One salty tear and one shaky breath at a time

It has been 297 days since July 4, 2011. I know. Who cares, right?

Well, tonight, as I listen to music and look through old photographs of past adventures, I care. I care because July 4, 2011, was a pretty traumatic day for me. I don't want to re-hash all the details here, but you can read my blog post about that day if you want. The run-down is this: In the early morning hours of that day, my friend and I were robbed by four men in backwoods Tennessee. They had crow bars and threatened to use guns. And a man I'll never see again (save in heaven, Lord willing) put his hands all over my body and threatened to rape me.

I've never been more scared as I was at about 1:30 a.m. when I was laying flat on my stomach whispering "Jesus" over and over as the men yelled for our money and my body, and I've never been more grateful for my next breath as I was when it all ended about 1:37 a.m. with the men speeding away with all our cash. And no more. Just our cash. Only our money. God is, indeed, our defender.

The events of that day did more damage to my mind and heart than I had originally thought they would. For several months after the incident, I was able to recount the details much like a reporter would recount a news story. This happened. That happened. And here I am still alive and grateful. But then, 3-4 months later, I was playing bass guitar on my church's worship team. We were singing the song, "Your Great Name" by Natalie Grant, when, at the lines, "Every fear has no place at the sound of Your great Name; The enemy, he has to leave at the sound of Your great Name," I fell to pieces. Tears streamed down my face, dotting my glasses with a mist of salt, as I recalled the event, the heart-throbbing sense of terror mixed with a strange fight-or-flight sense of steeliness, with flashback clarity. Something in the mix of the words and the music ripped away the Band-Aid of objectivity I'd placed over the wound, and I bled.

Being very German and quite stoic, I thought that one good cry in front of God and everyone would "cure" me. But to this day, I cry every time I hear or sing that song. The tears carry different weight each time as the wound heals from gushing to scabby to itchy to scaly to scarred. 

Scaly. That is what I would say I am now. In the months since the great gusher of October '11, I have progressed from bedtime flashbacks, to googling and facebooking the name of the man who touched me, to genuine sobbing prayers for God to reach those men with His love and forgiveness.

Most recently, I got rid of the shirt I was wearing during the incident. As silly as it sounds, that was a big step for me. I had held onto it for...I don't know what reason. I didn't wear it much because every time I put it on, I remembered. But I hung it in my closet so I wouldn't forget. I didn't want to remember, and I didn't want to forget. It was an odd limbo.

But, it's gone. And though I cried after I'd shed it, the tears were good tears. The wound grew one more layer of pink-white skin, a bit scaly and a bit smooth.

It is not necessarily fun to heal slowly like this. Part of me wishes I could have kept pretending I was strong. But, as I look back on the past 297 days, most of me is glad that God is helping me heal well one salty tear and one shaky breath at a time.