Category Archives: Raw

Essays and Thoughts, Raw

Musings from a 72-hour especially dark ordeal

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I suppose it’d be too long to cover all the details, but the gist is, I found myself out of state and in severe pain.  It had the symptoms of maybe a kidney stone, maybe appendicitis, (both of which I’ve suffered in the last three years once, and never before).  At the behest of my loved ones around me watching me suffer, I agreed to let them take me to an ER at about one in the morning.  (The pains had started about seven that evening, and I tried very hard to hide them and manage them myself.  Unfortunately they intensified and I was no longer able to shrug it off as “a little stomach pain”.)

After an especially grueling five hour ER visit in small town (out of state) hospital with ZERO other patients, they assessed I had a 4mm stone and it was about 1.5 inches from the bladder.  Oh good, I reasoned, the last one I had was 5mm and I passed it.  This one is almost all the way down, should be over with soon, I reasoned.  They gave me a strong pain killer and sent me on my way.

I thought the reason I was so tired when we were driving the 6+ hours home the next day was just from getting back to the hotel at six and having about four hours of sleep.  I thought it a little odd I was nauseous and had to pull over a few times to vomit. 

A friend picked me up and took me to the pharmacy where I got the pain killer prescription and I arrived home Thursday evening.  I felt shredded so laid down, for what ended up being several hours.  I tried to get up around eight or nine that evening and get something to eat, but didn’t have much appetite, and kept falling asleep, so finally went to bed for the night.  Oddly, a couple hours before I went to bed this phrase from a worship song began playing in my head, “This is how I fight my battles.  It may feel like I’m surrounded but I’m surrounded by You.”  Hmm, weird, I thought.  God usually gives me songs in the night or early morning.

I woke up in the three o’clock hour with that intense pain moving in.  Trying to ward it off, I got up and took the pain killer and went back to bed.  About an hour later I woke up to my teeth chattering.  Weird, I thought.  Weirder still, it worsened.  They began clattering violently, and it hurt.  I tried to hold my jaws to settle them, but I couldn’t control it.  My husband was now awake and trying to figure out what was going on.  It kept getting worse, more violent, until my body even began convulsing.  I couldn’t speak because my teeth were chattering so badly.  By now I was quite frightened because I had no idea what was going on in my body or how to alleviate it.

Bill got up and began gathering things to go to the ER.  When I got out of bed I was startled that I couldn’t walk well because of my body shaking so badly.  I couldn’t grab anything with my hands, and I could barely speak other than with single words and repeating them until they came through the teeth correctly. 

Our city has two main hospitals that carry their own problems, and we have found a non-corporate ER room that is free of so many of the hospital bureaucracies.  There they got me right in, began assessing, threw warm blankets on me, and started drawing blood while administering pain control.  After several blood draws, examining my prior night’s ER records we had brought, and a urinalysis, I was surprised when the doctor came in and said, “Well you won’t be going home today.”

I wasn’t really prepared for that.  I thought it was another matter of just passing the stone.  I had been chiding myself that I should have been doing the preventative treatment the weeks prior when I thought my kidney was a little achy. 

He went on to say they were going to give me some powerful antibiotics intravenously because my blood was sepsis, and my white blood count was quite elevated (and I had a 103 temperature).  He said that either the stone was infected, or the stone had gotten caught and caused an infection, and now my blood was poisoned.  He made it sound rather urgent, rather life or death if left untreated, and they immediately began administering antibiotics.

He then went on to tell me the next course of action where I would be transferred by ambulance (!) to a major hospital where an urologist will be selected to determine the next steps, which would likely be surgery.  There were other details that I’m missing but that’s the crucial part.

I waited for all the hospital staff to finish and leave the room, then turned to Bill and said, “I don’t think I can do it.  He’s never failed me before.”  Bill knows me, knows my heart and understands me.  He said, “Maybe there will be another option.”  So he asked the doctor when he came back next how likely he thinks surgery will be the solution.  He said in my current state he thought it very likely, but that would be the urologist’s decision.  When Bill asked what other options we had, he answered that I could pass the stone and then they’d just have to do intense antibiotic treatment. 

That became my prayer.  That’s when I reached out to friends to pray the stone passed so that surgery was removed from the solutions.  The phrase of that song became the song I sang to myself in my head the next 24 hours or so.

The hospital adventure is too long for this rant, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be in some ways, and worse in others.  Bureaucracy was definitely still an issue.  The urologist was ready to do surgery, but was actually quite reasonable and said he couldn’t do that without knowing where the stone was.  He ordered x-rays and they couldn’t find anything.  He ordered another CT scan and couldn’t find anything conclusive.  He requested I stay overnight while they kept fluids in me, monitored my temperature (which wasn’t as dramatic, but still showed infection), and saw how I landed in the morning.  When he left it was left that surgery was still a possibility the next afternoon.

That’s the backstory.  But it’s the context for the next part.

My first musing about said trial

I was absolutely miserable.  My body ached from the fever, from the hospital bed, from the whole ordeal.  Pain meds minimized but didn’t remove the pains.  My only prayer was that the stone pass so that I didn’t need surgery.  I was okay with antibiotics; I saw their urgent place.

This is where I hate explaining.  I have no desire to defend my decisions, yet explaining them is burdensome.  I don’t need anyone to agree with me, and I certainly don’t expect anyone else live by my own standards.  These are standards I acquired as I grew.

I have some very basic beliefs.  They’re mine; they’re my beliefs, and I’m not asking anyone else to believe them.  I’ve had too many encounters with God where He established His sovereignty over my body and I relinquished personal choice in the matter.  I simply yielded myself into His hands.

I didn’t have anyone in my life I could depend on (before Bill), and I threw myself at the mercy of my Creator decades ago.  I’d rather be at His mercy than man’s.  I’d rather yield to His wisdom and power than man’s.  Those are my beliefs, my convictions. 

I’ve heard it all over the years.  “God made doctors.”  (Did He?  Or did He create man and give man wisdom?  Let’s be clear.)  “God uses doctors.”  Absolutely.  I have no qualms with that.  “God gave us brains.”  (I’m not going to dignify that with an answer.)  If you can think of an objection to my belief system, I’d pretty much guarantee I’ve either heard it or contemplated it myself.

But I view life and the matters of life through the lens of walking with my Creator.  So every time I’ve had a crisis point, a moment of decision, a place I must choose which way to turn, I look for God first.  Where is He in this?  What is He saying?  What can I glean from what I’ve learned about Him to help me make this decision?

And I try to never, ever go backwards.  If I trusted God for matters of my health/finances/relationships/etc. in the past, how do I stop trusting Him in this new, scary instance?  Is this new situation too big for Him?  Is it somehow going to stump Him?  If He has proven Himself faithful with my particular needs before, is this an instance He may drop the ball?  Would I rather trust God or man?

See, that’s where I think the rub comes in.  We make decisions, have reactions based on fear too much of the time.  I’m in excruciating pain and suffering and there’s a possibility I may die from said pain without intervention, so at this instance I am at the same crossroads I’ve been before.  If I decide differently, that this is somehow too big or scary to trust God, then I have walked backward in my faith.  That’s not a place I’m comfortable being.  To be honest, I’d rather die.  When I looked at Bill and said, “I don’t think I can do that; He’s never failed me.”  I also said, “I’m okay with dying.”

For all of my life, God has been my one constant.  He has never failed me.  (Bill is a close second, but he has not been here all of my life.)  God cares for me more than anyone possibly could.  He knows me better than anyone ever will.  It is simple to trust Him (but not always easy).  There is no doctor who knows my body better than God.  There is no doctor that knows what’s going on in my body better than God.  I like my odds there.  Now it’s just trying to get myself aligned with God for the needs of my body.  I don’t mind that work.  I’m working with God.  Man is so much more inconsistent.  (Which is not to say God does not use man, because there have been many instances God has and I have acquiesced to the person He put in my path.)

My second musing about trial

Saturday morning when they still did not have a visual on the stone and my fever had not spiked but had remained under control, they reluctantly sent me home with oral antibiotics and pain killers and specific instructions.  If my fever was to spike and/or pain increase, I was to return at once. 

Little did I realize my real battle was in front of me.  Once I got home (Saturday morning around ten), I laid down after taking my antibiotic, only to wake up twenty minutes later and vomit it up.  My fever shot up a bit and I felt quite sick.  As the day progressed I fought nausea, loss of appetite, fever, and absolutely no strength or energy.  It took too much energy to speak, and I communicated by whispers meted out by necessity.  I was not able to walk well on my own.  If I had to walk on my own it was painfully slow and shuffled.

If I were to be honest, I would think this may be what it feels like to be dying.  I couldn’t take antibiotics or pain killers because I couldn’t eat and if I didn’t eat, I vomited.  It was a very, very long day.  The day before I had sorta joked, “I didn’t see my week going like this.”  On Saturday, I wasn’t sure what the next 24 hours were going to bring.

