I am taking some time off to concentrate on some personal issues and spend time with the Lord. I’ve decided to suspend my blog while I do this. I don’t know how long I’ll be away but I do know that it will be until at least immediately after the Living the Life women’s conference is over. I ask that those of you who know me and read my blog please pray for me.
Thanks,
Lakendra
It never ceases to amaze me how God can use one thing to get at the root of another thing.
For instance, take my new eating program that I just started today. Upon completing the first lesson, there was a Bible verse at the end on which to meditate. It was Psalm 138:5-8, which says:
Yes, they shall sing of the ways of the Lord,
For great is the glory of the Lord,
Though the Lord is on high,
Yet He regards the lowly;
But the proud He knows from afar.
Though I walk in the midst of trouble,
You will receive me;
You will stretch out Your hand
Against the wrath of my enemies,
And Your right hand will save me.
The Lord will perfect that which concerns me;
Your mercy, O Lord, endures forever;
Do not forsake the works of Your hands.
I have made it a practice for some time to take the Word and apply it to me personally so that the meaning resonates. So when I came to the part that says, “Though the Lord is on high, yet He regards the lowly,” I said aloud, “Though the Lord is on high, yet he regards me, who is lowly…”
That sentence stuck with me as I continued to read the rest of the passage. For several minutes afterwards, I could not stop thinking about it. The phrase kept repeating over and over in my mind…
“Though the Lord is on high, yet he regards me, the lowly.”
Me…
He regards me.
The Lord, who is God of all and lives in heaven cares about me.
Suddenly, I began to cry. I wasn’t sure what had come over me but I was sitting there with my face in my hands as huge, gasping sobs racked my body. I trembled from the force, wondering in the front of my mind why that verse had affected me in such a way while in the back of my mind all I could think was, “where were you God, where were you God, where were you?”
Then the thought became more coherent through the tears: “If you cared about me, God, why did you leave me when I needed you?”
Flashback.
Sitting there on my bed, feverishly brushing away tears, I saw in my mind’s eye, a young girl of about 14 or 15 cleaning erasers in a classroom after school. Alone. The young girl was me. Then another scene of me lying down in a back room behind the principal’s office. I used to go there whenever I was having menstral cramps but many times, I’d fake being sick just so I could get out of class and get away from the merciless teasing, waiting for the 6th period bell to ring. Then another scene of me walking to my locker between classes and finding it riddled with graffiti…all kinds of nasty names written on it in black magic marker. Bad names. Names to this day I have never forgotten. The school janitors waited till the end of the day to wipe the locker clean and I had to look at that crap all day between classes, feigning a smile and trying to act as if it didn’t bother me because I didn’t want whoever’d done it to see that they’d gotten to me. But I cried when I got home. Oh, how I cried.
Then the flashback was over and it was just me, sitting on my bed weeping with my face in my hands. I heard a soft inner voice say, “I was there,” and I knew it was God. “Everything you went through, I saw it. I was there.”
I realized what I’d just seen was not from my perspective but from God’s perspective. He was showing me what He’d witnessed, which leads me to believe that what the Bible says is true. Everything we’ve ever done or experienced is on record in the spiritual heavenlies. God was letting me know He’d seen.
But God, I said to Him, you saw yet you did nothing. You abandoned me. Why did you abandon me? Why did you let those things happen to me? Why did you let people get away with things? Why did you leave me to go through everything I went through alone?
Then it became apparent that was part of the reason God was showing me scenes from my life. He was telling me that I wasn’t alone.
He was there.
Then God spoke to me very clearly. He explained to me in my spirit that a person doesn’t always have control over their circumstances. Things happen and bad times will come. But even though you cannot control the circumstance, you can control how you choose to respond to it and…it helps when you have someone who is walking with you through it.
I was walking with you, God said. You just didn’t know I was there.
You know, I love the Lord and I’m born again and I want to do His will. But God showed me today that I still have bitterness towards him about the past. And while I firmly believe that God is with me now, it’s very hard for me to believe that He was with me beyond six years ago. In my heart, I never truly believed he was with me prior to that time. How could he have been when I endured so much on my own? I had no one and if God was hearing my prayers He certainly wasn’t answering them. But God has always been adamant that He was there. Maybe He didn’t operate the way I’d wanted him to but he was there.
“Why do you think you’re still here, Lakendra?” he asked me. “How do you think you came out of all that? I was with you.”
Okay, God, you say you were there. And God keeps replying, “Yes, I was. I AM.”
