Coming transparent today. Many of you know my God-sent friend, Richard. He's the rock in my life who has been my counselor since March of 1999. We've been through hell on earth together. I was a child mentally when we started our journey. I would send email after email when I couldn't wait the week till our next session. I've done that since the beginning.
Much of my emails are writings of a child. Lots of 'why did this happen", lots of 'why won't God do something?', lots of pain, a child in torment unable to find her way out. With that background I want to post one of the emails that is different. Its my feeble attempt at expressing the journey of my relationship to a New God I've never known. So its with much transparency I post this:
Hi Richard,
I need to talk...head is swimming, but in a good way :) I'm grasping so much of what you have taught me over the years now. Lots of this is repetitive of what you've said to me, what I've said to myself (without that pragmatic, logical brain of mine) but most of all God's love revealing Himself to me.
Just when I think God can't become a more powerful presence in my life, He heaps blessings on me. Limiting God is a dangerous thing. Going with Him on the journey He's set is so scary, but when you've come to the place of trust in Him, it takes much of the scary stuff away.
The biggest impact of all is my partnership with Him. To lay down the resistance I've carried all my life. To be open to the New God, to own my new relationship with Him, to rest in the reassurance (hmmm...there's a word that has come full circle in my life).
One of the key new core acceptances I have is God isn't human. And JoAnn has to (and has begun to) not compare apples to oranges. My frame of reference has been skewed since I was a small child. Lies that were told to me, ownership of things that were false, tainted who I thought God was. Most of the characteristics I placed on God just isn't who he is. I was 180 degrees incorrect in the character of who I made him to be. He's not those things.
I'm proud of my hard work. I'm grateful to the New Jo Ann that she fought with God and He proved me wrong. What amazing love He has for us. Its incomprehensible at times. But I know the God of Abraham,of Paul, of Judas, of Christ. And the assurance comes with a new found confidence.
The journey with Steve, the bad marriage, robbed me of so many things. I lost so much and God has always returned His love a 1,000 fold. Its a humbling experience, it comes with the fight to lay my own wants,wishes, my stubbornness at the cross and simply fall in love with Him. I've learned that when we are in such pain that we can't pray, where it says that Sarayu prays our groaning, that the inverse is true as well. When you come through on the other side, the place of quite peace, of knowing God as much as our limited human brains can, there are NO words that can express that gratefulness to Him. I try, but this girl who has never been speechless, becomes mute.
So I try to write the words to you of how polar different I am now. The rage is gone. Chunks of it sliding off the glacier. I'll always look back and remember the pain, but never want to loose it either. Its how God is going to use me to be able to help other people who are hurting. Those who can't reconcile a God of love and who think of him as a God of anger and punishment. I want to glorify Him by showing the God I now know.
God is so good....God is amazing Love.
