There is a glimmer

Written by Sandra Lloyd

Fog is all around us.  It is thick, heavy, oppressive.

Somewhere, in humility, there is a mother on her knees, weeping.  She does not weep for herself.  She weeps for her children; for the grandchildren she had hoped to have some day, but now, she’s no longer sure that is something she can look forward to.

Somewhere in America tonight, an aged WWII veteran, tattered Bible in his lap, sits alone under the light of a small lamp, sorrow heavy in his chest. It was the 4th day of his fast.  As is his habit at this time every night,  he cries out to God, who has seen Him through 94 years, to please, please have mercy on this wicked and foolish generation that is squandering what so many of his brothers-in-arms died for, to please turn the tide.

In a tiny town in Texas, there is an old woman, widow of a pastor, they’d served faithfully together for 62 years, raised 10 kids, had 18 grand kids and 4 great-grands, and she pleaded with God, prevailing upon His mercy “just this once more”.  “God, its been a long road.  I know I’ll be coming home to You and Joe soon, but Lord, my kids and my grand kids still have some living to do, long as You plan to tarry, and I’m asking not because we deserve it, for we do not, won’t you please forgive us, this wayward nation?  Will you raise up a voice with Holy Spirit fire, soften the hardened hearts and consciences of wayward folks, like my youngest son, who once knew better, and remove the scales from our eyes once again?  Father, that fella in the White House, that old Satan has done a real job on him.  Stopped his ears, blinded his eyes, and filled his head with so many lies that he doesn’t even know the difference.  Got an early start on him.  Lord, isn’t there anyone who could reach Mr. Obama.  O, forgive me that I haven’t prayed for Him more.  I was too busy bein’ mad at him, if you want the truth.  God help us.  Bring us back to the old paths that we once knew, but have all but been grown over from lack of traverse”

In a humble and run-down Christian school, started and nurtured in prayer, sweat, prayer, sacrifice, and more prayer, a mere 18 students gather for chapel.  The mood is subdued.   Finances are tight, and the school may be forced to close, if the economy gets much worse, and support dwindles further, but faith is still alive here.  The students kneel around the chapel, and even the small ones seem to detect the solemnity of the moment.  Prayers go up, silently at first, and then one by one, from the lone Senior student, all the way down to the littlest pre-schooler, they each ask God to provide.

And He hears.

The Lord looks down across the various states.  Here, and there, another one bows a head, and cries out in confession: “Lord, I am tired of this existence.  Nothing really makes sense to me anymore.  I have wandered so far from how my parents raised me, and here I am, divorced, my kids couldn’t really care less if they see or hear from me or not, and I deserve it because all I wanted was ‘the good life’.  I’m so sorry, Lord.  I am so sorry for not being the man I should have been.  I know can’t go back and fix anything, but God, if You’ll have me, I’d like to ask for your forgiveness and if You’ll help me, I’d like to do better.  But I can’t on my own.  I have come to understand there isn’t anything good in me.  For all my conviction I could forge my own destiny, and make something great of myself, the truth is, I don’t like what I have become at all.  I have the money, but without my family, it doesn’t satisfy, and only mocks me.  I’ve indulged every desire, and everything is empty and disappointing.  God, I want to get back to what I once knew.  You are God, and I am a sinner and I deserve hell and worse.  I’ve used people, harmed those I should have loved the best and should have treated as fine gold.  I disappointed my folks when all they ever did was serve You, and serve me and raise me up on the Bible.  There is no one to blame but myself and my own selfish ambitions.  But Lord, for Mama and Daddy’s sake, would you consider giving me one more chance?  I know Jesus never sinned, and He died on the cross to take the punishment for these things I’ve done.  I come empty and with nothing to recommend me, but Christ’s willingness to die for me, and ask that you apply His atonement to my account.  I know there is no guarantee I can ever mend fences with Joan and the kids, but I’d appreciate if You would give me the courage and the words, to try to convey my apology, and seek forgiveness, even though I don’t deserve it and they may not be able to find it in their hearts to grant it”, and on he prays until he is exhausted, empty, and purged.

A phone rings in that small Texas town, and the old widow is startled from sleep.  “Must have dosed off prayin’ again.  Sorry Lord”.  She reaches for the phone and hears a familiar voice, her dear, wayward son.  It’s been 5 years.  “Mama” was all he could say, before his sobs came.  She clutches her heart, and prayer as natural as breathing, pours out to her beloved Savior.  When he could finally talk, he told her of his confessions before the Lord, “and Mama, I know it’s too late to say this to Daddy, but will you forgive me for how I’ve treated you?”.

“Son, I already have”.  They talked for nearly forty minutes, and now it was time to try Joan.  He’d heard she was living in Georgia now, with her new husband.  All-around good guy, from all he’d heard.  With shaking hands, he dialed the number his daughter Kelly had given him the last time they talked.  Good old Kelly, the baby, the only one who hadn’t written him off.

A chain reaction started to take place.  As people sought reconciliation, bitter hearts were released from prisons they didn’t know they were in, and eyes of those who had been wronged, were then able to see beyond their own pain and disillusionment, to their own faults and failures.  Fathers mourned for failing to be the leaders and examples their families deserved.  Mothers repented for putting self-fulfillment above the needs of children they brought into this world.  Teens who had so dearly hoped to see some sign that there was really something to this “Christianity” business, witnessed something they recognized as authentic, and were relieved to be able to give church another chance.

All across the nation, prayers began to waft heavenward as incense and pleasing aroma to God.  Prayers captured in censors by the angels.  Prayers God had longed to hear and the sorts of requests God delighted most in answering.  Prayers of confession and repentance.  Prayers of long-silent saints, begging for boldness to proclaim Christ, prayers for revival!

It started out a trickle.  Like the faint warble of a faraway bird somewhere deep in a vast forest, as sunrise approaches.  It grew to a murmur. Fog began to dissipate.  Heaven grew animated and excitement buzzed through the heavenly host of angels and saints.  The sound of portals opening, angels dispatched, swords flashing.  What a flurry of wings!  The enemy, beaten into retreat.

The angels responsible for gathering the tears of the saints for God’s collection, had seldom been so busy!  Flask after alabaster flask, filling and filling with the repentant tears of a vast nation.  The fog was indeed lifting, and the light of heaven was breaking forth on the countenance of many who hadn’t genuinely smiled in years.

It started in the House of the Lord, preachers repenting of leaving what they knew, enticed or pressured, losing sight of God as provider, thinking only of getting the budget met, elders finally admitting that the ways of the world and the best marketing schemes, were useless tactics they’d fallen for, and they simply did not work.  Pastors who had gotten proud, or gotten themselves under yokes of bondage by failure to pray and continue in the Word, and most of all, to look to the Lord as the supplier of all, instead of getting  everything upon their own shoulders.  Others, lonely and pressured, who had succumbed to the lure of pornography and lonely women, wept in profound remorse, and repented before the Lord.

It was only a few here and there at first.  But it was genuine.  They started calling one another up, old friendships that had grown neglected.  They confessed their faults one to another, and pledged a new committment, by God’s grace and with His help, to hold one another accountable, and stop going it alone.

Next there came a wave of deep conviction in the hearts of those members which had various rifts and fallings-out with their brothers and sisters in Christ.  People who hadn’t spoken to one another in years started looking one another up, calling, confessing, repenting, reconciling, agreeing to simply disagree on the things that are not pertaining to salvation itself.  Many of them terribly petty.

Churches that had split from one another, held reconciliation meetings, held sessions of prayer together, and soon they were embarking on joint ventures.  One which had been struggling to start a bus ministry, but couldn’t get it off the ground, soon found itself the beneficiary of a used bus, and a generous love-gift from the other.  The youth, seeing something genuine taking place, came back out of curiosity, and soon were putting their elders to shame, with their own youthful enthusiasm and boldness.  Wise adults took their cues, and learned from the example.  The faith of a child, getting over what’s done and gone, looking to the future instead of nursing old hurts.  They may not have as much time or energy, but these adults started doing what they could, rather than seeing it all as the job of someone else.

VBS rosters filled, help showed up in droves, where congregations were aged, young families started to turn up a few at a time, with them, came babies, youth, a new generation to carry on the work.

And as aging missionaries all over the world, continued to press on even at seventy and eighty years old, the reinforcements they had prayed so long for, finally started coming.  Middle-agers, families with small children, nervous and insecure, they came on faith and a shoestring budget.  But the work would continue, after all, for whatever time remains.

