Random thoughts while driving...

Ironically, I find I do most of my best thinking when I'm driving...  Maybe it's not so ironic, it's about the only time during the day when I sit down, by myself, and just allow thoughts to flow.  I guess I'd say it's more frustrating.  I have these thoughts which I really want to remember, then one leads to another, and I keep driving because I want to keep the flow going...  before I know it, I get home, feeling like I've really accomplished some wonderful thinking...  but for the life of me I can't remember what I thought about!  This is an attempt to recall some of my thoughts tonight...  let's see how this goes  :-)

My thought for tonight was a little bit of an epiphany.  I'm realizing just how bitter I am.  It's nuts.  I hate it.  People have said things that have hurt, and there's nothing wrong with the pain.  However, instead of choosing to face that pain while standing side by side with Jesus, I've chosen to nurse anger towards those people.  All I could see was my own pain, all I could remember were old wounds.

There have been a couple of thoughts these last couple of weeks that have changed my perspective on that.

One came from the book I'm reading.  It's simply called "Humility", but Andrew Murray.  I have to say, I love this book.  His definition of humility is nothing like what churches normally teach (at least in my experience!).  He defines humility as the state in which ourselves and our flesh have become nothing so that God may be everything.  He says in his book, and I'm really starting to agree with this statement, that humility is not something God gives us.  Instead, humility is something that comes out when Jesus is allowed to live in us, and through us.  In ourselves, we possess no holiness.  Jesus is our holiness, and any humility that may exist in our lives depends entirely on us realizing our relationship to God.  When we realize that this life is not about us, when we allow ourselves to be emptied of our fleshly self, the Holy Spirit has the room to fill us with those things which we so desire to see in our lives:  humility, holiness, gentleness, self-control...

Sounds like a tangent, but I promise it ties in:

My life was about my pain.  In nursing my pain and anger, I fed my pride.  I gave in to the idea that my life is all about me.  Am I saying my pain didn't matter?  No, but I hadn't dealt with it in a healthy way.  I was allowing it to become the center of my life, letting it fill me, instead of allowing God to be the center of my life, and my all.

Which is where the second thought comes in  :-)

At Connections, my church, we are going through a series called "Wield Power".  This last week was about pain.  I just remember this picture of my pastor's wife and how she spoke about what happens to women when they're inflicted with wounds in their life...  She stood there with her arms held wide open and head thrown back, saying that this is how women enter the world.  We have so much love and trust and nurturing to offer, but that women are created to be receivers as well.  We take everything deeply.  Everything has the potential to feel like a knife to our heart.  After about the 15th or 88th knife (depending on how many we can handle), there's something in us that snaps.  We then decide that we are going to harden ourselves, be strong, that no one will ever hurt us again.  So we take our wounded little girl, bleeding and dying, and put her somewhere safe, and build a brick wall around her.  She can't be hurt more, but she isn't getting any better.  That little girl is still bleeding, crying, and dying.

At this point, I was in tears.  I could just feel the little girl in my chest crying out.  I remember when I made that decision to put her someplace safe and become hardened.  This little girl, though, still want to give.  She wants to offer all she has, to risk any pain, for the chance of helping someone else.  But she still hurts, so badly.  My situation was described perfectly, I couldn't believe it.  I really thought I was the only person who was going through this, then I see that it's really true that "no temptation has overcome [me] except that which is common to man"...  And that temptation is to keep the little girl behind the wall.  My problem was that I didn't know what else to do.  I thought that's what you did.

"Face it."  The pastor and his wife said.  Face it side by side with Jesus.  But, wait, facing it means validating it.  It means that all those times I said "oh, it's alright" or "don't worry about it" or simply told myself to toughen up and it didn't matter...  I was lying.  It meant having to admit my own vulnerability, which is totally taboo to a lot of people in my life.  Being vulnerable means that you're just too sensitive, you're too emotional, you're a drama queen.  Thus, facing my pain, means losing control in a way.  I lose control over the pain to an extent, because I'm allowing it to be real.

"Face it, without fear.  Then ask Jesus to go in and heal that little girl, just like He did Jarius' daughter.  Then ask the Holy Spirit to start tearing down the brick wall around her."  That's what they said Sunday morning.

Only once I had faced my pain, only once I had allowed Jesus to heal the wounds I finally knew I had to admit were real, and only once the Holy Spirit opened up my heart again was I really able to allow all the nasty stuff in my heart to pour out.  Like an infection under the skin, only once the wound is lanced, cleaned, and salved can it heal and grow healthy the way it's supposed to.

I feel like my heart has been opened again, the "gunk" (to use one of my technical terms) has been poured out:  all the rancid bitterness, the burning anger, the aching pain...  the remnants of it are being scraped away.  Does that mean it's all gone?  Nope.  That habit is going to die hard, it's been rehearsed so often.  But what God is doing in me now has given me hope...

This may sound prideful, but I'm simply rejoicing in these thoughts:

When I saw one of the people who I really allowed to hurt me deeply before, my first reaction was no longer anger so great it physically hurt.  I suddenly felt this overwhelming desire to love this person and commiserate and rejoice with them at what is occurring in their life.  Before, I would have felt competitive and smug, respectively.  When I thought about it later, I was shocked.  I realized that, the part of me that really nearly expressed hate for this person, has been cleaned out, and filled with God's love toward this person.  I literally wasn't being me, the Holy Spirit finally had room to live through me!

Honestly, the only reason I noticed any of this was because tonight, as I was driving, I was expressing a desire for another person (who was also someone who wounded me) to find their healing.  If you had talked to me last week, I would have said that this person deserved any pain they were experiencing for the pain I know they've caused other people, including myself.  After having all this come together for me on Sunday and experiencing the cleansing I did, I suddenly found myself more concerned about the pain I know this person goes though than for past hurts.

I only share this so that you may rejoice with me.  I take no credit, nor am I even able to, because this is only possible because God is finally being allowed some elbow room in my head and heart.

Please, pray for me as I continue to learn this.  I want to learn from past mistakes in my life and not perpetuate them.  I desire to leave a legacy of love and healing to the next generation of Christians that I may have contact with, and not even have a hint of the illness of bitterness to pass on to them. Pray for protection from the enemy and his attacks as I learn to open up and be as I am:  imperfect but made blameless by the Great High Priest, having been wounded by humans but divinely healed by the ultimate Healer, feeling unlovable but loved to the utmost by my Father.  Pray that I will become less and He more and more.  May His best for me be worked out in my life, now and for eternity.

:-)

Joanna


I wondered how to come to You,
I did not dare believe it true,
that You regard the orphaned ones:
beloved daughters, worthy sons,

The broken and the barren too,
I heard I could find some rest in You.
What kind of love in injury's place,
would leave instead the stain of grace?

So I come in sorrow and I come in shame.
I come to the cross with my pain.

Just as I am, without one plea,
but that thy blood was shed for me
and that Thou bidst me come to Thee,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

The pardon that I found from sin
spilled out from where the nails went in.
My heart will ever more proclaim
I had not lived until that day.

And I know there is a crown for me
beyond where mortal eyes can see
and I don't nod to any man,
but offer me just as I am.

So I come rejoicing with hands held high,
and I come singing words of new life.

Just as I am, without one plea,
but that thy blood was shed for me
and that Thou bidst me come to Thee,
O Lamb of God,
O Lamb of God,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

O Lamb of God, I come.