Protective Custody

After a bible study one night my friend commented that during the prayer time she felt that we were all being held in “protective custody”. I haven’t thought of this phrase for a while yet it came to mind as I think of my trip to the inner city later this week.

This term comes up with the negative connotation related to someone being placed within the criminal justice system. But let’s switch this around. Think of protection as safety and custody as guardianship – loving guardianship. This isn’t a place of punishment but a place of growing, loving and nurturing.

Walls of the heart are a prison but protective custody is where the heart is set free. Walls of the heart are hostage takers but protective custody negotiates for freedom.

What really got me started on this thought again was thinking about my weekend ahead. I am going as one of 4 adults on a team of teens and we are heading into inner city Vancouver for 3 days of ministry on the streets. It isn’t the ministry part that put the fear in me – it is thinking about working with teens. Not because I don’t feel at ease with them but because this brings up pain inside of me. I feel the “walls of my heart” going up. Those walls cannot go up again but I analyze why my response is to put them up.

In the church I grew up in you could either be a wife and mother or a single woman who spent her spare time helping the elderly and babysitting. Missions were not part of the church so there wasn’t an option there. As I was not a wife, or a mother, my time was spent with children and teens, and elderly. All of whom I loved and appreciated, and thoroughly enjoyed being with. I have learned an enormous amount from them that I treasure. But I always knew there was more to me than ever could be expressed there.

Women must remain silent in all formal church settings and what has resulted is those women don’t have much to say about their own spiritual journey outside or inside church. I felt such passion to know more, to grow and express more yet it had to be suppressed. When it did come out I was labeled “in subject”. And so the walls of my heart began to build up. I longed to see them be unafraid to be passionate about all of life. As I longed to be.

As I write this I remember the camping trip – I took 6, 9 years olds for 3 days and it poured rain, our tents leaked, the boys picked on the girls…and we all still remember it and laugh. I remember the lunches on Sundays between morning and afternoon services. Their stories, their laughter and through it I heard their young tender hearts searching for answers in life as they sat around my dining room table. The New Years Eve party for 13 of them because they were too young for the adult one. The pillow fights between the boys and girls were hilarious. Adventures we had, places we saw and stories that were written on the inside of them, of me.

But then there are the well-meaning people (who I dearly love still) who have those “words of wisdom” that sear the soul. They seared the soul of the woman and shredded her heart. Being told that because I could not bear children I did not deserve to be loved as a woman. Being told that because of my “in subjection” God was punishing me and I must remain single. When I was about to enter nursing school I remember the man who suggested “be a nice little secretary until someone will marry you”. (I never did go to nursing school) He wanted me to be a brainless puppet like his own wife. Words. Just words? No they were arrows, flaming arrows that headed straight to the heart of the woman who retreated a little more with every arrow sent. Another brick in the wall of the heart. More cement. More bitterness that welled out of the pain of that arrow. Women must be meek and quiet at all times – that is their beauty. I wasn’t meek and quiet – that made me ugly. The walls went up and I spent less and less time with children, with teens. I must protect myself.

Various other events conspired to cataclysmically come together and I found myself destroyed so deeply inside that the only escape was to die. In the healing process I began a new career, sold up everything and moved to a small community where I began working in ministry at Linwood House, where walking to wholeness is a part of what we do. I left my church and found one in my community. That sounds simple but the reality is when you leave the church they leave you. Most (not all because I still have a few amazing contacts there) stop contact with you.

The walls of my heart were up – don’t get close to children or teens because they will shut you out. My childhood friends (in an even stricter congregation) would walk on the other side of the street if they saw me coming, hang up the phone if I called. My mother was phoned 3 days after her mother was buried – she didn’t know her own mother had died.

I had no idea that another wall of my heart was a barrier against children and teens. I love them! They fascinate me! Five beautiful children are in my life right now and only this week do I realize I have been holding up the wall. In case I get hurt. In case they reject me.

Walls of the heart don’t belong there. My heart is too alive to be held behind walls! But the Liar still tries his best to reconstruct them. Not allowed! “The thief comes to kill and destroy. My purpose is to give life in all it’s fullness” John 10:10 NLT

For the next three days I will be a leader in a team from my church, going with 15 teens to the inner city of Vancouver. It is considered the 2nd highest per capita AIDS location in the world. We see some of the women from this area at The Journey – maybe I will see some familiar faces. I pray that as I go I will be fully present in every moment with a wide-open passionate heart. I pray that I will see the needs of those on the street but more than that I will see the hearts of the teens I am with. I want to hear their stories, see them be used and be alive as we walk the streets together being Light, carrying healing salt. I want to be a good leader with myself out of the way and Jesus up front and center every moment. There will be no walls of the heart as we walk together in “Protective Custody” – freedom of the Spirit. I think I heard something crumbling! Must have been some of that out of place wall disappearing!