It is clear to us, friends, that God not only loves you very much but also has put his hand on you for something special. When the Message we preached came to you, it wasn’t just words. Something happened in you. The Holy Spirit put steel in your convictions.- 1 Thessalonians 1:4-6
I have seen my share of heartache in life. Loss and grief have dug grooves like raging rivers. The blood in my soil runs very, very deep. I see all that I’ve been through as a means to enrich me with things God can use to enrich others. “A poured out offering.” Loss counted as gain because the foundation, the powerful current flowing under the surface of my rivers, are built on and powered by the absolute assurance that nothing happens without purpose. When trouble comes I find hope that it could be worse. When my plans hit a brick wall, it’s because God is saving me from what is on the other side of that wall. It’s an act of mercy.
My daughter was at a birthday party Saturday night. I’ve been so busy, trying to cram as much into the tiny spaces of my time, that I messed up what time I was supposed to pick her up. When I got the phone call that I was late, I grabbed my keys and told my shoeless girls that they have to stay home while I went to get their little sister. My husband was out of state so we were all going to have a ‘girls night’ at the movies later. I told them to be ready and I’d be back in a few minutes.
The roads have been covered with snow for a week, but this night they were clear. Most of them anyway. I took a back road to cut time. I have a 4-wheel drive and, after driving for a week without issue, I wasn’t worried. The sun was going down and, though I didn’t know it, the melted snow started to freeze.
I hit a patch of black ice and felt the rear of my SUV lose traction. My dad was a great teacher. As the oldest of eight children, the vehicle I learned to drive in was a Suburban. I know what to do on ice and I know what to do with a heavy vehicle. I turned my wheel toward the spin. First one way, then the other. The problem was, I was going down a hill and it was all icy. I was gaining speed and losing control.
My SUV started sliding sideways down the hill, but, still, I managed to maneuver out of it. When I did, I saw the headlights coming my way. I wasn’t going to be able to get my vehicle under control before we met.
I can’t stand the thought of hurting someone. I would rather be the one who got hurt. I have a high threshold for pain.
Fighting the ice was making it worse. With someone coming toward me, I lost my window. I let my vehicle go off the road. I knew I’d be stuck, but that was better than what I saw ahead. I didn’t realize that the side of the road was down a steep little hill and that the weight of my SUV would compact the snow into a perfect surface to continue sliding. When I saw the tree in front of me, I shut my eyes and waited for the impact.
It’s all like slow motion. The snap of branches. The scream of twisting metal. The splintering windshield. I hit my head on my steering wheel. I broke the steering column with my forearm. The airbags failed. I opened my eyes and watched steam rise out of the mess in front of me.
I couldn’t find my phone to call my friend. I wasn’t thinking clearly when I got out to walk the rest of the way to where they were waiting for me. Some people had stopped and were running toward me. Two more wrecks happened while we stood there talking and waiting to be rescued.
The couple who ran toward me had this strange look in their eyes and kept asking me if I was okay, like they didn’t believe it. I was. I didn’t hurt at all. I know I bumped my head, but it didn’t hurt. They stood there and listened to my account. I told them that I refused to hit the car coming toward me. I was so thankful. The man nodded and said, “That car was us.”
My friends got there with my daughter. While I stood there crying with Ashley, her husband walked a ways away with the other couple to talk. They told him that they knew I was trying not to hit them and when they saw the wreck, they had no doubt that I didn’t survive. Seeing me walk around the back of the SUV shocked them. Then they told him what I was so afraid was the case. I didn’t have my kids with me, but I had no idea what those headlights coming toward me had behind them. When I found out that the couple was with their three kids, I started crying.
So unbelievably thankful.
My SUV is ruined, but I’m not. I am bruised but I’ll heal. I only had liability on my vehicle. Instead of counting my losses, financially mostly (medical bills and the cost of a new family vehicle), I’m counting my blessings. I have so many of them. I believe in God’s sovereignty and I know that there is good that will come out of this.
I was in the emergency room waiting for my cat scan when a woman walked in and gave me a curious look. She was there to wheel my bed down the hall. She introduced herself and shook her head in disbelief. She said, “I can’t believe you’re here. Your story has changed my life. I failed miserably. Lost my marriage, my church family, all my friends… and couldn’t find anything to give me hope. Then someone sent the video you made and it gave me so much hope. I know that God still loves me.”
While I was in the cat scan machine, holding “very still”, she wrote her contact information on a scrap piece of paper so that we could meet and she could tell me her story. I can’t wait to hear it.
