Face to Face

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.
       - Eleanor Roosevelt

A teacher I once had told me to prioritize my tasks by doing the things I dislike the most, first.  Then they are out of the way and I could enjoy the other tasks I liked.  It worked, I did my math first, which I did not like and then I would finish up with my Literature and Writing.  I never aced the math classes, but I did get through them and passed.

This past two months, I have been trying to avoid what I could feel in my spirit was coming.  As a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, I have gone through counseling and deep times of prayer to God to let go of so much pain.  But as my life is changing, for the better, God has been quietly and gently drawing on me that there is another level that is now ready to be removed and when that happens, I will have broken forever, some chains that have kept me bound.

This time the journey is about intimacy.  Oh, I have a love for people and a burning desire to see them set free from the emotional pain and suffering they have endured throughout life.  I preach and teach about truth, responsibility, boundaries, priorities and letting go.  But when it comes to myself, (counselors are not the best counselees) I keep people at an arm's length.  Even the ones I desperately want to be nearer too.

It is this fear of pain and abandonment that creeps its disgusting head up and whispers to me that people can not be really trusted and they always want something from me, to take something from me. That my very person will be malled and ripped at if I get too close.  Childhood abuse, especially sexual and violent does that.  It plants a seed, a lying seed that you will be diminished if you let relationships increase in your life.

This past month, I came face to face with that fear.  People I love and care deeply for have been trying to hold me and encourage me that it is a safe place. I can lean inward and discover the newness of unconditional love.  I resisted and God shoved a mirror in front of my face and what I saw was this fear, this thing I hate was in me.  I wrestled, I shifted blame, I wanted to run and hide, but had no where to go.  Wherever I went there it was, there I was.  One friend said, "If you dont pull up that root, it will prevent you from going onward!  It will stop you from fulfillment in your walk with God."  My heart stopped for a moment as the truth of that saturated through me.

On my knees, face to the floor, petitioning God to show me, heal me, take this all away.  I don't want to go through this process of emotional and spiritual surgery again.  It is exhausting and after all I am supposed to have it together.  There was the latch, pride had locked my mind on this nonsense.  I turned the key and said to my Father, "Ok, whatever is Your will, I will do it."  I made contacts with those who would be close by in this process and determined to change some unhealthy patterns.  It will be a journey, life is that very thing.  But I will keep on moving.  I will do the thing which I thought I could not do.  People this is how we get our "roar".  From deep within, a primal instinctive cry to connect with the Creator and let that sound resonate well beyond us to others who must walk the same valleys and hills.

I invite you to walk with me.  I will share, laugh, cry and challenge myself and you as God removes this next layer.  We all need friends as we take our jouney.  Thanks for coming with me....

Pastor V