About Pasta Plates and Broken hearts

I just have to brag with our God a little: There is no one like Him, and there is no one that can see deep in the secret places of our hearts and bring about the most amazing healing!

I had a funny day yesterday. I felt nostalgic and was walking down memory lane a bit. I met up with an old school friend on Face Book. We haven’t spoken in twenty years and my mind was back in 1988. The more I thought about my high school years and everybody I knew back then the more my anxiety level climbed. It’s not that it was all that bad for me. I wasn’t bullied, I had some friends and I did pretty good academically, but I wasn’t popular or even close to it. I was at best a happy-clappy-Jesus-freak-nerd. Now today I will carry that title with pride, but back then, not so much.

After thinking about this for most of the morning, I brushed it off with a “Come on, those days are long gone, you have done well for yourself.” I carried on to recite in my mind the things I have accomplished, not that they were all that much or even that great, but it made me feel better. To tell you the truth, when I look back on my life I know for sure that God’s grace was the driving force behind every good thing, nothing else.

I thought I was done with all this doom and gloom. For goodness sakes, I should take these thoughts captive, right? Well, it turned out to be quite the challenge on this particular morning. While cleaning the kitchen my thoughts went a different route. I was packing away my pink pasta plates. I’m afraid I bought these plates without really knowing what I was buying. (This use to happen to me a lot, being an alien in a foreign country). I never knew there existed a thing called a “pasta plate”. I just thought they were pretty pink plates with a little bit of a hollow center at a great price! (Ross of course).

So to make a very long story short, a few months ago we had one of my husband’s colleagues and his family over for a BBQ (hot dogs and hamburgers) and I served it, of course, in my pretty pink “pasta plates”. All would have been fine, have they not been very eloquently speaking, well read, travelers of the world. In fact, they lived in Italy for a while! This was just another addition to my long list of cultural blunders. Oh well, what are you gonna do? I thought for sure this embarrassing incident was behind me. However, on this barely-Spring morning, while putting away my “pasta plates” (we now use it all the time – you can’t waste a good bargain!) waves of shame washed over me.

I was confused: Didn’t I already deal with all this stuff, what was this all about? Fortunately for me I have a Counselor, a dear friend who sees every crazy step I take, and always tells met the truth even when it hurts. He was right there, peeking over my shoulder, whispering in my ear with His gentle voice: “This is an assault on your heart.” Off course! John Eldridge explains this so wonderfully in his book Waking the Dead. The enemy would go to those wounded places in our hearts (my school days and my pasta plate incident) and he will use it to shame us, condemn us and sow lies in our hearts that we are utterly worthless. I was so excited to have recognized this (again). I ran to my room, shut the door, stretched myself out before God and sobbed: “What is going on God? What is this attack on my heart? My heart is your dwelling place, please help me guard it!”

I never seem to have the right words to explain the transformation that takes place in His presence.
In that place He showed me the lie: The enemy has been telling me “You will never be good enough!”
But better yet, in that moment He dropped His truth into my heart: “You are fearfully and wonderfully made. I have counted every hair on your head and I made you to be you for a very specific reason. Just be yourself my child”

Oh how I love Him. Oh how I need Him. Dearest sister in Christ, living without Him is not living at all. I hope you too are guarding your heart today. Don’t fall for the enemy’s lies. God made you so beautiful!

In my program for women recovering from overeating, binge eating and bulimia, we spend a whole week talking about the assaults on our hearts. In the struggle with food, the assaults are constant and crippling. It is almost impossible to live under those. God wants to free your heart and make it His sole dwelling place!