Me is a small part of Messiah

“Jesus calls us to his rest, and meekness is His method. The meek man cares not at all who is greater than he, for he has long ago decided that the esteem of the world is not worth the effort.”
― A.W. Tozer, Pursuit of God 
 

          One of my favorite things to do in my time with God, is listen.  I'm not talking about throwing out to Him all my concerns and waiting for Him to explain Himself.  What I am talking about is sitting quiet with Him and giving Him the floor.  Maybe I will start with "Good Morning, Jesus" but that is it.  Often times, after a few seconds He will ask a question or make a statement that is so far from anything I have been thinking about, that I have no doubt it is Him.  Sometimes He talks about me.  Sometimes He talks about Him.  Sometimes He talks about others, usually my relationship with them.  And other times He talks about life, the Church or the world in general.  More often than not lately His words are about listening to others.  It's not about my ability to listen, but more about what people are talking about.  Most of them are talking about the same thing whether they are believers, non-believers, young, old, whatever, their subject is always about them. 
     A couple years ago I began following a retired pastor on FB, "Jim".  Every day he poured out wisdom from his morning time with Jesus, or a lifetime with God, I am not sure where he got all of his wisdom and revelation.  In July of 2015 I got brave enough and asked him to be friends.  Not that I felt worthy, but because I didn't want to miss a thing he had to say.  Then he figured out how to make and post videos and that made him a real person, not just amazing words on a page.  He was and is so humble.  He talked mostly about what he was realizing about who God is, mistaken beliefs he had over the years.  It was refreshing.
     One day "Jim" dropped a bomb shell.  He was living in New York, but was going to be moving to Florida to live with his daughter.  Of all the months I had followed him, not once had I read anything about him having cancer.   And now it was serious enough that he wasn't able to take care of himself.  I cried.  I have never met this man, but he was such a humble mentor.  He did not need my pat on the back or my silly little compliments, all he needs is the Father and I was thankful he allowed us to see into their relationship.  There was a time his daughter got on line and posted for him and I thought it was the end, but he bounced back and I was selfishly happy for the additional time I had to watch, read, and follow him, instead of "Jim" joining Jesus. 
     The Lord led me to Jim.  He is a good example of the humility God wants in us.  But when you find someone like Jim, others start to stand out too.  This is where God has me listening to others.  I can't count the times I have picked up the phone and listened to a "friend" talk about everything thing in their life, ask me to pray for them, and then have to hang up, because somebody else is calling.  Not once do they ask about me or mine.  It's making me very sad.  Not that I need the attention, but that I question if this is how they talk . . . talk AT everyone.  Isn't FB enough talking about self?  My friend who has had cancer in his throat, prostate and now lymph glands rarely talks about how he feels.  I have to drag it out of him.  I have to insist that I am a friend and that's what friends do, they listen.  He will admit he is tired, he will admit his fears, and he will ask for a little help, but he really focuses on the positive.  He is a humble man.
     Facing death brings out who we really are.  I admit I am not one who likes to face my mistakes or my shortcomings.  I don't set aside days to ask the Lord if there is anyone I owe an apology to.  I forgive often, but I fall short when it comes to asking for forgiveness.  When I had a stroke a little over a year ago, before they came with the results of the MRI I pulled a friend aside and asked him "If this turns out bad, please get ??? in here so I can make things right."  Facing death exposes the truth about who a person really is. 
     I see so many people stuck in the "Look at me" stage of life.  I remember at about 3 or 4 realizing that my parents were my sisters parents too.  And as my world revolved around me hers revolved around her.  Then as I got older there was the "I live on a stage" period of life.  I see many stuck there.  That's where old men drive down the road playing music from their past, nodding, winking and giving a little wave like they are the coolest of the cool and you wonder if they ever were.  They live on a stage they should have stepped off of at least by 16.  You can see it in people, those who live every day like their life is a movie.
     When following Christ, if our lives and hearts have truly been given completely to Him, there should be a maturity that happens.  There should be a change in who we are that we can't help.  We should be teachable.  There should be no bible topic we fear, because "I don't know" is an answer.  We should never have unquestioned, uncritical agreement and allegiance to a human leader.  If they don't allow us to question, we should run.  I watch the Lord try to get a person's attention over and over and they don't see it, because they are stuck on what they need.  They are stuck on being in "the popular" crowd.  So many have no idea how to "be real" to get in touch with who they really are, because of their fear of man, need to please man, they have become actors.  They don't know who they are. 
     Why does God allow horrible things to happen to us?  Cancer?  As I am watching my friend and pastor Jim become more and more aware of how weak they are and how big God is, I have to listen to them.  I don't want to miss anything.  There has to be a reason God allows the suffering and I wonder if it is because it is making these two look hard at their lives and humbling them.  On the other hand another friend is playing it out like a star.  no I don't mean I am impressed, quite the opposite.  It's like he is waving to the crowd in a parade.  I don't hear anything about Jesus and what He is doing.  I know what is going on behind the scenes is not pretty.  See, I believe God allows trials, traumas, to expose the truth about who we are.  My friend told me the other day that when he spilled his mouth wash that morning, it launched him into a rage he hadn't seen in a while.  It was like he was making a confession to his priest.  He said there was a string of Mother F_ _ _ _ _ s that came out of his mouth and then when he saw the candle he lights during his Higher Power time he said "F You" to his candle.  He looked at me sheepishly and said, "God probably didn't like that."   All I could say, "God has big shoulders.  I have said the same things and worse and He still talks to me."  I was so glad to hear he was letting it out and I told him. 
     One thing that drives me nuts, is when the person we pretend to be is so different from who we really are.  The people I spend the most of my time with are the ones who are the same whether we are in a crowd or it's just the two of us talking.  The bigger the difference in who they are alone or with people, the less of my time they get. 
     I have spent the last couple months in a fog.  I feel like I am standing on a busy street corner and people are moving every which way around me, bumping into me and not even noticing I am there or for that matter, they aren't seeing anyone else.  Everyone is fighting this survival battle.  Everybody is alone.  The world keeps going around.  Nobody is hearing anyone else.  Nobody is seeing anyone else.  I am praying for the dying.  I am praying for the babies.  I am praying for the left behind.  I am praying for the ministries.  I am praying for finances.  I am praying and praying and I see no change.  How do we unite these broken vessels of loneliness?  I feel like a bomb has gone off and all I have is a handful of bandages and a couple bottles of water.  Then it hits me.  There is only one prayer that fits it all.  Lord, rip the veils from their eyes and ears that they may know your will and it is done.  Give them their daily bread of wisdom and revelation that they may align themselves with you.  Wash them in your blood and cover them with mercy and grace.  Then God shows up!
     Two days ago Pastor Jim's daughter posted that they had moved him into hospice and he was settling in nicely.  The nurses love him and he is in no pain. Pray, but let him go.   A few hours later Jim himself posts.  He wasn't talking about his pain, or the cancer or how he was doing, no he was giving a praise report.  He told of how God gave the address of where he was in the hospice house to a couple guys from another state who stopped by and he (Jim) was able to pray for them and pass on his mantle.  He was so excited about what God is doing, never once getting stuck in his own stuff.  I love that.  Jim is not the hero, but to his very last breath he is pointing to the one true God.  Never once since I have followed him has he said look at me.  Every day, in everything he does, he points and says "Look at Jesus". 


