You Cannot Kill The Soul

"Jesus said to the Twelve: ' Fear no one. . . . And do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. . . Even all the hairs on your head are counted. So do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows. Everyone who acknowledges me before others, I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father. But whoever denies me before others, I will deny before my heavenly Father." -- [Matthew 10: 26-33].


I was raised in a cruel household. No one ever hugged me or said, "I love you."

No one showed me any Love either. I was fed inconsistently. At age five, I would have to figure out, if I was not going to be fed that night, where would I find food?

A sibling used hit me and would tell me how ugly I was. Often.
I would cry, and complain to my mother. She would say, "You are too sensitive. If you show no emotion, he will leave you alone." But, he didn't. His verbal abuse escalated to physical abuse. . . to rounding up the kids in the neighborhood to join in bullying me.

My father took his anger out on me, breaching boundaries that should never be breached between father and daughter.

Decades later, my world went upside down, because my father had died suddenly. I had moved far away to protect myself, but my father, even in death, because of his death, was once again breaching the boundaries I had so carefully constructed.

So, I went to our parish pastor. He wrote out the Scripture references to the Conversion of Saul in Acts. I felt like he was a doctor, writing out an Rx. My pastor said, "You need to find a way to get closer to God."

I said, "I feel like they killed my soul." The pastor looked me straight in the eye, and said, "They cannot do that. You can kill the body but you cannot kill the soul. It's in the Bible." He did tell me that my soul had been very, very wounded. But it IS possible to heal.

When I read this Scripture at home, I felt like Saul -- struck by lightning, fallen off "my horse", blind with pain and grief for the person I had been, fearful for what was to come.

But, as with the Conversion of Saul, (Acts 9: 1-19), many hands came to help me as I was blind, stricken and barely able to eat or consume drink. I was helped up bodily. My soul would survive.

I then started therapy. One of the first things the therapist did was to ask me to shut my eyes and imagine myself as a little girl.

As soon as I closed my eyes, the image of that little girl came back. She was wearing a sweet smocked dress, lace-topped white socks and Mary-Janes. She had black eyes. And she was crying.

I burst into tears at the sight of her. Not because I could feel her pain, or because my tears burned at the sight of her tears. No, it was because I thought my family had killed her.

I gasped because that tiny girl was ALIVE. Inside of me. They had NOT killed her.

It took a lot of reading, praying and meditating before I came across Matthew 10. But, I see now the Truth of it: "You cannot kill the soul."

Even more important, I keep repeating to myself: " Fear no one. Do not be afraid of those who [may] kill the body, [for] you cannot kill the soul."

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