Maggie's Musings

It took me long enough!

2008-01-29T20:10:00.000-06:00

I haven't been able to get in here because I couldn't remember the correct e-mail/password combination. Whew! It's good to be back. More later.

"...some blow or loss, guilt or rejection….”

2007-05-20T17:07:00.000-05:00

Last Saturday (a week ago) was a really bad day for me. I slept all day, got up for three hours and went back to bed again until Sunday morning. I cried for much of the three hours I was up and all during church the next morning too. I had been reading the chapter called "Depression" in Healing for the Wounded Soul by John and Paula Sanford. It described me so well and really hit me. The book is intended for people who want to help others heal, not for the wounded themselves and as I read what they were recommending the "healers" do and not do for the depressed I couldn't help but wish that I had people like that here, around me. At church on Sunday, I felt very disconnected. But I'm sure that was me and not the folks at church because quite a few people came and hugged me.

Since then, I have gone back to reread the chapter on depression and take notes. As I did this, something interesting happened. I was reading, “Performance orientation… [lies] in some degree behind every person in depression … though it may not be the primal cause. The first cause, some blow or loss, guilt or rejection….” And at this point, a memory came to me but I’ll finish the quote first. “…is like the spark, but the performance orientation is the tinder. Or the wound is the seed, but performance orientation is the fertile ground where depression may quietly grow.”

The memory that hit me like a load of bricks was the car accident we had two days after my fourth birthday. It wasn’t a hidden memory but it has never hit me the way it did that day. It was Christmas Day and we were driving into the city to go to church. My dad was driving, my mom was in the front seat holding my not-quite-three-year-old sister on her lap. I was in the back seat between my paternal grandparents. I think there might have been an uncle with us or something but I can’t remember. The roads were icy and my dad liked driving fast (so I’ve heard). Just as we were nearing the city (I still know the spot though it’s now industrial instead of farm fields), Dad lost control of the car. Mom’s door flew open, my sister flew out the door with Mom following and the car following both of them until it landed in the snow-filled ditch, pinning my sister under the car, the hot engine pressed against her cheek. They couldn’t get her out. I sat screaming, unsure whether my mom and/or sister would live, and my grandfather very harshly told me to be quiet.

It took half an hour to finally get the car off my sister. During that time, someone was trying to flag down a car to help, but no one stopped for the longest time, until finally an immigrant who could hardly speak English stopped to help (maybe HE was the extra man I remember). Once my sister was rescued, the man took her (and her cooked face) and my parents to the hospital but he dropped my grandparents and me off at a bus stop and we proceeded to church. I remember very vividly, the bus stop and waiting there. I know that corner too. I don’t remember anything after that.

But as this memory came into my mind (taking only a flash of a second), I began to cry. I can’t remember ever crying about that accident. And for the first time, consciously, I began to wonder what would have happened to me if my mom and sister HAD died. It was a very scary thought.

That was Sunday afternoon. Wednesday I saw my psychiatrist. She was asking me questions and the accident came up again and, once again, I could hardly speak because of the tears. Obviously there’s something there that needs a closer look. Somehow it seems to be connected to my depression, but how? Why? The doctor asked me how the accident then is impacting my life now and all I could think of was my tendency to be a people pleaser or, what the book was talking about, performance orientation. My doctor seemed to suggest that there’s something else or something different. I haven’t a clue. I do know that going over that chapter again really gave me insight into myself.

If I was well

2007-05-12T18:45:00.000-05:00

My doctor asked me what I would do if I wasn’t working full time. That’s got me thinking about what I would like to do if I had the energy.

I would like our home to be a place of hospitality, where we would all feel comfortable inviting people over. It used to be like this when the kids were little. But in order to be back in that place again, I need to be able to keep the house in some sort of order and cleanliness and be making meals on a regular basis.

I would play the piano more. If my knee wasn’t hurting, I’d walk all sorts of places and maybe cycle too. I would be writing more. I started the research for a book about my relationship to and marriage with my husband but the depression (and working full time) got in the way. I would spend more time on the streets of where my church is trying to minister.

"That's not who I am!"

2007-05-09T21:36:00.000-05:00

I had an insight this morning. The way my co-worker dressed today had the potential of stirring me in unwelcome ways, especially at one point when she stood in front of my desk, and yet my first thought was, how will I respond to this? I remembered what had happened at the retreat a week and a half ago and was able to keep my thoughts where they belonged.

As I thought about this and how God is changing me, the words came to me, "This isn't who I am!" It came like a thunderbolt and was quite a surprise to me. And yet it rang true. I'm no longer who I used to be or who I thought I was. To be quite bold about it (and frankly, I think it's something that must be proven through time), I am no longer a woman who is sexually and/or romantically attracted to other women. Wow! That's a scary thing to declare and yet that was the revelation I received this morning. I am a daughter of God--not a lesbian, not a woman who struggles with same-sex attraction, but a daughter of God. Wow!

My psychiatrist asked me today how I've been doing the last week in that department and I could honestly say that I have not been troubled in the ways I was before the retreat. She was amazed. I am too. God's given me a whole new perspective of myself!

Sunday morning

2007-05-05T17:03:00.000-05:00

I could have gone home Saturday evening but I wanted time alone to digest the weekend and process it. I also wanted to attend the Sunday service of the church that sponsored the retreat. I won’t bore you with the details but there is one thing that really impressed me. After the singing/worship time and before the sermon, the pastor invited everyone to gather into groups of four or five to pray for each other. This was not an opportunity to bring up the needs of your neighbour’s cousin’s daughter’s broken leg, but a chance to share real and personal needs of the people in the group. Wow! What a way to foster community and intimacy amongst the congregation!

And in fact, I was so very impressed by everything about this church. There was a closeness to each other and a naked closeness to God. This is not a church where people wear a façade to show how spiritual they are. It is a place where people are real, welcoming transparency and honesty, and it shows. What a blessing that visit was! I wish I could be part of a church like that.

I wish I was able to better describe the impact the weekend had on me. It was very powerful and as it progressed, I found a deep peace filling me. Since then, I've been going to that place where I've experienced God's love in various ways and letting His love and presence soak into me. It has made such a difference in so many ways. I'm even sleeping better!

An Insight

2007-05-05T17:02:00.001-05:00

Saturday evening I went out to eat and wrote out some thoughts. I want emotional intimacy with my husband but he doesn’t seem to know what that looks like, never mind how to develop it. But what if, instead of waiting for him to give me what he may not know how to give, I began to do the things I’ve done or wanted to do with those with whom I have felt emotionally connected?

For instance, I used to send e-cards to Pearl all the time. I kept her picture near me. With someone else, I was willing to go into the smoking section of a restaurant, just to be with and near her. I thought of how, even though my co-worker smokes, I wanted to kiss her. I’d endure the foul taste to have that closeness with her. So why not my husband? Why not do those same things with him? Why not act as if I am madly in love with him even though I may not be. I could share my thoughts, feelings and life with him. I could give to him to please him, whether he tries to reciprocate or not. Can I do this?

I’ve started to send him cards and e-mails during the day from work. And I’m thinking about my trip to Tennessee this summer, to my niece’s wedding. I haven’t really wanted him to come, though I’ve tried not to convey that. He’s worried about the cost (he always worries about money). I’ve been very generous to others, paying for meals and such, but I’ve always had the mind-set that when we’re together, my husband should be the one who pays for everything. That probably comes from the years with him when I had no money or access to money. What if I invited him to come with me to the wedding and I offered to pay all the costs of the trip? That’s a scary prospect—not the spending of money but paying his way. My fear is that he’ll take advantage of me but I’ve renounced the spirits of fear and unbelief. Surely I can trust God to protect me as I step out in faith to do what seems so risky. And so I plan to do this.

Death

2007-05-05T17:01:00.001-05:00

The devil comes to steal, kill and destroy and brings death to many things. By contrast, Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life. There’s another juxtaposition that I’d never quite seen like that.

My hopes and dreams—did Satan kill my dream for love? Jesus can bring it back to life again. In fact, that’s what He’s promised me and I see it happening. Satan tries to bring death into our relationships—marriage, friendships, church and even (or especially) our relationship with God. He wants to bring death to our bodies, to the soul, mind and heart. He wants us to be hopeless, faithless and give up on God; to kill our vision for ministry—to make it wither up and die and have us accept it. The spirit of death brings mental dullness, tiredness (exactly what I’ve been experiencing) and a desire to die in addition to the easily recognizable forms of violence and murder. But God has come to bring life and life abundantly—to our spirits and bodies.

I could recognize how this has continued to have a grip on my life. I’m hoping that things will begin to change. The important thing, however, is that if we want to live by the Spirit of God, we must keep in step with the Spirit and live as He leads us. This is the crunch. It’s one thing to have a wonderful experience for a weekend but can I continue to walk in the freedom I’ve been given? Or will I welcome some or all of those evil spirits back into my life by the choices I make?

Heaviness

2007-05-05T17:00:00.000-05:00

This and the next (and last) topic touched heavily on depression and I expected to become quite overcome with emotion and tears like I had with the other topics but, to my surprise, that didn’t happen.

Heaviness attempts to isolate. It shows up as hopelessness, despair and a loss of heart and vision and results in a degradation of our relationships, self-absorption and the avoidance of counsel and wisdom.

Isaiah 61:3 says that for “those who grieve in Zion, [God will give them] … a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.” (The song calls it a spirit of heaviness.) The word is used also in Isaiah 42:3, which Matthew quotes, saying that it describes Jesus: “A bruised reed he will not break and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out, till he leads justice to victory.” (Matthew 12:20, NIV) The word “smoldering” is the same word. Jesus doesn’t break those who are heavy with despair. He comforts those who mourn! We can’t pull ourselves out of this heaviness and despair, but God can.

The problem with Heaviness is that we become self-focused and self-centered. (Have I been like that?) We push others away (and I’ve done my share of that). But, as I quoted above, Jesus wants to make an exchange—a garment of praise for the spirit of Heaviness. A garment of praise is a gift from God, the speaker told us, and we need to exercise it, so we pulled off the garment of heaviness, as if we were removing a t-shirt, and put on the garment of praise. And then we spent time singing praises to God. The cool thing about praising God is that when we worship Him, darkness can’t stay.

When I went for prayer, the fellow praying for me wanted to know what was behind my depression. Sigh. I hated to admit it because he and I had been chatting in the line waiting for lunch and I felt I had made a friend. Now I had to reveal stuff that I wanted to hide—my difficult marriage and my struggle with homosexuality. Nothing profound happened, which has me wondering if the depression was broken during the earlier sessions and now it’s just a matter of continuing in what God has given me. I guess time will tell.

Bitterness

2007-05-05T16:59:00.000-05:00

“See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many." (Hebrews 12:15)

When we look at a potted flower, we see the pot, the stems, leaves, flowers and soil. Roots often remain hidden and in order to see them, they must be exposed. So, when we remove the plant from the pot, the roots are easily visible. People see our appearances but the bitterness that’s rooted in us often remains hidden. Hidden or not, those roots of bitterness can cause defilement of us and others. “What bitterness is hidden in me?” I wondered. Bitterness develops when we form strong opinions about others; when we judge others.

The speaker took the potted plant she was using to illustrate and poured some water over the exposed roots. A bit of soil washed away but not much. But when she dunked it into a bowl of water, she was able to remove all the soil. Without soil, the roots can’t grow. And so with us. We can either be sprinkled by the Living Water or be immersed in it.

And then she reminded us about the mustard seed. Jesus said that it’s the smallest of seeds and yet, when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree so that birds can perch in its branches. But Jesus also said that if we had faith the size of a tiny mustard seed, we could tell mountains to move and they would. Imagine the mustard seed as it grows in the garden. What happens with the roots? They grow too and the network of roots begin to displace other roots, such as those of bitterness.

What a contrast! We can have roots of bitterness, which can defile many or we can have roots of faith which will crowd out unwanted roots and, like the mustard plant giving shelter to the birds, we can use our faith to bless those towards whom we’ve been bitter. Isn’t that cool?

Fear

2007-05-05T16:57:00.000-05:00

The spirit of Fear comes in many forms. I used to think I wasn’t afraid of anything but as they listed things like “strong feelings of powerlessness”, “stripped of authority at church”, “pulling away or withdrawing from others”, I realized that this does apply to me. How does the door open for fear to get in? Amongst other ways, it can come through previous generations and childhood experiences.

When I went for prayer about fear, I was asked, “What are you afraid of?”

Rejection.

“Rejection by whom?”

Authority figures, maybe? Those who have power over me? Especially men. Oh! That’s a new thought!

“When was the door opened?”

I hadn’t thought about that, but it came so clearly—when I was a preschooler. We lived with my paternal grandparents and my grandfather was very stern. I remember how, at our nightly times of family worship, wondering which way was the “proper” or more pious way of kneeling: sitting on my heels or being upright from head to knees? The latter was more uncomfortable so that must be the better way. My sister and I weren’t allowed to move or wiggle during prayer or during the reading, never mind making any kind of noise.

But another thought and remembrance came to me. My older cousins have described the kind of man they knew my father to be. He was jovial and friendly, easily their favourite. I knew a different man. Why? Was he that different with us? I remember, still at my grandparents’ as a preschooler, listening to a children’s radio program with my mom and sister but we had to do it clandestinely so that my dad wouldn’t find out. Was I afraid of my father because of his behaviour or because of what my mom communicated? Did I learn fear of my dad, grandfather and men in general from my mom? I’m beginning to wonder. I have only one concrete memory of feeling afraid of my dad on my own account and many positive experiences with him but I can see my mom, who was nearly young enough to be my father’s daughter, being very insecure. In later years she clearly displayed an animosity towards men.

The person praying for me led me through a declaration, phrase by phrase as I echoed. When she prompted, “I am equal to everyone else,” I couldn’t open my mouth to say the words and broke down crying.

I have never felt equal. From grade one on, everyone else was richer, dressed nicer, was more informed, more important or popular. My classmate’s play house was nearly as big as the house I lived in—a building smaller than a one-car garage with no plumbing. Five of us, one in cloth diapers, lived in that little house and my dad drove to the public tap in the neighbouring town to get water, which he brought home in pails.

When we moved to the city just before grade two, I was put in the slow class. All the other kids came with school supplies. I had nothing and wondered how they knew what to bring. In the middle of the year I was moved to the smart class but they were way ahead of me in what they’d been taught. I remember the day the teacher asked me what time it was. We were all lined up, waiting to be dismissed for the day. I hadn’t been taught how to tell time so I said I didn’t know. Everyone laughed.

When we left my dad, in the middle of grade three, we moved into a portion of the main floor of a three-story house, sharing the basement washroom with the other main-floor tenant. My three sisters and I shared a small bedroom and my mom slept on the couch. A few years later, we moved to a complete, self-contained apartment that was infested with mice. My classmates lived in modern bungalows in the suburbs and their homes were so beautiful, uncluttered and well-kept. But then, they were “rich” and we were poor. We were so poor that when we began receiving the paltry sum that welfare gives its clients, we moved a few steps up on the social scale.

My mom reinforced this idea of being unequal by the way she related to others and so I’ve lived with it all my life. It still amazes me that I now live in a large, five-bedroom house in a part of town where, as a child, I thought only “rich” people lived. But even still, I feel unequal—unequal to my neighbours, unequal to my husband’s colleagues, unequal to women who are well-dressed and well-coiffed, unequal to those who have power and position and especially unequal to those who are popular. I’m afraid to “impose” myself on them, as though they have more important things to attend to than spending time with me.

The person praying for me about fear, spent time praying over me and then asked me to symbolically remove the yoke of fear from my shoulders and break it over my knee. Then she picked up the declaration again, asking me to repeat, “I am equal to everyone else,” and this time I could do it.

Sexual Impurity

2007-05-05T16:56:00.001-05:00

But a really cool thing happened that I DO remember. Soul ties is the idea of two people being knit and tied together, cleaved, bonded together, joined. It’s an attachment to a person or object that influences our mind and emotions. There are good soul ties, such as married couples, parents with children, healthy friendships, etc. But the Bible tells us that even when a man lies with a prostitute, they become one. This is an example of an unhealthy soul tie. The story of Dinah in Numbers 25:1-3 is another example. The soul of the man who raped her, “clave unto her”.

The problem is that the destructive forces in those with whom we have soul ties can move from them to us. He told a true story to illustrate it but again, I’ve forgotten parts. But it made me think about Pearl. What destructive forces moved from her to me? How have I been affected in the spiritual realm? And then I wondered more about those ties between us. Could it be that I haven’t been able to break them because she’s still holding on to them? Maybe not, but I wondered.

The interesting thing is that this is the 7th time I’ve been invited to break whatever soul ties I’ve had. The first few times my list was very long but eventually the only person on the list was Pearl. Every time, I had the hardest time crossing her name off and ripping up the paper with her name on it. It was like something was stopping me—probably my continued desire for her, my double-mindedness. But this time it wasn’t hard at all! Wow! That was a miracle in itself.

Abuse/Abusing

2007-05-05T16:55:00.003-05:00

They talked about the various kinds of abuse and then first a man spoke on behalf of fathers, husbands and sons who have abused us and then a woman on behalf of mothers, wives and daughters, naming the ways they might have abused and apologizing. I cried almost right away when the “father” spoke but I didn’t cry when the “mother” started speaking until she said, “I touched you in ways I shouldn’t.” I don't remember my mother touching me inappropriately, but there certainly was a lack or violation of boundaries that my psychiatrist agrees was a form of sexual abuse.

There was almost always a point at which I would begin crying with each topic and each time, it was a clue to me of where my pain is and perhaps the source behind the pain but already I’m forgetting so much of what happened.

Guilt/Shame/Condemnation

2007-05-05T16:55:00.001-05:00

We watched a video about a young woman who had been raped while she had been passed out drunk. She said, “It was easy to forgive him but not so easy to forgive me.” Am I like that? Forgiving others but able to forgive myself?

Satan never misses the chance to remind us of what’s been done to or by us. He would tell us that we’re not worthy to go to God for forgiveness but God promises that if we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Many of us continue to carry our guilt even after we’ve been forgiven. I know that whenever I think of how I led Pearl into sin, it almost breaks me to think of how I opened the door to her and introduced her to a way of sinning that was closed to her before I came along. I know God has forgiven me but that doesn’t undo the damage I did.

The problem is that Satan gets our attention with feelings of guilt, shame and/or condemnation and then he pulls us in. Once he gets us even a little bit, he has us hooked. We begin to think that the blood of Jesus isn’t enough and we begin to focus on the dead thing (that which has been forgiven). He enjoys it when we heap self-condemnation on ourselves. It affects how we think and feel and how we receive or give love. But God doesn’t want us held back but rather released and set free from all sin in our past. No matter what we’ve done or what’s been done to us. Jesus covered it all on the cross.

Rejection

2007-05-05T16:54:00.003-05:00

Rejection is something I’ve struggled with all my life. I’ve thought about how I’ve been or felt rejected by others but I’ve never really looked at self-rejection, where a person becomes angry because she’s failed God or others and/or is not satisfied with the way God made her. We think something must be wrong with us and become perfectionists to prove our self-worth. The problem is that when we think of ourselves as unacceptable, we can begin to think or wonder if maybe God and others are also believing that about us. Thoughts of suicide, “I can’t take it anymore”, is one of several symptoms.

I think the aspect of rejection that really hit me was when fear of rejection was discussed. Because we are afraid of rejection, we please people so they won’t reject us. This has certainly been me. We withdraw from others. They can’t hurt me if I hold myself back. Wow! I’ve been thinking about the ways I withdraw. I do this a lot. I never really connected it with a fear of rejection.

Doubt and Unbelief

2007-05-05T16:54:00.001-05:00

Something that limits God giving to us and us receiving is Doubt and Unbelief. James 1 says that when we ask, we must believe and not doubt. I didn’t think this is an area in which I struggle until the speaker began to tell us what it looks like. One of the words he used was “double-minded”. Oh my! That’s the very word I’ve been using to describe myself as I’ve struggled with thoughts of Pearl and a growing attraction to my co-worker. I am determined to follow God and yet obviously there’s something in me that still wants the other. Could it be a simple matter of doubt and unbelief?

What opens the door to unbelief? Tragedy, abuse and negativity were three that were listed that were definitely part of my life growing up. I repented, renounced, and broke the hold of this over me and was blessed by the person praying for me.

The Introduction

2007-05-05T16:52:00.000-05:00

I’ve been to these retreats before, but it’s been over three years since the last one and so the teaching was a good refresher for me.

The key to dealing with sin and strongholds in our lives is fourfold—repent, renounce, break and bless—and we did this as a group, repeating after the leader, phrase by phrase for each area covered: the spirits of Pride, Doubt and Unbelief, Rejection, Guilt/Shame/Condemnation, Abuse/Abusing, Sexual Impurity, Fear, Bitterness, Heaviness and Death. A lot to cover in less than 24 hours! Sometimes we made symbolic gestures, like removing the crown of pride and putting on the cloak of humility. It was explained to us that our action in the physical releases action in the spiritual realm.

I went to the retreat, praying for a miracle, and when the leader told us of the words that came to the team as they prepared for the weekend, my hopes were encouraged.
1. Breakthrough—with joy, laughter, release and freedom. This is exactly what I had come for!
2. Sanctity—turning away from sins that hold us back.
3. Action—a word that was often repeated. Jesus said that the kingdom comes with force and forceful men take hold of it. We are to press in. “Press! Press! Press!” he said.
4. Filled—chains being broken. I remembered the vision God gave me of being in a small, dark hut and how I had to choose whether to stay in the chains that shackled me or walk into the unknown.

Going to the Retreat

2007-05-05T16:48:00.000-05:00

The traffic through the city, as I left work for the retreat, was horrendous and it took me nearly an hour to get out. After that, it was only 2 hours to my destination and all I missed at the retreat (I was half an hour late) was the singing. The border crossing was quick and easy.

The church where we met is old, not very big but well-kept. It’s brick on the outside with dark wood window frames inside. The bottom third of the windows are frosted glass and the top two-thirds are covered with think Venetian blinds, giving a soothing, diffused light that was very pleasant. Instead of pews, they use upholstered stacking chairs that are linked together so they act like a pew, which is a great idea, in my opinion.

Later, when I walked into the washroom, I was surprised. It looked like a princess’s garden—so inviting and welcoming it made me feel special—with a white, iron wrought chair under a leafy tree, wallpaper border with open gazebos of various kinds covered with flowers, and so on. Even the children’s areas were tastefully decorated.

My Psychiatrist

2007-05-02T13:53:00.000-05:00

I just got back from the psychiatrist's, where I was telling all the good things and insights and stuff from the weekend. I talked and talked and talked--mostly about God--and her questions were cool. For instance we were talking about faith and doubt and she wanted to know what I do when doubts start to come. I was telling her that God won't let me be tempted beyond what I am able and she said, "He must trust you a lot then." Never thought of it like that. It's so cool. She listens to what I say, never argues with me or tries to correct me. She asks questions but accepts what I say at face value. Sometimes I wonder if God sent me to her with depression simply so I could witness to her. Now that would be worth all my depression if she became a believer because of the things I've shared.

I Walked Too Much!

2007-04-23T10:31:00.000-05:00

I walked too much on the weekend. I didn't realize it until I got up from the computer last night to go to bed. I could put no pressure or weight on my right leg at all. Even the cane wasn't much help in walking. It's still a problem, so I won't be walking for a few days. I do have my stationary bike, however, so hopefully I'll be able to ride that when I get home in the evenings.

Lots of Walking

2007-04-22T20:50:00.000-05:00

I know death isn't the answer, but sometimes it FEELS like it's the only way out. I am committed to not pursue that line of thinking but the temptation still comes. I'm also committed to honesty, openness and transparency and so I admit the bad as well as the good. And I know I need as many people praying for me as possible because there's no way I can do what I shoud and WANT to do without God responding to and answering those prayers. So thank you for praying.

Today has been good. Fourth Son's girlfriend is here from Vancouver so I told them they could have the car for the day if they drove me to church in the morning. I would walk everywhere I had to go. And so, after church, I walked an hour and three-quarters to the women's study in the afternoon, stopping along the way for lunch, and then I walked home after the study, another hour and a half, for a total of three and a quarter hours of walking.

My pedometer seemed to working well yesterday when I went walking but although I walked an hour more today, it recorded the same distance, which doesnt' make sense so I'm kind of frustrated with it. My boys suggest that perhaps I'm such a graceful walker that the pedometer doesn't register all my steps. I doubt THAT'S true but the thought is flattering.

Anyway, all the walking really helps me because I spend the time memorizing Scripture (Matthew 16 today) and so my mind is kept on things of God instead of other things.

No One Has Ever Loved Me as Much

2007-04-22T09:31:00.000-05:00

I continue to struggle with thoughts about Pearl. I realize that I'm double-minded about this because obviously some part of me still WANTS to think about her. My psychiatrist has asked more than once, "What is it about her, or what does she represent that has me so attached to her?"

My answer is always, "No one has ever loved me or wanted me the way she did." I've been turning this around and thinking about it and my head knows that God loves and wants me way more than she ever has or ever could but my feelings/heart just doesn't seem to believe it. Wednesday night I was thinking about this and God reminded me that He has shown me His love for me in ways that most people never experience. I have cuddled in God's arms, as a child with a father; I have been hugged and loved and picked up as a child, sitting on Jesus' arm high above all the other kids; I have danced with God in a meadow; Jesus has come up behind me, put His arms around me and nuzzled His face into my neck. He has loved, and comforted and romanced me.

And as I thought about all this, the words that I've been memorizing in Matthew came to me, "You of little faith. Why did you doubt?" And it's true. I have minimized or forgotten or diminished what I have experienced because God is Spirit, not flesh and blood, even though my experiences with him have been very real. I have doubted, like Peter, when he was walking on the water and began to sink when he saw the waves.

And so, since then, I've been going back to those experiences and used my imagination to relive them—over and over again. I'm reminded of Brother Lawrence from several hundred years ago who talked about practicing the presence of God. That's exactly what I've been doing and even going to sleep with those pictures on my mind. And amazingly, the last two nights I've actually slept well—or at least better than I have in several months. My family doctor is convinced that my inability to sleep is directly connected to my depression. Could I have found the answer to both my depression and sleep problems? I think it's a possibility.

But once again I've been in a battle. I got into my car to come home from work and the Christian radio station I always listen to was playing a song that reminded me of Pearl, and the tension and fight began again. It's been so strong lately that sometimes I think the only escape is death. To add to the difficulties is a growing attraction to one of my co-workers. She's a very affectionate person—-to everyone (or at least to those she likes)—and she freely dispenses hugs, comments like, "I adore you," and even a kiss on the cheek once. I find myself wanting more of the same, so I'm battling that too.