God knows what He’s doing. Loss is gain when you believe that. All of my stuff will get worked out. I have no doubt. Sometimes God allows what could be a disaster to fulfill His purpose. Trust is the key to finding joy with the trouble.
Although great trouble accompanied the Word, you were able to take great joy from the Holy Spirit!—taking the trouble with the joy, the joy with the trouble. -1 Thessalonians 1:6
I was approached by a producer for Oprah’s new network, OWN, to be part of a new series on adultery. I don’t have an issue with the series. Their goal is to bring the subject out into the open and share stories of others who have been through it and survived. They want to give these stories some ‘take away value’ in order to help people who are in the hell of going through it.
I was to be an ‘especially exceptional’ point of view because most of the people who are willing to talk are those whose marriages survived. I have friends who are going to be a part of this series and I’ll be watching when their episode airs.
My story is different. I only talk about my affair because of God’s grace for the worst scenario. Without it, I never would have survived the guilt and shame.
I turned down the opportunity because I need to keep a tight reign on how my ‘happy ending’ is used and portrayed. If they edit out the reason I’m okay, then I’m just a selfish girl with nothing to say. The other stories, the marriages that survived, will give wholesome hope even if their relationship with God gets edited out. Mine, on the other hand, has the potential to give false hope to people who think they can survive without grace.
Affairs destroy people. I refuse to be portrayed as an example of a happy ending with the part about grace edited out. Without it, the hope in my life doesn’t add up.
I’ve had a few ’15 minutes’, I’ll have a few more. Just not this one.
I was recently made aware of a church in Canada that is using my story of God’s grace in their services. It’s a church of about 850 people and they’ve been around since the ’50′s. I listened to the last two weeks where Pastor John Visser, first, showed my video and, then the next week, talked about my book.
Not only is it wildly humbling for my story to be so far out there, but for it to be received so thoroughly and then shared. He gets it. I put myself out there, and people are taking it and using it to do exactly what I wanted done with it. They’re offering the hope of grace and letting my most shameful moments be used as a balm of healing for wounded people who feel desperately alone. It’s an amazing gift of grace and a picture of how God can turn absolute destruction, shame, and grief into a beautiful portrait that honors Him and shows His love for all of us.
I was once told, ‘I don’t know how God can redeem this and scrape together what could remain of your life to glorify Him.’ Well, I’m starting to see a picture of that now. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to see all that God is doing with His painting of me, but what little I can catch a glimpse of sends me straight to His feet in worship.
I’ve typed out what Pastor Visser says because I want you to hear his thoughts on my book and my story. From the author’s keyboard: This man gets it.
In the midst of the ferocity against the message of the Gospel, it’s a relief to know that those of us who are fighting are not fighting alone.
We ended the service last week, you will recall, with what I thought was a very moving testimony by Serena Woods. How she had a very rough upbringing, became a Christian, and then nine years after having been in Christ she failed morally, miserably, and blatantly. And I’ve been reading her book this past week and it’s called ‘Grace Is For Sinners’. And it confirms what my first reaction was when I saw that video. Because when I saw that video, there were three things that stood out. If you haven’t seen it, you can get a dvd of last week’s service, or you can go to our church website, or you can even go to YouTube and search for ‘Serena Woods’ and you will find it.
But when I first saw that video, the first thing that struck me was her comment that after she became a Christian, she put all her past into the farthest reaches of her mind. Do you remember that? And I remember thinking to myself, ‘You’re setting yourself up for failure’ because that is typically what Christians, in many circles, do. ‘I’m a new creation in Christ, the old has gone and I am a new creation.’ And what that is, is a confusion of justification with sanctification.
Justification is an instant process. Sanctification takes time as the Holy Spirit helps us to unfurrow old patterns and behavior. And He helps us to put on new patterns of behavior. You short-circuit that and your past will come to haunt you. Which is why many new believers, a few years down the line, fall away for a season because their inside world has not yet caught up with our outside world. And one of the reasons we emphasize the ministry of healing around here, is to help people become whole to the core of their being.
The second thing that struck me was her deep, deep sorrow for her failure. And when you hear more of her story, you can understand why that was. Because the man that she had the affair with was her best friend’s husband. The affair only lasted three weeks. But when, both, Serena’s husband and this other man’s wife found out about it, they both chose to divorce their spouses. Not only that, but during that three week sexual affair, she got pregnant with his child.
And so now her marriage was broken, they were driven together, eventually married each other, but they alienated every Christian connection that they have had in the past. And the grief was unspeakable.