"This will blow your mind people really!" - Pastor Jim's last post starts out with these words about Jesus.    

My Hippie Artist Friend

“There are no 'if's' in God's world. And no places that are safer than other places. The center of His will is our only safety - let us pray that we may always know it!”
― Corrie ten Boom


     Yesterday, cancer kicked my ass and I don't even have it.  I feel guilty because a very good friend of mine is really struggling with the whole God thing while her husband is in pain, being eaten alive by cancer cells.  I should be there, sitting beside her.  I was when her brother was murdered years ago.  It didn't matter if it was the middle of the night or the middle of the work day, I was there for her.  Now my hands are so full.  At least they feel that way.  I pray.  That is all I can do.  I listen to how He wants me to pray and I pray.  That's all I can do. 
     As I was having this awesome day with God two days ago, I didn't know everything that was happening.  The Lord spoke to me with a message for a couple friends and it was amazing.  I had lunch with a new friend and I had dreams interpreted and lots of confirmations.  I was feeling so good, especially about me and God.  I love those days where you hear clearly and many answers come, but I think those ice cream cone from heaven days are from God, because He knows the next day you will be required to eat spinach, liver, and sardines. 
     I woke up Sunday morning with the glow of God's presence still on me when I got a text from my friend who has been clean for over 20 years and he asked how I was doing and informed me he woke with a Johnny Cash song on his mind,  Sunday Morning Coming Down.  I answered his text with the song I woke up with " Nothing but the Blood " on my heart.  Then he dropped the bomb: Of the three lymph glands they tested, two showed cancer.  I can't even write this without tears.  We have been fighting for a year and a half, throat, then prostate and now . . . and now the worst.   I am so tired and I am so pissed off at Satan for his pride.  I spent most of the day in bed, in tears, feeling beat up.  Cancer is kicking my ass and I don't even have it. 
     It is frustrating to watch the different battles and how they are playing out.  We prayed for a guy a couple weeks ago and he passed away.  I see one fighting with hundreds of people supporting him, because they have made him their God instead of the real one.  I can say that because at one time I did the same with him.  Now he is just one of my friends and was very important at one time, but if people don't put him in the right place, under God, just a pastor, the Lord will take him.  He told me that years ago when I was putting him before God, God said, "Don't make me take him out of your life, because I will."  He has.  I learned.  Too late.  Now it looks like we will not have time to be friends like we once were.  I love him and he saved my life.  I would give him a kidney if that's what it took to keep him alive, but God made it a brain tumor, cause you can't give away your brain and who would want it?  Ha. 
     Then there is my friend sitting with her husband.  I should be there.  I can't take it.  I know her family is nonexistent and that makes me feel worse.  I don't know how she is managing, but if yelling at me about our God helps, I am okay with that. 
     Then there is my friend that the Lord instructed me to give whatever he needs and I have been and would have even without instruction.  He is amazing.  A few times I have sensed anger.  A few times we have sat in silence hurting alone together.  He tries to cheer me up and rips my heart out.  I do not want to lose one of these people, but I would give up their friendship to save their lives, I would walk away forever if it meant they lived.  Then I have to look at the bigger picture.  What is God doing and not doing and why?
     From what I have learned about healing, I would be on my face asking God who I needed to go to and ask forgiveness from.  I bet the list would surprise me and maybe now would be a good time to start - before the disease of bitterness.  I hate cancer and that just may be where my bitterness lies. 
     So yesterday, I spent the day listening to his song.  Today, I am fighting for all of them again, through prayer.

 

 

And the one that reminds me of him.

 

Somebody Teach!!

“Our actions and attitudes in the chronos times of preparing, sowing, believing and persevering are what determine whether God can shift us into the kairos times of fresh and strategic opportunities.”
― Dutch Sheets, God's Timing for Your Life 


