Many times, we have to learnsomething new, over and over again. In my case, I think one of the very basic and very needful things that I am working on is learning to be willing (or to be willing to be made willing) to let go.
Now this is among many other things, I am striving to grasp...To learn (or I should say re-learn) to trust.
Along with that, I am re-learning to rest... re-learning to give more fully, re-learning to care in deep ways ,(which I find is actually, all about leaning how to NOT self protect.) and I guess that gets back indirectly... to learning to let go.
Upon first instinct,
...if one would tell me I need to practice 'letting go' (as in; leaving people and situaltions in the Lord's hands)... I'd respond with a resounding "of course! I do that! that's a given!"
but, is it?
I find that the Lord is showing me differently.
It is not such an instinctual thing to let go and let God.... Quite the contrary... I do not let go... and I deceive myself into believing with out even questioning, that I am, in fact. "Letting Go and Letting God." BUT--I guess that would depend on who I have on the throne of my heart at the time... My "me-god" or "My Savior, Author and Finisher of my Faith -God!" Now you'd think with an impressive a title like that...(above)...That it would be like breathing to "let go and let God."
Well, Wrong!
At least for me.
I have lived my life
in deeply entrenched, learned patterns of distrust with a stranglehold, no matter how I covered it to look distinguished or polite or decent... on control.
I am beginning to realise in a life-giving way
(as opposed to intellectual assent to the fact) that I have been living in the opposite of faith.. I have lived the past 20 years or so in fear.
Just call me "much-afraid" :(
Can anyone relate?
I can have faith to be given words to say
to minister to a person, I can have faith for the Lord to answer another's prayers... I can have faith for many things... but rarely am I able to exercize faith to rest in Him when it comes to leaving the well-being of those I love in His hands. Actually I seem to see that I rarely exhibit faith to leave even myself and the issues of my own healing of my woundedness in His capable and loving hands. I seem to act as if I have to bring it about...e.g: if I don't take care of me... or for example, take care of those I love , then it won't get done.
What a shameful realization.
I look back and remember often rationalizing it (to actually try and make my lack of faith look good!) like this..."If circumstances were normal and I had not messed up (here or there) ... and I had been walking close to the Lord and in His perfect will (or at least closer to His ideal) Then He would be all too happy and willing to help me out here... and act on my behalf"..
"BUT"... "I have made a mess." ---
"I have been unfaithful, in that I have not sought His best , but made mistakes and have taken things into my own hands... and therefore these are the consequenses... Therefore, I can hardly presume upon the Lord to just make it all better!... I must handle (and untangle) all of this mess myself...."
~And, speaking of tangled,
"Oh what a tangled web we weave!" I am Thanking the Lord for showing this to me... and I am gonna take this as a wake up call, for, as I know He is faithful to show us these things, I know he will not leave us in our mess, and I am choosing to believe that He is gonnna keep "untangling" the mess of my negative, stinkin thinkin... and help me to re-learn a thing or two about leaving things ...all things, IN His Loving Hands... and resting. about getting my busy paws out of the way... so He can work out His perfect will in my life from here... in mine, and in those I love. After all, Only He loves them more than I do.. far more than I can even imagine.
~Thank you Father...
* * * * *
Pt 2 of my post is a condensed version of my testimony;
I share it here, as I want to be more open about where I have been and what the Lord has been faithful to bring me out of... so that it might give hope as it shines of His Glorious Saving and Restoring Power and how much He loves us all... It's an "encourager" for me as well as I hope it is for some of you :)
Disclaimer: Although this account may sound as if I hold ill-will or bad feelings toward my family of origin, I do not. These impressions are subjective and may not have been experienced by another in the same situation the way they were experienced by me. My feelings were exacerbated by betrayal in the form of abandonment at a young age… from the one closest to me .. and this family that raised me did their best with what they had to work with. In the Book of Joel…God promises to restore the years the locusts have eaten. He has and continues to prove this to be true… Praise be to you , Lord Jesus !
A Day To Remember…
I was a lonely child. I was a romantic child. I was a neglected and yet, or maybe even more so because of, a fanciful child. Lonely, imaginative, and lost children, without direction or a strong, firm bond or hand to guide them are oftentimes mislead. I was that, too. Mislead all over the place.
For example, from a young age, I read things I should never have. I read them to feel alive. No one seemed to notice or care. The ideas flourished in my mind unchecked and unabated. As I got a bit older, I began to get my real mixed up with my lusty fiction. The edges blurred together and ran together … outside the lines of the acceptable (or the prudent).
I desired to hang with and become anything or anyone dark, dangerous and devoid of good. By default, the devil had his way with my young, directionless life. I was a top, spinning out of control with no boundaries to bounce off of to slow me down. I remember asking for a counselor; I was crying out for help… a human touch, an acknowledgement that I was someone, a touch-point with compassion, reality,… anything.
I needed to know that I mattered… I needed to be cared about, validated, hugged – or, dare I then even acknowledge… I needed to be loved?
I never remember thinking those words. Words weren’t used much in my home… much less words that were tied to feelings. There was sterility and somber faces… not much more.
I ran away the first chance I had. They had a wedding for me (to save face). So the girl went off, she and her man-child spouse and her newborn child six months later… 3 children playing house. Three children, each bereft of what they needed to be okay…
Needless to say – too soon – there were only two.
