(Photo by Selma Komisky)

Back to Where We Belong

By Sarah Komisky

There was a time before your innocence was stolen. Before someone took that from you. For a minute, go there and stay awhile. Notice what you see. What was it like? Linger there. Then let this thought enter your mind. “This can be recovered.”

If there’s something as a writer that I find joy in the editing process is when I discover a recovered document. Nothing causes more happiness than reuniting with an original copy of something I was working on for a long time. Coming across a lost document creates a reunion of sorts with my words!

And, in the same way, there lies within in many of us the part of us that needs to be recovered. It’s the document that reads: purity.

I wonder what your document would say?

In life, I’ve seen people light up when they talk about the time in which they felt that innocence. Usually, it is in childhood. It could be their elementary years, tweens orr teens, but something about that time that was marked with innocence at some point and to some degree made them feel alive. Unbridled. Uninhibited. It’s the place God intended for all of us to live life in. The purity of innocence. It’s what we felt before we encountered things like shame, guilt, trauma, hurt, not-enoughness, and the mistakes we made, the pain we caused or the pain someone caused us. It’s the closest we have to our freest self and it’s this place that we long to return to. In short, it’s the place that makes the maturest of adults smile.

Purity reminds us there is good in this world, but for most of us, something or someone tainted that. So we adopted cynicism. It was easier to put on than our dream. Those hurt too much. Therefore purity became a mockery. We told ourselves to grow up, move on, become serious, and lifeless. And tragically, we come to the tarnished conclusion that true purity doesn’t exist. 

While all of us have had to grow up from childhood. Our dreams shouldn’t. They shouldn’t have remained lost in the files of our childhood to stay forever and never return to be revisited or recovered. It’s unfortunate that the things we’ve gone through stunted our belief system. But there is a way back to the purity of heart, mind, body, and spirit. 

In childlike faith, we can take the hand of our Heavenly Father and bravely ask Him to take us back to Eden. This is the place shame doesn’t exist. This is where we have peace and joy. This is where we meet a recovered version of our true self defined by our Maker before all the gunk of our experience marred that.

There is an original unfiltered blueprint of who we were. Our Maker knows who our true self is. And we can go back to that even in our most broken place. 

Hosea 2:14- 15 in the Bible says, “Therefore I am now going to allure her;  I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her. There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. There she will respond as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt.”

This was speaking to a broken woman. A woman who was disillusioned in life and worn from her bad choices. Purity was lost. But it was a call to come back. And, an illustration of God’s call to restore His people who immersed themselves in an unpure lifestyle to come back to Him. So, the call stands for us. 

We can go back to that place. Let God lead you to experience the restorative beauty of it’s wonder. We can enjoy the life that is lived there in that place with God knowing who He is, who He says we are (pure). We don’t have to stay in shame. We can let God unravel the years that were taken and bring beauty even into that place. We can live out our present learning how to appreciate this life given to us, unencumbered to live life with Him, going back to the place where He always intended for us to walk with Him in safety.