And the third thing that really struck me was the amazing grace of God. Because as she points out, and this is the back cover text, ‘Our sin doesn’t say anything new about us. Jesus didn’t hang on the cross in case we need him. He hung on the cross because we desperately need Him.’ And part of her mission, and part of her burden, is to try to help God’s people learn how you walk with sinners, not condoning her sin. She never justifies her action or her husband’s action. She has a great deal of grief. But she recognizes that if Jesus didn’t also die for those sins that we commit after we become a Christian, there isn’t any hope for any of us.
When we humble ourselves before God, it is God who will lift us up. -Pastor John Visser; ‘Preparation’; Maranatha Church; Belleville, Ontario
Posted: November 2nd, 2010 |
Filed under:God, life | Tags:grace, personal |
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We all have a story. We have things that we’ve survived. We’ve been the victim and we’ve been the criminal. I can tell you, with intricate detail, about both kinds of pain.
My church asked me to put part of my story on video for a series they’re teaching. I’ve posted it below.
My experience with grace is not found in my ability to move forward after my failure. Though growing is an effect, anyone, who has the will to survive, can move on after personal failure. Your past is always there and healing comes when you can see God in it. Grace, for me, is found in the undeniable knowledge that I can see Jesus clearer now, because of my failure. He’s more than my example, my teacher, or the name uttered at the beginning of my prayers. He’s my ransom. He gave me a gift, an insight. He gave me Himself. And the swirling whisper continues to speak, ‘No one, unbroken by their own sin, can see Me like this.’
God used my failure to show me who He is. His grace relabeled my sin and me. My failure destroyed me, but if not for that death, I would not really live. Grace enables me to be thankful for the hell.
I’m speaking at the Relevant 2010 Conference next week. I’ll be around a lot of people I’ve never met and I don’t talk a lot, so here is my cheat sheet for those wanting to get to know me:
I’m five feet tall.
I’m not shy or stuck up. I’m quiet.
Don’t ask me where I’m from. It’s a long story that starts with my mom being a gypsy, has 11 foster homes in there somewhere and ends up with me saying: ‘I was born in Utah, but never lived there. I’ve lived everywhere, but nowhere long enough to dig in roots. I don’t think I want roots, maybe too much of my mom in me. So, yeah, I’m not really from anywhere, but I live in Missouri for now.’
I’m sitting outside with my coffee and the quiet of all four kids off to school.
Today is going to be a good day. I’ve decided.
It just feels good.
I haven’t been writing in my blog as much lately because my spirit has been quiet. My life is busy, but my spirit is quiet and it’s nice. I don’t write when my spirit is quiet because I think it’s better to not force something. Sometimes silence is best.
Things are taking root. Shifting even.
I’m taking classes, I started working full time outside the home, celebrated my birthday last week and I have four little girls in four different schools. I’m also mentally preparing for a conference I’ll be speaking at in a few weeks. It’s a writers conference that I’m extremely honored to be a part of. I hope it happens more.
So, that’s where I am. Where are you? How are you?
I have to run out the door again. My keys are in my hand.
…let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious. -1 Peter 3:4 ESV
One of the biggest battles I faced while I was healing was in never being able to get away from the fact that I have left a very real trail of pain in my wake. Hurricane Serena. And I had no way of fixing it.
I felt toxic. I was detached from myself. The thinking part of me hated the rest of me. I wouldn’t let people befriend me.
Every once in a while I would feel a sense of ‘want’. I want to go back in time. I want to wake up. I want to be able to pay for it. I want to get away from myself. I want to be a good person.
I couldn’t do anything and I was tortured. I couldn’t make what I did go away. I would have done anything. But, there was nothing I could do. Every single bit of life was dimmed to a faint image and I lived inside a hell I can never adequately explain.
Clinically, I was experiencing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. My memory is very splotchy for that time frame. I can remember what was happening in my spirit, but I cannot remember anything about my physical life. Movies, birthdays, Christmas, my pregnancy, divorce… are lost in the peripheral. I couldn’t sleep. The invading thoughts were too powerful.
I don’t want to get weird, but if I’m being honest, I have to say that something very demonic was having a field day with me. There are a lot of things I can’t adequately explain and this is another one of them. It makes you forget about everything in the human experience. There is a part of you that is connected to Eternity and it’s very seldom that we tap into that. My eternal identity was under attack and there is no fear like that. Even a person in the face of a painful death can still find rest in the fact that the pain is over when death comes. A person whose eternal life is being threatened with painful death can find no comfort. An eternal scream of despair and regret.