So, here we are, Jesus and I. Looking down into the bottom of that smelly, putrid garbage bag. This bitterness, this doubt, is part of the trash.
God called my attention to a latter part of Psalm 138: “The Lord will perfect that which concerns me.” He gave me a prophecy, saying that he was going to perfect me by taking out that which is imperfect.
I guess we’re starting by putting a lie perpetuated by the enemy to bed for good. It looks as if the healing has begun in earnest.
And I thought all I was doing was trying to lose weight!
It’s funny how God can use one thing to get at the root of something else.
Today was a pretty lackadaisical one. I did absolutely nothing productive, which is the point of a Labor Day weekend, I suppose. Actually, I was feeling under the weather too.
One thing I am starting tomorrow is a new outlook on eating.
I’ve been overweight since I was about 12 and frankly, I’m sick of it. I’d like to know what it feels like to be thin as an adult and I also want to be healthier, especially since my recent (possible) heart scare. So my friend, Barbara, and I have decided to be accountability partners in a program that offers a Christian and biblical solution to overeating called The Lord’s Table (TLT). It is through a Christian website called Setting Captives Free that deals with addictions including sex, food, gambling and substance abuse.
I did this program on my own early last year and it does work. My problem is that I didn’t keep my focus on the Lord, which is what TLT emphasizes. Plus, I tried to go it alone, without the help of a mentor or accountability partner and I’ve come to find that no matter how much I’d like to be able to do it all myself, I can’t. As Ecclesiastes states, “Two are better than one.”
What I like about this program is that it’s all about focusing on JESUS and not on yourself or your addiction. There’s a very flexible eating schedule you can follow but it’s not mandatory. There’s no ‘you can’t eat this or you can eat that.’ Everything is done with an emphasis on meditating upon the Word and developing a closer relationship with God, who is our source and healer. I would highly recommend this type of program to anyone, it’s definitely worth checking out.
The first phase of TLT is 60 days. Tomorrow is my first day. It’s a half-day for me, which means I will only be eating half portions of everything. I gotta tell ya, when I did this program before, the half days were the toughest for me so I ask that you please keep me in prayer tomorrow.
I also need to finish cleaning out the apartment my grandmother and I just moved out of and that’s gonna be a job. I’m not looking forward to it but it has to be done. So most of my day tomorrow will be spent vacuuming and scrubbing toilets. Ah, joy!
Actually, my blog is getting a facelift, not me. But hey, made ya look! Psych!
Seriously, though, I am in the process of revamping my blog in a way that will have more of a look in keeping with my diamond theme.
In the meantime, career and ministry-wise, God has been opening doors for me. Here is a brief recap:
Anyway, there is more stuff happening. Lots of angst I need to share and will once the newly-remodeled blog is up, which should be soon.
In the meantime, hope this post finds everybody who still bothers to check in here well.
And thanks to Belinda for getting on me about not writing. Love ya, girl!
A while back, I was having an interesting phone chat with a very good friend of mine, Rebecca.
Bec and I are very much alike, which is probably why we get along so well. We both love acting and writing and we’re both unmarried Christian women who, due to the deaths of loved ones, have had to take on the added responsibility of being caregivers. She with her mom and I with my grandmother.
Not that we mind. We love these women. They raised us so it is only fitting that we now give back just a little of what they gave us. But sometimes it’s hard juggling so many balls and like a lot of single women out there taking care of a home and family without the help of a husband, we sometimes vent to each about how nice it would be to let someone else take the wheel. To, just for a little while, go back to that carefree time in our youth before we got our driver’s licenses and someone chauffeured us around.
Mind you, I am an admitted control freak so I usually prefer to be behind the wheel.
But every now and then…*sigh*
Since Bec likes to do some wordsmithing and she tends to have some good insight, I suggested she write down her thoughts on the driver vs. the drivee theory and I would post it as a guest blog. So, here it is:
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“THE DRIVEE”
When I was younger my parents did all the driving. Place to place. Trip to trip. I only had to sit back and enjoy the ride. Stare out the window at the passing countryside and daydream. Ah! The life of the drivee instead of the driver! Mom and dad, though, were “drivers” in life in general. Moving, paying bills, working around the house, cooking, cleaning….that’s what they did. They got these things done. I only had to sit back and enjoy the ride. Make new friends, sleep with the light on, play in the yard, eat a hot meal, …that’s what I did. Ah! The life of the drivee instead of the driver!
