Concerts and Dancing...

These are parts of an email I sent out earlier this week to friends for prayer.

"Please pray for me for the concerts this weekend. I am nervous… This just feels a lot different than singing up front in church or even doing special music up there. I also really want to glorify God in this. I want the audience (and choir members for that matter) to not see me, but to see God in me. God is the one really singing through me. He has given me the song in my heart, and I just want it to pour forth, without my interfering. I want God to be made known and glorified above all else.

This has been a hard year all around, and for me it is just icing on the cake that God has given me the opportunity to sing this solo. And did I mention that the solo is the hymn “Be Thou My Vision?” A different melody, but the same words. I have tried to keep Him my vision all year… and it is the prayer of my heart that He and He only will fill my vision for the rest of my days.

I open with the first verse:
“Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart, Be all else but naught to me save that thou art. Be thou my best thought in the day and the night, Both waking and sleeping, thy presence my light.”
The words of the last verse that I sing…
“Be thou and thou only the first in my heart; O Sovereign of heaven, my treasure thou art.
O Sovereign of Heaven, Be my vision, O Ruler of all.”

Talk about appropriate! I can wholeheartedly say that I praise Him for this past year or two. The pain has been worth it all. I know there are still going to be struggles, and sufferings, and pain in ways that I can’t imagine right now. But God is sovereign. He is faithful. He will never leave me nor forsake me, and to Him I will cling."

Oh my friends, I don't know if I can make you understand the depth to which God answered prayers this weekend!

I gave God my voice, and asked Him to supply the breath and tone and words and confidence to get up there and sing.

He was the one who kept me going when I was scared to death and got that huge stab of fear as I realized it was time for me to walk out of the choir and stand in front of them to sing the solo.

It was God who helped me breathe when I needed to, so that I actually had air to sing. He was the one who helped me focus on Him and the music, rather than how it might sound or be received.

Saturday night, for the first concert, I had taken some of my anti-anxiety medication a bit earlier in the evening, to help me just make it through the concert without getting sick to my stomach. I think it helped take that edge off. Enough that the words of advice and encouragement friends spoke to me, actually got through to me.

Then Sunday morning...
God did something during the worship.

When I say He met me there at church. I mean He MET me there.

When we moved into our longer set of worship, the tone of the service had already been set, and I was already open and ready for Him to speak to me. I had prayed all the way up to church from my house. I had conversed with Him in my heart all morning.

As the music started, I recognized the song immediately. I have already posted it here (It's at the bottom of that post) "Made me Glad" by Hillsong. It has quickly become one of my favorites. Just proclaiming the truth about who He is, well, it lights a fire in me.

I am not overly demonstrative in how I worship... particularily in a corporate setting.

But this song... well, first it gave me goosebumps, then the tears started. I took off my glasses. And after that I quickly became oblivious to anyone around me. It was just me and God. It was all I could do to keep from jumping up and down, or falling on my face before Him. I didn't really know which way it would have gone if I'd had the room.

I wept through the rest of the worship music.

More than anything else, it was about surrender. I had already, the night before turned the concert over to God. Through the reminder of a good friend (thank you Shelly) and the prayers of another friend who sings next to me in choir (thank you Harry). They ministered to my heart more than they will ever know.

But Sunday morning...
This was something completely different.

I felt like I was on my face before God, handing Him my heart, turning it inside out for Him, so that He could get into every last area of it. My whole life, everything, the day, the concert later on, the week...

I remember saying in my heart to Him,
"Jesus, take it, take me... take everything I have, all that I am. Do what you will with it, with me. Here, have it, I don't want it anymore. I just want You."

I specifically prayed that God would help me to sing that afternoon in the concert. And to help me to do it without my anti-anxiety meds. But also to not try to do it on my own strength, based on how well I did the night before. I asked Him to help me stand up there that afternoon, with a confidence, not in myself, but in Him.

Oh my friends, I haven't had such a sweet time of fellowship as I did that morning. Not in a very long time. Longer than I can even figure. I couldn't stop crying, and at the same time rejoicing at whatever He was doing in my heart.

