The Gift

The King's Daughters is a support group for women who have suffered some form of sexual abuse, whether childhood, or later on in life. We have been meeting now for nearly two years, and tonight was a  very special night for the group. It was our second annual Christmas dinner. There were women present for the first time, others who have been a part since the onset of the group. But all have one common goal: to become whole and regain our true, God-given identity.

Tonight one of the ladies blessed us with a poem she wrote, which I felt needed to be shared. It is called "The Gift."

Everything good
And everything perfect
 Comes from God above.

He gives us gifts
For us to enjoy
He gives us people to love.

As a King's Daughter
You are a gift
Just look around and see.

This journey we've walked
And are continuously on
Consists of you and me.

God gave me a gift
The day this group started
And I'm looking at it now.

The people here
Are meant to be.
All I can say is "wow."

Thank you, God,
For these wonderful gifts
Whom you meant for me.

Thank you, my gifts
For the friendship you give.
Sisters we'll always be.

We certainly are gifts for each other as we travel this road of healing together!

If you have a longing for inner healing, are struggling with these issues alone, and would like to be part of this support group, please e-mail me (Sally) at:thekingsdaughters7@gmail.com. Don't let life slip by without experiencing the joy of freedom from shame. There is a better way.
Blessings to you all.

Gotta Get it Right...Wrong!

Perfectionism has been part of me for as long as I can remember. I wanted to... no, let me be truthful, I needed to look perfect, get the perfect grades in school, complete the tasks in front of me  with perfect accuracy. There was no room at all for the slightest mistake. I had no mercy for my own soul. And if I did mess up by making a wrong decision, or by falling short of my goal, etc., etc., it took me forever to recover from the devastation of facing my imperfection and perceived failure. Thankfully, I am much better now after I have recognized and dealt with many of the effects that childhood sexual abuse has on personality development;  I am grateful that I no longer need to keep a perfect house, make perfect decisions, or be perfect at everything I do. I have learned to give myself some breathing room.

But, on another level,  the way I view what God expects from me has not been  with the same mercy that I have now achieved  in the way I view my self-expectations. I can be more relaxed now with my daily "mistakes," but is God not still demanding perfection from me? After all, Matthew 5:48 tells me: "Be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect."

I have always struggled with this verse, which seems to contradict  the internal healing that has allowed me the freedom not to be perfect. Even though I have experienced to some extent the truth that God loves me, how can I possibly obey these words of Jesus found in the Gospel of Matthew?
So I honestly wrestle with the idea that God may be asking something of me and I am not hearing and obeying, for whatever reasons, and therefore falling short of His expectations. Maybe you also have faced this dilemma: knowing God loves and forgives, but also seemingly demands perfection just as He is perfect.

I don't know if you would say this was a "divine intervention" to bring truth and light to this issue, but I believe it was. This morning in church my pastor spoke of Matthew 5:28 with new understanding. He explained how Jesus, prior to this verse, was talking about loving our enemies and those who persecute us. And then comes verse 48 about being perfect as God is perfect. What Jesus is truly saying is that  loving all people no matter what they do is exactly what God does, and this love and grace is what makes Him perfect. "Gratuitous Grace" my pastor labeled it. So the commandment is not about getting every little detail of my life correct until I reach some humanly impossible level of perfection. It is about allowing myself to love all people the way God loves them. I can't explain it, but somehow grasping this revelatory knowledge was as if  someone had removed a heavy burden from my back that has bent me over for years under its weight. Perfectionism as I once knew it was disintegrating as I sat there! What makes God perfect is His love. What will make me perfect is my love. Simply that and no more. So the more  I perceive and receive God's love for me, the more I will be able to be love my enemies and obey Jesus' command to be perfect.

I almost jumped out of my seat as my pastor was explaining all this! I wanted to raise my hand as if I were in school  so I could share what I was seeing! All of a sudden verses in Ephesians 3:17-19 had new depth of meaning. Paul was so adamant about about wanting the church to be able to "comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height -to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge" because such understanding would allow us to be "filled with all the fullness of God". I had spoken many times in many places about these verses, but it was this morning that I realized for the first time that being "filled with all the fullness of God" was parallel to being "perfect as the Father in heaven is perfect." It meant being filled with all the love and grace  for others that God bestows upon me. That ability to love is what fills God.  God is love in the truest form. So if I  understand the completeness of Christ's love for me, Paul admonishes, then I will be filled with the same love that fills God.