Everyone who saw me (except Bill) begged me to go back to the hospital.  My kids saw me early afternoon, and when they returned late afternoon they were dismayed.  They exclaimed that I looked horribly worse.  They lovingly implored us to not be “stubborn” and to go back to the hospital, that I was doing terribly and sepsis is not something you can take lightly. 

My daughter got me some jello.  Another daughter got me some pretzels.  I ate what I could (a few bites of each), and waited to see if I could keep them down.  My children left.  After thirty minutes or so, Bill and I prayed over the antibiotics and asked God to remove the nausea.  I took the pill.  A couple hours later I laid down, feeling the worse I had been feeling all day, honestly wondering if I was dying.  I was too weak to pray, to answer my phone, to talk, to move, to do anything at all.

When I laid down, I committed it all to God – the whole thing.  If I should go to the hospital, I would do what He said.  If I were to die, please take care of my family.  I asked Him to heal me, to remove the infection, but however it went, I released myself (again, as I always do) into His care.  The last words I prayed were, “I trust You.”

Around midnight I woke up in a pool of sweat and pain free.  My fever had broken.  I think I laid in bed smiling for an hour, thanking God for the breakthrough.  When I laid down, I thought the possibility existed that maybe I wouldn’t wake up the next day.

I’m not out of the woods yet.  I’ll be taking antibiotics for another eight days.  I had a low grade fever off and on all day on Sunday.  There are still risks involved.  I’m not here to make a stand for “never going to the doctor”.  I just haven’t quite figured out how to trust God and man simultaneously. 

Which leads me to this last muse…. Is it really stubbornness?  In an age of unfaithfulness, wouldn’t conviction seem a lot like stubbornness?  We live in a world, a society, a nation even, that bows the knee to human prowess and has been quite vocal in recent years at mocking God.  Is me trying to walk out my convictions that contradict worldly systems offensive?  Didn’t Paul speak of such things when he spoke of the carnal mind being unable to comprehend the things of the spirit?  When you come at me with human reasoning in matters of faith, you solidify my stance. 

Can I have the freedom to exercise my faith to the best of my ability?  Or is that now somehow relegated to categories of “stubbornness” or “stupidity”?   Should I bend my convictions to the altars of human knowledge and human wisdom?  Or should the altars of human knowledge and wisdom bend to the wisdom of God?  I want to represent Him well.

I don’t necessarily have the answers.  I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, but I needed time to seek Him, to figure it out.  I went home to do that.  I have to take each of these situations on a case by case and see if I am able to walk out my convictions with the decisions I make.  It is my greatest desire to walk with God in the manner He created me for, and sometimes that takes some time to figure out. 

Essays and Thoughts, National Issues, Raw

Rant

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It’s just interesting to me that conservatives are as biased as liberals but pretend they aren’t. It’s like we all have these lines we draw in the sand about what we’re willing to look at and/or believe and what we aren’t. I’m quite sure I do the same thing, even though I make a concerted effort not to.

I posted An0maly’s eighteen minute reporting on Trump’s connections to Bill Gates, his endorsements of Fauci and Birx, and his pride in his role in getting the covid vaccine released, ALL WHILE IN OFFICE. Crickets.

I’m just going to go off for a minute and I’m probably going to piss someone(s) off. I know most of us are sitting on the outside trying to make sense of actions happening on the inside of the playmakers’ tents. We can’t possibly know all the details, and we’re at best connecting some fuzzy dots. But when the dots are unfavorable, we don’t have the luxury of stopping our ears, covering our eyes, and closing our minds IF we care about truth and the stand for righteousness.

It’d go a long way if we’d not pick a mascot token person(s) for the fight in front of us. We just need to be able to stand on truths so we don’t fall in the cesspools of deceptive half-truths. That’s what makes one deceived. It’s what got us here in the first place.

Also, people are fallible. I don’t care how much you love the guy you’ve bet all your chips on, he/she is still going to make mistakes — and sometimes some very costly ones. King David cost innocent people their lives to the tune of THOUSANDS for his own mistake. Making mistakes doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the wrong person for the job, but covering for their errors and pretending they’re something they’re not only worsens our ability to flex and adapt in a constant moving reality. It worsens our condition instead of bettering it.

My husband thinks I’m amazing. Sometimes I am. Sometimes I’m not. When I screw up, we can’t afford to pretend I didn’t. We learn from it, adapt, grow. If we don’t, we create an environment of dysfunction. I can still be amazing and make serious errors. So can you, so can Trump, so can anyone. We don’t need to pretend errors are something else. It doesn’t help anything but the deception.

To conclude (haha!), I learned a really painful but necessary lesson years ago. I may have already shared it. But I was trying to make a decision about something that I was about 50/50 for/against. I sought intercessors and prayed and fasted and sought God hard about the decision. At the end of this period, the thing I thought I heard God on ended up I had not heard correctly. The intercessors had not heard correctly. We were all wrong because the outcome did not align with what we thought we had heard. And I was absolutely dismayed — not because I cared about the outcome, but because I did not hear God correctly and did not discern correctly.

After days of railing about this to God, and then a period of sullen silence because I ran out of things to belabor, He finally spoke. He said, “Michelle, if your faith is in anything but Me, you will fail. If your faith is in your understanding, if your faith is in your faith, if your faith is in your ability to hear Me, if your faith is in words in the Bible, if your faith is in ANYTHING but Me, ultimately your faith will fall. It will fail.”

We don’t realize the things we hang our mental hats on. We aren’t circumspect enough, as a general rule. We don’t realize that this thing we’re holding out hope in is based on moving parts and riddled with human foibles, while being sabotaged by dark spirits. All of our understanding, all of our wisdom and discernment, all of our experiences, all of our knowledge, everything — is nothing. It’s nothing.

My understanding is going to fail. My prayers will fail. My best efforts will fail. Not always, but at some points, and sometimes at a critical point. We just can’t afford to willfully turn aside from hard truths. We don’t have to embrace them, but we need to be honest and fair about them. Maybe we don’t understand where, how or why they fit. But disregarding them is to our detriment and hinders the progress of righteousness.

Rant over.

Essays and Thoughts, Raw, Things I've Learned Along the Way

Refuse to Participate in the Works of Darkness

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Let me start by saying who I am is not who I’ve always been.  In fact who I am today is not even who I was a year ago, and there is barely a resemblance to who I was ten years ago.  That said, dare I continue to expound and proclaim who I was 25+ years ago is not at all who I am today?

Yes, I have changed, and the truth of the difference between seasons of my life before and the season I am in now, is I was a much worse person the further back you go.  This is not to endorse myself as particularly superb at this point, but it is to say past deeds of error and failure cannot be denied, and such past deeds have indeed hurt people I love – even though it was not my desire to do so.

I will not justify past pains I have caused by dismissing them as errors and young folly, especially in the face of suffering such may have caused to others.  I regret every past sin, wish I had the wisdom and understanding and ability to behave differently then, and in an act of rectifying, try very hard to not be so today.

That said, if you are to view me today through the lens of my past failures, there is no hope for me.  Today I am not that person in essence.  Viewing me through the filter of yesterday will distort me today.  Sure, there are plenty of faults I carry today, but I am more than happy to be accountable for them and change as needed. 

Which leads to the lesson I wanted to share in the hopes of helping another….

Years ago, some that I love very dearly began a campaign (though they would never call it so) against me.  These are people I have laid down my life for, and would do so today.  Accusations (some true, some false) were flung against me from places of pain within themselves, pain from things I had done or said in the past (again some true, some false), and from misunderstandings.   At first I was unaware of the talk, but slowly it began to seep out to me.  Some was literally spoken to me, but most of it was veiled behind passive-aggressive behaviors.

At one point, the Spirit of God gave me visions of 2-3 of these people speaking amongst each other, and I saw whirlwinds of dark, polluted words over their heads.  When I inquired of the Lord, He simply told me they were bringing accusations and complaints about me to one another and stirring up dissension and strife in our family.

It took me awhile to understand what was going on.  I had been bewildered when some of their attitudes toward me changed, became hostile or combative, and especially accusatory.  At one point, the Spirit showed me two of them on the phone, showed a computer screen with my social media page pulled up, and showed condemning words over me from both parties.  I unfriended both from my social media page without comment, as I didn’t want more conflict.  I did so in an effort to remove gasoline from a burning fire.

Our family dynamics began to change.  Factions crept up, what seemed like alliances pitting some against others came to be.  Triangulating began between parties.  The worse it got, the more I distanced myself.  At first I tried to understand, tried to reach out to the offended parties.  I went through a very, very long season (a few years) of great angst.  My efforts to try to bridge growing chasms, to apologize or extend mending efforts only seemed to exacerbate the situation. 

In the thickest part of this darkness, I struggled a great deal trying very hard to not view those I love with my entire being as enemies.  The arrows kept coming; the sabotage was real; and I was being alienated and put outside of the people I cared the most about.  It rocked everything in me.  If it weren’t for God breaking in with His truths at critical times, I do not know where I’d be today.  It was destroying me and I was slowly dying.

