The King is enthralled with your beauty…. June 18, 2009

It seems when I am out in nature is when I hear the Holy Spirit the clearest. One morning as I walked the Lord showed me that when the woman in church said those words to me (that I am beautiful and I recoiled) what she was really saying to me (and what God Himself was saying) is that as I continue to walk out my healing, to walk in freedom and victory, people will see the beauty within; it is a reflection of His glory.

 It still amazes me that as I’ve experienced His healing this enables me to leave my comfortable church pew and greet people, shaking hands, hugging, smiling and offering words of life to them. I do this with a love that I’ve never experienced before, no longer closing myself off, hiding behind walls  as I once did……I think I get it~when I offer myself, this is my beauty.  

So when she said “you are so beautiful” I immediately recoiled because the old lies rose up, fear clawed at me once again and I wondered if all they saw was the outside. But God desires to bring me, to bring us, to a place where we can accept both, to offer both. As God heals, and as I continue to come out of hiding as I have been over the last several years, I hope that what people are seeing is a reflection of God himself through me. And though her comment caught me totally off guard, I recognized that God’s desire is to bring me into a deeper place of understanding and that I need to be open and let his Words….even through others…..into my heart, to let compliments penetrate my heart rather than letting them simply bounce right off and never penetrate deeper, to not flinch inwardly when I receive a compliment. Yet I realize that it’s almost more of a denial, an unbelieving when they compliment me…….and if I am totally honest there is that protective place in my heart where I wonder what is it they want from me. What will this cost me? This goes back to my childhood….something good always came with a cost.

 My husband always tells me that I don’t see what others see. Maybe that is true. Has the enemy distorted what we see?

 I was reading one morning in Lisa Bevere’s book, Fight Like A Girl, and in it was a chapter on Fighting For Beauty. These words especially spoke to me and I hope they do for all of us women on this journey. At a conference the Spirit brought forth this word to Lisa which expresses how our Lord views us;

“When I look at you I see something more…..I see promise. I see a generation of daughters so terrifying to the enemy that he will do whatever he can in his power to distort your image, pervert your beauty, and rob you of your strength and power. He is the father of lies and speaks to you through a glass but darkly. But the Father of Light longs to speak to you face to face. He wants to touch the dark places where the wounding is so deep and so severe it threatens to define your very existence. Ask, and He will allow you to behold Him. He will reach beyond the glass and call you altogether lovely and His own.The King is enthralled by your beauty; honor Him, for He is your lord. Psalm 45:11″

 She goes on to ask- “How do we honor the Lord when it comes to the issue of beauty? The answer; we accept His words as the ultimate truth.”

He has called our beauty enthralling; do I dare call Him a liar? Will I be brave enough to receive His love? Can I let this vantage embrace me? Maybe I cannot trust the mirror, maybe I am so much more than what I see.

She ends with this prayer which I have prayed and I feel a glimmer of hope, May the Holy Spirit minister to you as He did me:

“Heavenly Father, I come to You in the name of the One who is altogether lovely, Jesus the Christ. You are making me over from the inside out. I want the countenance of a woman who refuses to give way to fear. Forgive me for saying things contrary to Your Word, which is alive. Father, You are the great Physician and the One capable of perfecting every area of my life.

We women can be lovely before You and others no matter our age.

I repent of looking to the graven image and idols of this world when I should have come to You for my strength. I renounce their hold and influence. I cast their impressions from my mind and their illusions from before my eyes. Lord, remove their veil from my eyes; I want to see You and You alone. Let Your image outshine any other in my life. Imprint me deeper than any other. Reveal Yourself to me in an intimate and real way. I give You permission to invade this private and personal area of my life. Amen”

 Ah…..the King is enthralled by our beauty……may we believe Him!!

A beauty to unveil…. June 17, 2009

John & Staci Eldredge have written a wonderful book called Captivating, it is one I highly recommend to all women. Plus I would recommend that men read it as well, especially men who have daughters. The workbook that goes with it poses a question; Are you being sought after these days?

Whatever else it means to be feminine, it is depth and mystery and complexity, with beauty as their very essence.

