The Girl In The Mirror (journal entry 8-31-15)

As I look in the mirror, I don’t recognize the girl staring back at me. Her eyes are the eyes of a different soul. A girl who relives all the memories I forgot. A girl who can’t forget the very things I can’t remember. The reflection I see staring back at me is who everyone thinks to be me, I don’t have the heart to tell them that it’s not me. I do not know that girl. We are acquaintances at best because we have to be but we are not friends.

I feel as if everyday her smile betrays me because she keeps up the masquerade, the real me suffers in silence. She keeps everyone at arms length, when I want nothing more then to be close to another beating heart. She pushes them away while on the inside I’m screaming “please stay.” The only time the true me has a voice is through a pen because she has control of my tongue.

I hide inside beneath her ribcage seeking shelter from outside evil. Living in a cage is dark at times but it brings protection. She is kind to everyone but me. Perhaps she believes if she can starve me of love I will curl up and die. Maybe she thinks she is doing me a favor? All the ways she tries to protect me, they keep me safe but they keep me lonely.

If only someone would look deep into that woman’s eyes and see the little girl hiding inside, walk into that dark cage and draw her out. Give her a microphone. She doesn’t need someone to be her voice, just let her voice be heard. She would tell you the truth. Maybe that’s what my reflection is afraid of? The truth is painful.

So she bandages the bleeding wounds with princess bandages. So when the little girl sees the wounds she thinks of fairy tales in far away lands. For in that moment her mind leaves and goes where her body cannot. Her mind is her only way of escape. So she dreams up worlds of fake realities, in which the only sadness is that the sun goes down at the end of the day. But even that is not so bad because she makes her wishes on the falling stars.

God loves you

“The LORD hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.”                     Jeremiah 31:3 (KJV)

Everyone loves to hear about the love of God toward us. If you grew up in church, you hear it so much that your ears often fall deaf to the truth those words hold. I grew up hearing those words but I never truly believed them. When people would tell me that Jesus loved me even up till recently, I used to feel like I was being lied to. I couldn’t understand how if Jesus really loved me, He would let certain things go on. I grew angry toward God and bitter which then made me feel like I wasn’t worthy of His love. How could He love me after I rejected Him so many times, after I hated Him. I was so ashamed at the feelings I held toward Him. I remember saying to God during a time that I was struggling to overcome something and I kept failing, I told God, “I would understand if you never wanted to have anything to do with me again.” And I completely meant that! Yet He didn’t turn away from me, He so patiently kept calling me back to Him. He didn’t desert me.

One night when I was kneeling beside my bed praying, I got honest with God. I remember praying, “God I know your word and everyone else says you love me but I don’t feel that love. They just seem like empty words. God if you really love me, would you show me?”   

I got up from that prayer not feeling any different or more loved than when I knelt down. I’m not sure what I was expecting to happen? Maybe a bright light to shine down on me and this loud voice from God saying, “I love you ……” That would be nice but it never happened.

I began to search for Him, digging in the Bible trying to find this love. The Bible says to “Seek and ye shall find.” I started to find verse after verse and story after story of Jesus’s love put into action. I’ve known these verses and stories all my life but something was different this time, I had put my guard down. I stopped listening to those thoughts that that kind of love wasn’t for me. Just like that verse in Jeremiah 31:3 where it says He has loved us with a everlasting love. Everlasting that means it never stops! And with “lovingkindness have I drawn thee.” He even uses love to draw us to Him! No matter what we have done, how we have felt toward God or how long we have run from Him, with lovingkindness has He is calling us to Him.

One day it happened, I was by myself driving down one of those country roads again. I was singing a worship song when I heard it. The voice of God whispered to me out of the blue and it was this sweet, soft voice that was just dripping with love. (He called me by my name!) and said, “….. I love you”   I just stopped singing. I said “God, was that you?”  God spoke to me first and He called me by name. To think  that not only does the creator of the universe love me, but He knows my name also!

Don’t ever think that your prayers go unanswered or that He doesn’t hear you when you cry out to Him.

God loves you. He loves you in your brokenness. He loves you in your depression. He loves you in your pain, your hopelessness but He also loves you too much to leave you where you are. Search for Him!

“Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O LORD.” Psalm 130:1 (KJV)

 

“Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases; Who redeemeth thy life from distruction; who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies.” Psalm 103:3-4 (KJV)

That’s love in action!

Years of pain was healed in one touch.

I was reading during my personal devotion the other day about the woman with the issue of blood.

It’s so easy to put this space between us and them, like they are fictional characters but they lived and breathed. In the Matthew account there are only three verses used to tell her story, but for the first time I saw myself in those three verses.