All because someone cried with importunity, in humility, and in Godly sorrow, and refused to stop praying until something happened.  For that is the prayer, that availeth much.

Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.

Gosnell is guilty, but Christian, so are you.  Obama is guilty, but Christian, so are you. Against thee, and thee alone, have I sinned, oh Lord my God.

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http://www.wnd.com/2013/05/love-letter-to-americas-pastors/

My Little Garden~Guest post by Garrett Lloyd

Image Credit Timesrecordnews.com

Image Credit Farmatfalconridge.com

♥♥♥

My Little Garden

By Garrett Lloyd

Have you ever noticed how many agrarian references there are in the Bible.  The parable of the Sower,  wheat and tares,  the fig tree,  the mustard seed and on and on.  I am not enough of a biblical scholar to name them all but I know that sheer number of references in God’s Word to growing things tell’s me there may be some spiritual fruit to be gained from getting my hands dirty in my little back yard garden.

I grew up on a 5 acre lot of land of which my Dad dedicated about 1/4 to the garden.  His father lived a quarter-mile away and devoted even more land to the vegetable garden as well a couple of fields of hay, soybeans, sometimes a couple of acres of tobacco, and periodically harvested timber from the 88 acres of land he owned.

My Moms Dad also worked as a farm manager in his youth and retired to a little place where he grew all manner of vegetables (some fairly exotic ) as well as keeping bees.  Both grandmothers and my mom extensively canned, froze and otherwise preserved what was harvested so there was always home-grown food in the house.

While I was growing up I was often assigned chores in the garden,  I was not overly fond of these chores when I was young and usually did the bare minimum to get by and hurried back to the TV as soon as possible.  As an adult I deeply regret not taking more interest in gardening and taking full advantage of all that wisdom and experience that was available to me.

Fast forward thirty some odd years, the gardening gene in me finally matured and I began learning the art of putting non store-bought food on the family table.  In the process I have learned that all the hard work is far surpassed by the joy of watching God turn that labor and a few seeds into delicious food I can proudly place on my family’s dinner table.

I was greatly surprised when my experiences in the garden, success as well as failures often mirrored what I was reading in the Bible.  I discovered that sometimes you just can’t pull a stubborn weed without disturbing the plant your trying to grow like in the parable of the wheat and the tares.  I discovered that tilling the soil to the correct depth greatly improves the quality of your crops.  And also just simply the joy of watching God work in a tangible and practical way.   Feeding his sheep.

My garden  also raised questions I had never considered before.  The Word says of discipleship that some will sow the seed or plant the word in a non believer, some will water the seed or encourage someone who is seeking.  But the Word never makes mention of having to spread fertilizer.  I know plenty of people in various churches who seem quite adept at spreading manure but I guess that is for another post.

Anyway,  I feel there is great value in getting in touch with the land and starting your own garden.  Things like better freshness and taste than you can find in the store, knowing what if any pesticides or genetically modified nonsense you’re ingesting, or simply experiencing the joy of growing a portion of your  own food.  I doesn’t matter if it’s a small window box herb garden,  or fields of crops you can sell or give to neighbors.
Aside from the practical and pleasurable aspects of gardening,  I encourage you to view  a garden as a means of seeing God at work in a way our modern society has forgotten.  God himself planted the first garden and even though we messed up that deal,  He has given us glimpses of what awaits us in heaven as believers in Christ.  Someday I’ll live in that beautiful garden He intended for us.  In the meantime my strawberries should be ripe next week, now that I’ve discovered the plastic snakes and pinwheels trick for keeping birds and squirrels away.

Image Credit Florinella.com

The kiss of the sun for pardon

The song of the birds for mirth

One is nearer Gods heart in a garden

Than anywhere else on Earth

B y Dorothy Gurney

1858 – 1932

Hope

Image Credit: Ideals magazine

A New Chapter

By Sandra Lloyd

I took one final look around at this place that had been our home, our haven for so many years that I hardly could remember being anyplace else.  It hadn’t been “all good”, life never is, but it had been secure, a soft place to be when the world “out there” had often been treacherous.

But things were changing now, and it was time to go.  Onward to what was next.

What was next?   I didn’t really know.  Other than the fact that a chapter had ended, and a new and unfamiliar one was now beginning.  With heavy and tremulous heart, I managed to draw a deep breath past the sobs I refused to release, and forced myself on leaden feet, to turn and walk out through that beloved threshold for the final time.

“God”, I prayed, “I know that you know what you are doing, but just for the record, I don’t like this”.  And with that, we left behind everything that was familiar, and headed West.

We took turns and drove through the night, mile after endless mile, until it was all a blur.  We would be cutting it a little close, he was due to report to work bright and early  Monday morning,  but by switching off behind the wheel, and stopping only for the obligatory refueling of cars and tummies, potty, and stretch breaks, we should be able to make it in time to blow up the air mattresses and get a good nights rest.  It all felt sort of like a strange dream to me.  I guess I probably was in a state akin to shock.  The flat green miles of Virginia were far behind us, and already the scenery outside the window looked completely different.  The hills of Kentucky were pretty.  Some parts of Missouri were breathtaking, and soon I found myself mesmerized by God’s creativity and the unique variations from one state to the next.  Each place we stopped the folks seemed friendly, not so much like strangers, but almost like folks who could be my friends and neighbors, were we to end our trek here.  People are people, wherever you go, I guess.

Before I knew it, my dread and heaviness had begun to give way to a different and long-forgotten feeling.  Could it be?  Adventure, at this stage of my life?  I was incredulous, to say the least.  Our life had become so confined for so many years, due to circumstances that were largely outside our control.  We’d done the best we could to follow the example of the Apostle Paul, and be content, and I believe we were content, if not wholly satisfied.  But we stopped dreaming a long ways back.  After a while, we no longer dared to get our hopes up; too many disappointments, too many set-backs.

You know, it was funny, but by the time we made the next-to-the-last turn, onto the street that would now be “our street”, my dread had morphed into a sort of nervous excitement.  I could almost swear there was hope, even anticipation in my heart.  It was a new beginning.  How often I had longed for newness in the old circumstances somehow.  I began to notice that I was standing a little straighter, even leaning into the future a little.  Giving up the familiar was maybe not so bad after all.  I felt lighter than I had in years.

As we pulled up in front of the house we had thus far only seen in pictures, I lingered a moment, wanting to form a picture of my own.  I wanted to remember this moment, because if I knew anything, I knew that it doesn’t take long at all for many years to pass and for new experiences to turn into memories.  We’d raised our kids in the old house.  Would this one see our sons take wives, and make us grandparents?  Yes, it was an unusual age for pulling up stakes and putting down new roots, but in a way, I felt years younger.  I guess newness has that effect.  God, it’s been a long, long time since we had “looked forward” to anything.  You get to the place where you keep your eyes only on what is right in front of you.  What you have to get through.  You learn as you age, that  the vitality you hope to regain, isn’t coming back, you tear a few entries off the old “things I hope to do” list, and you end up just muddling through.  Yet from time to time, your spirit rises up, tries to pull you into the clouds where you used to soar.  But those old cinder-blocks of work-a-day life, don’t let that kite get far.

In a rare encore appearance, my daring spirit reached right up into my mental kite and cinder block image, and darn if she didn’t cut that string!  I could swear I saw her wink!

“You gonna sit there daydreaming all day, or are you gonna get out of that car and start your new life?

I chuckled, then smiled up into the eyes of my dear husband.  New hope glimmered in his own eyes.  I took the proffered hand, and with a spring in our steps, together we crossed a brand new threshold.

Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost.”

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“Hope”

Hope is a thing with feathers

That perches in the soul

And sings the tune without words,

And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little bird

That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land,

And on the strangest sea;

Yet never in extremity

It asked a crumb of me.

Emily Dickenson (1830-1886)

Getting to the heart of the matter

Monica Lewinsky

WMD’s, 9/11

Birth Certificate, College Records, Social Security number

Benghazi, IRS,

OBL, Seal Team Six

Election Fraud

What will it take

To get to the “heart of the matter”

to get down to truth.  Everyone is interested in truth, right?

How many scandals, lies, deaths, “crises” wars, false flags have been perpetuated, instigated and covered up by men and women in powerful places through-out history?

(Let him who is without sin cast the first stone)

But God sees and is keeping record.

