White Walls and Mountains

“Who may ascend the mountain of the LORD?
Who may stand in His holy place?
The one who has clean hands and a pure heart,
Who has not set his mind on what is false…” (Psalm 24: 3-4).

White walls. Friendly college interns who took us to see “Goonies” if we behaved well. Lewd secrets – things that happened when the staff went to sleep and the eleven-year-olds quietly roamed the halls. Smoking - cigarettes everywhere, even the little ones walked around with a cigarette hanging out of their young mouths. Tough, all of us. Broken, all of us. Varying degrees of horror, each story unique in its pain, each child unable to manage life anymore.

I remember staying up late because I couldn’t sleep, trying to read, and instead staring out across the courtyard where I could see the closed-ward children getting ready for bed. I thought my ward was bad enough; what went on in the closed ward?

“You tried to kill your baby brother,” my therapist would calmly say to me twice a day, trying to reach me from the place I had gone inside my head from the moment I walked through the doors. “We know this is true, Jessica. Your mother has given us many examples.”

It would be years before I understood that my mother was seriously ill, that she often moved in and out of reality, and I was frequently the one most hurt from the devastating effects of her mind.

Her tenuous hold on reality manifested one summer with her conviction that I was trying to hurt my one-year-old brother. She told me that I let go of his small hand in a parking lot so that he would run out in front of a car. She had me sit in a chair for hours until I said that this was true.

“Tell me what would happen next, Jessie,” she would say intently, “Imagine the scene after he was hit, what you were wanting to happen, and then describe it for me.”

“Um…” I would start, crying, knowing I loved my brother and didn’t want to hurt him… “Well, the ambulance would come…”

“Yes. And his legs would be completely flattened against the cement, Jess. Say that part. Tell me what you were really wanting to happen.”

I talked and talked until she was convinced I believed her. The really terrifying thing is that I started to believe her, too. Once I was admitted to the children’s mental hospital, I lost my own grip on my soul and slipped away, unsure of what happened each time I was alone with Jonathan.

This has been one of my biggest struggles as an adult: relearning to believe myself. To trust myself. To trust in my own healthy mind.

And the process of doing this is extremely long – much longer than I would like. I want to be done with thinking about these memories.

I wrestle daily with this, crying with my best friend on the phone as I drive to another counseling appointment, yelling at my husband for not understanding my three thousand emotions.

What, really, is the point, Lord? I pray all the time, begging for His voice to speak to me and tell me that I don’t need to do this anymore. That I can forget. That I don’t have to feel.

This morning I read Psalm 24 and the Holy Spirit whispered, “This is why, daughter.”

Psalm 24 describes one of my favorite images in the Bible – ascending to the mountain of the Lord. Oh, to be with the Father. To stand in “His holy place” with a heart free and soul completely alive in the Presence of God.

To get there, the Psalmist admonishes, we must have “clean hands and a pure heart, with a mind that is not set on things that are false.” I’ve always read this as a convicting verse about sin, and I think it is that.

But for me, today, it was something else. I need to have “a mind that is not set on things that are false.”

When I was growing up, my mind was trained to be set on false things. Things that were not true, things that were lies.

However, if I want to ascend to the mountain, to stand in His holy place, then I need a new mind. I need the Lord to come in and show me how to trust His truth and how to discard the lies I am so used to believing.

This is completely possible through the power of Christ. Jesus says that “you are being renewed in the spirit of your minds; you put on the new man, the one created to God’s likeness in righteousness and purity of the truth” (Ephesians 4:22-23).

Once again, all things are possible because of Jesus. I can slowly learn how to believe the truth. I can once more surrender my life to Him because I can trust Him to completely take care of me.

I will exchange the white walls for the mountain of God.

I will exchange the lies for His truth.

I will exchange my pain for His glory.

And I, too, will cry with joyful surrender and a renewed mind:

“Lift up your heads, you gates!
Rise up, ancient doors!
Then the King of glory will come in.
Who is He, this King of glory?
The LORD of hosts,
He is the King of glory” (Psalm 24:9-10).

Lord, thank you for renewing my mind with your Word. Everything I need is found in you. I love you so much, Jesus, and I thank you for your redemption and your Presence. In the name of your wonderful Son, Amen.