Scapegoats – Sent as Sheep Among Wolves

A light switch has turned on.  The Psalms and the words of Jesus taken literally has made the world to become less fearsome and confusing.

I wrote on this blog about the trip I was invited to by my parents.  It became something that made me feel a heavy piece of lead in my gut when I look back on it.  It seemed very significant, though.

I felt like Carrie invited to the prom – what was a surreal dream come true was just a set up to pour pig blood on me.  The residual feeling is of sickening disappointment and a recoil of the horror down to the marrow of my bones.  It took me six months to write about it, such was the trauma.

It was difficult to write about but it definitely helped me to do so.  But I think something was missing in the translation to anyone who will read it.  It wasn’t the actions that was traumatizing as it was the intention of the people involved.  You can, say, describe a nightmare where you went  into a room and you knew there was someone in the room but they were hiding.  People would think, “What’s so frightening about that?”  What is missing in that description that would have made it a nightmare was that what wasn’t being seen was leaving a heavy sense of evil lurking in one of the dark corners of the room.  That is the detail that makes you wake up frozen in terror.  And that is the sort of detail that I found a hard time trying to convey in my description of the trip.

I literally felt like a sitting duck, like a figure of derision that could be toyed with for the enjoyment of my parents and sister.  There were even more examples of this than what I even entered into my account of the trip, but for me I’m through trying to describe them in a way that would justify my sense of being targeted by something evil.

It’s been occurring to me to begin to use the language my soul wishes to use when thinking of all I’ve been through my whole life.  I usually used lighter language due to wishing to not be seen as exaggerating.  Not just here but also in my own mind.  I’m beginning to become free when I use the words my soul wants to use.

And the words my soul wants to use is that I’ve been Carrie being set up for the prom my whole life.  I’ve always been me on a trip wanting to enjoy the sun but instead spend the time trying to dodge darts flinging my way.  Such has been my whole life, such is the life of all scapegoats.

We always felt like we didn’t quite belong in this world,  That’s because we don’t quite belong in this world.  The world at this time belongs to the wolves, and we are sheep among them.

Some of us have had the blessing of parents or a parent who are also one of God’s own and the sense of not belonging is not felt as much at home as it is in the outside world.  But many of us were born to those who love the world and will hate us.

And this is why it’s not just our family that we find rejection from but also by the world at large.  Our childhood trauma (and a child even just being unloved is trauma enough itself, although many of us have experienced more than that) certainly has hardwired us a little different than those around us, but it doesn’t explain the general “get-alongness” others have in the world that we don’t have.  Many of us have had decades of experience in the world that should have lent us to having found at least a niche for ourselves.  But, no, we still find ourselves fighting for the merest of material comforts or fitting in that others achieve by merely working for them.

It’s like they all had been given a hidden manual on how to get on in this world that we didn’t get.  Well, in a sense they have.  But we’ve been given a manual that is offered to everyone but only those who are not of the world will love and understand – the Bible.

This is a spiritual battle.  There are those of ours who have been entangled in the world and need to hear from us that there is place for us after all, under the wings of the Most High who will make right everything that has gone wrong, and is doing so even now.  They are the lost sheep who’s wool has gotten them stuck in the brambles of the world.  Now that we are safe, He leaves us to free the other lost sheep and bring them also to the fold.

I’m learning to take the Bible literally, even though I thought I already was.  My parents and sister behaved the way they did to me because there was no other way for them to behave.  I have prayed for them that if there is a chance that they also be sheep but have got lost in the world that God show Himself to them.  But we were told we will know them by their fruit and I so suspect that they are not sheep but are one of the wicked.  But the prayer stands in case I am mistaken as the angels themselves will separate the wheat from the tares.  It’s not my burden to know for sure so I pray for them all.

So, whether those who abuse us are wolves or are sheep that are lost and are acting like wolves, we are not required to offer ourselves for their devouring or attacks.  We are to protect ourselves with the armor of God from their ways and attacks and find peace and comfort under the protective presence of the Shepherd.