It is not fear. She wants that understood, because people hear this and they picture something that is not what happens.
What happens is about a third of a second and it is entirely muscular. A door goes, hard, anywhere, and her shoulders come up about an inch and something in her stomach goes tight and her hearing sharpens, and then it is over and she carries on unloading the dishwasher.
That is it. That is the whole event. She does not think about anything. There is no image, no memory, no rush of anything. Her body simply performs a small piece of choreography it learned a very long time ago and then puts it away again.
She is thirty-nine. She has not lived in that house since she was seventeen. The man is not dead, but he is not in her life, and she has not laid eyes on him in eleven years, and there is no ongoing situation of any kind.
She has done the work. She really has. Two years of it, with a good person, in her late twenties, and it was hard and it helped enormously and she does not regret a day of it.
And the shoulders still come up when a door goes.
The thing that gets her is not the flinch. It is what she does immediately after it, which is a fast internal check that she is not aware of performing: was that me. Am I still that. Did it get out.
Because somewhere in the last twenty years she came to understand the flinch as a status report. As though her shoulders were reporting, several times a year, on whether she was still the girl in that hallway.
And the report is always the same, and the answer she takes from it is always the same, and it is: not fully out yet.
The body is not the witness
I want to say the most important thing first, plainly, without a run up.
Your shoulders are not reporting on your freedom.
They are reporting on a period of your life during which coming up an inch was a sensible thing to do, and they learned that, and they learned it well, and they are extremely good at it. That is what a nervous system is: a set of things a body got right under pressure and then kept.
It is not a witness. It has no access to the question you are asking it.
And I want to be careful and honest here, because there is a version of this page that gets sentimental about trauma and a version that gets brisk with it, and both are useless. What happened to you happened. Two years of work was necessary and it was real. Nothing about that is being tidied away.
What is being moved is the interpretation of a third of a second.
Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.Isaiah 43:19
Look at where the new thing is put. Not instead of the wilderness. In it. God does not say He will take His people somewhere less difficult and then act. He says He will make a road through the middle of the thing they are actually in.
You are somebody God is making a way for in the place you are actually standing, and that is not encouragement for a woman with a startle response, it is what is written, and the Holy Spirit is the reason it is arriving in the shoulders rather than in your head, where you already know it.
And notice the word now. Not once the desert has been dealt with. Now, while it is still a desert, while a door can still do that to a body.
Now let me go at the internal check, because that is the actual thing here.
Was that me. Am I still that. Did it get out. Three questions, several times a year, for twenty years, and every one of them is a question about your identity being put to a set of muscles.
You are not the girl in that hallway and your shoulders were never able to tell you either way. Scripture puts the new thing in God's hands and springing forth now, and the Spirit of God has been in you through eleven years of not seeing that man and two years of hard work and every single one of the flinches.
I want to say something about the two years of work, as well, because I do not think you have ever been told this.
You went and did the hardest available thing in your twenties. Most people do not. And somewhere in you there is a quiet suspicion that because the flinch survived it, the work did not take, and I want to name that suspicion and put it down: the work took. It changed how you live, how you love, what you will and will not tolerate in a room. What it did not do was uninstall a reflex, and it was never going to, and no honest person ever promised it would.
You are free, and your shoulders have not been told, and Scripture says the way is being made now, in the wilderness, and the Spirit is the one making it, and a body catching up slowly is not the same thing as a woman still being in that house.
You are free, and your shoulders were never asked to sign off on it. The written word says He is doing a new thing now and making a way in the wilderness, and the Holy Spirit is the one making it in a body that still comes up an inch.
So here is the turn, and it does not require your shoulders to stop.
They may not. And that is not the disaster you have quietly been treating it as for twenty years.
What moves is the report.
Your body has been giving evidence in a case it knows nothing about. A third of a second of muscular memory has been standing as testimony about whether you are free, and it has no standing, and it never had, and the verdict it has been producing several times a year is not a verdict at all.
The next time a door goes and your shoulders come up an inch, nothing has been reported. It is a set of muscles doing a very old thing very well.
And the new thing is springing forth now, in the wilderness, and it is being made by somebody else entirely.
You are somebody God is making a road for in the place you are actually standing. Scripture puts the new thing in the middle of the desert rather than after it, and the Holy Spirit has been in you through eleven years of not seeing that man.
Declare this over yourself
Say them out loud, at ordinary speaking volume. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, so this is not a woman asking to be fixed. It is an ambassador saying out loud what her King has already said, and however He answers and whatever He does from here is His and it is good.
- Slammed door, you are a sound in a hallway and you are not a warning about my life. The word of God says He is doing a new thing now and making a way in the wilderness, and now is a word that covers a body that still comes up an inch.
- Internal check that runs after the flinch, in the name of Jesus you are dismissed and you have had twenty years of evidence you were never qualified to give. The Holy Spirit is the one making the way in me, and a set of muscles has never once been able to report on it.
- Lord, You put the new thing in the middle of the wilderness rather than after it, and Your word says it is springing forth now. My shoulders are slow and I am free, and I am standing here today with my hands open.
Isaiah 43:19
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