It's obvious that Satan is trying to take away all the ground I gain and take away any victories I've won. Of course I've got to fight on but sometimes, like earlier, it seems too much. How long can I go on like this?

My friend had written to me: "We must believe God can help us. We must trust Him to help us. We must take the steps He shows us."

Yes. This is what I must do and He HAS shown me what to do—-focus on those experiences I've had with God showing me His love and soaking in the knowledge that He DOES love me and His love for me is intense. I realize that my faith IS little. I can't do this alone. I think of persecuted Christians and what they've had to give up in order to stay faithful to God. Surely if THEY can stay faithful, I can.

I'm going to a retreat next weekend. I'm hoping that God will do something for me if I can just hang on till then. Actually, I told my psychiatrist about the retreat and she wanted to know more about it and what I hoped would happen so I told her. So now it feels like God's reputation is at stake for surely she is skeptical. Will God do something marvelous for me, to show His glory and power to my doctor? I'm praying He will.

So, that's where I'm at. It's frustrating to go back and forth between extremes so quickly. I know God will get me through if I let Him. Please pray that I will!

Doctors, Doctors and More Doctors!

2007-04-15T20:55:00.000-05:00

This past week has been very difficult. On Monday I had to have a tooth filled. I don't like dentists and was really shaken, crying in the chair and such. I came home only to get a phone call reminding me (I had completely forgotten and hadn't marked it on my calendar) that I had a gastroscopy (camera down the throat to look at the esophagus and stomach) on Friday. I already knew that I had another tooth to be filled on Thursday. I was really numb at this prospect. Then my husband, who hadn't taken the time to find out how my day was, asked me to come sit with him and the fellow working on our bathroom as they sat drinking coffee and chatting. I didn't want to but I wanted to please him so I sat there, not really enjoying myself, for about an hour. Finally I said that I wanted to go back to the kitchen (where the computer is) but could we discuss a few things about the bathroom first. I was actually feeling goofy and was joking around, but after the workman left, my husband came to me very angry because 1) I had wanted to leave their company to return to the computer and 2) he hadn't liked my joking around and felt ... well, I'm not sure. Can't remember the word he used. I was furious. For the first time in a long time I had actually felt safe enough to joke with him and he totally misunderstood my intent. I certainly hadn't meant to hurt him or diminish him. I was still shaking from everything else before and was so angry with his attitude that I yelled back at him. The next morning, still hurt and angry at his behaviour, I yelled a whole lot more and was miserable all day at work as my world spiralled down. I had sent him an apology e-card but though I learned later that he had replied, very nicely, I didn't see that reply till the next day. I was in such a bad state that I broke down in tears at work.

That was Tuesday. Thursday, when I went for my second filling, the dentist had to fill up his needle three times before I had enough freezing. He told me that if this third time didn't work, I'd have to go home without the filling and come back again another day. That I did NOT want and so I started praying furiously. Thankfully my mouth was frozen enough and I got the filling done but my ear was frozen, my chin was frozen, my tongue was frozen and so was everything else in between. It was still frozen when I went to bed.

I was really scared about the gastroscopy. Last time I had a "scopy", it was a laparoscopy and instead of being sent home and able to work the next day like the woman ahead of me, I had been admitted to the hospital and then had a recovery time of six weeks. I did NOT want that happening again, especially since I have a regular job for the time being.

I left work at noon and drove home where dh was waiting to take me to the hospital. I was very impressed that he had taken a "family emergency day" to be with me but then he spent the time being really miserable to me and again I was in tears. I was so discouraged. I told him I wish I had let one of our boys take me instead. He eventually got nicer. And the gastroscopy turned out to be not nearly as bad as I had anticipated. The nurses were nice and it wasn't long after the procedure that I was able to sit up and eat something (my reward for being able to gag right away was a glass of water, followed shortly afterwards by pudding.

Within half an hour or 45 minutes, I was declared able to go home. Amazing! But I could only eat soft food, so I had my husband stop at a store and pick up canned pasta, canned stew and a bucket of ice cream. I basically ate ice cream for the rest of the day and most of Saturday too. I didn't feel like eating much else. Besides, they had taken a biopsy and I didn't want to rip apart the wound inside of me with what I ate.

I've been rather groggy most of the weekend, and the sedating drugs they gave me gave me weird but very vivid dreams. I also couldn't drive for 24 hours or make any major decisions. That was okay. I just lounged about and rested.

So, I hope I've rested enough, because I'm intending to go to work tomorrow. I didn't get any of the symptoms they told me to watch for, so I guess I'm okay. Now I just have to wait for the results.

Today was my next-door neighour's 81st birthday. I bought her a card and we all signed it. But my husband decided to do something different. He prepared her a salmon meal and delivered it to her door dressed in his tuxedo. She was thrilled!

And now I'm tired. Good night everyone!

The country the world forgot - again

2007-04-15T11:05:00.000-05:00

I love my country of Canada. I think the following article from a British newspaper describes one aspect of being Canadian very well. If some of my American friends wonder why I'm so prone to speak up about Canada, this is, in part, the reason why. We're the country that everyone ignores.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2002/04/21/do2106.xml

It's been a while

2007-04-14T13:55:00.000-05:00

It's been a shocking five months since I've posted here and so much has happened. And if I don't make a lot of sense in what I write today, I will blame it on the left-over sedation from the medical procedure I underwent yesterday. For 24 hours after leaving the hospital, I'm not to drive or make any major decisions. Is coming back to my blog a major decision? I'll let you decide.

In the past week, I've been reinstating some posts I deleted a year and a half ago. I plan to continue to insert back-dated posts that should have been put in here but weren't. I also hope to be able to continue writing on a more regular basis.

In the past several months, my marriage has improved dramatically, and I say that despite some heated conflagrations this week. It's really been remarkable. I hope to document how that has happened.

I've also been in depression and finally began seeing a psychiatrist two or three months ago. She's really nice and takes pains to not push her agenda on me, which is important because I suspect she's not a Christian and I think she sees nothing wrong with homosexuality--something I continue to struggle with and which is probably a large cause of my depression.

I've been working full time in a term position. I'm reluctant to tell much about my job because I think that as soon as I did, it wouldn't be hard to figure out where I'm working and I don't want to get in trouble with my employer or make things difficult for them. Anything I say about work will be in the vaguest of terms.

That's another thing I've noticed since I've started blogging. Some organizations don't like being identified online. It's really surprised me because often I've mentioned an organization in a way that I thought was positive and wanted to give the organization credit, only to find out that the organization was very angry and insisted I remove my posts. This happened to me nearly two years ago and is why I've been less eager to write here. It's had me second-guessing a lot of what I write. But I want to stop being controlled by that experience and so I'm going to try to be more faithful in writing. I will be careful, however, not to name people or organizations so they can't google and find themselves in my blog--unless I am sure it is safe to do so. I find this an unfortunate thing because I've always been so careful to give credit where credit is due, but I guess it's necessary--at least for now.

There were other things I was going to write but they've escaped my foggy mind. I guess that if they're important, I'll remember later.

It's good to be back.

Extremes

2007-04-04T20:36:00.000-05:00

Monday morning I actually felt happy! That was really cool. And I'm seeing all sorts of (positive) changes in my attitude towards my husband. I'm finding that quite amazing.

I'm still not sleeping well and an issue came up with my psychiatrist today that not only had me in tears but had me forcing myself to not scream out, loudly, in emotional pain. I had to go back to work afterwards so it's all stayed stuffed and I don't know how I'm going to deal with this. I could use a lot of prayer on this matter. I'm thinking that we're going to have to do a lot of digging and investigating to get to the root of it and I'm not sure if I can handle the deep pain that's going to come with that. But maybe we're getting close to the root of the depression.

Women's Ministries

2006-10-13T20:37:00.000-05:00

I’ve been sick with a respiratory flu. Saturday I was really sick when one of my pastors called me, last minute, and asked if I would give a 3-minute blurb about women's ministries as part of the one-year anniversary of the most current version of our church (the leadership, most of the congregation, the venue and the format all changed a year ago). My mind was too sick and foggy to think of anything to say but I thought I could come up with something Sunday before church. Nope. I hadn't slept well and I felt worse than ever. In fact, I took an entire box of tissue with me to church AND my 1.5 litre thermal teapot, just to help me make it through the morning. I was so miserable! (I drank the whole potful before the end of the service too!)

But as worship began, and I was too sick to stand up and join in, I noticed one of the other leaders doing last minute preparation for HER 3-minute talk, and finding a Bible verse; so I thought I could find a Bible verse too. Well, one thing led to another and I wound up spending worship time scrawling out some thoughts to share. Here's an edited version of what I wrote/shared:

One of my favourite passages in the Bible is 2 Corinthians 12:7-10: "...there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong." NIV

We don't know what Paul's thorn was--a physical ailment? A persistent temptation? Something else? We don't know. What we do know is that Jesus' grace is sufficient, for His power is made perfect in weakness. Did you hear that? His power is made perfect in WEAKNESS. When we are weak, then we are strong, because we're in a place where we can be used by God.

This past year has been one of great turmoil and difficulty for me. I was delighted that the my beloved house church wasn't going to fold but I wasn't sure about all these Pentecostals who were taking over. There was one thing our now senior pastor had said at one of the discussion meetings, before we restructured, and that was that his passion was to reach out to a particular neighbourhood in our city. Really? That's where much of the homosexual community hangs out! My passion for several years has been to help those who, like me, struggle with same-sex attraction, but who want to be free to bring honour and glory to God. I was sold, even though I got frustrated so many times (and still do) about how things had changed in my church. And through the year, as I attempted to link with ministries specifically geared to reaching the homosexual, I kept being shut out. I wasn't good enough. I was too weak. And I got weaker, sinking into deeper and deeper depression.

It was at the depth of this depression that one of the pastors asked me if I would lead Women's Ministries.

"Do you realize I'm in the midst of depression?"

"Yes."

"Do you realize I have a lousy marriage?"

"Yes."

"Do you realize I still struggle with same-sex attraction?"

"Yes! But we still want you to lead women's ministries."

And so, here I am, new at the job but excited about the possibilities: continuing the monthly study of Captivating [by John and Stasi Eldredge]; organizing secret sisters as a way to help the women of the church to connect; and weekly meeting at the Frog [name has been changed]. The Frog is an English-style pub where women of our targeted neighbourhood, who have never stepped into a church and who are very suspicious of Christians, might feel comfortable to come and meet and hang out and ask questions.

The pastor’s talk [that morning] has focused on fragrance. Magdaleine is the handle I use online. She was the woman who broke a box of alabaster to pour out an expensive perfume on Jesus' feet. Like that alabaster box, I want to be broken so that my life can be poured out extravagantly for Jesus so that his fragrance can rise from my brokenness and weakness. [The end]

I was really nervous because I'm accustomed to spending time before a public speech, especially one like that, going over it again and again, but I didn't have that chance. I was also nervous because many of the church people were hearing for the first time about my ssa and difficult marriage. How would they, especially the women, treat me afterwards? Many of the women love to hug me. Would they still want to? Yes! I was pleasantly surprised! And several thanked me for what I had said. It was a good morning despite being sick and I’m looking forward to what God is going to do next: in and through me, in and through our women’s ministries, and in and through our church.

Not Well

2006-09-30T18:52:00.000-05:00

I want to apologize for not writing too much in the past few months. I've been struggling with depression, sleep problems and other health issues. My mind is often foggy or just too tired to contemplate anything other than what is absolutely necessary.

Things haven't been all bad. There have been some great things happening. I just wish I had the energy to share it all as it was happening. One day I'll come in and do a major catch up.

A couple of things in brief, my marriage has been improving and I've been made leader for the women's ministry in my church. I'm enjoying the latter and trying to believe that the former is really happening. It's hard to regain trust. I haven't been doing anything on transcribing my journals but I have been working three days a week and that's really exhausted me. I've also been doing a fair bit of walking and while that adds to the exhaustion, I think it is helping my mood.

Showing my husband how to blog

2006-09-30T13:08:00.000-05:00

I'm trying to let my husband into my world and part of that is to show him how I make my blog postings and how this whole thing works. The picture is of the 50 roses I gave my mom on my 50th birthday last year.

My husbands says,

I want to create one for my consultancy work.

One of my favourite places online to visit is forums.crosswalk.com

Edge of the Precipice

2006-08-18T16:16:00.000-05:00

Things have been up and down for me lately. I had a major insight Monday morning. I've been wrestling with a lot of things, trying to find answers. I went into a tailspin on Friday as I realized (and put words to the realization) that my mother betrayed me when I was a teen. But I've been listening to Brian Doerksen's "Live in Europe" CD. I've been absorbing a couple songs on there that have so blessed me but the insight or realization came when I remembered the words of another song from that CD. "I was an orphan. You rescued me." (Actually the words are, "You adopted me," but I heard and remembered them wrong.) And I realized that I was indeed an orphan. My father had killed himself and my mom had, in essence, abandoned and betrayed me. But God has been with me. He didn't rescue me right away. But he didn't rescue Joseph right away either. What Joseph's brothers meant for evil, God meant for good. What Satan meant for evil for me, God meant for good.

Wednesday I had stitches removed from my mouth. I was in a lot of pain but I had to run errands. In the midst of my errands I lost my bankcard and had to retrace my steps to find it. In addition to the pain, the depression was heavy and my ssa issues were pounding at me. It was not a good day. But I decided to accept an invitation to paint pottery and going out and being with people (and being creative and praised for it) helped.

I seem to be living on the edge of a great precipice, constantly in danger of slipping and falling down into a mental breakdown and yet I don't. I can't seem to get away from the edge but God keeps me from completely losing it (though sometimes I feel like I'm so close). Little things help, like going to paint on Wednesday. And my husband has been amazingly good to me the last week. He hasn't said or done a single negative thing since Saturday. He even complemented me on the make up he saw me wearing one day and suggested I wear it more often. He's also helped me out with some financial muddles when he COULD have said (truthfully) that I brought them on myself.

So, on the one hand, I'm falling apart but on the other hand, God is holding me together.

A Boring Life?

2006-07-04T23:59:00.000-05:00

As I mentioned several entries ago, I've been transcribing my diaries, journals and letters.

In 1969, I was 13.

I was complaining to my son as I was transcribing this diary because it was so boring.
Sunday: Pathfinders
Monday: School
Tuesday: Piano
Wednesday: Mom goes to school
Thursday: Skating
Friday: Clean up
Saturday: Church
And my diary entries go on like this, week after week.

My son raised his eyebrow and said, "And that's boring compared to now?" and began to list my daily activities.
Sunday: Computer
Monday: Computer
Tuesday: Computer
Wednesday: Computer
Thursday: Computer
Friday: Computer
Saturday: Computer
I laughed and laughed and laughed.

Church Blessings

2006-07-02T17:06:00.000-05:00

Last weekend, after we returned home from the lake, my youngest son asked if he could come to church with me and bring a friend. The friend is an international student from China that my son has been paired with to help him become more comfortable with English. Apparently he'd heard from other international students that many of them have been taken to church by the students they're paired with. He's never been to church and so asked my son if he could come with him. Why my son picked my church instead of his own or his dad's is beyond me (well, his own church was having a picnic so that might be why) but that was cool. And the friend brought a friend.

We don't meet in a church building but in a legion hall. The bar is to the right of where we sit and the bingo board is up above the worship band. And that Sunday we had a guest worship band that played LOUDLY! But they seemed to enjoy themselves and even got pressed into helping put the place back in order when church was done (ready for the legion's bingo game in the evening). In addition, the associate pastor invited them to start Bible studies and, according to him, they agreed--on the grounds of an opportunity to learn more English. So cool!

The associate pastor has kept in touch with my son's friend and so this past Saturday, at a special booth our church had up for a community street party, the friend who'd only been at our church once and never to another church before then, was helping out, handing out pamphlets and telling anyone who'd listen all about our church. I didn't know this and was so surprised to see him pulling up to church on again on Sunday morning.

I arrived in church just in time to hear the announcement about a building we're hoping to buy. We have no money for a building. We don't even pay our pastors. Our congregation is very tiny but we made the offer to purchase anyway, with no money down. They've accepted the offer! The amazing thing about this is the location. Our church has a particular neighbourhood we want to reach out to--the local equivalent of Haight and Ashbury. There is one block that is considered the main strip of this community, a busy thoroughfare lined with unique (and sometimes strange) stores and restaurants of various kinds. Of course the community is much bigger than this one block and our building scouts were looking in the entire area. But this building is right smack dab in the middle of the main strip.

A variance is needed to turn the building into a church and a variance requires community support. Would the building's neighbours who welcome drag queens also welcome us? Yesterday at the neighbourhood party, two of the business leaders of the community came up to our pastor at our little booth and told him how glad they are that we're buying the building. They're not happy with what's been going on there and welcome our presence. Wow! Is that God or what? Furthermore, a church 1000 miles away from us has donated $10,000 towards the building. I can't imagine having a store-front presence in the heart of this neighbourhood. Just absolutely amazing!

God, thank you for the blessings you've been pouring down on my church. We aren't deserving and yet you give anyway! Enable us to be wise with what you've given us. Enable us to be light to our neighbourhood and to all those who walk through our doors. May we show love to all--those who appeal to us and those who don't. Give us wisdom and courage and strength. Give us grace to be like You.

Island Getaway

2006-07-02T16:54:00.000-05:00

My small group from church went away last weekend to the island cottage of one group member's parents. There were ten of us in three vehicles. All of us, our baggage and all our food had to be ferried across to the island in a small hull of a boat with a small motor. It took three trips and the boat was low in the water. Getting in was scary for me--I was sure I'd tip the boat and send all our possessions to the bottom--but the "boat master" was very gentle, patient and helpful and I managed without incident.

The cottage used to be a homestead, the family raising dairy cows. On an island? Apparently! I guess they could cross them on the ice in the winter, but imagine the difficulties, especially if they had school-age children! They could cross to the mainland by boat in the summer and in the winter they could trudge through the snow or be pulled on a sleigh with horses but what about the in between seasons when the ice was either forming or melting? They'd be island-bound!

It sure was a peaceful place, however. The old homestead has been added to. The original being one very large room, now the living/dining room. Added to it are two bedrooms; a large kitchen; a screened verandah; a sunroom where we ate many of our meals, looking out over a narrow straight of water and a large, roofed deck that overlooked the larger body of the lake. I enjoyed the rocking chair on the deck until I discovered that the bright sun in my eyes was causing me problems and had to retreat indoors. Some of the furniture inside is very old and must have belonged to the original owners. Obviously, moving furniture on and off an island is no easy feat, and so there were heavy pieces with ornate carvings, three wood-burning stoves of various kinds and sizes and even a pump organ--not working because mice have chewed holes in the bellows.

The outhouse deserves special mention. This was no ordinary place of contemplation. There were steps leading to the door and three LARGE windows covered with lace curtains. They said no one could see in but I have my doubts and surely at night, when one turned on the electric light in there, all could be seen. The walls held needlepoint and paintings and the toilet paper rested in a cloth-lined basket. On a stand sat a basin and jug of water and instead of a board with a hole cut in, we used an actual toilet--but please wrap the used tissue in a page of old phone book and toss in wastebasket. Despite the view of the lake from the windows on the front of the outhouse, out the side window, on a nearby shed, hung a framed, scenic painting for our viewing pleasure.

Each couple was assigned a meal to plan and prepare, so we ate very well. Breakfast was eggs benedict, lunch was fruit salad and hot-from-the-oven biscuits and supper was shishkabobs, corn on the cob and baked potatoes with all the fixings.

My husband came along (see "On the Right Path" for my turmoil about inviting him) and seemed to enjoy himself. Everyone else seemed to like him too, though amazingly he kept to himself a lot. I'm not sure why. He has since announced that he'd like to start coming to my church regularly. I have mixed feelings about that but I know God is in control and that He has promised to heal our marriage so I have to let go and let God do what He wills.

A 15-year-old's Dream

2006-07-01T22:08:00.000-05:00

Written just before my 16th birthday:

I’ve been talking to [a former missionary to China] about my career but I still haven’t decided absolutely sure except that I wish to serve humanity and spread to others the peace I know in Christ.

I got married two years later and instead of fulfilling this dream, I turned from God. After I returned to Him 5-6 years after leaving Him, I was caught up in living my life as a mom and wife in a difficult marriage. It's only been in the last couple of years that I see this desire starting to be met and that only slowly. Did it take me this long (I'm 50 years old) to prepare?

And yet I'm reminded of a story that was forwarded to me a long time ago. A man asked God what he could do for Him so God pointed him to a boulder and told him to push it. The man pushed it almost all day every day but after a few years he came back to God and complained that he hadn't been able to move it at all.

"I didn't ask you to move it," said God, "only push it. But this hasn't been wasted time. Look at yourself!"

And when the man did, he saw that he had developed a fine set of muscles.

Perhaps the last 34 years have been my time of boulder pushing.

Lord, please enable me to serve you in whatever way You desire.

On the Right Path

2006-05-17T00:22:00.000-05:00

My small group from church is planning a retreat--mostly a weekend away to hang out together and have fun at someone’s island cottage. The group is small enough and the way the numbers are configured, it really is important to invite my husband; but there is a terror in me—a terror that goes deeper than I know how to explain. If I invite him into my world, I fear I will be squashed, shoved aside, swallowed up. When I am with him, I feel like a non-person. The terror is so big that every time I try to talk about this I’m overcome with great pain and tears. And yet, if I don’t allow him into my world, how can our marriage improve? So of course I have to invite him.

Well, he was in a foul mood tonight. The triggers for his anger were little things that he completely misinterpreted in a negative way. I think he has such low self-esteem and thinks so poorly of himself that no matter what anyone says, unless it is blatant praise, he interprets it as that person saying he's no good. And then he gets mad at us for saying he's no good even though we didn't say that at all. That's what seems to have happened tonight.

Should I make the invitation tonight, even though he was so angry? The answer seemed to be yes and so I did. He’s going to think about it.

Amazingly, after I made the invitation, my husband became friendly again. I happened to be chatting with a friend and she said, “He really is needy.” Yeah. He is. And he tries to cover it up with anger, self-sufficiency and other ugly things.

And then I had an insight. The only way that I can deal with his neediness in a healthy way, is for me myself to get healthy and find healthy ways to take care of my own neediness. I myself am/have been very, very needy. So long as we're both really needy (as we both have been from the very beginning), we'll both be so focused on our own need that we can't see the other's. Or, even if we see the other's, we can't deal with it because of our own neediness.

So, I've been on the right path, all along, for the healing of our marriage--getting well myself. I can't heal him and I can't really meet his needs--not the deep needs that make him behave the way he does. But as I change, he will change too, to adjust to the change in me. How he changes is up to him but he will change. So, I have to keep on keeping on working on me. It’s the only way our marriage will improve. And of course, the only way to work on me is to keep pushing closer and closer to God, deepening the relationship He has been pleased to have with me, learning to listen ever more closely to what He wants to tell me and then obeying.

God, please do your will with me and with my marriage. Heal me in all ways, including the terror in my soul, and change me so that I am a reflection of You, heavy with the fruit of the Spirit, and able to see and love my husband as You do.

Diaries 1969 part 2

2006-05-14T01:09:00.000-05:00

1969, 13 years old

I made my first trip into the USA. My parents had taken me to the US when I was a baby but since I didn't remember that, it didn't count. This one did. Two things were very noticeable the moment we crossed the border: all the flags that were flying from homes and businesses and, secondly, the increased population density. Even now you can travel for a long time before you drive through a town on the highway. Back then it was even more desolate here in Manitoba. But in Minnesota? There were houses all along the highway. I'll never forget the shock I had.

But the trip was more memorable because I spent the entire time at our destination in the company of one of the boys from church who had also made the trip (it was to campmeeting with sister churches in Minnesota). Two days later this boy phoned me up and asked if I would "go around with him". He became my first boyfriend. It lasted only about three months but recently when I bumped into his mom some place, she introduced me by saying that I nearly became her daughter-in-law. Some wishful thinking went on there, I think.

I have to chuckle at one entry made in October. "Went to Hillary’s. ... Distainful evening. Too quiet. No Christian atmosphere." I remember that evening. I did NOT enjoy myself!

Our church went out every December, knocking door-to-door collecting money for international aid programs. At 13 I was out there with the adults doing my bit. My average "take" that year was $10 a night. I loved doing this. It was always a fun challenge. We had metal canisters with a battery-operated candle sticking up from the top. A bunch of us would pile into a car, go to our assigned territory and then compete to see who could collect the most. It was always dark (sun sets around 4:00 that time of year) but we were never worried about safety (though I was terrified of dogs roaming the streets).

I developed a friendship with a university student in his early 20s who probably had romantic thoughts towards me but hid them so well I didn't have a clue until many years later when I pieced everything together. He played the violin and I played the piano and so there was a logic to our friendship but I learned so much from him. He was studying music at the university. One of his subjects was learning how to conduct an orchestra. He taught me how to read an orchestral score and Tchiakovsky's Symphony in E Minor will always have a special place in my heart. He was Chinese and would take me out to these little hole-in-the-wall restaurants. I learned how to eat with chopsticks. His twin brother was an excellent cook and I later learned a lot of Chinese cooking from him. The last day of 1969 was spent playing piano-violin duets. Years later, quite by coincidence (we'd long lost touch with each other), our sons took violin lessons together.

Diaries 1969

2006-05-14T01:08:00.000-05:00

1969, 13 years old

I was in the church choir.

Two friends of mine and myself put on a program at the nursing home affiliated with our church.

A young man (in his 20s) was interested in me romantically. I hated him, probably because I never seemed to get relief from him. My mom frequently invited him into our home. One time she allowed him into my bedroom while I was sleeping so he could kiss me. I was not a happy girl about this. The man phoned me up a few years ago and actually apologized to me for his behaviour back then and asked my forgiveness.

I liked reading Nancy Drew. My teacher (a really strange fellow with strange ideas) was very much against books like Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys and told my class, in all seriousness, that if we continued reading such books we'd develop holes in our heads.

In March our school janitor retired. We had a rather progressive principal who was very student centred who decided that rather than hiring someone new, he would divide up the job and hire students to take various parts of the job. I was one of the lucky ones (so I thought) and became janitor of the girl's washroom and the kitchen. $14 a month seemed like big money back then.

I played Moonlight Sonata on the piano, by memory, for Talent Night. I loved playing that piece! I still love hearing it.