(Not just of leaders, but of fathers and mothers, businessmen and pastors, you and me)

Nothing in all creation is hidden from God. Everything is naked and exposed before his eyes, and He is the one to whom we are accountable. Hebrews 4:13 NLT

  But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God; ⁶ Who will render to every man according to his deeds: ⁷ To them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life: ⁸ But unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, ⁹ Tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile; Romans 2:5-9 KJV

It is appointed unto man once to die, but after this, the judgment. Hebrews 9:27

Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, ⁴ And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. ⁵ For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: ⁶ Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: ⁷ But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. ⁸ But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. ⁹ The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. ¹⁰ But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. ¹¹ Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, ¹² Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat? 2 Peter 3:3-12

Just because the Lord has been merciful, patient, and slow to wrath, do not make the fatal mistake of believing that He will not fulfill His promises.  The day of His appearing is very near.  Be judged now, and admit being a sinner, repent and call upon Jesus who said “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  No man cometh unto the Father but by Me”.   John 14:6

He was either a liar, a lunatic, or Jesus was exactly who He claimed to be; God incarnate, forgiver of sins, Creator of the World, Messiah, Emmanuel “God with us”, King of Kings and Lord of Lords.  What will you do with the question of Jesus?

There are false Christs only because there is an authentic One.  It’s not the Mahdi, it’s not the Mitreya.  Jesus is Prophet (Matthew 21), Priest (Hebrews 4:14), King (John 18:37), Son of God (John 5:25)

Related articles

• The Rapture and Then,”all Hell on Earth” (raptureimminent.wordpress.com)
• Is the Day of the Lord the Same as “Last Days”?(TheEndTime@blogspot.com)
• The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus: Reversal in the Afterlife (JoeQuatroneJr.wordpress.com)

Prayer makes a comeback on Capitol Hill

My commentary on this event and the controversy regarding Cahn: I am  glad and grateful to see this article and share it with readers today.  It could be the start of something very significant.  Doesn’t mean our world will pull back from the brink any time soon, but it is a positive development.  Rabbi Cahn is a Messianic Jew, a born-again Christian, a brother in Christ.  I read his book, and I also heard/watched his Prayer Breakfast sermon several weeks back, which was awesome and everything he said needed desperately to have been proclaimed!  I cannot disagree on the basis of Scripture, to anything I have heard him say about America and the judgment this nation is facing, other than the assertion that America has a covenant relationship with God because our founding fathers made one.  (God is the initiator of covenants, not man).  But as Christians, if Christians enter into an endeavor for the Lord, that He has called and led them to, we are not supposed to put hand to the plow, and then look back, for “that man is not worthy of the kingdom”.  By virtue of the fact that Judgement must begin at the House of the Lord, I see Rabbi Cahn as a bold prophet in the “forth-telling” sense.  He is not bringing “new Revelation”, but a call to repentance and renewed obedience to the Revelation via the Holy Bible, that we already have.  A return to the old paths.  We live in a generation which believes “new” always means better.  Some good old-fashioned remorse and sorrow for our waywardness could be such a refreshment to this once-great nation.  Cleansing.  I just do not believe that Hollywood or D.C. or mainstream press, or modern American Academia represent the majority of people in this nation, nor their values, nor their hearts.  Let us not be weary in well-doing.  Lord renew our strength and our hope, give us the wherewithal to continue to come against the evil in the name of Jesus and power of the Holy Spirit within us.  Wherever we are, and whatever our part, help us to do it heartily, as unto God, and not unto men.

Lawmakers, Christian Leaders Join in Unique Prayer Meeting on Capitol Hill

8:30PM EDT 5/13/2013 Gina Meeks

Jonathan Cahn

The House of Representatives became a house of prayer on Wednesday as lawmakers and Christian leaders met in a rare public gathering to ask God for wisdom and humility, and to bless America so it can be a blessing to the rest of the world.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif), former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, current Speaker of the House John Boehner and several other prominent lawmakers joined pastors and ministry leaders for the exclusive prayer meeting that followed a historic assembly last year. On May 8, 2012, a Christian organization was granted access to the Great Hall for the first time in more than 100 years for “Washington – A Man of Prayer.” The second annual event was held on the same day this year in honor of the 224th inaugural anniversary of President George Washington.

Since the anniversary of his inauguration, April 30, 1789, falls annually during the week of the National Day of Prayer, the first Thursday in May, this time serves as an opportunity for members of both Houses to assemble in historic Statuary Hall, once the meeting place of the House of Representatives, and prayerfully commit America to God.

The ceremony also featured brief history lessons about Washington from Gingrich and Christian author Eric Metaxas, who warned of the increasing attack on religious liberty. Bachmann, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, and rabbi Jonathan Cahn, the best-selling author of The Harbinger, also spoke. Other lawmakers present at the event this year included Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Calif.), Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-Mo.), Rep. Mike McIntyre (D-N.C.), Rep. Robert Pittenger (R-N.C.), Rep. James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas).

“Tonight we stand in the city that bears the name of our first president to … lift up our prayers to the Almighty,” Cahn said. “We’ve gathered here on Capitol Hill, the most exalted of national councils, to acknowledge that even the most powerful of nations cannot rise and will not endure apart from the will of the Almighty.”

Cahn spoke boldly of America’s spiritual descent, the nation’s connection to Israel and the warnings of judgment on America that mirror those in ancient Israel. Despite later revealing that he sensed a spiritual attack during the event, he concluded his address with a call to repentance to usher in national prayer and revival. After receiving a standing ovation, Cahn later was invited to conclude the event by leading the group in the Aaronic Blessing, which those attending joined in by lifting their hands to send out a blessing from Capitol Hill to America.

We Who Are Called by His Holy Name Are Hated

 

Terry James’ Nearing Midnight article today meshes hand-in-hand with Brother Farag’s video this week. 

Satan’s Mindset Prevailing

By Terry James

RaptureReady.com

Last week I presented in this Nearing Midnight column the essay entitled “The Jesus Haters.” Jesus’ own words foretold that such hatred for Him and for His followers would grow intensively down through the generations as time progresses toward the climax of human history and Christ’s return at Armageddon.

Paul, as prophet, gave the characteristics of end-times man in his perilous times enumeration as recorded in 2 Timothy 3:1-5. Paul, as Christ’s faithful apostle, gave parallel analysis of that prophetic end-times generation as recorded in Romans, listing what will be the results of evil men and seducers growing worse and worse while writing God out of their cultures and societies:

And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.” (Romans 1: 28-32)

How many times have you heard–or have you said yourself: “This world has gone crazy,” or something similar? Paul was predicting that the people of the world would indeed go crazy as the end of the dispensation of grace nears. People would be allowed to have the reprobate mindset –the satanic mindset—they desired. They would, in the final rush to throw off the shackles of God’s restraining influence (Psalms 2: 2-3), exchange in their thinking processes good for evil and evil for good (Isaiah 5:20).

The satanic mindset is upon us, with evil these days being called good and good being called evil. There is but one good, and His Name is Jesus. He is the only person who has been born in human flesh who has not sinned. That is why God, His Heavenly Father, offered Jesus–His only begotten (sired by Him Personally) Son—as the Lamb that takes away the sins of the world.

It is the perfection of Jesus Christ that God accepts as the only payment for the sins of mankind. The righteousness of Christ provides the only way to Heaven. As I mentioned in last week’s Nearing Midnight article, this is why Jesus –why we who are called by His Holy Name— are hated. It is the satanic mindset that infects the fallen minds of the world and enlists them to come against the only good there is in the world.

Now, lest the enemies of Christ take that previous statement and proclaim that I’m saying Christians are without sin, thus better than those who aren’t Christians –as human beings— I will endeavor to explain. Christians are fallen creatures just like all of humanity. But they have been redeemed by Jesus Christ, the sinless Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world.

Because believers in Christ are born again into the family of God (John 3:3), the Heavenly Father sees them as pure and righteous –through the prism of His Son Jesus, who died on Calvary for them. They have chosen the only way to God the Father and Heaven for eternity (John 14:6).

This “only way” to Heaven–to God— enrages the satanic mindset. Such satanic rage was made obvious in a news item this past week, in my opinion.

The U.S. military have been told in a training briefing that evangelical Christians are the No. 1 extremist threat to America – ahead of groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, KKK, Nation of Islam, al-Qaida, Hamas and others… The briefing, which was given to an Army reserve unit in Pennsylvania, came from a U.S. Army Reserve Equal Opportunity training brief titled “Extremism an extremist organization.” A slide titled “Religious Extremism” lists multiple organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaida, Hamas, the Nation of Islam, the Ku Klux Klan and the Christian Identity movement as examples of extremist groups…However, the first group on the list is evangelical Christianity. (Jack Minor, “Christians Targeted ahead of Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Qaida, KKK,” WND, RR News, 4/9/13).

