In Spirit and In Truth

Dinner time approaches and I haven't even practiced my singing for my audition next Tuesday, not enough hours in the day.  Every time I look for work, the door seems to get slammed shut, for no apparent reason.  Or, its just more of the waiting game.  The waiting game.  Don't you just love the waiting game?  Whatever your spiritual belief or in fact if you have none, you still hate the waiting game.  Its like waiting room, where you keep waiting for your name or  number to be called, so you can just get the hell out of there and get on with your life, because of course your mind races with all the other things you have to do that day.  Well, that reminds me of something that Bill and I have been reading in our daily devotionals: Be still! and KNOW--I AM--GOD.  Notice, the emphasis on the word "still", and how often do we complain, bipolar or no, how unstill our minds are.

Whatever the emphasis of spirituality, all those in leadership say that there should be some emphasis on stillness, prayer, readying your heart to hear from God.  And that God is not this grand explosion we should all be looking up for, but that something that starts calling us from the inside, tugging at our in most heartstrings.  Is he tugging at yours?  He's tugging at mine.  It reminds me of a scripture I read this morning:

"But the hour is now coming, and is now here, when true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and in Truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship Him.  God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth."

Throughout this day, I have dealt with enough tension to drive even my 6 month old kitten away from my presence, and yes, the attivan helps get through the day, but it wasn't until I quieted myself with a good book and a glass of Cranberry juice.  (All natural, no sugar, organic, can we say, Cranberry cleanse?)  I picked up The Feminine Face Of God and was taken to their chapter on tools for the sacred garden.  This book inspired me when it said:

"Just as any plot of soil with seeds and sun and water can become a garden if there is a gardener, so can our lives come to spiritual maturity if we are willing to cultivitate them.  To cultivate, in its root form, means to inhabit, to dwell within.  Learning how to live the dailiness of our own lives while opening continually to the sacred seems to take practice--practice in opening, practice in listening, practice in waiting.  Practice also in obeying our inner direction,in speaking out when we are moved to do so, and in accepting responsibility and authority when we are called upon to be bold.  And practice also means celebrating and expressing gratitude and "making a joyful song unto the Lord".  When we enter such practices wholeheartedly, we bring to life another root meaning of cultivate: worship."


One thing that surprised me, well actually, it didn't.  See, my time in the Calvary Chapel world was spent mainly on my knees, not in sexual posing, but in prayerful repentence for that act.  I think many of my friends of that age were doing the same thing, just not admitting it.  And, yet, we pretend to be super spiritual and not talk about our indiscretions in anyway, that might damage our image of perfect sainthood.  So, we don't talk about what is really going on, which for the most part is, sex.  We don't talk about what is really going on in our heads, which for the most part is, sex.

This book writes: "I think the big, awful secret of the church and the synagogue today is that many of the religious don't know how to pray.  Sexuality is a minor issue next to this.  And, indeed, we seem to be much more comfortable talking about our sex lives than we are sharing information with each other about how we pray.  Perhaps this is because praying may be the most personal and intimate thing we do.  To pray is to be vulnerable.  And in deep, personal prayer we come to know our vulnerabilities in a way that strips us of all our defenses and pretenses.  That which is our very essence calls us into communion with mystery, and this joining is a supremely intimate experience."


So, the church should be more open about their sex life.  Most of you readers know that I had illicit affairs before marriage and because of the church held great shame in my heart because of that.  Well, this all changed when I met my husband, who I did have sex with before marriage...but with him, it was truly like saying a prayer.  There were some times when we were making love where we were united with God and could feel his presence with us.

But, to be clear, sex doesn't mean love and I had to kiss a lot of frogs before I found my prince, also I had to wait eight years for that prince to come back to me.  But, girls, please don't think that because I say that prayer is like sex to go off and have sex with anyone and everyone.  That isn't the point, and I can assure you, will only end in pain.

