Category Archives: Abuse/Addiction

learning from addiction

Two years ago this May, I began serving in a recovery home called Grace House. It has been hard, fun, exciting and exasperating all at the same time. But mostly, it has been one of the greatest learning experiences I have ever had. And I, as always, am compelled to share with you what I’ve learned. 

Everyone has a story. In the two years I have spent ministering to women in addiction, I’ve heard unimaginable stories. And I’ve learned from them things I don’t know I would have learned any other way.Continue reading “learning from addiction”

broken and whole

She showed me her little clay pot that was a lovely shade of blue. I was surprised at how beautiful it was. Beautiful and cracked. Broken and whole. Jagged lines ran up and down and sideways all over it. It wasn’t hard to figure out what had happened.

blue pot

Because when something has been broken and put back together…it shows. 

It was therapeutic for her. She took the pot and smashed it and it helped something inside of her. And then she found the pieces and glued them back together and that helped too. Sometimes, we need to see something broken and put back together to really believe there is hope, you know? Hope that we can be put back together. Hope that even though our brokenness shows, we are still beautiful.

I saw the clay pot with jagged lines and I thought of my own jagged lines and I know God’s voice and He spoke that day.

 ‘Light shines best through vessels that have been broken.’

Trying to live this life on our own terms doing it our own way living far from God breaks our lives and our hearts and our very souls. And the prayer is that the breaking will lead to broken.

                              Because repentance is brokenness and it turns us from what is breaking us.

Brokenness is clinging to Jesus because we’ve discovered our greatest need is Him. Brokenness praises Him through pain and things we don’t understand because we know that no matter what He is God and He is good. Brokenness raises hands in surrender not fists in defiance and finally drinks in the grace that puts us back together with jagged lines.

And broken vessels are always amazed by the grace that makes them whole.

broken pot

Life can break us hard but grace leaves us sweetly broken and grace makes us whole. I’ve had the breaking and I’ve been broken and I want to see beauty, not shame, in my jagged lines. I want light to dance from these places put back together by grace. Places where the light shines best.

coming up from rock bottom

Picnic-Table-on-Sceen-Porch (1)We sat across from each other on the back porch, our bibles and papers fluttering in the afternoon breeze. We didn’t mind the occasional paper chase, since the breeze made the humidity bearable.

She is full of questions, this one, and I note the hint of suspicion in those questions. I am surprised that it stirred in me such a need to defend God. We hit the parables and her need to know why Jesus spoke in ways that everyday people couldn’t understand and I found myself struggling. And then like rapid fire we landed in the quagmire of the gift of tongues and why do we constantly praise Him when we pray before we ever get to the real praying part and what is this business of baptism in the Holy Spirit anyway?

(Speaking of Holy Spirit, I could use Your help right about now Sir.)

And oh yeah, there’s that book of Daniel and what does all that mean and then it came. That last question that formed over this…

“Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them.” (Daniel 10:12)

If God is so quick to answer, why did He wait so long to rescue her from her pain? She had prayed all those years, but nothing happened.

And I felt the gentle come to my heart as Holy Spirit split the humidity of our atmosphere and sat down at our table.

With some questions of my own she revealed that in her time in the pit she had believed in God, even loved God, but wanted nothing to do with Jesus or the bible.

Mary_at_the_feet_of_Jesus[1]So in the flutter of bible pages and notes, I told my own “rock bottom” story. That for me, it was only when Jesus was my only option that I finally surrendered and it’s sad, but for a lot of us, rock bottom is what it takes. And then our eyes met and I spoke what I wanted her to get most from this conversation.

Rock bottom is not what God wants, and the fact that it is often what we require is a testament to our hearts, not God’s.

I saw the softening as she agreed, and talked of the day she finally said ok, she would give this Jesus a try and that was when everything began to change.

She said she wanted to do more of this, so I promised her that we would do just that, and that I look forward to it.

Because with all her questions and suspicions and talk of tongues being “hooey”, God’s heart is crazy about this woman. And He looks forward to sitting with her in her favorite spot on the back porch, on humid days, chasing papers that flutter in the breeze, waiting to answer the real question in her heart.