I wish that I could lose myself in worship of my Lord and King, my Savior like that all the time. I know I probably can't or I would just explode or something! I hope I never get used to that intimacy with Him, because I don't want to take it for granted. At the same time, I so want to experience that depth with Him more often.

Oh to feel His heart touching mine!
To hear His voice speaking into my being!

That incredible intimacy, of being touched and blessed in a way that only God can do.

There is nothing at all that even comes close to that.

Sunday I went to the church where our concert was being held. I warmed up with the choir, I got ready, I prayed. I sat down and continued to pray, giving it all to God... even the knot in my stomach.

After the intermission, just before my song, I got another stab of anxiety like the previous night. But I took a big breath and reminded myself that "the Lord is my confidence, my strength, my portion" and I stepped out of the choir.

Again, God helped me to concentrate on the music, and on the words, and on putting my heart out there with those words... showing who He is.

I noticed a difference in me this weekend. One of the biggest things was that I was able to accept compliments with a "thank you" rather than dismissing them, or brushing them off, or saying "it was nothing." I never used to be able to accept compliments, because I felt that I wasn't good enough to be complimented on anything. I also am so critical of my performances, that I can pick apart every one and point out the mistakes. And on Sunday, though I made a mistake, I was able to let it go. Really let it go! (my counselor would be proud!) :)



It wasn't until I got to my parents house in Milwaukee on Sunday night that I realized the gift God has given me.

My husband got a short clip of my solo, the beginning of it, and posted it to You Tube here, and then sent it to my mom and dad, and myself. My mom opened it last night, and called me and dad into the office.

I listened to me singing on the computer. We re-played it. Then my dad asked if it bothered me to hear my own voice recorded like that.

I realized that it didn't. I mean it really didn't. I was comfortable with it.

God's gift to me this weekend, wasn't only the getting me through the solo, and meeting me in worship... but something much deeper.

God did another redemption.
He redeemed some years that the locusts had eaten.
He restored to me my music.

Yes, I have been using my musical gifts to serve at church and in choir.

Even so, I can't tell you how much I have doubted what I was doing. I can't tell you the times I have picked apart what I have done, dismissed it as not good enough, with the words of my student teaching supervisor ringing in my head... "your musical skills are not strong enough." Those words reinforced in me the lie that I will never be good enough, so I might as well not even try to use what I have been given, cause it will never be good enough.... God won't be able to use what I have to give, I will never measure up, and on they go....

Oh, that is gone!

Did you hear that?

It. Is. Gone.

God has given music back to me. He has healed a huge wound in me that I didn't even realize was so raw yet. He took me, weak and trembling, and set me on a stage in front of the choir and audience and helped me to sing the song in my heart. His song.

Then He showed me I don't have to be afraid to use what He has given me.

He has given me self confidence. I don't like that phrase, but it is what it is. Confidence, not in me and what I can do on my own, but confidence in Him. A complete trust that what He has given me I can use. It's this sense of security I can't quite explain. I feel grounded, and unashamed of what I can do, un-apologetic, unafraid. Because I am grounded in Him.

I feel like I can walk with my head high, and it isn't an act.

Does any of what I have written here make any sense?

I sure hope so, because I so want you to realize what God has done for me, and how huge it is...

Maybe you can't... at least not with me, but maybe He has done something big like that in your life... so in those terms you might understand a little bit.

I have been on a long journey these past few years. It is moments like these, weekends like these, that make me keep going. They show me just how much God is capable of. They show me hope. They remind me to keep my eyes fixed on Him and trust Him in all things at all times.

These are the "dancing in the streets" moments... Just like David did before the Ark of the Lord. Dancing with joyful abandon.

Cindy keeps reminding me to keep my dancing shoes handy.

Oh my friends, I am dancing today!

Please dance with me!

Know that our God is more than able to redeem anything, and everything... and He longs to heal you.

If He has healed me and continues to, He can heal you too... surrender to Him and let Him work.

On the road, not just walking, but dancing with Jesus,

"Self Talk, Soul Talk," Chap. 1, Not so well with my soul...

Welcome to the first blog book study for the year~ hosted by our dear friend Lelia! I am excited to be studying with the new friends I made in the last study, and looking forward to the new friends that I will make this time!

We are going through the book “Self Talk, Soul Talk,” by Jennifer Rothschild.

