tragic experience he is enough

 Today while driving home from work I found my mind taken back to a tragic experience when I was just 13 years old. Before I realized it the memories had unwound like an old broken cassette tape. Anxiety washed over me and I was overwhelmed with grief for that young girl.

In the midst of this a worship song came on the radio and I found myself singing as tears welled up and fell down my face. Tears that don’t come easily or often for me.
I was reminded in that moment that He too remembers. He too wept with me then and He weeps with me now. I felt the Holy space of shared experience, of being together, then and now.
As I sang I offered my broken heart to Jesus as a love song to Him and also for me. We have this sacred bond together, this knowing of every good and every bad that has ever crossed our path.
I sensed a deep knowing of His presence with me.
I use to often wonder how He could have allowed this awful experience if He was such a loving God. For the most part I have come to accept and have peace in knowing He never promised us to be without heartache or tragedy. He promises to be with us. He offers His love to us. He brings hope that can rise from the ashes.
That for the most part has become enough for me, but even when it’s not He understands that too.
In the depths of our souls where brokenness lies in jagged pieces He too is there. He knows.
Sometimes all we can offer Him is a broken heart, and when we are able we can whisper a quiet broken hallelujah for who He is and was. He will take either.
All that matters to Him is to know and have our hearts and for us to know and have His.
To anyone who knows what this specific brokenness feels like my heart is with you and you are not alone. He hears you, He knows the cry of your heart, then and now and He longs to fill it.
You may wonder why I would share such a personal intimate dark experience on Facebook. I believe
by bringing darkness to light, by exposing it the light can overcome it and set us free. I also feel that satan wants us to keep things hidden so it doesn’t come into the light and receive healing. I want people to know they aren’t the only one and they aren’t alone.
If you find yourself needing someone to listen and hear you… please message me. I will listen and feel with you. You are not alone.
PS I’ve had a couple people ask if they could share it.. by all means share If it can help even one it’s for His glory

He knows

 This week as I’ve remembered what things were like a year ago, I found myself sad and grieving. I just told a close friend yesterday that I just didn’t understand the darkness I went through and where God was at in it, that I knew He didn’t promise we wouldn’t suffer, He promised to be with us yet it’s been so hard to see Him in this.

I need the truth that I know in my mind to sink into my heart.

Today I read a writing on suffering and this scripture jumped out at me:

“… A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; …

Surely our griefs He Himself bore,

And our sorrows He carried {to the cross}…” (Isaiah 53:3-4).

He actually knows what our suffering feels like and He feels it with us. This is so comforting to me. I appreciate that He continues to expand my understanding of who He is and how much He loves me, and how far He will/has gone to show me that love.

When grief rolls in

Sometimes grief rolls in like a tidal wave.  It washes over us and engulfs ones being in just seconds and all is consumed.
In the ocean the tide rolls out as fast as it rolls in.

In the sea of grief, the tide often lingers.  It scatters and surrounds and soaks in and what once felt clear seems muddled and muted.  Grief begs to be noticed. If we ignore our losses, on the surface grief seems to disappear... but it doesn't really.  It soaks down deep into the depth of our soul and hides out there.

I've had my share of losses, and lately I've felt the Lord beckoning me back into the ocean. Calling me into the sea of grief.  I feel the tide coming in, the waves beating against my feet. When that tide rolls back out into the sea my losses are tossed up on the shore.  It feels as though grief has saturated my very essence and it's begging to be heard, to be felt, to come up out of the depths and be exposed. I know it's God calling me out,  and though I resist I know it's safe to enter in with Him. 

"Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
    I have called you by name, you are mine.
2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
    and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
    and the flame shall not consume you."  Isaiah 43:1-2

I've spent more than half my lifetime stuffing feelings and controlling emotions. I've built up an army of false beliefs and self protection. I've also spent more than half my life seeking God's healing and longing for more freedom.  God has been faithful to heal and restore and break through brokenness as I surrender it to Him. Lately He has placed His finger in a dark corner in my heart, beckoning for me to let Him in so He can shine His light on my losses.  I've struggled to surrender. It's scary to face things kept hidden. 