In April a group of us from school/church went to a youth conference in the next province over. I gave the opening prayer Saturday morning. I remember loving this trip. The older students had come along (I'm not sure how a young one like me got to go but I did!) and what fun I had as we all camped out on the floor in some school, talking and singing the night away! We went to sleep at 6 a.m. and had to be up by 7:30 to drive home. I didn't care.

Our principal developed anti-smoking teams. We had a case of flasks that showed the various poisons in cigarettes (arsenic and cyanide are two I remember) and a mannequin who could really smoke. Inside him were two glass jars filled with fibreglass, meant to represent lungs. We would make the mannequin smoke a cigarette and then show how black the lungs were after only so many cigarettes. It was a convincing show. We travelled around to various schools, and even did a presentation to the Women's Temperance Society with several hundred in the audience. Scary stuff!

My first summer job--babysitting the daughter of my mom's friend while the mom was at work all day. I don't think I enjoyed it but I sure got a lot of reading done! Reading was my passion and I read on the long bus trip to and from my job as well. If I recall, I had to get up and a most ungodly hour, especially considering it was summer vacation, in order to get there on time.

Diaries 1968

2006-05-14T01:05:00.000-05:00

I started journalling just after my eighth birthday. That attempt lasted only three months or so. I tried my hand at writing a diary again just after my 12th birthday. I think I was in grade 7 that January. I remember being so excited about being asked to be a librarian for the new fledgling library our principal was starting for our tiny school. We had 10 grades, three teachers and 66 students. The library wasn't much bigger than a closet but what honour and prestige to be part of its founding! I remember feeling so very important.

For years my grandparents took my mom, my and my three younger sisters ice skating once a week in the winter. The January I was 12 was the first time and I had to share my mom's skates because I didn't have any of my own.

That same January a well-known speaker was brought to the city by my church. So many people were expected that we rented one of the old stone churches. It was massive, complete with pipe organ and U-shaped balcony. What fun I remember having, exploring this place and being amazed at all the different kinds of rooms they had. I can't remember a thing about the speaker, however, though I duly noted his name in my diary.

Our church community was like a miniature sub-culture and was very close-knit. As I've read through the things I've written, I've really been impressed by the closeness we had with everyone even though we were all spread out over a large city.

At 12, I got my first job in direct sales, selling greeting cards and gift items. I also got my first experience in customers stiffing the salesperson as one person made a very large order and then never paid me for it. I had the turtle-shaped pajama bag she ordered for many years. What else was I going to do with it?

I was taking piano lessons, swimming lessons, went to church twice on Saturday and to Pathfinders (like Scouts) on Sunday mornings. I was starting to get crushes on boys.

In July I sewed a dress for my mom and a week later sewed another for someone else.

In August I got my first 3-speed bike. My grandpa "made" bikes in his basement from various used bike parts he managed to scrounge.

Some beginnings

2006-05-14T01:00:00.000-05:00

I've been transcribing my childhood diaries.

I started the first just after my 8th birthday. That one is always interesting to look at because, although I kept it only for 3 months, it records the last two months I lived with my dad. My mom left my dad at the beginning of March and a year and a half later, he killed himself.

In those three months, I visited a Ukrainian church, got 5 stars in math, got the mumps, Dad bought us chocolates for Valentine's Day (this surprises me), my baby sister swallowed Borax and we left my dad.

My dad was 16 years older than my mom. I was born out of wedlock when Mom was 18. She seriously considered giving me up for adoption and, in my teens, I met the family that wanted to adopt me. The girl they did adopt was brutally raped and murdered by an intruder into their home when she and I were 14 or 15 years old.

Dad was still legally married to someone else when I was born, though he had been separated from his wife for several years. I was a year old when my parents finally crossed the border and got married though my dad never did get a divorce from his first wife. Whether it was because she had a baby out of wedlock, because she lived unmarried with my dad or because she did both with a married man, I'm not sure, but Mom was disfellowshipped (excommunicated) from her beloved church. I never did ask her if Dad was disfellowshiped.

I don't think they ever had a good marriage and they were very poor. My earliest memories (except for one) are when I was three years old. We lived out in the country with my paternal grandparents then. Those were, in many ways, very idyllic days for me, even though, with my little sister, we were 6 people crammed into a small house.

But our home got even smaller when we moved out on our own to a village closer to the city where my dad worked. The house still stands but I'm told that it is now used for a dog kennel. It's too small even for a one-car garage. A third daughter was born to my parents while we lived in this one room shack. We had no plumbing. Dad brought water from the city in pails. Can you imagine raising three little girls and washing diapers in those conditions? I was in grade one while we lived there.

And then we moved to the city. We rented a two-bedroom apartment with a separate a living room, kitchen and bathroom. I thought we had moved into a palace. I think my favourite part of our new home, however, was the long hallway that connected the rooms, where my sister and I skated up and down in our stocking feet on the polished wood.

I have some good memories of living here, and may share some of them in another post, but there were some hard times too and it didn't surprise me at all when, one night when my dad was out, my mom told me we were leaving.

Writing an Unfinished Story

2006-05-13T00:04:00.000-05:00

Two summers ago I finished writing the book about my struggle with same-sex attraction. That was the same summer that God promised that my marriage would be healed, better than I can imagine. But He also gave me an instruction and that was to begin a book about my marriage. I put it off for one reason or another until this January, God started hassling me about it. So finally, less than a month ago, I began hunting for my old diaries and the letters my husband and I had exchanged during our "courtship". I found some of my diaries and the letters I sent, though not the letters he sent. It is enough to begin. I'm transcribing everything, putting it into a Word document in chronological order and then, once that's done I'll be able to sort things out from there and begin to look for the story God wants me to write.

How can I write a book about my marriage when it's still in shambles, you might ask. How indeed! When I started the first book, I was deep into an ssa relationship that should not have been (though I had become so blind that I didn't see the dangers of it until it was too late). I was still living the unfinished story. God's got a sense of humour when He gets a person writing the story of their deliverance when they're still in need of deliverance. And so now, though there's no sign of anything improving in my marriage, I'm starting the story of how God did (will do) a miracle in our lives and changed (will change) our marriage completely around to be a blessing instead of a curse.

I haven't a clue how it's going to happen but I can't help wondering if the process of writing the story will somehow trigger the change. Certainly transcribing all these diaries, journals and letters will give me a good look into what happened and what I thought about it at the time. It's already been an interesting journey.

I started the letters yesterday or the day before, having done all the diaries prior to our marriage. We met in the summer 1970. I was 14. We married at the end of December 1973, on my 18th birthday. I found, as I started to transcribe, that my stomach was turning in knots. It has been a painful relationship right from the beginning and returning to that time obviously stirred things up in my sub-consciousness.

As I wondered what to do about this, and discussed the pain with a friend who thinks I’m nuts to be returning, in any way, to such a painful time, it occurred to me what to do. So, as I’m transcribing these letters, I’m praying, “God, show me the Truth about all this!” Knowing the facts isn’t enough. It’s important to know the Truth. While the story is one that is full of pain, it is, essentially, a redemptive story, even if the redeeming hasn’t happened yet. I’m also realizing, when the pain comes, that this is a signal of unhealed wounds. And so when the pain comes, I’m using that as an opportunity to ask God for healing. I know I am in need of a lot of healing in regards to this relationship. The pain is also a sign of the need to forgive and so I’m asking God for the grace to do that too, for each wound that surfaces.

Another friend recently gave me two passages from the Bible which she put together as one:

Fret not yourself because of evildoers
Trust in the Lord with all your heart
Lean not to your own understanding
In all your ways acknowledge him
And He will direct your paths.

She gave it to me in regards to another troublesome relationship but I think it works for this as well. I’ve written it out and pasted it on my monitor as a reminder.

So, I’ll likely be sharing snippets from diaries and letters and insights I gain as I go through this process. There are a lot of letters to go through—2 oversized shoe boxes (more like boot boxes) full—and those are mostly BEFORE marriage. Then there will be all the journals after. It’s a rather daunting task but I’m expecting God to be showing me things. In fact, he already has.

Miracle at Marshill

2006-04-27T17:59:00.000-05:00

I originally wrote the following three or four years ago.

It was the end of January and I was discouraged. That's an understatement. I had lost all hope. And although I wasn't planning on acting on it, death seemed the only solution. I needed people to pray with me. I needed to hear (or read) those prayers, not just have them promised to me, so I went into my favourite place to chat.

Well, I tried. My slow computer wouldn't let me in, my next favourite chat room was empty and when I went to another Christian chat room, though folks were in the prayer room, they weren't praying and I just couldn't state my need. Eventually I managed to get into my first choice but the same problem existed--how do I state my need? I sat in the Prayer Room alone, but no one came. I went into the Lobby a few times but didn't feel comfortable saying anything.

Finally, in desperation, I went to Marshill. Marshill is the place to avoid. It's the place to debate. No one goes there unless they want to be quartered and thumbnailed to the wall; chewed up and spat out; stomped on and swept down the drain. But I was desperate! I NEEDED prayer. I went into the room, there were only about four or five people present, and without waiting for a lot of conversation to pass by, told them my need. They cared but after chatting for a few minutes, I got a phone call which lasted 15-20 minutes. I was sure I'd be forgotten and the conversation would move on. Chat room conversations can be rather fickle. However, the whole time I was on the phone, the folks in Marshill waited for me, not starting other conversations, and in fact some went to gather others. The room was much fuller when I returned.

We talked briefly and then I asked if they would mind praying with me. Do you know what they did? The entire room left Marshill and went to the prayer room. I couldn't believe it! I had never seen or heard of such a thing happening, ever! They began to pray. It wasn't just one or two praying. Everyone prayed. There were people there I didn't even know, all praying for me. More came pouring in. The prayer room was full and over-flowing. At one point the entire population of chat was in the prayer room.

It was an awesome time of prayer. They prayed for me for a very long time, this prayer room packed with people, and gradually, as God began to heal me, giving me hope and peace, the prayer turned into an incredible chorus of praise. It was marvelous! Unimaginable! A real blessing from God--not just for me but for all who were there, the most moving prayer meeting I've ever been to.

And, as I've said, God healed the pain, the despair, the hopelessness and filled me with hope, joy, peace. I am so grateful to God. Our God IS an awesome God. And the Miracle of Marshill will stay with me for a very long time.

Suffering--An Invitation to Intimacy

2006-04-18T07:34:00.000-05:00

I was recently sharing some of the difficulties of my marriage and said that it's been over 30 years of hell but that I've remained because I know God wants me to. Someone wrote and asked, "Why would God want us to go through hell? That's just plain cruel." This was my reply:

Oh! I can tell right away that this will be a long answer. I want to tell you right away that God is incredibly good and this doesn't change simply because my circumstances are bad.

God is not cruel. He loves us so very, very much. So why the pain? Well, for one, it has pushed me to God in a way nothing else could have. I walked away from God in the early years of my marriage. That solved nothing. When I returned to God, I began to take my difficulties and pain to Him. Would I have continued seeking His face if there hadn't been a need? I know that when things are going well, I have a tendency to stop reading my Bible and praying. I know others are the same way. So pain keeps my mind fixed on God and since I want God more than anything else, this is a good thing.

But I had an insight when I went through some guided meditations on the stations of the cross at a church I visited on Good Friday. It's a concept that will totally change my attitude about suffering.

When we, as people, are going through hard times--a death in the family, say, or some other great difficulty--who do we go to? We go to our closest friends. And those who truly care about us come alongside us and walk through the hard times with us. And those who have walked with us through the painful times are those with whom we stay close. Walking through that valley together strengthens our bond and knits us together in a way nothing else can. There are many fair weather friends but how many will stick close through the pain? Very few. Those who do, become our most intimate friends.

The Bible says we are called to share in Christ's sufferings. I never really understood the impact of this before. But when I suffer, what I am doing is sharing in Christ's sufferings. I get a glimpse, through my suffering, of what HIS suffering was like. It's a way of me walking through His valley with Him. Many of us run away from the pain that comes to us--or at least we try to. That's why there are so many addictions of various kinds and so much divorce. But when we are willing to ACCEPT the pain that life deals us, then we have the unique opportunity to know God better. It's like an invitation to intimacy with God. Only those who are willing to share in Christ's sufferings can truly know and understand Him. This is the path to intimacy with God and a deep relationship that nothing can shake.

I want that intimacy. I want to be in that place of depth with God. And so, as much as I hate the pain, I will stay in it because I want God more. And, in the pain, I am trusting God. He's given me a personal promise that my marriage will be made wonderful and new. That was two years ago and I've seen no sign of it yet but even if I never see that happen, I will trust God. In Job 13, Job said, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him."

Why has it been so long? I don't know. I do know that God could have changed things long ago. Have I been disobedient and thus blocked God from working in some way? I don't know. Is it that God is respecting my husband's free choice to make wrong choices? I don't know. I do know that He loves me more than I can comprehend, that His arms are around me, protecting me, and that He has my best good in mind. And I love the thought that this pain I'm in is God's invitation for intimacy with me. If pain is what it takes for me to enter that place with my God, then so be it. He will carry me through.

All that I've said is true for you too. God wants the same level of intimacy with you and if you are going through hard times, consider that His invitation for you to walk with Him through His sufferings so you can know Him deeper and more intimately. He was despised and rejected. Are you feeling that way too? Then you are sharing in His suffering if, indeed, you choose to walk in that valley instead of running away.

God is good. He is intensely good and He loves us with a passion that burns everything rotten that is in us. Isn't that a wonderful thing?

Happy Easter!

2006-04-16T12:14:00.000-05:00

Christ is Risen!

He is Risen INDEED!

Trust, Defend, Vindicated

2006-04-08T21:52:00.001-05:00

Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him. Even so, I will defend my own ways before Him. He also shall be my salvation, For a hypocrite could not come before Him. Listen carefully to my speech, And to my declaration with your ears. See now, I have prepared my case, I know that I shall be vindicated. Job 13:15-18 NKJ

Lord, You may send me through the fire and crush me in the crucible but I know You are my salvation. Without You, I am nothing. You know my ways and You know how my heart is for You alone. Vindicate me!

Valley, Comfort, Protection

2006-04-08T04:37:00.000-05:00

Even when I walk through the dark valley of death, I will not be afraid, for you are close beside me. Your rod and your staff protect and comfort me. You prepare a feast for me in the presence of my enemies. You welcome me as a guest, anointing my head with oil. Psalm 23:4,5 NLT

Lord, thank you for being with me in this dark valley. Thank you for your protection and your comfort. Thank you for your blessings.

My Bible an Idol?

2006-03-04T21:54:00.000-06:00

It's hard sometimes, to not think about Pearl (not her real name), the woman I walked away from over two years ago, though I loved her dearly. I have continued to miss her and despite my commitment to God to make no effort to reconnect with her, I have longed for the day when He would somehow make it happen. I've run endless loops of scenarios in my mind of what that would look like. Oftentimes, I catch myself and stop what I'm doing because it serves no good purpose but somehow I got caught off guard last weekend.

While we were still together, Pearl gave me a Bible that I have grown to treasure. In fact, it's the Bible I read every day. I happened to mention this to a friend of mine as I was describing how my thoughts had deteriorated from something that seemed quite innocent in the beginning--something triggered by my ownership of this Bible. She wrote to me,

I really believe that any thoughts of Pearl will keep you from a closer relationship with God. I was surprised to read that the Bible she gave you is your favorite. Why is that? I know that may seem a hard question. ... I hope this won't hurt you, my friend but please, please, just consider what keeping that Bible and it being your favorite might be keeping you connected to. Can you read it without thinking of Pearl? Could you say that it will never bring thoughts of her to you?

As you admitted, you slid back into wrong thoughts of her. I can't help but think that until you totally disconnect yourself from her in all ways God won't be able to fully work in your life as He desires. ... I pray that God will speak to your heart and spirit and that you will know, without a doubt, His guidance in these things.

That was hard to take and left me reeling.

She admitted to having something she shouldn't have and so, the next morning, when she wrote to say that our discussion had prompted her to realize she needed to find a way to dispose of it, I joked that maybe we could trade. But as I wrote that, I couldn’t hold back the tears. I didn’t want to give up my Bible.

Another friend came online as I was contemplating how to respond to the first friend's admonition. I needed to know--was she right? It took the discussion with this second friend to realize that although I walked away from a relationship with Pearl, I have been clinging for dear life to the hope that one day she and I would be friends again and I've been clinging to every scrap of anything that connects me to that hope.

My second friend didn’t want to tell me what to do but it became very evident that she was agreeing with my first friend. I needed to get rid of the Bible. For the entire hour we chatted, I was sobbing. How in the world could I do this? Though not as intense, it was like walking away from Pearl all over again. I’m crying now as I write this. Sometimes God’s ways are too hard, too painful, too demanding.

I was finally able to come into agreement with this, so now what? What do I do with it? Do I mail it to the first friend as I had joked about? Friend Two, shockingly, suggested I throw it in the garbage but I couldn’t do that. And then it came to me! I would be leading worship at small group that evening. The songs I had chosen were focused on repentance, forgiveness and heart-change. What better introduction to such a theme than using my Bible as an illustration of why even something very good and holy can become an idol and a stumbling block to God's will and then giving my Bible away to whoever wanted to take it! At this thought, I actually got rather excited.

There were six of us that night--a good size for us. All knew my story except for one whom I had never met before. I was a bit nervous about that but took a deep breath and began. When it came to asking who wanted my Bible, the visitor shot up his hand. Somehow what I shared spoke to him and reawakened in him a need to get back to reading the Bible. It was as if me giving away my most treasured Bible was an answer to some unspoken prayer for him. I’m crying while I write this but to my surprise, I didn’t cry at all while I spoke or when I handed over my Bible. And as he leafed through it and saw all my hand-written notes (I’m a very messy reader), he seemed to value it even more. It was an awesome evening of worship and prayer.

I came home pretty pumped and excited about all that had happened but I also realized I had more work to do. I burned my favourite picture of Pearl and the other things from her that I kept in my Bible (a bookmark and a note she wrote regarding the Bible). I’ve deleted her from my palmtop address book and from my prayer list. God can take care of her even if I don’t pray and if God decides to reunite us some day, He won’t need my address book to do it. I don’t want anything to hinder my walk with God.

I don’t really feel any freer. In fact, I feel totally exhausted. I don’t know what, if anything, God will do with my obedience but, even though it felt like I was walking away from her all over again, I’m glad I obeyed.

Power or Authority?

2006-02-26T20:43:00.000-06:00

Power isn’t the answer to overcoming the evil one. Jesus gave His disciples authority over the power of the enemy, not power over the enemy’s power. What’s the difference?

Power is the ability to get things done. It involves strength and force. God sustains everything by His Word. All power is authorized or allowed by God, even Satan’s.

Authority, on the other hand, is the legalized right to use someone else’s power—but you must use it as told and prescribed. An ambassador doesn’t come to a foreign country with an army. He might even be a twit. But he has all the power of the country he represents behind him. As long as he’s authorized and walking in obedience to that authority, he has complete access to the power even though, on his own, he has no power at all.

We have been authorized to speak and to invite with the full backing of heaven. The kingdom will come through our obedience but we must walk in authority, not power. Jesus always did what His Father told Him to do. So must we. God’s strength is perfect in our weakness.

Why Are Some Healed and Others Aren’t?

2006-02-26T20:31:00.000-06:00

In Acts 19:11-12, the simple passing around of a handkerchief that had touched Paul’s skin was sufficient to heal sick people and those with evil spirits and yet, where was that hanky—or even Paul’s skin—when Epaphroditus nearly died? Why didn’t Paul heal him?

John Wimber says we’re in a time where the kingdom of God is here but not yet. The speaker gave an example of this. D-day was the sign of the end for World War II in Europe. After D-day, everyone knew the war was over. Germany was defeated. All that was left to do was the mopping up. Another 11 months passed before VE (Victory in Europe) Day but the there was no doubt to the end once D-day had occurred. Amazingly, in those last 11 months there were more lives lost than in all the years of the war before then.

We’re living in those 11 months, so to speak. Victory is here but it’s not quite yet. It’s a time of disillusionment but also of victory. Some will be healed and others will be buried and we don’t get to pick. We’d rather for healing to happen all the time or not at all. It’s too painful to have a bit of both and yet there will be seasons of great power and seasons of nothing. Through it all, we’re called to persevere as servants of God, doing what He’s called us to do—heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those with leprousy and drive out demons (Matthew 10).

I Have an Idea How

2006-02-24T18:43:00.000-06:00

The speaker said that we should be doing this prophesying/encouragement (see previous post) every day. Our Father is always at work and all we have to do is join him. And here I had my insight regarding my husband, marriage and how to solve the problem described in the post “Alas! I don’t Know How to Get There.”

I had been grieving over the state of my marriage—not only does the brokenness of my marriage harm my husband, myself and our kids, I had begin to realize that week that it harms those who walk through our door and it harms those who we might have brought through our doors but can’t or won’t because this isn’t a healthy place to be. We are harming the advancement of the Gospel. But how can we change that? How do we break down the barriers? The wife of the seminar speaker (on the persecuted church) told me to pray that we would be united in Christ and promised to pray for this herself. But how in the world could this happen? How could we become united? It seemed impossible.

But what if I began to do what the speaker for the conference on living supernaturally was saying and what, in fact, I have done for others? What if I began to speak words of encouragement and life into my husband? What if tried to see in my husband what God sees. What He sees is a great invitation. What if I stopped looking for what isn’t there—what’s lacking, what’s wrong—but rather look for the plans God has for him and what He wants to call forward, to get outside myself, look at my husband and ask, “Lord, what do you see that you love and how can I say that so my husband will know its from you?” What if I started doing this on a daily basis?

I’m thinking that it just might begin to change everything. Do you see what’s happened? I saw what’s possible. I’ve known of God’s promise to heal my marriage but I haven’t seen HOW this could happen. Now I do. It’s kind of scary to contemplate and I’m not sure exactly how I’m going to do this but as the speaker pointed out, we often don’t know what God wants to say through us to someone until we open our mouths in obedience and start talking so I’m going to step out in risk (faith = risk) and begin to be obedient in this. I’m really quite excited!

Mail Deliverers for God

2006-02-23T20:25:00.000-06:00

The next session I attended was about prophecy or, to put it another way, speaking into people’s lives. I don’t know about you, but I’ve often been wakened in the night with an urgency to pray for someone. Sometimes I’ve been lead to pray for someone for days or weeks. One such time was many years ago. Back in junior high school, there was a girl with whom I was alternately best friends with and worst enemies. We were probably enemies more often than friends but I think I also spent more sleep-overs in her home than in anyone else’s—I wasn’t a very popular kid. Our animosity grew so great that, in frustration, the principal gave us each the strap and, in her parents’ frustration, they withdrew her from the school. Sad legacy I have, eh?

More than 25 years after any contact with this family, this girl’s mother came to mind and wouldn’t leave me. I prayed for her daily, with urgent passion, for over a month and then the urgency passed and I stopped. I had felt pressured to phone her at that time but I didn’t have the courage. “How ridiculous!” I thought, though I did pray. A year later I saw her at a funeral and went to talk to her. I had to find out what had happened a year before. Turns out she had been so sick she nearly died. Wow!

There have been other times when God’s shown me a need I could not have known about any other way, I prayed and He answered. It’s been really cool.

This is the sort of thing that was discussed at the conference--about giving a word to others. God’s thoughts are for us and His thoughts for us are thoughts of love. The speaker compared the gifts of the Holy Spirit as a toolbox. We can reach into that toolbox and pull out the tool we need for the moment as the Holy Spirit urges. It takes risk to use one of these tools. It is risky to pray for someone’s leg to become longer (an example and story given the first night) or to speak into a person’s life and give them words from God. But when the leg is lengthened before our very eyes, when the words we speak to someone turns out to be exactly what they needed to hear, our faith is reinforced. “I got lucky!” we might declare. But then it happens again and again and our faith grows and as we reach into the toolbox, we might choose more selectively, choosing the tool with which we’ve become familiar.

But of all the gifts from the Holy Spirit, is there one that will help unpack the others? In 1 Corinthians 14, Paul said to eagerly desire all the gifts but especially the gift of prophecy. I always thought prophecy was foretelling the future but apparently not. Basically, a prophet is a mail deliverer from God. It is used to encourage, comfort and strengthen others. Often we don’t even know when we’re prophesying. He compared it to pulling on a little thread. You don’t know if it’s short or if it’s the beginning of the whole sweater.

God has placed each of us sovereignly where we can touch the most lives. Try to see in the people around you what God sees. What He sees is a great invitation. Don’t look for what isn’t there. God has plans for them (Jeremiah 29) and that’s what he wants to call forward. We need to get outside ourselves, look at others and ask, “Lord, what do you see that you love and how can I say that so this person will know its from you?”

And so we got to practice this. He gave a certain criterion of people he wanted to stand (I can’t remember what it was). He had three assistants who are experienced in speaking God’s word over people and so he asked each of them to pick one person from those standing as someone they felt called to speak over. The three came to the front and the others sat down. He selected one of the three and asked all of us to look at her. Was God saying or showing anything to us for or about that person? Those who put up their hands were asked to form a line down an aisle and one by one we were asked to give that word or picture (no more than a sentence or two, please) to the woman. Afterwards, she was asked how the words she received fit—and much of it did!

Those who had stood up before and then told to sit down were now asked to stand again and find a place in the room to stand so others could come to speak over them. As they stood, we in the audience were to look at them and choose one we thought God might want us to speak to. As I moved towards the one I had chosen, I saw another, kind of in the way, who had no one gathered around while the one I had chosen had several so, after checking with the Holy Spirit, I decided to stick with him—a complete stranger. Three others joined me.

It was amazing! There were so many things God showed me that I was able to speak. After I had done so, he opened up and began to share a few things—one being an anger he wished he didn’t have. He held his abdomen as though the anger was lodged in there and refused to budge and so I put my hand on his and called the anger out. I’ve never done anything like this before. He started heaving. You could actually see the anger leaving. Afterwards, he said it was like God did the Heimlich Maneouvre on him. After lunch, the speaker asked if any of those who had been prayed for would like to share what happened and the man I (and three others) had prayed for went forward. He said it was as if we had “read his mail” and then he talked about what God had done for him. Wow! What a confirmation!

"You Didn’t Tell Me it was THIS Good!"

2006-02-22T19:15:00.000-06:00

The seminar on the Suffering Church ended at 5:00 p.m. on a Thursday. Two hours later I was in a different location with different people for a different conference. It was hard to switch gears from the seminar to the conference, from one topic to another, from a small intimate group to a large crowd and I wasn’t sure I wanted to stay. In fact, because of tremendous tiredness, I missed the second night’s session.