Our first chapter talked about how Jennifer came to a point in time where she realized that she woke up in bed with all sorts of negative thoughts running through her head… in essence condemning thoughts.

She wrote:
“As a child, I could not escape the idea that whatever I did just wasn’t good enough. I was a good girl with vast perfectionist tendencies - and painfully self-aware.”
Oh boy, does that sound like me! I didn’t want to be caught doing something wrong. I didn’t want to get bad grades. More because of the defeatist thoughts I would have… the “I should have done better’s” and all that. As she described how all those thoughts continued, I was caught by the thought that it felt like she was describing me.

She wrote:
“You’re not good enough. You’re not the wife you should be. You’re not a good mom. You should have done a better job. It’s all about me. I can’t do it; it’s impossible. I’ll always be this way. Nobody really cares.”

After a while of having those thoughts they become familiar. You don’t even realize they are there. You don’t even remember where they came from, when they started.

How many times have I had some or all of the thoughts that Jennifer listed? But before this last year or so, they were so numerous that I couldn’t control them. It was a constant barrage. And the enemy didn’t lose any opportunity to reinforce those thoughts, with more condemning thoughts of his own.

All these thoughts ran familiar paths. As my friend Cindy has talked about before. The thought patterns and lies from the past cut ruts in the road. The longer they have been there, the deeper the ruts. It takes a long time of thinking new thoughts to cover the old ruts and create new paths… to freedom and hope.

So many times, the condemning thoughts, the negative self talk get triggered by something. If there is something that I feel insecure about, a situation or a task at hand, then the talk immediately starts. I feel insecure because “I am hopeless, I can’t learn anything new, I can’t do it, it is impossible, nothing will ever change, I don’t know what I am doing.”

It doesn’t take long for that self talk to really pull me down.

And as Jennifer said:
“We grow so accustomed to our own self talk that we don’t even recognize its corrosive nature and the damage we’re inflicting on our own souls. It’s just normal for us… our self talk actually begins to shape the life we live…”

She made a distinction between destructive self talk and helpful soul talk.

I know that I want to engage in more and more soul talk, and much less self talk.

I think that this has started to happen this year. I have been starting to concentrate on memorizing scriptures. I never had such a desire for scripture before. I think it is God given. I am going to continue in that path of memorizing this year, and hopefully learn more and more, so that when I find myself in a situation which triggers the self talk, I will recognize it and replace it with soul talk.

When I encounter a situation that fills me with anxiety and fear and insecurity, I can turn to the scripture, “God has not given me a spirit of fear, but of power, love and a sound mind.” (my paraphrase of 2 Timothy 1:7)

And there are many other scriptures that I now know, that I have been able to start to use in my daily life.

Before this year I would have said that my closets were full of junk that needed to be cleaned out, a lot of damaging self talk in there. Now I would say that I am more neutral ground. I am pretty evenly divided between self talk and soul talk. But it would be VERY easy to revert to the negative thoughts and the lies and the ingrained patterns of my past.

The thoughts in my “thought closet” that Jennifer spoke of are definitely what I clothe myself with. And they are not supplying me with what I need to live the life I desire. Not that I am not starting on that road. Not that I am not already starting to renew my mind. But it needs to increase.

God’s word needs to increase in my mind and the words I say to myself.
The junk that I have been believing for so long needs to be hauled out to the dump!

***************************

If you want to read any more posts on our book, “Self Talk, Soul Talk,” by Jennifer Rothschild, pop on over to Lelia’s sight to check out the other blogs linked there.

I will close with my first memory verse for the year, as encouraged by Beth Moore, and referenced by Jennifer at the end of her first chapter.

Romans 12:1-2
“Therefore I urge you brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God - this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is - his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

"Yes to God" Chapter 10, Healing truth

Oh to have to read the last chapter of this book! To have to write the last post for this book… I have been dragging my feet all week. I haven’t wanted to end either.

This past year has been one of such learning! Such growth! God has used this book by Lisa in an amazing way to help complete the healing in such a short time frame. I never expected that when I finished this book, that I would be also looking at my last counseling session coming up.