One of the things we always pray for when I meet with the King's Daughter's support group is that we would understand God's love for us in a tangible, palpable way. It can be very hard for  abuse victims to believe that God loves us. But we must believe that He does, and that He is good. He wants not only to reveal His love to us, but also to live His love through us. That is ultimate perfection. That is being filled with God's very own fullness.  

And that revelation, for me, has changed my life today. I don't think I will ever be the same as I was when I got out of bed this morning.  I no longer see God  demanding of me an impossible perfection. I see a sacrificial Lamb, pleading with me to simply sacrifice enough of me to allow His  love and grace to  touch the world around me.

Rescued

I went down to the barn this evening to feed and care for my horse, Rayo, as I do every evening. After completing the normal "horse chores," I lingered for a while, my arms crossed over his stall door, just watching him. His beauty always amazes me, and his coat is so shiny that it looks like I dowsed him with oil. He came over to me and blew hot air from his nostrils, as if wanting to communicate. I breathed back, not speaking. He perked his ears forward, then began munching his hay.  I don't normally stay very long in the barn in the evenings, especially when I haven't had supper yet, but I felt compelled to just spend some extra time there in front of Rayo's stall. It had been a rough day, and I welcomed the few moments of solitude.

It was then that I heard the squeal. I wasn't sure what it was, but it was coming from the far side of the barn. I quickly picked up a manure fork and walked towards the sound. It was a desperate cry. Something was in trouble. I searched in the growing darkness of evening, but saw nothing. There it was again...a shrill squeal. I went outside and searched, following the noise. Was it a cat? A bird? Then I saw it in the grass. A baby rabbit with a huge black snake wrapped around it's small furry body, squeezing it tighter and tighter. The squealing stopped. I thought the life had been squeezed out of the tiny baby bunny. But no, it cried again. I took the fork and poked at the snake. It looked at me and started to strike, waving his tongue as if to threaten me. I did not want to kill it, since these snakes are not venomous  and control the mice population. So I kept poking and jabbing at his black scaly body until he finally let go and slithered into the thicket. The bunny ran into the pasture and flattened his body out onto the grass. I slowly approached, talking soothingly to him. He watched me, but didn't move. I knelt down next to him and quietly reassured him. "I saved you just in time from that old snake, poor little bunny. I hope you are OK." I was so close, and wanted so badly to pet  and calm him, but knew I shouldn't. I needed to make sure he was not badly injured, so I moved even closer, hoping he would get up and hop. And that he did! He hopped full speed back behind some bushes.
I was confident that he would be fine.

I started to walk back towards the house, but stopped. It was as if my feet wouldn't move me forward. I immediately saw a parallel of what had just happened and my own life. It was as God was talking  to me through what had just occurred.

I was  the little brown bunny, feeling hopelessly squeezed by  pressures of recent  circumstances. The enemy of my soul was trying to discourage me in so many ways, that I felt at times like I had no strength left in me. I had been desperately crying out to God in prayer. And tonight He let me know in such a tangible way that He is my deliverer. I felt Him "poke at the snake" until it released me. He then lovingly reassured me that He is always there in the nick of time, that He hears  my "squeals" of desperation.  I felt His awesome power free me.  I sensed His love.

I smiled as I walked back to the house, grateful that I had been there for the little bunny, and once again, reassured that God would always be there for me.

The Beckoning Sea

When I was growing up, we lived on a canal that ran into the Great South Bay of Long Island. In the warmer months, I would be able to swim in my backyard without the expense of a pool. Back then, the water was clean and unpolluted, and a very intricate part of my life. Just a few hundred yards from my house was the bay. I would often go to the shore and sit, staring out at the blue water and watching the seagulls.

My father had a twenty-four foot cabin cruiser. I especially loved going to the beach by boat, or going fishing with my dad. He was a good seaman, and I marveled at how he could maneuver that large boat down the narrow canal without disturbing the neighbors' boats that were neatly docked behind each house.

 From the canal we would enter the bay. We would either stop to fish or just ride around for a while. I felt very safe in the boat with my father at the wheel, especially in the narrow canal and the bay.

But sometimes he would venture into the Atlantic Ocean. We would pass under a few bridges and then be out on the open sea. This was a little  unnerving for me, because I was aware that the ocean could quickly grow rough.  When it did, it made our boat feel like a small canoe going down the rapids! But I totally trusted my father's judgement and ability to keep us safe. He knew that if he headed  straight into the waves, the boat would "ride" them. And if the sea got dangerously out of control, he always headed back towards the bay, then up the canal, then home.

