He was despised and rejected–a man of sorrows, acquainted with bitterest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way when he went by…. Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down. And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God for his own sins! But he was wounded and crushed for our sins. He was beaten that we might have peace. He was whipped, and we were healed! All of us have strayed away like sheep. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the LORD laid on him the guilt and sins of us all.

…But it was the LORD’s good plan to crush him and fill him with grief. Yet when his life is made an offering for sin, he will have a multitude of children, many heirs. He will enjoy a long life, and the LORD’s plan will prosper in his hands. When he sees all that is accomplished by his anguish, he will be satisfied. And because of what he has experienced, my righteous servant will make it possible for many to be counted righteous, for he will bear all their sins. I will give him the honors of one who is mighty and great, because he exposed himself to death. He was counted among those who were sinners. He bore the sins of many and interceded for sinners. — Isaiah 53

This passage has come to mean a lot to me this weekend. The Counseling Conversation by design digs deep into the soul and sniffs out the ways we run from God, hide from Him and hold Him at bay — not allowing ourselves to trust Him with every fragment of our lives. Usually what we are hiding are things we declare shameful. Like Adam and Eve, we focus on our nakedness before Him, rather than the cause of our "knowledge of our nakedness", our sin and our hiding.

Like an archeologist, I went digging — with the aid of my counselor — into the darker places of my soul and hit something solid. Gotta say, that solid thing has me scared silly. I know it must be big, for the fear it strikes in me. Yet I have no idea exactly what it is.

This experience (early last week) drove me underground, where I’ve been ever since. I haven’t the heart to come out and face the world. Hence the silence even here.

Over the weekend God led me to Isaiah and again had me read through from 49 to 54. A few passages, long familiar to me, echoed through my soul like old friends at a reunion. But this one, the one classically known as "The Suffering Servant," one I’ve known and read over and over andoverandover since I was very young, this is the one that embraced me and held me tight. I saw in it so clearly, as for the first time, my true Salvation. Not that neat-and-clean "Jesus come into my heart" kind of salvation. But the real-life gritty Salvation — the bloody-cross, beaten-to-a-pulp-then-brutally-killed Salvation. The Salvation that took every slimy, shameful, disgusting thing I ever did or thought, and ever will do or think, and paid the agonizing price in blood and cruelty.

Jesus made it possible for me to be counted Righteous. His bloody agony made it  possible for me to live blameless, even though I have many things in my life deserving of blame and shame. He made it possible for me to have Peace — not the peace that we talk of in today’s world, the absence of conflict — but the Peace God originally meant in the Scriptures, Shalom, walking and living in wholeness, harmony, spiritual health and healing with God today every day all day.

No matter what I did, no matter how shame-filled and dark my soul is, no matter how I respond today, I am still being "Saved" — bleh, that word dredges up all kinds of negative connotations for me, based on the super-religious who have given it such a bad name. But the fact of the matter is, Jesus continues to work out my salvation with me every day. I am in a continually process of restoration, as Jesus restores me to what God created me to be, to what I would have been without the tragedy of real life living in a fallen world.

This is what I cling to as I walk through the latest "valley of the shadow of death" in my life. He’s made a way, a path for me in the dark. And I will follow.