It seemed to originate with one particular person, the one I called best friend and had felt the closest to by a long shot.  Over the years our relationship died.  I prayed about our relationship, prayed for this person, reached out less and less as the extensions were rebuffed.  Finally God Himself spoke to me and told me two things about where this person was, and one thing about what the future would bring.

The first thing He told me was proven within days.  The second thing I began to see and understand a few years later.  The promise of the future I just hold on to, sometimes I see it and sometimes I don’t.

But the lesson I want to share right now is this.  In the worst part of this, when the accusations and slander was flying, the behaviors were hostile and even cruel, I had to fight to not to want to defend myself, not to want to lash out.  My own thoughts became dark with questions and doubts, and I struggled to not retaliate out of my own pain.  I did not always overcome. 

One particular day as I was nursing wounds over recent events, I was struggling to find the right course of action and attitude when the Spirit spoke.  He paraphrased this passage from James 3:

Who among you is wise and understanding? Let him show by his good behavior his deeds in the gentleness of wisdom.  But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, do not be arrogant and so lie against the truth.  This wisdom is not that which comes down from above, but is earthly, natural, demonic.  For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder (confusion) and every evil thing.  But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy.  And the seed whose fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

Then said, “What kind of fruit is this producing, Michelle?” 

Then He led me to Galatians 5:19-24:

Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions,  envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.  But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

Strife, enmities, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions were abounding in our family.  “Where do these come from, Michelle?” He asked.  These are “every evil thing”; these are the works of darkness.  And in that moment it was no longer about the people but about the spirits operating through the people.  For me to respond or react in anger, in defense even, in manners that would exacerbate the divisions and factions already produced, would be for me to partner with darkness to our family’s demise.  I did not want to be a vehicle for the devil’s work and to the demise of our family.  I had to choose to respond in wisdom and love, and if I couldn’t do that, I must keep silence.  I do not want my family’s demise.  I do not want any of the people involved to be damaged.

I posted the following on my wall where I would see it daily.

As the days proceeded to challenge my resolve, I remembered some instructions I learned back in the days I was getting deliverance.  When you remove the dark, you must replace it with light.  So I made a couple more notes and put them in prominent places I would see with the additional instruction.  This one is faded from being in the sun.

The people I love are manifesting works of darkness.  I must refuse to participate with the works of darkness.  I cannot retaliate; I cannot return like for like, and most of the time I am not even to defend myself.  In my silence, I run the risk of being misunderstood, (which is quite normal for me actually).  But I dare not disgrace my God, and this is the way I know to do so at this point.  (even though there are moments I still fail)

It’s interesting the different lessons I’ve been learning along the way.  I spend so much of my time raging against the machine and the evils of the world that I was caught off guard when the darkness manifested in the place that used to be my refuge.  It’s been equally devastating to watch the toll it has taken on my beloved.  I have a lifetime of rejections and abandonments that have in part “prepared” me.  He has had only one that nearly devastated him almost thirty years ago.  It has been particularly painful watching him suffer from the loss of those he loves.  It’s not what we think family is supposed to be.  It’s not what we endeavor family to be.  And dare I say it’s not what family was designed to be.

We live in a fallen world, and like never before I can see the powers of darkness clashing with the kingdom of Light – both externally and internally.  We have choices, albeit hard ones.  Ultimately, our allegiance will manifest in our behaviors, regardless of what our tongues say. 

I cannot help but think on the situation our family has been in for far too long now.  It is fractured, with clear strife, divisions and other manifestations of darkness.  Years ago the Spirit directed me to memorize 1 Corinthians 13.  Sometimes when I recount harsh words against me that have been left to stand as they were stated, have not been recanted, corrected or amended, the Spirit gently whispers to me, “That is not the nature of love.”  And if it’s not the nature of love, then it is in fact the nature of darkness.

God has broken in for me at precise moments to keep me from utter despair or a downward spiral of condemnation.  I do not write this from a point of need.  He has been faithful to me; has used even strangers to tell me what He thinks of some of this – strangers who knew nothing of my situation.  I only share because I think so many of us suffer from works of darkness manifesting in places we wish it wasn’t.  It’s so much easier to fight the battle outside than within.  The cost is so much greater when it is people we love than evil systems by unnamed or unknown people. 

When it’s people we love in an environment that’s supposed to be safe, we are called to personify love.  We must remember that love suffers long, that it is kind, that it does not behave rudely, that it does not seek its own, and that it keeps no record of wrong.  We can be assured that we do not rejoice in the iniquity that is challenging it, but we do indeed rejoice at the truth.  This has been a hard place especially for my husband, for he is unwilling to compromise what he knows to be truth to assuage emotions.  But ultimately, love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things and even endures all things.  Love never fails.  The reason love never fails is because God is love.  We must choose our alliances, God or darkness.  The details rarely if ever work out or manifest the way we think or want them to.  It doesn’t matter, though.  We set our eyes upon our Master and try not to flinch as we emulate His character, even at great personal cost. 

“Refuse to participate in the works of darkness.  Walk in light.”

I pray this encourages someone to seek the Kingdom of Light while walking through the valley of death, and to demonstrate love even in the face of pain and darkness.

Essays and Thoughts, Raw, Things I've Learned Along the Way

trial in the Valley

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I’ll be sharing some learning moments from a family trauma we’ve been going through for a few years now.  I’m only sharing things we’ve learned from God, not the trauma itself, in an effort to testify to God’s great love for all of us and how He is in the midst of even the drudgery of human failures.

I’ve been watching my husband slowly inwardly dying from the pain of this trial.  [I have my own issues with it, but this is not about that right now.]  Several months ago I had a dream and in one part, Bill was swimming in a river with a water turtle (turtles are a passion of his), and an alligator came up and bit him.  He was too far away for me to get to because the river bank was so high, and I watched his lifeless body sinking to the river bed about 25 feet below as I heard myself screaming his name.  No other part of the dream was about Bill, so I was startled by this inset in the dream.  I looked up the symbolism of an alligator attack and this stood out:  a spiritual attack often manifesting in treachery, and then an issue, challenge, or person stopping one’s flow.  When I inquired of the Spirit upon waking, God told me Bill was inwardly dying from the treachery involved in the trial.

I’ve watched as has felt stuck, unable to move forward, but unwilling to compromise what he knows is truth – to the painful detriment of his heart.  It seems to come and go in waves, with sometimes obvious, sometimes not so obvious triggers that set him back again. It has manifested even in physical symptoms of physical pain, and I am grieved watching him in so much pain, but unable to assuage it. 

Last week revealed more pain for Bill, and much of this pain he shoulders alone, unwilling to share with me because of his desire to shield me from further affliction.  The simplest word for his pain is abandonment.  He (and our family) have been abandoned by one he (and our family) dearly loves.  He did not see it coming, and it has crippled him in ways I am not at liberty to discuss.

Bill is a fixer.  He cannot fix this, and every attempt he has made to fix it has only seemingly worsened it.  He has withdrawn outward efforts in an attempt to not make matters any worse.  [I withdrew years ago when it seemed my presence only intensified the matter.]

Which brings us up to recent events that found Bill incapacitated by physical pain that I believe was brought on by emotional pain.  As he poured out his heart to me, I felt unable to bring relief or comfort.  Yet I felt the Lord speak through me when I told him he had to stop processing this ordeal through a particular title/role he holds in it.  He has done all he can to demonstrate his love and acceptance of this person, and there is nothing more he can do that will not compromise him, his convictions, and his obedience to God in the matter.  He needs to lay that down and focus on his role as a son, a son of God.  How does God see him?  What does God think of him?  What is God asking of him?

The next morning he relayed a dream he had the night before.  He had rented a ground tamper from Dale Sharp Auto.  (hilarious because Dale Sharp sells cars, does not rent tools)  He was pulling it with his truck and got caught in a snow storm.  The storm was so bad he was starting to get stuck.  He felt like he was stuck in a part of our city called “Oakland”.  He got out his phone to call Dale Sharp to tell them he might be late to getting the tamper back because of the storm, when a young boy rolled up beside him outside on a child’s sized snowmobile.  The boy and his snowmobile were moving effortlessly in the storm, even moving snow out of the way.  He woke up.

The storm represents the trial he is in, and snow represents purifying.  God is using this present trial to purify Bill in specific ways.  Bill is trying to resolve the issue/conflict in the manner he knows but he is unable to labor his way out of this storm.  (He is not meant to.)  Oaks symbolize strength and power, and he is getting stuck in the place he is trying to maneuver in his own strength or power.  Dale means “valley”.  Bill is walking in the “valley of the shadow of death” (remember the alligator dream), but the valley will sharpen him.  God is showing him he can move through this purifying storm by returning to the childlike faith Christ speaks of.  He will then be able to move effortlessly, even move the snow in his way.

