Layers

Oh, LORD, how many layers of self are there still to peel off?  How many self-wrapped chains?  How much wandering, ungrateful, testing, and complaining like the Israelites?

I pray that I do not wind up like them, camped so close to the Promised Land but unable to enter because of my own flesh.

God the Creator, bring order to my chaos so that I can play the role you have set for me.

More of the journey - dreams

If the first dream hadn't gotten my attention, the second one certainly would have.  This one took place a couple weeks after the first.  The dream opened at a women's retreat where I saw many pregnant women, which hit me hard emotionally.  I withdrew into another room crying, which really offended one of the organizers.  I felt as if I were being shunned, and the pastor was explaining to the women that I would probably need institutional help.  He offered to drive me home, but I wanted to stay. 

In the next scene of the dream, we were on a bus going by a large church and saw several youth burglarizing it.  We all looked to see if someone was calling for help, and the pastor was phoning it in, explaining that if we didn't get a code we'd be in trouble.  A man on a horse at the corner gave him the code and he unlocked a large box at the corner (potentially filled with weapons).  By this time we were all on foot.

Next to the large box lying in the gutter, I saw a young black man, Gabe, who had been severely wounded.  I was so horrified that he had just been left there to die that I ran over, picked him up, and began rocking him.  My tears were streaming down over him, and I was talking to him about letting Jesus in and heaven.  As I was doing that, I felt a surge of power rush through me continually, as if I were a pipe or conduit.  Many other people came up and shed tears on his pendant, which looked like the stone tiger eye.  The rushing intensified and it was extremely loud.

The scene jumped to a few minutes later, with an empty gutter.  I thought he had died.  But when I got inside, I saw Gabe sitting upright in bed, healthy, and the shock nearly knocked me down.  I ran to him, telling him that he'd essentially been dead, but that God's power had saved him and that I really hadn't done anything on my own.  I was exhorting him to turn his life over to God.  He admitted that he had been involved with Satanic things.  The scene shifted once more to a large assembly at the conference where he was sitting with his girlfriend (who had dyed her hair a bright pink), who was very uncertain of his new direction in life.

At that point I sat up fully awake in bed, and scrambled to find something to write with and my small dream notebook.    As I was frantically scribbling down the dream with a red crayon (all I could find) by the glow of my small booklight, I turned the page to see a large cross formed from bits of the wheat husk.  (The paper in the notebook is made of recycled cloth with little flecks of wheat husk.)

The feeling of having  God's power rushing through me was incredible, and I was awe struck by the fact that it was flowing through my tears, which had been such a source of weakness at the beginning of the dream.

If I had ever had any question about whether God could work through us, it was answered in a powerful way by this dream, which surpassed any that I've EVER had before in my life, and possibly ever will again.

But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me.     2 Corinthians 12:9

Looking back over a year

A year ago several of us from our church went to the Women of Joy conference.   I had taken along a Christian book on depression to read during the drive, and the combined influences made for an interesting weekend. 

We build up walls of isolated despair . . . . distorted images of ourselves that keep up trapped .  .. we call out for someone to hear . . . God as the defender of the weak . . . He is mighty to save . . . find a circle of close friends you can ask to pray for you . . . depression can be anger at oneself for not being someone that we couldn't possibly be . . . God as an always faithful friend . .  . get love and acceptance from God  . . . daily Bible reading and prayer as essential

A theme quickly emerged from that weekend:  friendship.  But it didn't exactly unfold the way you might imagine it.  Going into the weekend, I had set up mental pairings of people and cast myself as a third wheel. Right away from the first night of the conference, there was a theme in the speakers of seeing ourselves through our Creator's eyes.  I found myself praying that I would find one of those friends that you can just open up to fully, and not have to keep up the walls.  There were some moments of solitude during the weekend where I wrestled with the question:  Is God enough?  And I came to the conclusion that He was.  He challenged me to reach out to someone during the last session and obey a Spirit prompting to give a small sign of His love to someone else. In the final prayer of the weekend, a comment was made about taking friendships home with us.

I thought I'd learned the lesson God had for me.