I was thinking about this part of my childhood  this morning, and how it relates to my walk with God.  It is very easy for me to trust my Heavenly Father when He asks me to do something simple and "safe". Something within my comfort zone. I can even trust Him when He asks me to go a little farther into the deep. I enjoy His company and the challenge as much as I enjoyed fishing in the bay with my earthly father. But when He leads me into the sea, where I know the waves can be treacherous and  my mind can become "seasick," I tend to  struggle to trust His leading. It becomes easier to be afraid and to contemplate all the "what ifs " than to face  the waves  head-on.  And the sea can be  such a seemingly unending place, so vast. Wouldn't it be easier to stay in the bay where the water is calm, or at most, a little choppy?

But He tenderly beckons me to the sea. He's asking me to trust Him at the helm, to trust that He will not lead me to destruction, that He knows how to "ride the waves" and keep me safe, that He knows the exact time to head back to shore.

Lately, I sense the beckoning call of the sea.  I am determined to follow and step into  the boat. I am determined to trust my Father at the wheel.

It IS What it ISN'T

The phrase "It is what it is" has become extremely popular these days, denoting  that "this is just the way it is" or "this is the truth." But I dare to challenge that phrase.  Just because we feel, see, or experience something a certain way and believe it to be true, does not necessarily mean that it is. Maybe what is, really isn't!

Before you think I am unjustifiably stretching reality into some kind of fantasy, let me explain.
Just this past weekend I wound up in the emergency room with a blood pressure reading that had skyrocketed off the charts. A very scary event for me, because I have past experiences that fuel my mind's anxiety if a BP reading is above normal, so my mind can quickly send it out  of control. I have tried so many ways to try to conquer this problem...relaxation methods, prayer, and yes, even meds. After spending hours Friday night into early Saturday morning in the hospital, I was determined that even though the easy solution is to say "it is what it is," I had to try to find a way to help avoid this ever happening again. So I decided to try some serious meditation.

Early Monday morning I shut myself in my bedroom, sat in a typical yoga position, palms up, and put on Pandora radio, set to "peaceful music." As the ocean waves gently washed the shore and dolphins happily communicated with each other, I let my mind take me to that peaceful, sandy beach. I was a little girl again, playing and skipping in the foamy water as it brushed the sandy shoreline. I could see Jesus, sitting on the beach, lovingly watching me. Every once in a while I would run to his arms and he would playfully lift me in the air and smile. It was a very rewarding time of quietness for me, and I believe it brought a new phase of healing to my internal feelings of having been abandonment by Him as an abused child. I thought of the 23rd Psalm and let its comforting words penetrate deep into my mind and soul.

This morning, I decided I'd try this meditation technique again, and the thought of using Psalm 91 popped into my mind. But I quickly dismissed it. Why? Because it has always been a psalm that I have struggled with. When I was in my early teens, my pastor's wife was my Sunday School teacher, and in her class, we learned this psalm by memory. I still can recite it today!  My resistance to this particular psalm is not because I didn't like my teacher; on the contrary, I adored her. But her husband, the pastor, and 50 years my senior, was sexually abusing me at the time that I learned this psalm. It was especially hard for me to believe verse 11: "For He shall give His angels charge over you to keep you in all your ways..." So I dismissed it as the psalm I would use, and started my time of meditation by reading Psalm 108 instead. As before, I set Pandora Radio to the station I had created for peaceful music. Instead of instrumentals or nature music, it randomly played some  hymns. There was a song about resting our minds in Jesus. It was perfect, and I could feel my body and mind relaxing as time went on. A praise song followed, right in line with Psalm 108. I was losing myself deeper and deeper into the tranquility of the music and words. Then the most beautiful song about God's love played, and at the end of the song, a soothing male voice read Psalm 91. I sat in awe. Tears welled in my eyes. Each verse penetrated my heart as he softly read. I knew God was healing another part of my soul. "It is what it is" concerning this Psalm in my life,  gently became something it hadn't been in the past. It became truth for me for the first time, and truth always sets us free. What were the chances of Pandora playing that particular song with Psalm 91 at the end? I knew it was no mistake.

Many times we are content to say, "It is what it is," but we must be aware that even though we perceive things a certain way, our Creator has the ultimate word. I am so grateful that that's the way it is!

