choosing to be restored

It was no coincidence that hours after my women’s Bible study group had been discussing how painful events in our past had led us to either contemplate or attempt suicide — that a man would set his apartment on fire and jumped sixty stories to his death — right next to the downtown Chicago restaurant where I was wolfing down some chips and salsa.

I emerged from the restaurant amidst blaring sirens from fire engines and ambulances. I heard a policeman outside say something about a “jumper.” I asked him, “Did he die?”

He joked, “When you jump sixty stories, you better believe you’re gonna die. You gotta look up when you’re walking in Chicago.”

My heart broke for this man I did not know. I imagined his family’s pain as they learned of his death. I imagined HIS pain and how he must have felt that there was no hope for his situation.

I know what despair feels like. For me, the pain was a maddening anxiety that resulted from having been assaulted by a good friend of the family when I was a young child. While I didn’t have an apartment on the 60th floor of anything from which I could jump, I could have been creative. So on this particular fall night in Chicago, the topic of suicide was newly emblazoned in my mind. And it hasn’t left since.

Author Beth Moore talks about “sifting.” How God will go to extreme measures to jolt you — to free you from a load that you’re carrying unnecessarily. I knew that 2005 was my year to be sifted. And so I finally told my parents of what our “friend” had done to me, and how I’d suffered profoundly all of these years.

Healing is a process. It does not happen instantaneously. Healing is a journey. I am traversing hills and valleys. Healing is a gift, offered freely and unconditionally by Jesus. Once and for all, I am choosing to be restored by Him. It’s painfully difficult to let go of a load that I’ve been carrying since I was 7 years old (some 25 years now). It’s as if I’ve been holding onto a heavy wooden crate filled with lumps of coal. When God attempts to take it from me, He has to pry my fingers from the crate.

And along with that crate, there is a broken record in my mind that repeats, “You’re damaged goods, Liz. Who’d ever want to marry you with all of this psychological baggage?” I am now learning to believe God’s truth over my version of the “truth.”

What finally gave me the courage to tell my parents of my ordeal (I’d feared hurting my mom profoundly and feared “ruining” relationships amongst my family and the man’s family), was the following verse. Our God says that He has already redeemed me, that He has summoned me by name (Imagine that! “Bring me Elizabeth Sandoval!”), and that I am HIS. No one else’s but His. Not the world’s. Not this perpetrator’s. But His.

He says, “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze. For I am the Lord, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.” –Isaiah 43:1-3

How can I not accept HIS offer of restoration? I must. And I will.

Elizabeth Sandoval is a writer/performer who lives in Whittier (and LOVES Chicago!)

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