The search begins: how did we get here?

Whether we’ve experienced this strange thing called “rebirth” or not, we are all searching for something. This is because something isn’t right, but we don’t know it yet.

The search takes many forms, but they are essentially the same:

· The perfect job

· The romantic relationship that feels right

· The healthiest diet or exercise regime

· A way to seem put together

· Friends

· The ideal college

· The drug that makes pain go away

These things can be good in their own right, but why do they never satisfy? 

Why do we still feel empty? 

I’ll tell you.

These things can’t fill us because they weren’t designed to fill us. Plain and simple. And yet we keep searching, trying to stuff things into this unexplainable hole that gapes painfully as though a tooth has just been extracted. 

I remember how it felt to have two adult teeth taken out of my eleven-year-old mouth. My cheeks bulged with white gauze until I drooled around it, and I couldn’t communicate anything to my mom on the car ride home because my holes were overflowing with stuff that had taken the place of my teeth. But as soon as I removed the gauze and felt the chasm with my tongue, I cringed. I had no idea that little molars had roots that deep! And so I stuffed the gauze back in, bit my tongue, and let the tears roll down my rounded cheeks, unable to say how miserable I felt. 

How did we get here? Where did this hole come from?

In a book called The Sacred Romance, John Eldredge and Brent Curtis propose that we have all been wounded. You can buy this book or look into their podcasts here:

Read The Sacred Romance

Listen to apodcast on The Sacred Romance

From this book, I realized that somewhere, sometime, somehow, an arrow has pierced our hearts. This arrow usually carries a message that we latch onto and may believe the rest of our lives until the lie is shattered. These messages say things like . . .

 

· “You don’t have what it takes.”

· “You’re not enough.”

· “You’re too much.”

· “No one could ever love you.”

· “You’re a failure.” 

· “God isn’t good.”

The arrows come at various times in many forms, but they usually come when we are young and most vulnerable. They may be huge, like a parent abusing a child, or small, like a friend making a seemingly innocent joke. But both circumstances can be an arrow with equally deep and far-reaching consequences.

I’ll tell you mine.

My Arrow

The Indian summer sun slanted brightly on that New England morning. As was often our custom on the Bible school campus where we lived, my friends and I gathered to play outside as our parents attended staff meeting—a mysterious affair where the grownups closed themselves behind curtained glass doors, reclined in stuffed chairs in an elegant parlor, and discussed the world’s problems. 

I was five years old and dreamed of being a tomboy just like my friends. Jayna and Laura were six and seven, and they climbed trees and danced on rooftops fearlessly in their bare feet. However, my shoes clung stubbornly to my feet while my limbs turned to sticky rubber as soon as I got eight feet off the ground. Still, the older girls managed to tolerate me most of the time, and Jayna’s little brother dogged my steps like a faithful puppy which I ignored. 

I don’t remember what we were playing on this particular morning. But suddenly, Jayna stomped off, her calloused feet slapping the pavement. Laura, the blond mediator between us in age and personality, followed her. I shadowed both of them cautiously, wanting to learn why Jayna was so upset. 

Jayna perched on a cement wall, arms wrapped around her legs as tight as a spring. Laura murmured words soft as little waves on a lake beach. Jayna’s answer soared over them and pierced the distance between us: “I don’t want to play with Kayla.” She said it as simply as if she didn’t want to wear green socks that day, but the arrow found its mark and buried deep.

It said, “You’re not enough.” 

Of course, I didn’t know I’d been struck by an arrow, and I didn’t understand its message. I didn’t even know what “rejection” meant. But I knew then what it felt like. It hurt. And I decided on that day that I never wanted to experience that kind of pain again. 

This decision set the course for the next sixteen years of my life. 

The First Arrow

There’s another famous decision that altered the course of human history. It happened in the Garden of Eden. We usually blame Eve for getting the human race into the mess it’s now in, but is it possible that she was also attacked by an arrow?

“Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” (Genesis 3:1, English Standard Version). 

Here is the first arrow. It seems harmless, but what is it doing? It’s carrying a message of doubt. 

“But the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’” (Genesis 3:4-5)

What is the serpent implying? 

God is holding out on you. He’s not good. You could be something more. You’re not enough the way you are right now. 

Aha! Now we see the lies for what they really are! Hindsight is always twenty-twenty. But the messages did their insidious work. Eve bit the lie and swallowed it, and the human

race, whose DNA dwelt inside her, has been feasting on similar lies ever since. 

This is why we are searching. 

Ever since that day in the Garden, an essential piece of us was knocked out and we’ve been looking for that missing piece ever since. We're on the constant look-out for Eden, which is always just out of reach. We inherited this gaping hole from our parents and then the serpent gave us our own carefully crafted arrow so we would believe a lie and continue the cycle of sin that this lie perpetuates. 

The situation is really quite hopeless, except for one thing.

God hasn’t left the picture. 

And He has sent us a solution.