Bondage

When we see that word - bondage - it's likely we automatically think of slavery. A stain on any society that kept slaves. And while the word does usually mean being kept in chattel slavery, there is another meaning:

servitude or subjugation to a controlling person or force

It is this lesser-known meaning I've been praying on this past week. Particularly the "force" emphasized.

What could this force be? In the context of my own prayers it represents a spiritual attack on my well-being. I hesitate to say this as I'm not one to go this dramatic within my faith but...

satan

There. I said it.

The evil one. Lucifer. Beelzebub. The Dark Lord. Mephistopheles. The Beast.

So many names for one creature. 

I have come to see, incredibly recently, that I have been under spiritual attack by The Dark Lord. Intent on keeping me servile, it has tied me to the hatred that I bonded to within my own family.

Most everything they did was only for their own benefit. Self-aggrandizement. Charity did not begin at home unless someone could take credit for it. How very - un-Christian. And of course I've already shared what that meant in my family.

Their Christian virtues were irrevocably tied up in hatred. They weren't pro-Christadelphian, they were anti-Catholic (anti any Christian practice really). My mother was anti-<insert ethnicity here>. My father was the same. Equal opportunity bigots.

They hated pretty much anyone who didn't march to their particular drum. And that included people within the family as much as without. Since they weren't very loving, as a child we had no choice but to bond to what they offered.

And so here I am - bonded to their hatred. 

And given a gift without price. An epiphany delivered at Mass last weekend by none other than Holy Mary, Mother of God.

{Now to clarify things for the non-Catholics in the crowd - we do not worship Holy Mary. She is a Saint, not a God-replacement. She is venerated as all Saints are; we pray to her for her intercession on our behalf to Jesus, thru whom we pray to God. That's all. She is very important to the Catholic faith - as she should be to all Christian faiths.}

Back to Holy Mary's gift. In a quiet moment of communal & introspective prayer I found myself praying for my father. For the first time in nearly a decade I spoke his name in prayer in a positive way - and asked for the strength to learn how to forgive him.

Trust me - his sins against his daughter are great indeed. The worst sin a parent can commit on their child. In fact those sins really are among the unforgivable.

And yet, here I am. For the first time in my life recognizing that the kind of forgiveness I need to give him will release me.

Just me. Only me.

In a moment of pure clarity, Holy Mary showed me the chains that tie me to him. The connection that keeps me subjugated to him. To his hate. Literal chains leading to this man who wounded me so deeply I never thought I'd recover from the memories of it.

It was - literally a godsend of coherence in a mind that was anything but.

With this magnificent and quite holy offering, I have finally stepped on a path I haven't really seen for my entire life. The incredible understanding of this kind of forgiveness.

How liberating it will be. Oh yes, Holy Mary showed me that too.

After talking about it endlessly - annoyingly even - my journey in faith has taken on another facet. One that I know will bring me closer to that goal of all goals...

...peace.

Amen.

Our Warrior

Do you ever get tired of the daily grind? The endless demands on your time & energy. Whether that be at work, at home, or elsewhere in your life. Don't you want to set those burdens down?

Of course you do. Who wouldn't?

Well - guess what. We have the most powerful warrior the universe will ever know...walking right by our side, just waiting for us to turn to him and say...

Lord, please help me.

Or some variation of the same.

Don't be shy about it. Shout it out if you need to. Yell, scream, holler - or whisper it so that your words are almost silent. Just a faint breath on the breeze.

God won't think you are angry with him. And no matter how softly (or loudly) you say it - he will hear you. He always does.

He already knows you are overburdened, worn out, your insides mush from being wrung dry on a daily basis. All he wants from us is to turn to him in times of trouble. (Or happiness - to be thankful for the abundance.)

Even if those burdens don't magically disappear - the demanding boss, the financial concerns, the trials of life - giving them to God always feels good.

Because he is our Warrior. 

Spotlight

As I continue to consider putting pen to paper about my faith journey I am butting up against some seriously dark places along the way.

The journey I took started with one of the most disastrous moments in my adult life, taking me on an unwelcome whirlwind into deep forests of fear and pain.

And on the other side of all that - came God. Shining thru like a beacon, like the supreme being he always was and always will be.

Indeed. God's grace was always there as we are never alone. And his grace brings with it illumination into the dimmest reaches of our lives.

God's spotlight makes it impossible for the pain to hide in the shadows. And even better - that spotlight banishes the pain.

All you have to do it bend your knees - and ask.

I know I used this image last week. Hit me just as hard today as it did a week ago.

Contemplation

Something big has been on my heart for a long time now. I've approached it many times and each time was rebuffed by my own fear and trepidation. 

I have now dipped my toes into the vast ocean that is...my faith journey. Meaning putting it in writing. A memoir of sorts.

