A successful start to a new school year! Nathan's first day of Kindergarten was this past Thursday, and on Friday he told me that he loved his new teacher and he loves school! Prayers answered. Clare, who is beginning third grade told me that she can hardly wait for homework! I have written that down, dated it, and it now hangs on our refrigerator! Olivia and I are enjoying a calmer house and more uninterrupted time with each other. With her head hung low, she has told me several times that she misses Nathan and Clare. She may have the biggest adjustment of all of us. Her playmates are at school, and mom just doesn't quite cut it in the playmate department. There is nothing like fresh beginnings. They are full of hope, full of promise and potential, and full of new adventures for all of us. Watching Nathan take his first steps out into the world has tugged at my heart. The first day without him at home, was a little tough. One of the things Nathan and I liked to do together was pull out the wooden building blocks and build forts, castles, other great architectural "structures" and walls that he loved to crash his cars into when he was finished. For Nathan, tearing down the walls was as much fun as building them.
Adults have their own way of building up walls too, except that our walls are built inside our minds and hearts, and we tend to not enjoy tearing them down, but are experts at building them up high and strong. Adults build up walls usually after something or someone has hurt us, and they are built, not with wooden blocks, but with blocks of fear. Walls are built to keep something out, and to protect what is inside them. The walls of a house are built to keep the elements, animals, criminals, and many other things out and they are built to define living space and protect the people who live inside them. And then there are the walls that are famous around the world. The Berlin wall was a wall that divided the city of Berlin, Germany into East Germany and West Germany. It was built to stop the people from East Germany from enjoying the freedoms that West Germans enjoyed. That wall was built to keep alive the communist regime, and put to death any thoughts of freedom. It was a wall that was built to control and divide a country's people. Walls can compartmentalize, separate, define, and promote purpose and privacy. Walls can hide what we don't want seen and create a sense of safety. Some walls are built of brick, some out of wood, some out of cement, some out of mud and clay, and some out of plywood.
The walls that are built in our hearts and minds are walls that are put up, usually in response to a painful event, or the fear of a future painful event. When a close loved one passes away, oftentimes, the spouse, the child, the best friend, or the person left behind, without them being aware of it, begins to build a wall out of fear. Fear of loving that deeply and losing that love again, creates the perfect conditions for erecting a wall to keep love out, to redefine who you are, and to feel safe from that kind of pain again. People who are diagnosed with a serious illness or disease, sometimes build their walls to separate themselves out from those that are healthy. It is often too painful to remain faithful, and to remain involved in life, and it is easier to build a wall and watch life from behind that wall, safe and protected from the pain of having to deal with how much your life has changed. Students who are bullied build up walls, afraid of society, afraid of not fitting in, afraid of not being protected by the people that should be able to protect them, and help them. People who have experienced abuse build up walls in order to cope with the psychological, physical, and emotional trauma.
Sometimes the walls we build are temporary, put in place to help us cope and survive until we are ready to have God dismantle them, and move on with life. The trick is making sure the walls we put up are temporary and not permanent. We can't allow ourselves too get too comfortable behind the walls, maybe once in awhile peeking out a window to see what life is like out there. People who move often ( military, clergy, etc.) have to be very careful about wall-building. It is sometimes easier to live behind walls than build up a relationship, grow to love the person, or people, and then have to leave them behind. Sometimes it is more safe, less complicated, and just plain easier to invest in the wall than the people.
