I published the original version of this post during a dark time in my life. What a turning point! Writing what I wrote here – saying it, meaning it, pressing in to live it – I shook off the paralysis that had gripped me and set out into the light that gives life.

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I’m Deborah, and I have been so blind.

• Blind to what was really going on in my family as I grew up.
• Blinded to the roles handed me early in life – roles that, in adulthood, I continued to play.
• Blinded to who I am, apart from those assigned roles.
• Blind to whatever the people close to me profoundly denied.
• Blind to the things their behavior revealed, when their words and actions did not match.
• Blinded to my own unmet need to be affirmed as a person – and how very unsafe, the places I tried to get that need met.
• Clueless as to the many, and oh-so-predictable, ways I’ve let others pull my strings.
• Unaware of the false responsibility I’ve constantly carried – and the false guilt I’ve kept agreeing to take.
• Blind to the difference between religious and godly.
• In short, blinded to anything going on behind a convincing Christian façade.

Lost in the fog

Years ago, I began to see. It was marvelous, like a veil lifting, and such an astounding change that I didn’t realize how very much still needed to come into focus.

I didn’t know how hard it would be to face each new revelation – or how many in my Christian world would fight to keep me from it. I did not expect people I loved and trusted to hate my every movement toward the light.

Worse yet, I didn’t know how much it would compromise my identity in Christ to try to go with God – while still trying to please people who did not want that.

The more the Lord showed me, the more I found myself fighting against the FOG that author Susan Forward first described. A cloud of fear, obligation and guilt swirled just below the surface of my understanding, while a chorus of voices relentlessly shouted, “No! Don’t see that! Don’t go there! Change back!”

I’m Deborah, and I have been so stuck.

Time and again, I’ve taken a few steps forward. Then, lost in the fog, I’ve fallen down and back. Stuck is depressing. Stuck feels hopeless. It keeps you going in circles, while whispering, “There’s no way out.”

Each time I’ve gotten stuck, it’s because I wanted to follow God fully – and I wanted people to understand that’s what I was doing. I wanted them to know I was not wronging them. Rather, I was learning what real love looks like: love for God, love for them. I wanted them to see that. I wanted them to experience it too.

Every time I’ve gotten stuck, I have been trying to do what I cannot: make someone else see. Every time, I’ve tried to avoid acting on what I saw, until they saw it too.

Staying stuck vs. going with God

It costs to say, “Though none go with me, I still will follow.” It costs more, to press in to do it. Both involve “spending and being spent” for people who believe you are doing the opposite.¹

We may get stuck on that cost, thinking it too high. Yet staying stuck costs even more. Staying stuck, we set ourselves up to lose everything.

• We don’t honor ourselves, or the people eager to keep us blind and bound. Trying to be loved by those who will not give it, we miss out on real love and real belonging. Wanting to show love to those who will not receive it, we instead do them no good, no good at all.
• We miss out on the life our Lord gave everything to provide for us. We forfeit the fullness of our identity, purpose and joy in him.
• We deeply grieve our God. No matter what anyone may tell you, we do not honor him by trying to please people who count us “good Christians” only when we do what they want.

Embracing what God is revealing

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Lord, for your grace.

As I stumbled around, stuck in the fog – confused as to what was good and what, evil; what was true and what, a lie – God knew I wanted to see. And he kept showing me what I needed to know to be free.

Embracing what he is revealing has required a fight every inch of the way. While the Lord has worked – slowly, lovingly, firmly – to strip off blinders I had worn for a lifetime, I’ve tried to process the emotions: the anger and sorrow, the guilt of not seeing sooner, the shock of what I now know.

The people whose approval I’ve tried the hardest to gain still withhold it. I deeply feel the grief of it. Yet now I see why validation from certain quarters has mattered so much to me. The lie I’d unwittingly embraced since infancy said: “If they disapprove, I’m worthless. And repulsive.”

Now I realize: The ones who taught me to believe that lie were, themselves, blind and bound. And at last, I know in my inmost being what I would have told you I knew all along:

→ I’m created in the image of God
and made new in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Accepted in the Beloved,
I am fully me in him.
No one’s disapproval cancels that,
and the only person who can hinder my living it out is me.