As I got older I found myself in the driver seat more and more. I am now a driver more often than a drivee. It’s now my turn to pay bills, weed the garden, cook, and clean. I now have to know where we are going and how we are going to get there. It’s the responsibilities that come with being an adult. In my life, it became more so when my dad passed away. I have accepted my position as driver with the knowledge and satisfaction that I am doing what I need to do. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Still, I find myself remembering my life as the drivee instead of the driver! How nice it would be if someone else did the driving! Not all the time but just once in awhile! I’d love to just sit back and enjoy the ride!
So, for all you drivers out there, remember that sometimes it’s ok to be the drivee instead of the driver. I hope soon you find yourself as the drivee, staring at the passing countryside, watching a passing thunderstorm, sticking your head out the window and letting the wind hit your face, and just enjoying the ride! You deserve it! Oh, by the way drivees don’t do any back seat driving!
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Our conversation got me to thinking about how even though us single gals may not have a man right now to help us, we do have a husband. His name is Jesus. And He is just itching to be our driver if we would only let Him. So if you’re a driver who’s feeling tired and overloaded, move over and let Jesus take the wheel…
Since it’s raining today and is expected to rain much of tomorrow, I thought I’d post one of my favorite songs on the subject by my all-time favorite band. This song holds a fond memory for me (read previous post). Enjoy and comment if ya like:
Right now, there’s a hurricane looming in the Gulf.
It’s very wet today as I stare out over my patio balcony onto the slippery, gray street.
I love the sound of rain, how it bounces off the pavement. The sound makes me feel warm and secure. It reminds me of special times in my youth when I’d sit in the den listening to the Beatles sing about rain as I contentedly watched it fall outside.
Ah, youth…..I remember reading some wise saying about how such a thing was wasted on the young. And even though I don’t consider myself that old, I am coming to the point in my life when I look back on my childhood with a longing to return to those carefree days when I had no responsibilities.
Yet as I write this post, I realize that even then, as little as my responsibilities were, I did have a few: cleaning my room, homework, going to school, doing whatever it was I had to do to collect a few dollars in allowance…
Yes, come to think of it, I did have a few situations in my young life in which I was held–be it by my parents, teachers or some other adult authority figure–to a certain level of accountability. And now that I think about it, I wasn’t so good about adhering to that accountability because I’ve always been a bit touchy about being told what to do.
Okay, since this is a blog that requires honesty, let’s not mince words. I resented being told what to do and am still that way.
I’m hard-headed and I like to be in control. I like doing things my own way because operating in that manner insures that I am in control. Bad stuff that happened to me early on left me with a need to make sure I was always one step ahead of whatever might happen next. I either had to pretty much know the outcome of a situation beforehand or most times, I wouldn’t walk into it. It was the same with performing. If I wasn’t going to perform something be it onstage or off to perfection, I simply didn’t perform.
This stubbornness and desire to know what is around the corner before I get there has been a thorn in God’s side with me from the moment I accepted Christ. Being the control freak that I am, it has been very difficult for me to relinquish control to God. I think part of it is that there’s a young girl in me who still feels God abandoned her when she really needed Him the most. Logically, I see now that this is not true. And because God is a patient, loving Daddy, He also understands that in order for that little girl to trust Him as the adult in me trusts Him, she must be shown the Father loves her. So God is patient with me in my reluctance to turn all over to Him. He doesn’t fume when I take back control from Him but gently nudges me to let Him back in the driver’s seat, all the while assuring me that I must trust Him and have faith because only He knows where we’re going.
And I want to go God’s way but I’m afraid. God won’t tell me everything. Sure, He’ll drop hints. He’s even shown me the end result of some things but never the middle. Never the how and this irks me, the control freak. I know that where I’m going and how I get there is a process but wouldn’t it be so much easier, Lord, if You could tell me what happens so I can be prepared?
Then I hear God say, “Now, what would you learn if I did that, daughter?”
To which I mutter, “Nothing, I guess,” and sulking, cross my arms over my chest.
“My grace is sufficient for you,” says the Lord. “For My strength is made perfect in [your] weakness.” -2 Corinthians 12:9
So through much trial and a lot of error on my part, the Lord has brought me to the understanding that in order to develop faith in Him I must trust Him implicity. Now if it were just a matter of trusting God, I could do that. I really believe God loves me and that He is looking out for my best interests. The real trust dilemna comes when God sends people into the equation. I don’t trust people. People have hurt me, therefore, I must protect myself against them. And that’s pretty much been my attitude from about the age of 14 on. The me-against-them mentality with “them” being the entire world. Yet, ironically, it has been the approval of people (not God) that I have sought most of my life.