How do you know when you've built a wall? The walls that we build up first begin with a belief, conscious or unconscious, that we make our "truth". The walls we put up often begin with beliefs like I am always going to lose the people I love. I am not a lovable person. I am too "different" to be liked. I always seem to cling to attract people who hurt me. I don't have anything intelligent to offer. I am overweight, fat, and ugly. No one is going to want to be in my company. I am not smart enough to go to college. God couldn't love me because I've made too many mistakes in my life. You get it. Every wall begins with a perception of ourselves, that we make into a belief, and that we eventually proclaim as our truth. The walls begin to be constructed when we turn these "truths" into laws that we abide by. Somewhere inside us, we believe these to be our destiny. We worship that destiny by erecting a wall, a monument, that supports that destiny. Just like the Vietnam Memorial Wall, we have written our names on that wall, and we have become a casualty at the hands of our mind's thinking and our heart's beliefs. We have died a psychological, spiritual death, and we go to that wall often, making sure our name is there for all to see. We weep at that wall, touch that wall, and bow our heads at that wall. Grieving, remembering, and wishing the outcome could have been different. We surrender our power to that wall's largeness, its depth, its height, and its length. Finally getting used to that wall's presence and its message to the world, we have made the wall a part of every cell of our body, every vein, every inch of tissue, every limb and every muscle. I am the wall. Come to me, and look, but please don't touch me. Come to me, and tell me what you hope for me, but don't forget to grieve for me, pity me, and feel sorry for me. Come to me and share your strength, but don't forget I am a victim of the war inside my mind. You can come to me, but you will not be able to change me. This wall is indestructible.
When Nathan and I would build walls with our blocks, he used to just knock what I had built. I had to tell him that he needed to ask permission to tear down my wall. It wasn't okay for him to just come over and knock it down. When it comes to our wall-building, we have to get to a point where we say to God, "Okay, God. You can knock it down now." What gets us to that point could be almost anything, but first you have to recognize where you have built your wall. We are all so used to our walls, that the first step is to become aware of where inside us we have built them. God will point out to us what is missing in our lives. Because it is what is missing in our lives that becomes the ground for which a wall is built upon. When something is missing, we have an open space that we need to fill, and constructing a wall fills that space. God will sometimes point out our walls to us through our relationships. If a relationship is difficult and is just not going well, sometimes we've constructed a wall that prevents love from flowing freely in that relationship. Walls are built on a lack of trust. Pray to find your wall or walls, and you will find a place in you where trust has been shattered and broken. God will show us how we've taken the broken fragments that once were trust, and we have used that material to build the wall. Sometimes it is helpful to make a timeline of events in our lives where we have built up our walls brick by brick. A death, a job loss, a hurtful comment, a dream that you believe has died, an illness, the birth of a child, divorce, a move...etc. Walls aren't built in a single day, but are built over time, brick by brick. Going back through your past, with God, and identifying each brick will help you gain perspective on the size and strength of your wall. Anger, fear, lack, judgment, prejudice, lies, and so many other parts of ego are the brick and the mortar that have constructed and held the wall together.
Remember Ronald Reagan and his speech concerning the Berlin Wall? " Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall!" Praying for our walls to be dismantled, torn down, and transformed into something new is our call to God to Please, tear down that wall! God will show us that our minds have been our prison, and our hearts have been locked up, and we believed that the key had been thrown away. It is God's desire to release us from behind the wall, from the prison we have created in our minds. It is God who will give us the key. We will have to unlock the prison gate, and begin to tear down the wall with God at our side. Brick by brick, our wall will be dismantled, broken up, kicked down, and torn apart. God empowers us to tear down that wall and walk from the East to the West. We will rise up from our prison cells, open the gate, and march on the ground where the wall once stood, into the land of freedom. Free to love and be loved. Free to be happy, free to taste the sweetness of life... the promise of sheer joy. Free of fear we dance where the wall once stood. Free of fear we rejoice on the ground that once held us captive. Free of fear we learn to dream again, laugh again, and be a part of life again! Free of fear, the earth beneath the wall of death and destruction is now an open space filled with the glory of resurrection.
And the good news is that once we become aware of how walls are built, we can catch ourselves before we build a wall too high or too long. We realize how much work and sweat and tears and muscle it takes to build a wall and tear it down. As time goes on, with steady and consistent prayer, we are released from our desire and our need to build walls. We will come to know it is much easier and less consuming it is to just live life fully and freely. We will create a new and brave law to live by, that is not written on a wall, but is written on our open hearts...the law of perfect love. If you fill your emptiness with love, there is absolutely no room for walls to be built.
Blast your horns and march around the city of your old self, and when you hear the Great Horn, the unmistakable signal inside your heart, shout your readiness to God, and feel the wall collapse around you. Advance spirit's purpose and move forward!
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