I love the takeaway in this, and how every one of us can apply it.  We all have situations and trials we get stuck in, and our best labors will not get us out.  But as children of God, we must choose to identify in our roles as sons and daughters of God.  The particular intricacies of our trials obviously all vary with the uniqueness of our personal lives.  But to be children of God is the keystone to our existence and our purposes in every relationship.  When we get stuck, maybe we just need to get back to that premise, that foundation of who we are.  Maybe then we will be able to move in the storms designed to take us out, but our roles as God’s children will instead move us through.

Dreams, Raw

my course correction

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I think for the impact of this course correction and the profoundness it weighed on me to be understood with any chance of it helping another, I will have to expound on the background of the setting.  I apologize if it’s too detailed, but to leave out some may cause the effect to be lost, and then what’s the point?

The background is that I spend untold of hours as a watchman on the wall, scanning the landscape for threat or even hints of threat coming off the horizon.  In the process of operating at my post, I am compelled to evaluate perceived threats for their seriousness.  To do that, I must look past the surface and superficial, and really look at the nuts and bolts of something to the best of my abilities.  A headline, for instance, is not enough information to warrant a warning.  A whole article is not usually enough. 

There’s more to that, but the point of it is that I spend a lot of hours in dark holes of malicious intent and nefarious connections and roots.  The past few years have been heavy, and the past several months have worn me down considerably.   After awhile I realized I have not heard from God personally in quite some time – longer than usual.  In fact, the darkness of the hole I was in had swallowed the light and I have been scanning to see and hear God.  I have been desperate for some sort of balance to the dismal future I see before humanity.

From my journal entry:  I have been crying out to God for weeks upon weeks now.  I have not been able to see, hear, or perceive Him.  I have been in a shadow, a place I couldn’t understand or discern rightly.  I have been looking for God – straining to hear Him.  The blackness of this world – the corrupt state of our nation – the seeming lostness of my children – all of it has taken its toll and I have been in a dismal, dark place.  I have been looking, looking, looking for Him.  Where is He right now?  What is He doing?  What is He thinking?  How can I join Him if I don’t know where He is?  What He’s doing?  Has my soul become polluted from the cesspools I’ve been mortified by?  Has my heart gotten hardened by the depravity of our society and the growing cynicism in my heart?  Is He upset with me because my faith is so weak right now?  I have been watching and reporting on the darkness for so long now, have I become unable to see what He, the Light, is doing?  These have been some of the questions haunting me that I have been echoing to my God.

And sentiments like this have been my continual prayer before God for weeks upon weeks now, in between tasks, when I lie down at night and rise in the morning. 

I have the gift of faith, so faith comes easy for me.  I usually have enough faith for me and whatever community is around me.  I have no problem believing God.  Yet in November I confided to a couple of my best friends that I had never known my faith to be so weak.  I set myself to see what was the root.  I set myself before God.

I’ve been waiting.  And waiting. 

It got better as I set myself to read His Word more consistently, to set aside time to meditate and just be before Him.  But I still hadn’t heard from Him.  I’ve learned over the years how to posture myself to see and/or hear God when I need to.  I’m used to seasons of silence.  It doesn’t bother me, because I’ve learned He speaks and moves faithfully.  I’ve learned how to wait upon Him and wait for Him.  This was different.  This time was not like the rest.  It was nothingness.  Not a silence as in He wasn’t speaking, but a nothingness as in is He even there? 

Then Friday night, I was going to be alone again because Bill had to work late again.  I threw some leftovers in the oven and sat by the fire to eat them around 8:30pm.  As usual, I am talking to God on the in-betweens of thoughts and actions.  I sat down cross-legged in my chair before the fire, the plate on my lap, continued the last thought I had before Him, and as I picked up my fork to take a bite He said, “I’m right here, Michelle.”

He interrupted me, and I stopped, fork mid-air.  It’s been quite awhile that I’ve been looking for Him so I wondered if my mind was playing tricks on me, if maybe I said it to myself to comfort myself….  (Though I wouldn’t say it like that, and it interrupted my own thoughts enough to startle me.)

The next morning was Christmas Eve morning, and I awoke at 5:58am with the following dream (see excerpt). 

I got out of bed, went to the living room and built a fire.  I sat there silently.  Everything faded.  Every other person in my life faded so far in the background I couldn’t see them anymore (though I knew they were there), and it was just me and God.  [Almost like it used to be but also like it is now and should be.]

I was cognizant at that moment of just me and God.

There were no real thoughts at that time.  No words.  No prayers.  I half-expected Him to speak but thought that He probably wouldn’t.  This morning as I sat by the early fire and all the world faded to the background, I heard it again, “I’m right here, Michelle.”

He’s right here…..

I began talking with Him about the dream, and He began showing me some things.  [It would take the next three days to unpack different parts of it and what they meant, which I’ll share in a minute.]  I was at that place where it was still me and God – that “I’m right here, Michelle” place.  And I saw the landscape of the dream (and I use dream lightly here), and thought how I needed that place of the dream, that place unscathed by man, and Psalm 91 came to me…

 “He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty…”

Abide.  Abide.  Abide.

                The key.

       I must abide, dwell, live in the secret place….

In the dream, Bill symbolized Christ and we were walking and talking in the spiritual domain, in the spiritual terrain.  It was untouched by man for as far as I could see.  It was peace and safety and rest.  I was telling Bill/Christ the burdens of my heart, the questions I had, the weight I was carrying.  But it couldn’t touch me there.  I was safe there.  I was at peace there.  I was happy there.

Abide.  Abide.  Abide.  This is where I must abide, the secret place.  The place untouched by man.

I was so happy there that I had the conscious thought of building a reprieve there.  I knew I couldn’t live there because it was detached from my responsible life, but I knew I could go there.  I thought about how we would build it and with what. 

As I sat there with the Lord, the whole Psalm unfolded before me. 

I know there are many facets to the truths and promises in this Psalm, but a couple things struck me:  “NO EVIL SHALL BEFALL YOU….no plague come near your tent.”

The promise of THAT alone, the surety and assuredness in it are overwhelming.  If God is my dwelling place – the place where I live, where I abide – evil cannot befall me.  The plague cannot enter my home.

Our love for God, for Christ, puts us in a position that safeguards our vulnerability.  For so  long now, decades, I have felt secure and not afraid for my life – almost assured nothing could touch me apart from the will of God.  I couldn’t tell you why I was sure harm (in the form of evil kind of harm) could not touch me.  I just knew it – felt it in my bones.  In some ways it felt like an invincible sort of spirit.  I didn’t tempt evil to come get me by putting myself in deliberately precarious positions, I just didn’t fear evil.

It’s not that I was safe or impervious to struggle or hardship or pain or any number of situations that happen just from being a human and living on this earth.  I’m not talking about being spared from such like that.  There are various kinds of harm, hurts, and pains.  I want to be clear here.  I have just always felt certain forms of evil I was immune to – like they couldn’t touch me – only would I see the evil around me, but not personally on me.

This Psalm explains that which I’ve felt as my reality.  It may be happening all around me; I may see it with my own two eyes, but it will not touch me. 

And this matters.  This matters a great deal to me.  Because I spend a significant portion of my waking hours studying the works of evil in our society and in our world.  I have been disturbed by the implications of human cloning, transhumanism, and Artificial Intelligence.  The impact and capabilities of the new technologies to control human thought and action through nanoparticles injected (or even swallowed in food, water or air) and using cellular, wireless and Bluetooth technology to employ such, has mortified me.  What chance does humanity have over these schemes?  People can be infected unwillingly and unwittingly.  What precaution or shield do we have for THAT??

As I sat before the Lord and this Psalm came back to me, I marveled at the provision of God.  God is able.  God is willing.  All of this destruction – weather modification, bioengineered pandemics, transhumanism, mind control – is not outside the sphere of God’s sovereignty.  And He will protect WHOM from it??  He who sets his love upon God.

Selah

We will see and know the SALVATION – saving from harm or destruction – of the Almighty.

What a promise!  What a glorious, glorious promise! 

“I’m right here, Michelle.”

I’m not a god far off.  I’m right here.

The Spirit helped me understand the other pieces of the dream after this.  Anytime Ken Ellis is mentioned in my dreams, it’s how God signals that it’s a direct word from God.  [long personal story, but there’s a reason for this – also, his name means “royal oath, mouthpiece of God” – another way God underscores for me to pay attention]

In the dream I’m told of an account Ken told about a date in the 1800s where apparently the world was in a state of despair.  As he was telling me in the dream I could actually see (like watching a movie) a sidewalk scene where there were people in 1800s period clothing walking.  The countenance of the people were lifted in a noticeable and measurable way when they encountered someone who smiled and was happy.  Bill (Christ) said, “Maybe we’re missing it, Michelle.”  This was my course correction.