    Some days I am just stunned.  Being teachable is a big thing.  Knowing what you need to learn is another.  Let's take prayer for instance.  I have yet to go to a church that teaches how to pray.  There must be something to learn or the Bible wouldn't give instruction.  I remember hearing a man I know said that a friend of mine was praying just to be seen.  It cracked me up, because I know her.  When she starts praying the Holy Spirit takes over and she doesn't remember half of what she said.  The difference in the two people is the man who was accusing told me we have to control the Holy Spirit and the friend praying is totally submitted to the Holy Spirit.  It's a very sad difference. 
     I am listening to everything I can on prayer.  I want God to be able to use every word of my prayer.  I know Jesus is in the middle of this and we don't have to be perfect, but I still want every ounce of God working on the people I am crying out for.  What if my prayers just fall to the ground?  Can you imagine?  And I believe they do at times.  We are to pray in His will and a good way to check if we are doing just that is to check our motives, what do I want out of this?   The Lord has taken me off prayer patrol before for someone because of my heart.  It seemed my motives were pure, but they couldn't be because my heart wasn't.  That's why He had to give me a dream about my friend having a brain tumor almost a year before they were diagnosed.  Basically He was giving me authority to go after it. 
     I went to visit my friend a few days ago who had prostate cancer.  His stomach looks like a pin cushion.  I really didn't want to see it.  He looks like and feels like he weighs about 100 pounds.  When I hugged him I noticed bones I had never noticed before.  He was happy, at least he seemed happy with his checker board bandaged stomach and his pee bag tied to his leg.  This battle has been going on for a year and a half and I want to beat the cancer off him like a rabid dog having ahold of his leg.  I am tired.  Some days I can only pray in tongues and cry because I have no words left for God about this subject. 
     I was praying for a mentor the other day, "Lord God open their eyes and ears to you!" and I hear, "How's that working for you?"  What?  Huh?  "You have been praying that same prayer for 6 years for "D".  How did that work?"  Well doesn't that just put a speed bump in your prayer life.  Tongues is all I got.  I couple weeks ago the Lord had talked to me about forgiveness.  I was seeing the number 77 everywhere.  When I asked Him what He was trying to tell me, He said it meant forgiveness.  He wanted forgiveness toward the government for hiding cures for cancer and forgiveness toward doctors who use their patients to make money and so on.  I was going to gather a group to do this praying together when one day on my way to a friend's He asked why I hadn't forgiven.  I told Him I was getting a group together to pray for cancer . . .  and He said, "I asked you to forgive.  I didn't ask you to get a group.  I gathered a group and you are one of them."  I went right into prayer and forgave everyone and everything He brought to my attention.  
     I have been sick for the last couple weeks, first with sinus infection and then a stomach bug.  I was driving home the other night, completely exhausted and emotional.  I asked Him if any of my prayers were doing anything.  Talk about feeling negative.  Then I heard Him, "you weren't done."   I knew I had forgiven every thing and person He had said.  Then He whispered, "Forgive me."  Instant tears.  It was a knowing, I didn't have to go through the arguments of "But Lord You have done nothing wrong."  We both knew that, but I did have to forgive Him for allowing the cancer.  I went down my list of cancer fighting friends and forgave God for allowing them to be in this fight.  It has gotten easier to forgive Him over time, because I realize there is a good reason.  There is a Kingdom reason.  If He takes one person and it some how saves 10, they all win.  We get so stuck in an earthly view of life when it goes so far beyond the here and the now. 
     A while back I lost a friend to cancer.  He had leukemia.  He was in his eighties, but I really feel God used him as an example to me to get me through what was coming.  I went to the hospital almost every other day to pray with and for him.  He and his wife are very important to me.  I had asked them on several occasions to adopt me.  He would say in his ornery way, "No way.  I got enough trouble."  Then he would smile.  He was always asking if I needed anything.  Back in November of 2015 when I had a stroke he and his wife showed up at the hospital and with big ole tears in his eyes he handed me a rock with the word family on it and he said, "We have decided to adopt you."  We both cried.  Who knew months later I would be going to the hospital to pray for him. 
     The last time I saw him, he was very sleepy.  I had my granddaughter with me and we sat in the corner of the room and prayed quietly for him.   When I left I kissed him on the head and from somewhere in me the words came out, "We have your wife.  We will take care of her.  Don't you worry."  We both cried because that was God, not me.  I couldn't go back because I was fighting a bug and he died a week later.  Then God showed me a very important picture.  It was a tri-level chess board.  He often used a chess board to show me things about His strategy, but this was the first time it had three levels.  I watched as a huge hand reached down and took a piece from the first level and moved it to the top level.  I heard the words, "He may be on a different level now, but it's the same game." 
     A short time later, I was listening to a teaching by an intercessor I have much respect for and he was telling a story about his assistant who had passed.  He was crying out to the Lord and said, "How will I get things done without her?"  He said, "The Lord answered me and informed me she is working harder for me now than she ever has."  I believed his words because of what God had showed me with the tri-level chess board.  They aren't up there playing checkers and sipping on iced tea.  On a couple of occasions the Lord has reminded me of this.  How many are up there from our families, from our ministries, from places we have forgotten and they are praying and petitioning on our behalf?  I don't believe they are seeing every stupid thing we do here, but the belief that there are no tears, no pain, and no sin in heaven falls apart when you realize it was in heaven that one of God's top angels rebelled.  He also took a third with him when he got the boot.  That is sin, there had to be pain, and scripture confirms He weeps.  I guess that's why there will be a new heaven.
     In the last couple years God has moved several people to the third level of this game and I like to believe that every move is strategic.  Maybe a person can do more for the Kingdom there than he is doing here.  Maybe moving somebody we depend on up to the third floor forces us to be who He made us to be.  I had a friend ask me yesterday when we were talking about a mentor, "what if you walked into that situation being who God created you to be?"  Well . . . well, in a perfect world?  Ha.  His thinking is so far above our thinking.  If you are not fulfilling your purpose here, you may be relocated for the sake of souls.  Purpose?  Purpose.  I can't remember where I was going and what I was going there for, but as I drove I was talking to two friends on speaker.  I asked them for prayer and as they prayed for me and I listened and agreed, I noticed that among all the gray and white clouds in the sky there was one that was bright pink.  It happens here often as the sun goes down, but this was just one cloud, and that was odd.  I said out loud to my friends, "There is a cloud that looks like a dolphin."  Immediately I heard the Lord, "That's a porpoise.  What is your porpoise, Kayleen, what is your porpoise?"  My purpose Lord is to teach people to hear your voice and that is what I will do. 


“Why is it,” comedian Lily Tomlin asks, “that when we speak to God we are said to be praying but when God speaks to us we are said to be schizophrenic?” Such a response from ourselves or others to someone’s claim to have heard from God is especially likely today because of the lack of specific teaching and pastoral guidance on such matters.”
― Dallas Willard, Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God  

 

Outhouse, Closet or Shack, He Will Find You.

