reflect

Hey @Rick

I've been mentally mangled too, for most of my 51 years. I wasn't physically beaten but there was so much other "stuff" that I really have no idea where to begin to talk much about it.

For almost my whole life this has been deeply debilitating, and occasionally still is, and until 2009 I didn't even have much of an inkling as to why. In all honesty I can finds lots of hell in my journey, and for so long that seemed where I was destined to live. The shocking part has been the grace I've found in the most unexpected places. I know that you know first-hand what abuse does in terms of making you feeling terribly ashamed, as if somehow it was our fault that we were abused. So how to begin to explain, let alone accept, grace?

Nearly twenty years ago I asked God why I couldn't live in the light, nor hardly even believe it was real. I longed to live in the light. Do you know what answer I got? A bloody question (typical of God's sense of humour, as I have discovered over the years)! "Why don't you try taking off your dark glasses?" I was pretty narky about it, like "what you think I like living like this?" But I also thought about it. I realised that what I had been through (or what I knew of it then) had made me deeply cynical about everything and everyone - so much that it was making me sicker. This was not going to be an easy freight train to shift. (BTW I'm not suggesting this answer is for you or anyone else, in my experience the answers for us are as individual and personal as our relationships with God)

I did make up my mind to try to look for grace in my day, every day. Did I / do I always remember to look for it? No. Is it worthwhile when I do? Yes always, though sometimes very painful too. People say "don't forget to smell the roses" as if roses are what we should always look for. I have found that grace comes in so many surprising and unlikely places and ways that I just ask now to be shown the grace, rather than put my own ideas on what it must or "should" be like.

So here are a couple of pictures of grace which have been shown to me when I've asked (these are physical, but I feel apt metaphors for the grace I've found amidst my suffering).

This is from the log in the river behind my house. During winter I went to the river seeking solace and found these minute fungi growing on "my" log. They are so tiny they are mostly smaller than my little fingernail, and exquisite.

I found this next to a city carpark alongside a littered lane, when I was lamenting to God at how we are trashing the planet - I asked for a sign of grace. Here in an "empty" garden bed which had a broken water meter and some mulch (amongst this sh*t) was life springing forth. Not roses, not smelling pretty, but abundant unstoppable life. I think maybe I'm a human mushroom.

I also believe my children are gifts of grace. And perhaps your daughter is grace for you?

I agree that God is a force for good. I even suspect that God would not argue with you about being a "bastard for what he's allowed". Free will is such a gift of enduring love and hope, when we might have been made obedient automatons instead. So he tied both his hands behind his back - and cries broken-hearted with us, beside us, inside us - for the deep wounds we suffer and carry. I struggle to explain it with words, it is a felt sense with my heart that God is with us holding us through it all, longing to stop it NOW and yet the intervention would be to change us into robots.

I have cried and raged at God over many things, hurts of my own & of others. I have yet to be struck down for my raging. Instead I have been struck by the transformation in me which has come when I have been prepared to bare my all before God and demand - "I am bl99ding, help me!"

I am not a believer in quick-fixes generally, though it hasn't stopped me from asking for them still. I begged God to save me from my mother when I was 11, I needed an instant answer. Instead I received a journey, it took me 40 years before realising that my prayer was answered in the only way it could be (unbeknown to me my step-father & his new wife were willing to adopt me, that would have killed me). I don't have pat answers, not even for my own journey, let alone others'. I can only try to explain what I have found. I hope it makes some sense, or better still is of some help.

Ashes

All I can taste are ashes
Chalky and grating
Bitter in my mouth

All I can smell are ashes
Smoking and choking still
Everything reeking of death

All I can see are ashes
Blackening every horizon
Burned beyond redemption

Near forty years in the wilderness
Searching for an answer to my prayer
I’ve nothing to offer but ashes

So I keep giving You
Ashes weighty as millstones
Hanging my head in shame

You hold my hand
To lead me on a different path
Showing me what you’ve sown

From offerings I believed worthless
You’ve grown a towering forest
Of glorious Mountain Ashes

Kristin © July 2013

I think it is amazing... that hope endures

Kindest regards,

Kristin

Hi Kristin

aint it a rough road.

I'm going to go over to something's not right after this cos I'm having a bad day.

