When the Past Whispers Sorrows

By Dylan Verdun Sullivan
As I move through my Wednesday, getting a few small jobs done around the house, I brew my third coffee for the day. I can feel something sitting with me anger mixed with anxiety—as I replay what feels like a series of movie trilogies running through my mind.
I find myself searching for a place to lay down a life marked by pain, trauma, and a history that often felt like it was surrounded by exit signs.
There are days where the present feels steady.
Days where life feels grounded.
Where the rhythm is manageable.
Where your thoughts are aligned and your emotions don’t pull you apart.
And then there are days like this.
Days where the past doesn’t just visit.
It lingers.
It doesn’t knock politely.
It sits in the room.
And no matter what I’m doing washing dishes, moving through the house, trying to stay present it runs in the background like a film I didn’t choose to play.
That’s what today feels like.
Not one memory.
Not one moment.
But a sequence.
Scenes layered on top of each other.
Moments stitched together.
Old pain replaying itself with a weight that still feels real.
And what makes it heavier is not just the memory.
It’s the emotion attached to it.
Because memory alone is one thing.
But when the feeling comes with it…
That’s where it grips.
Anger.
Anxiety.
A tightening in my chest that doesn’t quite leave.
And if I’m honest, there’s a part of me that wants to shut it down.
Distract myself.
Push it aside.
Move on quickly without sitting in it.
But I’ve learned something through my walk with Christ.
You cannot bring healing to what you refuse to bring into the light.
And today, something is being brought into the light.
Not because I chose it.
But because God is exposing something in me.
Not to shame me.
Not to condemn me.
But to heal me.
And this is where the questions start to rise.
Not clean questions.
Not easy ones.
Real ones.
How do I sit with a broken family bloodline?
A history marked by addiction, poverty, and mental illness.
Patterns I didn’t create but still feel the weight of.
How do I sit with my broken body?
The physical reality that my life has not been untouched by suffering.
That some things don’t just pass through you…
They mark you.
How do I sit with my haunting mistakes?
The ones that don’t disappear.
The ones that return in quiet moments and remind me of who I was before Christ intervened.
And if I go deeper…
How do I sit with addiction?
Because even in sobriety…
It still chases me.
Not always loudly.
Not always visibly.
But present.
Whispering false promises in the bottom of a bottle of scotch 
A shadow that waits.
A voice that whispers when I’m tired, when I’m weak, when I’m overwhelmed.
And then there’s this feeling
Like standing in front of a fire hydrant with no reprieve.
Pressure.
Constant.
Unrelenting.
Everything hitting at once.
The past.
The body.
The mistakes.
The addiction.
All of it.
And I stand there trying to hold my ground.
Trying not to be knocked over by the force of it.
And this is where everything becomes real.
Because there is no pretending here.
No polished Christianity.
No surface-level faith.
Just the reality of standing in it
And asking…
Where do I put this?
Because I cannot carry it.
Not like this.
And this is where the gospel stops being something I talk about…
And becomes something I desperately need.
Because if Jesus Christ does not meet me here
Then I have no hope.
But He does.
Not as a distant figure.
Not as a concept.
The One who stepped into broken humanity.
The One who carried sin, shame, and suffering on the cross.
The One who did not avoid the weight but absorbed it.
And that matters.
Because what I am feeling today is not just emotional weight.
It is the reality of sin, brokenness, and a fallen world pressing in.
And the gospel speaks directly into that.
Jesus did not come to make me feel slightly better.
He came to save me.
To rescue me from sin.
To redeem what was broken.
To take what I could not carry and place it upon Himself.
That means my bloodline does not define me.
Because I have been adopted into the family of God through Christ.
That means my broken body is not the end of my story.
Because resurrection is promised through Him.
That means my mistakes are not my identity.
Because they have been paid for in full at the cross.
“But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.” (ESV)
And that means addiction does not own me.
Because I have been bought with a price.
And yet…
Even with that truth…
I still feel messy.
Unresolved.
Like I am dealing with broken systems inside of me that don’t always align instantly with what I know is true.
And that tension is real.
Because salvation is immediate.
But sanctification is a process.
And I am in that process.
A process where God is not only saving me
But transforming me.
And transformation is not clean.
It is confronting.
It is exposing.
It is refining.
It brings things to the surface that I would rather leave buried.
But if Christ is the healer
Then those things must come into His hands.
Because He does not heal what I hide.
He heals what I surrender.
And so today, I don’t come to Him as someone who has it together.
I come as I am.
Messy.
Unresolved.
Still working through broken systems.
Still trying to process pain in real time
Still feeling the weight of things that haven’t fully settled.
And I bring it all to Him.
Because the cross is not just where I was forgiven.
It is where I return.
Again and again.
Not to be saved again
But to be reminded.
Reminded that my hope is not in my ability to fix myself.
Reminded that my healing is not dependent on my strength.
But on His finished work.
And that changes how I stand in this moment.
I fix my broken heart on the Gospel
Because even when it feels like I’m standing in front of that fire hydrant with no reprieve
I am not standing there alone.
Christ stands with me.
Christ intercedes for me.
Christ has already secured my victory, even if I don’t feel it yet.
And that…
is the difference.
The difference between being overwhelmed by the weight
And being held in the middle of it.
So today, I don’t pretend this is easy.
I don’t pretend everything is resolved.
But I also don’t surrender to the whispers of the past.
Because the voice of Christ is greater.
And when the past whispers sorrows
The gospel speaks louder.
And that…
is where I stand.
Not perfect.
Not complete.
But held.
And for today?
That is enough.

