Tell My Body I’m Innocent

Reflections – week 3

Welcome to the third week of reflections inspired by my current small groups. Together with some of my favorite women, I’m exploring these books: Father’s House: The Path That Leads Home, and The Whole Language. This is week three of eight. I’m finding joy here, and I’m pleased you’re with me on this journey.

Forgiven Future

“I am fully forgiven forever.”¹ This is key #3 in Father’s House.

The exercises in the workbook are designed to walk me through past grievances, but I find myself feeling more guilt and shame for my potential to mess up, than for past behaviors. I feel like a walking liability, a mistake waiting to happen, impatience and selfishness and bitterness piled up on an over-filled plate, waiting to get bumped and spill everywhere.

I believe that forgiveness from God is complete. It doesn’t happen when or because I ask for it. It’s done for all people for all time, and my invitation is simply to accept awareness of it. But I realize I have not allowed this to permeate my present and my future. I see everything in front of me through the filter of my imperfection. And I believe my capacity to act without love means I deserve a diminished life. Father’s House declares, “In Papa’s House your past doesn’t stand a chance.”² Could I believe that in Papa’s house my future doesn’t stand a chance?

The ability to walk forward is not only dependent on being untied from the past, but also on a clear way ahead. Papa doesn’t expect me to walk embarrassed, afraid, tentative—advancing slowly to improve the chance of catching myself when I trip. I have believed I must hold back because getting things right is more important than anything else. But if my future is forgiven and I am “innocent and pure forever,”³ I can’t possibly make things any more “right” than they already are.

I can walk with confidence, run with abandon, knowing that tripping is expected. God isn’t surprised when I make mistakes or protect my ego or forget to love. All of this is understood and received into His expansiveness. He is not keeping track. He is not expecting perfection. He is not asking me to go back to the starting line and try again. He is not putting his hand up and requiring me to kneel and beg forgiveness before I go on.

I have tried to avoid forgiveness by getting things right. I have believed that if I need to think about forgiveness, something has gone wrong. But Jesus didn’t shy away from forgiveness. He gave it out left and right, and not because people were asking for it. He never suggested we should be trying to not need to be forgiven. Perfection—“rightness”—is a distraction, a black hole, handcuffs.

Tension

A few months ago I began to notice tension in my body. The tension wasn’t new, but my notice was. I first became aware of it when I was lying in bed. I noticed I could allow my scalp and forehead and cheeks and shoulders and arms and back and legs and feet to relax. Five minutes later, I would become aware of the tension again, and again I could relax. After a day or two, I realized the tension was always there, but when I took notice of it I could release it. I don’t know what prompted this awareness, but it became an ongoing invitation to rest. Perhaps it was a result of internalizing freedom in Father’s House, knowing “It is finished”—what Jesus completed is my starting point and my resting place. I belong in Papa’s house. I’m exactly where I need to be. I sit in Papa’s house calm and light, because I’m no longer juggling while climbing stairs and holding my breath.

Holding

Children who have been abused often speak of a moment in their healing when they realize that the abuse was not their fault, not their destiny, not normal, not what they deserved. It becomes something that happened to them, but it is no longer their secret identity, the truth of who they are, or the predictor of who they will be.

Gregory Boyle tells the story of a kid named Sharky, whose father continued to find and terrorize the family, despite restraining orders. One day Sharky came home to find his father hiding there, waiting to interrogate him. When he couldn’t take any more, he ran to a neighbor’s house and called his mom, who arranged a meeting place. When they both arrive, “She just holds him there, in the gym bleachers, as he sobs all the more and her only message is this: ‘I’m so sorry you had to go through that.’” Many years later, Sharky is alone in a prison cell, and “comes a message from God… a singular expression of tenderness. God holding a sobbing Sharky and saying only this: ‘I’m so sorry you had to go through that.’ Sharky tells me later that this has become the notion of God that holds him still. It fills him enough to say finally to his own father, ‘I’m so sorry you had to go through all that.’ The Tender One… is sorry that we go through what we do.”⁴ He is holding us in the bleachers. He is speaking the truth that neither “abuser” nor “abused” is our identity, releasing us to healing and wholeness.

Innocent

“Father God doesn’t just consider you forgiven,” write the authors of Father’s House, “but He sees you as completely innocent—as though you had never sinned.”⁵ I don’t know what this means. It can’t mean I’m perfect. It can’t mean I’m not human. It can’t mean I don’t need to heal. Surely God sees my wounds, because He touches them and restores health. Ultimately, I think innocence is about intimacy. Innocence is, “There is nothing between you and Father God, for He sees you as holy, flawless, and restored,”⁶—forever. Innocence is an invitation to uncouple from shame. “Shame and intimacy will never share a seat at the same table. You have to let go of one to have the other.”⁷

Gregory Boyle writes, “Unshakeable goodness is our royal nature.” When we see this, he says, “We then undertake the search for innocence in the other. We cease to find the guilty party. We no longer divide into camps: Heroes and Villains. We end up only seeing heroes. We look for the unchangeable goodness that’s always there in the other… In this, we find the unbearable beauty of our own life.”⁸

Intimacy seems fragile to me, a rare treasure—not something that can be promised forever. But God Of The Impossible is promising infinite intimacy, and He is suggesting that innocence and intimacy are inextricably connected. Nothing between us.

Rest

My innocence, and the innocence of every human being, is an invitation to rest. Boyle writes, “It will always be less exhausting to love than to find fault. When we see fault, we immediately believe that something has to be done about it. But love knows that nothing is ever needed.”⁹ I no longer need to find fault. Instead, I find goodness. There is nothing left to fix, and my muscles relax in gratitude. I am not a tripping hazard. I am forgiven, innocent, whole. I breathe this in and release “fixing” so I can see love. Everywhere, and in everyone, love.

Endnotes:
¹Father’s House, page 46
²Father’s House, activation #3
³Ibid
⁴The Whole Language, pages 23, 24
⁵Father’s House, page 46
⁶Colossians 1:22 TPT, emphasis mine
⁷Father’s House, page 50
⁸The Whole Language, pages 40, 41
⁹The Whole Language, page 41