My two-year-old son and myself. Things were rough. But I has a nagging sense that there was more. That the God and Jesus I heard about in Sunday School was, in fact, real. I became convinced. This of course was the Father drawing me near… wooing me with His presence and His love. I began sharing the Salvation message with anyone that would lend an ear. But no-one seemed to want to take the plunge with me… no one wanted to step off the proverbial cliff and surrender their crutches and vices and go at it with a Being that they could not trust and had never known. I couldn’t either – so sadly, on I went with my dismal and thankless life. My son and I.
I found myself slipping further and further down a slippery slope to the bottom of the dregs…the muck and mire that the world had to offer. I partook of indecent things and lost any semblance of self-worth or positive self-concept I might have salvaged from my youth. I’m sure you know how these things can go… suffice it to say, I believe it went even worse.
I still longed for spiritual reality. I sensed the void and I was longing for it to be filled. I sought it out, but all I was finding was the counterfeit spirituality that satan so readily offers and dresses up so glitzy to entice foolish desperados that are hungry and indiscriminately seeking their fill.
I bought the beggars banquet for a song, and further down I slid.
* * * *
A new day…
Finally, I found myself at the end of the road and the end of myself…praise the Lord…during the summer of 1987. It had been nine years since my marriage and – for better or for worse – I had been away from home since the age of 16.
Here I was, a twenty-five-year-old loser, many times over, having dropped out of high school; a divorcee with children; a refugee from an abusive partner; now having been in-patient in a psychiatric ward – I was used, abused, used up, and done in.
I had tried to get it together, and realized I had to take a leave from what I believed was to be my saving grace – my beloved art school. I took a leave and checked back into the hospital. They had to help me…I had to find life…feel alive…just live!
God had the same plan! But it took my leaving the ward early… and thus sliding down that slope a bit more…(I had thought I had sunk to the bottom…but au contraire!)
I had a ways yet to go and wasted no time in plumbing the depths!
It took until I was finally at the very bottom to be able to realize that I had no place left to look but up…literally.
The Lord was there. I looked up and I heard His voice…I was alive!
I think His was the first love I had ever truly felt.
It was everything I had thought it would be and so much more…so much more than I ever dared to yearn for! There I was, at the very bottom, my soul in the worst condition it had been in theretofore... it was in that state that I knew…for the first time in my life…that I was going to be okay!
I was now "in Christ" I knew Him! I was safe! and what happened from there was of no account, because for the first time, I was alive! I was free, I was someone, I was His! – and I was forgiven.
I had purpose and assurance that things would be okay…no matter what…because for once, I could rest. I didn’t have to keep striving…I had someone watching over me to take care of me. Someone who cared. God was my Father, Jesus was my friend and the Holy Spirit was my wisdom, my conscience and my guide . I would be okay. The light turned on for me that day. I didn’t have to walk in darkness any longer. He cleaned the mud and mire from me that had accumulated during my descent. Yes, I still had a few brown spots … probably more than I realized at the time, but I felt clean! And new. He, true to His character and his Word… carried me through that time . That time where it would have been the very darkest of my life was the lightest and brightest . I had hope. That carried me far! I felt as if I were walking on air. I poured over the Word voraciously.. I ate and drank it in. I was given wisdom and a boldness and a soft heart to care and share all of this with a new believer’s zeal that wouldn’t be squelched! People saw His light in me and responded. Woman came to me for advice, questions about God’s word, for prayer and with the question of ‘how to find what I had found’, I was blessed…
God was good… gentle, faithful and my protector. He was the keeper of my faith and guard of my heart during those years. I would like to say that I got out of there early and met my prince charming and rose off into the sunset… me, him and God encircling us with His love … and all living happily ever after… But I can’t. I didn’t get out early… it was along haul…(Bit more fruitful though, than any seminary education could have been for me)
I did meet the man I was to marry shortly thereafter, but he didn’t remain extremely princely for long.
It took 13 plus years of hard work, prayer, tears, confession, healing and growth between the both of us till his princely charms began to shine through again.
I was no prize either... Oh my no! but we both know.. and God confirmed in each of our hearts that we loved one another and we had found our soul mates … each of us… and that He had a purpose for all of our struggles and angst.
Our marriage was (and still is; though we didn't always realise how long it was all gonna take :) a laboratory for change and growth in relationships and we were going to come forth (in short order, no doubt) as a shining specimens of His Grace and Glory together… purged of all of our leftover and well hidden filth and dross.
We heard the term… ‘Wounded Healers’… That’s what we had fancied we would be one day… and The Lord is seeing fit day by day .. that we live out that destiny.. and, as we come closer and closer to His perfect will for us... our destinies, together with our Captain at the helm of our ship—He, the Captain, who invites us to His most trusted and Seaworthy Craft, to carry us along on our journey and navigate through the turbulence , He IS the MOST esteemed and trustworthy Commander we could ever hope for or imagine---
Truly, He is faithful and just to complete the good work He has begun In us (and in you too)!
Trust Him with Your life-- He never fails.
Never... Though we falter at times... when things seem to take too long!
Imagine, us questioning our Creator!.... He is in no hurry... We are always in a hurry! His goal is to perfect us and to make us fit for the Masters use... To prepare us for our Heavenly Home... and to be ready and equipped to bring along as many souls with us as possible!
This can take time... but We must not lose heart!
To be Continued...
