Dear Younger Me

 Dear Younger Me

By Jennifer Moodie

7/20/2022

Dear younger me,

You were a little miss “goody two shoes”, having a big head and believing that your standards, spiritual disciplines, and fear of disobeying was what gave you a good relationship with God. You asked Jesus into your heart over, and over, and over again because you desperately desired to be saved, but couldn’t be good enough to think you were. You lived a life of absolute fear- fear of breaking the rules, fear because you wanted so badly to break those rules, and fear of going to hell when you finally broke them. 

-But someday, you will understand salvation, the law/gospel distinction, and you will have rest and assurance. 

All through your teen years you were desperate for love. You wanted nothing more from life than to be a wife and mother, and you were heartbroken over ever boy who didn’t promise to give you that. You “laid out fleeces” like Gideon, bargaining with God to give you a sign as to which boy you had a crush on would ask you to be his forever, never for a moment considering that God’s plan involved someone you haven’t even met yet. 

-But someday, you will learn that “You are not Gideon”, and God doesn’t work like that, and that there actually is more to life than being a wife and mom, although it was God’s plan to allow you to be both. 

You had very rough teenage years, and felt as if you would never be an adult. You felt like you could never do anything right or measure up to the standards that were set and yet you wanted approval. In college you believed you found “the one”, thought you were in love, were told that he loved you back, only to discover that neither one of you understood then what love really meant. 

-But someday you will understand love- earthly love and a Heavenly love, and it will blow your mind.

Your “purity” was a thing of pride for you, a constant area of boasting, and then you had this gut wrenching, sick feeling when you lost it. You wrestled with feelings of pride that you finally did what you had always wanted to do, feeling worthless because the only thing of value that any guy would want from you was gone, and shame over how you lost it. That shame followed you for over a decade, haunting you like a terrifying ghost. You even felt shame over checking in to the hotel on your wedding night because then everyone would KNOW you for sure were not a virgin anymore and that made you feel icky. That feeling that you ruined your chances of a happy marriage seemed to be confirmed later on, and you blamed yourself, as others blamed you, for “leaving the castle” or the “umbrella of protection”. You had a crushing weight of feeling as if you lost your identity, one that had defined you for so many years: virgin. You believed that everyone who looked at you knew what you did, and yet you also wished that they knew because you somehow finally felt like a woman. 

-But you will come to realize that your value isn’t in your virginity, and that God’s opinion matters more than any man or woman’s, and when He sees you, He doesn’t see your status as a virgin or not, but as His adopted child, for whom He sent His Son to die, and to cover your sins with His blood. You will come to understand that your purity was never found in your virginity, but in Christ through His blood. 

You got married. Your wedding day, a day you didn’t get a say in, was just the beginning of many traumas. You love the man you marry with everything you have, but you married him in a cloud of shame and with a sense of hopelessness feeling as if you literally had no other choice. But you were also over the moon happy to finally be called “wife”, and to be an adult. You found that you were vastly unprepared for both and you panicked. You knew happiness like you had never felt, and also experienced pain you never knew you could withstand. You felt lied to about what marriage is, and less than a year in you wanted relief from the very thing you had previously wanted most out of life. It was sheer fear and stubbornness that kept you company when you felt so alone. 

-But someday you will understand that marriage isn’t the ultimate goal in life, and will learn the “chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever” (Heidelberg Catechism Q&A 1) You will one day find your satisfaction in Christ alone. But you will still get butterflies when you hear your husband call you “my wife”. 

The next few years were a blur. You were broken to the point of wanting to die because you believed that was your only way out of the hell you were living, but that it was the hell you brought on yourself for not “doing things God’s way”. You doubt if God is real and that terrified the living daylights out of you. You had a child, a baby boy. Being a mother was the second most important thing you wanted out of life, and finding out you were carrying life within you was a feeling you will never get over. You were wildly unprepared to be a mother, but you threw yourself wholeheartedly into the task. That little boy was your lifeline that you clung to even when you felt like you are drowning, which you did as post partum depression took over without your knowledge, and your marriage hit rock bottom. You were so desperate for a love that was different than what you had that you agreed to an open marriage, praying twisted prayers that God, if He be real, would allow your husband to find love elsewhere so it would end your misery but keep your and your family’s reputation in tact. You prayed for relief from the life you had previously begged for. Your husband abused you, tore you down, and battered you to an emotional bloody pulp and you didn’t think there was any recovering from it. And you believed it was all your fault—that if you could have just been better, skinnier, prettier, sexier, and just….more that you could have made your marriage better. You were crushed under the weight of failed expectations, disappointment, guilt and shame, and believed that God hated you and there was no forgiveness for the sins you had not only committed with your body, but in your heart. You were convinced that if God were real, He hated you because you were not good enough to earn His love, you were overwhelmed with grief over your sins and the feeling like you needed to earn your forgiveness from them. You had another baby boy, and once again post partum depression overtook you. You considered walking away from religion in the hopes it would relieve you of the burdens you believe are there because of God. You learned to lament, but you didn’t  understand that until much later.