I don't pretend to be any sort of writer at all. Except that I do enjoy it and there can be healing in the action of writing down your own story. Even if it's only ever for yourself.

Yet there is this part of me that thinks - maybe my story can help someone else navigate theirs. 

Is that ego? Or hope? 

And so it is with my story. God is at the center of it - even though for two thirds of that time I was utterly unaware of his presence in any real way. God remained with me during the deepest, darkest times of a young life thru the darkest times of an adult life - and every weigh station in between.

I feel like I need to honor him by speaking my truths. Even if my voice shakes a bit.

Right now my thoughts are a jumble of what to write and where to put that bit of history in relation to the other bits. For now it's just isolated experiences. At some point I will need to combine them somehow, or at least that's what my research tells me.

My prayers - well right now I'm asking God to help me get it all out; we'll sort it out when the times comes. And yes, I mean "we" - God and me. With every chapter, paragraph, and word - my prayers will be ongoing for God's love & grace to guide me.

And so - without further preamble or excuses - I bare it all with the first few paragraphs of my faith history. 

On Being Christadelphian - Pt. 1

My faith history needs a bit of context. My mother grew up in the Congregational Church, my father was a Wesley Methodist. I remember being told they went to church every Sunday. I am not aware of their involvement beyond attending services.  After they got engaged, they met someone who introduced them to the Christadelphian branch of Christianity. Something clicked for them and together they took the necessary classes, converted, and were married in that faith. They even brought in my father’s parents after their wedding. My mother’s parents didn’t convert. Their reasons are lost to time.

Christadelphian - Brothers in Christ - are a special breed of Christian. In the most basic terms, they are a fundamentalist faith observing a strict interpretation of the Bible, which they believe is inspired by God rather than written by men. Their churches - ecclesias - are independent of each other, managed by a group of elected men - brothers - who handle everything from building maintenance to investments of donations. They reject the idea of a Trinity, they believe Jesus Christ, in his human form, was not divine, and they wait for that day when Christ returns to Earth to establish his Father’s Kingdom. They believe as strongly in the Old Testament as the New Testament. Believers call it “The Truth”. Salvation is thru reading scripture alone, or sola scriptura.

And they believe The Truth is for just them. No other Christian, or other form of faith except the Jews, will have the opportunity to inherit God's Kingdom. With regard to Judaism - as the favored people of God, they get a "free pass" from Christadelphians. Any other Christian faith will be found lacking on Judgement Day per Christadelphians. Because these other branches don't read the Bible to the strictest degree that Christadelphians do. Plus no other Bible study is good enough when compared to the Christadelphian Bible reading program, wherein you read the Old Testament once and the New Testament twice per calendar year.

The Christadelphian faith was founded in 1848 by a doctor from England. In small part this was in response to the Radical Reformation that began in the late 17th century, which was mostly about the rampant corruption in the Catholic Church. Which is so personally ironic given my current and happy home in the Catholic faith. This reformation would create several more now-mainstream Christian branches including Anabaptists (which includes Huetterites, Mennonites, and Amish). Some Christadelphians align themselves, at least in part, with Quakers.

It is a strict faith with unyielding rules and beliefs. Not unlike many others. However, Christadelphians believe in a vengeful God even while believing in a benevolent God who gave us our ultimate savior, Jesus Christ. There is also much hate and bigotry taught in Sunday School. That will become important later. Overall, as I look back on it with decades of distance, I can see how my earliest traumas were a result of this hateful, vengeful faith. My inevitable low self-esteem and sense of unworthiness can be traced, in part, to my activities with and belief in being Christadelphian.

Up Next: On Being Christadelphian, Pt 2 - A Family of Faith

Stubborn

This past week has been - a struggle to get thru.

I haven't felt like myself. Deep within I feel disoriented and there is a disquieting edge to my thoughts and my attitude. I've been clipped and easily irritated. I am definitely wearing my grumpy-pants 24/7.

And I can't figure out why. Maybe that's the point - another hint from God that it's not up to me to figure it out, it's up to me to give it to him so I can release the burden of needing to know.

And if you know me in real life - I have to know all the things. All of them, all the time. As I've written so many times, the human ego can be a real challenge to getting thru life.

Some of what I'm grappling with is memories that are the very worst kind. They are torturous and painful beyond words. I don't want to think about "them" and yet...they infiltrate my mind at the least opportune moments.

And I reflect here that perhaps that's what God wants. Catch us off-guard so we can train our "muscles" to turn to him in these times of greatest need.

To be honest, I'm not sure I'm OK with that. And it's likely my version of something much simpler.

God wants good for us; good for us all the time. He wants us to love him; there is no way for us to love God in a way that comes close to his love for us. Yet he wants us to persist in prayer to him so he can show us his love.