The tide rolls in and grief washes over me. I walk the shore with my Jesus. We talk about things from many years ago. The tide rolls back into the sea and I watch. I look and I see what God has tossed upon  the shore.  I reach down,  pick one up.  One by one I count my losses. I examine them, and hold them to the Light of God's love.  I sit with my God and we linger there in the moment. We talk about things that were taken from me.  I open my hands to my Healer.  I ask Him what I need to keep and what I need to toss back in the sea. I feel the weight of my losses. He whispers to me "Child I will restore to you all that satan has taken from you.  It's in those moments that He enters into my sorrow. We remember together. We feel and we grieve. He and I, we become one. He enters into my pain. It's in those moments I am changed.

"I will restore to you the years the locust have eaten." Joel 2:25

“Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love;
Therefore with loving kindness I have drawn you.
4 Again I will build you, and you shall be rebuilt. Jeremiah 31:3

I can trust my Father because He has proven His love to me time and time again. He has a perfect track record. He's never let me down.

 Father I ask You to give me confidence to trust and not fear, to feel and not cover up or close off, to embrace your Truth and not default to lies. I ask you Father to restore me and bring me into greater freedom in You. Redeem me from false beliefs, doubt and disappointment. Allow me to embrace who I am, who's I am, and who I am becoming.
Thank You for being with me on my journey, for making my story for Your glory, and for making me capable and able to work through, to recover and heal. You are my Everlasting Peace, my Redeemer. Thank you for Your favor, your promises, Your steadfast love. Thank you for for not discarding my broken pieces, but instead You create beauty from the ashes. You waste nothing and You restore everything. 

Isaiah 63:1-3

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,
    because the Lord has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
    to proclaim freedom for the captives
    and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor
    and the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all who mourn,

    and provide for those who grieve in Zion—to bestow on them a crown of beauty
    instead of ashes,
the oil of joy
    instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise
    instead of a spirit of despair.
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
    a planting of the Lord
    for the display of his splendor.

God you are so Faithful. Thank for what You've done, are doing, and will do.  All the glory and all my love to you!

Clay to life

I sit and ponder the words written by Laura Beach in her new book Rhythms of Restoration...

She's talking about our grief being like quicksand under our feet, the further we try to escape it the deeper in we go. And the idea that what if we ask and allow God to enter our mud and mire and clay, is it possible that maybe He can take it and mold it and shape it into something He can breathe life into? She says, "If God formed humanity by scooping dirt out of the earth, can't it be done again? Can't God reach into the pit, the tomb, the darkness of our grief and pull us out to breathe life into us?" Just as He did with Jesus on Calvary?  

And I think, and I pray, Jesus is this what you are doing with me right now? Could it be?  I look at my life, I look at the rape, the way the dirt and muck got on me and so much of my life has felt like that sinking sand. 

Right now I'm in a process of unpacking the memories, the good and the bad, in hopes of drawing nearer to Jesus, in hopes of a greater love life with Him, and in hopes of finding myself again. There is this longing inside me to be whole, to trust again, to allow God to be on His throne and allow Him to protect and provide  for me. 