The speaker told the story of a man who, as a ten-year-old, was made a sex slave and drug runner by a biker gang. When the boy was 16, he finally told someone—his uncle—but when that uncle turns up dead shortly thereafter, the boy knew he had to run. He got married and lived life, somehow completely forgetting/blocking those six years of his youth until one day he heard a voice from those years and it all came back to him. He wound up in the psychiatric ward and several days after his release, he called the speaker to pray for him.

The speaker didn’t want to pray for him. He didn’t know how to pray for him and yet the man was persistent and so the speaker went. Amazingly, the man fell to his knees and then flat out on his face. His body began to bounce up and down and the speaker looked at this, wondering what in the world was going on and how in the world a body could even manage to bounce like that. The bouncing didn’t stop and so finally the speaker left.

The next day he got a call from the man. “You didn’t tell me it was THIS good,” he said.

How did Jesus demonstrate the Good News? By going to people and delivering them from spiritual bondage. Have you ever thought of this? Every person healed means a family restored. It is God’s invitation, expectation and plan that the Good News will go through His followers each day, every day for the rest of their lives. Anyone can receive this Good News and anyone can give it away.

But how? How do we do this? We start now—just the way we are. In John 5:17, Jesus said, “My Father never stops working, so why should I?” (NLT) The kingdom of God is always expanding—with or without us. Jesus said, “I do what He’s doing.” Basically, Jesus wandered around the day, looking for what His Dad was doing and then joined in.

The speaker told the story of how he witnessed and then participated in his first healing. It was scary stuff. He and his friends were praying for a woman’s leg to grow two inches. What if it didn’t work? But it did! All he had to do was be willing to stretch out his short little arm.

How willing am I to do this?

How to Pray in the Face of Evil and Pain

2006-02-22T07:19:00.000-06:00

There are five responses in the face of evil:

1. God, save us!
2. God, judge them!
3. God, forgive them!
4. God forgive us as we forgive others!
5. God, glorify Yourself.

All five are biblical.

How do you respond to the suffering and evil that comes to your life?

Alas! I Don’t Know How to Get There

2006-02-21T19:41:00.000-06:00

I love the model of living and witnessing discussed in a previous post. We don’t have to be missionaries in a foreign land to do this. All we need to do is learn how to be a family that worships, prays and celebrates God together and who extends hospitality to those they know—from the kingdom or from without.

Alas! I can’t do this. My marriage is so broken that my husband and I can’t even eat together. Oh, we do at times but I’ve noticed that I avoid it as much as I can. I don’t want to eat with him. Eating is a time of sharing and I can’t share. I don’t trust him with my heart. And if we’re unable to eat together in harmony, how in the WORLD can we worship together? We can’t. There are too many barriers. And with this kind of tension in our home, how can we invite others to join us? Join us in what? We certainly wouldn’t be able to invite them to share in the joy we have because, as a couple, we have none. You can sense the climate of a home when you enter it and it would be no witness to others to bring them to a place of tension.

This was a matter of great grief to me—a grief that continued through the seminar as I saw more and more how practical, useful and incredibly full of blessing this model of witnessing can be. My witness is not as effective when my home and marriage are broken. Please hear me on this. I’m not saying I can’t witness because I do. I’m not saying that witnessing can’t be effective outside the walls of a healthy home because of course it can be but I’m beginning to see how much MORE effective a healthy family can be the milieu in which witnessing occurs and I don’t have that.

I would find a clue that weekend at a different conference.

Church is Community

2006-02-21T13:10:00.000-06:00

Persecutors don’t really care about the mode of church or about theology. All they care about is that the person was once one of them and now is one of us and baptism seems to be the dividing line for them.

The speaker at the seminar said, “Every Baptism in the New Testament took place within and was witnessed by the local believing community.” Baptism means, “I belong. I’m part of the community.”

Church is the place that, when I don’t go, they come looking for me because they have angst over my absence.

An interesting thing about church is that it will look just like the person who’s planting it. This is a note of caution and warning to sending agencies. If you send dysfunctional missionaries to plant churches, they will plant dysfunctional churches. And the more a church is defined by buildings, property and denomination, the easier it is for the persecutors to control faith. This is what happened in the Soviet Union. Survival mode and evangelism are seldom partners.

If church is community and if community is needed for faith to grow and be maintained, what about those thrown in jail? Often Christians are jailed together. If not, they evangelize as quickly as possible in jail to create community. The worst situation is isolation. It kills. In isolation, persecutors can drive a person crazy so when you’re praying for the persecuted church, pray for those in prison that they’ll have fellowship.

Interestingly, two weeks after the seminar, I read a story about when Richard Wurmbrand was thrown into isolation. Did that keep him disconnected? No! He discovered that when he tapped the wall, someone tapped back. So he tried it on the other wall and it worked too. He taught both sides Morse Code and then, using Morse Code, was able to develop relationship and bring his neighbours to Christ. Apparently, his neighbours passed on the means of communication and developed further community. Richard was no longer alone.

Are you part of a Christian community that notices when you’re absent? If not, why not? How are you “doing church” in your life?

Building the Church as Families

2006-02-20T13:10:00.000-06:00

On the mission field, and especially in mission fields in areas of persecution, there are two things of importance the seminar speaker has discovered. They are both connected to family.

First of all, in persecuted countries, association by the locals with the outsider, the Westerner, is enough to get them jailed or killed. They don’t have to be a Christian for this to happen. They are guilty by association. As a result, the Westerner, the missionary, has to be very careful how he handles this matter of associating with the locals and it is highly recommended (there was tons of teaching leading up to this, explaining it and giving it logic and sense) that missionaries do NOT join local churches—even those (especially those) they’ve helped create. Instead, they need to find other ways to provide their needs for worship and fellowship with Christians. They can worship with other expatriates, they can create church with their team and/or they can worship together as a family—mom, dad and kids. The ability to come before the throne of God as a family is vital but many missionaries going overseas don’t have a clue how to do this because they never did it at home.

Secondly, the old missionary style is that the wife stays home with the kids, homeschooling them, running the home, etc., and the husband is the one who goes out and works with the local people. However, in many countries and cultures, and especially in those where persecution is rife, men don’t have access to the women of the local culture and so only men come to Christ. But Christianity is a religion where community is vital and, the speaker argued, you don’t have real community when only one gender is present. You need men and women (and children and varying ages, etc.).

So how does one “fix” this problem? The missionary family does a paradigm shift and, through hospitality in their home, inviting whole families over for a meal or whatever, they relate together as families. In cultures where the wife and kids are kept separate from the husband, where the women are less than nothing, the local family visiting the missionary family begins to see Christianity working out in family and community. They see how a Christian man treats his wife, how a wife is honoured, what healthy interaction is like between husband and wife, parents and children and it draws them into community.

In this style of witnessing, the missionary’s home because almost an open house. People come for dinner and stay to talk—often about spiritual matters. People come when it’s time to put the kids to bed and Dad says, “I’m going to have to help my wife put the kids to bed.” The visitors are shocked because they’ve never heard of such a thing and are even more shocked when they learn the bedtime “ritual” is a time of family worship—coming before the throne of God to worship, share His stories and pray. The visitor watches all this and, simply through the regular rhythm of the missionaries’ lives, is witnessed to.

I know a family in my city that lives like this. It’s simply the way they function as a natural course of events. They’ve developed a ministry to international students who stay a few days with them or who are invited to come have a meal and the family simply carries on its life of prayer and worship with the guests present.

Interestingly, I read the following on an anti-Christian, pro-gay site that focuses on “recovery from Bible abuse”:

Informal home small group study and dialogue may be the most viable replacement for contemporary church type religion, which is based primarily in medieval points of view and methods. Small group home study allows individuals to be open and accepting of each other and themselves and to be non-judgmental and willing to share and learn from each other.

Perhaps we have failed large segments of our North American population by the way we do church.

What is Church? Part Two

2006-02-19T21:27:00.000-06:00

Most definitions of church leave out the following:

1. It chooses its own leader and governs itself. This won’t happen when missionaries stay instead of leaving. It’s also something that doesn’t happen much in the West. Instead, strangers come from Bible colleges and other churches, appointed by denominational leaders.

2. It cares for its members and supports and finances itself. Persecutors want churches to be dependent on outside funds because they can stop them at a moment’s notice. Missionaries must not keep churches dependent on themselves. This is something that churches in North America need to consider as well. I know of churches who apply for government grants. When the time comes that we don’t have a Christian-friendly government, if we’re dependent on these funds, we could be faced with some hard choices.

3. It reproduces itself into new communities.

4. It’s defined by community and not by doctrine. In North America, we’re really caught up in doctrinal battles. What is community? The speaker proposed that community involves family—-not just men or just women but families meeting together. This is church and is a revolutionary concept in Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist cultures.

What is Church? Part One

2006-02-19T00:54:00.000-06:00

In the past, the typical way of missionaries was to come into a country, begin to witness to people and as they turned to Christ, the missionaries would create church for them. They’d build a building, they’d be the pastors, they hired workers, etc. and all would be great until the missionaries went home on furlough. Then the church would cease to meet. Why? Did they really have church while the missionary was there? What is church?

The definition of church is controversial but if you don’t know what it is, how do you know when you have one? We tend to think of church as including a building but for persecuted Christians, this can be problematic.

Compare persecution under Communism in the Soviet Union with that in China. Through the entire course of the Soviet Union, there was no growth in number of Christians or churches whereas in China, when Communism and persecution arrived, the number of Christians exploded and continues to do so. Why?

In the Soviet Union, churches, their buildings and pastors were initially allowed to continue but they had a government “handler”. At the beginning, the handlers told the pastors to give a report each week. Pastors saw no problem with this so they complied. Six years later, the handlers told the pastors that they had to check with them first before deciding who could sing or preach on Sunday. The pastors complied. Six years after that, the handlers said, “Don’t you dare have anyone sing or preach outside the church.” The pastors complied. Piece by piece, inch by inch, the Church was swallowed. They had buildings and denominations they were trying to protect and so their focus was there and on preserving themselves, rather than on evangelism.

In China, persecution arrived in one fell-swoop and so the Chinese Christians weren’t tricked into thinking that the government might be on their side. Right from the start they had to find ways to deal with persecution. Rather than being led by clergy, the churches were led by lay people; the churches were secret—they had no buildings to hold on to and in fact, whenever they reached 30, the congregation split in two; they had no denominations but were purely Chinese and they focused on evangelism rather than on themselves.

Muslims Dreaming about Jesus

2006-02-18T13:24:00.000-06:00

What does God do when He wants to reach people who have no access to the Good News of Christ? He sends them dreams. Hundreds, maybe hundreds of thousands, of Muslims are encountering Jesus or something that points them to Jesus in their dreams—such as the 17-year-old girl in one of the stories of the previous post. Muslims put great stock in dreams and so it’s a natural medium for God to use. Often, once they’ve had such a dream, they never return to the mosque.

Once such man was having a hard time. He was always sick. His family was sick. They were poor, their animals weren’t reproducing and everything was going bad for them. He went to the sheikh of the mosque and asked what to do. The sheikh told him to fast and pray for three days and at the end of the three days he’d be told what to do. So he did.

At the end of the three days he had a vision. In the vision, he was told to seek Jesus. He didn’t have a clue what a Jesus was—a food, a tree, a person. But he was told how to find out about Jesus. He was to walk to a certain city that was seven hours away. The first two people he saw when he came to the city, he was to ask where a certain street was. When he got to that street, he was to find a particular building with a certain sign on the door. He was to ask the person who opened the door about Jesus.

He followed the instructions, not even telling his wife what he was doing. When he arrived at the door and asked his question, he was pulled inside the house quickly. He had no idea that asking about Jesus in a loud voice was dangerous. Who had he connected with? One of only three Christians in a country of a quarter million Muslims. Now, is that God or what?

He went home after staying a week, studying with this man, and everything changed for him. He and his family became healthy, their animals started reproducing and everything that had gone bad for them started going well. Their neighbours wanted to know why and in his answer, he led three families to Christ and they began to worship together.

Stories of Victorious Christians

2006-02-17T23:21:00.000-06:00

Some of these stories I wanted to use as examples in the previous post but they would have made the post too long.

They Know How to Pray

The speaker at the seminar I attended travels the world interviewing persecuted Christians. The interviews each take three hours and he tries to pack as many into a day as possible. When he goes to a country to interview (and he’ll interview many there), he’s busy. While he was in one such South-East Asian country, he received an e-mail from a German doctor in another persecuted country further west. “Please! I need you to come here NOW!” He wrote to say he couldn’t come; he had solid interviews for many, many days. He did some interviewing in the back country where he was and when he returned to the city, he found two things—a chunk of interviews had been cancelled and another e-mail from the German doctor saying, “You must come now!” He wrote to say he couldn’t come; he had no time. But then another chunk of interviews got cancelled because a pack of pastors had been arrested and he received a third e-mail from the German doctor, urging him to come.

He left the first country and traveled to where the German was, a country which was bristling with danger—not just for Christians but for everyone. He got off the plane and was met by the German doctor who had with him three men who looked rather dangerous themselves. “Who are these men,” he asked. The doctor replied, “Don’t you know? They’ve been asking for you.” Then the doctor walked away, leaving him alone with the strange, dangerous-looking men who begin to tell him why he had come to their country.

Several weeks or months before, these men prayed, “We don’t know how to be Christians in this environment. Please help us!” One morning they pray this and God told them, “Go to the airport. The man who can answer your question is coming today.” Can you imagine being the answer to such a prayer? Can you imagine praying like that?

They Know How to Listen

Another time, the speaker was being driven to the airport in one country after he had finished some interviews there. Something happened along the way and they couldn’t get to the airport so they stopped, unexpectedly, at someone’s apartment. The person whose home they had stopped at had the table set for breakfast for four. The Holy Spirit had told him he would have three guests that morning. Can you imagine having such a connection with God?

They Know their Bible

Back in the days of the Soviet Union, there were hundreds of little house churches consisting of three or four families and most didn’t know that the others existed. Three pastors decided to gather up the teens from these various churches and bring them to Moscow so they could see each other and be strengthened in faith. The pastors were arrested and imprisoned for three years for doing this but said they’d do it again.

While the kids were together, they were challenged to gather their corporate knowledge together. They were able to collectively amass 1600 songs and all the gospels from memory with only 6 mistakes.

They’ve Claimed Their Freedom

One the imprisoned Christian had to be guarded 24 hours a day for reasons I can’t remember. The guards were not allowed to leave him. There was a problem, however. The man loved to sing songs about Jesus and the guards kept being converted. One pair of guards finally told him they didn’t want him to sing anymore because they were afraid of being converted. They had a solution. They would take him up to the rooftop every day. They would stand in one corner and he could stand in the other corner and sing in such a way that the wind would carry his voice away from the guards.

They’ve Lost Their Fear

A 17-year-old Muslim girl had a vision in which she saw a Bible. The Bible said to her, “Find me! Find Jesus!” She hunted and hunted until she found one under her brother’s bed. She read it every chance she got. One night, falling asleep with the Bible on her chest, she had another dream in which a light came to her and she accepted Jesus. Fifteen minutes later she went to tell her Muslim dad that she’s a Christian and that Mohammed was demon-possessed. As you can imagine, her father was rather irate. He beat her and broke her nose.

They Know Their Songs of Faith

Here in North America, a family was heartbroken because the dad, deteriorating with Alzheimer’s, didn’t know them. The son especially, wracked his brain wondering how he could connect with his dad. As he sat in the room, puzzling this out, he began, not even knowing what he was doing, to sing quietly one of the songs he had learned on his father’s knee. To his amazement, his father began to join in. When he was done, he tried another song and his father remembered that too. He rushed to the phone and called the man’s family back to the nursing home where they all gathered around the old man for several hours, joining him in singing songs of faith from when the man was young. The man still didn’t remember them but what a wonderful time of communion they had with him! We don’t forget the songs we sing.

Victorious Faith

2006-02-17T12:00:00.000-06:00

What enables a Christian to have the kind of victorious faith that 17-year prisoner of Soviet Union had? How can we live so victoriously? The speaker at the seminar gave several common denominators of such Christians.

1. They know Jesus. He said he could tell in 15 minutes whether the person he was interviewing truly knew Jesus or not.

2. They know how to pray and fast. The speaker told many stories of prayer among the persecuted. In some countries, the safest way to interview someone is to act the tourist and walk the city streets with the one being interviewed as they talk. Several times he would be walking along with such a person and the other would be talking and he’d turn to them and ask, “What did you say?” “Oh, I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to God.” Victorious Christians are never out of touch with God.

3. Large portions of the Bible can be recreated by memory. Far too many of us haven’t even read it cover to cover once but what do we do when someone wants to know what we believe and why? Even if we have our Bible nearby and reach for it, it takes time to find what we’re looking for. I know. I’ve been there. We need to become so familiar with God’s Word that we can share what’s in it even when we don’t have it with us. We need this for our own encouragement as well as for sharing with others.

4. Large amounts of indigenous Christian music has been committed to memory. In North America, churches squabble over what kind of music to use, not realizing that every generation needs and deserves its own heart music. This is serious. If you take away a generation’s music, you strip them.

In his interviews, the speaker asks, “What’s your verse? What’s your song? What bubbles up when things are hard?” How would you answer those questions?

5. The persecuted know they are prayed for. In a gathering of 150 pastors in China, the speaker was asked, “Has Jesus come to any other countries?” And so he told them about all the rest of us. They asked if others are persecuted like them and so he told them about the two most restricted countries in the world. They were completely silent and he didn’t know why.

The next morning, 150 pastors were shrieking at his door. When he stepped out, he found them on their faces. “What are they saying?” he asked his interpreter. “Just listen,” he was told. As he walked among them, he heard the names of the two persecuted countries he had talked about. They were so moved for places where the persecution was worse than they knew that they, as a group, had determined to get up an hour early every day to pray for these two countries. A year later he asked the Christians in one of these countries what had happened the year before. They said, “You wouldn’t believe it! We’ve had a complete outbreak of the gospel!” They are so grateful to China for praying for them.

6. The Local Believing Community cares for their families. One woman, whose husband was in prison, had food thrust upon her so much in the marketplace that she sewed a large cape with huge pockets on the inside. People would surreptitiously give her food as she walked through the market place and she’d hide it away. When the coat was full, she’d go home until in need again. Another woman found what she needed on her doorstep—food, bicycle, whatever.

7. Victorious Christians know that their suffering is for Jesus’ sake. One sending agency, when two of their young women missionaries were thrown in jail, wanted to send a press release apologizing for the witnessing the girls had done. The speaker, brought in to give advice, told them to rip it up. The girls were being accused of loving Jesus and helping the poor. When this is true, say, “I’m guilty!” When those we love are sent to jail or worse, tell them “I’m so proud of you! You’re here for Jesus’ sake!”

8. Victorious Christians know their persecution is normal. The number one cause of people being persecuted is people coming to Jesus. The number one result of people being persecuted is people coming to Jesus.

9. Victorious Christians have claimed their freedom. In the West, our laws say we have the right to be happy and laws are put in place to help govern this, telling us what we can’t do. In the 10-40 window, the laws tell a person what they can do. If there’s no law, they can’t do it. So in some persecuted countries, the Christians there are waiting for the government to give them permission to gather as churches or to evangelize, etc.

What gives us our freedom? Israel had just spent 400 years as slaves in Egypt. A slave has no rights and no freedoms. She works 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. She has no days off and no choices. When they reached Mount Sinai and heard Moses read the Ten Commandments for the first time, when he got to the one that reads, “Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy,” they would have heard, “My people are free!” and they would have cried because only free people can take a day off. Our freedom comes from God, not from governments or any other source.

10. Victorious Christians have lost their fear. The Chinese church knows their possessions belong to Jesus. Whatever the government threatens to take away, they cry, “Take! Then I’ll be free to….”

Fear of persecution is more debilitating that persecution itself. Fear makes us irrational. We have the freedom to choose joy and Satan can’t take that away from us. This is a truth I need to spend much time pondering for myself. Ask someone, “What are you afraid of?” When they tell you, ask, “Who’s had that happen to them in the last 20 years?” No one. “So then, why are you afraid?

Who or what are YOU afraid of when it comes to living your faith?

11. Victorious Christians have a genealogy of faith. There was much persecution in the Ukraine during the time of the Soviet Union. The speaker asked one man, “Where did you learn to live and die like this?” “In my father’s lap.”

When the man was a boy, his father sat him on his lap with the family gathered around and said, “Tomorrow I will be arrested. Everyone in this area who refuses to deny their faith will be hanged. So, when I hear in prison that my wife and children were hanged, I’ll be the happiest man because I’ll know you kept the faith.”

Time after time the speaker has asked, “Where did you learn victorious living?” and he’s been told, “From my father, my mother, grandmother, uncle, aunt.” But Christians coming out of Islam don’t have this, nor do other new believers, so what can we do? We can create for them a genealogy of faith—showing them the history of faith from the Bible and since and also being an example and standing in the gap for those who don’t have their own genealogy of faith.

What if you are a new believer and you don’t have family to model for you? You can begin to create your own by finding godly men and women who can be examples of faith for you. You can also begin finding and reading the stories of victorious Christians who have held on to their faith despite all odds. You will be encouraged.

SHUT UP!

2006-02-16T18:04:00.000-06:00

What is the goal of persecution? Is it to jail, torture and kill Christians? No! The goal is simply to get them to be quiet. If they can do that, they’re happy. It’s only when Christians won’t comply that more pressure is brought to bear. It’s hard to hide a death. It’s real easy to hide, “Don’t talk about that!”

If we don’t speak about Christ, if we don’t speak about what God has done in our lives, we’ve given in to persecution and given victory to the enemy. We think of persecution happening only overseas in closed countries but it happens here and often those who are the worst persecutors are those within the church. I think of the times I’ve been told that I’m not allowed to tell my story or chastised when I did.

In what ways do you feel silenced—either overtly or covertly? What would happen if you began to share Christ the way you believe you should? Would you lose your job? Your popularity? Your prestige in the community? Is Jesus worth it?

In China, when warned to keep quiet or their land and home will be taken from them, they say, “Take it! It’s not mine anyway. It’s God’s.” When the ante is upped and they’re told to keep quiet or their children will be taken from them they say, “Take them! They’re not mine anyway. They belong to God.” When their lives are in danger if they don’t keep quiet they say, “Take my life. It isn’t mine but God’s.” Is Jesus worth it?

During the time of the Soviet Union, there weren’t many churches and often these churches were a three-day walk from home, one way. Many Christians couldn’t afford the time to go more than a couple times a year. One family solved this problem by having church in their home. They didn’t call it church and wouldn’t have considered it church because they simply sat together as a family, singing songs of praise to God, praying and sharing stories from the Bible. A couple neighbouring families saw what they were doing and asked if they could join them.

When the group grew to 25, the father of this family was threatened. When they grew to 50, the man lost his job and the kids were kicked out of school. They continued and people brought them food and helped teach the kids trades. When it grew to 75 (they were still meeting in a very small house), the government showed up, slapped the man back and forth and told him to stop. An old grandma confronted the police who had done this, telling the man he’d mishandled the man of God and would die as a result. He dropped dead several days later. Fear of God swept the community and the next week 150 showed up.

The man was sent 1000 miles to a prison full of 1500 hardened criminals where he stayed for the next 17 years. The prison was the sort where there were no walls, only bars and so you could see the entire place in a glance. There was no privacy, the lights were always on, it was always noisy and always damp.

His first morning there he did as he always did. He stood by his bed, faced east (apparently this is a common thing amongst Christians in certain areas), stretched out his arms to the side and began to sing his heart song to Jesus. The 1500 criminals jeered, laughed and threw food at him. But he continued every morning for years. The officials couldn’t break him, though they tried. Every time he was taken out of his cell, he made a practice of watching for bits of paper and anything with which to write. He’d pick them up, hide them in his clothes and take them back to his cell where he’d write out Bible verses and stories as an offering to Jesus and attach them to the pillars that formed the corners of his cell. This really angered his jailers who would rip them off and beat him. He continued.

One day, they travelled the 1000 miles to his home, broke in, took some of his wife’s clothing that he would recognize, found a prisoner with a similar appearance to his wife and dressed the woman in the wife’s clothes. Then they made sure the man saw the woman without seeing her face. The woman was taken and tortured for three days within earshot of the man and then killed. For him, this was the last straw. He was sure it was his wife and was in utter despair of soul. He told the guards to bring him the necessary papers. He would sign whatever they wanted. In glee they told him they’d bring them in the morning.

That night, back home, sensing the man’s despair, various family members gathered together in his home and began to pray for him. In his prison cell, 1000 miles away, aided by the Holy Spirit wafting the sounds of their voices to him, the man heard these voices, including those of his wife and children. He knew now that his wife was alive and when the guards brought the papers in the morning, he refused to sign them.

Later that week, he thought Christmas had come. He found an whole piece of paper and a pencil lying beside it. He wrote all over it and put it up on his pillar. When the jailers saw this, they went berserk and decided to kill him. As they reached his cell door, dragging him with them, all 1500 criminals stood by their beds, faced the east, raised their arms and sang his heart song. The jailers dropped the man in astonishment and asked him, “Who are you?” “I am the son of the Living God whose name is Jesus.”

Ask this man, “Was Jesus worth it?” and he’ll say, “YES!”

What are you willing to risk in order to not only be faithful but to speak out and share your faith with others? Is Jesus worth it?

Surprising Statistics

2006-02-16T09:49:00.000-06:00

You’ve probably heard them before, things like “There have been more Christian martyrs in this century than in all the centuries before, combined.” Or “150,000 Christians are being martyred every year. Where do these statistics come from and are they true?

I was at a seminar recently, led by a missionary commissioned to interview persecuted Christians around the world to find the answer to the question, “How does one plant churches in areas where Christians are (or would be if there were any) persecuted?” In the quest for the answer, he has interviewed 600 persecuted Christians in 60 countries. He’s been in the countries where persecution is worst and hasn’t found anything to substantiate the statistics bandied about so how have these numbers been determined? We need to look at definitions.

First of all, what is a Christian? Some definitions are:

1. Anyone who calls herself a Christian—they don’t necessarily know anything about Jesus, and have never been to church. This might be 80% of North America (don’t quote me on that percentage).

2. Someone who describes herself as Catholic, Orthodox, Baptist but still doesn’t know much about Jesus and probably hasn’t ever been to church.

3. One who has actually been to church and participated in some function such as a baptism, communion, etc.

4. One who is “born again” and for whom faith determines how they live their life. This might be only 4% of North America (again, don’t quote me on the number).