“Pain has a way of clipping our wings and keeping us from being able to fly.”
― William Paul Young, The Shack    


      For the last several weeks I have been in a place I have never been before. I would guess our walk, if we are actually moving ,should always feel like this.  I am not even sure how to explain this place, except that maybe my pain is all that is holding me together.  I know less than I have ever known.  God, Jesus is a subject different than any other.  If I was learning about fixing an engine, each week I am sure I would know more, but with the subject of the Holy Spirit, Jesus, and God the more time I spend learning the less I know.      
     Let's take the subject of cancer alone.  I have several people in my life fighting cancer right now.  Two of them are very important to me.   One is a friendship of 23 years.  He gets parts of me that no one else does.  Creativity is what we have in common and practically the only thing, but his friendship is very important to me.  Sometimes I feel he is the only proof that I have changed.  He knew me when.  Though he no longer has throat cancer, he will have surgery to remove prostate cancer and the affects could be life changing.  Some days the pain I feel for him is more than I can express.  As he struggles to believe in a God that I hold hands with even as we share and laugh at our struggles. 
     I worked with a woman for 7 years at my last job and we became good friends.  Then I changed, I found Christ and I am not the same person and though I love her as much as ever, she doesn't believe it.  Her husband has the "C" and is in a lot of pain.  As I stood in the Healing Rooms where I volunteer and people are set free from cancer, unforgiveness and uneven limbs, I receive a text from her and though they are only words on a small screen I can hear her screaming them "I am going to go crazy and kill.  Who is this God you talk about?  The higher power that is hurting us so bad?  I have prayed for my husband to not have this pain, but you know what??  He doesn't hear me.  I am just poop, yeah that's me shit.  It doesn't pay to be a good person.  I wish I would have just died on the street."  As I stand there holding Jesus' hand and feeling her pain and feeling totally helpless I have learned not to let go, but to hold on tighter or the world's pain will take me down.  What do I do?  I invite them to come to the Healing Room.  I feel small.  I hurt.
    Then there is the big one.  Our relationship is odd.  He saved my life when nobody else had time.  He stayed and he prayed and sometimes he dragged me through the muck of life to show me a God I was raging at.  He cleaned me up and held my hand, while He held God's hand and prayed one day I wouldn't need him in the middle.  The day came.  Finally.  When I watch my granddaughter at a year old I see me.  She plays by herself, going from one thing to the next and then suddenly has to find mom.  She doesn't need anything, just to know mom is there and she can continue in her play without a worry.  I have done that in this relationship.  I wander off, grow up a little, but always have to check in at some point.  It's been the strangest 6 year relationship with more offs than ons, but when I learned of an inoperable brain tumor taking his life I went numb.  I couldn't tell you how I felt.  As I sat in worship at the Healing Rooms one day, my new mentor put it in perspective.  It feels like you are losing a parent.  I don't like the term but for lack of a better one, he was my first spiritual father, but it was more of a big brother.  I always wanted a big brother and that was the only reason I could open up to him and eventually Jesus.  
    So as though these three are not enough there are more.  Not nearly as close to me, but I pray for them regularly.  A couple days ago a friend asked if we would go to her nephews house with stage four liver cancer and pray for him.  As I am driving to meet my prayer warrior partner for the day, I begin the battle.  Lord, go ahead of us and prepare his heart.  That was as far as I got before my feelings came to the surface.  WHAT AM I SUPPOSE TO SAY TO THESE PEOPLE??  What are we even doing here?  So I pray for his liver to heal and I pray for the brain tumor, and does it do any good?  Is it up to you or is it up to them?  And then it hits me, WHY am I praying for them?  They get to go be with you and leave me here to do the hard work.  They should be praying for me.  Then I laughed.  I know it's not funny, but really, who is better off?  So I go through this cycle of laughing and crying and praying and screaming and wondering and repenting and believing and not believing and asking and telling and laughing and crying . . . and so on . . . and more.  Then He shows up. 
     When God shows up it is different every time.  This day I catch glimpses as He stays mostly out of sight at first.  But then I see Him clearly as my friends son (11 years) says I want to go pray with you guys.  He even states that this man will be healed.  That's a glimpse of God.  We talk about God and the awesome stuff He is doing around us as we drive the short distance to the house.  And as we sit with this man so wrecked by cancer that his skin color is nothing I have ever seen before, the Holy Spirit dances in between and around us setting the atmosphere in the room.  Three sisters and a young man he has mentored and a few others gather with us as we wait to see how God moves.  For privacy for the family I will only say, God blows my mind all the time.  Ministry never looks like I think it will look.  Healing isn't always what I think it should be. 
     This morning I read several posts online about "The Shack".  I am so sick of the boxes we shove Jesus in.  When I first read the Shack it destroyed my God boxes.  I am so tired of religious people telling me what I should watch as they do their Holy Yoga and play with their idols.  I don't do boxes.  Jesus does not do boxes.  What does healing look like?  You can never say.  If anyone of these three cancer battles ended in a death and like Elijah with the widows son, would their families trust God enough to allow someone to lay across their family members dead body?  If I walked into a hospital room where the body lay would anyone (in their right mind by the worlds standard) allow me to lay across the body three times and believe me when I told them their loved one would be revived?  Who don't you believe??  ME?  JESUS?? 
     If I hear one more time that Jesus is not an overweight black woman I will throw up.  Are you kidding me?  He is all things.  When I went into intense ministry to heal from the wounds of sexual abuse and trauma, Jesus showed up to me as a little jungle boy.  He looked just like Mowgli from the Jungle book.  WHY?  Because that was all the more I could trust Him.  As I healed and grew He grew with me.  Now Jesus shows up as a grown man.  Who are you or anyone to tell me what Jesus looks like?  He meets us where we are.  Mowgli looking Jesus met me in my closet.  There were many times as I walked through difficult moments in my healing that I would get a glimpse of a Mowgli looking Jesus in strange diaper looking garb, waving in a Forest Gump way and His smile alone would heal parts of my heart I didn't know were damaged.  Go ahead and climb in your box and wait for Him.  He showed up for me in a closet, but He never allowed the door to close behind Him.