I have been venturing into the pages of my journals from when I was a teenager. I am getting to know this girl in these pages and I'm awed at how much I like her. I look at the things she endured, I read the details of things forgotten and I am wowed that she got through it. I marvel at the way she prayed for people, the way she interceded for their salvation, their healing, she prayed for the man that raped her, she prayed that he would find God's love because she recognized how lost he was. She prayed for her mom who was so lost in her own inability to accept love.  She prayed for the hurting. I notice how this girl has this courage, she tells people about Jesus, she stands up for justice even when she knows she will pay for it, she tells others about what happened and how God was there and how God got her through... even as a young teen I started telling my story. And I think, what guts, she knew the cost and she went after things anyways. She was passionate, she had this zeal for life, for Jesus, she was hungry to know Him and to really be His... What stubbornness she had yet what strength she had.
And I find myself asking "where did she go? Is that still me?  I still long for healing for the hurting. I still pray with great longing for healing for the people I love. Yet there's a big part of me though that realizes some of her is gone.  Satan took what wasn't his to take and some of who I was is truly gone and yet other parts of me are buried in that tomb. Some is tangled in lies. I am pretty certain I'm one of the very weakest people I know. I mean I'm hardly consistent with anything..... I struggle with bipolar depression, I have a house that's often caving in on me because I stink at keeping it up...... and yet there's this longing, this desire to embrace HER as ME. I want to know her, I want to find her again but most of all I want to BE me. I want to know who I am and be confident again. I'm reminded of how very much the rape took from me. Satan stole so much from me, and I want it BACK. 

I feel like I'm finally giving God permission to roll the stone away and He is slowly moving it. It isn't without pain. In fact it's super painful to have the light shinning in when I've been hiding in darkness for so long. My eyes are squinting at the light, trying to look into it but mostly having to look away still. God is so tender and patient though, so full of compassion for me. I feel that. 

 I see the darkness, the pit of despair I felt as that young girl having been raped. I realize that I in many ways have spent a lifetime locked up with the mistrust, the shattered self-esteem, the lies, the questions.  I was mistaken to think that if they are hidden in the dark corners of my mind that they are safe for the keeping. I bought into the lie that I need to protect myself, that I need to make others love me, that I need to make sure my husband takes care of me.  I have found myself lost in all the sin of and emptiness of filling my heart with so many things that have no ability to provide for me the things my heart desperately needs, and my God so desperately longs to give. 

And then, there in the midst of it all, in the very heart of the darkness, in all the ugly places I don't even dare go myself I find Jesus. Not just His presence around me but God Himself. He breathes life and in a moment the darkness is invaded with the most glorious light: Jesus Himself.  He enters in my darkness, enters my darkness that only I know. He enters only when I let Him. It all looks differently when God's love enters in. He is giving me back what satan has stolen. One of my favorite life verses is coming to life... "He will restore the years the locust have eaten".  He Will restore all that satan has stolen. He wills to take my mud and mire and shape something beautiful.
He isn't just taking the pretty parts and adding them up to eventually make something good, no He takes the yuck, the broken pieces, the quicksand, the sand that burnt right into my feet, and He forms it into something beautiful. He breathes life into lifeless places.  He's giving back to me pleasant memories, He's restoring to me the strength He placed in me, He's building me up again and restoring my confidence. Much of this I haven't yet seen but I see it forming and am confident He will continue to do it.
It amazes me that out of all of the pieces of my life He picks the darkest, hardest, most dirty pieces to breathe His life into and make something beautiful out of.
I'm pretty certain that as He rolls that stone away He's going to help me find ME, the me I was, but more importantly the me I am now. It's going to be beautiful. I just know it, cause I know Him. 

Part of the journey

Tomorrow morning I will be speaking to the Embrace women's group who meets at GCF. I will be sharing my story. It's been a crazy week and I am just today sitting down to prepare for tomorrow. As someone who likes to write/journal I do my best thinking through writing (or in this case typing). I get my thoughts out and I am able to process.

Writing has always been a safe thing for me. I began journaling when I was in 6th grade I think, but I began really writing after I was raped when I was 13. Writing became a time with God. It was something that felt safe but also helped me not feel alone. Most of my journaling over those next 8 years or so (before I had kids haha) were in the form of prayers to Jesus. Spending that time with Him, unhindered, without insecurity and worry of what people thought, I felt most myself. 

So today as I struggle to figure out just what I want to focus on and what I want to speak about tomorrow I find my way back to writing. 