I have faith in God. I became a christian when I was 27 but always was a believer. He chased me like a rabid dog. I was engaged for a few years in spiritual experimentation in an effort to get more control over my head.

That's not what he wanted.

I become a Christian because of a war. A war of good against evil. For me both of these values are also personified.

I've seen all kinds of stuff in this world and through the veil of another. I came to be believe certain spiritual things. I believe as fact.

I won't go into nitty gritty cos I know for many it just sounds nuts, but I know what I know.

So I became a warrior of God. Silly Iknow but that's what it is for me. My faith is rock solid as it shouldbe since it comes from without rather than within.

I prayed in those early days for healing. I was only 27 yet I'd spent every year since I was at least 9 as symptomatic. Part of this is a death wish. It's been there so so long and so strongly that I wanted it gone.

I prayed and prayed and others did the same for me.

One day in a quiet moment I heard a voice.

I'd been talking to that old man and saying I did'nt want to keep going like this. I wanted something better.

That voice ,which I've only heard once and never again said. "And your point is.......?"

So like Paul in Ephesus when praying for God to remove and heal his limp the old man said NO.

I was Pi$$ed. My goodness was'nt I.

It's been along time since then. I can't do church for a variety of reasons but mainly I guess because religion destroys the essence of the deal in so very many.I have a Christian mate and his wife and I'm Godfather for to both of their kids, that and my littles girls faith is enough for fellowship.

I have only just figured out , and I mean in the last few months , have figured out that God allowed my life to happen to allow me a perspective I could never have appreciated otherwise. I hope that the plan is for me to work in the sector with a true empathy, compassion, knowledge and skill set that makes it worth something. I meanit. It has to have been for some reason, it has to be able to be made worthwhile. I feel it in my bones. I need to have been worthwhile. Imean this shite storm started when my Mum drive away Dember 1973 and I went into the den of a psychopath to live . To be raised. It has to have been worthwhile somehow.

The hard part is breaking in. I have a cert 4 in MH. And 15 years experience as a youthworker. And so far I've had one interview in 18 months. I got the damn job but it's 2 hours travel by car each way. I could'nt stand the stress of that much time in peak hour traffic. So I turned it down.

Since then I keep applying and I hone my skills and I read reviews and policy and legislation and I network online and contribute to sector forums and I feel like I'm spinning my wheels.

But patience is an unlimited economy. And whilst I cry each night and wrestle with deathlonging, I just keep trying I guesss.

This is all just a long wided jumble of words, some of which may seem Dogmatic.

I just want to let you know In guess that your words and your story made me want to reveal myself to you a little more.

I've just re read that sentence and it sounds a little weird if not disturbing. I mean nothing inappropriate though.

I just wanted to communicate with you like you did with me.

Hope endures because the battle is already won if not yet fought

Rick

Hi @Rick

I'm really sorry you are having a bad day, I expect that is probably the understatement of the week BTW. I truly hope tomorrow is better.

I can see you have faith. He chased me too. For about 20 years, from 11-33yo. I now say to people it's ok not to believe in God, he's very respectful. He wants a relationship with you but won't force it upon you. But don't think that disbelieving in God stops God from believing in you, because it doesn't. He never gives up on us.

The funniest thing was when I was baptised - I was looking into baby names (I was pregnant with my son at the time) and I discovered that my name means follower of Christ. It is deeply ironic because my atheist parents had no idea what it meant, they just liked it. And when I was a child I hated it - because it was so different. I even tried to get my mum to call me Kate! Now I increasingly realise it is who I am, not just my name. What that means ultimately I really don't know.

I tried asking for the quick fix too. Mostly when I ask I get the wry humour back with my answer. He knows I'm a stubborn bugger, and that having been effectively enslaved in childhood I hate being told what to do. So he doesn't tell me. Instead he often asks me questions, but the answers are so blinking obvious they are as plain as the nose on my face - but they are my answers! Another way I have had answers is through visions, but some have taken me 10 years to have much idea what they were about.

I agree about the war. I believe it's a "war" in which only the power of love can win against evil. To use anything else is to effectively move camps.

I suspect that the rock solid has moved in, it may have started with him but it's now in you also.