“I often find that getting head issues out of the way first makes the heart stuff easier to work on later.”
― William Paul Young, The Shack      

Prison of Shame

“The word comfort is from two Latin words meaning “with” and “strong” – He is with us to make us strong. Comfort is not soft, weakening commiseration; it is true, strengthening love.”
― Amy Carmichael, Kohila : the shaping of an Indian nurse



     You know when you get something new, like a car for instance, and then you see that kind of car everywhere?  You can't run a block without seeing one.  First, you find yourself saying, "If I would have realized there were so many cars like mine, I wouldn't have got this one."  At least that's what I would say, because I don't like to be like everyone else.  Okay, okay, I did drive a Camaro years ago and there was a saying about how Camaros were like a certain body part, everyone has one.  But after that lapse in character, I want to be different.  So back to that car!  When you get past the fact that there are three on your block you had not noticed, then you start looking at the differences.  You like that color better than the color you chose, you like that sunroof, you're glad you did NOT pick those wheels and so on and so on.  The point is, right now, I am doing this with shame. 
     God never ... well has never, so far, given me any type of healing in a "poof" moment.  I have to work through every single step.  I have studied shame like my life depends on it, and it does.  The great wall of shame, shrouded in anger, stands between me and God's plan for me.  After all this study, I can barely be in the world.  I watch people shame each other and it breaks my heart.  Little comments cut deep and I see the knife's reflection in their eyes.  I wonder who shamed the shamer.  It's like any abuse I suppose; when you are constantly shamed as a child, you either become a shamer like the parent/guardian who shamed you, OR you turn it completely around and never say a negative word that could shame a person, but somehow, the unshamer  is just as broken because they are so afraid of shaming they can't tell the truth at times when they really need to.
     Jesus told the Samaritan woman at the well about the Living Water and in verse 15 she says, "Sir, give me this water, so I will not be thirsty nor come all the way here to draw."  The next thing He does would not be approved by many Christians today: He tells her to go get her husband.  Every time I have read this verse or heard this story preached I get a weird feeling.  I have discovered that feeling is shame.  Not only did he know she had no husband, but He knew how many she had in the past and all other little dirty secrets.   I find it interesting that He tells her of the Living Water and then brings up all of her shame.  The Samaritan woman didn't let the shame get in her way of entering into a relationship with Jesus. 
     I realized shame can only be dissolved by knowing our true identity in Christ.  The other day I was watching a teaching and he mentioned an Irish woman who was a missionary in India for 55 years.  I then looked her up and watched a documentary on Amy Carmichael.  One of the women she worked with told a story about Amy that messed me up, in a good way.  In her last 20 years on earth she was pretty much bedridden from a fall.  She had chosen one of many women she worked with to be by her side and help her daily.  The woman telling the story said, there were several women who could have and would have done a much better job caring for and helping Amy.  She asked Amy why she chose this particular woman.  Amy said, "Nobody wants her.  I thought maybe I could help her."  Are you kidding me?  For 20 years Miss Carmichael was in tremendous pain and wrote most of her books and other writings from that pain, while ministering to a woman who supplied all her needs, poorly.  I have a long way to go.  Miss Amy Carmichael knew who she was in Christ.  If you want to be amazed by her, get her booklet "If".  It's only $1.99 on Kindle right now. 
     On the same day that I met Amy Carmichael through her writing and the documentary, I also watched a program about young women in prison, who were hanging themselves on the other end of the spectrum.  When you have been so intimately involved with shame and the anger you unsuccessfully try to hide it under, the whole world looks different.  These girls were so hungry for identity.  They fought over the most ridiculous things like girls in the fifth grade.  I have watched this type of show many times, but it was much different now.  I believe my mouth was hanging open much of the time.  Only one woman had remorse about her crime.  At one point they had women who had abused or murdered children, locked away in one area and only a wall of windows separated them from the area where they locked up women who were detoxing.  The women constantly fought with the women on the other side of the partition.  It was some what like watching a volleyball game played with shame messages through a window instead of a ball over a net.  One woman said, "You can't let them see that they are hurting you, but it hurts."  Any one of those women could have been the next Amy Carmichael had they been nurtured, loved, and told so.
    I believe people behave at a certain maturity level, because that is the age they began to believe the lies that they were as dog poop steaming on a sidewalk.  We are an angry country, because we are a country that believes the lies of the enemy.  Shame is everywhere, and if we could stop fighting through the glass partition, trying to convince others that their crime/sin is worse than ours, maybe we could turn this around.  What would have happened if one woman would have complimented, had empathy for or encouraged instead?

“The best training is to learn to accept everything as it comes, as from Him whom our soul loves. The tests are always unexpected things, not great things that can be written up, but the common little rubs of life, silly little nothings, things you are ashamed of minding one scrap”
― Amy Carmichael, A Very Present Help: Life Messages of Great Christans

Washing The Blood Out

“A joker is a little fool who is different from everyone else. He's not a club, diamond, heart, or spade. He's not an eight or a nine, a king or a jack. He is an outsider. He is placed in the same pack as the other cards, but he doesn't belong there. Therefore, he can be removed without anybody missing him.”
― Jostein Gaarder
     
     When you decide to get completely healed, face the truth head on, and do whatever it takes to find freedom ... you do it alone.   People, family, friends can say they will walk through it with you, but they will only walk as far as the truth they can handle, then the most unexpected thing happens; they come against you.  In their need to stop at the depth of truth they can handle they will fight you going deeper because it just might expose them somehow.  Fear takes over.  They don't even have to be a part of your story, but as you uncover truths about unhealthy, you just might have something in common that they don't want to see in their story. 
     It's like being in a war and the enemy has POW's deep in their territory.  The POW's are children, the generations to come and the child you once were.  People come along side of you as you commit to rescuing those babies, but at the first sign of enemy gunfire (truth) half your troop suddenly has something else more important to do.  The deeper you get into enemy territory, not only do your comrades stop fighting alongside of you, but the enemy actually convinces them to join his side.  Sometimes they don't even realize what is happening.  It becomes more dangerous the deeper you go, because you don't know who your friends are, the enemy becomes more determined to keep his captives (so they don't turn against him) and it is unfamiliar ground.  It's easy to play war on familiar ground, but step out into the unknown and  ....
     When you dig down into shame and truth about your life, a rage is released.  Depending on the level of trauma, rage can be severe.  The average pastor does not have any experience with this and if they refuse to learn about battling spirits, and if he battles with rage himself, you can knock him on his ass.  Instead of admitting he knows nothing, he continually digs into his old bag of tricks until he realizes you are exposing his demons more than he is able or willing to expose yours.  I don't believe many pastors should be counseling at all.  Maybe simple every day stuff, but in my case, more damage was done.  I had made a decision to trust again, something I had not done in years and it blew up in my face. 
     As you go deeper into the war zone, the spirits that once controlled you now attack you through others.  For instance, I once was controlled by rage, as I dig deeper, others who are controlled by rage are attacking me.  I still get angry, but I don't rage.  The enemy will stop at nothing to get you to give up and turning those in your life against you is a powerful tool.  Don't let him win.  Keep walking.  It's a narrower and narrower path the further you go, because many stop where truth hits them in the face and fear stops them from walking through it.  You have to respect freewill.  It was a gift God gave each of us and we in turn can't take it away from anyone. 
     It gets more difficult and it gets darker, but the closer you get to the light and freedom, the more willing you are to keep fighting.  I believe there is a point when you reach that biggest hurdle, it actually gets lighter and lighter.  Though, it sometimes seems that when I finally cross the finish line, there will be no one there to congratulate me or share in the victory, but that is not so.  The people who celebrate the loudest with you are the ones who have already crossed that same finish line.
    