But, what I want you to understand is this, I wish I had waited, not with my husband, but with the guys that came before him.  Because, and here we go back to the waiting room, I sat in that room and didn't look around for one guy for threee years.  I chose celibacy in order to get healthy and be whole.  I chose to focus, to pray, to meditate, and to listen for the Lord to bring the one into my life.  (And I can go back to the days before, when I swore the Lord gave me a promise that this one was the one I would marry).  But, still I had to wait, in that waiting room, with the old magazines with the perfumed ripped out of them and the crying babies, well, I learned to always take a book.  And I read, and read, and read.  And I learned a little something about myself, and about God, and about Jesus, and about others, and I also learned that I have way more to learn.

"And thus Abraham, having patiently waited, obtained the promise."

And in the waiting, I learned that the waiting is sometimes the best place for us, the most growing place.  Its the place that prepared me to be a wife because even with the trials I went through this last week, the attacks, and the tension, I know who my God is and I know that when trials come, as they do, you get on your knees and you pray, and when you do, God hears.  Well, God heard my prayers this week, and lots of doors got open with my mind, heart, and emotions, but also with our finances.  A job hasn't dropped into my hands yet but we will pray about that too.  And it'll come.  Good things come to those who wait.

And when I get downcast, weary, or depressed, I can turn to Hebrews and hear God tug at my heart, saying:

"We who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the anchor of our soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain."

So, dear friends, remember I am praying for you, drop me a line if you need a prayer...oh, and remember when you pray, remember to listen.

When we are healed, we are not healed alone.

As I have been writing in earlier entries about my recovery, my source of healing did not come on my own, in contrary, in came in part during my time at Hope Chapel Healdsburg.  As I said, I was forcing myself to sit through the services at Hope Chapel Windsor (nothing against this church) when one day I had a full blown anxiety attack on the freeway and had to get off immediately and my car led me straight over to Hope Chapel Healdsburg.  They recognized me immediately, knew a little bit about my suffering, and welcomed me as family.  I felt welcomed and warmed, and for the first time in along time, was able to truly worship the Lord and hear from God.  It was inspiring.  In this, my recovery was not set out in isolation but with the family of God I found at this church.  It was there that I met Red-Hot Renee.  She wandered into church, any church, would do for her that day and met me.  She knew she had to be in church that day and that was the one that God led her too, and led her to me.  Wherever you are, Renee, I owe my a great deal of my healing and dedication to Jesus to your presence in my life.

A woman by the name of Irene Smith, from the book "The Feminine Side of God" inspires this entry today because it talks about her own recovery through prostitution and drug abuse to finding her value, her sense of self, and ultimately her Jesus.  Her healing started out from an honest opinion of her brother who told her in my own paraphrase that she looked like crap.  She immediately looked in the mirror and made a conscious decision to change.  As she says, "I need to be totally quiet."  As in my recovery, she says that she "had my cat a a loving companion and I knew that I had to get up when the sun got up and go to bed when the sun went down, and in between I just needed to be with me and nobody else."

She had her first divine experience with Jesus when she was detoxing the chemicals out of her body through her own self made sauna "Oh, Jesus," she recalls saying aloud as she watched the spray descending over her, "I can't believe this water is so beautiful.  It is so beautiful."  She said her prayer life started then.  This is a kin to my experience of going to that Assembly of God church and coming out of there, crying out to Jesus and proclaiming my love for him, after days of telling him I hated him.

Also, like her, I went through years of suffering based on stuffing all my pain deep within myself, which was forced upon me by my dad's insistence that no emotion other than happiness ever express itself in our household.  ( I think I remember him beating us if we cried, argued, or got upset.)  Irene went through her own cathatris: "All the pain that had been stuffed down through long years of acquiescence and drug-induced denial began to surface in full force.  Kicking and screaming and beating pillows, Irene began to release a lifetime's acumulation of fear, anger, and grief.  During this process of release, she acquired the tools she would later use to help others open up the closed-off parts of themselves."