Recognizing who I am in Christ has been hard for me… especially in the past 3 years. As my depression got more and more pronounced, I just didn’t feel like I had any real truth about who I was to keep me steady and stayed on Him. I truly did feel, like Lisa said, that God dropped a stitch when He was knitting me together in my mother’s womb.

I thought I should be who my family wanted me to be, or like those I looked up to, and all it did was muddy the waters.

Lisa said,
“It has been a beautiful thing in my life to let go of the ideas I have for me and ask God to develop in me those things He intends me to do and to be the person He intends me to be…. I am talking about saying to God, ‘Have your own way with me.’ Recognize that in the process of making you, God didn’t have an ‘oops!’ moment.”

This has been a big part of this past year for me. I’ve continually beat myself up for quitting my student teaching. For not managing to finish with a teaching degree. For not using my musical gifts in a “professional” area. For not being a good enough wife. For not being a good enough mother. For not being a good enough ___________. Fill in the blank: Christian, daughter, grand-daughter, friend, person… and then it led me to the thought that I shouldn’t be here, that I was just a mistake.

As I have finally learned to let go, and let God have His way with me, I have come into more and more freedom. He has awakened things in me I thought I had lost. The biggest was a thirst for Him that I haven’t experienced ever since I was a new Christian. Another one was the joy I got from writing and singing. I had lost writing, and almost lost my joy in music as well.

Admitting my mess-ups has been hard for me, because I clung to them as an identity. I had to let God clear up who I was in Him, and then not wade in the cesspool of condemnation. It was hard to admit I screwed up, and then LET GOD TAKE CARE OF IT!!

I love what Lisa said:
“God is quick not only to forgive us; He is quick also to restore us.”

Oh, how thankful I am for that! I’ve gotten some very visual reminders of how much He loves me, of the depths of His forgiveness, and what His redeeming and restoring work is in my life. I’m so grateful that my mistakes aren’t held against me, but that I can learn from them, and He helps me to walk away from them and not make more mistakes on top of them, and end up worse off that I was before.

The pain I’ve been in and through in my life, because of my choices or others, has been enough to cripple me this past year. If I hadn’t been given the strength to deal with the pain, and take a good hard look at it and allow God into it, I don’t know that I would be here right now.

All my life, I applied a soothing balm… of time, of distraction, or of attempting to move on with my life. It covered over the hurts, but never healed them. The worldly things I tried to anesthetize my soul didn’t work permanently.

Only God can apply the healing balm… of really looking into the pain, and touching it with His love, His forgiveness, His restoration, His TRUTH. That really heals. I may have scars left, but this year I’ve been healed by the Truth, my God.

Lisa is right when she said that all God desires is to take my brokenness and yours and set all of us free by the Truth that we were once so afraid to face.

That is truly what has happened this year in counseling. I was so afraid to see the Truth, to see God in the face of all I had done, and all that had been done to me. But, all my brokenness has been exposed to the light of day, and to the light of the Truth. All God has wanted is to set me free. That’s all He wants to do for you. Once we are free, the possibilities are endless. I know that now that I am free of so much pain that was shackling me, I can do whatever He leads me to.

More than that, I know that even if I don’t know right now specifics of what to “do,” He uses me. I have so much baggage, but God has freed me from it, and now can use it to help others. As Lisa said, being used by God is the one time that being “used” by someone felt good!

Today I can say that I have truly tasted the goodness of God, tasted the freedom, tasted the healing that I never thought I would.

Truth time:
Is my soul truly set free? Is the truth behind my eyes the same as what others see?

Answer:
I think so. I hope so. I feel like I am set free, that my soul is. I think there are probably some things that I still have to work through, but who doesn’t have something?
I’ve struggled with the idea of needing to pray for someone who hurt me. Still am. Finding others to pray for specifically… or God is finding them for me.

I realized that I canceled my counseling appointment with Tricia this week, and I really didn’t feel stressed. I did schedule another appointment, in a couple of weeks. To know that I have one out there, my last one to talk a few things over with her, gives me freedom to see what it is like to get through a month without “needing” to talk to her about everything.
One other thing… to be truthful… (sigh)

I’ve realized just how much I am going to miss Tricia. I praise God for her. I’m so thankful for how He has used her to help me along this road of healing I have been on. I know that it is time to end our relationship as counselor/client. I’m OK with that. I’m just going to miss her. I’ll be praying for her. I know that if we never meet again on this side of heaven, I’ll be able to see her there, and hopefully then express to her how incredibly grateful I am that she has allowed God to use her as He has, not only in my life, but the lives of countless others she’s invested herself in.