“There is the solitude of suffering, when you go through darkness that is lonely, intense, and terrible. Words become powerless to express your pain; what others hear from your words is so distant and different from what you are actually suffering.”
― John O'Donohue

Twisting Satan and Santa

“I need Christ, not something that resembles Him.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed    


     5:30 Christmas morning, 2016 and I have been up for a couple hours already.  This is just another day.  People don't want it to be so.  I read a post yesterday about this time of year being our annual glimpse into what Kingdom living is supposed to look like.  People feeding the poor, stopping to help a motorist, and giving money to charity are just a few of the things we do during this time of year that we don't usually do.  Me?  I bought myself a donut to have with my coffee.  I don't normally do that. 
     Christmas for me is full of bad reminders.  I have struggled this time of year for the last 5 years.  Facing truth, changes perspective on many things.  You see my mother's mother used to cancel Christmas and have mental breakdowns this time of year.  In response to that, every single year as far back as I can remember, I heard the words, "You are not going to ruin my Christmas.  I never had a good Christmas growing up."  So in turn, she made sure ours sucked too.  When my kids were little it was still about her, but when I had grandkids, I decided I don't need it anymore.  She actually made me and my sister go with the person who molested us to get a Christmas tree one year.  I am not a fan of Christmas trees.  If and when I had one it was for my kids and when they grew up, and if they lived with me, they could get one themselves.  What it comes down to is this: I hate fake.  If you aren't going to be nice to me the rest of the year, don't do it now.
     I am house sitting.  This morning I am looking down on this valley and all the lights on in the hundreds of homes and I wonder how many parents will wake up angry from their childhoods, what they didn't get and take it out on their kids.  I wonder how many will fake this whole Christmas thing from their smiles to their "I love the gift".   We know some kids will get nothing, some will watch their parents get high or drunk, and worse things, but I am talking about the perfect "movie set" Christmas getting ruined when mom explodes because somebody accidently knocked a ball off the tree. 
     I would rather hibernate, read my book and work toward healing.  I don't fake smile very well at all.   I have seen nothing this Christmas about Christ.  I have seen Santa, Rudolph, Charlie Brown and Frosty, but no Jesus.  There is that one short scene in Charlie Brown's Christmas where Linus tells what Christmas is all about, but we have to go back to the cartoon from 1965 to find Jesus mentioned? 
     There is so much deception out there.  Very few want the truth.  I would rather face God after telling only one person in my life time His truth, than stand before Him having told thousands a twisted Satan Claus version of the truth.  I would rather have no friends and tell the truth than have superficial friends who don't really know me because I have told them what they want to hear.  Deception comes way to easy to Christians.  I used to think most people were good, until I started hanging out with Christians.  Lukewarm, one foot in the world and most of the other foot too. 

There are too many starving people eating apples in the dark, so they can't see the rotten parts!

Steaming Ahead.

“Everything was perfectly healthy and normal here in Denial Land.”
― Jim Butcher

     About a month ago I sat in the car with one of my closest friends, one who knows most of my story and I told her my plan to forgive.  I told her some of what I learned about myself and that I realized, this is a wall between me and God, between me and my future.  Why?  Why can I forgive a man for raping me, for molesting me, for beating me and all that horrible stuff, but I can't forgive these two?  She just so matter of factly stated, "Because they are the ones who saw you naked."  Huh?  Being molested and full of body shame I right away
began to scan my memories and that did not happen.  But then it slowly registered what she was saying.  She continued, "Your mother and your pastor are the two people you should be able to trust in this world."  Yes, she was right.  They should be.  Many will ask why I feel it is acceptable to talk about the two of them on this blog.  I know they will deny it, they have been doing it for years.
     Another "Aaaaha moment" in the archeological dig for shame was reading this in the book Released from Shame - Moving beyond the Pain of the Past by Sandra D. Wilson Ph.D.

I once read one of the more amusing revelations from postglasnost Russia. It seems the chief of the principal mapping agency admitted that for the last 50 years Soviet mapmakers deliberately misplaced rivers and streets, distorted boundaries and omitted geographical features on public maps. The article went on to say that the correct maps were still "top secret" in the Soviet Union long after space photography allowed foreign countries to make their own extremely accurate m...aps.

"Pepole did not recognize their motherland on maps. Tourists tried in vain to orient themselves on the terrain .... You can get maps of our country in many countries of the world except U.S.S.R.," the (Moscow) evening paper ... complained recently. "From whom, one wonders, are we keeping secrets? From ourselves?"!

That's a good question - one you might want to ask yourself. Unhealthy families (and church families) are famous for keeping secrets from themselves. And as a loyal child you might still be trying in vain to orient yourself to life with a parent-drawn (pastor-drawn) map of secrets and lies.
No wonder you've lost your way and feel confused. You need to begin following a new map charted by truth. But that won't be easy because in unhealthy families, truth brings pain.

 

 

    I have always felt like this.  I have a different map.  I want to get out, but my map is designed to keep me in.    I have a parent-drawn and a pastor-drawn and I can't get anywhere with them.  So many people choose to live in the lie instead of finding freedom, instead of accepting responsibility, instead of putting others before themselves, instead of doing the hard painful work it takes to be completely free.  This book is one of the few that is changing my life.  This came from the same book. 

