Ruined For Normal Life

Tears choked her as she told us what had happened. She was no longer the same person; no longer the same girl.

Crippled by depression, she never knew how long it would be before she would throw herself in front of a truck and take her life. Nothing satisfied her. She disguised the secrets of her heart and forced a smile. She fell asleep night after night angry at God and the world. No hope. No peace. No joy.

When she couldn't take it any longer; once the pain and fear hurt too much, she broke. All that had been pressed down inside her released...She wept.

But as soon as she fell, her Savior fell too. When she cried, her Redeemer shed tears of blood. As her heart broke, her Lamb was beaten, bruised, and crushed. While she threatened to take her life, He gave His own.

When the overwhelming sense of guilt and shame fled from her heart and surpassing peace swept through her and took control, she couldn't describe what had happened. It was as if she was transformed into a whole new person.

In fact, that is exactly what had happened. But as she told us the wonder of this transformation, she realized how serious it was. There was no going back. There was no returning to the old way of living; the old self had died. It had ruined her for the death she was enduring, and fixed her for life...

As C.S. Lewis writes:

"The Christian way is different: harder, and easier. Christ says, "Give me All. I don't want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. I don't want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down. I don't want to drill the tooth, or crown it, or stop it, but to have it out. Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked--the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours...Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in."

...That is what it means to be Ruined for Normal Life.