Time to Take Down the Cross

As a child, I struggled with the way we celebrated the Christian holidays.

Jesus was born, we celebrated Him, and then it felt like we tucked Him back into bed. At Resurrection Sunday, we pulled Him back out, crucified Him, put Him in the tomb, celebrated that He rose again—and then somehow put Him back in the tomb until it was time to celebrate His birth again.

So much of the focus for me was on suffering.

I think, in some way, I learned to live there in my suffering.

One day, I was standing in my house, looking at a cross on the wall, when I felt God speak clearly to my heart:

It’s time to take Me down off the cross, Rebecca.

That moment stopped me.

I realized my entire life had been lived in a kind of perpetual crucifixion—rehashing mistakes, putting it in the tomb, then pulling my “failures and errors” out- never forgiving myself, never really moving on. I lived in the suffering. I stayed there. What felt familiar to me was pain, not resurrection.

And somehow, in a dysfunctional way, suffering felt more accessible than freedom.

I could identify with the brokenness of Christ far more easily than I could embrace the fullness of His resurrection and abundant life. I believed in it somewhere within, but I didn’t live out of it.

There is a word in the Bible that changed everything for me: T’shuavah.

It’s often translated as repentance. Growing up, repentance meant one thing-turn from your sin- everything that is “wrong with you”.

And yet, I would turn from it only to find myself right back in it.

I didn’t want to struggle with bulimia.
I didn’t want to live in depression.
I didn’t want to keep choosing things that hurt me or others.

But I couldn’t seem to stop.

Years later, I learned how to ride a motorcycle. On my first ride, they told me something I’ve never forgotten:

If you look at the curb Rebecca, you’ll hit the curb.
If you’re afraid of the curb, you’ll hit the curb.
Where your focus goes, you will go.

And sure enough, every time I was afraid of a sharp turn and fixated on not hitting the curb, I went straight toward it.

This lesson shifted how I understood sin.

I don’t even like that word sin anymore. To me, sin is anything that robs us of life—anything that tears at the fabric of our souls and pulls us away from love, unity connection to self, to God, to others and the world.

When we “turn from” something but keep the thought as the center of our focus, it becomes the curb. And our subconscious will take us right back to it.

Then one day, while studying Hebrew with my kids, we came across the word T’shuavah again-but this time, we studied its original meaning.

And the meaning shifted me forever.

T’shuavah doesn’t mean “turn away from sin.”

T’shuavah means return.

Return to your original divine order.
Return to who you were created to be.
Return to love.

That’s why Scripture says, “I remember your sins no more.”

God isn’t obsessed with our failures.
God is lazer focused on our becoming, our emerging of our truest self- our Divine Self what we were created and born to be.

This  doesn’t mean we ignore our choices or avoid accountability. We absolutely need to ask questions. Why am I choosing this? What am I afraid of? What am I hiding from? What can I learn here?

But the turning isn’t toward shame.

The turn is toward light.

For so much of my life, I thought repentance meant rolling around in my mistakes—replaying them, punishing myself, crucifying myself over and over again.

I thought that was faithfulness.
I thought that was humility.

But really, I was keeping myself on the cross.

God was inviting me to come down.

Put it in the tomb.
Leave it there.
And live a resurrected life.

Christ didn’t die so we could stay buried in guilt.
He rose so we could live.

Taking Him down off the cross meant taking myself down too.

And that shifted things forward, onward.

Rebecca Dawn