Choosing life

The fog hasn’t completely dispelled. Sometimes, it still gets really thick. But now I recognize it. And I realize what in me opens the door for confusion to roll in. Now, I can cooperate with the Lord Jesus to blow the fog away.

For You light my lamp; The Lord my God illumines my darkness. (Ps. 18:28 NAS)

By grace, I cling to the Spirit of Christ when he reveals what is very hard to face. I struggle deeply – and yet find courage and rest – when seeing, and speaking up, seem to make things exponentially worse.

Today, he who rose again shows me not to lean on my own understanding as to what lies ahead. He who is light leads me to choose the light – and to say no to what would deter me from it.

As I dare to go with God where fear, obligation and guilt forbid, I rediscover hope. I taste joy.

No longer blinded, no longer stuck, I’m embracing the light, and pressing in to know the God who gives it.

I’m Deborah, and I am choosing life.

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More thoughts, four years later

When I wrote the words above, I stood at a crossroads. No. I lay at a crossroads, like one beaten to a pulp and left – by abusers who kept coming back, to act as if I had done it to myself, and they had come to help.

Choosing light had cost me so much that I had put off and put off going with God, again, into the continual dying-to-self that releases his life.

And yet, while I halted, desperately searching for a way to avoid making that choice, I remained victim to the tormentor who inflicts death by a thousand cuts.

This tormentor hates us. And he delights in disguising himself as an angel of light. And thus he confounds and immobilizes us, while he destroys us. Alternately seducing and intimidating, he severs our relationships, sabotages what brings us joy and slowly siphons off our confidence and hope, our freedom, integrity, life.

Meanwhile, on the human side of things, the abusers abuse. And others we have trusted collude. They may tell us to be quiet and submit. They may assure us (in love) that we’re the problem, but even if not, we’re to stay and take the pummeling, for that is how good Christians suffer for God.

I experienced all of that. Yet as weak and sick and confused as I was, I did see at last: To stay any longer meant to choose against God, not for him.

When I chose him, God made a way where there was none, and gave me grace to see – and take – each next step.

And now, a decade has passed

So blinded for so long, I first began to see what I desperately needed to see – in myself, and in my church culture. Then, I began to see what I had not seen in my family, in my marriage – and in a broader swathe of the church. Now, I’m distressed over what I see in my country and in the world.

Through it all, the Lord has told me, “Keep looking. Bear witness.” Especially, he keeps reminding me of the heart of the matter for me – the calling on my life. He keeps challenging me:

• To see my own life clearly.
• To see the state of the church more clearly.
• And with regard to both: To keep learning to separate out what is toxic, from what is precious and truly God.

Thank you, Lord, for guiding me through every dark time along the way, including the one I’ve revisited here.

You see the religiosity in us and around us that we’ve thought godliness. You challenge the “words without knowledge” that keep us in the dark (Job 38:2 NAS). You judge those who “present darkness as light and light as darkness” (Isa. 5:20 CEB).

And your words in John 8:12 are true:

I am the light of the world.
Whoever follows me
won’t walk in darkness
but will have the light of life. (CEB)

Lord Jesus, help us choose light!

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May 1, 2016, I published the original post, “I choose light.” September 2020, I wrote – but did not publish – the “four years later” section. April 2026, I included that section and the final section in this renamed and updated repost.

Image by Adrian Siea from Pixabay

See also

• You have circled this mountain long enough
• Trauma and truth-seeking: Desperation, spirit, life
• A sign and a wonder: The amazing grace cycle
• The truth will set you free
  
  
• The dream – and awakening 50 years later
• Newborn: Search for a parent’s love
• Enigma: A heart hidden, that appears open
• Treachery and divorce: When God sees betrayal

Footnotes

1. See Paul’s cry to the Corinthian Christians: “I will very gladly spend and be spent for your sake. If I love you more, will you love me less?” (2 Corinthians 12:15 CEB.) ↩︎