And I get to watch the unfolding of a love story as a woman comes up from rock bottom and falls in love with Jesus.

It never gets old.

believing for wonderful

Different. Wrong. Abnormal. Words that describe how I have felt most of my life.

aloneThe struggle to feel right, or normal. Always, every day, in every circumstance, I felt different, somehow wrong inside. I never fit in anywhere. I didn’t belong. I was just small when someone did things to me they should not have done and told me not to tell and something inside of me shifted sideways and I never again felt what most people want to feel. Normal, right, okay…whatever words you want to use, I never felt any of them. I still don’t, but most people wouldn’t know it. It’s like walking around with a low-grade fever all the time. You’re the only one who knows there’s something wrong.

I never understood it, never knew what it was, I just knew it was there. It was how I lived my life. And it wore me out. But God knew and God cared so He reached out and touched something and it all came rushing out like dirty water. It came rushing out and when it did He named it shame and I knew, just knew, He was right.

And because He is good He had begun preparing me before any of this surfaced. He laid my eyes on Psalm 139:14 and something in me caught its breath as He asked me “when did it stop being true?”. I was still turning it over and over in my hands and in my head days later when the rushing like dirty water came up and out.

“I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful, I know that full well.” 

…and I knew the words I had laid my eyes on were a sword I was going to have to pick up. Because it cuts through shame and it severs the lie right out of any heart that is willing to believe with a let-go-and-fall-back kind of trust. Because it never stopped being true, not for a moment. Not before, and not after the thing that broke something inside of me. Nothing I did and nothing that was done to me turned Psalm 139:14 into a lie. Nothing.

fearfully. yare’. ‘in a wonderful manner’, or ‘wonderfully’…

wonderfully made. palah. ‘to be distinct, be separated, be distinguished, to be set apart. To be wonderful’.

(And I laugh as I see ‘wonderfully made to be wonderful’, and then I try not to cry as I hear Him whisper…)

“Beloved, you have wonderful all over you.”

(And you should laugh and then try not to cry because He’s talking about you and not just me.)

KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA

I am a work of God and therefore I am wonderful, and I will say it and say it until it rings true in my heart. Because wielding the sword is not done well unless it is done often. Over and over, until the lie is dead and truth lives in its place.

I will praise Him for what He has made.

I don’t know what you are dealing with or what broke something inside of you. I don’t know if you carry shame or if it is something else that makes you feel somehow wrong inside. I don’t know what lies you are believing. 

   Not good enough      Not pretty enough      Not smart enough  
  Unlovable     It’s all your fault      Not normal    
Unacceptable      Failure    Tainted   Used      Wrong
Bad      Stupid      Broken     Too much      Too little
 
 And it all goes down easy. We take it in and live our lives by it and never break a sweat.  A lie is spoken and it sounds just right to us so we take it and claim it and we let it call the shots.

But the truth is turned over in our hands, peered at from every angle, almost with suspicion.  And when finally we choose to believe that truth, it’s hard and we weep because we want so badly to believe it and it’s probably true for others but not for me, but we must choose. We must, no matter how hard, no matter how suspicious it seems, we must choose to let go and fall back into ‘fearfully and wonderfully‘ made. Because we want to be free.

Our hearts can easily memorize a lie but must work hard to remember truth and this is life in a fallen world.

It takes great effort to live by the truth.

wonderfullymade

Over and over…until you know this full well…

You are a wonderful work of God.

breaking_chains.208145743_std“For You created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from You when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in Your book before one of them came to be.” 

Psalm 139:13-16

from disgrace into grace

rebuilding-the-wallFive women sitting in a living room, taking turns reading from Nehemiah. We are studying that book because in the rebuilding of a wall God can speak much about rebuilding lives. And in that second chapter, starting right there in that 17th verse, something speaks to me.

‘Then I said to them, “You see the trouble we are in: Jerusalem lies in ruins, and its gates have been burned with fire. Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, and we will no longer be in disgrace.”’

Disgrace. (It rhymes with shame.)

Nehemiah saw his broken city with broken walls, and women see their broken lives in much the same way. And in the time it took to inhale that 17th verse something grabbed hold and won’t let go.

