Stories that Shine on an Awesome God

Posts tagged ‘hope’

Hope Deferred

“The tired-er you get, the faster you go,” Dad used to comment when she was eight. Now, at seventy-two, her steps halt as my sister wheels her suitcase down the hall to our lodging at the conference center. JerryAnn isn’t going fast today, but she is going.

“Sciatica,” she says and twists her thinning lips into a smile. As a retired nurse, her quiet knowledge seems ever at the ready, but as I hold open the door to our room, we both know the root of her latest ailment.

Twenty-seven long years ago she began mental health therapy, and, as she came out of dissociation, she dealt with her memories on an adult level. God’s healing process restored her mind and heart, but her body continues to suffer the consequence of unimaginable evil.

As a child, she depleted her energy quotient, for how else does one run off nervous trauma when a perpetrator threatens?

“Praise, God,” she says as we settle into our room. “I know He has wonderful things in store for us this weekend. I can hardly wait.”

Yes, praise God. Because, after all these years, how much longer can you wait to fulfill the burning passion of what you know is your purpose—our purpose? How much longer will our hope be deferred?

A few minutes later, I remind myself to slow my pace as we make our way to register for our first Called to Peace Ministries conference. We collect our name tags from a welcoming volunteer and check the schedule.

With a quick scan I see that “Understanding & Overcoming Dissociation” will be one of this evening’s topics. Timely. Tomorrow morning it’s “How God Will Redeem Your Story.” My heart gives a joyful leap.

Redeeming our stories, especially JerryAnn’s, is our hope. Her story has already been redeemed in her personal life, but precious few have heard the beautiful details of how God accomplished it.

Her brown eyes meet mine and a dimple deepens her smile. Her shoulders shiver in delight. “I know. I just know God is going to make things happen this weekend,” she says.

I nod in agreement. “Me too.” We weave our way through the growing number of women who are undoubtedly in different stages of surviving abuse, gaining freedom, and finding healing. “And,” I add, “I think networking here will come easy.”

We’ve spent years talking and planning and writing and dreaming and living and waiting on God. We both feel it in our spirits. This weekend is a turning point.

And it is. There’s deep, well presented sessions that share a common thread of love and comfort and excellent advice. Around the meal tables, there’s animated sharing. I jot down names and contact information.

One woman was gang raped, but is free of the trauma and seems fulfilled in the role God has given her. Another woman lived in a homeless shelter, but is now in her own place. Some are mothers, heartbroken with concern over how their choices to leave their marriage will affect their children. God has given one precious helper a passion to make a difference, even though she’s never been abused. Many speak of being rejected by their church when they left their abusers. Others share the opposite and say that, fortunately, their churches are havens of safety and support.

JerryAnn and I share our stories too. In this setting, people seem eager to hear. They understand. I tell how I’ve finally completed writing my experience, how I’m seeking a publisher, and how my three-volume series, Sisters of Silence, is meant to speak to the fact that a culture of silence negatively impacts not only the abused, but also the family members.

“Finishing JerryAnn’s story is next,” I say. “It’s almost done. It’s time.”

JerryAnn’s enthusiasm bubbles over as she talks of the God-concepts she’s learned while being restored. “It’s a process,” she tells them, “and I love process. God’s given me a vision for a multi-faceted enterprise I’m calling Kingdom Flow. I want to show how the Kingdom of Heaven flows to us here on earth in healing waves. Trauma affects our bodies, but God has made every provision. Here’s how it works….”

There’s a woman at our table who catches the spark and insists JerryAnn speak at a coming event.

Her face alight, my sister sucks in a breath. “That’s just the motivation I need to get my thoughts in order.”

 After a long, glorious day, we retreat to our room, weary but satisfied.

JerryAnn hobbles in and, with a sigh, settles on her bed. “Oh, no,” she groans, “I forgot to take my insulin.” She slowly rises and opens the small refrigerator. “And this nerve pain…in a minute I’m going down to the microwave and warm up my heat wrap. It helps me sleep.”

Compassion whelms within me. How long, Lord? How long for her hope to be fulfilled?

She inserts the needle and gives a quiet yelp. Her body folds. With each breath in, then out, she speaks the name of God. “Yah-weh. Yah-weh. I praise You, Father, for Your healing power. If not today, the day is coming. I praise You, Yeshua. I love You. I trust You.”

JerryAnn believes in the power of words. Praise is her go-to at times like this, even when, like she says, her energy isn’t what it used to be.

Okay, Lord. It’s time.

I take off my shoes, get onto my own bed, and relax against the pillows. “His strength is made perfect in our weakness,” I say.

Even though her eyes are dulled with pain, she tosses me a grin. “I believe it,” she says, “and I can’t wait to see how His strength is perfected in me.”

Morning comes and, from her phone, she selects songs of worship. Today, we have a Zoom appointment with a fellow survivor whose podcast, Only God Rescued Me redeems the stories of other SRA victors. She’s invited us to be her next guests.

 After a bit, JerryAnn turns off her music and rummages in her suitcase.

“Our interview is today,” I remind her.

She clasps her hands and holds them against her chest. “I know.” Her voice nearly squeaks. “Today I get to tell my story. Isn’t God awesome? It’s like He’s saying, ‘And now. Now is the time.’”

Yes, God, You’re doing it. NOW.

We enfold each other in a hug, and we pray.

When we leave our room, we walk into a fresh, spring day of new beginnings.

“Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.” Proverbs 13:12 NIV

ONLY YOU

Only you know how

To take my need and turn it into

Overflowing rich supply.