After I got in trouble for screaming at Karissa, Randy, and my students, I started screaming in my car.  Although I would cry uncomtrollably afterwards and punish myself by biting myself for even showing the emotion of anger, I believe this was one of the healthiest outlet for me to do.  No one heard me.  It was a free time to just let it all out and looking back I thank God for those moments I had to freely express myself, and thank my friend with the name of the elite university for always pushing me to "feel my feelings".

One of the ways Irene felt healing was by truly feeling heard.  Although we, humans, can try our best to learn skills to actively listen, in my opinion the only person who really heard me was God.  Also, my good friends, Tony Fleisher and Will Richey were helpful in stirring me along the right path.  Irene's step towards awakening came when she admitted aloud: "I'm a prostitute and I'm going to be a counselor."

She then went onto be a masseusse for those afflicted with the AIDS virus, the ones that we normally are afraid to touch.  Last night at my healing and prayer night, the leader of the group was listening to a woman share about her pain.  I noticed that he touched her shoulder when he was sharing what he had heard from her.

When someone touches you, you can feel the  meaning behind it.  When my own father touches me because of the years of physical and emotional abuse he has caused, I tense up and do not welcome it.  But, when loving friends and my husband touch me, if I feel any pain, whether it be a back pain or a heart pain, a little bit of me unfolds.  Touch can be the most powerful gift that we can give one another, within one's boundaries.  From my own experience, its not necessarily a good thing to just go up and hug anyone you see on the street, but use discernment.  People who refuse touch, especially when they are in immense pain, suffer the most.

Irene explains: "I had a deep need to do service and surrender myself to Jesus for my own healing and I also needed to prove to others, as well as myself, that I was good and kind.  And I had a very deep need for love and affection that was not in any way connected with sex.  I could go and sit down with these people who were terribly sick and hold and stroke them.  Sometimes I would cry, I was very open and responsive.  It's hard for most people to touch and hold those who are dying but I had learned to sit with others in pain during Elizabeth's workshops.  I think the personal clearing I went through at that time gave overs the permission to expose their pain with me.  Being touched in a loving way says "I care" and I so much wanted to feel the caring."

In my daily reading today, I read "For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self control."  During my time in recovery, I decided to do some work in a Senior living home.  I was afraid but saw past my fear to the need for those to receive the love and care that they may not otherwise receive.  My experience was one of true blessing; I went in with this notion that I would somehow reach out to them with the gospel with words but maybe I did so with my heart and my actions; in any event, they did so with me.  To put it all honestly, I relied on the Lord to give me the power to withstand my fear and to learn and love these individuals who so desparately needed it.

Bonhoeffer writes: "What Jesus really wants me to have is faith.  But my faith is not necessarily tied up with riches or poverty or anything of that kind.  We may be both poor and rich in the spirit.  It is not important that I should have no possessions, but if I do I must keep them as though I had them not, in other words I must cultivate a spirit of inward detachment, so that my heart is not in my possessions.  Jesus may have said: Sell thy goods, but he meant, "Do not let it be a matter of consequence to you that you have outward prosperity; rather keep your goods quietly, having them as if you had them not.  Let not your heart be in your goods."

Well, dear readers, my challenge for myself today and for the rest of the week, is to reach out to someone and to truly touch them, whether physically or emotionally.  In my profile, I say that my favorite thing is to "give gifts to my friends and family" and I truly do.  I am sorry if this entry seems like a lecture of books and scriptures but I am merely inspired by these books and wish to share what I am learning from these texts...Use what you learn here, or forget all about it....But my heart wants to reach out, to touch, to serve, to pray, to change the world in my own quiet, gentle, and profound way...the way Jesus calls us to, I believe.

So, whatever you believe, whatever religion or belief structure you hold onto, I encourage you to "fan into flame the gift of God" given to you.  Remember, reaching out maybe scary but we were not given a spirit of fear but of power and love and of self control.

God speed, dear friends and readers, and may the Holy Spirit rest upon you this evening.