5. A “crypto” or secret believer who hasn’t yet declared his faith within a church.

Secondly, what is a Christian martyr? Is it any Christian who is killed? What definition of Christian are you using? Is a person a martyr because of who he works for? Many people are killed simply because they work for a Westerner. The speaker lived in a country where a hit list of 150 Christians was created. The problem was that some of the men on that list were committed Muslims who prayed 5 times a day and went to the mosque as often as required. Their crime? They were security guards for a western Christian. If they were killed, were they martyrs?

If someone hands an illiterate person a Bible and, because it was a gift, that person carries it around with him and, because he carries it with him he’s killed, is he a martyr even though he hasn’t a clue what’s in the book he carries?

In many countries, the Christians in that country belong to a particular ethnic group (majority or minority—doesn’t matter). Perhaps they hold the power in that country or they live in an area rich in some natural resource and the other ethnic group(s) is jealous and begins to kill the Christians. Ask one of the persecuted in some of these countries, “What would change if you weren’t Christian?” and they’ll tell you, “Nothing.” Are they killed because they are Christians or is there another reason such as trying to gain the power and wealth the Christians hold? Amazingly, time after time, when the speaker has gone to such Christian people groups and asked them about sharing the gospel with the other ethnic groups in their country, especially the persecuting group, they unanimously have asked, “Why would we?” Are they martyrs for their faith or victims of some other cruel purpose?

In one Muslim country, a Christian man was violently murdered. The news services and Christian watchdogs proclaimed the man a martyr. When more of his story was uncovered, it was learned that he had been embezzling funds and sleeping with a Muslim woman who wasn’t his wife. Was he a martyr?

In another Muslim country, an entire Christian family were slaughtered in their homes, their necks cut open. Again, the news services, Christian watchdogs and Christian nations around the world reported, condemned and lobbied against the government in this country because of what appeared to be the act of Muslim extremists. But no one in that country had ever been martyred that way so why now? The speaker of the seminar was sent in to investigate and after much digging, learned that the son of this family had been sent to another country for some purpose. When he returned, he learned that his sisters had been prostituted out by his father. He killed his family. Surely this was not martyrdom.

Disagreement about definitions can change the statistics. If we define Christians by the last two definitions above, and if we consider as martyrs only those who are killed because of the testimony of their words and lives—those who, if given a choice, would choose violence and death rather than relinquish Christ, we find the numbers decrease radically. Violent death at the hands of angry murderers is never right but it doesn’t necessarily make a martyr.

What kind of Christian are you? If someone wanted you dead, would it be because of your testimony and witness of Christ or would it be for some other reason?

The Greatest of These is Love

2006-02-14T20:54:00.000-06:00

Today is Valentine’s Day—a day of love; a day of romantic love. The biggest romancer of all time is God. If you take the time to read the Bible from cover to cover, you find a God passionately in love with His people, giving them gifts and wooing them when they turn away. He compares His relationship with His people to a love affair. His most valuable Valentine to us is His Son, Jesus.

As followers of Jesus, we are to pass on the love God has given us—to our fellow Christians, to our neighbours, to the poor, to the disenfranchised, to the ugly, even to our enemies. Sadly, we seem to pick and choose who we will love. Consider this statement by Rembert Truluck:

“At a recent home spiritual growth group, the question was asked, "How is Christianity different from all other world religions?" My answer was that Christianity is the only world religion that does not do what it claims to do. All other religions basically do what they claim to do, whether it is honoring ancestors, respecting nature, accepting all religions, or learning the teachings of a great teacher like the Buddha. Christianity claims to follow Jesus in giving and demonstrating God's unconditional love for all people. Christianity, however, does not carry out that claim and denies it in countless churches, councils, denominations, radio and television preachers, and a steady flow of books, magazines, and web sites.”

What a sad indictment! Is it true? One blogger tells the story of a Christian school that received an application for a kindergarten student. When the principal realized that the child is being raised by a gay couple he told the child’s parents, “his [the child’s] home life is an abomination against God and that if [the child] was to attend DCA, he would be taught that he comes from a sinful family and subject to the ultimate punishment from God.” The blogger asks, “Whatever happened to ‘let the little children come to me?’” What indeed?

In another blog entry the same blogger writes,

“When a friend of mine at a ultra-conservative college in Southern California was discovered to be gay (they read his email), they hauled him on stage in chapel and demanded he admit it, apologize and repent. (He opted for instant, public expulsion.)

“When my Beau came out to his parents, they paraded the fact in front of every family member; forcing him out of the closet with a hot firebrand rather than letting him tell his story appropriately and timely. It set off a three week marathon of every family member coming over to tell him how selfish and wrong and cruel he was being and that he was going to hell.”

Where is the love that’s supposed to be the hallmark of Christianity? Why is it that by some people, Christianity is seen as a religion of hate, anger and judgment? Why is it that some who call themselves Christian see persecution of a certain group of people justifiable and righteous? May God forgive us!

If a gay couple came into your church and openly held hands through the service, how would YOU respond? How would the rest of the congregation? The church elders? The pastor? Would they be welcome or would you expect them to be “cleaned up” before they walked through your doors? Do you expect the same of other sinners?

There are three things that will endure – faith, hope, and love – and the greatest of these is love. 1 Corinthians 13:13

An Improbable Bible Study

2006-02-13T13:30:00.000-06:00

Once my church took on new leadership and the congregation had completely changed except for one family and two others of us, it was decided we should begin small groups. My small group has been poorly attended and lacked direction or function. Finally, a few weeks ago, our very young hostess took the bull by the horns, took over and led us in a very good Bible study. Up until then, we'd just kind of sat around and talked. Just sitting around socializing was dissatisfying but the Bible study was awesome.

And then, on a Friday, she asked me if I would lead a Bible study the following Monday. I wasn't sure if I could have something prepared in time but she would be out of town and if I didn't lead it, those of us who went would wind up just hanging out--again. I decided to give it some serious thought.

I would have liked to have done something along the lines of the last study we had, to stay in a theme of sorts but when it came right down to it, I didn't have time. However, there WAS the study on gluttony I had done for myself the previous week. I had everything (Bible verses, word definitions, etc.) typed up and ready. All I had to do was review it and make sure I knew how I would present it but how would a topic like that be received? I wasn't sure. Still, it was all I had so that's what I went with.

So who showed up besides me? Two skinny 20-something guys. And this 50-year-old, much-too-large woman is going to lead them on a study about gluttony? Get serious! And yet an amazing thing happened. For one thing, as I introduced the whole idea of using bible.crosswalk.com to search and find the meanings for the Hebrew and Greek words used in the Bible, they were intrigued.

In the King James Version, the only words close to gluttony are glutton, the Hebrew word for which appears 8 times in the Old Testament, and gluttonous, which appears twice in the New. The word that's translated "gluttony" in Hebrew, salal, actually has nothing to do with food and in fact, is used twice in Isaiah to describe the action of mountains. Basically, it means worthless, insignificant, vile, to make light of, squander or be lavish with. I've shortened it in my mind to mean "lavish squanderers in worthless pursuits".

In Deuteronomy 21:20, parents could bring their son to the elders of the city to have him stoned to death because he was stubborn, rebellious, disobedient, a drunkard and a worthless and lavish squanderer.

In Proverbs 23:20,21, we are warned to avoid drunkards and lavish squanderers because such people will become poor and sleepy.

Proverbs 28:7 warns us that the companion of lavish squanderers disgraces his father.

If one keeps with that same translation of meaning, in Isaiah 64:1-3, God is addressed. If only God would come down, the mountains would lavishly squander themselves before Him. In fact, when God has come down in the past, that's exactly what the mountains did.

Jeremiah 15:19, God is telling Jeremiah that He wants him to be His mouth, but only if he utters words of worth instead of lavishly squandering his words. Then he will be His spokesman.

Lamentations 1:11 The people are under seige and so hungry that they are selling their treasures for food but Jeremiah's words to them are considered worthless and lavish squandering.

Nothing about these passages are about eating. So what does it mean to lavishly squander? Do we do this with our time? Our interests? Our money?

The two passages in the New Testament are parallel stories from Matthew 11:19 and Luke 7:34 where Jesus compares the people's reactions to John the Baptist and Himself. John came, neither eating and drinking, and they say he has a demon. Jesus came eating and drinking and they call him a drunkard and a glutton.

Now here, in the Greek, the word used for glutton (phagos) really does refer to food. And "glutton" is the dictionary translation of the word. But the only time this word appears is in this accusation against Jesus.

In my personal study I did a google search for the word "glutton" and shared some of my findings.

Dictionary.com says it's excessive eating or drinking; habitual eating to excess.

whitestonejournal.com in a discussion of the "seven deadly sins" of which gluttony is apparently one, says that "The chief error about gluttony is to think it only pertains to food. Some people can't have enough toys, television, entertainment, sex or company. It is about an excess of anything." The article gives three forms of gluttony and we discussed each form:

1. Wanting more pleasure from something than it was made for.

"It is possible to become so caught up in a pleasure, whether food or fun, that we can no longer enjoy other things, and would be willing to sacrifice other pleasures for the one."

An example is given of how, in Roman days, people would feast and feast and feast and when they'd had too much to eat, they'd go vomit and then return to feast some more. Today we have bulimics who do the same thing, though it's not just food and drink that this is done with.

2. Wanting it exactly our way.

"In 'The Screwtape Letters', C.S. Lewis describes delicacy as a desire to have things exactly our way. He gives the example of food having to be prepared just right...but it isnt't limited to food. We might complain about unimportant defects in a product, the temperature in the room or the colour of a laundry basket. There is a certain amount of discomfort to be expected in life, but the Glutton will have none of it. Intead of becoming strong by suffering the minor inconveniences of life, the Glutton insists on being pampered."

I know when I've been on diets, I've been guilty of this and my current love of decaf Earl Grey tea could easily turn into this sort of delicacy if, when going to a friend's place, for example, I showed disappointment if they didn't serve me my favourite beverage.

3. Demanding Too Much From People. I've been guilty of this one. It's being so needy of someone else that one gets jealous when that someone else doesn't provide the attention one needs.

"It is said that St. Thomas More was an exceptionally fun person to be around, so much so that King Henry VIII of England kept calling for him, preventing Thomas from going home to his family. Thomas eventually began to curtail his merrymaking so that he was more dull company. This strategy worked, and he was able to live at home more often.

"The cure for Gluttony lies in deliberately reducing our use of pleasurable things, not in eliminating them. When eating, quit before feeling stuffed. When snacking, don't just keep stuffing, but quit after a while. With people, allow some quiet time together, and also get some time alone. Of course, if time alone is very pleasurable, get out more often. And if the toast is a bit too brown, eat it anyway."

At this point we got so caught up in discussion that we never did the second half of what I had prepared. We talked about things like pain and suffering. If gluttony is lavish squandering or, as one fellow put it, self-centred and self-serving, then the act of reducing pleasurable things could mean pain and suffering. One of them asked, "So what IS suffering for Jesus?"

This is a favourite topic of mine. An extreme example of suffering for Jesus comes from a book I keep in my washroom called Extreme Devotion by Voice of the Martyrs. It contains 365 one-page stories of persecuted Christians from the beginning of Christendom to today. I read it through in a year and at the end of the year I start again. I'm getting close to beginning it for the third time. It keeps me in touch with what devotion to Christ really is. The story I read the day before the study was about a thief who wound up in a Russian jail during the Communist era. Because of his contact with Christians, he became one himself. Once he was released he became a powerful force for Christ. Then his pastor was arrested and the pastor's captors brought the former thief before him and told him to renounce Jesus or they'd gouge out the former thief's eyes. What a decision for the pastor! It's one thing to relinquish your own eyes, but someone else's? The former thief told him to not renounce his faith. He'd give up his eyes and he did. Then the captors brought the former thief in front of the pastor again and told him to renounce Jesus or they'd cut out the former thief's tongue. Piece by piece that man's body was cut away until he died. But Jesus was not renounced. That's an extreme form of suffering for Christ.

But there are many ways. Whenever we choose to give up something that matters to us, no matter how seemingly insignificant, and we're giving it up (or embracing it--as the case may be) because our loyalty to Jesus requires it (this is important--it's not giving things up just for the sake of suffering), we are suffering for Jesus. When my husband asks me to watch a movie with him but I'd rather not because I don't enjoy his company and I don't like movies, but I do it anyway because I know God wants me to do things that will build my marriage up, the pain (as insignificant as it may seem) is suffering for Jesus.

The young man who asked me this question looked at me rather strangely. How could this be suffering for Jesus? Jesus said that when we are faithful in small things, He can entrust us with bigger things. I suggest to you, as I did to him, that those who have been willing to be tortured or killed rather than renounce Jesus began accepting suffering in its lesser forms long before they were in the place of the greater suffering.

When we begin to reduce our pleasures, we will feel the pinch of it. It will hurt. But we do it because we want to embrace something bigger than ourselves, something bigger than our own needs, wants and desires. We want to embrace the fullness of life that God offers and we can't do that when we're living lives of lavish squandering and dissipation. As one of the fellows pointed out, it really comes down to who we love most--ourselves, others or God. When we love others more than ourselves and God more than either ourselves or others, we're going to be making decisions that pinch. Sometimes they'll be outright painful. This is suffering for Christ. This is choosing Christ over pleasure, choosing Christ over lavish squandering on things that ultimately are worthless.

It was an amazing time as we studied and discussed. Finally, one of the young men asked if we could have a time of silent contemplation. We followed that with an incredible time of prayer. God was present in a way I would never have anticipated when faced with leading a study on gluttony to two young, skinny guys. It was so awesome. It was all so unlikely and so improbable. God is good.

And the way our discussion turned to the suffering church was so "a propos" because beginning the next day, I was to attend a three-day seminar on the suffering church led by a couple who have presented this seminar around the world. The seminar would end at 5:00 on Thursday and at 7:00 that evening I would begin attending a conference on living in the supernatural. I was so excited about what was ahead and the Bible study on gluttony was an unexpected but awesome jump into all that was to come.

Renouncing Gluttony

2006-02-12T15:41:00.000-06:00

I knew I had to work towards the Repent/Renounce/Break/Bless sequence that I did last November. That was so meaningful and powerful for me then and I wanted the same kind of breakthrough this time. Here is what I prayed when I was done:

I confess, Lord God, that I have broken my vow to be and stay under the authority of [a particular weight loss program--I had made this vow many years ago and had been wrestling with it recently]. I have found that this is an impossible task. I am unable to do it no matter how hard I try. I was wrong to break this vow but I was also wrong to make it. Yet I deliberately choose to make it, knowing that Jesus said to NOT make vows. I was wrong. I was wrong to give [that organization] the kind of authority I did for they did not point me to Jesus or the need to feast on Him instead of on food.

There is a time for feasting and a time to refrain from feasting. Christmas is a time of celebration of You coming to earth and so it is a time of feasting. You commanded times of feasting in Your law. But I seem to want to feast all the time and have the finest of foods as well. I have been dissipated in the way I spend money I don't have to eat out for the purpose of comfort and luxury. I have tried to comfort myself by going to beautiful places and ordering fine foods. I have argued that I've needed these restaurant times as oases to spend time with You and I know You're not against doing that but only if I can afford to do it.

I've allowed myself to be gluttonous in areas other than food, as well, such as the use of the computer or even in my desire for people. Actually, those two have been tied together, haven't they? And I've allowed my excessive use and desire for these to interfere with what You would have me do--take care of my home and my family. I've allowed my use of the computer and my desire to be constantly connected to my friends to supercede my responsibilities.

According to whitestonejournal.com the solution is to reduce my use of pleasureable things, not eliminate them. I want to do this, God. I repent of making the vow to be under the authority of [that organization], of breaking my vow, of being caught up in the excesses of spending what I don't have, of making my comfort my god, of spending time on the computer with friends when I should be meeting my responsibilities in my home and to my family. I have been wrong. I want to change.

Please forgive me. Help me to reduce my pleasures and increase the meeting of my responsibilities. Help me to find balance between overwork and too much play, between the excesses of spending and saving, between hiding from people and needing them too much, between too much sitting and too much activity, between comfort and pain, between taking and giving. Help me find balance, Lord. I choose balance and moderation except when it comes to pursuing You. For that, I choose to be extreme.

Also, Lord, I allowed myself to masturbate again, after over 2 months of abstinence. I was wrong. I see how much of a trap it is, luring me back into lies I have renounced and into the trap from which I have struggled to escape. Forgive me!

I renounce, once again, the lie that masturbating is harmless. And while it does give comfort and pleasure, I renounce the lie that this comfort and pleasure is the sort I want. It is not. I want Your comfort, dear God! And I want the pleasure you provide, not what I steal for myself.

What lies have I believed about the other things I've confessed, God? I renounce the desire to shirk my responsibilities. I renounce the laziness that keeps me inactive at the computer instead of moving around my home--keeping it clean and in order and keeping my family well-fed and well-nourished. I have chosen my friends over my husband and sons and spend much more time with my friends than with my family. I'm not sure what I need to renounce with this--my wrong priorities. This is a hard one, God! I'm not sure I WANT to spend much time with my husband. I don't enjoy being with him. I want to, God, but I don't. I renounce my selfishness and choose instead to give time to my husband for his pleasure and happiness even when I don't feel like it. I renounce the lie that says I need large amounts of time each day with my friends. I renounce the lie that says I need to pamper or indulge myself at restaurants, cafés and dining facilities whenever I'm out. If I start providing better for my family, I will probably find eating at home more attractive. I renounce the lie that says I have to be out of my home to spend quality time with You, God. I have a lovely prayer room for that purpose and keep avoiding it. I renounce the lie that comfort is always better than pain. I renounce my self-indulgence and instead choose to embrace self-control and restraint. I renounce my vow and the making of vows.

I break off my laziness, my self-indulgence, my selfishness, my sinful attitudes, the spirit of Jezebel if it's still hanging on, all lying spirits and deceiving spirits. I break off all residue of my sin and all connection to everything I've renounced.

I choose You, God. You are my Ishi, my Husband, my Lover, my King and my Master. I have given You my ears to pierce, to be Yours forever. Thank You for forgiving me. Bless me, Lord, as I choose to become more active, to take better care of my home, my husband, my family. Bless me as I choose to reduce my pleasures so I can better meet my responsibilities. Bless me, please, as I choose to give as well as receive. Bless me as I choose to walk in Your ways instead of mine and as I continue to seek Your Face and Your Presence. Bless me, please, as I choose Life over death.

I love You.

Is Gluttony Sin?

2006-02-11T22:21:00.000-06:00

As you may have gathered from previous posts, I continued to be discombobulated and dis-eased. It came to a head towards the end of January, and I knew I had to do something about it. Sometimes I leave things that are rumbling in my mind because I can't be bothered to take the time to deal with them. However, I knew I needed to spend time with God and get all this sorted out. I thought I'd be dealing with one thing but instead, I wound up dealing with another.

I've been doing the course from settingcaptivesfree.com called The Lord's Table. The whole premise is that gluttony is sin but I've had real trouble with this and when I went to find the texts in the Bible about gluttony, all I could see as a negative result was poverty and sleepiness, NOT that it is a sin. [Please! Don't assume from this that it isn't a sin--I'm just giving my personal thoughts.] But I hadn't done a thorough search and so last night I began to do so. Using Nave's Topical Bible at bible.crosswalk.com, I looked up the verses purportedly to do with gluttony. Most of them had very little to do with food and more to do with things like dissipation, dissolution, etc.--big words that I wasn't sure what they meant until I looked them up. Here is the conclusion I drew from my research:

We're not to allow ourselves to become so caught up in pleasing ourselves, wasting, squandering, and indulging, that we forget to watch for the signs of Christ's coming and so aren't ready when He comes.

We need to be "decent and true...so that everyone can approve of our behaviour..." and not look for ways to indulge our evil desires, lacking moral strength or disregarding accepted rules and standards.

Our conduct can show that we're enemies of the cross of Christ. One such way is when we are given up to the pleasures of our palate or to gluttony, when we make THIS our god, rather than following Paul's example.

It is wrong for leaders to pig out at church functions and leave others with little or nothing. It is wrong for leaders to serve only themselves, even when it comes to eating.

Gluttons are lavish squanderers who waste their means by indulgence and, according to Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary, as quoted by dictionary.com, this wasting could be of one's own body.

There are plenty of verses in the Bible that talk about how GOOD it is to eat and be satisfied and full, so if gluttony is a sin it is something that is beyond being sated with food. It would seem that the sin is wasting, squandering, self-indulgence, lacking self-control, making the desires of our stomach our god. And while feasting is commanded in the Bible, there are a number of passages where people were feasting when they should have been fasting or being more circumspect in their eating. I think the thing is to be moderate and self-controlled, not just in eating but in other things like spending and computer use—-two areas where I think I need to begin paying attention—-and to seek God’s face at all times to ensure that one is hearing what He is saying and obeying.

I spent 7 hours in my research and in thinking, praying and sorting things out. It was hard work. I knew I had to work towards the Repent/Renounce/Break/Bless sequence that I did last November. That was so meaningful and powerful for me then and I wanted the same kind of breakthrough this time.

Searching for Life

2006-02-11T11:59:00.000-06:00

I couldn't sleep. I went to bed and I stayed there but it seemed like the battle of the previous post continued in my mind, threatening to engulf me if only I would give in to the thoughts that plagued me. I refused. I recited the two chapters in Matthew that I've been reviewing the past few months, I sang silent songs of praise to God, I prayed, I chanted over and over and over again, "I choose Life!" When my alarm rang for church at 9:30 a.m., I still hadn't slept, though I'd been in bed for 7 hours. I was too tired to move.

I DID force myself to get up later, however, and attended two other church functions--another step in choosing Life over self-destruction. I would have liked to have slept my day away or hidden away, especially when the afternoon activitiy was a women's group taking its first look at John and Stacy Eldridge's book, Captivating. My perusal through the study guide before going had produced enough tears that I wanted to stay far away from the group and the potential for more tears to flow. I went anyway and compromised by hiding around a corner where most couldn't see me. To my surprise, I was okay most of the time and could probably have been in the thick of things once I'd shared my pain with my friend, the hostess.

She wanted me to go to an evening event at our "mother church". The afternoon event went so long that even if we left straight from one and went to the other, we'd be late. I wasn't sure. But it was to be a time of praise, worship and intercession and I thought it might be good for me to simply sit and soak in the presence of God. My friend urged me to go and so I did. I'm glad I did, though the "sniff" (rubber cement or some solvent kept in a small container and sniffed to produce a "high") of the men sitting behind me was rather strong. Everyone is welcome in this church in the middle of the worst part of the city, which I think is the coolest thing.

I've never experienced or seen what I observed that night. It was awesome. I arrived late. The band was leading the congregation in worship. As seems typical in many churches, the same song went on and on and on. And then someone stepped to the mike to begin the time of intercession. People were invited to come forward if they wanted to pray and some did--praying extemporaneously or praying Scripture. And here's where it became interesting. The person praying would pause and the band, which had been playing in the background, would begin to sing--first one person in the band and then another and another. I didn't realize it at first because it happened so seamlessly and it seemed rehearsed but they weren't singing any particular song but rather singing their agreement with what had just been prayed. They'd sing for a bit and then pause and the person praying would then continue with his or her prayer. It was a beautiful way to dialogue together to God.

Sometimes one of the musicians would sing a phrase or sentence and turn it into a repetitious rythym. I remembered how, at the camp I'd been to in the summer, people would sing "in the Spirit" but would sing real words and music that harmonized and counter-pointed each other and it sounded so heavenly. I felt encouraged in my spirit to participate with the band in the same way (they were loud enough that I figured I could sing gustily and not be "found out") and so, when the music seemed right, I would counter with my own words, harmonies and rythym. If only worship could always be so wonderfully intricate and inclusive! My soul soared to the heights.

God is good. That night I didn't have to battle to choose Life. Instead (though still I couldn't sleep), I could celebrate and thank God for His mercies which are continually renewed.

I choose Life!

2006-02-10T10:43:00.000-06:00

Friends, husband, and others are NOT where I should be finding my importance and value. It is in You, God, that I have value and nowhere else. So how do I change? How do I change myself so that how You view me matters to me so much more than how anyone else views me. I can’t, God. I need You to change me. I know You have been but I’m still not there. It hurts to be disliked, hated, ignored, shoved aside. I want to matter to the people who matter to me but it seems like I don’t.

And so then all the blackness comes threatening to engulf me. The temptation to wallow in self-destructive thinking and behaviour is huge--end my life, drive a knife through my chest—-except I’ve renounced that way of thinking so I shove it aside. My eating 400 grams of Lindt chocolate yesterday, however, came out of the same self-destructiveness. If I can’t overtly harm myself, I’ll do it subtly? Since I can’t use a sharp knife, use a dull one?

Self-destruction and the promise of relief it brings is a lie from Satan. It won’t end the pain. It merely enlarges it. Self-destruction feeds on itself. Give it an inch and it will take everything I have and when I have nothing left it will continue to consume. I can’t give in—-not even with the smothering smoothness of fine Swiss chocolate. I must continue to reach out for life—-for Life.

How? How do I grasp life when everything in me feels like its dying? When all I feel like doing is curling in a ball and giving up? I’m reaching out to You, God. I’ve read my Bible. I also read notes (with lots of Bible passages) from the “Forgiveness/Temptation” section of my palmtop. I went grocery shopping when I felt like hiding in bed. I parked a long ways from the entrance so I could walk and when I came home I brought in the groceries myself rather than asking the boys to do it. Each of these were a way of reaching out for life and living but it hasn’t been enough. I’m overwhelmed by my emotional pain. I need to just accept the pain, don’t I, God? I have to be willing to feel it and not run from it. I guess in that sense I HAVE succeeded in reaching out for life. The trick is to continue to do so and to continue to say no to self-destruction. Please help me to do this.

Dear God...

2006-02-09T21:24:00.000-06:00

...I need your peace. I'm too easily upset by the way others treat me. Help me to be more dependent on you than on any person. And when my world seems to fall apart, help me to look to YOU for comfort and help than to other things that cannot satisfy. Give me hope, God. Let me not be drawn into the black hole that yawns before me. Pull me away from the edge of the abyss and give me hope, courage, strength and peace.

Thank you for who You are, Father. Thank you for Your love, Your presence, Your guiding hand, Your deliverance. Thank you for all you've done for me till now--the ways you've rescued me, delivered me, healed me, enabled me to help others. Thank you for the promises you have given me and the hope you have planted in my heart even though I see no other reason to hope. Thank you for the friends and the communities of your people in which you have planted me. You are able to do far above what we hope or ask for. You are holy, Lord. You are in control even when it seems like everything is spinning out of control. You are the Light when everything seems black. Yours are the arms that draw me close and hold on to me when I'm willing to pause long enough to let you. You are my Rock. Hide me in Your cleft and let the winds blow past.

