“My Beautiful Box”

“He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him;
I will be with him in trouble,

 I will deliver him and honor him.
With long life will I satisfy him

and show him my salvation.”

Psalm 91:15, 16

(Amplified Bible)

I was four years old when I lost my Mother. She died at the young age of twenty two due to a horrible act of violence. Three very short years later my Father lost his life in a terrible automobile accident. By the time I was seven years old I was deeply traumatized. At a very young age, and before I could even understand them, my heart was overflowing with feelings of grief, loss, sadness, confusion and fear.


As a result of all of this, I learned to live my life in what I have come to refer to as a “box”. I worked very hard at keeping my box “safe”. I learned to be very careful about “who” or “what” I allowed into my box. I spent a lot of time and energy keeping my box organized, and clean. It felt a lot safer to me that way. I somehow thought that if I could keep everything “in order” then things like trauma and tragedy wouldn’t be able to come in and turn everything upside down in my life again, especially without warning.


I learned to make everything look “good” on the outside, and tried very hard to hide the tremendous amount of pain that I was feeling on the inside. I learned how to “go” through the motions of life, but for some reason I never really ever felt happy. I learned to keep this inside of me also, because I really believed that something was terribly “wrong” with me. My deepest fear was that others would notice that I “different, and “different” to me somehow meant that I was the worst kind of “bad”.


Although I was quite determined to try and hold all of these feelings inside of me, and to control each and every circumstance in my life, eventually this all proved to be too difficult for me. As so often happens, I reached out to the Lord in the depth of my distress, and I was delighted to learn that He had already been reaching out to me. I began to speak to Him as a Father, and He continued to speak to me as His child.


Eventually, and with the help of many people that the Lord brought into my life, I slowly began to heal. This was a process, and although I was never alone, it was a process that was perfectly suited to me. The Lord helped me and it was all done in my own way and in my own time. I love that about the Lord. He knows how to reach, help and heal each one of us in a way that is perfectly suited for us, individually.


I finally came to the place where I felt as if I was ready and able to “set” my box aside. I felt as if I didn’t need it any longer, and that I could now live my life “outside” of the safe place that I had built up for myself. I had come to understand and believe that the Lord Himself was my “safe” place and that wherever He was, I was with Him, and that somehow that meant that I would be okay, no matter what happened. So, I decided to leave my box.


This was when the Lord showed me an example of His great wisdom and mercy. In my mind I could see a picture of this little girl and she was sitting inside of a box. She had been in there for a very long time, and somehow she had begun to grow. One day she realized that she had grown too big to stay inside of that box, and she wanted to get out. She was no longer afraid. She was excited to see, hear and experience the things that she had seen going on around her, by those who were outside of her box. What surprised her was that once the Lord had helped her to get out, and once she was standing safely beside Him, was that He didn’t throw the box away, as she had expected.

What He did do was turn that box upside down, and proceed to set that little girl on top of the box. He then explained to her that now the very thing that had held her captive would now be used as a platform. It would now be used as a platform to help her to reach out to others that had been through some of the same things in life. That “box” was still something that the Lord could use. Only this time it would be used for the Lord’s purpose and glory.


I cannot tell you how delighted I was to learn this concept. I am amazed at the Lord’s ability to use every single circumstance that happens in our lives for our good and for His glory. There is nothing that cannot be used by Him. So, today I am “out:” of that box, but I am still using it as a platform to reach out to others. It is from that very place that I can now speak to others of the Lord’s goodness, kindness, and His overwhelming and all consuming love.


It is comforting to me, in a way, to still “see” that box in my life. It is a daily reminder to me of where I once was, where I am now, and where I am headed. Most importantly, though, it speaks to me of the One who delivered me, the One who set me free, and the One who is still teaching me how to live daily in the abundance of His love and healing.


Written by Beverley A. Napier