Now, lest despair set in, let us say as clearly as we can:

Every woman has a beauty to unveil.

Every woman.

Because she bears the image of God.

What if? What if this really is true about you–that you are a captivating woman? Let your heart go there for a moment; what does it bring?

 As I’ve thought about these questions I realize it brings me hope, hope that I can rest, hope that I need not fear beauty, hope that God will show me my beauty and as He shows me I can allow Him to romance me.

My ache is to know that my Lord sees me a beautiful, whatever that may fully mean I want to learn, to know, to understand.

I have always been afraid of being beautiful, of my essence being beauty. Yes I understand beauty is the essence of the feminine soul but it scares me. I have always been known as a feminine, graceful woman, I know that’s how others see me but I don’t see myself that way, I want to. Yet at the same time it scares me because it is the very place where the enemy wounded me. When I was 14 and was being raped by two guys (I was drugged at the time with the date rape drug, but I came to long enough to know what was happening). While I was being raped they kept telling me over and over how beautiful I was. What do you think happened to that young soul? She began to fear beauty, it meant she was something to be admired, sought after but abused.

She was betrayed by beauty.

 So that’s why beauty scares me and truthfully I don’t think I fully understand or can embrace (yet) what John and Staci are saying. In the last few years I have slowly begun to ask Jesus to show me my beauty. I see beauty all around me and I love beauty but how do I see myself? How does Jesus see me? I’ve always seen myself as plain and not beautiful, it’s a feeling of ambivalence, desiring to be beautiful yet being afraid to be beautiful.

 Something happened not to long ago in church and I know God used to get my attention; He was trying to speak to my heart. During our worship time we took some time to greet one another. As I freely moved about greeting people, which let me clarify has become much easier for me since I used to stay in my seat and let people come to me, but I can now move about and hug and greet people because I desire to connect with them. Well, something happened that was totally unexpected and shook me to the core, after one woman hugged me she took me by the shoulders, looked straight into my eyes and said- you are so beautiful.

Huh?? I really didn’t know how to respond. I politely said thank you and took my seat and for the rest of the service I struggled with desiring to believe and accept the compliment but at the same time wanting to reject it. Later as I shared this with my husband he simply smiled and agreed. But then he asked-” you don’t let these compliments penetrate your heart do you?” We both knew the answer. Compliments of any kind never penetrate my heart.

 Later that day I prayed from my heart, “Lord Jesus soften my heart, show me my beauty, and then romance me. I am afraid; I have connected beauty with pain. It assaulted my essence as a young girl and I have hardened my heart all these years to beauty, to how you see me, to how my husband sees me or how others may see me. I don’t want to live this way any more. Beauty has betrayed me; yes that’s what it is. I know because of the abuses in my past that beauty sparks within me the fear of danger and of being dangerous to others coexists within my heart. Come Lord Jesus come. If I allow my heart to soften and hear how you find me beautiful, will you betray me? My head says no but my heart is afraid. But I want to trust you Jesus, I want to trust you.”

This past winter while watching The Lord Of the Rings again, I saw in Arwen her beauty. I saw more than her outward beauty. I saw her beauty as strength, as rest, as confidence, as peaceful, as trust, as hope and most of all as love. I saw in her what my heart longs for, too much for words to express- that she is enough. That’s my ache. To be enough, to know in my quiet center where God dwells that He finds me beautiful, has deemed me worthy, and in Him I am enough.  He will not betray me. He continues to show me what beauty really is.

Faith is Remembering June 6, 2009

The book of Deuteronomy, it seems, is all about remembering:

Remember the day you stood before the Lord…

Remember you were slaves in Egypt…  (this one shows up five times)

Remember what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh…

Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the desert…

Remember the Lord your God…

Remember this and never forget how you provoked the Lord…

Remember … God’s majesty, his mighty hand, his outstretched arm…

Remember the time of your departure from Egypt…

Remember what the Lord your God did to Miriam…

Remember the days of old; consider the generations long past…

Do you remember, dear reader?  Do you remember what God has done for you?  Can you stand with one hand grasping your present struggle and one hand firmly holding the past, remembering His Deliverance?  Remember your God because He remembers you. 

