I’m looking for someone who has walked this way before. Someone with age and the wisdom borne of long years of experience – of trying and failing, of getting back up and trying again.
I’m young and inexperienced. Five months ago some things in my life shifted in a major way, and I’m trying to negotiate this new journey with God. I am desperate to know Him in a deeper way. To learn to recognize His voice and presence. To understand what it means that I’ve encountered the Living Spirit of God and that my life has been totally altered by the encounter.
I am looking to be taught, to be pulled along this journey by someone with experience. And I haven’t found that person. I’m looking for someone radically in love with God. I’m looking for wisdom and encouragement. For someone who will tell me that I haven’t gone crazy.
I want someone to explain this thing to me. To tell me in the moments when I’m completely exhausted from caring so deeply for those God has laid on my heart that I’m not insane for allowing my emotions to become involved.
I’m after someone who can explain spiritual warfare to me. Who can tell me how to recognize attack, and how to fight against it. Who can help me as I wade through the realities of the decidedly evil decisions made by some of those I am caring for. Who can answer questions about nightmares and sleeping difficulties. Who can teach me to combat with God’s help the instinctive fear that seems to control so very much of my life.
I would love for someone to walk through my own wounds with me. To help me identify areas of strength and areas of weakness. To teach me what it means to be emotionally and spiritually healthy.
I am looking for this. And I am afraid of it. I am afraid of my life being exposed. The idea that I am vulnerable to spiritual attack is new, and I struggle with fear already. I am very nearly afraid of beginning to wade into the realities of this new life I find myself living. It terrifies me. It pulls me beyond my much loved comfort zone. But I’m looking for it. Because life the way I used to live – life of hopelessness and depression is no way to live.
Friday, March 17, 2006
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6 comments:
this is the kind of thing that needs to be read publically to the saints in community. you are longing for cover, from those in authority to cover you and teach you and pray with and for you. For spiritual mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters who can wade through all of this with you.
May God answer the cry of your heart and bring you those who's hearts are fully devoted to him, who know how to pray, who know how to overcome the adversary, who lean on God when it comes to dealing with the deep things within.
When the pupil is ready the teacher will find them.
Kirk, I've said this to a few people in the epic community with very little response. I am blessed to have a few "spiritual friends", but I am longing for the teaching and wisdom of mothers and fathers.
The trouble is, I've felt very silenced within the community I'm calling home. It's been a messy journey, and I've discovered that people really don't tend to like messiness. And so, I've been more silent, because it is easier than the rejection of speaking and still not being heard.
I'm grateful for the friends that hear - for people like James and Stuart and Kari and others. For people that are encouraging me and journeying with me.
As to covering, I got an email from a friend out of town a month or so ago, as I was walking with a friend through the week immediately following the death of her mother. The email asked me if I was feeling spiritually covered - a concept that was entirely new - I had to ask someone to explain to me what it meant. It is something I long for, but not something I'm sure that I've found, or that I understand...
lots of questions and deep longings that are rarely expressed verbally but often expressed in writing... that's who I've always been...
I understand...
Kirk,
I may email you or I'd love to chat with you in person sometime about this a bit... been struggling with this whole issue a lot lately, wondering where to look for answers.
I have become so convinced in the last while that the place that God is calling me to serve him is a very messy and often ugly place, and the lives of the people who live there reflect their surroundings. And yet, God has spoken to me powerfully of his presence in the midst of the messy - in the midst of the ashes and the suffering. The trouble is, I have found that very few people in the church want to see that messiness, to face it, and even fewer are willing to look for God there. And my life was one of the messy ones - I'm a pastor's kid who suffered from depression for years, carries the wounds of the church, and who God stepped in and healed from that same depression five months ago, and then pitched headlong into carrying for some very messy people. And it seems that no one really wants to deal with messy... I have had my own experience of healing minimized by someone who looked at the present state of my life (which is still messy and wounded, but a thousand times better and more whole than it was) and basically informed me that nothing had changed...
Really I could go for a very long time... working to find a Godly attitude in this situation, to figure out how to proceed, to find those spiritual parents... maybe this is better in conversation than in written form...
let's chat anytime... btw, a catapillar turns to mush before becoming a butterfly. The entire dna is reconstituted... thus the mess! It's all good. Sorry that you had someone judge your "progress" like that... foolish people look on the outward appearance of things. God is deep in our hearts - way down in the catacombs that we rarely ever venture in ourselves. When we finally get there, deep within ourselves, we discover that He has always been there waiting for us to join him - a little joyful celebration in the dark.
Kirk, I love that image of the catapillar being mush! Thanks for that one. I'm looking for Him in those deep places, and I'm astounded every time I find Him there!
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