Be in the moment with those you’re with.  The despair and heaviness in the earth for those who endeavor righteousness is tangible.  There’s a growing despair over the wickedness of the days of Lot we’re in.  [actually read and contemplate 2 Peter 2:4-10]  My stiletto moment in the dream was this moment:  “Maybe we’re missing it Michelle”.  I can’t recapture the whole monologue Bill (Christ) told of the Ken Ellis message of a century or two ago, but its essence has stayed with me plainly.  We carry the hope of Christ within us.  The joy of the Lord is our strength.  This is our weapon in the midst of depravity and its ensuing despair.

We are kept by abiding in the secret place of the Most High, under the shadow of the Almighty.  Because we love God and have set our hearts upon Him, He delivers us from the wickedness around us.  The bioengineered weapons the enemy is using, the nanoparticles of control the enemy is deploying, the technology that invades our spheres, these are not pervious if we are abiding in the secret place.  It can’t get to us, and we are filled with joy and gratitude for the provision of our King for our defense.  That joy manifests in our peace in a world of conflict and turmoil.  That joy can be passed to those around us in despair.  Our attitudes, our spirits, can help those around us.

The only thing I saw in the scenery of my dream that was man-made was an unmarked rancher’s arch that was broken at the top right.  In the dream I marveled at how it was still standing and why it hadn’t fallen because of its brokenness.  The Spirit told me it represented the institutions of man and its infrastructure.  Just like I know today that the institutions of man are broken and I cannot understand how they are still standing.

God is a personal God.  He speaks to us where we are.  That was in my dream to show me God knows my heart, has heard my questions.  Maybe I’ll get the answer and maybe I won’t.  But He has heard and He spoke my heart back to me. 

There were other things He spoke to me about through that dream, but that was the essence I wanted to share publicly (and there are other parts of the dream I didn’t share).  I thought there may be others who fight despair, who have wondered where God is, who have questions, who are seeking….  Maybe it will help someone else.  He’s right here. 

If He’s silent on the battlefront right now, He’s not absent.  I think He’s calling His children to abide in the secret place, to secure the protections and provisions that come from that intimate relationship with our Creator and Father.  I think He’s telling us to carry the hope of Christ to those around us, to smile, to share our joy and our hope, our faith and our peace, to lift others out of that place of heaviness and despair, of fear and doubt, even though the world may be in darkness.  We are not, and we represent the One who saves.

Essays and Thoughts, National Issues, Raw

Almighty God, Father of all Creation, Ancient of Days…

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We call upon you to move in the power of Your might.  We recognize our nation has gone the way of Baal and idolatry, and You are justified in Your judgments.  We recognize the slaughter of the innocent demands a reckoning.  We don’t come before you as a righteous nation, one that is intent on upholding the ways of the Kingdom of God, but one instead that is groaning under the weight of corruption and wickedness.  We know that there are none righteous, no not one, apart from the atonement of Christ. 

We recognize that the institutional church has compromised its calling to bring the lost to salvation, and has partnered with the systems of the world.  And yet, my Lord, You have reserved a people who have not compromised, who have practiced repentance and the ways of Your kingdom. 

Father, You remain faithful even when we are faithless, for You cannot deny yourself.  Forgive us our complacency, our compromise, our apathy.  Forgive us our inaction and our weaknesses.  Restore the fear of the Lord in our land, in our homes and in our hearts.  Transfer power from the works of darkness to the Kingdom of God, and give us the wisdom and abilities to wield it with the wisdom of Heaven and the authority of Christ.

Father have mercy on our nation, for our rulers are wicked and have partnered with the works of darkness.  They have deceived the simple-minded and weak-willed; they have pacified and distracted even the strong and mindful.  They have been empowered by abhorrent deeds of wickedness in their partnership to the gods of darkness.  They have compromised our government, our society, our culture, our families, our public and private venues and installed cultural evils, works of iniquity, and a culture of sin from diabolical orders of evil in nearly every realm.

Spirit of the Living God, send your angelic hosts of heaven to war on our behalf.  Enable the righteous to partner with heaven and its Kingdom of righteousness to bring down the giants deployed in our land.  Anoint your Davids and Deborahs and the children of Your kingdom.  Raise up and release Elijahs to confront the priests and servants of Baal and expose their impotence. 

Do not abandon us to the powers of darkness in our hour of need.  If you do not intervene our nation will be lost, and yet we know You care about the hearts of men.  Rescue us from the tyrants around us.  Remove the ungodly persons’ power, those bent on the works of flesh and the works of darkness.  Bring them to repentance, and if they will not repent, bring them to judgment. Deliver us from our oppressors and let Your Spirit embolden us to walk in the authority of Christ who redeemed us from the works of darkness. 

Render Your verdict, King of Glory, upon our land.  Shut the mouth of the enemy.  Expose the hidden works of darkness, and release the light of Your Kingdom in our hearts, our homes, in the byways and highways, in the public and private arenas.  May the sons and daughters of God arise in the authority of the King of kings and slay the giants opposing the Living God, and make open spectacles of the priests and servants of wickedness, for Your Great Name, and for Your Glory. 

We call upon You, Ancient of Days, to arrest the wickedness in our land, deliver Your people, and release Your power and glory. Let God arise and His enemies be scattered. May the children of God arise and shatter the works of darkness that all may know Yahweh is God and there is none other, that Christ is the King of kings and holds the title deed of earth and has come to set the captives free, to heal the broken, and to save the lost to reconcile mankind to the Creator, Jehovah.

Raw, Things I've Learned Along the Way

Hobbes

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Your life may be a symphony, but mine is one allegory after another. 

A symphony would be nice.  I’d like a symphony.  Some nice strings contending with some pan flutes as the occasion arises for change….a slow rhythmic bass drum in the routine sections of normal living… crescendos to a snare solo leading to some brass as a life situation gets more dramatic, slowing back down to a woodwind melody as it evens out… Yeah, a symphony would be nice.

But my life seems intent on playing out in prophetical allegory.  It probably wouldn’t make a difference if I actually wanted something different.  This seems one of the ways God gets my attention, draws parallels from scenarios to help me understand.  Sometimes it’s pretty cool, like the time my husband bought me a mini cooper and the Spirit indicated a new season of ministry for me by characteristics of the car.  It wasn’t so cool when the rod broke in a flash flood – that was an allegory too. 

When my daughter totaled our new favorite car days before Christmas a few years ago, I resisted the allegory God put in my spirit that our family was totaled by a seeming small thing.  In real life she had my small dog in the car, and she said he distracted her and she swerved into a parked car.  This was a painful lesson on about every front, but the Spirit incessantly whispered, “But your daughter is unharmed.” 

I knew we weren’t out of the woods when we replaced the car.  It seemed like just a fill in for some reason, not as good as the one we delighted in.  Bill was never really content with it and ended up selling it for a loss to our daughter’s boyfriend to help him out.  The car we replaced that one with has been the bane of Bill’s car existence for the duration of this car.  It was in a front end accident and completely refurbished.  On the outside it looked so good – for about a month.  Then we noticed the paint job was shoddy, and the door was bent.  There were paint drips and bubbles we missed at first inspection, and some rust spots on the hood.  The stereo only partially worked, the dash had a small crack that grew larger the longer we had the car.  One of the consoles didn’t always close correctly.  I was endangered when two weeks after buying the car I was stuck in a snow storm in western Colorado and learned while driving through a blizzard that the windshield wiper was disconnected to the reservoir.  That was literally life and death scary. 

Somewhere in the disillusion of the new car that was continually surprising me with weak points, the Spirit indicated it was the current condition of our family.  I didn’t care for that analogy so I ignored it – until I couldn’t ignore it anymore.  My family had been in an accident and the damage was manifesting in a myriad of “lesser” ways as the days turned into months. 

As Bill grumbled about the continuing and increasing car issues, the Spirit quietly paralleled them to our family issues.  The only consolation I received in these times was “but the engine is good”.  All of the flaws on the car were cosmetic and minimal.  They did not impact the cars drive-ability or its road worthiness.  (minus the blizzard drive that one time)  It was crazy low miles on the car, with an engine that was rock solid.  So that is what I would tell Bill as he would complain about something else he discovered.  “It’s okay, dear.  The engine is good.”

This is not a favorite lesson of mine.  I have a feeling we’ll have this car until resolution in our family happens.  That’s just the way my life works.  The allegory God is using to speak to me about a condition in my life exists until I either learn what I need to understand, or the allegory is resolved.

The interesting lesson in this is we bought a used car with crazy low miles.  It was a salvage title and we were told it was because it had some minor repair work.  After owning the car we realized it was a bit more than minor.  There was a front-end collision once upon a time and the damage from that accident lent itself to the current less than optimal “fixes”.  I was unaware of the accident of the car, just as I was unaware of the accident in my family. 

Because of my own childhood and the issues I brought into our marriage and subsequently our family, you could say I was a salvage title.  Because of my state in the early years of our family, before healing and before deliverance, there was damage in our earlier family that somehow was masked with some paint jobs and hastily reconstructed repair work.  Now, years later, it is manifesting in similar ways.