Every person God put in my life early on in my walk with Him, I defied; I pushed them out. Nobody was gonna tell me what to do! I wasn’t going to be held accountable to anyone but myself, which was the one person on whom I knew I could rely. I used to think, “God, if you tell me to do it, I will but so-and-so? Who are they that I should listen to them?”
The reply: “They are my servant and the authority under which I have set you.”
Romans chapter 13 says, “Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves…for he is God’s minister to you for good.”
Because of my past hurts, I’ve had a lot of trouble seeing the good someone could bring to me. It has been a constant struggle each time I get introduced to some new person in my life to see the Jesus in them rather than the fact that they are flesh and blood and could potentially harm me.
God works through people. And in order for me to trust Him, I must begin to trust those through whom He works. So, the subject of accountability started weighing heavy on my mind. The last month or so-and especially since I had my health scare-I’ve been wondering if maybe getting an accountability partner isn’t such a bad idea. Even Jesus wasn’t entirely a lone wolf.
Back in the day, I relished my aloneness. It somehow, in my mind, set me apart and made me special. But I wonder now if perhaps I haven’t been kidding myself. Or maybe that alone time was necessary but now, it is a new season. Ecclesiastes 4 says:
9 Two are better than one,
Because they have a good reward for their labor.
10 For if they fall, one will lift up his companion.
But woe to him who is alone when he falls,
For he has no one to help him up.
11 Again, if two lie down together, they will keep warm;
But how can one be warm alone?
12 Though one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him.
And a threefold cord is not quickly broken.
I went to a business conference where I learned that people are more apt to make good on what they say if they make the promise publicly. It’s the resolutions we make privately that tend to get left by the wayside. Funny how we are more committed to do something if others are watching. In fact, now that I think about it, people in general tend to act better when they know others are watching.
So, now I’m seriously looking into finding a few people to whom I can be accountable. Actually, I don’t know if we really have a choice in whom we’d like to be accountable. I suppose that’s God’s call. So let me rephrase and say I believe God is about to give me another crack at being held accountable to someone. I guess I’m either getting older or more spritually mature because I’m not rejecting the idea as I did in the past but am rather looking forward to it.
I wonder how I’ll do? A few years ago, that kind of wondering would have been enough for me to not forge ahead because I didn’t have the answer.
Now I think, “I wonder how I’ll do? I dunno, God, I’m kind of scared but…let’s go find out anyway.”
A few songs come to mind that I feel is relavant to this post. There isn’t just one that stands out, so since I love music anyway, I’m going to post them all. Hopefully, along with what I’ve written, one or more of these songs also relates to you…
Al Green-I’m So Tired of Being Alone
Marvin Gaye & Kim Weston-It Takes Two
Donnie McClurkin-I’ll Trust You, Lord
Well, ladies (and gents), I had a bit of a health scare today.
When I got up this morning, I noticed my left arm and hand was feeling slightly numb and tingly.
I didn’t think too much of it until, as the day went on, the pain persisted and started to spread somewhat into my neck. My first immediate thought was that I was in the early stages of a heart attack.
Silently growing frantic (I didn’t want to upset my grandmother unless I absolutely had to) I went to that almighty source of boundless information, the Internet, and began typing in my symptoms to see if perhaps what I was feeling could be something other than a heart attack. Turns out there were several maladies to which I could attribute my symptoms: Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, cardiovascular disease or joy of joys, a stroke!
I wanted to think that my symptoms were being caused by something non life-threatening but my grandmother had been a nurse. We kept a lot of medical journals around the house and I knew that what I was feeling and the way I was feeling was more then likely the onset of a heart attack.
Scared and already having visions of being taken into the emergency room, I went outside on the patio of our apartment and prayed. After bringing my concern before the Lord, I instantly felt peace as I heard Him say in that small, still manner of His, “You’re not having a heart attack, daughter. Your discomfort will stop. But this is a warning. Your body is telling you you need to take better care of yourself or you will end up in the hospital. You need to eat better and exercise.”
I must admit, I had been feeling for some time that I needed to stop eating certain foods and drink more water. I’ve been making a conscious effort to cut back on red meat and soda but indulged yesterday in some free barbecued brisket and sausage my apartment complex treated everyone too as part of its Resident Pool Party day. I guess maybe that’s what started my heart to complaining.