Again, Jesus forewarned about the satanic mindset and how it would act to impact His followers –Christians of the last days. But all these things will they do unto you for my name’s sake, because they know not him that sent me. If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no cloke for their sin. He that hateth me hateth my Father also. If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin: but now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father. (John 15:21-24)

The only thing the Lord Jesus has done to “offend” the world –the satanic mindset—is to love the world of sinners so much that He died for each and every one of us, individually. He is the only being who has ever lived who can offer the world the peace that has been so desperately sought throughout the millennia.

Despite the satanic mindset that opposes at every turn, we who are Christians are to serve with all our might as royal ambassadors to present God’s peace offering to mankind.

–Terry

What do you make of this?

Strange rashes and sores, metallic hair-like fibers found inside of the lesions, and odd bright colors visible under microscope, and numbers visible in the tissue?  Whaaaat?

http://www.morgellonsexposed.com

I remember not too long ago putting up a video of a lady testifying at a city council meeting about a government implant she needed to have taken out.   It was so bizzare and surreal.  I know that there have always been mentally ill people who were delusional, and they can be very convincing, but more and more you see things like this out there on the internet, and it gets more and more “out there” all of the time.

I can’t help but wonder if that sort of thing is not just groundwork being laid for the coming delusion:

And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming:

⁹ Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders,

¹⁰ And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.

¹¹ And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:

¹² That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

Chapter 5 Her sins, which are many, are forgiven

As my room-mate was saving up for her move to Florida, going through her things and deciding what to take and what to put in storage someplace, we had been invited to a different singles group at a larger church not too far away.  We started visiting and I ran into a guy I had once worked with years ago.  My room-mate was interested in him, so we struck up a conversation and made some plans for a group outing with him and some other friends of ours, to go to a college basketball game.

(Side Trip) That turned into an adventure in it’s own right, when my alarm system went wonky on me late at night in the heart of downtown after the basketball game.  The doors would unlock but the system would not disarm so I couldn’t start the car, and I couldn’t stop the glaring horn sounds.  The police wouldn’t help us, and I didn’t have Triple A, so it took some time for me to get hold of a tow truck.  Then we all scrambled to come up with the $65 between us (which sounds cheap now, but I was appalled then) and then all 4 of us crammed into the cab with the tow truck driver (yup, 5!) and made the 45 minute drive home.

Anyway, the match didn’t “take” between my room-mate and the old acquaintance from work, but the old acquaintance also had a room-mate, and the long and short of it is, he is the father of my children, and known affectionately to my readers as “hubby”.

Now, it didn’t happen just like that. God had done a good bit of work in my heart, and I had finally resigned my will to His on the “being married” score.  I was ready to trust the Lord and allow Him be sufficient.  I had every intention of moving to Florida.  (I jokingly remind him from time to time that he still owes me Florida).  I expected to live out the rest of my life as a single and childless person, and I had accepted that.  It’s interesting that when I finally relinquished my determination to have a mate, it was only then the Lord sent him.  There was a great deal of heart-ache for me as I shared with him my past, and a renewed mourning over what really had been lost.  (He loved me anyway).  My history, my scars, came into the marriage with me.

Just before we met, his aunt died, ( She was a nurse, and a poet-some of her poems are on my blog at Cordia’s Page) Included in her estate, was a ring.  His mom was the heir to her estate.  When we knew we were serious, he asked me what type of ring I would want when we got engaged.  I described it.  I said I wanted white gold, an emerald-cut ceylon blue sapphire, with diamonds on each side, but not necessarily symmetrical.  When he told his parents, and asked his mom to go ring shopping with him, she said “Nope, we already have that ring!”

Here is Aunt Cordia’s Ring, which is now mine.  It is a Ceylon blue emerald-cut sapphire, baguette diamond on one shoulder, 3 rounds in tapering sized down the other. The only difference was, it was yellow gold, clad-over with platinum.  When I had it polished, they stripped the platinum off of the shank, so now it is two-tone, which I think I like even better.  For our bands, I got white gold and he got yellow, but they are matching in style.  We had the jeweler furrow out a thin cross at center of each ring, use the yellow gold from Garrett’s ring, to make a yellow-gold cross in my white-gold ring with his gold, and a white-gold cross in his ring from my gold.  So each of our rings has a piece of the others ring in it, in the shape of a cross which symbolizes Jesus in the marriage with us because a triple-stranded cord is not easily broken.  You can sort of see the crossbeam on my band, as it is tured a little off-centered toward the left.  (Look just below the left prong on the sapphire).  When the rings are polished you can see the crosses very clearly, but as tiny scratches appear and mar the surface, it is less discernible, but can be seen in bright light such as sunlight.  We get a lot of compliments on them.  He was so excited when he proposed to me, and the story about the ring is just amazing because we all saw it as God’s blessing.  His aunt also was a Christian.  I think I would have liked her a lot from what I’ve heard about her.  I’ll meet her in heaven some day, where we can swap nursing stories.

Well, with Garrett I was finally  safe enough for God to begin to unpack my baggage and start dealing with it all.  We both were cheated by those other experiences in my history.  He had history of his own, but was not previously married.  I worked hard trying to learn God’s real design and intent for Biblical intimacy and for marriage itself. Now that I had a good man, I had to learn how to be in a relationship that wasn’t turbulent and conflicted and dysfunctional.  We both had to learn things.  I am so thankful that God gave me this man, a gift I certainly did not deserve, and then even blessed us with our two great boys.  Garrett is as consistent as I am “chang-ie”.  I am the kite, liable to get myself caught up and carried away on turbulent winds, but he keeps me from ending up in the stratosphere.  He calls himself my cinder block.

The church we were attending when the kids were younger, had a class that was pretty unique, called “Apples of Gold”.   It centers around the Proverbs 25:11 verse which says “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver” and it is  mentoring program for older Christian women who have raised their families, to mentor younger Christian women wives and moms on how to make the home a warm and nurturing place for their family to enjoy together, how to set a peaceful and Godly tone or atmosphere, practice hospitality and fellowship, and most of all how to be a good mate to her husband and nurture the marriage.  It was one of the neatest church programs that I think I have ever participated in.  I think it was 12 weeks.  There were about 8 mentors, and about 25 younger women.  Each week there were 4 of the leaders who were assigned to creatively decorate a table, using full table settings, themes, and decorations, while one leader was in charge of the devotional and whomever was hostessing was the mentor in charge of the meal.  That person would take us through a recipe which she would have all the prep-work done ahead of time, and teach us about the herbs and things she used, as well as about cuts of meat, etc.  We got the recipes of everything that we cooked or ate while there, to take home, so at the end of the course we had 12 full-meals we knew how to put together.  It also included variations of table-settings, substitutions for certain ingredients, conversion charts, etc.  They taught us about certain kitchen tools and gadgets that “every kitchen should have” to make work easier, etc.

When we first arrived, we did the recipe.  We all gathered around in the hostess kitchen, while she demonstrated her recipes, and while that was cooking, we had our devotional lesson, all centering around the ideas of fellowship, being gracious, particularly on respecting your husband and how to build him up, rather than tear him down.  We discussed how the woman really sets the atmosphere at home, so things like knowing to give him time for some quiet and transition when he first gets home, just lots of stuff that, in today’s broken world, where so many come from broken families, and never learned the more traditional stuff, can know how to still have that for their own family.  The classes were one morning a week, and lasted about 2 and a half to 3 hours.  At the end, if you completed all the classes, you got to attend this really nice banquet, childcare provided, where you and your husband were treated to a nice dinner and they made  it all really special.

Well, one day a leader named Mrs. Delaney* was speaking, and when we all sat down, I noticed right away that she was a little nervous.  I noticed because I turn flushed around my neck and face when I am nervous or upset, and she was like that.  (I always hate when people make it worse by pointing it out.)  She opened with prayer, and then she started out by saying that she would like us to continue to pray for her as she spoke, because she had something else she had planned to talk about that morning, but God led her to speak on “this other thing”.  Her voice was even trembling so I was really feeling empathy for her, I mean, I could tell it was excruciatingly uncomfortable for her. She said that she even argued with God, and tried to talk Him out of it but that He told her, “no, there is someone here today that needs to hear your story.