 

In a study of 14 adolescent males on death row, the researchers observed that 8 of the 14 had injuries severe enough to require hospitalization ... 12 had been brutally abused and 5 had been sodomized by relatives. Their parents had a high rate of alcoholism, drug abuse, and psychiatric hospitalizations. The boys had tried to conceal all this during their trials. They preferred to be seen as bad rather than admit that they were ... victims of ... abuse. The parents often cooperated with the prosecution (and even urged the death sentence) because they had an interest in concealing their own actions.

 

 

     I read a book years ago on confronting your abuser.  It said they would either deny and call you crazy or break down, admit the truth and beg forgiveness.  I confronted one of mine and he denied, said I was crazy just like the book said.  I knew he knew the truth because of a sentence he said word for word in the book.  It was total confirmation.  After that I held my head up and he looked at the ground.  But then my mother decided to stay friends with him and his wife.  At one time she even had them in a picture on her fridge.  I had told him my parents knew, they all knew, but when she did nothing to support me, he went back to holding his head high and I felt like a pile of dog shit steaming on the sidewalk.  I asked her why she had his picture on her fridge and she said it was too uncomfortable to end the friendship.  See, the dog's comfort is much more important than the dog shit.

     They will deny and continue to live the lie.  They will live in the shame by choice, just like I have done for so many years.  I won't do it anymore.  The truth is the truth and I will forgive them for making me believe I am ... was a pile of dog shit.  I am not.  I could expose the lies, but I think seeing the truth is more valuable.  To find out you are not a pile of dog shit is good, but confusing, because then what are you?  Instead I want to show people they are children of God, not born of their past anymore, but born again.   

 

 

“There is a moment in our healing journey when our denial crumbles; we realize our experience and it's continued effects on us won't "just go away". That's our breakthrough moment. It's the sun coming out to warm the seeds of hope so they can grow our personal garden of empowerment.”
― Jeanne McElvaney, Healing Insights: Effects of Abuse for Adults Abused as Children    

 

 

Subtle Shamers

“Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change.”
― Brené Brown, I Thought It Was Just Me: Women Reclaiming Power and Courage in a Culture of Shame    


     I am having a moment ... this is a much needed ... leading to health ... very much needed moment in my life ... I want to bite somebody ... I want to bite them hard.  You have to be able to name the offense to forgive.  There were moments in this walk when I had "Aaaaha moments" like when I realized I had been raped though for decades I had said, "He touched me".  When you put the correct label on the crime, you can forgive the correct crime. 
     I set out a couple months ago to forgive the two people I cannot seem to forgive and set myself free.  I try to forgive and I fall back to hate, I try to forgive and yet dream about revenge.  Why can't I get past this.  I have forgiven horrible things, why not these two? 
     I had a friend offer to walk through this with me.  She knows forgiveness.  She knows anger.  So we will meet once a week and forgive these two so I can move on with my life.  I began reading all I could find on forgiveness.  The first thing to jump out and grab me was the statement that every person who rages, who struggles to control their anger has shame.  When I went to my friend and repeated this she actually showed me a diagram with a ball of anger, wrapped in shame and then a layer of something else and another and another.  Those layers I have dealt with, but the shame ... where do you even begin? 
     I started by looking for a book on shame.  They are very difficult to find if you want one form a known author.  If you want a Christian known author it is nearly impossible.  I prayed and found Released From Shame by Sandra D. Wilson, Ph.D.   Like most books, you read through and some where in your brain you know this all makes sense.  Sometimes it's just putting known thoughts into clearer statements.  But then, as in every life changing book experience, the "Aaaaaha" bombs start falling.  When you have been molested, raped, beat, etc. the shame is obvious, the offense is obvious, the forgiveness is correctly labeled because the offense is correctly labeled.  Well, it is after you take down the minimizing signs "he touched me" and "he molested me" and put up the correct "RAPE" signs.  Then you are able to forgive and actually bless those people. 
     So if rage rises up every time I think I have forgiven these two, where is the shame?  First, what is shame?  Shame is believing you have the same value as a steaming pile of dog shit on the sidewalk.  What value does dog shit have?  None.  People avoid it, people wrinkle their noses and look away in disgust, even gagging at the smell and/or sight.  Nobody wants to deal with cleaning you up ... or should I say cleaning your nasty self from the sidewalk.  When people have given you this message over a long period of time and depending on the relationship, it can wear you down to nothing.  If I was to draw a diagram of shame it would not look like the ball with outer layers at all.  Shame would be the roots of the tree and anger the trunk. The shame came before the anger.   All those other things that come later such as comparing yourself to the offender, rehearsing the injury, depletion of energy, altered world view, etc. would be the branches that sprout from the shame and anger tree.
     When you first look at the ways you were shamed, you automatically ask yourself, "Did I do that to my kids, friends, spouse?"  If you have the true desire to heal, you have to ask yourself that question.  As Sandra D. Wilson says in her book, "Yesterday's shamed become today's shamers, as shame begets shame."  One of the examples she first uses is a little girl in the public restroom with her mother.  She drops her coat and washes her hands getting water and soap everywhere.  Shame comes in a look.  I received that look many, many times as a child and I in turn gave it to my kids.  Instead, I could have been taught and taught mine how to wipe up the mess like no big deal and move on with your day.  A quick wipe with a paper towel could have saved a lot of therapy. 
     There is a huge difference in my parents.  My dad, who has done some horrible things, is still someone I want in my life.  His sideways looks when I was a kid were more of a "Check yourself.  Should you be doing what you are doing right now?"  He was encouraging.  He made mistakes and he really hurt me when he left me, but I knew and still know he loves me.  My mother on the other hand, was never pleased with anything.  I got the look all the time, I got the sneers and the "You are ruining my life" looks.  Everything I did, everything that happened to me and everything she regretted doing were somehow my fault, because of who I am.  When I asked her why she never hugged me as a kid, like she hugged my brother and sister, I expected an answer like, "That's not true, I hugged you" but what I got, without hesitation was "I resented your birth".  Confirmation, steaming shit, on her sidewalk of life.  It is possible to not like someone, yet leave them with their self worth.  But who, even resenting their child's birth, would actually tell their child that?  The dog who shit you on to the sidewalk.  That's who.   I am beginning to understand the shame, putting the correct label on the crime and know I will be free one day soon.
     The other person I am struggling to forgive hid their shaming a lot better.  In trying to find it, I even blamed myself for trusting too much.  Maybe I did, but ...   The pastor I went to for help in the beginning of my walk was the opposite kind of shamer.  Actually it was in the beginning that he was a subtle shamer.  "Subtle shamers favor rescuing.  It allows them to look stronger and more competent than the "victim" while also maintaining the appearance of respectful kindness." (from Released From Shame, Sandra Wilson)  When I began to grow out of a place of dependence on him the shaming became blatant, from slamming me and others in sermons, phone calls of screaming everything he thought wrong with me, to sending out a letter warning security to watch for me.  If you ask him, he had good reason for all of this.  Oh yes and I shamed him also, but as in the first example, who was the adult and who was the child, even if in a spiritual sense.  The harm that came from this, added his name to my offender list.  Now, a good forgiver, sees that the offender (shamer) had to have been shamed in their life.  I have not healed enough at this point to care, but maybe one day. 
     As I was frozen in my "Aaaaha moment" of this realization,  I also realized how deep this goes in our society.  If raging, uncontrolled anger is about shame, atheists must have been shamed by a believer at some point, races shamed for skin color, men shamed by women, and so on and so on.  Our society, America is an angry nation rooted in shame.  I think I may have my calling.  To understand the depths of the roots of shame and to share the shovel to dig those roots out, can change a lot of lives.  I truly believe you have to understand the crime, the offense, the true wound, in order to forgive it and be free.  And now, moving towards forgiveness...