Wholeness

2006-02-09T12:54:00.000-06:00

I was talking about what I've shared in my previous post with a friend and we started talking about wholeness. I believe this new desire for good emotional/mental health is part of the process of growing in Christ. He wants each of us to be whole in every way but I truly believe that He has His own timetable for the restoration of each of us. When we listen to Him, we make ourselves open to His leading towards that restoration. Most times, we get an idea in our head and, because it’s a good one, we think that that’s what we should be doing. But sometimes it’s not yet God’s timing and so we’re doing it on our own strength instead of His. I’m discovering that when God comes into the picture (because now is the time he’s appointed to deal with a particular issue) it makes all the difference in the world–-it’s like God moves the boulders out of the way ahead of us.

My friend pointed out that some people would argue that it is always God’s timing to get one’s life in order and I agree with that in principle, but our lives are so complicated and we’re all so OUT of order, there’s no way any of us can begin to put everything in order all at once. So, where do we begin? For myself, do I begin with physical health? Mental/emotional health? Losing weight? Exercising? Getting my marriage in order? Dealing with my same-sex attraction and other related stuff? Learning how to not be emotionally dependent? Where do I start?

That’s where being sensitive to God’s leading is so important. And God’s order of dealing with things isn’t always ours or society’s. I think of one advisor who was impatient because I was dealing with my ssa issues when he wanted to see me work on my marriage. He wanted to run ahead of God and have me change things in my own power. But that can be so defeating because there’s no way I can change much of anything on my own---not if I’m truly honest with myself and not if I want the change to be real instead of simply on the surface. When GOD does the changing, it’s so exciting and awesome. Of course it still involves decision making on my part but really, it’s like sitting on the sidelines and watching as God rearranges my attitudes. I’m really quite excited!

The end of Isaiah 40 reads, “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They will mount up on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not grow faint.” (MRV—Maggie’s Remembered Version) Waiting on the Lord. That’s the key. It’s not a passive waiting but waiting does involve not running ahead of God. I’m happy to keep pushing into God, grabbing hold of what He chooses to give me and waiting for what He decides to do next. Our God is an awesome God.

Returning to Health

2006-02-08T20:32:00.000-06:00

Something else happened the Thursday of my last post. As I was walking up the stairs to bed, something occurred to me. I can be happy. So simple, but it was a sudden revelation. It was a surprise to me. Can I? Can I really be happy? Cool! As I settled into bed that night, another thought came to me and that was the need for me to focus on my health, particularly exercise plus proper eating and sleeping. That returned to me very forcefully several days later.

Compared to how I’d been the previous two weeks, I was doing much better. The attitude change I described in "A New Way of Thinking" (and which had occured the day or two before), was the catalyst for that but I realized that in the large scheme of things, the improvement was a small one. What I mean is that while I was doing much better, I realized that I was (and still am) a long way from being in good, solid, emotional and mental health.

I got thinking this way because I was trying to figure out how to tell my husband and others how, exactly, I was doing. The stress hadn’t left and it probably wouldn’t take much to put me back where I was. As I was doing some shopping the day before, I realized that my standard for my own personal mental/emotional health has been very low. As long as I’m not falling apart, I’ve been satisfied. It occurred to me that it’s no longer good enough. I want COMPLETE health, not just a fraction of it and not just a pretense of it. It was a powerful revelation. I’ve never thought this way before.

And so, for the first time, I've started pushing towards better health—-not physical health as much as mental/emotional, though they’re probably tightly connected. I’ve already been working on my eating with an online course called “Lord’s Table” for the past several months which deals with the spiritual aspects of overeating but now I want to also focus on things like proper nutrition, daily exercise, etc. I’m really excited about the possibility of returning to good health.

Scraping the Bottom of the Barrel

2006-02-08T07:48:00.000-06:00

After watching “The Notebook”, I continued in a semi-catatonic state for several days. I would return to God’s arms as I remembered and as He gently nudged me and that helped tremendously—probably kept me from falling apart completely.

The thing is, God doesn’t promise a life free from pain and even in the midst of my pain I was convinced (and continue to be) that He allows and maybe even BRINGS pain into our lives for His purposes and to shape us into who He needs and wants us to be. I don’t want the pain but I’m willing to walk wherever God leads me and if that means pain, then so be it. A number of friends discussed the possibility of leaving my husband but God used some amazing methods to bring the two of us together more than a quarter of a century ago after being separated for a couple of years and unless God tells me to leave, I really don’t see that as an option.

The movie had been Saturday. Thursday, a breakthrough came. I was at my wits’ end, with no one to share my pain, I finally decided to tell my husband what was going on with me—how I was so near a breakdown of some sort. He listened quietly and then went on to talk about a letter he had just written and was excited about. Hurt that other things seemed more important to him than my crisis, I walked away, and escaped to the bathtub—a favourite place to be alone with God.

He finally came up to where I was and actually sat and listened to me. He wanted to know how he could help so I started by telling him my symptoms and what was happening with me. He wanted to know why this was happening so I started to tell him what the couple at church I had gone to for prayer had concluded the week before—that the stress of my marriage had built to such a point that I couldn’t cope anymore, though I didn’t put it quite like that. I think he was really scared I was going to say I’m leaving and probably his relief that I didn’t, enabled him to give his full attention.

I told him that there are three things I’m most aware that I need from him and he listened, agreed and told me he’s made contact with the counsellor I suggested and also renewed contact with his accountability partner who’s also a trained therapist, so that was good.

I felt a bit more hopeful with his response but being depleted is something that’s going to take a long time to change. I wasn’t just at the bottom of the barrel, I was scraping away the wood of the barrel bottom. I still felt like I was millimeters away from the psych ward but I kept going to God. I knew He was in control. I knew He loves me. I knew He has all sorts of good things in store for me but it didn’t take away the mental/emotional/physical exhaustion that was now two weeks in duration.

The Notebook

2006-02-07T12:23:00.000-06:00

I’m not usually much of a movie-watcher. If given a choice, I prefer the interaction and friendships the Internet provides than the passive watching of some invented story. However, my husband really enjoys movies. I don’t really understand how watching a movie together can promote togetherness because you sit beside each other and say nothing till the movie is over and then you go your separate ways. What’s the big deal? But my husband really enjoys movies and, I think, would like my companionship while he watches so on New Year’s Eve, after my birthday party, I offered to watch a movie with him. He wanted to see “The Notebook”.

“The Notebook” is a wonderful love story, I went to check out reviews and one reviewer commented on how people who review for a living are pretty jaded when it comes to movies but the night this movie was shown for the reviewers, there wasn’t a dry eye in the lot.

Warning! I’m going to give away the plot.

James Garner stars as an old man who spends his day reading a story to an old woman with Alzheimer’s in an upscale nursing home. The story he’s reading is the story of a young couple, teens, who fall in love. It’s a summer romance. He works in a lumber yard, her monied family is spending the summer where he lives. At the end of the summer, shocked that she's fallen for such a boy, they forbid her to have anything to do with him and return home early, taking her with them. He writes to her every day for a year but her mom intercepts the letters and the girl never sees them, crying herself to sleep every night, thinking he doesn’t care.

In the movie, we see two stories happening—that of the young couple and that of the old. As the old man is reading, I begin to suspect the story he’s reading is really the story of this old couple when they were young.

The young woman goes on to become engaged to a young heir but on the day she’s fitting her wedding gown, she sees a news article that causes her to faint. Her first love is standing in front of an old house he’s restored—-the house he had promised to restore for her. She runs away to see him one last time but while there, she finds she still loves him and he her. Now she has to choose.

At this point, the old woman comes out of her dementia and remembers and the old couple have a few minutes of love and affection before she returns to her state of forgetfulness. Meanwhile, their kids come to visit. They want their dad to come home. He doesn’t need to stay in the nursing home with their mom. But she is his love and he won’t leave her.

I was crying through much of the movie but by the end my body was wracked with silent sobs. Only once have I experienced (or seemed to) such love and I had to keep pushing away the thoughts that came to me about that. But the problem weren’t those thoughts so much as the pain of never being loved like this in a legitimate way. The pain froze me in one place. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do anything. I sat and stared into space with empty eyes. My husband saw and tried to comfort me but he didn’t ask what was wrong and eventually he left. I stayed like this for a long time, overcome with unspeakable grief, before I went to bed. I’m not sure I can ever watch (or read) a love story again. It’s too painful.

God showed me something, however, as I was lying in bed, unable to sleep. HE loves me like that. I could feel the warmth of His arms around me and the love and affection He was pouring on me at that very moment. God loves me! His love for me is intense and unarguable. On the one hand, it was all I needed and yet, on the other hand, it didn’t remove the pain and grief at all.

I wondered about this but not for long. God made us for love. He put that desire and longing for human love into us. He made us that way. God was NOT enough for Adam. Adam needed someone like him to love and be loved by.

Meltdowns

2006-02-06T09:14:00.000-06:00

Christmas was a very difficult time for me. Part of the problem had been that I’d been sick in the weeks leading up to Christmas. By the Monday before Christmas, I’d started improving and, with Christmas so close I had to start working full-tilt on getting ready. My deadline for being ready was Thursday at 6 p.m. because I had small group from church that night, my birthday the next day (I don't get ready for Christmas on my birthday, instead it's a day of complete rest) and Saturday, Christmas Eve, was Christmas Day for me--I'd wake up way earlier than usual to start cooking and would continue "doing Christmas" till past midnight: a couple meals, church, opening presents.

It looked like I was going to be ready on time, though it was really taking a toll on my energy level, but late Thursday afternoon, before I'd finished grocery shopping for Christmas, my car died. That meant my birthday was not a day of rest and so, by Christmas Eve, when I needed all the energy I could muster, I had little. My boys were wonderful in the help they provided but by the end of Christmas dinner, I had a meltdown. The most obvious symptom were tears that I couldn't keep back but the real symptoms were such a total exhaustion—physically, mentally and emotionally—that I couldn't do a single thing. I escaped from the room, my family and guests and spent the next hour soaking in the bathtub, reading my Bible, praying and trying to figure out what was going on. That was enough to enable me to make it through the rest of the day and evening.

The next day was Christmas Day and we went to my mom's. I had no obligations this day. I didn't have to bring anything and I didn't have to do anything once I got there. My mom noticed something was wrong, though, and the fact that she noticed and cared started my tears going again. After that, the smallest thing triggered them. By the end of THAT meal, again I was in such a bad state that all I wanted to do was go home but I didn't want to spoil everyone else's Christmas and they all wanted to play a game. I went and lay down in one of the bedrooms until everyone was ready to go home.

I planned Monday to simply rest. I figured if I just rested a day, I'd be okay. Surely this was just because I'd worked so hard without a rest. But Monday wasn't a day of rest. My son was flying to see his girlfriend but when we went to check him in, after much confusion and the help of more than 6 agents, it became evident that his expedia ticket was never issued. It took all day and much energy to sort that out and finally get him on another plane at the same cost he had expected.

Tuesday was my designated day to rest and I did--till I had another meltdown. This time there was no obvious reason and I was beginning to get scared. I had a milestone birthday this year and was throwing a big party in my home the following weekend with over 60 guests invited (I'm not a party person by any means--I usually avoid them--but milestones need to be celebrated). I needed my energy to get my house in order. How in the world was I going to do it if I kept falling apart? I'd discussed the problem with a friend the night before and she was quite alarmed. Now, with this inexplicable meltdown I began to wonder, am I going insane? Am I having a nervous breakdown, whatever that is?

Each meltdown, aside from the tears, was a complete lack of ability to function even in the smallest ways. Even when I wasn't in the crisis moments that I described, my energy (physical, mental and emotional) was so low I wasn't even able to put together a plate of leftovers to heat and eat. I couldn’t even make tea which I usually drink nearly non-stop. I couldn't make decisions. I could do next to nothing except what I absolutely HAD to do (like helping my son at the airport--somehow I was able to do that).

I was chatting with a friend and asked her to pray for me. She told me she would but urged me to find someone who could lay hands on me and pray for me in person. I've never asked anyone to go out of their way to do that so it was scary but I was in desperate straights and so I asked a couple from church if they'd be willing.

When I got to their place, the husband started asking me many questions to try and figure out what was going on and why. I had kind of figured out it was stress and he agreed. He came to the conclusion that it wasn't really all the work related to getting ready for Christmas but rather the stress from over 30 years of a very painful and difficult marriage. At first it seemed kind of old news that my husband is stressing me. Why crack up now? My friend basically said that it was the straw that broke the camel's back (he used a different illustration--same idea).

As I pondered, I realized that I'd actually been handed a gift. I think I was able to realize this because, through the whole ordeal, I'd made an extra effort to "feed on" Jesus. I even escaped to the washroom at my mom's place at one point before the meal just to pray and regroup with God. I was spending extra time in prayer, meditation, worship (quietly, in my head, because I had no energy for anything else), Bible memory (reviewing what I've learned) and making a point to read my Bible.

So why was the realization that the problem was stress from living with my husband a gift? One question I was asked at the end was, "What do you want?" Well, I can't change my husband as much as I might want to. But I can change me. What I want is to be able to keep my equilibrium, my peace, my health and my ability to function well regardless of what happens to or near me, no matter what anyone says or does. I know I've come a long way in this but it's evident that I still have a long way to go. Now that I know the problem, I can begin to deal with it.

Already the next morning I found myself evaluating my attitude and internal responses to things my husband said or did and presenting them before God. I think I've been getting very angry at many of his behaviours and, in an effort to keep the peace, I've stuffed the anger which, in turn, has created so much stress that I couldn't function. I never realized (not really--I knew it in theory only) that I had a choice in how I responded. I don't HAVE to get angry or annoyed. I'm not sure yet how I'm going to make that happen but I know that God has done some amazing things in my life in the last several months so I don't doubt that He'll show me the way through all this.

Why so Bold?

2006-02-06T07:40:00.000-06:00

Someone wrote to me,

Maggie, you have shared areas of your life that not too many people would have the courage and strength to do.

By you opening yourself up, you are helping somebody out there who is apprehensive or even afraid to speak up. You speak what you've been through and you speak from the heart. I truly appreciate your boldness.

God is going to bless you mightly for your obedience and willingness. Thank you again.

God has used an Internet community I'm part of very powerfully in my life over the past 4 1/2 years. I would not be where I am today if it wasn't for for this community and the people I've met there. It is because of their love and graciousness that I've learned how to be bold in what I share.

This boldness actually came out of fear. Over four years ago, a member of that community began a conversation, with my encouragement, telling how she felt violated and upset because someone in the community she had trusted ... I don't remember how she worded it but basically saying that another woman was sexually interested in her or something to that effect. It was worded in such a way that at least one person was lividly angry on her behalf. Others tried to be consoling and encouraging to her. She used a pseudonym so no one would recognize her but her style of writing was such that anyone who knew her well would soon figure out who she was. Most people knew that I was her best friend in the community and I was deathly afraid they'd figure out that I was the woman she was talking about. I had made the mistake of confessing my attraction to her a few days previously, doing so in a repentant manner and, on the advice of someone I trusted, had told her that I was ending our friendship. I didn't want the attraction and I didn't want to do anything that would foster it. This was before the conversation I'm describing was started.

As I said, I was afraid people would figure out on their own that I was the woman mentioned in that conversation and was afraid that all the close friendships I'd developed in the previous several months would end as people began to whisper behind my back, unwilling to face me directly and yet unwilling to have anything to do with someone who had behaved so vilely. After much prayer and deliberation, I decided I'd rather have people angry with me directly, rather than behind my back, never knowing who guessed it was me or who was politely trying to avoid me because of their disgust with me. And so I went into that conversation and "came out", admitting that I was the one described in the opening post.

I was sure that within 24 hours I would be booted out of the lives of everyone who had come to mean so much to me and was amazed at the love that poured out to me, people showing appreciation for my honesty and my willingness to come clean. I made a number of new and very dear friends that day as well, strangers who, amazingly, were blessed by my openness. It was one of the best things to ever happen to me, this disclosure. Up until this point, I had not ever come face to face with my same-sex attraction and hadn't known how to be free of it. Now, to my amazement, I had a whole community of friends who were standing by me in support and love. And so, amazed by the love that poured out to me at my first bold admission, I began to realize that I could continue to be honest about myself because it brought about blessing to both me and to others.

It is this community, more than any other single source, that God has used to bring healing and change into my life. I am very grateful to them and to God who brought me to them and am determined to continue to share my life--the good and the bad-- because, as I do, I'm hoping those who read will see just how gracious, loving and powerful God is.

This blog is a way for you to share in the journey. God's not done with me yet. He cleans me up in an area and then I go play in the mud again. I'm so very fickle. And yet we serve a faithful God who perseveres in His passionate pursuit of us. He keeps cleaning me off and pointing me to where He wants me to be and more and more I'm learning how to be obedient.

Catching Up

2006-02-06T07:32:00.000-06:00

I've not been writing here much lately. My apologies to those who have been watching and waiting. Some awesome things have happened in the past week but I think I need to first catch up with what's happened before that. I'm going to try to be more diligent about writing here from now on.

A New Way of Thinking

2006-01-09T05:32:00.000-06:00

Most of you know that I struggle with same-sex attraction. In particular, there has been someone I have loved and then walked away from because the relationship went where it shouldn’t. I’ve never stopped missing Pearl, however, though it’s been over two years since we’ve had any contact. Lately I’ve been missing her more than usual and so I went online to see if I could find her anywhere—not to make contact but just to see if I could find anything that would give me an indication of how she's doing. Yeah, I know. It’s probably not a smart thing to do but it’s been a way for me to “keep in touch” without actually making contact with her.

I found what I was looking for but it got me thinking. I began to do a google search that would help me understand her religious beliefs. I knew we had differences but I was never sure how sharp they were. I had wanted to believe that we were on the same page spiritually. We certainly used the same language but now I’m beginning to wonder if we were saying the same things. My search found several things that were rather alarming to me. These are not differences in interpretation of Scripture but radical divergences from Christianity as it has been known across denominational lines throughout the ages.

A verse came to mind as I was doing this research. 2 Corinthians 6:14, “Do not be mismatched with unbelievers. ... what fellowship is there between light and darkness?” (NLT) What fellowship indeed?

I’ve longed for close friendship with her. I have hoped that one day this would be possible—not sex or romance but simple friendship. But how can this be? It would be downright dangerous because, by associating with her other than as a casual acquaintance, I’d have to water down my own beliefs in order to accommodate hers. I would eventually shift camps. If her theology is so divergent from mine, if she is walking in such darkness and, in fact, is a leader in the community that promotes that darkness, then how in the world could I ever have a close friendship with her without compromising all that I value in God?

All this was before I went to bed Saturday night at about 5:30 a.m. I got up four hours later for church, not sure I wanted to go, I was so tired, but I’m committed to going to church and this will be my last Sunday till February since I’ll be away for awhile, so I went. It was one of the best services we’ve had since the new leadership took over. Was that because of where I was? I don’t know. I do know that the songs spoke to me. I wish I remembered what they were but I was too busy soaking in God’s messages to me to pause and write them down. And then our pastor spoke on Truth—what is it? How do we find it?

John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” Truth is not relative. It’s not situational. Truth defines what reality is and it transcends culture. Truth equals relationship, the pastor stated. Relationships are based on truth and without truth, everything is a façade. A relationship built on lies can’t last. (I’m using italics to identify the pastor’s words—rephrased by me.) Am I willing and even hungering to have a relationship that is based upon lies about my Saviour and His people? NO! But that’s what I’ve wanted. That’s what I’ve been doing! I sat there and felt dirty, repulsed by the desires I’ve held on to.

Truth equals release. The Truth will set you free. Truth releases us from self. If you define your life by Jesus, you will find the real you. It is Jesus who defines us. And when Truth is revealed, we are released to love. In order to find out what is true about me, I must find out the truth about God. This is why a search for God and a personal (and corporate) focus on God (all three persons) is vital and must come before anything else in our lives.

It’s an interesting thing. I have made this my focus for the past four years. Sometimes it has seemed like some things in me would never change, such as my desire for this one I have loved so much, and yet I have kept pushing towards God, seeking His face, seeking Him, seeking to know and experience the love He has for me. Because I had had such little sleep last night, I went back to bed when I returned from church. When I woke up, I was so overwhelmed by God’s love and for the first time ever, that love made my desire for the other seem filthy. As one friend said, when I shared this with her, “Pure love really does outdo any other kind.”

Now understand, I’m still processing what’s happened/happening, but it’s been very powerful for me. And the strangest thing is that I’ve actually been excited by all this. Isn’t that so bizarre?

Something occurred to me at some point in all this. One thing I've tried to do is to be honest with myself and with others about where I am. When I've not been where I should be, I've freely admitted it. Some would suggest that a person should just ... hmmm, I don't know how to explain this. Well, for instance, I haven't pretended that I've lost all interest for Pearl when I haven't. I didn't squash those feelings into some corner and pretend they didn't exist, for example. I have owned where I am and how I feel, even when I've known that where I was and how I felt wasn't where I should be. And I think that honesty with myself, God and others has been a good thing (even though I'm sure it's made some very uncomfortable at times) because it means I've been able to deal honestly with these things. Because I didn't pretend to have no interest in her, I went to check out how she's doing. Because I did that, I started researching her church and what I found has brought me to the place where (I think this is what's happening) my attitude towards her has GENUINELY changed. And that's what I need (and what we all need)--genuine change, not something “put on” to appear changed.

Anyway, I’m really excited by all that’s happened in the last 30 hours. God is so good!

Washed by the Light

2005-12-27T14:56:00.000-06:00

We celebrate the birth of Jesus on earth at Christmas time. We celebrate that God came to earth to save us from our sins. I fear, however, that too many of us put on the appearance of Christianity without allowing the Christ to change our innermost parts. Those parts are often so black and ugly that we don't want to admit them, even to ourselves, and so they remain hidden, diminishing the Light that is within us. Jesus is the Light of the world but He also called us the light of the world (Matthew 5). Our ability to shine is hindered by the black darkness in us, which we keep from the Light. As we allow God to expose our hidden secrets--first to ourselves and then (horror of horrors) to others, those secrets begin to lose their power and strength. They (and we) begin to be overcome by and washed by the Light.

Washed by the Light. Oh the glory of it! Sit back, close your eyes and imagine what that would look like. How would it feel? For me it brings me to a place of intimate union with God that is indescribable. This is why Jesus came to earth as a baby. This is what He longs to do for and with us--to wash us and bring us into that intimate and unbreakable union with God Almighty, the Creator of the universe and Lover of our souls.

Overcoming Sin

2005-12-27T14:23:00.000-06:00

Merry Christmas!

Sometime ago someone wrote to me in response to one of my posts. I'd like to share an edited version of my reply.

God is more than able to help us overcome the sin in our lives and not only is He able, He is willing and eager to do so. The thing is, that we need to want Him more than we want the sin and often times we don’t really. We enjoy the sin too much. And though certain sins are really enjoyable, afterwards we often feel horrid. Satan does that. He makes sin seem so attractive and then, once he’s got us snared, he takes away the attractiveness of the sin and lets us see it for what it really is—until the next time.

So what can a person do to overcome the sins that they can’t seem to be rid of? Several things. First of all, you must confess what you have done. Then you must repent. Repent means to turn around and go in the other direction. Confessing says, “Yes, I did it.” Repenting says, “I don’t want to ever do this again. I choose to follow God instead.” And then renounce your sin and everything associated with it. In one of my previous posts, "Repenting, Renouncing, Breaking and Blessing", I talk about this process. In the example I gave there, I renounced the lies I believed associated with masturbation. Ask God to show you what lies you’ve been believing. But renouncing isn’t just about the lies. We can renounce desires and the act itself. Then break off (with your words) anything connected to the sin. If you want, look to the post I linked to to see examples. Finally, thank God for His forgiveness (He promises to forgive when we confess them) and ask for His blessing on you.

These steps are very powerful and after I went through them for myself the day I described in that linked post and the ones connected to it, something changed in me. I have not masturbated since then and, in fact, the urge has not been great to do so. God’s also changed other things in my life such as my attitude towards my husband and towards food. (It’s really been amazing and I hope to write a post in the near future about just how wonderfully God has been working in my life since then.)

But following steps for anything can be something we do with our mouths and we don’t really put our entire hearts and being into it. And so there is something else that is crucial to walking God’s way instead of our way and that is to put our focus and desire completely and totally on God. We need to feed on Him.

We all have great hunger and thirst in our lives. We have a great need for love, acceptance, affirmation, comfort, etc. Satan’s lie says that we can get these things through sexual pleasure, through people, through eating, through alcohol and drugs, through hard work, etc. The truth is that the only true source for any of these needs to be met is God, through Jesus Christ. This is sometimes very hard to believe because God seems so intangible and far away and sex, people, food, drugs, etc. are easy to grab onto and hold.

Jesus said, I am the Living Water, drink from Me. Isaiah (or was it Jeremiah?) talked about how the people were going to empty, broken and dirty cisterns to drink, trying to dig their own wells, when what God wanted them to do was come and drink from His well, a well of pure, clean water that brings life instead of death.

But how do we do this? God promises that when we seek Him and seek Him with all our hearts, we will find Him. For the past four years, I have made this the focus of my life. I had a very wise friend near the beginning of that time who advised me to not focus on my problems (my sins) so much as to focus on God. And she was right. The closer I come to God, the less I’m inclined to give in to Satan.

I think the first step is to ask God to give us the desire to want Him more than anything else because truly, even this desire is a gift from God and nothing that we can manufacture. And then begin to seek Him. Read your Bible. Read much each day. This is where you will learn about God. When you read, ask God to show you what He wants you to hear that day. It doesn’t really matter where you start reading but I do encourage you to read the entire book (I know it’s long and it might take months and months to do this but it is worth the perseverance). The Bible is a story of God’s love. I know that most people don’t have that perception of the Bible, especially of the Old Testament, but it’s true. So as you’re reading, look for God’s love. It is there, no matter what you’re reading.

I believe that knowing, not just in our minds but with our very being, that God loves us makes an incredible difference in how we behave. We are much more responsive to someone we FEEL loved by, than to someone we think is distant and uninterested. God loves you intensely, dear reader. He is passionately in love with you.

