Crumpled Up

4/12/2025

 Psalm 34:18 "The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit." 

This morning, while asking for God's forgiveness during my devotional time, I asked him to smooth out the wrinkles in my soul. Those things that are deep creases that keep coming up over and over again. I then had a vision of how, when we are born, we are a blank slate. We are like fresh, unblemished pieces of crisp paper. Then over time, that paper gets a small crease, then another and then another. As we grow, if we are not abused or traumatized as children, our paper stays relatively unrumpled. We are able to love and forgive with a childlike innocence. Yet the farther we go in life, we get more and more creases from hurt, disappointment, broken relationships, failure, and our own sin. Our relatively untarnished pieces of paper become crumpled up. Sometimes it even gets dragged through the mud. After we come to Christ, we may not be crumpled in a little ball anymore, but the creases often remain.  

For me, these wrinkles reflect the areas of my life that I have not fully released and given over to Jesus. It's as if my own hand is on that piece of paper now, creasing and re-creasing those areas until they are in danger of becoming weaker and tearing. These creases now look like disappointment, unkindness, judgement, injury, and unforgiveness. Sometimes it actually feels as if my soul is bound up in a tight little immovable scrunched up ball of self-protection. This is not something I am proud to admit. 

While I was in prayer, I was struggling with a familiar disappointment, and my own wrestling with an unforgiving spirit. The other person's actions, or lack thereof, are not in my control, but my coming before the Lord to ask Him to work on ME is, as I beseeched Him to smooth out those bends and crinkles. Thankfully, He did. 

I have prayerfully meditated the past several weeks on how much Jesus loves me. He gave Himself unto death for the forgiveness of my sin and yours. An undertaking utterly unfathomable to my simple human mind. It was the ultimate act of unselfish love. It is through Him alone that true soul healing can occur. All the deep down, puckered, rumpled. creased, and wrinkled parts of who we become on this journey of life need only to be set down before the cross of Christ. 

He sees us. He knows us. He rescued us. He loves us; crinkles, crumples, rumples and all.