In my humble experience God says no when it is something that will truly be bad for us (perhaps deadly), even if it seems the reverse. Have you ever considered asking him what his point is? The answer might surprise, and even help, you. I find he appreciates engagement and being challenged. He didn't make us robots, but lively and intelligent. He longs for relationship, and asking questions and arguing are certainly part of being real in relationship! There are plenty of examples, but Job is one of my favourites. Boy is he p'ed off, and with good reason.

I struggle with churches for various reasons myself. Partly because I am so utterly unorthodox, I believe that practising love faithfully is far more important than professing anything (including "Christianity"), whatever one's religious beliefs are. So it tends to get up people's nose a bit, not that I push it - but eventually it comes out. I also challenge hypocrisy when I find it (even in me, ouch!).

I agree that purpose will arise from your suffering, or at least this was definitely part of my own transformative journey - finding that sense of purpose. I am less sure that this is why it happened in the first place. Maybe this is the long and winding path which God leads us upon - the only way out to love, into being fully present?

I hope that break comes through.

What you said doesn't seem weird or inappropriate, I understood what you meant.

Blessings, and a prayer for dreamless sleep.

Kristin

Hey @kenny66

Well done for taking on board what a huge thing it is for you to have spoken out at all about the abuse. You honour us with your trust. We value it, and will try to hold it gently.

Kindest regards,

Kristin

Dear @Rick

I've just been rereading some of this thread, and something you said has struck me again, but more forcefully.

You said

'I'd been talking to that old man and saying I did'nt want to keep going like this. I wanted something better.

That voice ,which I've only heard once and never again said. "And your point is.......?"

So like Paul in Ephesus when praying for God to remove and heal his limp the old man said NO.'

I can't help but wonder whether he did mean no, or whether that is how you've interpreted it. The reason I say this is because I know that at least one of my visions which at the time I thought was quite apocalyptic (I was praying for world peace and my mum was a human shield in Bagdad at the time) turned out to be a refiner's fire answer, not an apocalypse answer at all. It was only after I gathered the courage and insight to ask him what it was about that he showed me, when my fear of the "wrong" answer had abated.

So I'm going to offer a gentle challenge to the flat "No" you clearly read in this. I'm happy to discuss it, or argue even. I'm asking you to consider that he was encouraging (maybe insisting?) you to work out more specifically what the "something better" looks lke to you, and keep asking (keep knocking). I guess you could look at it as the difference between asking for food or for fresh strawberries. Working out the specific answer can be a journey in itself, but knowing what we are looking for (like that job) makes it easier to ask for and seek out in our lives. It's a rather odd invitation to journey, but I suspect that is closer to what it is than a flat no (as in never).

Hope endures...

that there is help and healing in store for all our journeying

Kindest regards,

Kristin

@kristin

Hi Kristin

wow

I appreciate the fact that you though about this.

You are correct in the idea there was more to it.

When he said " And your point is"? he meant all things in his time.

Now it's been nearly 20 years since then. And like Job i've tried to wait patient like.

It came to me this year.
I was reading the word, can't remember what. I do remeber I'd been talkinfg to both my daughter about godliness. And my god daughter about rough roads and godliness. That child don't need no lessons on the subject she is one who is touched.

Anyway. There I was reading. And a thought came to and stayed a spell. That thought was about worth. Reason. Sense.

I don't want to go into details about the things that happened to me as a young one so I'll say only this

My impression was that everything that had happened including what I had become( a feckin nutter) was for a reason.

To Make sense of it I would work in the mental health sector in some capacity ( i dont know) and armed with everything I am and had learned I would make some kind of difference.

Now I know it all sound a bit egotistical and cheesy. But it was followed by this f*cking Hope that I could'nt shake. A couple of weeks ago I spat the dummy and tried unblieve hope. Lasted for only 5 days. The hope never actually was affected I was just a bit nuts was angry.

I can't tell you what it will mean for me to actually be of good use. To actually make this life worthwhile.

Cos I need it to make sense.

When you have been just thrown away at 3

and tortured with pain most days until 19. None of that was my fault. So it make no sense. Do you see?

I need it to make sense.

And that's all I have to say about that.....................................................

Hope you know............

Rick