What else can you do to seek God, besides reading His Word? Talk to Him. Ask Him questions, tell Him your thoughts. I sometimes do this in writing because it helps me from being distracted. Others prefer to do it out loud for the same reason. Some go for a walk so they’ll be alone while they talk to Him. Others have a special place in their home. The truth is that we can talk to Him any place and any time. We can talk to Him while on the bus, in the dentist’s chair, at work, at school, as we go to sleep, as we wake up, anywhere.

Listening to Him is a good thing to do too. God often speaks to us in nudges. Have you ever had a little thought come to mind and you begin to argue with it or dismiss it as silly or unimportant? Often, those little thoughts are from God. Listen to them! Ask God if it’s Him and then act on those nudges. And these nudges won’t be earth-shattering things. For me, they started out being things like, “Close the gate” as I went through it or “Lock the door” as I left the house—things I don’t like doing. But as I began to tune my ear to those nudges from God, the nudges began to be about other, more consequential things, like going to spend a few minutes with my husband when I didn’t feel like it. When we are faithful in listening in small things, God will begin to give us greater things to listen to and obey.

Spend time worshipping God. Turn on some Christian music (not essential but it does help) or go out to a favourite place in nature and simply sit, lie or stand there, soaking in God’s presence and then pouring out to Him (not necessarily audibly) how wonderful He is. If you have trouble doing this, start by thanking Him for things and after each statement of thanks, just savour the beauty of God doing or being that for which you’re thankful. Sing songs of praise to Him. Pour out all your adoration towards Him. This can radically change one’s thoughts, mind and attitude and is a good thing to do frequently throughout the day (as you get experienced in doing this, you’ll be able to put yourself, in your mind, at the places where you have experienced God).

Spend time with others who are committed to having their lives focused on God. When we surround ourselves with others who have the same quest, we find ourselves encouraged to continue and we can, in turn, encourage them. This is one reason why church is so important. If you’re not going regularly, begin to do so. If your church seems dead, find another where the people are alive to God in their lives.

As God begins to do good things in your life, no matter how small, tell someone else. This is what witnessing is. You don’t have to tell a stranger or even a non-Christian. Witnessing is speaking about what you have seen God do. God is even now doing things in your life and as you begin to share with others what He has and is doing, your faith will be strengthened. Also, write down the things God does for, in and through you. Such writing makes it possible for you to go back when you’re feeling discouraged and be reminded of what He’s done and how much He cares for you. Sometimes we think something that happened was just our imagination. If we wrote about it, we can look back and realize it really DID happen.

As you push towards God, He will begin to change your life. You will continue to struggle but the struggles will, over time, lessen and the ability to obey and follow Him will become easier and more joyful. When you’re aware that you’ve sinned again (and this happens to all of us), go back and repeat those steps I mentioned above and seek to return to the place you were with God before you sinned.

I hope you find this helpful.

With Jesus’ love,
Maggie

Day of Judgment

2005-12-18T21:57:00.000-06:00

I have a long term project of memorizing the Gospel of Matthew. I started many years ago and, over time, memorized the first 12 chapters but it’s been a few years since I have faithfully reviewed them and, memory being what it is at my age, I need to bring them back to memory before proceeding on to subsequent chapters. The past month or two, I’ve been working on chapters 11 and 12 (I’m going backwards) and circumstances today gave me a two-hour block of time to spend reciting the chapters repeatedly to get them soaked in my head. It was while doing this that a few things hit me.

Degrees of punishment

I’ve always thought that the consequences were the same for everyone who didn’t go to heaven—the fires of hell (what an icky thought)—but it seems (this might not be news to you) that not everyone receives the same punishment. In chapter 11, Jesus is condemning the towns in which He performed the bulk of His miracles because they did not repent and what does he do? He compares these three cities to cities from the Old Testament that received severe judgment, saying that it will be worse on the Day of Judgment for the cities of His day than for Tyre, Sidon and Sodom.

Obviously, not everyone will be receiving the same consequences for not turning to God before they die. I never realized this before. That helps me know what to say next time someone asks me, “My aunt/grandma/father was a good man but didn’t become a Christian. What will happen to him?” I’ve always known that God is a just God but now I can reassure others that no, their aunt/grandma/father will not suffer the same fate as Saddam Hussein and Adolf Hitler.

Capernaum worse than Sodom?

Many people treat homosexuality as the worst possible sin and cite Sodom as an example of how severely God views homosexuality but in Matthew 11 and 12, Jesus gives us two answers to that. First, in chapter 11, He says it will be better for those from Sodom on the Day of Judgment than for the Bible-believing, synagogue and temple-going religious folk of Capernaum who refused to repent when Jesus performed His miracles there. Say what? Can this be true? I wonder how He’d compare the self-righteous Christians of today to well-meaning but living-in-sin homosexuals who call themselves Christians? Who would He have his harshest words for?

In chapter 12, Jesus makes it very clear that all sins and blasphemy can be forgiven except one. That one unforgivable sin is not homosexuality or, indeed, any sexual sin but rather the sin of speaking against the Holy Spirit. How many people who call themselves Christian do that? Far too many. I grew up in a church that taught that speaking in tongues was of the devil. Interestingly, Jesus’ teaching about this unforgivable sin comes on the heels of the Pharisees accusing Jesus of using the power of Satan to drive out demons. This is what Jesus condemned most and said could not be forgiven. This is for what Jesus reserved His harshest words.

How do we evaluate sin? Do we use social norms to decide what’s worse than something else or do we use the Word of God?

We won’t stand alone on the Day of Judgment

Jesus condemned the cities in which most of His miracles took place because they did not repent and then, when (in chapter 12) some of the Pharisees asked for a miraculous sign, He threw up His hands in frustration and warned them that not only would they be standing before God on the Day of Judgment, but standing beside them to accuse them, would be the people of Nineveh who repented when Jonah preached to them and the Queen of Sheba who travelled from the ends of the earth to listen to the wisdom of Solomon.

I didn’t know anyone but Satan would be accusing us. It’s a fearsome thought. Who do you know who would have a just case against you in the court of heaven on that day? How many might join together with him or her?

But if it’s true that other people can stand with us on the Day of Judgment to condemn us, might not the reverse be true? Might it be that those who have reason to defend and commend us might also stand with us on the Day of Judgment and speak on our behalf? Who might those people be in your life? And which group would be bigger, those condemning or those commending?

Christmas Blogging

2005-12-11T14:50:00.000-06:00

My friend Francine has been writing a series of thoughts on Christmas which I've been enjoying. You might like them too. You can find her blog at "Words from the Heart".

Shadows

2005-12-03T13:32:00.000-06:00

I remember walking home from school in the middle of winter. It was already dark outside in our northern city and the street lamps cast interesting shadows of the trees, the houses and anything passing by, including my sister and me. Our shadows would change in shape and size as we moved from one pool of light to another and this change fascinated me.

There’s something about shadows. We can get an idea of what is casting the shadow. For instance, I could tell my shadow from my sister’s as we walked down the street or ran along the tops of the snow banks at the edge of the street, but how much could those shadows tell about the two little girls that made them? All they showed was our shape and that was distorted depending on our distance from the light. The shadows said little about our facial features, what we were wearing or what we were carrying and had nothing to say about hair colour, our state of emotion, our thoughts or our character. The shadows didn’t show the intricate stitchery of our mother’s handwork in sewing matching fake fur winter coats, nor the warm lining she put inside. The shadows didn’t show the loss we had inside from losing our father, the confusion I felt from the unkindness of kids my age or the pain of my sister from years of plastic surgery to repair an accidental burn on her face. Shadows show very little about the real.

As I was driving home from work last night, it hit me like a bolt of lightning. We live in a shadow. We can’t see reality, only the shadow of reality, as we move through the days that have been ordained to us. This is hinted at in several passages of the New Testament. Colossians 2:17, in referring to “matters of food and drink or of observing festivals, new moons, or sabbaths,” says, “These are only a shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.” (NLT) 1 Corinthians 13:12 says, “Now we see things imperfectly as in a poor mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity.” Shadows.

What we see, what we experience, what we know here on earth is merely a dim outline of what is yet to come. Think of it! Think of the deepest love you have ever had. It’s just a shadow of what’s yet to come. Think of the most delectable foods you’ve ever tasted. It can’t compare to the tastes of heaven. Think of the most exquisite sexual experience you’ve had. Our time with God will far surpass that pleasure. All the delights and pleasures that God has graciously given us to enjoy are merely shadows. All the delights and pleasures that Satan uses to lure us away from God are merely shadows.

So what am I living for? Am I chasing shadows, looking for meaning, joy and delight in them? Or am searching for substance and reality? Where do I find my meaning? Will I settle for the shadows because they are immediate or am I willing to wait for the Real?

Something’s Changed

2005-11-20T00:06:00.000-06:00

Continued from previous entry.

I didn’t notice the change right away. Life seemed to go on as usual, though the temptations and the battle had ended. But I kept thinking about the flow of the Holy Spirit. Somehow I’d never thought of things in those terms. No way do I want to block His flow in me. I want to stay filled and overflowing.

That same week I had started an online course called The Lord’s Table at www.settingcaptivesfree.com. It’s a free, 60-day, one-lesson-per-day course with a lesson each day. The premise is that we often overeat because we’re hungry for something other than food. I know I often eat when I’m in emotional pain or need comfort of some kind—in fact the same conditions that provoke me to masturbate are what also prompt me to overeat. Jesus said, “I am the bread of life,” and invites us to “eat” Him. The course focuses on the importance of filling up on Jesus instead of food, providing a great companion for me to the recognition that I want to keep the Holy Spirit flowing to and through me. It has helped to remind me of the importance of filling up with God which, of course, facilitates the flow of the Holy Spirit.

I’ve enjoyed things like simply lying in bed on a morning I don’t have to get up early, and soaking in God’s presence. Interestingly, this morning I was editing an essay for one of my sons. The topic was a comparison and contrast of Coleridge and Blake’s views of Christianity as seen through their poetry—an odd topic for someone who seems to have no interest in Christ.

He wrote, "Innocence plays a large role in Christianity in that the innocent, unknowing child is spotless of sin, and therefore instantly gains entrance to the kingdom of heaven; this is seen also in Blake's “A Cradle Song”, wherein the Christ Child's image is likened to the image of all newborns and shows that experience is what hardens the human soul."

That got me to thinking. If it is experience that hardens the human soul, and my experience and all I've read and been taught would substantiate this, then would not experience be what would soften it? The experience that hardens is the experience we have with sinful man and its wounding power. The experience that heals is the experience we have with holy God and His healing power.

God has given me some wonderful experiences with Him and it seems that this latest experience with Him—the repenting, renouncing, breaking and blessing—has caused a softening and healing in me I didn’t expect.

It began to show before I was aware of its existence—as people began to remark on the difference in me. I noticed it last Sunday when I went out to eat twice with friends and both times found myself eating only half of what I would normally eat and being completely satisfied. I noticed it when my husband got mad at me and refused to talk for several days and I didn’t fall apart. I’ve noticed it in the peace, confidence and joy that has sneaked into my life. And friends continue to remark on the change.

God is good.

Repenting, Renouncing, Breaking and Blessing

2005-11-19T23:08:00.000-06:00

Continued from previous entry.

God, I repent. I repent of masturbating and thinking it was okay; for giving into the lies that had me believing it was okay. I repent of thinking that since I’d masturbated once I could keep on doing it. I repent of liking my erotic dream and wanting it to continue—of not trying to get out of it. I repent of using food to comfort myself in my discombobulation. I repent for shutting you and your Spirit out in my righteous indignation over what happened at the conference. God, I don’t want to ever masturbate again. It opens too many doors to the enemy. I don’t want to shut You out, regardless of what happens. I want to believe only the truth and recognize the lies for what they are. I don’t want to enjoy sex with anyone but my husband—not even in dreams. God, I don’t want to use food for comfort or to fill my loneliness. I don’t want to use sex that way either.

I renounce the lie that I have believed—the lie that masturbation is okay if I don’t allow my thoughts to go to lust or fantasy. I renounce the desire to have sexual pleasure apart from my husband. I renounce the desire to give myself comfort through masturbation and I renounce the lie that masturbation will give me any comfort or help me feel better when I’m unhappy, lonely, out of sorts or any other negative feeling.

I break off all residue of my sin. I break off all connection to all I’ve renounced. I break off the spirit of Jezebel. I want nothing to do with you. I break off all lying spirits and all deceiving spirits. (Lord, what else should I break off?)

Father, thank you for Your forgiveness. I want to walk in the blessings of repentance. I choose to walk in Your ways. I love You.

To be continued.

Jezebel Spirit?

2005-11-19T23:01:00.000-06:00

Continued from previous entry.

I wanted to talk to someone about what had been happening, but who? The people who might have insight weren't available. I knew that somehow the door had been opened at the point of the troubling matter at the conference. But how? Why? I sat down and began to write everything down, trying to figure it all out. I couldn't. What I could do was confess to God and ask His forgiveness and His protection.

Finally, I got a chance to talk to a friend knowledgeable in these matters. She had a number of things to say but one, which she didn't have time to elaborate on, stuck with me. She mentioned the Jezebel spirit. I’ve heard of this before but never had anyone explain what it is so I went to do some research.

The idea of this spirit comes from Revelation 2:20. “I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess. By her teaching she misleads, seduces my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols.” That’s exactly what happened! I was seduced into sexual immorality! Seduced by lies I accepted as truth. I need to do more studying and I want to examine how/if this connects to what was taught at the conference but for now I'm just applying it to what happened to me personally and the choices I made.

The Jezebel spirit seduces. It comes "...to draw us away from God and His Truth, by seductive means! Seduction is subtle. It does not blatantly state, 'I come to draw you away.' It comes in disguise. It seems to be ok. It desires to convince one that it too is of God, and hence, can be trusted...."(1) That's what happened to me.

The research I did retold the story of Ahab, Jezebel and Naboth's vineyard. “Ahab, used to having his own way, (and this is the root of the entering in of this spirit) went home and pouted.”

…There is no place for this Jezebel spirit to work, when people only want what God wants! It is only when self-will enters the equation that "Jezebel" has a place! She used lies, intimidation, and people, to get Ahab his way! Truth played no part in what she did.

“She could have done nothing if Ahab had not allowed her to USURP his authority! He was in fact, KING. He could have stopped her, but closed his eyes to what she was doing, in order to have his own way!”(1)

This Jezebel spirit can’t do anything with me either if I don’t allow it to usurp my authority in Christ. I can stop it if I don’t close my eyes to what it is doing in order to have my own way.

Another site said, "It is a product of the flesh that opens the door to an evil spirit. It is behaviour that operates through a person to control by the use of manipulative, domineering and intimidating tactics. When it is in the church it is to disrupt the flow of the Spirit."(2)

The troubling matter at the conference and my resultant, critical attitude disrupted the flow of God's Spirit in me. Having cut off the flow of God's Spirit in me, I was open to attack with no protection.

The solution? “…the person must be willing to ruthlessly face truth and be willing to let God crucify his flesh. The flesh and its patterns must be subjected to the Holy Spirit daily in order for the person to be permanently set free…. A true explanation of Jezebel can clearly be described as the worship of self-will.”(2)

I had already confessed my sin to God so I asked my friend, the next time I was talking to her, what else I needed to do. Repent, Renounce, Break, Bless. I've done this process before for different things but this time I got an insight. When I renounce the lies I accepted and acted on, I'm saying I don't plan to ever pick them up again. I think I'm going to start an entry in my palmtop where I keep track of the things I renounce. It might be good to renounce them (or remind myself of having renounced them) on a frequent basis.

To be continued.

(1) Cunningham, Paul. “Exposing the Wicked Spirits of Korah and Jezebel.” http://www.revlu.com/Jez.html

(2) Ryden, Vassula. “Beware the Jezebel Spirit.” http://www.tlig.org/jezebel.html

Temptation Succumbed

2005-11-19T23:00:00.000-06:00

Continued from previous entry.

The following weekend I was out of town again, this time at a Christian conference. Something troubling happened at the Saturday night session that had me questioning the theology and, in fact, the entire spiritual legitimacy of the speaker and her team. Because of this, I had trouble entering into worship and found myself being critical of all that happened from then on. My mood was altered and I couldn’t shake the dis-ease I felt.

Somehow, and I didn't know how until later in the week, that opened a door that I was unable (or maybe unwilling) to close. The temptation I had successfully fought all the week before came again. Unlike the previous Saturday, none of my thoughts through the day had in any way invited it—at least in any way obvious to me at the time. But Satan fashioned a lie that said that since my thoughts hadn’t been where they shouldn’t be, I could successfully give in this time because I wouldn’t be tempted to let my thoughts go where they shouldn’t while I gave in. How’s that for twisted logic? I believed the lie and gave in to the temptation.

Of course it didn’t relieve the way I was feeling because of the troubling matter at the conference and I continued to be very discombobulated. I knew there was a connection between what had happened in the service and my giving in to temptation, but I couldn't figure it out. I remained that way all Sunday.

Monday morning I woke to an erotic dream. I never have erotic dreams. Never. This was the first. It was obvious the masturbation had opened a huge door. I was very distressed and didn't know what to do or how to get out of where I was. To compound the problem, I had really enjoyed the dream and couldn't get it off my mind. I wanted to go back there. What in the world was going on, I wondered? It was certainly something out of the ordinary and it bothered me. What had I opened myself to? I tried to resist the subsequent temptations but I seemed unable. I continued to be troubled and concerned.

If I had any doubts about being in a spiritual battle, they were all removed by the next morning. I had another dream. This one wasn't sexual at all but rather focused on Buddhist monks celebrating yoga. Interestingly, all night, before the dream, during and even after, I had been praying, "Lord, protect me!" It wasn't a very conscious thing I was doing. It was just there, all night. I don't think I got much sleep. In the dream I knew I was where I shouldn’t be and sought a way to escape. When I awoke I laughed at Satan. He had been successful with the previous night’s dream but this one didn’t come close to tempting me to anything. Nevertheless, it woke me up to the fact that I was facing something way bigger than I had realized.

To be continued.

Temptation Resisted

2005-11-19T17:37:00.000-06:00

Three weeks ago I was at an out-of-town wedding. I watched the lithe movements of the boyish photographer and found myself wondering if she was lesbian. The thought appealled to me and I watched her a lot. I watched the other women as well and found myself playing what I thought was an innocent “game” of evaluating each woman as to her desirability.

That night when I went to bed, the temptation to masturbate was huge. There are many who say that there’s nothing wrong with masturbation. Certainly the Bible makes no statement about it, at least not directly. So, I’ve always held to the idea that so long as one is not lusting or fantasizing while doing it, there’s nothing wrong with it. But I knew, given where my thoughts had been during the day and evening, that giving in to the temptation would open the door to places I dared not go. Though I wanted to be able to see past the lies Satan threw at me, I desperately wanted to believe them (if that makes sense). Finally the thought came to me that God can give me so much more than what I wanted to take for myself at that moment and that was enough. I was able to resist and go to sleep.

With no provocation on my part, the temptation came again the next night and the next. Each time the triggers were different and each time I thought I had a justified reason to ignore what God was telling me—or to pretend it wasn’t Him talking. Is God all I want? Is He all I need? I was beginning to realize that the “little errands” I had allowed my double-minded mind to run on behalf of my old nature had opened an enormous door that was resulting in unnecessary warfare. What I had thought was innocent was, in fact, potentially deadly. I must guard my thoughts much more tenaciously than I had realized.

On the fourth day of this nightly battle, still out of town, my host took me on a short trip to visit someone. This trip took us to the highway that leads to where my former lover lives. The road signs announcing the places near her pulled at me and at my thoughts. I miss her terribly. But I had learned something from the night of the wedding. I cannot allow my mind to dwell even on seemingly innocent thoughts if they have the potential to lead me to temptation and sin. And so I began to recite the passage I’m currently memorizing and the danger passed. But that night, again the temptation returned.

Interestingly, one of those nights of temptation, I was reading the book “Captivating” by John and Stacy Eldridge. The deal I made with God that night was that I would finish reading the chapter first and then maybe I would give in. Oh how foolishly our minds work! The chapter was about healing wounds and walked the reader through things like renouncing the lies our wounds tell us. Well, I couldn’t exactly renounce and then pick the lies right back up again, could I?

Thankfully, each night I resisted and after the fourth night the nightly battle ended.

To be continued.

You look so good!

2005-11-19T17:30:00.000-06:00

People have been remarking on the changes in me. The say things like my eyes have changed, my skin has changed, I look lighter, I seem more joyful and positive, I look good. At first I thought it was the make-up I’ve started wearing but even those online are making such comments and those in person insist that it is something deeper than make-up.

So what’s made the difference? Nothing has changed in my circumstances. My life is the same as it always is. And yet I feel different too. There is a change. What might it be? I will be tracing what I think what led to this in the next two or three posts.

Hardened and Softened

2005-11-19T13:03:00.000-06:00

This morning I was editing my second son's essay comparing Coleridge and Blake and their spiritual views (an interesting essay by a son who wants nothing to do with Christianity). He wrote, "Innocence plays a large role in Christianity in that the innocent, unknowing child is spotless of sin, and therefore instantly gains entrance to the kingdom of heaven; this is seen also in Blake's 'A Cradle Song', wherein the Christ Child's image is likened to the image of all newborns and shows that experience is what hardens the human soul."

That got me thinking. If it is experience that hardens the human soul, and my experience and all I've read and been taught would substantiate this, then would not experience be what would soften it? The experience that hardens is the experience we have with sinful man and his wounding power. The experience that heals is the experience we have with holy God and His healing power. It isn't knowledge that wounds or heals. It isn't doctrine or dogma either. It is only when we have an encounter with the living God and He impacts our lives in a real and experiential way that we begin to soften towards Him.

Fear

2005-11-12T19:51:00.000-06:00

Fear

I'm catching up in my mail and found a note from someone who anonymously commented on my blog entry "Inadequacy and Fear". She wrote, "this is just the exact feelings i am going thru and i also do not know hot to face my fears . i feel so inadequate and i am sure i must be o/w why would i feel it but how do i face them ?? its really feels like a mess !!"

I've been giving some thought to fear, especially since I just finished reading Michael Crichton's novel, "State of Fear". Evans, a lawyer who's one of the main characters in the story, is given the job of talking to and calming down Professor Norman Hoffman who threatens to disrupt an important conference. Hoffman studies "the ecology of thought...and how it has led to a State of Fear." Because this is the crux of the book, the reader is treated to many of Hoffman's thoughts and ideas as he tells them to Evans.

He suggests (and Crichton has an impressive 33-page annotated bibliography at the end of the novel) that social control is best managed through fear. He makes a good case for how heavy-weight organizations promote "fear in the population--under the guise of promoting safety." "Industrialized nations provide their citizens with unprecedented safety, health, and comfort. Average life spans increased fifty percent in the last century. Yet modern people live in abject fear. They are afraid of strangers, of disease, of crime, of the environment. They are afraid of the homes they live in, the food they eat, the technology that surrounds them. They are in a particular panic over things they can't even see--germs, chemicals, additives, pollutants. They are timid, nervous, fretful, and depressed." He asks the question, "How has this world view been instilled in everyone?" And we see the answer above--fear is used to control people nation-wide and around the world.

Interestingly, Crichton (through Hoffman's voice) twists a popular saying amongst Christians to "What Would Jesus Drive?" complaining that the religious leaders do not speak out against the fear-mongering that occurs "As if they have forgotten that what Jesus would drive is the false prophets and fearmongers out of the temple."

The Bible says, "There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love." (1 John 4:18, NIV) As I was reading the conversation between Evans and Hoffman, I was struck by how fear is a tool that Satan uses to keep US under his control. I've heard it said that the only weapon Satan has against us is deceitfulness. If he can get us to believe the lie that something is worth being afraid of, then he can control how we behave.

The only way we can face our fears is by asking God to show us the truth and then choosing to believe what he shows us despite how tangible and real the lie of our fears seems to be. The truth is that we ARE inadequate. That's why we need Jesus. Without Him we are a mess. But for those who are in Christ Jesus, there is no condemnation for that weakness. In fact, we're told that Christ's power is made perfect in our weaknesses. We can rejoice in being weak, as bizarre as that seems.

I know that some of my biggest fears are connected to rejection. The fear of rejection often reduces me to tears. I've been shown this past week in another area of my life just how vulnerable I am to Satan's lies. They are so subtle and believable! And yet, from this other experience (which I will write about in another entry), I'm realizing just how important it is to keep connected to Jesus through His Holy Spirit so that I can hear the truths He's trying to tell me to counteract the lies. This is what I want more than anything else--to have God's Spirit flowing through me at all times and to have nothing blocking Him and His voice but to hear all He chooses to tell me and to believe and obey it.

Dear Father, I don't want to believe the lies that tie me to fear. You are Love and perfect love drives out fear. Please drive out all fear from me. Jesus, block my ears from the lies but keep them open to hear all Your truths for You are Truth. Holy Spirit, fill me and flow through me. Be my Source of confidence and comfort. I want only you, God.

A Holy God and Sex

2005-10-22T00:33:00.000-05:00

This and the previous post are rambling thoughts and questions I had during worship the first night of the conference.

I'm not sure HOW I got thinking on this subject this particular time but it's one that I ponder a fair bit. (After writing a fair bit...) Oh yes! I know why! We were worshipping God as a group at camp. It was the first evening and the Holy Spirit came down amongst us in a powerful way. I felt Jesus nuzzling up to me like He has in the past and was filled with an incredible feeling. It helped me understand why, in pagan religions, worship of the gods is connected with the erotic (though what I was experiencing was not erotic). Those who don't worship our Creator can't conceive of ecstasy greater than sexual expression and so they equate the two. One becomes a counterfeit for the other.

I've often wondered why marriage and fidelity in marriage is so important to God. I think I have a small clue.

God is holy. Holy means apart, separate, different from others like it. In the tabernacle of the Old Testament, the pots, pans, hooks, forks, candles, bread, etc. were holy. They couldn't be mixed with regular pots, pans, hooks, forks, candles, bread, etc. They could ONLY be used in the tabernacle for the worship of God. A priest couldn't borrow one of the pots so his wife could cook for the big party she was hosting, for example. God is holy. What does this mean?

It means that in a world full of many gods, He was separate, different. (He still is, for that matter.) The pagan nations used sex as a way to worship and celebrate their gods but Yahweh was and is above this. He says he is a jealous God. He is a jealous Lover. Unlike the other gods, He will not share the ecstasy of being with Him with others. Having sex with others in celebration of God and/or worshipping other gods would minimize that ecstasy and His uniqueness.