Whatever it was, it was a real wake-up call and all the confirmation I needed in discerning that no, it wasn’t just my imagination that the Holy Spirit had been pushing me these last few months to change my eating habits.
When I went back inside, I laid down on the couch, told my grandmother my arm was hurting and asked her if she would pray. I didn’t say which arm nor did I describe my symptoms but I don’t think I had to. She seemed to understand. As I lay there waiting for the pain to subside, which it was already starting to do, all I could think was, “I’m only 35. I’m too young to be having a heart attack!”
But heart disease, stroke and diabetes run in my family. I am overweight for my height and build and I hate, I repeat, HATE exercising. I hate the monotony of it. Not to mention that my desire to start seeing physical results within the first five minutes of having started exercising and it not happening has always been a major deterent. That and I absolutely love food. Outside of the Beatles and performing, it has been my main drug of choice and the one vice I haven’t quite licked since I came to the Lord.
Not that God hasn’t been after me to lose weight.
When He first started mentioning it about a year ago, my sense of low self-esteem kicked in and I got upset. I’ve never thought of myself as attractive and now here was God confirming what I’d always thought about myself by telling me I needed to lose weight. Well, if Jesus, who said He would love me no matter what, was criticizing my appearance, what hope was there for me?! If God was telling me I was ugly then that’s it, I really must be ugly!
Of course, that was my fear talking. God wasn’t saying I was ugly at all.
After I calmed down, the Lord explained to me that He was broaching the subject of my weight because He did love me so much. He said he wanted me to be healthy and that the extra pounds I’m currently carrying on my 5-foot-3-inch frame was taxing my heart, lungs and kidneys. And get this: He told me the way I look now isn’t the way I’m supposed to look.
“Not that you’re ugly,” God explained. “You’re not. But your body was not designed to be heavy. See, you put on all this extra weight because you stuffed down all of the bitterness, shame and guilt you felt by eating. This isn’t really you. You don’t really look like this. The way you look now is a result of the enemy’s plan for you, not mine.”
“If you were healthy,” He went on, “I wouldn’t care how much you weighed. But the truth is, you are harming your body by not taking care of yourself and this extra weight has made you unhealthy. How can you do what it is I have called you to do if you’re sick? And if you don’t start developing better eating habits you will become sick, which is exactly what the enemy wants.”
After God explained it, it made sense. When I see myself through God’s eyes, I don’t see someone who is overweight. My diamond is actually quite svelte. God had been telling me He was going to rebuild me from the ground up, inside and out. So, even though I’m still fat NOW, God has already shown me that when He gets finished rebuilding me, I won’t be. It’s not even my body anyway, it belongs to God. For the Word says:
“…do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?…” ~I Corinthians 6:19
I think the slimming part of His renovation may have come. I do not want a repeat of what happened today. It was the worst feeling. And I don’t mean just the pain in my arm. I mean the feeling of knowing that at only 35 years of age, I could be headed for a heart attack. Frankly, if I had to have gone to the emergency room, I was more concerned about the doctors and nurses shaking their heads at me in pity.
“Tsk, tsk,” I could hear them murmuring outside of my earshot. “Her chart says she’s in her mid-30’s….it’s a real shame.”
Because heart disease is so prevalent and people are developing it earlier, perhaps the sight of a woman my age being brought in for a heart attack wouldn’t be such a shocker to a seasoned hospital staff but I don’t want to find out. I don’t like hospitals.
Funny that all of this happened right after I’d been worshipping and praising the Lord the night before. I attended a phenomenal women’s conference over the weekend on which worship was the topic. The theme and the conference speakers had so inspired me that I have been basking in the Lord’s presence with a renewed zeal for worship I don’t think I’ve ever before experienced.
If the devil was trying to scare me, the effect was only momentary.
As one of the ladies at the conference said upon switching microphones after the one she was using to sing a worship song suddenly went out, “I am not intimidated by the enemy’s tactics.”
In fact, this possible brush with a heart attack has only made me want to worship God more. I’m thankful to Him that the pain only lasted a little while. I laid down and went to sleep for about an hour and when I woke up, the pain was gone, just as God had told me it would be. I praise God that He is a healer and that I didn’t have to go to the hospital. And I thank God that He is so thorough. That His concern for me doesn’t stop with renewing my spirit but that He wants to see all of me made whole, the inward and the outward!