So when my beloved cat uncharacteristically disappeared a few weeks ago and normal efforts at locating him failed, I figured this was another lesson for me.  As the hours turned to days turned to weeks, I countered my husband’s optimism of Hobbes’ return with carefully meted out realism:  Hobbes will not return until I have learned what I need to learn from his disappearance.

I wrote about the time I was attacked by a dog and it was an allegory for a belief system that was dangerous.  Sometimes the allegory speaks louder than the actuality.  I’m not here to argue about whether all of the extra circumstances in one’s life are allegories.  I wouldn’t pretend that God speaks to everyone the same.  I know in fact that He does not.  But over the years, I have learned to pay attention to how God may be speaking to me.  If it’s out of the ordinary, if it doesn’t follow regular routine and my normal circumstances, more times than not God is using it to illustrate a concept to me I may not otherwise receive.

Hobbes’ disappearance was another of these for me.

The way it works for me….

God is so much a personal God that all I can do is tell how it works for me but with the disclaimer that it will be different for you.  But maybe in the telling of my own experience it will help someone seek out how God speaks to them.

I am wired to search for meaning.  I seek understanding and meaning in practically everything.  It’s how I’m wired.  I have a daughter who is wired to see art.  I have another daughter who is wired to see sequence and logic.  If we think for a minute that God is going to show each of them the same thing in the same way, we don’t understand God.  He speaks to us individually.

To the best of my ability, I have submitted my life to God.  It’s a process, but it’s a process that I’m continually growing in.  God knows how I think and process, and He speaks to me through my understanding of my own particular process.  This is how I know when a life circumstance out of the ordinary is an allegory for understanding that God is using to teach or illustrate something to me. 

In the case of Hobbes, here’s my reality that God was using to speak through:  I live on a busy street in the middle of a capital city.  I used to live on a farm.  Because I live on a busy street in a busy city, I did not want an outdoor cat.  I did not want the heartache of it being hit by a car.

A couple Christmases ago, Bill thought I needed a cat and got me an adorable kitten. 

I kept Hobbes inside for the winter, and let him out in the backyard in the spring to acclimate.  But as is the reality for cats, they love to explore.  Hobbes eventually outgrew the backyard and was off about the neighborhood. 

It was too stressful for me to worry about Hobbes’ welfare outside of my property so I had a chat with God.  I told Him I knew Hobbes was more important to God than even to me, and I was trusting that God would care for Hobbes outside of my jurisdiction.  I plead the Blood of Christ over my home, my property, and all that pertains to me daily.  I entrusted Hobbes into God’s care, and that is how I manage to have a cat that I love in the middle of the city.

So when Hobbes disappeared, it was never a question to me that it was an accident.  I knew it was not.  I have deliberately entrusted my cat into the care of my Father.  When Hobbes hadn’t returned in a few days, I began the normal process I normally go through when the routine has been changed:  I asked God what I was supposed to learn or understand. 

There was an immediate parallel my mind drew to some actions of some of my daughters, but I pushed it away because I didn’t like the parallel and I ignored it.  After so many days of this, I was forced to look at it again by my own hard-wiring of seeking understanding and meaning.  I was annoyed and maybe a little angry.  I’ve suffered a lot of loss lately, and the loss of my cat was personal to the inclusion of just me.  I lashed out at God, said something like, “I’m getting a little tired of all these lessons!”  He responded, “Break it down.  What does it [Hobbes’ disappearance/loss] speak to you in its simplest terms?” 

After some thought, I hard-lined it like this:  “I’ve lost something precious to me.”  He let me sit on that a few days and He asked me what that could parallel.  To me, it parallels intimate relationship I’ve lost with my daughter(s).  After a few days, I asked Him what I was supposed to be learning.  (It took me a few days because the pain was so poignant.)  He said, “What could you have done differently to keep Hobbes from leaving?  What do you think you did that caused it?” 

After some thought, I replied, “I don’t know.  I couldn’t have loved him more.  I met all his needs.  He was well loved, well cared for.  I don’t know what I could have done differently.”  And God said, “Exactly.  It wasn’t anything you did or didn’t do.”

Then He said, “I knew you wouldn’t believe it with your daughters so I used your cat.  You didn’t do anything wrong.  They didn’t leave because of you.  It’s not your fault.”

You see, I lost something precious to me, precious relationship with my daughter(s).  And I have believed for a long time it was my fault.  They may even believe it is my fault.  But God says it isn’t.  And I have a choice to believe God or not. 

I usually can’t explain these things to others.  It’s one of those things that I’ve learned over time on how God speaks to me.  I realize it may sound fantastical or over-imaginative to some.  I can’t help that, nor do I want to.  All I know is God is real.  He speaks to me through dozens of things:  songs, nature, my husband, numbers, dreams, and my circumstances, to name a few. 

He knows I seek meaning and look for purpose.  He speaks to me in things I have no control over so I don’t question whether I manipulated (even inadvertently) a situation.  He knows I pay attention to the details and I ask the difficult question.  He knows I get angry or annoyed or confused.  So He takes those things into account.  I knew Hobbes was going to stay missing until I learned what God was trying to show me.

So just past midnight two nights ago, Hobbes showed up.  I asked God for Hobbes to come home on Christmas, but I knew he wouldn’t.  I felt like God wasn’t going to allow him to show up when someone else was here, because it was a lesson just for me.  He showed up just past midnight when I was in bed about to go to sleep.  Bill was at work for another 20 minutes.

Besides thanking God for Hobbes’ safe return, I’ve had a few conversations with Him about what all I’m supposed to be learning.  Here’s what he showed me yesterday:  “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it.”  (Psalm 24:1)  I entrusted my cat to God’s care, and God can be trusted.  Even more so, I entrusted my children to God’s care.  They could not be in better hands. 

I know the nature of a cat is to explore, and I have not desired for a moment to restrain my cat from its natural instincts.  It’s more important to me that Hobbes is free to come and go, than to restrain him in my home unable to leave.  I am willing to suffer the uncertainty of Hobbes’ return in order for him to be free to operate as he was created.  I have done the same with my children.  It is more important to me that they be free, than carefully restrained in limitations I design for their safety.  I don’t find a life restrained from its original purposes of freedom a fair life, and so I have entrusted all that the Lord has given me to the Lord to keep and preserve.  It may at times have undesirable outcomes for me, but I am not willing to circumvent freedom to change outcomes.

Sometimes it’s hard, these allegories and the realities they represent.  But sometimes it’s redeeming.  Either way, I’m grateful God reaches out to me to help me on this journey of life.  One day we’ll get a new car, an undamaged car.  I’m gonna guess when that happens, our family will be mended quite nicely by then.

Raw, Things I've Learned Along the Way

Healing from Trauma, part one

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At about fifteen, I was sitting on our home’s back porch when I saw a memory play out in my mind, like a flash, without solicitation on my part.  But it was the memory of my parents waking me up in the middle of the night and motioning me to stay quiet so as not to wake my siblings, and to put on my robe and come downstairs.  I’m guessing I was around eight, because I put on the pink Strawberry Shortcake robe my grandma had gotten me (around that age) and followed them downstairs to the well-lit kitchen.  My parents were standing there with a large box in the middle of the floor.

They told me to pick out my favorite toys and put them in the box.  I thought it was a game, and hurriedly selected my favorite toys to fill the box.  After a few trips to the box, my mom explained something in my behavior that was particularly displeasing (I can’t recall what), and then told me to put my shoes on.  My dad picked up the box and the three of us walked outside into the night sky, where we walked past the tire swing and the clothes line, down to the fence line.  My dad put the box in the burn barrel and lit it.  I don’t remember the walk back to the house.

I do remember waking up the next morning and wondering if it was a dream or if it had really happened.  I went downstairs and looked for all of those toys I remembered putting in the box, and they weren’t there.

Obviously I had repressed that memory for a number of years.  I don’t know why it came back on that particular day, but I do recall the feelings that came with it, mainly horror, shame and confusion.  I did not know what to do with that memory, and was not comfortable telling anyone, so I put it on a shelf in my mind.

About a decade later, I had my first child and she was just a few months old.  A block down from me was a garage sale, and I put her in the stroller and headed to it.  A box on the floor in the garage caught my eye.  It was full of assorted wall papers.  I was drawn to three rolls, all the same.  I am not a fan of wall paper, but was compelled to buy these three rolls.  I liked the coloring, with a muted antique look.  I bought them and maybe a couple other small things and we rolled back home.

I put my daughter down for a nap and began to unpack the stroller.  I was more curious about these wallpaper rolls and set them on the table.  I rolled one out to see the pattern and was quite startled to see it was a Holly Hobbie print.  Immediately I had a flash memory recall of myself as a four year old, sitting in a child’s rocker in the corner of the living room, cradling a Holly Hobbie doll in my arms, rocking.