Matthew 9:20-22 “And, behold, a woman, which was diseased with an issue of blood twelve years, came behind him, and touched the hem of his garment: For she said within herself, If I may but touch his garment I shall be made whole. But Jesus turned him about, and when he saw her, he said, Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole. And the woman was made whole from that hour.” (KJV)

Because of the kind of disease she had, she was considered unclean. So she suffered silently and alone for twelve years. The same story is told over in Mark 5:25-34, there it tells of how she had tried everything searching for healing, she exhausted all her resources but no healing was ever found.

I thought how many times have I felt like this woman? How many times have I searched elsewhere for my healing? How many times have I felt too weak to push through the things keeping me from getting to Jesus? “The crowd”

I remember praying at times, “God if I can just get to you, just get ahold of you then I know everything will be ok.” I had to get to the place where I was desperate for him, nothing else would satisfy. I had to touch Jesus!

“For she said within herself, If I may but touch his garment, I shall be whole.” Matthew 9:21 (KJV)

I don’t think I ever realized before what really happened that day. One touch was all it took to heal years of suffering! If I only had half the faith she did. She didn’t care what people might have thought of her, she didn’t care if people stared. She was on a mission, she had to get to the healer!

When she FINALLY got to Jesus, it caused him to stop and turn around to her. It didn’t matter the size of the crowd calling out his name. There is something special about touching Jesus. It causes him to stop and turn to you. Anyone can stand and call out the name of Jesus for healing, but only the truly desperate will crawl till they reach the healer! To be so desperate for Jesus that you feel like, ” I must get to Jesus, lest I die.”

The Bible says in Jeremiah 9:13

“And ye shall seek me, and ye shall find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.” (KJV)

Just because no one else may have been able to see her disease or the wounds she carried, doesn’t mean she didn’t have any. There are some wounds that only you and Jesus see. It didn’t say he healed her disease, it says he made her whole. He went beyond the surface problem. Maybe she carried years of shame and feeling like a outcast because back in those days, the disease she had with “the issue of blood” made her unclean in the eyes of the world. She was rejected. I wonder if it made her feel like a throw away?

“He healeth the broken in heart, and binds up their wounds.” Psalm 147:3 (KJV)

Years of pain was healed in one touch!

One thing is for sure. No matter the pain, no matter the disease, no matter the wound. One touch from Jesus and we are made whole!

Jesus didn’t just heal her and walk away, but he stopped to comfort her (Vs. 22) He is our comforter, healer, redeemer and savior! Everything that I have ever searched for, is found in him alone.

Jesus sees, Jesus comforts and Jesus heals!

My soul waiteth for the Lord!

Psalm 130:5-6, “I wait for the LORD, my soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope. My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that wait for the morning: I say, more than they that wait for the morning.” (KJV)

Lately God has been trying to teach me to wait on him. In my eyes I want things to be over with already. I want healing from the past. I want this person to make right what he has done wrong, I want him to get right with God. I want him to ask for my forgiveness, I want him to be able to own up to what he has done. During the meeting he wouldn’t confess, he denied instead.

After the meeting I really struggled with not falling back into old habits and I was fighting thoughts from the enemy again. I had always been told that “the truth will set you free” but I felt like it did the complete opposite for me. I felt like the truth just made everything worse. That now I was out in the open and I felt exposed and ashamed. I wasn’t set free, I was still bound by what happened. I really had to pray that God would help me to lean on him for strength.

This past Friday night, it was like the enemy was beating me up from every angle. I called someone crying. I told them that I was never going to pray about this anymore, that I was done. God wasn’t answering me. When you are in a spiritual battle, at times you can even feel physically weak, like you have no strength left to fight. That’s how I felt Friday night. They began to encourage me, that God hadn’t forsaken me and he hears my cries. That even though we may go through the fire, he is always with us, just like the three Hebrew children. They reminded me that sometimes we have to wait on God to move. He sees a greater purpose that I can’t see right now!

We talked till almost two in the morning and something began to change inside of me. I began to see what I was doing! It was like I had been grabbing Jesus by the hand and was trying to pull him around. I wanted God to move right then and to move only how I wanted him to. But only God knows the end from the beginning, he already knows what’s best for me. That night I had to truly give it to God, I had to just trust him that he would take care of everything!

God has a way of taking these things that the devil throws at us and turning them around for the glory of God! One day there is going to be a person going through what I was going through that night and I’m going to be able to encourage them, just like I was encouraged. As hard as it is to wait on the Lord at times, I know in the end it’s not something that I am going to regret doing!!

I pray that one day this person will be able to confess to the sin the have committed and get it right before God, so one day I will be able to see this person in heaven. I don’t want to allow this stuff to keep me from heaven, but to draw me closer to the one in heaven!

So until I see God move and work this out, my soul will wait on the Lord!

Psalm 40:1-3, I WAITED patiently for the LORD; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry. He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings. And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God: many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the LORD.” (KJV)