I understand more than ever now what God meant when He said the way I look now isn’t the way I’m supposed to look. I hadn’t thought about it before, but along with my peace, self-respect and confidence, the enemy also stole my appearance. I have been so bogged down with guilt, depression, shame and unforgiveness that until recently, I really didn’t care what I looked like. I didn’t care if I lived or died. I’ve believed the enemy’s lies that I was ugly, worthless and no good for so long, that the effects of it manifested physically through weight gain and a sad, angry countenance.
But praise God, I’m no longer subject to the enemy.
Now it’s time to start taking better care of my body, which is the temple of the Lord. It’s a resolution I’ve made before with a lukewarm attitude and lackluster results. But there’s something different this time about saying I want to take care of myself.
I actually mean it. I want to become this lovely, sparkling diamond God has shone me I am.
Please pray for God’s grace upon me to start showing more respect for His temple.
On a lighter note, all this talk about a heart attack makes me think of a little ditty sung by Miss Olivia Newton-John. Enjoy:
A few years ago, I went with a team on a church mission trip to Mexico to help build casitas (little houses) for an impoverished family.
Ranging in ages from babies to adults, the family consisted of about 14 people (15 if you counted a petite, pregnant 14-year-old who still looked very much like a baby herself) all living in one cluttered room with a dirt floor. They had no heat in the winter or air conditioning in the summer. Their makeshift kitchen was a tiny, rundown stove in a dilapidated shed next to the house and their bathroom was an outhouse with a hole in the ground.
Compared to the one room in which they’d all been living, the casita we built them, which was probably about the size of an average contemporary master bedroom, was a mansion.
I had never been on a mission trip before and had no idea what to expect. The squalor of what I saw affected me deeply. Seeing and playing with the little unkempt children on the street who had no shoes and watching their eyes light up whenever we sang songs with them about Jesus or gave them candy or some small trinket touched me in a way I hadn’t expected.
The family we ministered to was very poor and yet, on our last day, they cooked us a wonderful meal of tortillas and beans that I will never forget not only because it tasted so good but because they’d pooled together their last bit of money to buy the food that fed us. Yet they were so happy, so grateful to share the little with us they had. It made me cry.
It also made me realize how truly blessed I was and how I had taken so much for granted.
Through their simple act of unselfishness, that family taught me something. And I realized that even though I had originally gone to give them something, they had inadvertently ended up giving me something.
The minister became the ministered.
That scenario happened again the other day when I was asked to sing at a Bible study for a group of incarcerated women housed in a lock-up facility for inmates who, as part of their probation sentence, are undergoing rehabilitation for drug and alcohol-related crimes.
As with the Mexico trip, I had never ministered to anyone in jail or prison before and had no idea what to expect. My ministry is still very new, only a few months old, and God is slowly but steadily opening doors for me through which I can minister. As a former police reporter, I had been to the police station on many occasions and even made a few trips to the jail to gather information for stories but I’d never been any further than the front desk.
Now I was on the inside of what pretty much amounted to a jail, actually standing before a small group of women who, unlike myself, couldn’t simply walk out the door when the Bible study was over.
I had originally been asked to sing one song at the start of the study time. After I sang, I could leave if I wanted or I could stay for the rest of the Bible study. There was a Christian open mike jam happening at a church I wanted to get to, so my plan was to sing my song, maybe speak a little word of encouragement to the ladies the Lord had given me for them and leave. I was going to do this new thing called ministry and make a quiet exit.
Funny how the Holy Spirit works. The minute I stepped into that room and began to set up to sing, I started to get the sense that God had other plans.
I ended up singing three songs, all the songs I had, and as I sang, each time I locked eyes with those ladies (there were about 12 of them all seated on chairs and sofas around me in an semi-circle) and saw how the Spirit of God was speaking to them through the music…how their eyes welled with tears and the naked pain, anguish and despair they felt began to surface on their faces, it made me start to cry and I had to catch myself. In an effort to keep my composure, I tried to look straight ahead, close my eyes or look at the ceiling but it was too late. The tears of those women had seared my heart, leaving an indelible impression.
When I looked at them, I saw myself. The pain they felt was my pain. I recognized their teary countenances because my face had once carried that same teary expression.
Their brokenness was familiar because it was also mine.
I got through the songs, although my voice broke a couple of times.
