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Monday 21 June 2010

Self-harm & self-worth

Mandy Stone is a friend of mine from St Margaret’s in Barking. When she was 14 years old, Mandy began to self-harm and continued to do so for 14 years only stopping about 6-7 years ago after she had become a Christian.

Mandy identifies with the man that Jesus healed in Luke 8. 26 - 39 because, in addition to all the other things he is described as doing, when the story is told in Mark’s gospel he is described as wandering among the tombs and through the hills screaming and cutting himself with stones. So, this man appears to be the only reference in the Bible to someone who self-harmed and his situation both before and after his healing has similarities with Mandy’s experience.

Mandy’s foster brother encouraged her to come to Church and to go on an Alpha Course. She did but describes herself as rebelling against Christianity and the Church for about nine months after she had begun to go. Eventually, one night, she felt she had reached rock bottom and, on her own, asked Jesus to come into her life and take over. Since that night she has not self-harmed again, although she has felt the temptation to do so on many occasions, and has set up and run support groups for others who were self-harming that have helped some to stop their self-abuse. In 2007 I had the privilege and joy of taking Mandy’s wedding back at St Margaret’s and she has since been blessed with three children and another on the way.

The man that Jesus healed, who called himself ‘Mob’, had strong, violent urges and would walk in lonely, isolated places linked to death, shouting and screaming and cutting himself. This description of his behaviour and torment has much in common with the way Mandy has described her experience of self-harming. She says:

“When I think back to my self-harming and the way that I would be feeling, it’s like the anxiety of my inner battle was becoming unbearable and I wanted to let something out. The anxiety I felt would have been so easy to give in to but then I would have lost all awareness of my surroundings and myself.

I would cry and look desperately into my eyes, reflected in the mirror, wanting to know the answers to the way out of my mental prison. I began to cut myself in anger and to hate my own body. I was sure that I had feelings but they didn't seem to show. I became very violent towards myself. The world around me was becoming as unforgiving and intolerant as I was to myself. I would lay down after a violent outburst and fall asleep, very drunk.

Sometimes I would wake up in another part of the room, hiding from something in the room which only my sleeping mind had seen. I would get up, have more drink and drugs and cut again to stop the feelings. Then I would lie there in silence until it was light. There was so much silence in my head and everything else seemed a thousand miles away. My energy was gone, I would stare at the ceiling of my bedroom. The silence inside my head was so loud.”

The torment inside the person needs some physical, external expression which for the person who self-harms is achieved by cutting their body. Doing so, actually releases a chemical called Seratonin which, when released, leaves the body feeling calm. As a result, self-harmers like ‘Mob’ and Mandy enter a vicious cycle in which cutting themselves becomes the way to release their pent-up emotions and return to a measure of calm and control.

For both ‘Mob’ and Mandy there was a sudden moment of encounter with Jesus that changed their lives. For ‘Mob’ it may be that, just as he had needed a physical, external release for his anguish through cutting, he needed to see something that symbolised his full and final release in order to believe that he was finally free and that that is what the episode with the pigs provided for him.

Life after that encounter was very different for them. Jesus told ‘Mob’, although he would no longer have called himself that, to go back to his home and tell people there what God had done for him.” Mandy, too, through her support groups and by giving her testimony to a number of different groups has shared her experience of being healed by Jesus with others.

Both, however, carried with them visible reminders of their self-harming. Mandy’s arms are badly scarred and Mob’s would have been too. While change began suddenly for them the rest of lives involved living with the implications both of what they had done to themselves and of the changes that encounter with Jesus had brought into their lives. None of that is easy, particularly as people relive experiences from their past when they talk about them to others. Mandy has been helped by the knowledge that, like her body, Jesus also bears scars on his body. In his case, the scars from the nailprints on his hands and feet and from the spear wound in his side. For her, this means that Jesus understands the pain and emotions that she continues to feel and is an assurance that he is alongside her in those times. Because Jesus’ scars remain on his resurrected body, she knows that she is accepted as she is; scars and memories and all.

As Mandy says:

“Having Jesus in my life now has made me look at things in a very different light. You see, to be an anybody, anywhere is to look into the eyes of someone who matters to you and know that they don't care what or who you are, where you have been or what you have achieved. To be an anybody, anywhere is to look into those eyes and know that if you see love there, then you have earned it. Not for being a walking achievement or an interesting case or a social inspiration or a charity case, but just for being you. That is the gift of the Lord Jesus Christ; A loving and understanding heart. Not someone that is looking at what you did instead he looks at what you will become. I have now found the best friendship and a sense of belonging and the love that I have always longed for. The mask that I had hidden behind for so long has now gone and I am no longer a label but a child of God.”

Many of us will also have experienced trauma and difficulty in our lives, although, for us, that pain may not have been expressed through self-harm. Where those experiences exercise control in some way over our lives today, Jesus wants to bring release and healing as he did for ‘Mob’ and Mandy. Where that release has already come he promises to be alongside us as we cope with the implications of the changes he has brought. In both situations, we need to continually come to him in prayer asking for his healing touch and his words of life.

God of grace, in my rejection I remember the cruel words which all too easily undermine my confidence, the harsh actions which make me feel worthless, the petty complaints which make me feel useless, and the scornful looks which make me feel unloved and unloveable. Help me to know that I am your child, of infinite worth, both loved and lovable. Help me to hear your voice, to accept your forgiveness and love and to forgive and love myself. Amen.

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The Call - You Run.

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