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

More wonderings

“Will God ever ask you to do something you are not able to do? The answer is yes--all the time! It must be that way, for God's glory and kingdom. If we function according to our ability alone, we get the glory; if we function according to the power of the Spirit within us, God gets the glory. He wants to reveal Himself to a watching world.”
― Henry T. Blackaby, Experiencing the Spirit: The Power of Pentecost Every Day

     There are stages of growth in life and in relationship.  You cannot have a relationship without a level of trust.  To survive a betrayal of trust is an awesome thing that I am not equipped for.  My past has limited the amount of trust I have in my bucket.  Trust me.  Ha.  In life and relationship with people there is a stage we all come to when we realize people are not perfect.  We keep hoping that there is one person out there who we can look up to and trust to always be a good example, but we are all human.  What I have found is that it isn't the person who does everything right that I trust, it is the person who is constantly seeking God, His will for their life and following His instruction.  Whether they fail or not does not matter, it's that they pursue Him first and with that His will.
     I keep getting this picture of a potter at his wheel.  As he shapes his creation, he constantly adds water.  He has a bowl near him and with a sponge or by dipping his hands in the bowl as he works his masterpiece he constantly adds water.  If he didn't the clay would dry out and crack.  I would say the potter is Jesus, the clay is us and the water is living. 
     Lately I have heard so much talk about Spiritual gifts.  The gifts given by God

1 Corinthians 12:4-11

New International Version (NIV)

⁴ There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. ⁵ There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. ⁶ There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work.
⁷ Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. ⁸ To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another a message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, ⁹ to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, ¹⁰ to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues,^[a] and to still another the interpretation of tongues.^{[b] 11} All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines.

     These are called Spiritual gifts and repeatedly it says these gifts are given through the Spirit.  It is only through the Spirit these gifts give glory to God.  A teacher may have the gift of teaching, but if the teacher does not allow the Holy Spirit to guide him in this gift, it is not a teaching from God.  Teaching is a gift given to nonbelievers too, so it can be used without the Spirit. 
     Believers connect through the Holy Spirit in them.  We are drawn to each other because the same Spirit lives in us.  These gifts are not to be worshipped, nor the person who was given the gift.  The Lord has made it clear to me that He is looking for a people He can trust.  People He can trust to listen to the details.  For instance, if He were to tell me to deliver groceries to the house on the corner, but I decided to deliver the groceries one house down, I'm out of His will, i am not obeying.  Maybe I decided that the house I chose was in a deeper need for groceries.  I do not know the whole plan of God.  I do not know all the details of the story He is writing in these lives.  We can do good things for people without the Lord instructing us, but we still need to listen because He might be stopping us for a reason we don't understand.  Maybe the people in the house I chose would be offended and turn even more against believers.  True obedience brings blessings.
     I have seen too many people run with first instructions.  If God says, I want you to fill somebody's gas tank" it is likely that he has a specific person in mind.  Now, the lesson or blessing may be for us and He may not care who we choose, but we are really missing it if it we don't ask and listen.  It's the same with the gifts.  If you are given a word of knowledge for someone there is a chance you are not supposed to repeat it to them.  He may be telling you only so you can understand them and see clearer how to treat them. 
     They are called Spiritual gifts because they are to be used through the Holy Spirit in you.  There is a responsibility that comes with the gifts to listen.  We all have a responsibility to listen to the holy Spirit, whether we are gifted or not.  Anyone, no matter how long they have been active in their gift can hear the wrong spirit or can all together stop listening to the Holy Spirit, because of pride.  Maybe they are just too busy to stop and really listen.  Maybe their own will gets in the way.  We have to worship God, not the teacher, the prophet, or the healer.  We have to remember it is the Holy Spirit in them that teaches, prophecies, and heals, not the person themselves.  It doesn't say in the Bible to seek these gifts, it says to desire them.  We are only to seek God.  Our hunger is for Him, not the people or the gifts. 
     Francis Chan is good example.  He stepped down from pastoring a church because he felt he was getting more credit than God there.  That's a disciple. 


“I want to live so that I am truly submitted to the Spirit's leading on a daily basis. Christ said its better for us that the Spirit came and I want to live like that is true. I don't want to keep crawling when I have the ability to fly.”
― Francis Chan, Forgotten God: Reversing Our Tragic Neglect of the Holy Spirit

Is That Legal? Girls on a Baseball Diamond?