I was adopted at four years old the day after Christmas.  My new parents gave me a Holly Hobbie doll.  This was the first time I remembered it was burned with the box of toys.  Silent tears slipped down my face, and I heard the Spirit say, “I will replace everything the enemy has stolen from you.”

This was one of my most poignant encounters with healing from trauma.  I had not sought it out, did not know what to do with the memory recalls or the silent suffering stuffed in the recesses of my fragmented heart. 

I only told my husband about this.  The house we lived in did not have an appropriate room for the wall paper, so it sat in a closet, but still — I had that encounter with the God who sees our suffering.  I knew He cared.  There was a tangible reminder.

About three years later and two kids later, we loaded up our family to visit another family with small children for Christmas.  We were going to sing carols and share a Christmas soup meal together.  We were both on limited budgets with small children and had agreed to no gift exchanges, so I was startled when Catherine pulled me aside and pressed a small box in my hand.  She simply said God had told her to give it to me.

There was a card with it and all it said was, “As near as I can remember, I was eight years old when my parents gave me this.  God asked me to give it to you.”  In the small box was a child’s necklace with a Holly Hobbie pendant. 

This is the God we serve.  This is the God who knows us intimately, who loves us.  He sees our pain and knows our afflictions.  He is keenly acquainted with our sorrows and sufferings.

It would be a few years later and a different house before that wallpaper was hung in a spare bedroom.  By the time it was hung, there was a small collection of Holly Hobbie paraphernalia, including a tattered Holly Hobbie doll, almost all given to me by random people at random times.  It was my reminder that God sees, God knows, God cares. 

I don’t know how God is going to heal your trauma, I just know He wants to.  He knows every part of it, and that includes the emotions that got damaged, the way it rewired your thoughts and made you cautious instead of free-spirited, guarded instead of accepting, and a number of other things I haven’t listed. 

For me, I was able to move through the stages of healing by acknowledging the reality of the experience, but in the presence or company of my loving God who did not wish this for me.  I was able to bear the reawakened pain because He accompanied me in the midst.  It’s not that it didn’t hurt, it’s that I wasn’t alone in the hurt.  He began to teach me, through this and dozens more to come, that He can be trusted to heal even what appears damaged beyond repair.

It just took time, time to feel what you could not handle at the age of the trauma.  Those feelings had to come to the forefront, and I had to acknowledge them.  Then I could give them to Him.  And all the lies that came with the trauma had to be exposed for what they were.  There were lies that told me I was unworthy, undeserving, and unwanted.  One by one, the Spirit of God began to deal with me by replacing the lies with truths, but His Truth. 

I’ll share more of this journey of healing from trauma in the weeks to come.  I just want you to know you do not have to live in the trauma for the rest of your life.  Healing is possible and available.  

Today I am in my third house from that experience.  The Holly Hobbie room was sold with the second house, and the only thing that made the trip to my current house is the Holly Hobbie doll and necklace.  They sit on my bookshelves as quiet reminders that God saw my pain and healed it.  It doesn’t pain me to see them anymore.  It brings me great comfort and joy and reassurance about the One who created me.  That’s available to you and anyone who wants free from the impact and effects of trauma. 

Raw

a word to me passed on to you – May 2021

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I have a word for someone(s).  Just know the details are going to look different for yourself but the essence of the word is the same [for someone(s)].  I can only tell it with my details because that’s how it came to me, but the Spirit will elucidate for your own details.  He told me to share it (otherwise I wouldn’t; it’s too personal), so I pray He is glorified and His Kingdom advances through this word of knowledge He has released.

The background is I have four amazing children, seriously amazing, each in their own ways.  They are my great reward.  That said, the past several years have been quite possibly some of my hardest, at least my hardest in recent memory.  Most of my children have been consistently walking out rejection of me in varying degrees.  Some of the manifestations have been quite painful.  While none have outright rejected the faith, some are teetering on that edge.  This has been a personal crucible for me.  Anyone who knows me well knows my greatest love is my God and my Savior.  I echo John’s words when he said he has no greater joy than to know his children are walking in the truth.  I’m not going to lie, it’s going to suck if when I get to the other side all of my family is not with me.

Somewhere along my life path, I finally learned that if you lack understanding you don’t speak.  So I don’t speak when I don’t understand.  It gives the devil license and room to move when you speak in ignorance.  It gives the Spirit room to move when you speak in faith.  If you can’t figure out where that line is, it’s best to keep quiet, to watch and wait and learn.  Observation is half the process of study.

It started with one child, and dominoed eventually to almost all of them.  I had no idea where it was coming from.  We went from a tightknit family that laughed, wept and experienced life together, to schisms and fragments.  It was a far cry from who we were, and it changed somewhat abruptly (to me).  Along the way there were times God’s peace would take over to quell the raging grief and turmoil in me.  But there were long, dark seasons in the valley where I could not find the light.  Either way, I held to His hand as well as I could.

In the meantime, I wrote.  (for my blog, for NewsWithViews, for my email correspondence, on social media)  I’m a writer and was called to write, and so write I did.  But sometimes I felt like a fraud.  Sometimes I thought, if they knew what my children said to me last week, they’d…..   And the accusations my children had against me were heartbreaking.  Some deserved, but many were misunderstandings, almost flat out deceptions.

Sometimes I implored the Lord to just take me Home. 

I’ve been so long in this valley that I’ve gotten used to it.  I’ve been misunderstood all my life, so it shouldn’t surprise me that my adult children have joined that club.  (They didn’t use to.)  There were times the Spirit of God would give me a word that kept me from complete shutdown.  He gave me many songs.  He spoke through various people.  He is and has always been faithful, even in the dark and the silence. 

I finally resolved this was my new lot in life, my children’s rejection and criticism.  I resolved I was going to walk it out day by day as best I could, in silence, and love them as best I could.  Then one day He gave me these specific words:  “Sometimes you leave the ones you love but if it’s love they won’t give up cause they know the war is raging and you’ve gotta choose. These days are tough, these days are long, sometimes it’s hard to carry on. But I hear a voice singing, and I know it’s true.”  And I knew God was saying I had to go on in some respects and leave my children to sort out their belief systems.  I couldn’t stay in this valley of grief, because there was a war raging and I was called to fulfill my role.  I had to choose:  stay in my grief and withdraw (my continual temptation), or release it (them) and move forward even though I knew they weren’t coming with me. 

So I made my choice and I hung up my grieving, deliberated to love my children exactly where they were, not defend myself to their accusations, and press on in my life calling.

Don’t misunderstand.  My children love me.  They have not outright rejected me as their mom; it’s been a different battle.  They each have made extensions to me to express their love for me, and the accusations have slowly stopped.  But the schism is still there in subtle ways.

After a particularly difficult confrontation two years ago with one, the Spirit gave me the song “Take Heart” and told me that was the anthem for our family, and while I can sing it now, we will ALL be able to sing it eventually.  So I took heart.  I have let His love lead me through the night.  (and it’s been a long night)  I have held on to hope, and I have taken courage once again.  I’m walking this out the whole way.  [song:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MfBQ30Ta9w]

So here is the word, and I’m sorry it has taken me this long to tell it.

Last week I was speaking with God, and maybe I phrased some questions differently or maybe I was just in a better place to hear the answer, but what He said to me He has since asked me to post so that others may receive where applicable.

He said this:  “Michelle, when the devil saw he couldn’t destroy you, (and I was given a download – like a download in the matrix – of a flurry of my history), he set out to destroy you through your children.”  (and I received another download of a flurry of our history)

What I saw when He spoke, was the decade plus of spiritual warfare and deliverance I was engaged in when the children were young.  I came from a place of brokenness because of childhood trauma, and I had strongholds of mind, I had generational curses, I had demonic oppressions, etc.  And I warred for literally over a decade to break free from these things. 

While I love, admire and appreciate those Christian families who have the beautiful and shining example of tender love and compassion in a setting of acceptance and faith, our family was not that family.  We literally spent years in warfare prayers, in the heat of ugly battles with ugly demons and hideous flesh.  While I was in the (several year) process of being delivered the kids saw me angry and broken.  They saw me inconsistent.  And we ached and groaned through the whole long, sordid process, until we emerged on the other side free of the curses, free of the uncontrollable emotions, free of the bondage.

The Spirit showed me at this point, the devil knew he had been defeated in his attempt to destroy me, and he turned to destroy me through my children.  My Achilles heel has always been rejection.  I was rejected by my birth mother, rejected by my adopted parents, and rejected by other significant care-givers along the way.  I never in a million years anticipated being rejected by my own children.  I love them fiercely, and they are beautiful people.  But the devil is cunning and crafty, so what the Lord showed me next was I saw what looked like Lone Ranger masks put over the eyes of my children, only there were no slits for the eyes.  The masks were solid.  And these masks became filters of how they would see me, my faith, and their circumstances.  Only I would not realize these masks were filtering their views.  He would filter their views and whisper his accusations, steadily building doubts in them.  They would remain silent about them when younger because they loved me, but as time wore on the internal conflict would begin to mount in different ways, and each having a different personality would handle it slightly differently.

