My 1st Breath

WHAT DEAD THINGS ARE YOU CARRYING? Surviving that darkest night left me asking a question I never thought I’d ask: “If God wouldn’t let me die, then what am I supposed to do with this life?” It was then I realized—sometimes survival is not the end of the story, but the beginning of healing. Waking up meant I had to face what I had been carrying all along. Not just the memories, not just the pain, but the dead weight of betrayal, shame, rejection, bitterness, unforgiveness, fear, abandonment, and broken dreams. I had been dragging these things with me for years, and they were suffocating me. When God whispered: “You will not die until you know who I truly am.” I realized that although I “thought” that I was close to God, living behind the veil, that I had no real understanding of who He truly is. And that’s where the real work began. I began to understand that the dead things I carried weren’t just dark memories, they were weights shaping how I saw myself, how I saw others, how I interpreted relationships, and how I lived. Naming them was painful, but necessary. Then, I thought of Jesus and Lazarus. In John 11, (NIV) when Jesus called Lazarus out of the tomb, Lazarus obeyed. He stepped into life when Jesus said, “Come forth.” But even as he stood there alive, he was still bound by grave clothes. The breath of life was in him, yet the evidence of death still clung to his body. John 11:44 (NIV) 44 The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face. (Lazarus was up and moving; but he still had the weight of the past dead cloths. He couldn’t see who was around him, so he didn’t know who he could lean into.) Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.” (Those who loved him had to step up.) I realized that carrying around unhealed traumas came out in my personality in many ways. For years, God surrounded me with safe and trusting tribes. When He told them to move away the stone, my sisters obeyed by giving me a safe place away from my mother. For years, my eldest sister allowed me to stay for the summer, until I was finally freed at 15. My friend tribe obeyed by calling out behaviors that were unhealthy because every time I saw an adult male playing with a girl child, I saw them as perpetrator and victim. I obeyed God by coming out of the tomb; but I was still weighed down by the dead cloths. I still thought my old normal was real. I was moving; but without full freedom. My movements were limited by the grave clothes, and my back began to ache. Every time I tried a new romantic relationship, they ended with same results and it laid another grave cloth. Each time I made financial choices that dug me into a hole, another cloth. Each time I begged for love but received only pride or selfishness, another grave cloth was laid on my shoulders. My back began to ache. I came to realize that in creating us, God was not only intentional about obedience, but also about our interdependence. Could it be that Genesis 2:18,“It is not good for man to be alone” also points to the importance of community? For John 11 shows that Lazarus could not have been delivered by himself. His family and close friends were intricately involved: • They rolled away the stone. • They took off the grave clothes. • They let him go. Are your relations filled with people that will roll away the stone. Will they take off the grave clothes? Or have you surrounded yourself with people who will only add more weight, another layer, another odor, another burden? Questions to Consider What dead things are you carrying? • Is it the memory of someone who hurt you, and the wound is so deep that it still bleeds when you think about it? • Is it the regret of choices you can’t undo? • Is it the approval of people who never truly saw you, but whose voices still echo in your mind as if their judgment has the final word. • Is it the people who tried to control you? • Is it the people who ignored your boundaries? • Was it your mom or dad not being there—or being there in a way that hurt more than it helped? • Is it that you had a body odor of death? • Were you bullied in school simply for being you, or because you lacked what others had? • Do you have unresolved grief? • Have you surrounded yourself with takers, liars, or people who add to your pain? • Have you sacrificed your personal needs for the sake of everyone getting along? • Or maybe… are you the fixer, carrying everyone else’s weight until it drowns you? Sometimes the heaviest things in our lives aren’t physical at all. They are invisible burdens that weigh down our souls. We walk around dragging them like chains, convincing ourselves we have no choice but to keep carrying them. We’re breathing, but we’re not free. We’re alive, but still bound. And the question becomes: what dead things are you carrying that God never intended for you to drag into your new life? That’s the trick of carrying dead things: after a while, the weight feels normal. You get used to it. You tell yourself; this is just who I am, this is just what my life is. But Jesus didn’t just call Lazarus to come out of the tomb—He also commanded, “Loose him, and let him go.” Life is being unwrapped from the things that try to keep you tied to your past. Take a moment. Name the dead things you carry. Ask yourself: When Jesus rolls away the stone, who will help remove the grave clothes?