At that she forged ahead, and began telling about how she had grown up going to church, got saved when she was real young.  She said that she was pretty timid and shy, and didn’t really date anyone during her teen years, until when she was about 19 years old.  She met a boy she really liked, and  they started seeing one another regularly.  She felt comfortable with him, they had even started talking a little about getting married some day.  In other words, she really trusted him, but one night, when they had been dating for about 8 months, he started getting physical with her.

When I realized where she was going, and that I was that person for whom God was asking her to relive this very obviously painful piece of her past, I was overtaken with panic and I began to quake in my seat.  I felt suddenly cold as ice.   I dropped my chin to my chest and kept my eyes closed,  and fought to keep tears from forming.  I felt like a spotlight was on me and I sat there, frozen, not daring to move, barely breathing, not wanting others to realize it’s me while a little voice somewhere down in me began to whimper, and plead, “no, please God, make her stop, please don’t let her tell it”.  I experienced a sense of both shutting down, and of going outside of myself at the same time, outside of the scene and watching from afar.  I remember also experiencing a sense of dropping, down, down, down into a hole, with people all around me, hearing her voice through a roaring that filled my ears, and muffled her words.  I remember wanting to run, but feeling pinned in place.  All I wanted was to not be in that room.  My chest squeezed like there was an enormous balloon in there, and every word she said pumped it up tighter and tighter.  I felt that pressure rise into my throat, but I choked back the sobs until my head ached with it.  I kept telling myself, just hold on, it will be over soon, and when everyone starts moving around, you can slip out and you never have to come back here.  She told of how he brought her home afterwords, her dress torn, her socks muddy, and crying.  She told of how when she told her mother what had happened, her mom didn’t believe her.  She called her a slut.  And she said that other than her husband, she had never told this story to anyone else in her life.

As everyone got up and started moving around, in the general chaos of several ladies gathering up their things, I made a bee-line for the door, only getting stopped once, and made it to my truck before I broke down.  I didn’t want to sit there and have my breakdown, because if anyone so much as looked at me, much less asked me if I was okay, I was afraid that I might shatter into a million pieces.  When I got home, no one was there.  It was a school day, and so for a couple of more hours, at least, I had the house to myself.   I started praying, just trying to take everything to the Lord that I was churning up inside me.  The Lord said “call her”.  I said, “oh God, no, please, I don’t want to talk about it”.  God said “call her”.  So I finally did.  When she answered the phone, I told her who it was, and I said, “you said the Lord told you there was someone there who needed to hear your story.  I think it was me”.  She said, “I know”.
I said; “you knew it was me?”, and she said, “When I first started talking, I didn’t know who it was, but by the time I finished talking, the Lord had told me who it was.  Now, I want you to come on over to my house, you need to talk about this”.

So I went, and I did talk, and she ministered to me and prayed for me, and prayed with me, and she told me that God has forgiven me, that I needed to forgive myself, and the person that did this to me.

The Lord has intervened in my life in very personal ways many times, but this!  God coming to me, orchestrating the time, the date, the individual He would use, He came especially to me.  Me! I was so overwhelmed and so broken by His mercy.

That was a new beginning for us in this marriage because between the emotional pain and shame that I carried, and my mental and physical illnesses, Garrett’s and my relationship intimacy was fraught with frustration, difficulty, and tears.  The irritability that came with the “ups” of my mood swings made it excruciating for him to even touch me in any way, and yet I so needed to be comforted by him.  A lot of the time I couldn’t even tolerate a hug.

It is hard enough, being mommy all day, and making the switch back to being someone’s lover.  I think for most women, tenderness outside the bedroom is a crucial and necessary prerequisite, for leading up to that greater intimacy we both may be hoping for later.  We women are not compartmentalized within, like men are.  We have to have some neutral territory in between, to create a segue way from point a, to point c.  Most of us can’t “turn on a dime” at will, emotionally, from being mommy in sweats, with baby puke on the shoulder and toddler slime on the sleeve, to being our husband’s “hot mama”.  We were aware of the need for “us time”, we just found it nearly impossible, between my being sick, our financial struggles, the conflict with the in-laws, who often when we might have asked them to babysit, were already keeping the other couple’s two boys, and just yada, yada, ad infinitum.  We did the best we could.  I continued to work on me, my issues,  with a counselor, and on my own with the Lord, and also the two of us with counseling.  We just never gave up.  We had faith that God would some day help us get things right, in spite of ourselves, and there were also two things in particular we had going for us in the marriage.  Garrett and I are great friends first and foremost, and we have always “found our way back to one another” whenever there is anything that we were divided about.  Because we both are absolutely miserable when anything is sitting badly between us.  The other thing is, we can always laugh together.  That by itself has probably been our saving grace more times than I could count.

I know that there are those who would argue that being married again, makes Garrett and me both adulterers.  Well, yes.  Adultery is an act, though, not a continuous state.  I’m an adulterer, I’m a liar, I’m a thief, I’m a murderer.  So is he, so are you.  Gods law is one law, if we are guilty of breaking one, we are guilty of breaking all because God’s law is one law.  That is why Jesus gave His life.

I remember before meeting Garrett, that there was a nurse about my age who started working on the unit shortly before I left, whose husband had left her, except she also had a daughter.   She was a Christian, but felt strongly that she could not be remarried because of her divorce, yet she felt very cheated.  She was not judgmental about it when she knew I got engaged to Garrett, in fact she was genuinely happy for me, but she was bound by her own convictions in regards to herself.

While another girl, who was a good bit younger than I was, and not a Christian, made a remark to one of the other nurses when she found out, saying “Engaged? She doesn’t have any business getting engaged, she’s done been divorced twice”.  One of the other nurses said “doesn’t she deserve to be happy like anyone else?” That nurse wasn’t a Christian either, but she knew I was, and she was the one that shared the exchange with me.  It stung a little, but people are entitled to their opinions.

God hates divorce.  Having been through it, I know why. No matter what the circumstances, divorces are painful.  I am so thankful that there were no children in those other unions, although the second one did have his young daughter, and I saw that even as her step-mom when her dad only had her every other weekend, and a week each summer, that it was painful for her.

There are people who would say that if I was only 9 when I “got saved” and considering the direction my life took, I probably was not truly saved back then.  And frankly, I wondered that myself, later on.  I mean, if a child dies before the age of accountability, and goes to heaven because she had not reached the point of being able to grasp her state of sinfulness and need for salvation, (not knowing good and evil) then I have to wonder if professions of faith at that age are “counted” per se as the moment of salvation, or whether God sort of takes it “as earnest” but  still requires a later confirmation of that decision once the age of accountability is reached.

There are those who just do not believe a person who has truly been saved will be allowed by God to live in such opposition to His law, essentially dragging Christ’s name through the mud.  (All I know is, God knows the end, from the beginning). I do know that I truly loved the Lord as a child and teen (even if I didn’t have much understanding about Him or His character and nature yet).  Things grew very complicated as I began to face the life passages of adulthood, and I was miserable the entire time that I walked counter to His will, and that the day I came to the end of myself on the floor before work, was the first time that I truly understood with an adult’s mind,  the cost of sin and my need for my Savior and the price He paid.  

Can there be salvation without repentance and can there be repentance without fully grasping the scope of our depravity? (Jesus says we are to come to him with faith like that of a child)  I was sincere in 1973 at the age of 9.  I was broken that fall day  in 1992, at the age of 28 when I cried out to Him again.  Which counts as my “spiritual rebirth” day?  I don’t know if it matters.  Because whether I was saved in 73 or 92, Jesus has paid the penalty for my sins.  I know I never had a doubt after the encounter in ’92.

I sometimes imagine that my physical sickness stems from that history, but I don’t see anything that I have been through as punishment, but rather natural consequences.  Sin brings pain and death.  Whether it is my sin, or whether I am in some way a victim of the sin of someone else, doesn’t really make a difference.  Like a pebble dropped into a pond, there is a ripple effect of sin and it effects every person and all of creation.  The “thou shalt nots” of God’s law are not there to spoil our fun.  They are fences and boundary lines erected for our own safety and protection.  God is holy and yes, it offends Him when we violate His law, but it is because He loves us and provided a way to avoid the painful consequences and yet we choose to suffer them when it is unnecessary.  What’s more, He knew we would, so He took the form of a man, and died to pay for those sins so we didn’t have to continue to suffer for them through out all of eternity, and people still refuse to accept His free gift of forgiveness and redemption, loving their sin all the more.