When Everything Says "No", Go!

Perseverance. Going on even though you want to stop. When everything inside you says "I've had enough," perseverance keeps you marching forward, keeps instilling the slightest hope that you are on the right path, and that on the other side of the arid, steep  mountain, there awaits a luscious, green valley.

Perseverance is believing in God when He seems silent, continuing  on a  journey towards emotional wholeness when one feels  fearful and anxious, and sometimes conjuring up the strength to just get through the day. It  truly can be so difficult to move forward at times. But we must. We must keep marching.

It was nearly four years ago that I began a journey of healing from childhood sexual abuse. In the midst of the healing process, a well of new creativity began to spring forth, and I started designing and making purses. It has been, overall, an awesome journey so far. I have met new people, shared my story, and started a business in the worst of times and seen it stay debt free.

One of my weekly activities is going on Saturdays to a local farmer's market where artisans sell their creations. I always enjoy these times, and it has  been beneficial financially to be there. But last Saturday, I just wanted  to give up. No one was buying my purses, or stopping by my table to have any meaningful conversation. I was doubting that I should continue this venture, and frankly, was feeling rejected. Other vendors were selling. Maybe no one liked my creations. Giving up certainly felt like a good direction. Just do something else with my time.

The day was almost over when an elderly lady came to my table and started chatting. One thing led to another, and I was able to share some of my childhood story.  She looked at me, obviously also an abuse survivor, and said, "I have chills, you have made my day!"

I answered, "You have no idea how close I came to making this my last day here." She said she'd return again so we could talk more. And I knew I had to keep marching.

This week, a wonderful new venue opened up for my business. It could take me in a whole different, exciting direction. What would have happened if I had not decided to persevere in spite of utter exhaustion and discouragement? 

Granted, there may be times we need to change the direction of our lives. But most of the time, if we persevere in our faith, march on towards healing, and when everything  cries "stop!"' keep going forward towards our dreams, then we will find ourselves on the right path, in the right direction. And when we get to the peak and can see down into the valley, we notice that it is full of  fragrant flowers!

Coming Down From The Tree

When I was a little girl, I loved to climb trees, especially the apple tree in my grandmother's back yard. It was so much fun to see my surroundings from that perspective, perched out on a limb.  And the apples seemed to taste so much better when I grabbed them from the high branches! And maybe I liked sitting in the midst of apples and leaves because it felt like a safe place. Whatever it was that attracted me, I was always disappointed when my grandmother would call me and I'd have to climb down.

This morning I was reading the familiar story of Zacchaeus. If you grew up at all in any type of Sunday School, you will remember the song and all the little motions that went with it. He was a "wee, little man" who climbed a tree so he could see Jesus, because the crowds were so huge. And when Jesus saw him, he told him to come down, that he wanted to go to his house and spend some time with him. I can imagine Zacchaeus' excitement that this "teacher" would notice him, an abusive tax collector, and even want to fellowship together! Unlike my lingering in the apple tree, I'm sure Zacchaeus immediately responded when Jesus called.

I know in my own life, I often  need to "climb a tree to see Jesus."  The crowded activities and worries of everyday life push and pull me, and even though I want to see Him, my view is blocked. So I try hard to "climb the tree" by setting aside time to read, pray, and just be still... to see things from a higher perspective, and focus my thoughts. I "wait for Jesus to pass by so I can catch a glimpse of the Master." If I climb high enough, quiet my anxious thoughts enough, I not only see Him, but hear Him. He's calling me by my name. He's telling me He wants to come to "my house" where he can truly fellowship with me.  If I climb down and allow Him to come home with me, it means letting Him into the deepest secrets of my life. It means letting Him see how I truly live. It means coming down from the safety of the tree. That can be difficult, especially, if like Zacchaeus, there is shame hovering over me. But climbing down and truly allowing Jesus to fellowship with the most hidden and profound parts of my being always results in new- found freedom and salvation from the remaining "dark" areas of my life. For Zacchaeus, it meant "righting the wrongs" concerning the people he had cheated, and giving to the poor. For me, among many other things, it has meant facing the fact of sexual abuse and forgiving, even confronting, one of my abusers. 

I think I will always love to "climb the tree and eat the fruit." Yet when I'm willing to come down when Jesus calls my name and accept His invitation to come to my house and fellowship,  that's when I truly experience His marvelous salvation!