Funny thing about human ego - I don't love them, I'm struggling with the practice of forgiveness, and if I'm being really honest - I don't want anything for them that is good. (Which, I am fully aware, goes against what I said just one paragraph above. God wants good for all of us...so who am I to not want good for them? I don't wish them ill (or at least I stopped doing that a few years ago). I just don't wish them good, either.) But I am 100% OK with moving on without them. I just didn't think it would be as chronic & debilitating as it has been.

And that last has been my struggle for a very long time. Living my life without them has been the hardest thing I've ever done. Or ever tried to do, more like. It gets easier with time - and prayer - and yet there are weeks, like this last one, that surely try my soul.

Is this some kind of spiritual attack? Likely. And so it is, as always, I continue to train those muscles to turn to God in all things.

But goodness I have a stubborn ego, don't I?

Fragility

To be human...is to feel fragile. Our bodies are pretty sturdy, all things considered, and yet we are physically prone to bruising, cuts, falling, injuries, illness, etc...

We aren't meant to last forever. 

What I mean by using the word "fragility" as the title of this conversation is our emotional fragility. For in that we are prone to tears, anger, betrayal, depression, etc...

Nothing really much good in that kind of fragility, is there. It wears us down and wears us out. Only if we allow ourselves to become lost in the sea of our human frailty.

For indeed, God is most definitely not fragile. Not in any sense of the word. By any definition God is the strongest being of all time and space. His creation endures - it might change and it still endures.

Like the epic waterfall in this picture. Gullfoss (meaning golden waterfall) in Iceland. Millions of years old its torrents gush unimpeded through this harsh & beautiful landscape. While the water, over time, may change the face of the rocks the flow of the water is a constant. 

As is God - he is there for us, even when we don't acknowledge him. Or talk to him. 

We go thru each day not being fully aware of God's constant presence in our lives. Or at least - I do.

I am utterly clueless sometimes in the stress & tumble of a day. Something can be staring me in the face and if I'm wrapped up in my own little dramas and concerns I don't see it.

And that doesn't mean that God isn't there anyway. Even when he is ignored or worse - yelled at in anger about some petty thing - he is there. Steadfast. 

Waiting for us - always waiting for us. And all we need to do is say "Hi God" or "Thank you God" or even just "God, please help me".

Because we may be fragile - but he never is.

On Forgiveness

All of life is a process of some kind. From the simple process of getting a driver's license to the challenges you face while grieving. The spectrum is wide, deep, and long. 

The process of forgiveness - is all those things and more. I have grieved people who have died. And I find the ability to forgive to be far more difficult than grieving.

I am in a season of my life where forgiving people is paramount to my ability to move forward. I have so much anger against these people - and rightfully so. And yet I am holding onto that anger, thinking it keeps me safe.

And all it does is hold me hostage to those people. And trust me - what they have done is truly unforgivable.

Yet...here I am. In a deep dark hole of anger & rage. It has become something larger than myself and it is holding me back from some deep personal healing and growth.

So I am doing research on forgiveness, thru the lens of a Christian. We all know that, as Christians, it is our duty & obligation to forgive others as God has forgiven us.

In the Bible, the Greek word “forgiveness” literally means “to let go”. Holding on to my anger is definitely not letting go of anything at all.

The Bible tells us this is very clear terms:

“But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” -Matthew 6:14

“For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more." - Hebrews 8:12

“Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” - Colossians 3:13

There are more but you get the idea.

If I don't find my way to forgiveness God will deny me entry into the Kingdom, into Heaven itself.

Yeah - this is pretty serious for a Christian.

If I am to live my life in a Christian way, then I must find the path to forgive people who really don't deserve it. Add in the fact that I will only be doing this for myself; there is no way for me to actually approach them and offer them my forgiveness. And I know their response would be rejection - yet that is not the Christian point, now is it.

I feel like I'm walking a fine line here. I'm supposed to actually forgive them - one of them is dead. And the other I haven't seen or spoken to in over 15 years. For all I know, she may well be dead too. 

Plus I have no wish to be in that presence again. To welcome that toxicity & violence into my life again. It really is she who should be asking me for forgiveness. And therein lies another conundrum for me - even if she did ask me, would I be able to forgive her for the unforgivable?

Daunting...is the word that comes to mind.

And then in my research this morning I found this:

The Bible teaches that unselfish love is the basis for true forgiveness, since “...it keeps no record of wrongs...” (1 Corinthians 13:5). Forgiving others means letting go of resentment and giving up any claim to be compensated for the hurt or loss we have suffered. from LAChristianCounseling website

And further, this gem appeared like the gift from God that it clearly is:

"If you've given up the right to get even with your offender, that's forgiveness. If your loss still hurts, that's normal anger that will exist as long as you feel the loss. As you come to accept the loss and move on with your life, the anger will slowly dissipate." from KerriCoaching, a Christian life-coaching website

This one reminded me that I did pray for all of them at the Easter Vigil this year. I felt called, by God, to do that. And as much as I resisted I couldn't ignore that clear call for prayer. I had forgotten about this until today.

