I do not believe that I am any different from any other woman. I dream of finding my one true love, my knight in shining armor. While I do consider myself a hopeless romantic I understand that there are no fairy tale romances in real life. Nevertheless, one of my hearts desires has always been to find a husband. I have been hindered for so long in this effort and never understood why. I thought that it just wasn’t in God’s will for me to have someone in my life, to never know the love of a companion. This thought has grieved me for years.
Before I knew where God would lead me, I was beginning to confide in a friend of mine, who just so happened to be a councilor. One day when I was sharing this desire for a relationship with her, she said something that really made me stop and think. Her words to me were, “Maybe God wants you to work on yourself before He brings someone else into your life.” I heard the truth of it immediately, however I didn’t know what it meant.
Not long after this conversation God opened my eyes to what needed to happen in my heart. (Refer to my previous post, My Testimony.) One of the things that I have had to try to do in this journey of healing is learn how to feel emotions instead of suppress them. The feelings of being unlovable and void of value were and, at times, still are the strongest emotions. I began to deal with these as best I could.
While out of town one night I turned on the TV, found a romantic move and became interested in the storyline. I watched as my two favorite characters inevitably fell in love. A deep sorrow settled on me and that night I remember lying in bed sobbing into my pillow asking God, “Why can’t I be loved!” After a few minutes of listening to my heart ache, God said to me,
“You have to be able to accept My love before you can accept anyone else’s.”
I began to do some serious self examination on my feelings toward God. I wanted to understand the love relationship that we can have with Christ. I thought about the illustrations of Christ being a bridegroom and the church being His bride. I could not keep from wondering, “Is it wrong to think of Jesus as being my husband? Can I really have that kind of relationship with Him?”
I looked through the Bible looking for God’s love. I know, that sounds crazy. I tried different chapters and verses in the Bible that I thought would give me what I was looking for and kept coming up empty. I know that God loves us but I kept seeing it as a father and child love relationship and that wasn’t what I needed. I could see Him as a king and ruler over my life but not a husband. I kept getting caught up with the physical aspects of it. I wanted someone to hold me when I was having a bad day or give me their shoulder to cry on when I needed one. Someone told me that God could send us people who would act as His arms but that didn’t satisfy me either. I wanted to, Literally, fall into the arms of Jesus.
As an answer to the questions in my mind and heart I heard poetry come through the speakers of my car. These words are what caught my attention;
Love of my life • Look deep in my eyes • There you will find what you need…
You’re my beloved • Lover I’m yours • and Death shall not part us • It’s you I died for • For better or worse • Forever we’ll be • Our Love it unites us and it binds you to me.
For a moment my mind, thoughts and heart seemed to be completely still and then excitement came. Could this really be God’s answer to me?
I listened to this song, Beloved, over and over again, knowing that it held a message to me from God. Still, I had trouble understanding.
During revival, there was a message about the love relationship we have with God. This message began to put the pieces together for me. I began to see that Jesus is already in love with me, that He is calling me closer to Him. He wants that same intimate connection with me that I have been wanting with Him. I have been listening to the enemy who keeps telling me that no one wants me not even God can love me. The Spirit moved on my heart and I understood something that had been alluding me from the beginning.
The Spiritual intimacy that I can have with Christ is far greater than any physical intimacy that I could have with someone here, in this world.
It’s such a simple thought that once it was given to me I wondered why it had never occurred to me before.
Today I know that God sees me as not just a child, subject or servant but as a Woman. He knows me and my needs with a deeper understanding than I do. He wants me to know Him in the same way. There is a spiritual woman inside me that is beginning to stand up and take a stand against the lies that the enemy has been feeding me for the past twenty-four years.
God Loves Me! My Lord! My Jesus! The Lover of My Soul!
Friday, August 13, 2010
Monday, August 2, 2010
My Testimony
When I was small, 6 years old, I began to face an evil that continued for six years. I am now an adult living with the affects of this past child abuse. My abuser was someone trusted by my family. No one would have ever thought of him as a pedophile.
God wants to bring me out from under that evil. It’s something that I have lived with for nearly my entire life. I never understood or really knew the affects of it until God put His finger on this situation, a little under a year ago. Since then He has pointed me down the road that He would have me to travel. It’s a dark one. However, I know that He is the light that illuminates my path, one step at a time.
I know now that most of the trouble that I face physically and emotionally comes from this past abuse. I have dealt with physical pain in just about every part of my body, migraine headaches, depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts over the years.
God called me to pray for my own healing a few years ago. Not long after I began to pray He told me that my physical problems come from an evil source. Even knowing my own history it never really clicked as to the true meaning of this.