Only you can take my heartbreak

And make it hold YOU.

When crying

Desire fills my sleepless night,

You alone bring peaceful restful hope.

And when my angry, wounded heart

Cannot love

Or obey

Or forgive

Only you can soften it,

Dissolve the rocks of rebellion

Bring forth

The love I never could produce.

You knead the essential oils

Of your redemption’s sorrow.

I begin to feel the hard, heavy lump

Of dough that is my heart

Come alive.

Your love brings

Submission to your radical transformation.

Wet tears flow

The minerals dissolve

Leaving behind

A fragrance sweet

And everything has changed!

Only because of YOU!

by JerryAnn Berry Written April 10, 2022

at the conclusion of the He Makes All Things New conference

by Called to Peace Ministries.

Category:

Childhood Abuse and Trauma, Culture of Silence, Points of Light, Restoration from Abuse

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Womb of the Wind

 

Heartache abounds. Slow and insidious or sudden and gut-wrenching

While the wind roars its violence.

Depression debilitates. Dark cloud suffocating heart and joy.

While the wind moans in death.

Suppressed grief. Trickling tears inside the mind. Slipping, sliding, letting go.

While the wind grows silent.

Others, friends, and mothers pray, weep, and worry. Cling to the faith of their fathers

While they wait for the Wind

Hearing its sound. Not knowing, only petitioning its destination.

While the Wind blows where it pleases.

Down the pathway of their hope to the heart giving up, letting go.

While the Wind soars on its wings with new birth.

Unseen work. Left to the Creator to tell where it comes from and where it is going.

While the womb of the Wind molds a new creature.

“He who forms the mountains, creates the wind, and reveals his thoughts to man, he who turns dawn to darkness, and treads the high places of the earth – the Lord God Almighty is his name.” – Amos 4:13:

Category:

Creative, Grief, Points of Light, Relationships, Shining on God's Character

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A God of Cats and Old Age and Teenage Boys

“Rosey can barely walk, Mom.” My sixteen year old son gently picked up his cat and carried her down the hall to her litter box.

Rosey2

“Yesterday she seemed slower, but you’re right. She’s definitely struggling. She’s old, Son. Older than you.”

We’ve known this day was coming. Sometime. In the future.

“Let’s move her food and box to your room so everything will be close and she won’t have to come down the hall. Tomorrow we’ll take her to the vet.”

The arm load of blankets that my man-boy gathered for Rosey’s new habitat included the baby blanket I had crocheted before he was born. The calico kitten had curled on one end while I worked on the other. She had been there to welcome her new master. As he grew, his bed was where she slept. His desk was where she lounged as a companion to his studies, an aid for his tactile learning.

His face grew grim as he hovered over his aged pet and grasped his new reality. I ached in a grief more for him than for her. Tears were catching up with us both.

“God, I sense you’re timing here. I want to see it clearer. Please show me. Is he ready for this?”

Memory took me back, a good twelve years back, when I had written the following words:

Most every parent longs to protect their children from the dangers of life. I am no exception. Isolation tempts me with its safety. I consider a deserted island or perhaps some kind of bubble suit where only good can get in and all the bad stays out. Of course I know that good outside boundaries are only part of the answer.

To be truly safe, my child needs to be bounded internally. He needs to equipped with internal strength to survive a crazy world. I have decided that there are two essential pieces of this equipment. One piece is Security, the other, Hope. My consistent, always available love helps equip my son with security. And when I tell him of Christ’s promise to return, of life after death, and elaborate on heaven, I equip him with hope.

However, he hasn’t lost so much as a pet to death, and being taken away from the world he knows to go to heaven might be a pretty scary thought. He has sorted through the possibilities, and, one day on a quiet ride home from town, he shared his solution:

“I know, Mommy. When Jesus comes we hold hands. Okay?”

“You want to hold hands when we go to heaven?”

“Mommy, Daddy, and me hold hands. Then we go togedder! Okay?”

I promised him we will all hold hands real tight when Jesus comes.

On another day a dog lay dead on the road. “Mommy, will Jesus make the dead doggie alive and take him to heaven?”

“Jesus promises to make a brand new earth where there will be lots and lots of doggies and kitties.”

I’ll take a leash for my kitty. Yeah, and one for Lassie too.”

“So now, God, my son is sixteen and his kitty, seventeen. He has lost much more than a pet in death, but is he ready for this? Is he equipped with that internal strength? Does he possess that essential equipment, Security and Hope? Is this for a deepening maturity? Another necessary step out of childhood?”

I watch my son carefully squirt the vet’s pain medication into his pet’s mouth and receive a fresh glimpse of a God who promises to carry us even to our old age. I know I can trust God’s timing. Next, a vision presses my thoughts. It’s resurrection morning. Christ has returned to leashed animals and eager humans holding hands, meeting him in the air.

Caleb&Rosey

 When you face pain or grief, try to consider how it has come to you at that point in your life. Are there others who are ready to gain a glimpse of God through your experience? Does your experience mark a spiritual turning point for you? Can you feel God sustaining you even through your darkest hours? He is there. Sometimes it is only through faith that we perceive him. Sometimes it is through simple things like old cats and the teenage boys who care for them.

“Listen to me, all who have been borne by me from before your birth, carried from the womb; even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save.”  Isaiah 46:3&4

If you have had an experience when you saw God through the simple things of life, please share that point of light with me. On the “Share Your God Story” page you can send me a brief telling that will be rewritten and approved by you. I look forward to sharing God through your eyes.

 

Category:

God of Our Ultimates, Grief, Points of Light, Shining on God's Character, Timely

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