in good company

we say that misery loves company

we find comfort in knowing that we are not the only ones who are unhappy. we find solidarity and unity in our pain, or discontentment, or unmet expectations. we rest easy knowing that we aren’t the only ones who are left wanting.

i recently taught a sermon on the miracle of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead…which you’ve probably heard a million times if you are even remotely “churched”.
but, after reading it in preparation, something new stuck out to me: as Jesus is approaching the tomb of Lazarus, he asks them to move the stone away, to which Lazarus’ sister Martha replies “Lord, he’s been dead for 4 days, there will be an odor”.
the Creator of the universe nears the death that lies in a tomb and the human response is to attempt to shield Him from the mess within.
what struck me is that this is exactly like our lives.
every single one of us has a “tomb” that we are trying to shield the Lord from entering.
every single one of us has a place in our lives that is so filled with death and shame and guilt and pain and brokenness that we can’t even begin to imagine letting the Lord look upon, much less enter in.
we become Jesus’ backseat drivers, attempting to steer Him away from the one place in our lives that needs him the most.
at least that’s what i did…
and my tomb was closed for a lot more than 4 days.
my tomb was closed for 11 years.
there were no longer distinguishable remains inside of my tomb, just bones and ash and dust.
scarcely were there signs that life had ever flourished in what now lay, disheveled within the walls of my heart.

my tomb was a mess of broken identity, fractured trust, all-consuming shame, severed relationships, paralyzing anxiety + absolute hopelessness, all coexisting in blinding darkness.
my condition was chronic.
my tomb was filled with a splintering truth, buried under a decades worth of lies.
my tomb was sexual assault.

the stone stayed over my abuse for 11 years.
no light. no life. just still, haunting, darkness.
until one day Jesus arrived and told the stone that it was time to move.
i was angry. and scared. and confused.
couldn’t this wait?
hadn’t everything been ok with the tomb locked up tight?
why would Jesus want to let the light shine in and expose something so unbelievably — something so incomprehensibly ugly and wrong?
it had been buried. why would a loving Savior make me look at all of the pieces of myself that were dead?

but in the way that He does, He opened the tomb, and all the light of life and truth poured in.
which was stark and disorienting and exposing.
my misery, now on display for all to see, but most importantly for Him to see.
i struggled through a lot of anger and pride as i looked in the face of my misery. i so desperately didn’t want to be another number, i didn’t want to be a part of a statistic.
"one in three women will experience sexual violence at some point in their lifetime”
”one in four girls will be sexually abused before they turn 18”
in one fell swoop it seemed that suddenly my identity was no longer my own. my identity was that of “victim” and it was one that i shared with a whole new demographic of other faceless sufferers.
my misery had found company. and it was company that i didn’t want to be associated with.

but then He did the unthinkable.
He did the impossible.
with a love that’s big enough to overcome death, He peered into my tomb and simply said “come alive”.
and in a turn as unexpected as a dead man raising to life, the dead parts of my identity began to open their eyes and feel the warm light of the sun on their cold skin.
slowly at first, and then all at once.
the road to the tomb was arduous and harrowing.
there was not a single step that didn’t ache in some untouched corner of my soul.
but the moment that Jesus stepped in front of my fear, rolled away the stone and spoke value and worth and love and kindness into my tomb, all that was dead suddenly had the courage to walk out of the shadows and into His radiant light.

there was a lot that i thought was lost and gone forever through the process of my assault.
hope and identity and truth and confidence and value and worth, all scattered like ashes, but just like Adam, He scooped up the dirt from inside my tomb and breathed life into a soul that had been in the grave for a long time.
1 Peter 5:10 says “And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you”
He knew the path to the tomb would make me feel like i was going to die. He knew it would hurt and that my feet would bleed and my heart would ache to just give up.
but He also knew the promise on the other side.
He knew life didn’t just mean breathing lungs and a beating heart, it meant an identity finally found thriving in Him. it meant a whole being (body, mind, heart and soul) that was restored, confirmed, strengthened and established.
He knew.

we say that misery loves company.
but the more i reflect on misery the more i see that misery doesn’t love company, it is simply comfortable in the company it keeps.
what i really think misery loves is a way out of it’s misery.
i think the truth is that misery loves to have a hero.
a hero who heals and restores and brings it out of darkness into light.
misery longs to be healed.
and it has been in my healing that i have found myself seated in good company.
the selfishness of one abuser brought me into misery, but the selflessness of one Savior brought me into joy.
an abuser may have minimized my identity to nothing more than a statistic on a page, but it is only through the death that Jesus was able to call me to life and bring me into the company of other’s just like me:
broken people made whole by the miracle that is Jesus.

may we be people standing at the mouth of our tomb, humbly asking Jesus to roll it away, trusting that the death within is never too dead for Him to bring it back to life.

all is not lost, it just needs to be woken back up.