After the songs, I decided to stay for the rest of the Bible study. During the discussion, one of the girls, whom I later found out never cries, broke down and began to sob uncontrollably. Another one of the women went over to her and warmly put her arms around her. Before she’d started crying, the girl had been talking about how she’d known the Lord as a child but had strayed away when she got older. She talked of letting the light within her burn out and how, before she repented, she’d thought God had abandoned her and didn’t love her. It might as well have been me talking.
As the discussion continued, it seemed the overall concern for these women, most of whom were new Christians, was wrapping their minds around the fact that God loved them in spite of themselves and that even though they weren’t living this new Christian existence perfectly, God was willing to forgive. But I keep messing up, they would all say. And God still forgives me??? He still loves me???
The answer, of course, was ‘yes.’
During my singing and even after when we were all seated around the table talking, as my eyes scanned the faces of each woman, some older and quite a few young, I didn’t see criminals. I didn’t see alcoholics. I didn’t see drug addicts. I only saw broken, hurting, wounded women who wanted desperately to hear and know there was a God who loved them unconditionally…that despite whatever they’d done to end up in that lock-up and despite how others may see them or how they’d been branded, they were worth something in the sight of God.
I saw them through the eyes of the Spirit and I realized that I was just like them. Even though I’d never been in an actual prison, before I turned to Jesus, I had been in prison all right. Only my bars had been invisible. My heart went out to these ladies because we shared a kinship: pain, anguish, guilt, shame. All the brokenness that registered on their faces had been (and still is) my brokenness.
Psalm 34:18-”The LORD is near to those who have a broken heart, And saves such as have a contrite spirit.”
Psalm 51:17-”The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, A broken and a contrite heart— These, O God, You will not despise.”
Those women taught me something. Never again will I simply look at a person behind bars or living on the street, smugly dismiss them and think, “Well, they’re just a drunk or a dopehead that needs to get their act together!”
There but for the grace of God, that person could have been me. And it could STILL become me if I’m not careful. Pride is a deadly, tricky thing. I don’t think anyone wakes up in the morning and consciously decides to become an addict.
The devil is a liar.
He lied to that young girl who didn’t believe she was any good or that God loved her just as he’d lied to me in the same way. But praise God:
“The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon Me,
Because the LORD has anointed Me
To preach good tidings to the poor;
He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives,
And the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
2 To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD,
And the day of vengeance of our God;
To comfort all who mourn,
3 To console those who mourn in Zion,
To give them beauty for ashes,
The oil of joy for mourning,
The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness;
That they may be called trees of righteousness,
The planting of the LORD, that He may be glorified.” ~Isaiah 61:1-3
I hear God saying, “I got you out of prison, now you go and do for others what I did for you.”
I saw a lot of unmined diamonds in that lock-up; I intend to go back and help them discover their luster.
Before I left, I made a point to go up to that girl who’d broken down earlier. I felt led to tell her God wasn’t looking for her to be perfect, He just wants her to seek Him.
As I spoke the words, I got the feeling that message was also meant for me.
I’m pretty sure it was.
Not too long after I became, as a friend of mine would call “radically saved,” I remember one of the first Bible verses I learned was the one about guarding your heart. The one found in Proverbs 4:23, which, according to the NIV translation says:
“Above all else, guard your heart, For it is the wellspring of life.”
It seemed for a time that was the Scripture that was on everyone’s lips. I couldn’t go to a church service or a Bible study where this admonition didn’t somehow enter into the discussion. It was like a mantra.
“Remember, the Bible says, ‘guard your heart,’” people would say. “Whatever you do, guard your heart!”
The context in which most people referenced this verse as well as the way it was always spoken to me lead me to surmise it meant be careful who you let get close to you and be careful what of yourself you give away. In short, guard your heart.
To me, the meaning of Proverbs 4:23 seemed pretty obvious and I never thought much about it nor questioned it’s meaning until I started this blog and ran into major difficulty doing what a blogger does, which is write!
I wish I had some great excuse for why I haven’t journaled. I wish I could tell you in all truth that there was a death in the family or that I lost my job and have fallen on hard times recently or that a monsoon swept through my city and we’ve only just now regained electrical power or that I had to put my laptop in the shop because I accidentally spilled coffee on it while studiously writing a post for this blog and the liquid short-circuited the wires.
Heck, I’d even try the old dog-ate-my-computer bit, if I thought you’d believe something like that was physically possible. Who knows? Maybe for some dogs, it is. But the bottom line is, it wouldn’t be true.