-But, dear one, you will come to understand that salvation isn’t earned, in any sense of the word, but is a gift in every sense of the word. God has never loved you because of who you are, but because of Who He is. You will understand what true love is and it will never cease to fill you with awe and wonder. And you will understand that to seek to be good enough for salvation, or to believe that you are too sinful to be redeemed, is to tell Jesus that what He suffered for you wasn’t enough and you needed to somehow add to the cross. You will understand that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ, and when we sin we have an Advocate with the Father. Burdens that you had carried so long will fall away as you realize they were never meant to be carried. 

Your marriage improved because God transforms hearts. You are so utterly confused as you watch your husband, the man you had a love/hate relationship with, grow in Christ and change. Not like before when he promised he would be better, but silently and in little increments that stuck. You were confused because you didn’t understand trauma and how it works yet, so you knew in your head that he was changing because you could see it, but your body still held on to the trauma. It took years and so much work to fall in love with your own husband again, but you could see him trying so hard to love you well, and seeking to love God, and himself less. You were so frustrated that you couldn’t seem to move on from the heartache you endured, because you could see him becoming more tender, compassionate, and gentle but you could not seem to enjoy or appreciate it because you just couldn’t forget the pain. Your health took a nosedive and you screamed, cried, and were oh so very weary of your earthly body that felt so broken.

-But, my younger self, it gets so much better. You will someday understand to some degree trauma and it’s effects, and while you still have health problems and your body remains broken to some degree, your marriage will be redeemed as you both grow in Christ. You will finally have the marriage you always dreamed of, although it will look much different than you imagined. Your husband will actually become your best friend and you will feel like half of you is missing when he goes to work every day. You will have a little girl and she will be everything you ever wanted in a daughter. Truly. And another little boy with blonde curls. You will be ever so “twitterpated” over your husband and be loved by him in a way that makes you feel so safe and secure, and your children will not only be the biggest blessings in your life, but will also cause you to really re-evaluate so many things so that you are prepared to answer questions they may have and to teach them. They will also show you your weaknesses and God will use that to push you to heal and grow and seek help in counseling. 

You had a doctrine change that felt like you had a lightbulb come on and you could see things clearly for the first time. It also felt like leaving everything familiar that you’d ever known about God and the Bible and you re-examined everything. Everything. You began following celebrity pastors such as John Piper and John MacArthur, erroneously believing that if they, biblical scholars, said it, it must be true… And you went into a “cage stage”— A time when you felt that you’d been lied to and it is your job to help open everyone else’s eyes to the new truths that you were seeing.  You lost friends who turned out not to be friends at all. As you started digging deeper into the Bible in a way you’d never dug before, you began loving Jesus in a way you didn’t think was possible. As you dug deeper, your entire perspective shifted on so many things. And you left almost everything that felt familiar while desperately trying not to leave what was right. You are proof that you can “deconstruct” and not leave the faith.

-But that cage stage will eventually blow over as you understand, as Theocast puts it, you need to “Trust Christ & Calm Down”. You will grow in discernment and will see the errors of following celebrity pastors, and will be so thankful for those who helped point out the dangers of Christian Hedonism, Lordship Salvation, and biblicism among other things. You will make new friends and understand that being part of The Body means more than just your local church, and that being part of a “faith family” includes believers from all over the world, and not just one church.

Younger me, the life you have now is not like you would have imagined it- it is so much better. You didn’t end up becoming a missionary’s wife or a pastor’s wife… and by the definition you were raised with, you aren’t “in ministry”. But you have learned about the doctrine of vocation and are so thankful for that because it helped you to understand that being a mother was a vocation worthy of the kingdom in times when you felt you weren’t serving enough. You have experienced spiritual abuse which hurt far more than you anticipated, but you will also have the tools to recognize it and heal. You will lose people you thought were friends, but will find that those that stay are like family. You will find the friend you always wanted and have babies at the same time and be an “aunt” to kids that aren’t related to you. You will leave the denomination you once believed was the only right one, and it will be scary, but also understanding the gospel through Historical Reformed theology will breathe life into you and your husband. 

You will still have pimples as an adult and you won’t have the body you wanted, but you will have born four precious children into the world and love them with everything you have in you.

You will wear pants and shorts, go to the movies, listen to “worldly” music and dance at concerts, love Harry Potter, have tattoos, a nose ring, raise your hands during the music portion of the worship service, learn to love liturgy and use a prayer book, talk to your kids about sex, and talk openly about sex to others (in an appropriate context of course), and will work to “smash the patriarchy” and seek to help those who have been harmed and abused. You will learn about boundaries and how to enforce them, and it will feel so strange and almost wrong, but it will be necessary and anxiety/stress reducing. You will do so many things, and believe so many things, that would appall you if you knew. But you will understand freedom and liberty in Christ and will stop blatantly saying “Thank you God that I am not like other people”. You will stop trying so hard to keep the law to gain righteousness when it is Christ’s righteousness for you that matters. You will do things out of love for the Lord and no longer out of fear or obligation. 

It isn’t the life you would have expected, but it is the life you will love and be so thankful for. The trials you endure will shape you into the person you become and you wouldn’t trade it for anything. 

It does get better. You survive. You heal. And you thrive. Because God doesn’t punish his children or make them earn His love, and what He starts He will finish, working in our hearts and lives to accomplish His will. 

Soli Deo Gloria. Semper Reformanda.