Over time I have come to learn that even our failures are never wasted in God’s economy.  I avoided church and God, and Christian friends when I was living a life that diverged from that “straight and narrow” way.  Even though I was rebelling and railing against God in my heart, I still respected the Bible and God and Church enough that I wasn’t about to go into church and fake it. Even after I was back in church, for a long time, I couldn’t  share the gospel because somewhere along the line and without realizing it, I had absorbed the “get saved-have a better life” mentality.  Without that “selling point”  I didn’t know how to appeal to people.   Beyond my initial rudimentary grasp that I had as a nine-year old child, of my need to be saved, I somehow grew to feel entitled to certain blessings in return for being a “good Christian girl”   As if I knew I needed Him to save me, but I thought I had achieved some degree righteousness of my own.  (As if it can be built up like a muscle).  So many misconceptions.
God said: “My people are destroyed for lack for lack of knowledge”.  He also said “the people that do know their God shall be strong and do exploits.

Maybe the biggest difference between my earlier years and now, is that now I know Him better.

As I look back now, I know I am forgiven, so in regards to my self, it doesn’t matter whether or not God counted marriage #1 as a “real marriage” or whether technically I have been divorced once or twice. All of it is under the blood.   I regret the bad example that I was to the lost around me who knew I professed to be a Christian. I did so many things that misrepresented Him.  Yet even that has been forgiven.

I am just a forgiven sinner.  That is all.  Sin leaves scars, but God loves us anyway.  And that is probably why the song “Alabaster Box” is so special to me, and why the many instances recorded in scripture of Jesus’ tender mercy to women, are so precious; the woman at the well, the woman caught in adultery, the woman who anointed His feet while the Pharisees griped about the waste of the precious and costly perfume.

Luke 7:37 And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster box of ointment,

³⁸ And stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment.

³⁹ Now when the Pharisee which had bidden him saw it, he spake within himself, saying, This man, if he were a prophet, would have known who and what manner of woman this is that toucheth him: for she is a sinner.

⁴⁰ And Jesus answering said unto him, Simon, I have somewhat to say unto thee. And he saith, Master, say on.

⁴¹ There was a certain creditor which had two debtors: the one owed five hundred pence, and the other fifty.

⁴² And when they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both. Tell me therefore, which of them will love him most?

⁴³ Simon answered and said, I suppose that he, to whom he forgave most. And he said unto him, Thou hast rightly judged.

⁴⁴ And he turned to the woman, and said unto Simon, Seest thou this woman? I entered into thine house, thou gavest me no water for my feet: but she hath washed my feet with tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head.

⁴⁵ Thou gavest me no kiss: but this woman since the time I came in hath not ceased to kiss my feet.

⁴⁶ My head with oil thou didst not anoint: but this woman hath anointed my feet with ointment.

⁴⁷ Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.

⁴⁸ And he said unto her, Thy sins are forgiven.

⁴⁹ And they that sat at meat with him began to say within themselves, Who is this that forgiveth sins also?

⁵⁰ And he said to the woman, Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace.

Yes, that is why I love Him so much! More than my husband, more than my kids, more than my parents, and more than life. 

Go to Randomocity Interlude or skip to Chapter 6

Chapter 3 Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Blender

When I had managed to finally extricate myself from that first “marriage”, I was once again without much of a plan beyond survival.  I was in no shape to try and continue my degree at that point, although there probably were campus counseling services available, I didn’t even think of that at the time.  I was so wounded that all I wanted to do was escape the source of pain, and try and pull my shredded spirit back together.  I couldn’t even contemplate resuming classes and upcoming clinical practice that would mean working on the floor, with real patients.

So, it was back to the previous place of employment for a while, until I found a job as a medical assistant in a doctor’s office which was full-time and had benefits.  At that point I was resigned to my status of being divorced, but  God and I weren’t much on speaking terms again yet.  (Repentance and and understanding would come later).

In equal parts I felt shame that caused me to want to avoid Him, and anger at Him over the direction my life went when my dreams and plans were scuttled.  I had huge lessons to learn in regards to my will versus God’s, and a lot to learn about God’s character. None of my self-esteem issues and spiritual questions were resolved, and now I had a whole slew of baggage to go with them.

I still wanted to be married someday. Before long I was involved with someone else.  He was also divorced, so the fact that I was divorced was no concern to him.  He also had a 5-year old daughter with shared custody.  He was friendly, laid back, sort of happy-go-lucky, seemed to have lots of friends, and was working his way up in the company.  He asked me out, I went, we dated, lived together for a while, then eventually we, too married. As you might expect, that did not turn out any better than the first time. The marriage itself barely lasted a year.  By that time I had enrolled in the local community college to finish getting my nursing degree, and though it wouldn’t be the Bachelors I had originally been shooting for, it would get that R.N. behind my name, and the paychecks that went with it.

He was not manipulative like the first guy, but he did have a bad temper, especially if he was drinking.  I was never a drinker, never hung around with people who were drinkers.  I always assumed that was a phase in some people’s lives, or at most, an occasional thing.  It was a friend who made the observation that he was likely an alcoholic because she recognized the signs from her experience with her own father.

Most times when we got into a heated argument, I just wanted to walk away so both of us could cool down. But he would restrain me, which, to this day I have a visceral reaction to being restrained, and did already when I met him. (Wonder why?) He then would take my “freak-out”reaction as a good reason to escalate things rather than back off.  Though I was strong back then I was no match for his size and strength.  My nerves were so bad at that point, it didn’t really take much to make me feel sheer panic.  There were 2 or 3 occasions that involved police.  One time when he came home drunk, I just got in the car to leave, locking the car door as soon as I got in.  He pounded on the window until his fist went through the glass, and severed a ligament in is arm.  I was in a state amounting to shock, at that point.  I managed to get past him while he was busy cradling his arm, and set off in the night in my bare feet, going I knew not where, other than away from him.  It was the sound of an unfamiliar voice shouting my name, that snapped me back.  I turned to see who it was, and it was a neighbor. He had heard my husband call out my name, and he had gone to check on him, and finding him bleeding profusely, he came after me and talked me into coming back to tend to the wound. (Once a caregiver, always a caregiver).  I shouldn’t have, but when you are trained, you respond in emergency situations with emergency measures without a whole lot of extraneous contemplation.  The neighbor apparently called the police, but back then the officers were not duty-bound to arrest someone unless the abused spouse agreed to press charges.  Now the officer can press charges with enough reasonable suspicion that an infraction has occurred, regardless of what the spouse wants or doesn’t want.  My busted car window and his bloody arm should have sufficed, but since it was up to me, I frankly was afraid to press charges and have him carted off to jail.

A few weeks after I finally graduated from nursing school, there was a weekend when he didn’t come home.  Now, it wasn’t unusual for him to hang out late with his friends.  They played softball, watched NASCAR, football, etc, and he had one friend that lived a couple of hours away whom he sometimes spent a weekends with at his lake house for some fishing.  I actually welcomed this “space to do our own thing”after my previous experience.  I liked that he had his own friends and activities, I had mine, and we were not so enmeshed.  But usually he called to tell me where he was and let me know if he was going to crash at one of the friends houses. This one night when he didn’t come home, though, was different.  He seemed to be staying away from home more than usual, and when I called his best friend the next morning thinking that was probably where he was, I could tell the friend was caught off guard and trying to be very careful about what he said.  Though this was the kind of friend that would have covered for him, he had already blown it with the long “uhhhh” after I asked if  my husband was there.

A few moments later my husband called me,and was livid that I had called his friends house “checking up on him”.  That was when I realized that there was someone else and it probably had not been the first time it happened.  The friend had obviously given him the “heads up”.

The crazy and sad thing was, one of my nurse friends had invited me to her church during this period and I had started attending regularly. Prior to this incident, he had even been going with me, stopped drinking for a while (at home anyway) and seemed to be trying to be a “better man” over all.  I thought maybe things were going to turn out okay.  I had even begun entertaining the possibility for the first time in my life, of starting a family.  He genuinely seemed to like going to church, but when it came to the point of actually getting saved, he stopped short, saying that he felt a need to “straighten up his act” first.  I tried to tell him it didn’t work that way, but he just kept saying he wasn’t ready to make that commitment.