“Piglet noticed that even though he had a Very Small Heart, it could hold a rather large amount of Gratitude.”
― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh 


      I like to go through my old notebooks and read all my scribbles.  Sometimes a sentence, paragraph or whole page will really touch my heart and I wonder if I wrote it, read it, or heard it.  It would seem that one could not forget their own amazing words, but I have notebooks full of dreams and stories I know I wrote, but don't remember.  My brain has so many parts, each doing it's own thing at the same time.  I have to play a mindless game while I listen to a speaker or I can't focus on what he is saying.  If I don't, that part of my brain will run off on rabbit trails and pretty soon I have heard nothing, so I keep it busy like a small child so the grown up in the other part of my brain can hear.  Maybe God allowed the stroke to show me that it really wasn't bad having all those parts of my brain going at once.  Now there are times it seems I can't get any of the parts moving forward.  I found this in my notebook and I may have written about this already but I don't remember so it's new to me.




     I don't know if this is only for writers or artists, or maybe musicians, but there are these moments where time pauses.  This feeling comes over me that this moment, though it may seem insignificant to others, to me is a place to build an alter.  Something changes and you know you will never be the same.  I was sitting outside of Subway in Redding California with four friends who changed me in different ways.

     One woman, whom I have been friends with the longest and trust more than I ever thought possible is in a place we can't and don't want to bring her back from, because we know she has to walk through it.  There is a pendulum swinging in her heart, taking her from extreme sadness at the realization that only moments ago her grandma slipped from this world into the arms of Jesus and though she feels extreme sadness at losing her, at the other end of the pendulum is complete peace in knowing she is home.  Sadness in knowing she was not there in that moment and peace knowing she has raised children who stepped in and stepped up to comfort others.  Honor in realizing the call on her life to pull people back from the edge of hell, but fear because the first group to call to step away from that edge is her family members, the most difficult people to be "the new you" in Christ and not resort back to the "dead  man" she was.  Crying one moment and laughing the next as she sits across from me on Papa's lap, as He shows her how He has touched every corner of this place she is in.

     To her right is another friend I have walked with the last few years.  She is in a mother's nightmare of praying for an addicted son.  Lord show him, Lord open his eyes, Lord please give him a vision of who he is, she begs her Papa and prays for faith.  God showed up only hours earlier as we prayed for her, but it was not her son's spiritual eyes that were opened, but the corrected vision in her physical eyes.  He restored her vision, she can throw her glasses away.  Who is this God we love and how is it that this is the way He touches the eyes in her family.  After she was healed, she sat crying, reading scripture on the sidewalk for all passers by to hear.

     To her right sits another who I have known for some time.  In the last few days my trust and love for her has grown.  In our few days away from our lives, off chasing Jesus in Redding, she is the one I spent the most time with.  She faced a moment that triggered old pain and in her transparency, I saw myself.  There was a connection of spirit, that has only happened on a very rare occasion for me.  I could see her heart like I rarely see another's heart and it was so beautiful as it struggled to beat even with the old wounds of childhood.  The love that flowed from her heart appeared to be intensified by the wounds.   I saw such a deep desire to set others free and suddenly understood that in releasing others, she was releasing herself.  This friend is the one I would choose if the Lord offered to show one of my friends what He sees when He looks at her. 

     And last, but not at all least is my youngest and newest friend.  She puts fire in those she meets.  Her past seems to be the most like mine, but this woman chases Jesus 24/7 with outstretched arms and a hunger like I have never seen.  She would walk through fire to get to Him and though she paused often to care for and comfort the rest of us over the past few days, her hunger and pursuit never waned.


     There we sat, each of us dealing with our individual pain and challenges that God had exposed to us over the recent days, through ugly moments and beautiful moments.  Each of us caring, concerned for each other as our mini vacation was coming to a close.  I knew I wanted these women completely free.  I also wanted to stay in that moment of laughter and tears, but I knew I couldn't.  As we made our way to the car to head back to our lives, I realized we were leaving nothing behind but the old us.  Instead of saying good-bye to Redding, we looked forward to saying "hello" to our home town with a united purpose of changing the atmosphere, with a decision to bring the anointing, to bring Jesus and to set the captives free in a way we had never done before.
     It wasn't that our time was over.  That car was full of laughter, worship, prayers, our hands reached out to each other as we processed on the way into battle against the enemy, with freshly sharpened weapons and an armor that was a little more banged up, but stronger and shining like it never had before.  We were back to the fight, a little stronger, more focused, never to return to the warriors we had been, but sitting a little taller in the saddle knowing things would never be the same. 


I believe that trip was about a year and a half ago.  I look back like at the end of "The Sandlot" and see people fade into memories and out of the picture.  Nothings the same, like eyes that were once healed wear glasses again.  Were they really healed?  Brokeness seems to have grown instead of being healed.  Cancer, a stroke, pain, abuse, healings, ministry, friendships all those things still exist, they just change positions on the field.  I have to laugh a little and wonder, why don't I write more?  Ha.  Cause I change when I write.  I don't even use my own voice.

 

"You're killing me Smalls". - The Sandlot