About the Author

Dylan Verdun Sullivan is the founder of Refined by Fire Press and an Australian author indexed in the National Library of Australia. As a Level 7 Local Guide with over 1.7 million views on Google Maps, he documents the intersection of faith, recovery, and the light found in ordinary places.

Comments

Post a Comment

From the Fire

A Week Ignited: Brotherhood, Openness, and the Quiet Work of God

By Dylan Verdun Sullivan
Wow  what a start to the week. I’ve been sitting with Saturday for a couple of days now, letting it settle, letting it breathe, letting it speak in its own way before rushing to put words around it. There are moments in life that are better written immediately, while the emotion is still raw and close to the surface. But there are other moments that need time time to process, time to reflect, time to understand what was actually taking place beneath what we could see. Saturday felt like one of those moments. Kings Church connect group at Paradise Point . A simple setting on the surface. A lunchtime barbecue. Men gathered. Food cooking. Conversations unfolding. Nothing overly structured. Nothing forced. But what took place in that space carried far more weight than what it looked like from the outside. And I think that’s what has stayed with me the most. Letting the Moment Settle I was going to write on Saturday. I really was. I felt it stirring in me as I left. Tha...
Continue Reading →

Writing From the Middle of It

By Dylan Verdun Sullivan
As I finished up my second last week at Woolworths before stepping into a new season at the Gold Coast University Hospital , on the eve of Good Friday , I found myself in a strange kind of space. Not quiet. Not chaotic. Just full. It’s a wild thing how even on days where your mind is locked into movement goals, timelines, responsibilities, things that need to be done  something deeper can still cut through all of it without warning. You can be thinking about shifts, routines, what’s next, what needs to be done… and then something from another season just breaks through the surface like it was never gone. That’s what happened to me. As I was walking into work, just moving through what should have been a normal moment, a memory came flooding back. Not gently. Not subtly. It hit with weight. It took me straight back to a season I haven’t fully stepped away from, even if time says I should have by now. A season where I was writing my first book — Kissed by Death  My journey to fi...
Continue Reading →

An Unsent Beginning

By Dylan Verdun Sullivan
 Some words aren’t written to be understood. They’re written because they refuse to stay inside. This space exists for the things I never sent , the thoughts that didn’t belong in conversations, the prayers that didn’t resolve into answers, the moments that were too honest for performance. I’ve learned that not everything needs a destination. Some things just need a place to rest. What you’ll find here won’t be lessons or instructions. There will be no tidy endings, no motivational arcs, no promise that pain always makes sense in hindsight . There will be faith, but not the polished kind. There will be struggle, spoken quietly. There will be days when hope is loud and days when it barely whispers. This is not a journal written for an audience. It’s a record of what survives the day. What remains after the noise has burned off. What’s left when honesty is the only option. If these words resonate, that’s enough. If they don’t, that’s also enough. Some letters are never sent because t...
Continue Reading →

Christ in the Middle of the Fire

By Dylan Verdun Sullivan
This week has been a beautiful mixture of struggling with past wounds and patterns and deep revelations from Christ. Some weeks feel heavy in ways that are difficult to explain. Old memories surface, patterns you thought you had already buried rise again, and you begin to see parts of yourself that you wish were not still there. But at the very same time, there are also moments where Christ reveals something deeper, something clearer, something that steadies the soul in the middle of the struggle. That is what this week has felt like. A strange but beautiful tension between wrestling with the past and experiencing fresh understanding of who Jesus really is. Bible college yesterday became a powerful foundation for the entire week. As I sat among other students and opened the Scriptures together, I felt that quiet sense again that God is forming something in my life. The topic that anchored our study was the apostle Paul’s letter to the Ephesians . The book of Ephesians is one of those...
Continue Reading →

Learning to Think Deeply About God in the Middle of Life

By Dylan Verdun Sullivan
 There are seasons in life when the mind begins to slow down and look more carefully at the deeper things. Not because everything is suddenly calm. Not because all of life’s questions have been answered. But because something inside you begins to hunger for understanding in a deeper way than before. That is the season I find myself in right now. For much of my life, faith was something deeply personal. It was something I clung to in moments of pain, moments of fear, moments when life felt as though it could collapse beneath the weight of circumstances. Faith was not theoretical for me. It was survival. It was the quiet anchor that kept me steady when everything else felt unstable. But over time, something else began to grow alongside that faith. A desire to understand. Not simply to believe that God is real, but to think deeply about who He is. To explore the theology behind the truths that had already become real in my life through experience. That desire has led me into a season ...
Continue Reading →