But in the dark of the evening as we drove toward home, God showed me that He had more.  We began really opening up to each other.  And as we shared, God's love flowing through His children began to illuminate those hidden depths, to expose the lies we had believed for the deceptions that they were.  We realized that while we each had been holding on to different lies, the lies were strongest in the areas of our gifts. What another could see as our strong area, individually our view of it was prone to be clouded by untruths, threatening to throw our ministry off course. 

Tears flowed, truth was spoken, prayers were offered  . . . and in the midst of it, I realized that my prayer for friend to whom I could be fully me, fears and faults and all, had been answered.  That in fact, there were at least two women already in my life who had been there all along ready to be that friend.  But I hadn't been able to see it through the lies that I'd believed in the area of friendship.  I wasn't a second tier friend after all . . . but a second "tear" friend, who would be there even in the hard times.

I left the weekend with a new found joy.  In the midst of Becky Tirabassi's session, I had scrawled a few dreams for myself for the next year, and then promptly forgotten them much the way I had treated New Year's resolutions.  But while I may have forgotten that list, God didn't.

By next year (April 2011):

• I will read the Bible and pray regularly.  My souvenir from that weekend was a One Year Bible.  I began with the April readings, and ended up finishing ahead of schedule last month.  Since then, I've begun a chronological read-through in a different translation, and am working through the New Testament for Lent.  Just in this last month, God has taught me about days of fasting and prayer in addition to the prayer I'd been doing already.
• The chains will be looser and I will see myself as God sees me.  This has been a work in progress, but the past couple months have especially brought me closer to this and I am experiencing the freedom and peace of Christ more.  He has been driving home the message that we are Children of God, that I am His precious daughter. 
• I will be the friend that I want to have.  I look back at this last year and am astounded by how full of friendship my life has become.  Friendships nurtured in person, by phone, online . . . sharing and praying and celebrating and lifting each other up.
• My health (God-willing) will not hold me back.  The Daniel fast taught me a lot about the way I've used food as an idol.  This area is still in progress, too, but the long-seated hold is being broken bit by bit.  This week brings challenges in this area, as I go through an endometrial biopsy to rule out cancer as a cause of some unusual cycles.  Another opportunity to lean into God and know that He already knows the results and can work ALL things for good to those who love God.

All I can do upon seeing who God has fulfilled that list in my life is to offer up praise and humble adoration for His grace and love.  Because none of those would have been possible on my own.  On my own, I jump in headfirst and lose steam.  On my own, I am weak.   But our amazing God works through our weaknesses!

5 Months of a Journey

5 months ago I took the first steps on a journey that I didn't realize I was taking.  I only knew that my life was feeling like it was spiraling out of control.    My journal from November reads:

You and me on this one, God.  I need change, big change.  My actions don't honor You or my family.  My thinking is warped, I have made idols of knowledge and sentiment, of dreams and things I "should" do.  And at the same time, they overwhelm me.

 In my Bible reading that night (read "late" according to schedule), I was in Ezekiel.  I found myself reading verses about God giving me a new heart of flesh.  I found myself with promises that God could cleanse me of worshiping my idols.  Then the reading continued in James 1:5:  If you need wisdom - if you want to know what God wants you to do - ask him and he will gladly tell you.  This is followed by a list that I now see is straight from God of what I need to do. 

In December, the insights continued as I read  in a book by Stormie Omartian that only God can work changes in us that last.  That only God can transform us.  My prayers continued . . . . .

Lord, change me into the person you want me to be and show me what I need to do. I praise you and thank you for the transformation you are working in me.

January and a new year came.  Little did I know that God was working behind the scenes setting up big changes ahead, but He gave me a tiny glimpse in dreams.  In one, as I was about to be shot in a botched robbery I found myself holding onto Jesus.  The bullet didn't hurt at all as I was already at complete peace in His arms.  That dream involved walking a road with others who had already died, and giving encouragement to those still living, where my words took the form of Bible verses.  That dream made me realize that the amount of Scripture I knew by heart was very minimal, and awakened a deep desire to learn verses well enough to use them in that same form of encouragement.  

to be continued. . .