Next year, I’ll turn 70. Raised from childhood in a mainline church, the stories of Noah, David and Goliath, Jonah and the whale, captured my young imagination. There wasn’t anything we couldn’t make out of Popsicle sticks, craft paper, paste, and Plaster of Paris during Sunday School hour. It was a joyful experience, fondly remembered. Yet somewhere along the line, I learned that God was a harsh judge, sending punishment on people who were bad. Whether that was expressly taught, I don’t know, it’s just the impression I was left with by the time I reached adulthood. Fear and insecurity were reinforced at home and school, where some times it felt like the only time I heard my name, was when an adult summoned me for inquisition and punishment.

Realistically, fear and insecurity were at work within me even from conception. I was born with a heart defect. No, not a physical defect, but a wound to my very being that somehow prevented me from receiving love. Mom even wrote about it in my baby book – how it broke her heart that I didn’t like to be held or kissed, refused to suckle, or receive any other form of affection. The curse followed me into adulthood where I often downplayed anyone’s expression of love for me. From sources unknown, condemnation rang in my ears and denied me the love and care of others.

If I could describe my first 40 years in a single word, it would be loneliness.

Despite my heart defect, I am blessed with a beautiful praying wife, who knows her husband well and by the Holy Spirit discerned how to pray for me. At a healing conference during a time of intercession, my wife was face down on the floor before the altar praying for my healing. I felt nothing. In fact, feeling nothing describes my relationship with Jesus for many years – except for the vicious cycle of feeling shame and condemnation followed by forgiveness and temporary relief.

I joined Karen on the floor – face down – and pounded the floor with my fist while praying “I am NOT leaving without what I came for” … the person with the microphone said “come to the cross” and at once I found myself in a waking vision, at the foot of the cross. With the tips of my fingers, I reached out and felt the rough hewn beam, darkened from age, stained from use. I felt my way up the cross, until I saw what shattered my heart like a hammer – feet, nail pierced, broken and mangled, bloodied and filthy … weeping came over me like a flood and I cried out in Spirit “they’re broken … broken …” I lay hold of those feet, so overcome by the gruesome sight, when a pair of strong hands reached down and took hold of me from under my arms, and lifted me up until I was looking directly into the face of the Crucified Christ. There was no mistaking the look in His eyes: it was love. He uttered just 2 words, spoken into the very depths of my being and in an instant, healed my heart defect: FOR YOU.

Warmed by the love of Christ, I lay there trembling until finally rejoining my wife who had returned to her seat. I sat beside her, took her in my arms and held her tightly. Without a word she knew my heart had been healed.

Still, I have occasional bouts of insecurity rooted in a lifetime of being conditioned to respond in fear. As often as fear shows itself, the Holy Spirit is there with a word of encouragement to restore my peace and security.

During a time of devotion I experienced additional healing while reading from Psalm 139. Often I use a computer Bible for the large print and typically read from the English Standard Version. That morning however I mistakenly clicked on the Easy to Read Version. What I read in verse 13 moved me deeply:

“You formed the way I think and feel.”

Most translations render the passage “For you formed my inward parts” which I’ve always taken to mean God made my internal organs. Others render it “For you have possessed my reins.”

That God formed “the way I think and feel” was revelational for me, even liberating.

You see, growing up in the 50’s and 60’s, the message I received from the world is that being different, specifically being gentle, compassionate and artistic, was contrary to expectations for a boy. To make sure I got the message, there were any number of emotional and physical bullies who seemed intent on beating the gentility out of me, one way or another, in order to “make a man out of me”. I hadn’t realized until reading Psalm 139, just how much that bullying had affected me, even now that I’m an older man.

More than God forming “the way I think and feel”, I’m awed by the implication of the more common translation “you have possessed my reins.” That suggests to me the way I “think and feel” is the means by which God has bridled me and leads me along the path He has chosen.

God made me deeply emotional and a person of conscience, which compels me to examine myself and to work through conflict and seek reconciliation. I’m deeply introverted, intuitive and feeling, and place great value upon my inner peace, or what the Hebrews would call their “shalom”. God has also made me observant and inquisitive, which motivate me to search for truth. Thus the way I think and feel helps to form the character and person God created me to become.

His word reduced me to tears that morning, over the number of times I’ve gone to Him in prayer and asked forgiveness for the way I think and feel together with begging Him to change me. For me to have prayed that way, was to ask Him to conform me to the demands of the world, rather than be conformed to the will of God who made me.

And so the Father had yet another healing gift for me, through accidentally clicking on a translation I rarely ever read. His word freed me to give thanks for how He formed me where I can stop beating myself up for the way I think and feel. Though I may not be the man the world expects, I am and continue to grow into the man God has made me to be.

Thank you Abba Father, for making me as I am. I shall never again despise what you have formed in me.