However, my prayer is that someday, this side of heaven, when the right amount of time has passed, God will bring us back together and allow us to meet and develop a relationship on the equal footing of friendship. I don’t know that it will happen. But that is my prayer.
If it doesn’t get answered the way I would like, I won’t be disappointed, because God has the best for me and the best for her in His heart. He knows what will be best for both of us. I’m extremely blessed to have known her for this brief year. I’m forever grateful to God for bringing her into my life, me to her, when I so desperately needed someone to come alongside who cared and who could guide me ever closer to God.

In closing, (it is so hard to try to figure out how to sum this whole study, this whole book, this whole year up) our church has a Thanksgiving service this Sunday night. We do this annually where we open up the mic to whoever wants to come forward and share a praise. I couldn’t bring myself to go last year. Just out of the hospital 3 weeks, I couldn’t find anything praiseworthy.

This year, well, I really don’t know what to share or how to share it, because I could be up there ALL night! This year has been incredible. Looking back now, I can see God’s hand all over it. I look at all the struggles I had, and how I thought the darkness would never end… and now… oh words can’t express what I am feeling right now!

I can only pray that more and more what people see from me is truly what is going on inside of me. That my actions and words match with what is really going on inside. I don’t want to act the part anymore. If things are going bad, I don’t want to fake the perfect life. If things are going good, I want to share that with others. I want to be free to rejoice with, or cry with others as the need arises. I want to be approachable. I want to be used by God to bring healing to His people who are hurting. However that happens I don’t know. Yet.

I want to leave with two quotes from Lisa that caught me enough that they rated not only underlining, but also highlighting!

“He [God] wants us to realize the freedom - true freedom - that comes with letting go of the struggle, once and for all, over our past mistakes, major life interruptions, and wrongs that have been done to us. He desires to remove that which has incapacitated us and held us captive - unable to fly and soar and be the beautifully created person He has made us each to be. Jesus wants to fix everything in us that has ever been broken, not temporarily soothing it on the exterior, but healing it in places not able to be seen by the human eye….

His arms are a place of ultimate security and peaceful rest.”

There is nothing more powerful that to realize the Creator of the whole universe, is your Creator, that you are the apple of His eye, and that He searches after you with undivided attention until you are found by Him…. and then He holds you, oh so carefully, gently, and securely in His arms… and that He wants to HEAL EVERY HURT! He wants to heal you and me and everyone else, until we all realize who we are in Him, and are able to live from that Truth in our everyday life.

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May God bless all of you. Thank you for joining in this journey with me: through this book, and for those of you who have been around longer, through this past year. I can’t tell you what your prayers and support have meant. Please don’t cease praying for me; I won’t cease praying for you. God has so much more to do in all of our lives.

Just because I see the end of a season for me doesn’t mean an end! It really means a new beginning. I never thought I would say this, but I have a new beginning!

So do we all!

Thank you Lelia for hosting this. I can’t tell you how God has used you in my life. You are the first person who ever contacted me, other than my family, on my blog… the first “bloggy friend” I made… and the first person I ever started praying for that I met through a blog. My husband thought I was nuts (still does, I think) :) But I know that God has been behind all of this. I praise God for you Lelia, and continue to pray for you. God bless you, and I love you!

Perfectionism and good enough...

Ok, I said in my last post that we didn’t hit things too hard in counseling. But maybe that’s wrong. We did hit things hard, in that we talked about lots of things. We ranged all over, from my telling Tricia about the more recent lies I realized I have been believing, to how things are going at home, to, well, just about everything…

This week has been hard as well. I have been holding myself together the best I can. I have been fighting a bad (and I mean, it hurts to breathe, bad) cold. I am exhausted. My son has started pre-school for the first time. My daughter wants to go too. Neither of them want to sleep for a nap when they are home. On top of that, there are multiple things I am trying to deal with in counseling.