In the coming weeks, after the arm-gash incident (he lied to everyone and told them he had caught it on a branch while cutting back some brush).  I simply knew intuitively that he was planning on leaving.  He didn’t say anything, but we became like strangers, until finally I just said one night “you’re leaving, aren’t you?”  He said “Yeah, I am”.  I said “were you even going to tell me?”  He said, yeah, I was waiting until payday, and I was going to tell you then”.  I rolled over and went to sleep, and in the morning, he brought it up again.  He actually had tears in his eyes.  He said “you deserve better than me, somebody who believes like you do, and I can’t be what you need me to be.  You will thank me one day”. (That part turned out to be true).  I realize all of that sounds like a line of bull, but truthfully, I believe that God put it in his heart as a way to free me from yet another bad relationship.

I didn’t have the energy to put up a fight.  I accepted it pretty calmly.  We didn’t have much anyway and I told him I didn’t want anything except what was mine, and for him to pay off some credit cards he had run up.  He did that, and gave me a little cash, he filed for the divorce, and I even thanked his friends who helped him move out.  He left the day of my 10 Year High School Reunion.  I still went to it.

Though I took his leaving pretty well, I obviously had not made any real progress in getting my head together.  I still held myself in low esteem, still dealt with depression and anxiety.  I was given the diagnosis of “cyclothymic” back then.  It is, I guess you could say, a milder, more benign version of bipolar, in that it entails mood swings, they just don’t get as erratic and arc as widely as in Bipolar.  At least at that point I was back on speaking terms with God.  It was a beginning.   If I had understood God’s heart toward me better, if I had known  His character, it could have made a difference.  I had  knowledge only of those things taught in my particular church, and similar to the Catholic church, the people tended to look to the pastor for expertise on scripture.  I wasn’t taught to study it on my own, either at church or in my home.  Yeah, it was required work the one year at the Christian school, but I somehow never adopted a perspective that it should carry over as a lifelong habit.  It was just a required subject like Math and Science.   We did manage to have periods when we had family devotions together in our home growing up, but it never got to be an established habit, (nor was family prayer).  But I sure do thank God my Mom and Dad took us to church.

Well, after number 2 left, I just kept putting one foot in front of the other, going to my job, taking care of patients, paying my bills, going through the motions.

Until the day came when I couldn’t.

Chapter 2 From Potter’s Clay to Predator’s Putty

I put a pretty high premium on being honest and real.  As such, this is a hard chapter to write.

His father died when he was just a kid. His mom and sister were church-goers, he and the brothers were not.  His oldest brother was about the same age as my parents.  His middle brother, sister, and mom were somewhat mentally and/or socially challenged, and all but one of whom still lived together in the one house, which could have easily qualified for an episode of “Hoarders”.   At that particular juncture I wasn’t going to church very regularly myself.  He liked to call himself an atheist, but had a seething resentment toward God. It was irrational to hate  a god he didn’t believe in, but somehow that fact was lost on him.   In hindsight it is no surprise that someone who felt that way toward God could be used of Satan to inflict so much damage in my life, and it is human nature to take what others easily give up.  That’s particularly true for those who feel they’ve been cheated somehow.  Not everyone who gets a raw deal in life turns it into a sense of entitlement, but he did.   He was prideful, an overachiever, a narcissist, and a card-carrying dyed-in-the-wool cynic.

Even though I was disappointed with God, myself, when we met, I was still the friendly, trusting, seeing-the-best-in-people, happy to be helpful, sort of young lady I had previously been. Disappointment would turn to disillusionment, and I would develop my own cynicism.

It has taken a lot of years for me to make sense of all that happened from the time he entered my life.  I have struggled to forgive myself for ever getting into a position that could lead up to what eventually took place, and to get past resenting the lack of guidance and protections that someone raised in a Christian home and in Church ought to have been able to count on.

I don’t know if this sounds strange or not, but I have never really felt anger at the guy.  Maybe because I was initially so devastated by what took place, then later so angry at God and at myself, and  just trying to survive took all the energy I had.  By the time that I “came back to myself and to the Lord” after the ensuing (and very long) detour was over, I understood much more about my own sin nature, why Jesus needed to die for me personally, and really couldn’t condemn someone who was just a fellow-sinner  like myself.

He didn’t so much win me over, as wear me down.  He was polite, charming, a clever conversationalist. Honor student, pre-Med.  Doors just seemed to open before him.  Association with him opened up a new world to me.  He appreciated the fact that I wanted an education, and he was  happy  to show me the ropes as far as applications, financial aid, etc, and tutor me in area where I struggled, like math.  In hindsight, I think that had we remained “just friends”, I could have looked back with some gratitude and count having known him as a positive experience at that time of my life. I might not have gone to college or nursing school otherwise. I still credit him for that.

He spent money on me, lavished me with praise and attention, made me feel beautiful, and after a while, I got comfortable with those perks.  When he became possessive, I felt a heady sense of empowerment that comes with realizing I could have that effect on anyone on the basis of God-given “womanly charms”, and that he could be jealous over me.    He didn’t like it when I spent time with anyone other than him.  Particularly he didn’t like that I insisted on continuing to abide by my parent’s rules about coming and going, checking in, things like that.  My parents never had to have the “while you are under my roof” lecture with me.  I wanted to respect and honor them.   I  did sort of like the sense of shifting over into the adult mode where I had an association with someone other than my parents, and that between he and I, we’d decide things.

As far as I could tell, my parents seemed pretty neutral about him.  They didn’t go to any effort, as I recall, to really get to know him, (nor he, them) but never expressed any opposition to my seeing him. (My parents are humble folks from humble beginnings and I now know that they were probably a little intimidated by his confidence themselves.)  After we had been seeing each other for several months, even though they still wanted me home at a decent hour, they seemed okay about him coming in and hanging out with me after we’d been out, even if they were turning in for the night.  They trusted me, and apparently they trusted him.  But really, I was in something way over my head and so naïve  I didn’t have a clue.  He resented that they still had such control/influence in my life and really encouraged me to move out.  I also felt ready to do that, but since I wasn’t working full-time,  I found a room to rent in the home of an older lady that I worked with.

I felt like I was living a little, having freedom for the first time, making my own decisions, but really, I just went from being under my parents authority, to being under his thumb.

I had zero experience, and what I knew about the “birds and bees” I’d picked up from idle talk heard in school, a very limited one-time discussion with my mom, and from a cousin when were maybe 7 or 8 who should have been as ignorant as I was, but what was demonstrated to and upon me proved otherwise.  Further, the demonstration was accompanied by the assertion that “you have to learn how to do this because you have to do it when you get married”.    I did realize that it was something meant to  take place only between a man and a woman who were married to each other, and that if it happened outside of wedlock it earned (somehow only) the woman her “scarlet letter”.

As you already know from chapter 1 my favorite book is Gone With The Wind, and I had read it several times by the time I was 19, so I had ascertained the general perspective that the whole “intimate business” was messy and unpleasant for the woman, and a rather unfortunate but also unavoidable duty.  I never got that “it is a natural, beautiful special gift from God” angle from anyone, so it left things pretty open for someone to come along and fill in the blanks.

Suddenly my previous standards and beliefs were challenged in ways I was profoundly ill-equipped to counter.   I was in the midst of my very first crisis of faith when I met him. After feeling God had rejected me in my desire to serve Him by going to Bible college and the mission field, I lost sight of any reason to live a “separated” kind of life. I  was as good as conquered (and that was his aim) as soon as I could no longer come up with any better reason to continue “trying to be virtuous” than, “it was the way I was raised/what I was taught/what I believe”.   He did a pretty good job of isolating me, positioning himself in a way that I was becoming dependent upon him. (His own idea, or coached by the master-manipulator Satan?)  For him, there was no confusion, no conflict, no moral question. But maybe he was just following the natural course his hormones led him on. In his mind, he was entitled.  He has no idea what his selfishness cost me, to this very day, I am sure.   He determined that “what was mine, was his” if you catch my meaning.

God designed the human body to respond to certain things in certain ways, and whether this happens in the proper context or not,  His design functions just in the way it was meant to.  That type of intimacy is also very potent by design, meant to meld “two into one”.   Thus it creates ties at a soul-level.  It is also true, and probably intentional on God’s part, that first experiences imprint certain things into a person’s development which become indelible.

I can’t help but recognize how calculating Satan was as he orchestrated the addition of that particular “Pandora’s Box” at that exact juncture of my life.  There is no question I was already depressed at that time. But regardless of how much coercion may have been applied, my own free will  cannot be dismissed as a factor.  Viewing my quashed dreams as a rejection by God, I felt hurt, and it was deep.  Pride, of course, is something which often requires a long time and a lot of heartache for God to get us to see in ourselves.  The understanding of that aspect of it wouldn’t come until much later.