Later God began to deal with me about having a closer walk with Him. I began to eliminate things out of my life as He pointed them out to me. I suppose you could say that I was fasting those things in my life that didn’t have anything to do with God. I had been filling myself up with things of this world and leaving no room for the things of God. During this fasting time, I was not to read any secular books or watch any secular entertainment. I was to only have things that had to do with God.
I began reading Christian based fiction and looking for Christian based movies. God began to speak to me through those books and the situations that each character faced. He began to show me what can happen to people when they bury things deep inside them and refuse to deal with it. I went through 6 books before I came to the place that God wanted me. It was the seventh book, A Rush of Wings, that really brought everything together for me. It was with this character that I found myself looking into a mirror.
It was a shock to me when God pointed this situation out. I don’t know why, unless it was because I was so afraid of what might happen if I really were to face it. So much is wrapped up in this situation, not just the abuse but things that came after as well as things that happened once everything was made known to my family.
As I began to pray about the direction I was to take, God spoke directly to my heart and said, “You have to let your spirit be healed before I can heal your body.” At that moment I made a commitment to do the will of God and I knew that for once I was doing Exactly what He wanted me to do.
It is obvious to me, now, that God has sent people into my life to help me with all the strugels that I am and have faced. As I began to accept this path and to pray about it I had several different feelings. The first was a kind of excitement. I thought about the kind of person that I would be on the other side of this and knew that I would come out of it closer to God. The next was a very real fear and sinking feeling, because of the thought that I was going to have to face the darkest part of my life. I knew that things were going to get a lot worse before they got better. The third was the feeling of walls, inside me, crumbling down and releasing a flood of emotions that I have kept hidden and locked away All my life. Sometimes it feels like I am going to be washed away by the tide. That’s when I have to remember who put me on this path and literally make him my anchor.
I am learning more about myself and my relationship with God all the time. The most important realization came the other night in revival while standing at the alter.
God is going to bring me out of this!
I do not put my testimony out here looking for sympathy. I have shared it to tell what God is doing for me, in my life. I will write more later but for now I just want to encourage others that no matter what kind of darkness you have faced or are facing now – God is bigger!
God wants to bring me out from under that evil. It’s something that I have lived with for nearly my entire life. I never understood or really knew the affects of it until God put His finger on this situation, a little under a year ago. Since then He has pointed me down the road that He would have me to travel. It’s a dark one. However, I know that He is the light that illuminates my path, one step at a time.
I know now that most of the trouble that I face physically and emotionally comes from this past abuse. I have dealt with physical pain in just about every part of my body, migraine headaches, depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts over the years.
God called me to pray for my own healing a few years ago. Not long after I began to pray He told me that my physical problems come from an evil source. Even knowing my own history it never really clicked as to the true meaning of this.
Later God began to deal with me about having a closer walk with Him. I began to eliminate things out of my life as He pointed them out to me. I suppose you could say that I was fasting those things in my life that didn’t have anything to do with God. I had been filling myself up with things of this world and leaving no room for the things of God. During this fasting time, I was not to read any secular books or watch any secular entertainment. I was to only have things that had to do with God.
I began reading Christian based fiction and looking for Christian based movies. God began to speak to me through those books and the situations that each character faced. He began to show me what can happen to people when they bury things deep inside them and refuse to deal with it. I went through 6 books before I came to the place that God wanted me. It was the seventh book, A Rush of Wings, that really brought everything together for me. It was with this character that I found myself looking into a mirror.
It was a shock to me when God pointed this situation out. I don’t know why, unless it was because I was so afraid of what might happen if I really were to face it. So much is wrapped up in this situation, not just the abuse but things that came after as well as things that happened once everything was made known to my family.
As I began to pray about the direction I was to take, God spoke directly to my heart and said, “You have to let your spirit be healed before I can heal your body.” At that moment I made a commitment to do the will of God and I knew that for once I was doing Exactly what He wanted me to do.
It is obvious to me, now, that God has sent people into my life to help me with all the strugels that I am and have faced. As I began to accept this path and to pray about it I had several different feelings. The first was a kind of excitement. I thought about the kind of person that I would be on the other side of this and knew that I would come out of it closer to God. The next was a very real fear and sinking feeling, because of the thought that I was going to have to face the darkest part of my life. I knew that things were going to get a lot worse before they got better. The third was the feeling of walls, inside me, crumbling down and releasing a flood of emotions that I have kept hidden and locked away All my life. Sometimes it feels like I am going to be washed away by the tide. That’s when I have to remember who put me on this path and literally make him my anchor.
I am learning more about myself and my relationship with God all the time. The most important realization came the other night in revival while standing at the alter.
God is going to bring me out of this!
I do not put my testimony out here looking for sympathy. I have shared it to tell what God is doing for me, in my life. I will write more later but for now I just want to encourage others that no matter what kind of darkness you have faced or are facing now – God is bigger!
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