Travelling with God

I am currently travelling the East of America, heading down to the South (New Orleans) to present at a conference. It’s been a very exciting and blessed trip and I have really felt the presence of God with me this whole time. I can feel some internal disruption starting as of tonight. Something has changed, I can feel it in the air. My parts can feel it. I know that New Orleans has been known to have lots of demonic energy and I am susceptible to this, so I just need to stick close to God and pray lots.

It’s been so fascinating driving through some parts of the Bible Belt. I have absolutely loved it, I feel really inspired and safe seeing Jesus’ name everywhere. I have never seen anything like that before. We just don’t get that type of show and tell in Australia. The Christian community feels strong and large. This trip has made me thirsty to know and serve God more. Something has shifted in me. Who knows if it will last. All I know is that I want and need to rely on God for everything. It’s like I just don’t want to do anything more by myself. As though I can’t. It must be led by Him. This excites me as whatever God does is amazing, so that means there is going to be such good things in store.

 

Notes from afar.

Tonight she asked me if I still felt the same about her, with me being away and all. Yeah, there is a part of me that wishes I didn’t feel the same way, that the feelings could shake off and I could go back to a normal life, with my husband and dogs and avoid the disruption. But, the truth is, I can’t get her out of my head and I like her more and more everyday. Every-time she sends me a message or a picture of herself, I am blown away by how smart and pretty she is. I keep praying and handing it over to God, open to the idea that things could change if He wants them to, but they aren’t changing. I just want to hold her and touch her even more.

Recovery: God’s Gift.

I went to a SIA meeting tonight. Everyone identified their first name and followed this by saying, ‘and I am an incest survivor’. It was powerful, identifying this way, to a small room of fellow survivors – who had been abused and raped by their mums, dads, step-parents. The toxic shame that we all carried around for so many years, unable to find a language for it, minimising it, escaping from it with alcohol, drugs, sex, promiscuity. Now to come to a room where you are being encouraged to say – this is who I am! – this is what happened to me! I am not going to deny it anymore! As I said, it was powerful.

Tonight I felt how blessed I am to have found God in Jesus Christ. To really know the truth. How my heart sings for joy that He is working in my heart. I can feel His love so deep, I want to run around the streets singing! But that would be weird and silly, so instead, I sit on my computer, oscillating between these feelings of pure joy and then confusion. The confusion is to do with lots of things, so bear with me as I grapple through some of it.

• How come not everyone believes in God and Jesus and how can I help people come to believe but in a loving, humble way? How can I do this when I don’t ever feel like a good enough Christian? Let’s face it, my life at the moment is not oozing with high class God modelling. I am having an affair with a woman (does God even accept homosexuals???) and so living a double life. I still swear at times like a trooper and I can be really sarcastic and judgemental and non-loving. I know that whatever happens, God will work through me and the right learning’s will happen. The funny thing is, through this affair, I feel I am getting closer to God, not further away. I know in my heart that God does not condone this behaviour. I believe 100 per cent what I am doing is sinful (not of God, ‘missing the mark’), but I also understand that the Bible is full of flawed people who God used to spread His word.
• A man shared tonight that he doesn’t have God (or a Higher Power as the program suggests “it” is called), but yet he aspires to be good, get well and heal. He had suffered so much pain at the hands of his own paternal father, I understood why he would reject God. The man said he just couldn’t believe that God, if he did exist, would condemn him to eternal hell after the suffering he had experienced and the fact that he was getting his life on track. Now I agree with this. I believe when we die that God will meet us and we will have a choice then and there to accept Jesus into our heart. I think most people (at least I hope so), will understand the truth at this moment and accept Jesus (the way to God) and will go to heaven. What that means from there, I have no idea, but that is God’s plan. So, I understand what this man is saying. Why should he believe in God now? It is not my place to convince him I guess, rather it is to show through action and faith that accepting Christ now is so much better than denying Him. How does one explain the feeling of being so loved and of infinite joy? The problem is I don’t always feel that way! These feelings come and go and sometimes my heart feels hard and cold and resentful. Confusion kicks in then, because selfishly (in a good way), I want God in me 24/7. I know that He is working on me to get there, it just takes time. Plus, sometimes being a Christian is lonely because you feel very separate from the world. I see how much the world is guided by darkness and I find it hard to enjoy the things that many other people enjoy, because of the messages that they promote (maybe I will expand on this in another blog some other time). I felt tonight that He will call me to work for Him – minister in some way. My heart just bleeds for other survivors. I just felt so much love for them tonight and wanted to tell them all how much God loved them and cared for them and that it wasn’t Him that let them get hurt. Maybe one day, God will help me do this, but I guess at the moment, I just have to keep developing my relationship with Him and trusting that things will turn out. I have to get my life sorted ‘in the now’ rather than trying to help others fully just yet. It will all be in God’s time, I know that, I just have addict behaviour at my heart and can be terribly impatient. I want it all now.