I have a long road ahead of me to reach this state of forgiveness, this state of letting go. Of not feeling the pain of decades of torment & abuse. God is listening to me (as he always does, even if we aren't fully aware) and is already granting me visions & very clear messages.

The key to all this is - to pay attention to what God wants me to know. I already know the work he wants me to do here is coming to forgiveness.

This is my soul's purpose right now. My one goal in life. Because if I don't come to a state of forgiveness, I fear I will be trapped as a hostage to these people - and that is the last thing I want to do with the rest of my life.

Tears & Suffering

 

if all you have are tears to cry

the Lord keeps track of all your sorrow

psalm 56:8

Life - moves fast and not always politely. There are days - weeks even - when I feel like I've been run over, repeatedly. Despite all my efforts at setting boundaries with people I still end up worn out in every possible way.

These past few weeks have been such a time and this past week was intensified. It was just - a slog. 

All I wanted to do when I got home from work yesterday was curl up under the covers and cry my heart out. I could feel the dammed up tears threatening to overtop my control all day long.

So home I went - and literally crawled into bed, under the lovely covers, thinking I'd give over to the tears and let the dam break.

It didn't.

Because I prayed for solace, for comfort. I prayed most fervently for relief from the weight of it all. 

And as ever - God was there in the silence, holding my hand and drying my tears before I shed them.

He does that - all day long. And in those times when our tears do overtop us, it's only because we didn't ask God to help in that moment.

I know - the question surely follows - but if he is there all the time why doesn't he always help us to not cry?

And I ask that question myself all the time. There is no easy answer - it is the age-old question of why a munificent God would allow us to suffer at all.

The short answer is - because in those moments God wants us to call out to him, to turn to him, to be drawn into his embrace, and stay there.

The long answer is - I don't have one. It is the oldest & hardest question of faith. 

I think back to my previous writing about spiritual warfare and the presence of satan. For the evil one is always there just waiting - crouched in the shadows - to distract us away from what we know is right.

God - is right. Praying to God - is right. Repentance - is right.

Satan - is wrong. Satan - is never the answer to anything.

So here we are in another spiritual fight. Turning to God - while tears threaten and solace seems unreachable - is the only way to gain these things.

On Vulnerability & Warfare

 

Spiritual warfare. We're gonna get vulnerable here.

Ever feel like each day is some kind of battle? From the time your eyes open until you can finally close them again, and surrender to the hopeful peace of sleep - you are fighting against ... something. At the blissful end of such a day you don't know what you were fighting, you can't recall how it all started, and you just want it to disappear into the mist of a dreamless rest.

I've had more than a bevy of these days over the past few years. And in my own reflections, meditations, and prayers I've determined that at the bedrock of these kinds of days is warfare.

Yes - warfare. For my spirit. Sometimes it feels like a battle for my very soul. 

Satan steps into the breach of these kinds of moments and tries to wrest control away from me. He sneaks in like colorless smoke and captures me in his web of lies and condemnations.

Sometimes he comes in the form of gossip in the news. Sometimes it is some kind of sadistic abuser masquerading as a comforter who distracts me from my faith. Other times it is self-doubt - the worst kind, born of abuse from my parents and read back to me in the darkest of dark thoughts.

No matter how he comes, Satan is a slick, oily salesman who wends his way into my life and works his own deviant magic on me to call me away from what I know to be true and right.

Righteous even.

There are two words in this that shed a bright light onto how this happens:

• Surrender
• Control

These 2 words effectively cancel each other out, don't they.

Leaving no room for an effective plan. No room for God. And therein lies the problem.

Satan cancels out God. If you let him. And those days I've had of spiritual warfare, Satan sometimes comes close to being the victor.

He came extremely close just once - many years ago. I brought in the help of several people to get him away from me. It took an enormous leap of - faith - to overcome his hold over me.

And nowadays when I feel Satan closing in on me - I turn to God as swiftly as I feel the hot breath on my face. 

That breath is nasty. Just nasty.

I am so thankful for my faith, for God's healing & enduring love, for God's forgiveness always - especially on those spiritual warfare days. When Satan's temptation gets under my skin and tries to make a home there.

Satan only has one home and that is behind me. With God in front of me leading me, as ever, to safety & protection.

It is a daily act of faith to give control of the day to God. On some days, I have to give control to God every few minutes.

And when I do that - humble myself and tell God I truly need his protection & love - he is steadfast as always. And my anxiety and fear fades away.