The only way out of disgrace is to step into grace.

And I find myself stepping in, in more ways than one. As I sat on that couch in that circle of women, I had no idea that God was searching something out in me. Something that caught my heart by a painful surprise.

Later that night something was said that pulled a trigger and a dam broke open and disgrace spilled out, and I learned that scar tissue won’t hold a wall together because grace is the mortar of God’s rebuilding.

running awayI discovered, as I tried to stop the flow of pain and tears and years of pent-up shame, that the city walls begin to fall into ruin when a little girl is held to a secret as hands go where hands aren’t supposed to go. Shame makes a little girl feel alone and somehow ‘wrong’, and in her attempts to feel ‘right’ again she runs as hard as she can away from her pain, only to discover she has just been running with her pain. Until one day she falls in a heap. Disgraced.

at the cross

But God. He knew where she would fall and He made sure it was at the feet of Grace.

(Because sometimes the only way out of disgrace is to fall into Grace.)

For days now God has been pulling away scar tissue and putting grace in its place. And for once, I understand His timing. Because the women who are studying Nehemiah are the staff at Grace House. And this is where God has me now, about to step into full-time ministry to women with broken walls. To cities in ruin. And I needed to know that God doesn’t rebuild with scar tissue, but with grace.

faith has to move

chairIt came to me as I stood on the chair, almost cutting off my head in the ceiling fan blades. Maybe not cutting off really, but the thwack of even a dull fan blade would have hurt. Anyway, that’s when it hit me. Right up there on the chair, in my little prayer room, as the woman on my couch looked on with a deer-in-the-headlights look on her face. And who could blame her? I’d have that look too if I was her and not me.

Faith is moving.

That’s what came to me as I stood on the chair trying to demonstrate trust to the poor woman on my couch. I stood there and pretended to fall back because I need visuals most times and I hoped she appreciated my attempt, awkward as it was. The look on her face never really changed, so I couldn’t tell.

Faith moves, even when we are “being still and knowing that He is God”. Because being still is movement too, I think. It takes a lot of trust to stay very still when you want to hide or get busy fixing this mess. Being still is still falling backward, as long you know that He is God.

trust1Faith is trust and trust falls backward into the waiting arms of God, knowing He will be there. It knows and it falls back and God always catches faith.

Faith reaches for the hem of the garment, falling backward into the Healer’s arms. “Take heart, daughter…your faith has healed you.” 

Faith follows, crying out for mercy the whole way. “Do you believe I can do this?”.  Blind men see because God always catches faith.

Faith steps out onto water and it speaks to mountains and it walks through the fire and all of it is letting go, knowing God won’t drop you.

I listened to the woman on my couch, heard her hard story, and her brand new, shaky, trying-to-believe faith that was keeping the needle out of her arm. As she talked, I could feel myself getting overwhelmed. It felt like that time last year when God said “Pack” and I was looking at 28 years of stuff and thinking there’s not enough boxes on earth and where do I begin?

shooting upSo faith reached for my Bible and He caught me there and said “tell her about love”. Because her life had been just so hard and when someone has been kicked around that much you have to start with the love that died for her before the needle ever left her arm, before she stopped being for sale. She needs to know that we don’t fall backward into anger or disappointment or “shame on you”. It’s love that has arms out to catch us.

And every little movement is faith – the reaching, the leaving, the following, the coming through the roof for your healing. This is the falling, the trusting, the letting go and believing He will catch you and not drop you.

Faith must move.

Because faith that stands still, unable to move, unwilling to even shift its feet? That’s not faith, that’s fear and there will be no falling backward in that. And every so often I have to repeat it to myself, God doesn’t catch what isn’t falling.

Today, let your faith move.

Reach for Him.
           Speak to a mountain.
                      Come through the roof to get your healing.
                                Step out of the boat. 
                                        If you don’t have enough, give anyway.
                                                    Share the gospel.    
                                                         Go.
                                                             Love.

God will catch you.

Matthew 9:22; Matthew 9:28-29; Matthew 14:29; Matthew 17:20; Romans 5:8;