The simple truth is that every time I wanted to write, maybe even needed to write, I couldn’t. I’d become paralyzed, as if some invisible force had come over me and was literally restraining me from penning (or in this case, typing) what was on my mind.
Finally, after a few weeks of this immobilization, I asked God what was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I write???
The answer I received was not only shocking but pretty profound. God told me I couldn’t write because I was afraid of revealing my heart.
Aha! I said to God. So the immobilization is fear. That explains a lot. It would explain the feeling of paralysis I felt whenever I even began to think about entering a blog post. But it didn’t explain why I didn’t want to reveal my heart. The Lord chided me about that part as if my unwillingness to reveal my heart were a detriment, a bad thing, which it couldn’t be because the Bible clearly says, “Guard your heart.”
See, I realized that even though I thought I was okay with writing about myself in such an open way, I still have trepidation about revealing who I really am, what I really feel and what I really think before an audience who not only knows my true identity but may, in some cases, actually know me on some personal level.
Keeping a personal journal where one can spew out all their thoughts and really be real is one thing. Even doing it online under a false name is one thing. But to do it publicly on the World Wide Web under your real name and risk people really seeing YOU is totally another. Surely, God did not mean for me to reveal my heart in that manner. To do such a thing would be folly and it would NOT be guarding my heart.
That’s when God got profound on me and blew my mind, as He is apt to do. I want to share what He told me because I believe someone out there who reads it might learn something as I did.
God told me that I had been taking Proverbs 4:23 out of context and that while it does say to guard your heart, what the verse actually means is to guard your heart not from revealing your true self to others or from letting someone in, but from the sinful thoughts and ideology of the world, which if we’re not careful, can contaminate us, making our hearts hard, bitter and closed off.
So it wasn’t about guarding my heart against letting myself out but against letting the wrong things in.
At that moment, God reminded me of what Philippians 4:8 says:
“Finally brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.” (NKJV)
Then, as I was writing this post, God showed me something else about Proverbs 4:23 I had never looked at. Really, I’d always had the ‘guard your heart’ thing quoted to me and I’d never paid much attention to the verses after it but they keep verse 23 and really the whole of chapter four, in context. The rest of it reads:
23 “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.
24 Put away perversity from your mouth; keep corrupt talk far from your lips.
25 Let your eyes look straight ahead, fix your gaze directly before you.
26 Make level paths for your feet and take only ways that are firm.
27 Do not swerve to the right or to the left; keep your foot from evil.”
That is most certainly in keeping with what Philippians 4:8 talks about.
For a girl who, along with harboring an immense amount of shame, was taught not to show her true feelings or to air her dirty laundry in public, these two Scriptures working in tandem were an eye-opener. And even though I tried to argue with God that showing my vulnerability could open me up to attack from people, God silenced me by reminding me that remaining hard-hearted definitely left me open for the enemy to attack. After all, God pointed out, how could I really minister to anyone if I was unwilling to talk about my own struggles? How could anyone relate to me or me to them? People are yearning to find a similar voice. But when we refuse to let people know who we really are, how can we expect to ever have that one accord that the people in Acts experienced?
Of course, this doesn’t mean I’m now going to reveal my whole heart on this blog without exercising spiritual discernment or wisdom but it does mean that I understand and trust that I needn’t worry about making myself vulnerable. God will protect my vulnerability in the same way he protected Adam and Eve before sin opened their eyes and they realized they were naked.
So, with my mouth hanging open from the realization of what ‘guard your heart’ really means, I was left with a decision: I could continue to keep writing online and be as honest and transparent as God would have me in the hopes that someone else might be encouraged, or I could not write, keep incorrectly ‘guarding my heart’ and let no one see that I’m a tarnished gem. A flawed saint who, in spite of her love for the Lord, still has bad days, occasionally might still utter an inadvertent curse word under her breath or think an inappropriate thought or experience a momentary twinge of anger, jealousy, pride or any one of the other seven deadly sins.
As you probably have already gathered by the fact that I posted this, I’ve made the decision to let people see me, flaws and all. Honestly, the real me is still buried under a lot of muck. I’m still digging myself out with the help of Jesus and I’ve come to the realization that I no longer want to play a role. I don’t want to act offstage anymore. As Sammy Davis Jr. sang, I gotta be me and if people like the diamond they see, great. If they don’t, that’s okay too. At least what they’re seeing won’t be cubic zirconia.
This is the cover of my first published novel, "In His Time." If you're looking for a story that will bless you and refresh your faith, you will enjoy this novel. Just click on the book to order!