Remember…

Remember…

Remember…

God is about redeeming us….. June 6, 2009

Not to long ago my husband and I were reflecting on our earlier years of marriage and he brought up the subject of my earlier anger issues. My anger came to the surface soon after we married. He  went on to share how my anger had scared him in those early years partly because he didn’t know where it came from, and partly because he didn’t grow up in a home where he saw such rage explode. My anger would raise its ugly head over seemingly small issues. He also shared how amazed he was that God had healed my rage years ago. He watched the transformation and he knew I was no longer an angry person. I was at peace.

 And then he asked how I dealt with it, how did I get past all the rage, what had happened?

 Whenever we’ve talked about this in the past I would feel such shame and didn’t want to talk about it. I felt shame because I knew in those earlier years that my anger/rage wounded my husband and family. I grieved those times. I was deeply saddened that my anger was directed at the wrong people and the wrong things. And I’ve struggled to put into words how God healed this area in my life. How God took all the pent up rage and healed my fragmented heart.

 Abuse victims often go numb. We stuff our anger. We are scared of anger. Often the anger we should feel towards our abuser gets turned inward, we turn this anger in on ourselves. We think there is no anger yet it is there, often just below the surface. And sometimes even little things trigger it causing it to explode and come to the surface.

 When I was finally in counseling several years after we were married I came to understand that God gave me emotions, feelings. That the bible even commands us to be angry-Ephesians 4:26 “Go ahead and be angry. You do well to be angry—but don’t use your anger as fuel for revenge. And don’t stay angry. Don’t go to bed angry. Don’t give the Devil that kind of foothold in your life.” With this command comes a stipulation-be angry but in our anger don’t sin.

 We’ve been wired to feel anger. But when is anger acceptable? When is it appropriate? Sadly, too often we get angry at the wrong things. Like when we try to control people and they don’t listen to us and we get angry.

 But when we allow ourselves to get angry at what God is angry about…such as betrayal, injustice, abuse, this is righteous anger…we are wired to feel this kind of anger so that we can do something about it.

 Many of us are scared of our anger.

 In counseling I entered the grieving stage. And part of the grieving stage was facing the anger. For the first time in my life I dealt with my anger. I was in a safe place, and I was permitted to finally face, and to feel, all the rage turned inward and put it where it belonged. I finally felt anger/rage towards my abusers. I put the anger where it belonged. And in doing so I stopped punishing myself, hating myself.

 When we enter the angry stage we are in essence pushing the memory away so that it no longer controls us…so it’s not so heavy and present in our lives….we release it.

 God is about redeeming us…and when we begin to feel our feelings we are beginning to redeem our body, reclaiming it…because abuse victims go numb we are in essence reclaiming it, bringing it back under His kingdom domain…this is part of His redemption.

 Sometimes we mistake grieving as depression. While it may be true that depression is anger turned inward this is really an oversimplification. Because when we enter the grieving process we at some point will then enter the angry stage….and although it’s important to be angry…we can’t stay there.

In depression we are stuck…in grieving we are moving through it…we can feel a moving through it, as we experience and get in touch with our anger and sadness.

When we are not allowed to feel anger towards our abuser we get stuck, we begin to feel hopeless….when we go through the grieving stages we can’t skip over the anger part, because that doesn’t resolve anything, that doesn’t bring God’s redemption.

But we can’t rush the process….sometimes healing hurts more at the beginning…and that is too often where we stop but we need to continue through the process.

And all too often well meaning friends, Pastors, even counselors, tell us that we shouldn’t stay in the anger stage too long, that we need to move through it quickly and get past it, forgive and move on.

How long should it take some ask…..my answer, as long as it needs to take!!

 Often the younger we are when we were abused, and the deeper the wound, the more time it takes to heal.

 Healing takes time….give yourself, and give God permission, to take all the time needed in order for healing and redemption to do it’s work. I am still amazed (and so is my husband) that I no longer feel that simmering anger, that rage hiding just below the surface……God’s love is a redeeming love, He can truly heal and bring peace to our wounded and troubled hearts!!!