This trip overseas has been so incredible. I think going in with low expectations was a good thing. I was so worried I would be in parts and dissociate the whole time. To think, I have only been in parts once! I can feel my parts are with me and I am happy to have everyone here. I want to learn how to listen to them more and parent them more. I cannot believe I am saying that! Progress. I shared tonight that two years ago, when I came overseas, although it was an incredible opportunity, I was plagued with feelings of disgust, shame, fear and self-loathing. I just wanted to die so bad and was unable to grasp the moment and that contributed to a sense of self hate. I felt bad for feeling bad! It was a perpetual cycle of negative self talk and feelings and really hard to handle, because I didn’t expect to feel that way. I can see that I have come far. I can see that I have changed and that God has worked in me. I owe everything to Him. Yes I showed up, yes, I was willing, of course I was! I was coming from a place of absolutely no self esteem. When I surrendered finally to the fact that I hated myself, I thought I was the disgusting piece of shit they told me I was, when I finally admitted, I am a filthy slut and all those horrible things they programmed me to believe, and when I gave those beliefs to God and repented of those lies, He started to heal me. Things changed. I started to get better. When I opened myself up to Him and said ‘this is me, this is who or what I think I am and I need you to take it’, He did. He took me and washed me and just bathed me in light and gently waited for me to let Him in so He could begin to heal all my wounds. How amazing is that! Recovery started that journey – a willingness to surrender and face the pain, even if I didn’t know what I was getting myself in for. Praise God, recovery is so much better than life before – walking in the darkness sucked.

Travel adventures.

Arrived in Boston last night. Such a long flight- about 18 hours. Great to check in to a hotel, although I was suitably irritable and distant. Went out to downtown Boston to a Chinese restaurant and then later got takeaway cheesecake – including pumpkin pie. I like pumpkin pie. The food in America is not very good. Oversized and just something strange about the taste in general! We are so lucky in Australia. Everything is so fresh and healthy (mostly). Oh well; it is nice to be reminded of things like that, as it is easy to take for granted.

Husband and I were narky, so we ate and headed back to hotel. Crawled into bed, passed out and then I woke with the worst migraine. I took some pain killers and couldn’t stomach them, so threw up and then I was basically throwing up every hour for the next few hours, crawling back into bed shivering and shaking. Thankfully around 3pm I started to feel better and was okay this evening. I slept for 18 hours in total! We got takeaway pizza and then walked to a local AA meeting. It was so good to hear the message of recovery and be filled with God and hope again. The woman who shared told the most horrific story. The things she would do to get drugs. She once had her ex girlfriend scorch her with a rod that had been put in the fire so her arm would welt up and she could go to hospital and score drugs! How awful. And she told all these other stories where God was working through all the darkness to help her get the message and it was just so amazing to hear. I spoke and said I was from Australia and told a little bit about my story. It was good and we got invited to another meeting tomorrow night and driven home by two older, sober members.

In the back of my mind is S, always. It is hard living a double life. I am looking forward to clean, honest living. I have to trust that God will work it out and forgive me and that He will turn things good and right. It won’t be without much pain though, but I guess I am used to that. She loves deep and in some ways I am used to that, but not. It feels different. She is very wise and measured for someone so young and who has been hurt too. I want to be good for her, a good person. I want to love like that too.

Tomorrow I am going to run around the Navy Yard (we are staying in that part of Boston).