The shifting sands of transitioning into adulthood had left me  desperate to feel some “sense of place”.  My association with him provided me an identity to replace the one that seemed to have disintegrated.   I was raised, like a lot of people my age, in the “do as I say, because I am the parent” school of child-rearing.  This  tends to discourage a child from learning to think for themselves.  Asking “but why?” was a good way to get in hot water at our house.  Being a parent now, I can see the logic in that response, and there are times when it is appropriate, but it is not good if that is the only answer a child ever hears because it doesn’t allow for that child to develop good judgment, confidence in their God-given intuition, nor strong decision-making skills.  The child who has only heard “because I said so” when and if he/she moves out from under the parent’s influence, will naturally seek that next person who will fill that role of telling them what to think and do, and won’t learn accountability. If a child is never allowed to make a unilateral decision, how can anything ever possibly be their fault?

When a vast world opens up, and you suddenly learn there are endless other ways of “believing and being” than what you have known thus far, it is easy and probably normal (and in a safe environment, maybe even healthy), for your own beliefs to be called into question and challenged and re-examined.  They aren’t your own, really, until they have been tested and proven in your own life.  Learning “the hard way” is not ideal, but it is the most common and age-old method for the majority of people, unfortunately.  And God knows this about us.

Years later,  when people I’d grown up with, shared that they’d been victims of incest or molestation, (It was sadly much more common than I knew) I was surprised to discover that accompanying their sense of shame and indignation at having been violated, there was also some  guilt and feelings of complicity.   However, in light of God’s design, it probably shouldn’t be surprising that there be a pleasurable aspect to the experience.  Once Pandora’s box is opened, once sexuality is awakened it can’t be put back into that box for the more appropriate day.  It therefore becomes something that must be dealt with, managed, constrained, and doing so without benefit of maturity and contextual understanding, well, it is a daunting task, and enormously damaging to say the least.

Though I was technically an adult when the rape took place, by then he had put in months worth of preparatory “grooming” and I found that I had that same kind of internal conflict.  In trying to work through all the fallout, I was hard-pressed to pin down the line between his manipulation and my submission to it.  Where did his guilt end and mine begin?  I finally realized it didn’t matter.  Sin is sin, it must be confessed and repented of, but it is Christ alone who makes propitiation for it.  If only I had understood that, maybe I could have done that much sooner, and got on with my life, and avoided years of heartache.  The fact it happened when I was already a professing Christian, led me to mistakenly assume I had utterly blown my life for good.

(My understanding about a lot of things was just wrong, wrong, wrong!)

I heard a “Focus on the Family” broadcast  in which Fran Sciocca said something like this (and I paraphrase): “Guys will play at ‘love” to get the sex that they are after, while girls will skirt the edges of sex, to get the love and affirmation they so desperately want”.  That rang true in what happened in our situation.  I could see how, for him, having no greater guide than his own hormones, with no motivation for restraint, could move unhindered through each step in the continuum, just following where his body wanted to go.  I could see how he professed love in an effort to move closer to that goalpost.   And I could see that I was willing to allow certain concessions (letting him hold my hand and kiss me, when I didn’t even want him to)  in order to feel that I was experiencing love and for the affirmation that seemed to establish; a mark of measuring up, if you will.  I actually laughed the first time he said “I love you” and said, “no you don’t you just think you do”.  I knew we were both calling something that was not, as though it were.  I went along for the sake of appearing normal, which I thought I was not, but which I desperately wanted to be!

It doesn’t help that society crams a false “measuring stick” in our faces and pressures us to judge ourselves by their arbitrary standard.  I desperately needed someone to help me navigate the passages of life that were opening up before me.  He was willing to fill the role, and I submitted myself to his influence if only by my failure to flee.  Hand-holding and kissing were the “price of admission” to being part of a couple, and I counted the cost to my integrity, which was seeming less beneficial all the time.  I wasn’t happy.  But I did feel like less of a misfit in light of his affirmations.

I look back now and can hardly conceive of such a lack of ownership over my own body, and couldn’t  figure out how that perspective came about.   I am no child-development expert, so I have no idea when or how a well-adjusted kid normally gains that sense of ownership, or whether it is something most are born with, only to have it conditioned out along the way.  I just know I didn’t have it in that moment when I needed it.  There was no burst of fight and superhuman strength.  I verbally protested, I even pressed him away, but where was the crazed creature that should have come out swinging for her life?  A Christian therapist I saw, said that is often an indication of prior repressed/forgotten abuse.  I don’t know about all that.  Psychology is fuzzy and I don’t trust it.  Outside perspective helps sometimes, and sometimes it only muddies the water, and as you may have noticed, I need not even go outside my own head to get a second and third opinion.

When you are small, adults necessarily dictate when and what you eat, where and when you go, what you wear, etc.  As you get older its normal to gradually get more “say” in those things.  I mean no disrespect to my parents, (Mom and I have talked about these things,  my parents were good parents, and they did the very best they knew how.  She has even asked me, how did you figure this stuff out?) but yeah, there are probably some clues to my sense of powerlessness, to be found in examining Mom and Dad and their ways of being.

My Dad was the smallest among his brothers, and his Dad was a “picker”.  (No, not the guys who make a living sifting through others junk for treasures).  He tended to “pick on” people. And I even recall that about my grandfather, though he died when I was in 3rd grade.  That was his way of giving you any attention.  I am not even saying he was a bully.  Probably it was the only means of interaction Pappaw learned in his own upbringing, but a grandpa that pops his little grand-daughter’s balloon with his cigarette, and then laughs as she cries about it, could possibly be considered a little mean. That, and him tickling me until I cried, are what I remember about him. I was very uncomfortable around him. That trait in my Grandfather really did a number on my dad’s confidence and sense of self-worth, according to Mom.  Being the youngest boy, the older brothers treated him in like manner, so he got a triplicate dose.

My mom, on the other hand, well, as I’ve said jokingly before, their two voices in my head alone were enough to cause a “splitting” within my mind.  Both extremely stubborn, (I inherited the double dose) both very opposite of one another.  My mom doesn’t consider herself to be  confident either, but as she would put it, she “didn’t know enough to know she didn’t know” how to do something, so she just did it!  (Helplessness is learned).  She could sew anything, swing a hammer, calculate angles, re-upholster furniture, taught herself music and how to play the organ, cut hair, is a talented artist, and she has always accomplished just about anything else she took a notion to do.  But she also has very set ideas of what constitutes the “right way”  On its face, that sounds virtuous, like a high standard, but in the real world it doesn’t always pan out so well to be inflexible. (Things that don’t bend, will break).

Though there were a couple of other vaguely “possible” indicators of “possible” repressed past experiences, solving that particular mystery, (if indeed there was one), wouldn’t necessarily help, and the way I figure if God gave us the ability to bury something like that and forget it, I certainly don’t care to dig it up.  I will say that the incidences I speak of, did unearth some history within the family line, things not forgotten by the ones who experienced them.

The fact remains, instead of physically fighting, I just went away inside my head somewhere.  I don’t mean for the duration of that moment, but for the next decade.  And I am, in fact, still retrieving pieces of myself from off that battlefield even today.

By the way, I wasn’t exactly Shrek’s Fiona (ogre version), or anything like that.  Self esteem issues seldom have any basis in the facts such as they are.  Society certainly sends us mixed messages, and those females who are least constrained by modesty certainly appear to possess a definite “edge” in attracting a mate,  the price of which can be hard to grasp when you are young and insecure.  I was perplexed by the mixed messages and double-standards, and stymied by the impossibility of measuring up to the unattainable air-brushed over-sexualized version of “beauty” peddled by society, and plastered wherever the eye turns.  I was as prone to comparing myself to those false indicators of  “real womanhood” as anyone.  If you weren’t willing or comfortable dancing to the tune of those societal parameters, the message was you could pretty much consider yourself “out of the running” as far as guys were concerned.  In the present day, girls can’t escape this even in the context of church.  For something that is not a competition, it sure can feel like one.  Even the most proactive and intentional effort to raise a girl with a healthy appreciation for her uniqueness and natural beauty, threatens to be drowned out by the worlds contradicting clamor.

It is the ultimate lie Satan has perpetrated against women.  And rare is the woman or young lady (and in this day, girls as young as 8) who hasn’t already bought into it to some degree or other.

Beautiful You