I have found in the past I don't do so well at writing out notes, doing bullet points or steps when I share my story. When I do steps/notes I find myself getting distracted by them by trying to stay in order and it tends to actually distract my focus enough to make it choppy. I tend to write out notes and points so that they are more organized in my head but don't follow them when I speak.  But, today I'm a little concerned about just winging it considering I've been struggling with depression for the last month. I find I'm not as focused, things feel "foggy" and I worry that I won't remember important things or won't keep my train of thought as well. Depression in general tends to make me feel insecure and less confident. I feel more disconnected to people during this time. That's not optimal for speaking in a group! 

So, I pray. I pray that God gives me just the words He wants me to speak. I pray that He gives me clarity and sharpness to speak clearly and keep my mind on track. Then I trust. I trust that He knows what He has planned for tomorrow and He knows what He wants to speak through me and I trust that He will equip me to carry that out. 

It's not just my story, It's HIS story. It's all His story.

His story of creating this beautiful girl. He created me with a heart that loved to care for the sick and hurting, He created me with a desire to encourage people and gave me this crazy love for babies. He created me with a heart to love Him.  

Sadly, I bought into the lies of the world and thought I wasn't worth much. I allowed the shame and dirty feelings of being raped to shape my thoughts about myself. I allowed childhood abuse and brokeneness in my family to tell me that I wasn't important, that I was a bother and that I was a problem. Satan stole from me. He robbed me of much of my childhood and he tried to get me to believe I wasn't worth anything.  It's a regular struggle for me. 

But being a child of God, he can't take that away. No matter what he did to me or has caused, no matter how many lies he plants he cannot take away the TRUTH. The truth that I am a beautiful child of God, that I was created for God's pleasure and good purposes, that I was bought with a price and that I was more than able to overcome and victor over ALL of the traps and lies that satan threw at me.  I play a crutial rule in all this though: I can choose to believe the lies of satan and allow them to cripple and paralyse me OR I can say NO and I choose Jesus. When I choose truth and proclaim it all of those things have no power over me. They just fall right off of me.  I find speaking scripture out loud when I can't seem to speak truth or fight lies helps me to come to the place of saying YES to Jesus and No to satan's lies. 

The more I seek the truth, the more I seek the face of Jesus, the more I can embrace His love for me and His freedom and grace the more the chains fall off and the more alive I become. 

There is so much CHOICE. I can choose to pity that girl that had a crummy thing happen to her, I can pity the woman who struggles with bipolar illness, I can pity the woman who fights just to stay alive or I can choose to embrace her and love her and live in the truth that God loves her and God has compassion for her. 

God knows us. He knows right where we are. 

It's my choose if I choose to believe the lies and believe that I am not capable to overcome my struggles and my brokeness or it is my choice if I choose to embrace Jesus, embrace that beautiful girl that He has made me to be. Embrace the true person that I am. Embrace myself in my brokeness and pain and see myself as I truly am: Broken and beautiful yet being made whole in Christ minute by minute day by day. 

We have a choice. We can look at our struggles and see all the defeat and give in to it or we can look at our struggles and see Jesus and ask Him to walk through it with us so we can live true, be ourselves, embrace all that He died to give us and believe that we can do all things through God who gives us strength. 

Satan has stolen much from me yet he couldn't take my life and he can't prevent God from giving back to me that he has taken. God restores the years the locust have eaten. God restores the brokenhearted and He binds up their wounds. 

So much hurt, so much rejection, so much pain. Yet so much love, so much hope, so much redemption, so much gain. 

God has shown me that some of my greatest struggles have become my greatest treasures because they bring me to His feet, they nail me to His cross, they allow me to be intimate with Him in a way I can't touch without all that pain. 