The marriage covenant represents the holiness of God. It shows God's uniqueness. The ecstasy is not to be shared. It is for one only. None other but God is holy. He is separate and not part of a group. Same with our spouses. They are separate, apart from all others. In this regard, marriage and the importance of fidelity in marriage is meant to mirror our relationship with God. Just as we are to worship God and God alone, to have no other gods before Him and to keep that relationship pure and unique from all other relationships, so it is with our marriages.

Gifts from God

2005-10-22T00:32:00.000-05:00

This and the next post are rambling thoughts and questions that came to me during worship time our first evening at the conference.

We were singing "Father of Lights" by John Barnett. The chorus repeats the line, "Every good and perfect gift comes from You." Does that mean that God gives ONLY good and perfect gifts? Is my husband a good and perfect gift even though it doesn't seem that way? What IS a good and perfect gift? What makes it good and perfect?

Prophetic Intercession Conference

2005-10-21T23:09:00.000-05:00

I've been meaning to write about last weekend but life keeps happening and snatching my time and energy from me.

The weather was wonderful. I was a bit nervous as we started getting closer to our destination because of SNOW in the ditches and other places. There were just patches here and there but snow doesn't stay unless it's cold enough to keep it from melting. Well, it was a bit chilly but not so bad that I needed more than my sweater and of course we were indoors except when walking from the lodge (where we ate and slept) to the meeting place and back. The sun shone brightly the entire time and it really was a beautiful weekend.

There were no major catastrophes between my husband and me. On the way to the camp he asked me more about what I had said to him earlier in the week (see paragraphs 4 and 5 of Vertigo of Mind and Spirit). I seem to have really struck a chord with that. That can only be the hand of God.

The weekend itself was good. It was good to reconnect with people I’ve gotten to know over the summer—-both camp regulars and those on the teaching team. Of the four teaching times I was there (2 weeks and 2 weekends), Darlene Smith taught all but one with her accompanying teams.

Every time I encounter her and her teams (a different group each time but with overlap of members) I am more and more impressed. She is NOT a person caught up in religiosity. She’s really quite humourous and likes to poke fun in a way that keeps people on their toes and in laughter. She definitely doesn’t take herself too seriously--nor the outer trappings of Christianity. I like that. While there were team members with her this time whom I didn’t know, there were also some from her previous visits who I was so glad to connect with again.

The teaching was about prophetic intercession. There was some really good stuff and some stuff that was really quite weird (which Darlene freely admitted was weird). I hope to share some of what I learned in subsequent posts.

Am I Okay?

2005-10-19T02:25:00.000-05:00

“No, I’m sorry. You’re not allowed to give your thoughts on this.”

As I heard those words, tears started to fill my eyes, threatening to spill over.

“What’s happening, Maggie? What’s going on? What are you thinking?”

What WAS I thinking? All I knew was that, once again, I was hurting. Once again I was a “bad girl”. I hadn’t done things right. Once again I was rejected.

“What would you LIKE to hear?”

In the smallest of whispers, I answered, “You’re okay.”

As I’ve thought about this, I realize that this is at the bottom of my deepest pain. It is written on every shard of my brokenness. It is the essence of all that stinks in my life. I want to be accepted, wanted, valued. I want to be okay.

I don’t feel like I am. I wasn’t okay as a little kid. I was too squirmy as a preschooler for my grandfather, misbehaved too much for my dad, irritated my mom too much, wasn’t cool enough for my classmates, asked my teachers too many questions. As an adult, I haven’t been okay for my husband. I’m too fat, too lazy, too unimportant. I haven’t been okay for the friends who have cast me aside. Those who treat me like I am okay will eventually change their minds. Is my measure of value determined by parents, husband, friends and other assorted people? Can they be trusted? Am I too dependent on what people think, do, behave towards me?

“God is all you need.”

Oh? If that’s so, why do I feel the need for more? God said, “It’s not good for man to be alone,” and created someone to take away that aloneness. We were created for each other. Why? If God is all we need, why was Adam lacking something when he had God right there with him in tangible form?

Who defines if I’m okay? Me? Most days of late I hate myself. Others? The news is dismal there as well. God?

“Can a mother forget her nursing child? Can she feel no love for a child she has borne? But even if that were possible, I would not forget you!” Isaiah 49:15

“How precious are your thoughts about me, O God! They are innumerable! I can't even count them; they outnumber the grains of sand! And when I wake up in the morning, you are still with me!” Psalm 139: 17, 18

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16

Is what God says enough? He says He loves me, He thinks (good things) about me all the time and He won’t ever forget me. Can I believe what He says?

I’ve not just read what He says; I’ve also experienced His love. He has crouched down before me and enveloped the child me in His arms. He has picked me up and carried me amongst my taunting schoolmates. He has placed His cross between me and those who abused me. He has held me on His lap, pressing my face close to His chest. He has rocked me as an infant in His arms. He has come up behind me, put his arms around me and nuzzled my neck like a persistent Lover. He has shown me the glory and protection of His angels.

God’s given me more than words. He’s shown His love, His care, His steadfast refusal to walk away from me even when I treat Him like dirt. I haven’t yet met a person like Him—not someone so tenacious in pursuing me regardless of what I’m like. If any one, single person treated me like that, I’d think I was A-okay. Do I value what people say and do more than God?

Lord, forgive me for putting You in second place or worse. Forgive me for not believing what You say about me; for not believing how much You value me. Forgive me, please, for devaluing Your creation (me) and hating it. Forgive me for giving more weight and value to people than to You. Please help me to see me the way You do. Keep my eyes and ears blind to the lies and open to the truth. You are the Way, the Truth and the Life—not husband, friends, parents or anyone else. Help me to keep my eyes on You. Help me to know how much You value me.

Censorship Removed

2005-10-12T16:10:00.000-05:00

What I posted in my previous blog entry is an edited version of what I first wrote. I sent the original to my censor and was told he wanted to talk to me personally about it. I had already made an appointment to see him today about getting some counselling and so now both would be discussed at that meeting. I felt like I was off to the lion's den to discuss with the hungry lion what should be served for dinner.

That feeling was not helped by the e-mail I received just before leaving in which a very respected friend and spiritual mentor urged me to "get away from those ... people as fast and as far as I could." She's not the first person to give that advice. Is she right? What does God want? I prayed fervently that God would make it clear to me one way or another whether to follow her advice or not. As I drove, I had the sense that what happened at this meeting would be pivotal.

First we discussed counselling--why I need counselling, how often it would take place, etc. I was antsy at this. What was the point in making these decisions if, after we discussed what I wrote, I felt led to end all association with him and his organization? Discussing what I wrote wasn't easy either. I was angry and resentful and couldn't seem to get past that. He was trying to explain that my perception of his censorship wasn't accurate. He wasn't silencing me. I wasn't muzzled. Then why has it felt that way?

In frustration I made a suggestion. I've agreed to not talk about the organization, its teachings and what happens in class but, outside of that, if the rest of the restrictions are merely meant to teach me about boundaries and not a muzzling of my voice, then could I maybe write what I want when I want, trying to keep in mind the things he's teaching me about what's acceptable and what's not, and submit what I've written AFTER the fact for his feedback. I was sure he'd refuse but to my amazement, he agreed. He laughed and said he didn't want to control me. He didn't want me or anyone else under his thumb. Whew!

This was the sign I had asked for; the indication from God that I should continue with this man and his organization. I do want to learn how to communicate in ethical ways that don't cross the boundaries of others. I don't want to be offensive in the way I speak or write. I want my writing to be respectful, even of my husband. I am willing to learn how to do this. What I'm not willing to do is be put in a box with a rag stuffed in my mouth and the lid closed down on me. I believe that now that I've been "allowed" out of the box (was it only my perceptions that had me there?) I can once again communicate the way I have in the past with one difference--I'm learning how to do it better.

Vertigo of Mind and Spirit

2005-10-12T16:05:00.000-05:00

As I rolled over and opened my eyes this morning, the wall refused to stand still. Instead, multiple copies rotated slowly through my unfocused eyes; motion-induced vertigo making the solidity of the wall seem fluid. I know the wall is solid and that it stands still and yet, my eyes told me differently. My world is out of kilter in another way though it's not my eyes that deceive me but the thoughts in my head that set my emotions spinning and my objectivity reeling.

Two months ago, my world seemed in order. The issues I've struggled with, while not gone, were under control. I was becoming equipped to help others and even my marriage was on the road to restoration. God has done mighty things in my life and this summer was a time to rejoice and share the good news. But I've felt silenced and told that I'm much messier than I thought and thus not fit to help others in the way I had hoped.

I've been reading about shame and silence. We all live with a level of shame. It became part of our being when Adam and Eve found need to cover themselves with fig leaves. Some of us carry more shame than others because of environment, experiences and choices and, like Adam and Even, in our shame we hide.

One way to hide is to let others see only our good side. "We present an image of ourselves to others that is more capable, more emotionally healthy and more morally upright than we really are ... projecting a good but false self." (Andrew Comiskey in Strength in Weakness, pp 81, 82.) The problem with the good, false self is that it requires increasing amounts of energy to maintain the facade. One must work longer hours, visit more sick, join more committees, read more books and smile more against the crumbling interior until the effort needed to keep the false image propped up takes more than one has. Against one's will, the bad self bursts forth unexpectedly and our shame increases.

I wanted to help my husband see some areas of his brokenness. The first step to solving a problem is admitting the problem exists. We can't work towards wholeness until we acknowledge that we're broken. But how can we acknowledge and admit if we can't see? Sometimes we need someone to show us.

I waited several days until I felt that gentle nudging of the Holy Spirit saying, "Now is the time." I found myself overcome with compassion for my husband and began to explain what I was seeing. To my amazement, he saw the truth of what I was saying and agreed. It was a miracle and another step towards healing in our marriage.

I used to live with the facade of the good, false self. I was a people pleaser (I'm still working on this); the “perfect” daughter, the “perfect” homemaker, the “perfect” mother, the “perfect” Christian. I hid, even from myself, the messiness of my life until one day my shame burst to the surface and I could no longer hide. Shame "cowers under the threat of exposure" (ibid. p. 83) but that day I removed the threat by making the exposure myself and discovered the truth that "until one can freely admit one's needs, weaknesses and failures, one cannot experience the grace to be a whole human being." (p.83)

The grace extended to me upon my self-exposure was so astounding I knew I could never hide again. Secrecy, hiding the truth of who we are, is a poison that not only destroys us personally but damages our relationships and, ultimately, the very fabric of society. We are a society that prefers to hide things in secrecy. The Christian community is no different. Those who present the good, false self are encouraged to do so more. We don't want the ugly secrets of ourselves or others exposed. We don't want to face sins such as alcoholism, homosexuality and abuse in our congregations, our homes, our neighbourhoods.

I had a discussion with a favourite pastor of mine about this one time. I had some time previously told him of my struggle with same-sex attraction and was excited about all the victories God was giving me in my life. I wanted to share what God was doing but it wouldn't make sense without talking about what God was giving me victory in. The pastor was very uncomfortable about me revealing my struggles to others. They couldn't handle it, he said. He did acknowledge that this was a preference on his part, that not all would agree with him and told me about the vision of a man we both knew personally.

Dr. John White (author of many books including "Eros Defiled") was both a psychiatrist and pastor. His idea of a healthy church community was a place where a person could find it safe to stand up on a Sunday morning and confess, "I'm gay" and people in the congregation, while not accepting the sin, would accept the person and love her. My pastor disagreed strongly with this idea and yet Dr. White, the psychiatrist, saw this as ideal. His "motto" was, "Stand up and let it all hang out because it will bless you and us all." From my experience, Dr. White's modus operandi makes much more sense to me. I have noticed that when I have done what he suggests, both I and others HAVE been blessed.

Yet there are many, like my former pastor, who, for whatever reason, feel very uncomfortable with a "let it all hang out" philosophy. They would suggest that it's an indication of poor boundary formation, a sign of unhealed brokenness. Is it? Or is the discomfort an unwitting product of a culture that is unwilling to face the shame of endemic brokenness in our society? Those who teach that we must uncover our shame in order to be healed have questioned my openness. I have felt my voice muzzled and my speech restricted.

This kept me from sharing the joy of another step taken closer to marital healing as described above. It kept me from describing the pain and confusion resulting from a subsequent encounter with my husband. I left that encounter confused and wondering if I was insane. Are my realities true? Am I so out of kilter that I think black is white and white is black? What is the truth? What is real? How do I know? I try very hard to be objective. I know a person can be self-deceptive and so I don't automatically dismiss the negative things others say to me about myself. Maybe they're right. But how can one be sure? If he says black and I say white, who's right? Normally I would present my confusion to my internet community and they would help me find the truth but I felt restricted from doing so.

I went to my prayer room and poured out my confusion and anger to God. I didn't feel any better. "Give your pain to God," people say but what does that do? If someone beats me up, I can talk to God about the pain all I want but it doesn't make the pain go away. My pain was excruciating. My confusion was overwhelming. My world was spinning as though vertigo had entered my thoughts and my emotions. A phrase came to me--emotional abuse.

Could that be what was happening in my marriage? I had thought the abuse had ended. Maybe it hadn't. I did a google search on the subject, answered questions, read symptoms and discovered that the confusion, disorientation and questioning of sanity and reality I was experiencing are all results of emotional abuse. What do I do? My primary support is an internet community but I've been limited to what I can say. I felt lost and cut adrift.

Church didn't help much. We are masterpieces, the pastor declared. Hrmph! Not me. I felt like a piece of tossed garbage. He said that my identity is not defined by what I went through last week but by God and God alone but if that's true (and I do believe it is), then why do the statements of others have such power? "You're not healed enough." "Your boundaries are out of whack." "You can't be trusted." "You're lazy." "It's all your fault." "You're no good." "The efforts you make are useless." "You don't do enough."

During previous sermons, the pastor examined the brushstrokes of Worship and Love. This week, the brushstroke was Family. We weren't created to be islands; we're called to belong. Belong? Where do I belong? If we weren't meant to be islands, why do I feel so isolated and alone?

Family provides security, unconditional love, a safe place to be ourselves with no strings attached, able to make mistakes and still learn. It provides support, a safe place to get help and comfort, a place to give and receive, a place to have an arm around you. It provides relationship, interaction, laughing and crying. It provides encouragement, a place where we build each other up, energize each other, help each other fulfill our dreams. It provides challenges, where we challenge one another to accomplish things and become better than we are.

I know the pastor was talking about church family but all I could think of was how my family, my marriage (to be more precise), provides none of these--except the crying and that's all I could do through the entire service. We're called to belong but where do I belong? My church family reached out to me with love, compassion, hugs and prayers but, like a Styrofoam cup poked through with holes that drains all the water poured into it, I couldn't seem to hold the love poured into me. It passed in and out and left me as empty as before.

I went home and poured out my pain and anger to a friend. I'm told that all relationships are secondary to one's marriage. What if my marriage is the worst relationship I have? Does that consign me to no significant relationships? It seems like everyone wants their turn at fixing my marriage and if I don't have a good marriage, I'm not worthy of anything. Sometimes it seems like I'd be more respected if I was divorced. Why is it so much easier to believe the negative things I'm told about myself than the good? Maybe it's not my husband who's messed up but me. Maybe it's me who's made the marriage a lousy place to be. Maybe my expectations and wants are so out of line that I don't know what's real, what's good, what's proper, what's healthy. My husband thinks he's right. We can't both be right. Everyone thinks he's Mr. Wonderful. Maybe I'm out of whack. I don't know what's up and what's down. I'm angry at life. I'm angry with the pain. I'm angry with my censors. I'm angry at God. I'm angry with the idea of marriage. How does one not hurt when one is mistreated, blamed, attacked and put down? MJ says to stop believing all the lies Satan tells me but sometimes it's hard to know what is truth and what is lie. My whole reality is shaken up. I don't know what is real about me.

My friend listened to all these statements and questions, made comments, answered questions and finally said, "There may be some areas where you aren't seeing everything quite clearly. Gosh, Maggie, no one could do that except God and we none have the mind of God but you know basically where the problem is and where the breakdown is because you've taken years to think about it, research it, study it, try to correct it, pray over it. Come on, Maggie! You have spent a good deal of your adult life trying to make this okay. You are NOT deceiving yourself. God would have put you on your ear long ago if you had been because for a good part of this time you have been trying to serve Him and when you were not, you knew it. You knew when you were out of His will and you knew you had to come back. And you did.

"Maggie, He is a loving God. He would not let one of His children wander around totally lost when they were trying to stay under His protective wings. He just wouldn't. You have been trying to serve Him to the best of your ability, trying to find the answers to life and love and marriage and relationships; trying to become what you feel He wants you to become. You have been giving it your all. That doesn't mean you've never made mistakes during all this searching but you've been doing your best and backtracking when you've realized those mistakes and repenting and making it right with Him again. That's what we do! That's what we're supposed to do! He isn't asking for perfection; just that we are always striving to be our best and you have been. No way would he allow you to pursue something that wasn't His will when you were asking Him to lead you to His will, Maggie."

"No way would he allow you to pursue something that wasn't His will when you were asking Him to lead you to His will." That's TRUE! When I ask for clarity, God won't give me confusion. He won't let me wander around lost when I'm trying to stay under His protective wings. A heavy weight fell off me. The fog parted, the room stopped spinning. Here was the truth. Here was my answer. "For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace...." (1 Corinthians 14:33 KJV)

God, please give me clarity, peace and a sound mind. When my world is spinning out of control, help me know that my reality is the solidity of a God who doesn't change, of a Rock I can cling to that will not move.

Anger and Right Choices

2005-10-05T18:34:00.000-05:00

I left the meeting very angry. My first thought was to find someplace to stuff my face. I took a different route home so I could go to a favourite burger house. But I've been having digestive problems and burgers and fries would just make them worse. As I was driving, the thought came to me to just speed down street and crash into something and end it all. But I can't do that. I've given up considering suicide as an option. Besides, it wouldn't work. I was reminded of the cross-in-a-heart I draw over my heart and the words I often use to remind myself, "Jesus died so I can live." The connection between my wanting to die and wanting to overeat wasn't lost on me.

I passed a drug store and turned in. I could fill up on less greasy junk food there! But as I pulled into the parking lot, I was reminded of what came to me a couple weeks ago, "Nothing will take away the pain." I sat in the parking lot, thinking and deciding. With a heavy sigh, I turned around and drove home in a way that wouldn't take me past the burger joint and argued all the way home about what I'd do once I got there. Death won't solve anything. Overeating won't solve anything. Sitting at the computer and chatting or writing won't solve anything either.

So I went down to my prayer room and just sat and prayed. I didn't feel remarkably different when I finally left, but I'm pleased that given the temptations, I made a series of good decisions and chose what was right. I may be in danger of sliding into deep depression again, but if I can keep on making decisions like I made that evening, the worst of it will be diverted.

A Foot in the Neighbourhood

2005-10-05T12:54:00.000-05:00

Tuesday after work is my chosen day to spend time in my church's new neighbourhood. Deciding which establishment to make my "regular" place (so that I might, after a period of time, come to know others who frequent the restaurant) was a tricky thing. It needed to provide both food and drink and couldn't be too expensive. I think I've found the perfect "home" where hot chocolate and steamed, flavoured milk is served in large bowls for a decent price.

At 4:30, the café that at 10:00 will be crowded with a 100 guests, seemed a barren, empty room. Rock, much harder than my tastes, blared over red-enameled chairs sitting on a black and white checkered floor. Two large glass cases displayed several dozen tortes, cheesecakes, pies and other rich delicacies. I sat far enough away that, with my glasses off, the desserts were blurry blobs that hopefully wouldn't tempt me to partake. I ordered linguine with feta cheese, diced tomatoes and calamati olives. At the side was a generous hunk of garlic bread. A toddler with her doting parents, kept me entertained as she repeatedly escaped their table to come visit mine and the near-by wall of window. I think I'm going to like this place.

Nomadic Churching

2005-10-02T20:36:00.000-05:00

Last week, church was held in an unused wing of an exclusive, members-only, white cloth-covered tables, be-careful-you-don’t-damage-anything, we-have-to-maintain-the-status-quo club that huddles, misplaced, on the edge of the let’s-do-everything-to-buck-the-status-quo-and-flaunt-our-sinfulness-in-trendy-style neighbourhood we want to connect with. The security at the entrance wouldn’t have welcomed the guests we hope to attract, even had such guests gained the courage to go near the doors, so it was good the club decided we were unwelcome tenants.

This week, we gathered in the basement of a Legion Hall. We worshipped God with professional dartboards before us and a large bingo board to our left. Under the bingo board were stacks of skeletal chairs denuded of seats and backs and under our feet were well-worn asphalt tiles likely glued in place before many of the regular inhabitants—beer-guzzling, dart-throwing, aging veterans and their companions—were born. The acoustic ceiling tiles sagged as though weary of holding the light fixtures, the walls were covered with cheap panelling and the children’s ministry area was separated from the adults by a sheet hung from the rafters.

Last week, everything seemed too formal, rigid and “churchy”. Today, church felt more casual and home-like. I liked it. We even had guests! One was an older woman the pastor had encountered in “the village” and had invited to attend. Complete with walker, she had somehow managed to negotiate the basement stairs. Another was a middle-aged couple who, on the strength of celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary last month, won a duffle bag with Christian CDs and books inside. Last week two other visitors each won such a bag by sitting on chairs that had red tags on their undersides.

This week, I won a book by knowing two of the several pieces of art used to introduce the sermon, “Creation” by Michelangelo and “The Scream” by Edvard Munch. We’re studying Ephesians 2:10, “For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

Last week, we looked at the brushstroke of Worship. Worship is not something you do but is who you are. It’s not something you listen to but a state of being in your heart. It’s something we give, not receive. It isn’t easy; it comes out of sacrifice. It’s not self-control but God-centred. It’s not something to feel but Someone to experience. I would argue that worship is coming to God even when one is feeling the way I did yesterday (see previous blog entry). Worship happens not just when we’re full of joy. It is an offering of ourselves even when we’re ugly and dirty.

This week, the brushstroke we examined is that of Love. Jesus’ interaction with others was personal, relational, confrontational, intellectual and intentional. We were invited to participate in the sermon by giving examples of times we’ve interacted in love in one of these ways. It occurred to me that one intentional way I can begin to interact with people of “the village” is by spending my Tuesdays between work and an evening class at one of its coffee shops, pubs or restaurants.

This week, we were also challenged by one of our group who has recently returned from two months in Africa ministering to AIDS orphans who, without adults in their shanty homes built of garbage and no beds but the dirt floor, have no means of gaining an education in a place where schools cost money. She wants to return and help them develop the means to raise the money they need; she wants to give them an education. And so our tiny church with fewer than 30 in attendance, including children and guests, is looking for ways to help the disenfranchised both in our city and on the other side of the world.

This week, we met where the feet of veterans, which have touched the soil of many lands, now shuffle below the soil of this land. One of our group gathered a handful of that dirt and passed it around for all of us to take a portion. This is our territory. This dirt is what we were before God redeemed us. I will be putting my bit of dirt in my prayer room as a reminder to pray for those in “the village” who are in need of this same redemption.

Next week, we don’t know where we’ll be. Perhaps we’ll return to the Legion. Maybe the building we’ve been negotiating for will come available. There’s no doubt, however, that we will continue to stand on the territory God is giving us. There we will worship God and love the dirty.

It Doesn't FEEL Well

2005-10-01T12:14:00.000-05:00

I went to my prayer room this morning to pray.

I opened my alabastor box and anointed myself with spikenard. "God, sometimes I don't want to be devoted to You. I don't want to listen to you or do your will."

I put my hand on the coins. "Sometimes I'm not grateful for Your provision."

I picked up the framed, stamp-sized photo of the Aurora Borealis. "Sometimes You seem so far away and I don't want to give you any reason to rejoice over me."

I put my hand on the Book of Common Prayer. "Sometimes it feels like prayer is meaningless."

I touched the bulldozer with the "boulders" in front of it. "Sometimes the boulders are overwhelming, God, and there's no way to remove them."

I handled the spike. "What was the point of taking my sins?"

I looked at the inkwell with the quill. "God, even my voice has been taken from me."

I knelt before the candle. "You want me to be a light to the world but all I see is a dark cloud."

I looked at the salt cellar. "And all I provide is a bad taste in people's mouths."

I picked up the crown of thorns. "My whole being seems wrapped up in thorns, God."

I sat in my rocker where I could view the symbols of God's work in my life, feeling nothing good or redemptive, and I sang:

When peace like a river attendeth my way
When sorrows like sea billows roll.
Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,
'It is well, it is well with my soul.'

Bending or Upright?

2005-09-25T23:53:00.000-05:00

We've known each other for over two years but had met in person for the first time just the day before. In the course of our visit, we'd spent time in worship before God, talked through a lot of things and found no disappointments in our expectations of the other. The joy I was feeling was intense. What does one do with exuberant happiness that bubbles over and refuses to be confined? I wanted to focus it all on my friend. After all, if it hadn't been for her, I'd be back home in the pit of despair dug during the preceding weeks and made seemingly impossibly deep two days earlier.

I perceived her as the reason I was so happy and was ready to let her consume all my thoughts when suddenly a thought came to me--a thought I'm sure was from the Holy Spirit. "Stop bending towards her. Your joy doesn't come from her, it comes from God!" I realized that, rather than spilling my joy out in inappropriate affection, longings or other behaviours, I must direct my joy back to God, the source of my joy. This was an opportunity to worship God. Amazingly, it was very easy to switch directions; like flipping a light switch. As I directed my joy towards God, I found the joy increasing. I could hardly contain it.

That evening as I opened my Bible, the next chapter in my reading plan was Psalm 43. The first three verses seemed so out of sync to where I was, I had trouble focusing. I stopped to journal what God had shown me earlier in the day, writing "God is the source of my joy". When I returned to the psalm, I was struck by verse 4 which, in the NLT, reads, "...God--the source of all my joy." My jaw dropped. I couldn't believe my eyes; not because I was surprised the Bible said this but because of the timing. It was confirmation of what I had learned and discovered. No one is the cause of my joy. God is.

That got me to thinking. If no one is the cause of my joy, then is anyone the cause of my emotional pain and hurt? If I shouldn't bend towards the perceived source of my joy, should I bend towards the perceived source of my pain? If I shouldn't let joy be an excuse to consume someone with my thoughts, should I allow pain to be such a reason? Should I not stand upright towards God in both joy and pain and use both as a reason to focus on Him? Now that I've experienced how to stand upright in the joy, maybe I can transfer that to doing the same when I'm tempted to take offense at something someone says or does. I may still feel the offense and pain, just as I continued to feel the joy, but I want to use it as an opportunity to be overwhelmed with God, rather than with the offender and the offense.