AND…

I am a perfectionist.

Yeah, if you haven’t guessed it (or if I haven’t mentioned it before) I really am a perfectionist. To the point of insanity sometimes. If you came in my house, you would never guess that. I could show you a picture here of what my living room and kitchen look like, but I want to show you a “Better Homes and Gardens” type of kitchen and living room… and, well, that ain’t gonna happen in these parts!!!!

One of the things I talked over with Tricia is that I don’t bother worrying about how perfect my house is, because I “know” that I can’t make it perfect, so why bother trying. She told me that is a common problem with perfectionists. If they feel they can’t do it right, and right the first time, they don’t even try. Because failing at something is even worse than not doing it in the first place.

I don’t like failing.

Maybe that comes into play in my counseling. When I feel like I don’t get anywhere, or accomplish anything in a session, I come away with frustration, because I feel like I failed, I feel like I didn’t “do” it well enough. I feel that I have to try to do this on my own. I have to heal. So, if something doesn’t seem to “work,” well, then I didn’t do something right. That’s when I start over analyzing everything.

Including being a wife.

I look at how I have been as a wife to Dave. I pick myself apart for ways I could have listened to him better, ways I could have lifted him up better, or encouraged him better, made our house more like a home and less like just a place to stop and sleep.

Including being a mother.

I start worrying about whether I am doing a good job raising the kids, looking at the things that I have done recently, or not done, and see where I could have done better. I worry about whether I can help raise them to know and love God. I wonder if I really am doing them any good at all.

Including my writing.

I end up starting to write, and then delete things, because my posts are going every which way, or they don’t have a point, or they can’t possibly have any spiritual value to anyone, or they are just talking about the same old stuff again and again… and on the list goes.
Tricia knows most of this. We have talked about it many times before.

So this perfectionist tendency came up when we were discussing a book I was reading “Healing for Damaged Emotions,” by David A. Seamands. He talked about many things in there and one of them is perfectionism, sources and symptoms, ways of healing and being real about who you are.
So we talked about my being a perfectionist. (If you could only the contortions I go through at times to make this blog look the way I want it to!)

Tricia gave me a phrase that ended up being the theme for our whole session… it carried through to everything we talked about.

“Good Enough.”
Period.
Stand Alone.
That’s it.

Well, you can imagine my mind doing back flips. Especially when I hear the phrase with a negative connotation. Because, for so long, I have heard in my head, “I am not good enough.” So, anything that I do, it’s good enough, but…. It’s not the best, it could have been better, I didn’t give it enough effort, so it’s settling for second rate, second class, second place.

Then one of the ways she explained is this:
“It is GOOD and God is ENOUGH.”

That is better, and I can’t deny that God is enough, but I am still struggling with the negative connotations. Tricia asked me to keep this phrase in mind this week. To be honest, I haven’t. Even that night after counseling it was gone from my mind. I beat myself up because I was so tired when I got home, that even though I got a homemade, baked chicken dinner on the table, including home-made gravy, I didn’t manage to make the cornbread that I had intended.

I wanted a “perfect” meal for the ending of Peter’s first day of school. I didn’t get all the items made I wanted because I was too tired. Which is not an excuse for a perfectionist. So, therefore, I failed.

Looking back, I can see now that the meal was good. There was enough food. The kids enjoyed it, even though it took a bit longer to cook than I wanted. It was fine, but I was so tired and disappointed with myself, that I didn’t hardly feel like eating.

That is one example of where, if I had remembered in the middle of it all, that it’s good enough… I might have saved myself a lot of heartache.

Now, I need to refocus on this for the rest of the week. I am sick. I feel miserable. There are going to be only so many things that I can do, just because of my energy level. I am only going to be able to do so much for the kids. I am only going to be able to do so much for my husband. I am only going to be able to fold the loads of laundry that my energy allows. I am only going to be able to pull together light meals, that are easy to prepare.

It will be GOOD.

I may be able to spend only a little bit of time with God each day until my time alone right before counseling on Wednesday.

God will be ENOUGH.

Everything this week will be good enough.
Not only did God say “It is good,” but He is enough!

That has to be GOOD ENOUGH for me.