I first received this extremely vivid picture whilst I was leading a ladies’ meeting earlier this year on the subject of, ‘Taking Down The Barriers’. A number of people responded to it and there was a very blessed and lovely time of ministry and healing. However, the impact of this picture stayed with me and I have had a deep sense of the need to share it with a wider audience. If you feel that God is speaking to you through this and you don’t know anyone who could pray it through with you, then please e-mail me and I will arrange ministry for you. I may not know you, but I do know that God does. God loves you. He knew you before you were born and has been there throughout every moment of your life. He knows every pain and heartache that you have ever suffered. In the eyes of Father God, you are an extremely special person and He only wants the very best for your life. He wants to do something beautiful and something good for you, in the Name of JESUS.

We are in the hallway of a traditional style house. The stairs are facing us, and about half-way up is sitting a little girl. The fragility and tiny frame of this exquisitely, delicate child seem to belie her real age. Her features are obscured by the hair falling over her face and she is sobbing her heart out. Noisy, choking cries that cause her to struggle to catch her breath and her eyes to feel swollen and achingly tight. A distress that reaches into the whole of her being and goes on and on and on. This is a real tearing apart of her emotional  well-being; a wrenching and an agony that is destroying her. The intense pain in this scene is tangible; palpable. The mental anguish is hard to watch. This quiet, sensitive Thumbelina of a child has had her whole world, her physical body, her heart, her mental stability torn asunder by something exceedingly cruel that has come into her life.
    
Then the picture begins to subtly change. The sobbing stops. There is a gradual silence as the little girl begins to internalise her pain. I can actually see this process going on, the hurts being  compartmentalised and a ‘hardness’ creeping over the child. There is a shell forming around her, a strong, hard carapace that will not allow anyone in, a protection of her own making to keep her safe from the attacks of a hurtful world. Her survival strategies have developed a way of ensuring that no one will ever attack or harm her ever again.

The picture changes into a series of impressions. This girl moving on in her life, finding it difficult to communicate with people, incredibly introverted; reticent; afraid of getting close to anyone. She finds it hard to look people in the eye and her face is usually downcast. When she speaks with people, the words come out brusquely and she often appears rude to others. She has little validation of the feelings of other people and cannot comprehend that they are hurt by her attitudes. She is afraid to show her femininity and cannot accept well-intentioned compliments.

She marries and hopes that this will give her the security she craves, but she finds it difficult to relate even to her husband, who loves her dearly. There are sexual and emotional tensions and she is constantly afraid that he will leave her. She appears to find it terribly threatening when he has normal, day-to-day dealings with other women and, despite his repeated reassurances, she lives in fear that her world will be torn asunder again.

There is a deep sense that this is someone who longs, just longs, to be different. Like a tiny, soft creature curled up in a hard shell that is too big for her and prevents her from seeing with full vision, she knows that she is restricted and restricting others. There have been moments when she has ventured out and allowed the world to see her beautiful radiance, her gorgeous smile, her incredible kindness and her deep-seated humour, but she has quickly retreated back inside that enormous cavern of hardness that obscures her from view. She cannot find the strength to remove the barriers fully. She is so afraid to leave the security of her shell.
   
God is encouraging her. Saying, “Trust Me – I will never harm you.” He wants her to trust Him, to let Him gently remove that shell, to lift her, in all her fragility, and place her in the palm of His strong, capable hands, allowing Him to protect and take care of her. And, from that vantage point, to look up and to see, with crystal-clear clarity of vision, the beautiful world around her and the good things that He has for her life.

“The Lord sets prisoners free, The Lord gives sight to the blind, the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down, The Lord loves the righteous.” – Psalm 146:7,8.

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourself be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”  – Galatians 5:1