(This post is the body of an essay I wrote for a scholarship competition. Read on if you'd like, or think about your own favorite word and why you cherish it. You can even write about it; let me know how it goes! I'd love to hear your stories.)
Safe. When I see that word, my heart sighs. Safe, by dictionary definition, means “secure from harm, danger, or evil; free from injury or danger; giving protection”.* What do you think of when you see the word? Perhaps it takes you back to memories of your childhood, when you had nightmares so frightening that they woke you up and sent you flying into your parents’ bedroom, the haven of reassurance that it was all a dream; you’re safe. Maybe it reminds you of a time you nearly had an accident—nearly, but you came out alive, and you exhaled with relief knowing you were safe. However, maybe the word reminds you of times when you weren’t safe—when your parents were yelling at each other, thinking you were asleep. When you had to escape a house being consumed by flames. When life was attacking you, seeming to leave you no way out. Perhaps you’ve never known what it is like to feel safe—protected, shielded from harm, secure. What I am learning is that true safety does not depend on what does or doesn’t happen to us, whose strong arms you are held or not held in, what well-paying job you do or don’t have. It depends on your relationship with God.
The word safe is my favorite word, a word that I cling to, because many times in my life I have not felt safe. You may think that I grew up in an abusive home, suffered bullying from peers, or lived in a rough neighborhood. However, none of that is true of my life. I have a loving, protective family, have never been bullied, and live in a little house out in the country with kind neighbors on every side. Why have I sometimes not felt safe? Because inside, my relationship with God has not always been steady. I allowed questions about God and myself to develop into doubts, and those doubts to grow into destructive beliefs. Thus, all kinds of doors were opened for Satan’s lies to enter into my mind. I forgot who God was, who I was, and what my purpose in life was; as author Ted Dekker writes, “Life is a cycle of remembering and forgetting.”** The assurance that God was not only with me but actually for me when I received a poor grade, when choices involving my future were overwhelming, when someone close to me was not okay, had been blocked out by voices. I was nearly driven crazy.
I am still on a journey to discover how to live in true safety, but just the knowledge that there is such a word as safe keeps me seeking to know that God is my safety, and that He will never leave me or forsake me. Because this struggle has been such a battle for me, I know that, in the future, I want to help other people know that their safety does not lie in their circumstances or the condition of the people around them; it lies in Jesus, our sure salvation.
*: Adapted from Webster’s II New College Dictionary
**: Eyes Wide Open, Ted Dekker. P. 232