I would like to say that I have complete healing from my bipolar disorder, that I have complete healing from being raped, from having a broken abusive home life, from painful marriage struggles, but I can't say that. What I can say is that I have had much healing, deep deep healing in so many of these areas and I am not without hope that there is much more to come. I am speaking out of a place of currently struggling with depression yet I speak with Hope. Hope because I know that I know that I know that I am NEVER alone, that I will never be overcome by these things because I have a God who loves me, a God who is deeply aquainted with my pain, that chooses to join into my brokeness with me and a God who LOVES to be with me... even in my messy places, even when I don't have it all together and find myself often having temper tantrums and fits over where I'm at with depression right now. He just wants us, right where we are, brokeness included, sin and ugliness included. He sees the beautiful person He has created and the person we are to become. He isn't hindered in His love for us the way we are with ourselves and each other. His love has no bounds. Praise God! 

Some of the things that I feel have been most important in my healing journey thus far:

1-I had to ask God to show me where He was at when I was raped. I didn't want Him to see me in that place. I didn't want Him to see me naked and helpless. But I had to allow Him into that horrid place in order to allow His love and truth and healing to penetrate my heart and bring healing. God showed me that He was right there, He was a literal human shield between that man and I and nothing went through that man's hands to me that didn't first go through the body of Jesus. He showed me that His eyes were on me and that He saw my naked body but it was beautiful and pure and innocent. His tears flowed with my tears. We were one. He chose to go there with me, in my darkest hour He chose to share my pain and he bore my shame. It took 24 years for me to allow God to take me back to that night with Him and to allow God to take my shame and show me what He really saw. 

2-I am never alone. Knowing God chose to be so incredibly close and intimate with me during the hardest most horrid experience of my life helps me realize and know that He is always going to be there. It gives me Hope when I'm in the midst of depression to know that God wants to be with me. He wants to share in our struggles, share our pain, He longs for us to let Him go there into the depts with us. He will only go where we invite Him though, He won't force Himself anywhere He hasn't been invited.
3-Satan loves secrecy and works his hardest to keep our pain and hurt hidden in the dark.  If he can keep us silent he can keep us bound in shame and fear and he uses that silence and shame to cripple and eventually paralyse. If he can keep us silent he tricks us into believing that we will never get better, that we will never get over our past pain and hurt. If we speak out, if we bring that darkness into the light the light overcomes the darkness. Satan finds that incredibly threatening. Whatever is hidden in the dark stays bound up in the dark, but whatever we expose to the light, the truth, to God's love and healing, it is overcome by light and the darkness is expelled. We must use our voice to speak out for ourselves and to speak out for those who have no voice. Speaking the truth is powerful.
4-I am beautiful and God treasures me on my best of days, and my very worst of days. Right now I am in the midst of a depression. During low times I often feel I am not measuring up and feel as though I am constantly failing.  BUT the truth is, I am a beautiful child of God, and He is just as pleased with me today as he is on my very best days. Just because I feel I don't have much to give doesn't mean I am not worth much. He bases His worth on who He is and who He made me to be. He says that I am fearfully and wonderfully made. He says that I am His beloved, His bride, He says that I am worth dying for.  And more than that He wants me to believe who He says I am, even when I don't feel it, even when everything screaming in my ear says that I stink, He wants me to look at His Word, His truth and claim it.  He wants me to take the authority He's given me and fight it and send those lies back where they came from. I'm working on this. I often wrestle with lies and feel I don't measure up but God is helping me make progress and He's showing me that it's not about being perfect, it's about making progress with Him. Progress not perfection.
5-I have a choice. When lies come I can choose to fight them with God's word. When depression comes I can choose to fight it and not lay down and give in. When failures seem to pile up and I feel less than I have a choice. I can choose to see myself through God's eyes or I can give in and pity myself and allow satan to rob me of the freedom Jesus died to give. Realizing I can choose how I respond to what life throws at me has been a huge huge step towards healing and health for me. It's one I have to learn in deeper ways day by day but it has been a huge agent of change for me.
So much more I'm learning...... off to make some notes that I probably won't follow tomorrow. HA!