in my sorrow – right in the middle of life’s ugly, grueling, and despairing places.  

My perspective improved that morning, but my propensity for burning those blasted hash browns sure didn’t. Then during a grocery run one day, I spotted some “southern” hash browns in the freezer section. They’re the same as what I was eating except that they’re little cubes instead of shredded, so I decided to try them. And guess what. I discovered that they don’t burn nearly as easily as the shredded ones! When I made the switch, I smiled with delight as I was cooking them because I was so pleased with myself that I had found a way to reduce my chances of burnt-food-induced frustration. {pats self on back}

I made a similar strategic shift when my laptop died this summer. I was so disheartened that we had to fork over 100+ bucks to have my picture memories extracted from my dead laptop that I decided I wouldn’t put any files on my new laptop’s hard drive. None. It was just too risky. So I’m outsmarting it this time. Because this time, I have an external hard drive permanently plugged into the USB port, and that’s where I have been storing everything.
Ha-HA!

Oh yes, I am all about preventative measures to spare myself recurrences of pain and agony. My list could go on and on. Take a look inside my fridge when I’m thawing meat, and you’ll see that package of meat sitting on top of a plate. That’s because I’ve had more nasty meat juice messes than I care to count. And how about spending a ton of time composing a long e-mail, and then an evil fluke makes it disappear right before your eyes the moment you hit the send button?? {I heard you echo my growl.} Anyone else copy the text before pressing the send button now to avoid that? I do!

As I was standing at my stove proudly tending to my well-managed hash browns, I thought, “It’s all about not getting burned, isn’t it? . . . "

Because that’s largely how I approach life.
And sadly, my relationships.

I walk through life as if I’m living on a mine field, ever navigating around what appears to threaten my emotional survival. Consciously and subconsciously, I strategize to minimize all risks: the uncertain, the uncomfortable, and the downright painful. Because in my mind, they’re explosives that promise only shrapnel. The agony of relational hurt can be too excruciating, so I tell myself that I’ll never let THAT situation happen to me again. Burn me once, shame on you. Burn me twice and shame on me, right?

And so I put preventative measures in place to assure that I won’t get burned like the last time. I don’t even care if the measures are terribly awkward like my external hard drive that perpetually dangles from my laptop. As long as I perceive my feelings as safe and secure – inside that hard, unbreakable enclosure – I feel protected.

So here’s the secret for how to never get burned again:
Build a self-protective fortress around your soul.
It works like a charm.

And the more frequent the attack, or the deeper the burn, the taller and broader my fortress becomes . . .

Here’s the problem:
In doing so, we become isolated prisoners chained to the darkness of our own cold, concrete walls.

Rather than taking deep breaths in the fragrant fields of freedom and forgiveness, we construct impenetrable walls that surround us only with the oppressive stench of bitterness.

And it chokes us.

This is how Beth Moore describes it in BreakingFree:
“Life's way of reacting to a crushed heart is to wrap tough sinews of flesh around it and tempt us to promise we'll never let ourselves get hurt again.
That's not God's way.
Remember, self-made fortresses not only keep love from going out; they keep love from coming in. We risk becoming captives in our own protective fortresses.”

In other words, when we focus so hard on avoiding the explosive mines in the field,
we create them in the process.

“the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer,
because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you
in proportion to your fear of being hurt.” 
~ Thomas Merton

The reality, my friend, is that we live in a fallen world. And Jesus assured us that we will have trouble. And we can either try to manage that trouble on our own by stacking cinderblocks around the chambers of our heart – living life as a bitter fortress. Or we can place our bleeding souls in the tender hands of the Healer. And let our pain breathe, rest, and heal in the arms of Trust. Isaiah tells us that this is why Jesus came – to bind up the brokenhearted.             

“Only God can put the pieces of our hearts back together again, close up all the wounds, and bind them with a porous bandage that protects from infection . . . but keeps the heart free to inhale & exhale love.”
- Beth Moore, Breaking Free

I don’t want to be consumed with the mines anymore.
I want to be consumed with Jesus.

So I’m inviting Him to tear down the walls in my soul.
Will you dare join me?
~ ~ ~
Come read what the Lord revealed to me about these walls in the follow-on post, Letting Go of the Need to Make Sense of the Pain