Overdependents have been called the "fairy godmothers of the world".  Now the problem with trying to be everyone's fairy godmother is that you keep waving your magic wand but nothing happens.  The truth is this: We do not have the magic power to change and control other people.  We are living a fairy tale if we think we do.  And living in this fairy tale about control traps us in overdependent bondage. - Sandra D. Wilson, Ph.D.

Right Brain Drag

“What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch    


     The blank page has changed.  It somehow does not look the same.  Before it was a canvas and my thoughts would randomly splat on the page to miraculously form some idea, story line, deduction, or other word art.  Yes, it was a canvas.  Now it has somehow become very loud, screaming at me, "THE DREAM, YOUR DREAM IS  DEAD!"  Writing is an impossibility.  Communication is beyond your dead brain cells.  Kayleen - 0  Satan - 2
     I went for prayer the other day and I was honest.  I have no confidence.  I don't want to pray for people.  I am sure I will screw it up.  My brain is not the same and I am not familiar with this new and not improved brain, so communication is an impossibility.  Parts of my vocabulary are gone, completely gone, do not exist anymore.  I am too young to feel this way.  So, I stood in the middle of three trusted friends and admitted that I am nothing and I have no confidence in who I am.  How do you have confidence in dead brain cells?  Their response, "You are right where you need to be".  I hated that response until they continued, "when you are nothing and you know it, you allow Him to be everything".  He has to be.  He has to fill in for my dead brain cells and my live ones for that matter, because the dead ones have some how made me see the live ones have shortcomings of their own.  If God does not write for me, then there will be no writing.  I can't and don't want to write without Him. 
     One of my closest friends in this last year is one who faced his own death and won.  In so many ways he is the only one who understands me at all.  Somehow, people who focus on this immature, me, me, me, me, me trivial crap are more annoying than ever.  The person who chooses to put covering up their own crime before a child's welfare make me ... well, they make me ... Ugh.  I have realized that labeling my feelings is not one of my strong points.  When you stuff them for so long you forget their names.  It's a new thing I am learning - Identify the feeling.  There are more than happy and angry.  Who knew?  My thought process is often like driving in a cluster of round-a-bouts.  They put them too close together and I can drive for hundreds of miles in a half mile radius.
     What I started to say many words ago is that the trivial crap that immature, selfish people get stuck in that is so irritating has taken over my world.  In our conversation about Dr. appointments, memory and accepting the changes in our minds and bodies since our illnesses, we realized trivial, what was once nothing to us, stuff has stolen our dreams.  My blank canvas has turned into a mirror and in it all I see is dead brain cells.  Write a book?  I don't see it happening, ever. 
     My friends dream was about to happen in a year.  Money is not an issue.  His girlfriend will retire and they planned on travelling.  Today he mentioned Italy.  They went a couple years ago.  "How do I enjoy Italy, when I can't taste food?"  He went on to talk about how impossible it is to fly.  His saliva glands were destroyed during his chemo, so he drinks water constantly, and that leads to bathroom visits, lots of bathroom visits.  How do you fly with this issue?  I need water, I need more water, 'scuse me, 'scuse me, can I get out, I HAVE TO PEE!!  "It's a 5 hour flight, Kayleen and that is not counting getting to New York.  I went to a movie last night and had to pee 5 times.  FIVE TIMES!!" 
      These trivial things have affected our relationships with others, because when you mention these things, we will call them N.U.T.S (Not Understood Trivial Stuff. -  people want to solve the problem or claim it for themselves.  Oh yeah I get up several times during a movie too.  FIVE?  There is a big difference between twice and five times.  But you look good.  You dressed yourself, you drive, you talk right, you look fine to me.  Get over the stroke, the cancer, etc., you're fine now. 
     I have always been a multi tasker.  Actually I could have been an Olympian Multi-tasker.  My hands could be doing completely different tasks and they each used a different part of my brain.  There was very little reason for both sides of my brain to communicate with each other.  Now, there are people who have had strokes and they drag one side of their body around, scary movie, left leg, drag, we all know the guy, well, I drag the right side of my brain.  It amazingly sounds a lot like the leg drag, but I am the only one who can hear it.  It's okay to laugh.  Laughing and crying are healing.  I can no longer retain what I read, so I have no idea if this flows or just moves amongst the round-a-bout cluster.  There are some feelings, still without labels that go with them, but we will get to that in the future.  I wrote today to beat the dead dream and my friend is looking into a private jet to fly him to Italy.  Trivial crap.


The last refuge of intolerance is in not tolerating the intolerant ...
George Eliot