Oh I saw the scenario play out before me.  I finally understood the root of the issue.  The gig is up.  It’s just a matter of time before the breakthrough for us, and if that matter of time is years, months or weeks, I will see it through.  Sunday I watched the antichrist spirit speak through one of my children.  I’m getting wiser to the enemy’s scheme. 

I have prayed that I could be a John Wick in the spirit world.  I care not at all what this world thinks of me, but I care a great deal what the spirit world in the heavenly realm does.   I’ve cast demons out of myself, others, animals, houses and land.  I’ve changed the weather, decreed and declared healings, brought changes to circumstances, etc.  It’s our mantle as ambassadors of Christ to represent His superior Kingdom to this inferior kingdom of earth. 

So the word is, some of you the enemy has set out to destroy through your children when he failed destroying you directly.  Once you see the assignment, you can restore your battered armor and go to the battle.  You’re not fighting blindly anymore.  The details will be different for each of us, but the word of understanding is our key to success. 

And the word is, it may not be your children – that’s what it is for me (right now), but it may not be that for you.  It may be an adversary, an affliction, a continual persecution, an obstacle you haven’t been able to get around, any number of things.  But the word is still that when the enemy of God (who becomes your enemy by default) realized he couldn’t destroy you by his original plans against you, he sought another way.  The adversary is cunning and shrewd.  He has studied our lives and knows our bloodlines.  He knows our strengths and weaknesses and calculates where he can do the most damage.  He may wait years before he strikes again after his initial blow of defeat by your allegiance to God.   Once we realize it’s just the devil using people, circumstances, etc. to bring about our defeat and destruction, the thing he has been using begins to lose its power as we rise up to walk out our destiny regardless of the opposition to it. 

Godspeed to the sons and daughters of YHWH.

Raw

Who is this God?

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I’ve only heard the audible voice of God once in my life.  I was 24 years old and in college.  Five months earlier, Bill had taken me to Colorado and put a sapphire ring on my finger and asked me to marry him.  I was newly divorced and the pain and shame of that failure was fresh.  I never wanted to make the mistake of a failed marriage again.  I knew I loved Bill, but would that be enough?  Would it weather the unforeseeable challenges in our future?  I did not know how to tell that, and so I said, “Yes, as long as God says I can.”

So we were engaged with no wedding date set, waiting on God.  I began asking God, “Is Bill the man I’m to marry?”  And as the days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, many variances of that question came into play.  What if there’s someone else better suited?  What if I or he get fat?  What if I or he change so we no longer know each other?  What if I can’t resolve some of these nagging pressures I’m already feeling about being a step mom? 

“I can’t see the future, God.  I can’t see how I’m going to change – how he’s going to change.  What if it’s only a good fit right now, but won’t be in ten or twenty years?  Only You know.  I don’t have the wisdom I need to make this decision.”  This was my continual prayer.

A couple months before Bill proposed, the Spirit had impressed on me to go back to college, and He was clear about where I was to go.  Bill and I were dating, but God told me to go to a college three hours away.  So I did.  I was recently divorced, with a meager income and a car loan.  I knew no one at the college or the city I was to move to.  I decided I’d just sleep in my car and come home on the weekends, but a couple who ran the local Christian bookstore offered me their couch to sleep on Monday-Thursdays, and their home to stay in while attending school.

The day I heard God was mid-October.  I had come home between my morning and afternoon classes.  I had about two hours in between, and the small bungalow was empty.  I had a long list of reservations about myself, my life, my future, and some very real and hard conflicting feelings going on.  I was on my knees in the middle of their living room literally weeping, praying.  Bill was the best thing that had ever happened to me.  He was kind and good and loving and beautiful in every way.  But there were things in me that were ugly and hard and difficult, and what if I couldn’t get them under control?  These were the questions that flooded me. 

I was literally weeping such that when He spoke, it startled me from a hard cry to an abrupt gasp.  I heard Him before my mind processed what He had said, and my mouth said, “What?”  He repeated it.  “I will have mercy upon whom I have mercy.  I will have compassion upon whom I will have compassion.”  [Exactly what God said to Moses in Exodus 33:19.]  Audibly. 

I said, “I don’t understand.”  Images began flooding my mind like a movie screen of all the amazing attributes about Bill, one after another.  Then the Lord spoke, “Bill is My mercy and compassion for you.  Marry Bill.”

I knew that I knew that I knew God had spoken and Bill was His plan for my life.  I called Bill that night and told him I had heard from God and we could marry.  We threw a quick wedding together, got married on Thanksgiving Break, I went back to finish the semester, and  now we are over 25 years into this marriage.

So my ode to Bill is also my ode to God, for Bill was God’s gift for me. 

I’m a firm believer in honoring the ones in your life while they’re still living, and not waiting until they’re dead.  They won’t receive posthumous honor, but if we can do it while those we love are still alive, think of the way we can uplift and show gratitude!

It’s not an accident that Bill’s name (William) means protector.  I needed a lot of protection.  I needed a place of safety and refuge to begin to unpack and deal with some tragic things that had happened earlier in my life.  Until Bill, I did not have a safe place to do so.

When you unpack hastily crammed holding places of trauma and abuse, however, it becomes very, very messy.  There are piles of very painful and ugly emotions that do not gently mete out over increments of time.  There are irrational fears, frightening bouts of anger, and absurd insecurities that lend to jealousy, as well as a host of other things that excrete an enormous amount of energy of a very destructive nature.

MY ODE TO BILL

My pain became Bill’s.  He wept with me.  He shielded me from anything he perceived that could cause further damage.  He gave me time and space to sort it out, to heal, to forgive others and myself, to learn and to grow.  He went to bat for me over and over and over.  He defended me against a litany of accusers and critics, taking every blow he could from me.  He required others treat me with honor, or he would remove them from our lives. 

And he did it all selflessly.  He missed sleep.  He was misunderstood and judged.  He worked 55+ hour work weeks of manual labor, then came home at nights and remodeled our home(s) to my liking and to ease our loads at home.  He spent his weekends doing for me and the kids.

I made countless mistakes with him, with family and friends, with our children.  He forgave every one of them.  His love covered all of my sins.  He did without things he wanted or needed to give to me and the kids. 

There were times he was so tired.  We went through a very long season where everything was against us, from financial problems, to relationship difficulties, to home and car repairs, etc.  He was literally exhausted.  I could see it on his face.  But he never quit.  He never threw in the towel.  He’d just take a step back and regroup.

He lived (and still lives) with his own physical pains.  He is on his feet for 10-12 hours a day, lifting boxes, driving a manual truck (until recently).  He never complains.  For 15 years he didn’t get paid for sick days, so he was literally never sick.  He worked when ill, even when he had to pull over and throw up. 

Bill is the epitome of selfless.  He gives and gives and gives.  He loves and loves and loves.  He is also hilarious, and brings a light heartedness to our home.  (I can be a bit intense at times, and my humor is dry, even wry.  Very few people really “get” me.)  Bill never required me to work outside the home, but always encouraged me to pursue my dreams, goals and ambitions.  He was never controlling, but firmly led with reason and love.  I am not an easy person to lead.  He did not endeavor to fashion me to a specific image of wife or mom, but embraced who I was and let me walk out my convictions.

Here’s what Bill did that was so profound:  He freed me to love God and be who God created me to be.  He saw my gifts and abilities and created an environment that I could grow them.  He has built me countless bookshelves, remodeled a bedroom into an office for me, built and remodeled a school room for me and the kids when I taught at home, and even finds me supplies for my various projects.  He let me turn our dining room into a work lab, helped me hang butcher paper from the ceiling so I could write out my notes on scrolls.  He busted his butt every day he knew I’d be teaching or speaking to be the first person there, to help me get overheads ready, or music, or whatever I needed.  He’d be the last person there to help me tear down and pick up.  He’d be the first person to pray and to utter praise for me.

Bill has been Christ in the flesh to me, for twenty-five years and counting.  He would lay down his life for me without a second thought.  He has laid down his life for me.

There’s not a day that goes by that I do not thank God in some fashion for the gift of Bill, for my husband and my best friend.  I know God more and better because of Bill.  I have watched Bill walk out the sacrificial life of a disciple of Christ and a husband intent on his wife’s good.  I am able to walk out God’s plan for my life because of what Bill has sacrificially created for me.

I owe Christ for all that I am that is good, and I owe Bill honor and praise for his obedience to God and his love for me. Bill constantly praises me and talks about how pleased God is with me, but what I know to be true is my ability to be what I am is because of Bill’s love and sacrifice for me.  God handed the messed up, broken individual that I was to Bill; He entrusted my broken life to a man who would lay down his own for me.  Apart from Christ, I have never known such a sacrifice.  I am most blessed.

How great is this God?  I have no way to measure His greatness, but perhaps through Bill’s life someone else can catch a glimpse.