You ebb between thoughts of an end only to remember that there is no end. Then there is despair. In order to survive the despair, you grasp for hope in thoughts of an end and the cycle continues. A rat running for her life on a wheel in a cage.
The only reason I am telling you what it was like is to show you the contrast of what may be happening inside someone you know versus what you may think based on the arrogance and selfishness in which they previously acted. I sinned shamelessly. I lied without hesitation. I was heartless, sneaky, reckless and unapologetic. My venomous vanity sunk deep into the heart of people I had legitimately cared about. And that makes it worse. I am not a victim. So don’t give me any excuse just because you’re detached enough to be able to.
People tend to think that those who choose sin are enjoying it. I’m writing to tell you just how ‘fun’ it is.
I believe that if God didn’t care about me, I would’t have been taken to the ‘threshing floor’. I wouldn’t have experienced the unspeakable or dragged into the unmapped. I believe that God let me smell the breath of hell because that’s the only way I would have gotten what He wanted me to get.
This was actually an answer to prayer. I wanted to be pure. For a solid year, long before this happened, I would pray the same prayer every day. “God, please remove anything from my life that is not put there by you.” In another period of my Christian life, I prayed for God to use me. I didn’t care what it was, I just wanted my entire life to be used by Him. I remember feeling the sense of Him asking me if I knew what I was asking for. I wrote in my journal: ‘God wants to know if I have limits to what I’m used for. What If I would never agree to be used in the way He chooses to use me had I been asked?’ I thought about this for a while. It was sobering. But, I agreed completely. I said yes. I wrote a little about it here. I just re-read it and I’m crying.
The fire came. The Builder tore down the poorly laid bricks. Every part of me was sent through the fire and very little was left when I came out.
Remember, there is only one foundation, the one already laid: Jesus Christ. Take particular care in picking out your building materials. Eventually there is going to be an inspection. If you use cheap or inferior materials, you’ll be found out. The inspection will be thorough and rigorous. You won’t get by with a thing. If your work passes inspection, fine; if it doesn’t, your part of the building will be torn out and started over. But you won’t be torn out; you’ll survive—but just barely. -1 Corinthians 3:11-15
I emerged a weak, insecure, lonely, speck of a person with a very poignant message. A message that is so much bigger than I am that it hurts to carry it. I, as a person, am not much to speak of. I keep to myself and struggle with feeling over-exposed. But my sense of purpose is something entirely different. God used my sin to do what, possibly, nothing else could have done. I hate what I did, but it has been turned into something that I would never wish away.
Now, I’m waiting. I want to speak. I want to write. I want to share my eye witness account of Jesus, my ‘testimony’, because that’s how ‘the accuser’ is defeated. He’s defeated by the Blood of the Lamb and our eye witness account of Jesus. So, when you withhold grace from someone, you’re actually witnessing for the other side. You’re with ‘the accuser.’
“Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God.And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony…”-Revelation 12:10-11 ESV
It’s 5am and I’m making breakfast muffins for my kids. Today is the first day of school and everybody is nervous, including me. I think the older I get, the more sentimental I get. Or maybe the older they get, the more I feel like I’m losing them. I have a high schooler for the first time. So, I’m almost positive I’m a cliche.
I’m surprised 5am is being nice to me. I usually don’t get along with mornings. I get close to it at the other end, like staying up until 3am, but not this end. The sun isn’t even up.
My online friend, Jenni Clayville, is hosting an ‘Affair Week’ (actually two weeks). I don’t know if she did this on purpose, but she chose almost every ‘affair’ perspective. (click the names to read their stories) The first day was Justin Davis. He had an affair, hindsight showed him the hole in the accountability part of ‘community’ and is now creating something to fill the hole for others. The second was Trisha, his wife. She literally opens up her journal so you can see her pain and shares her hope. Sarah Markley shared her story of how she and her husband, Chad, had to divorce who they were before her affair. The good and the bad… Cindy Beall added her own story. Including how she was able to make room on her lap for an innocent little boy her husband fathered with another woman. She also made room in her heart for the little boy’s mother. Alece Ronzino opened herself up and told you why she chose to divorce her husband and is healing from the damage. Not an easy thing to do when you’re among ‘survival stories.’ Yesterday, Brian Clayville, Jenni’s husband, shared what it was like for him to not try to sweep his wife’s affair under the rug so they could be ‘normal’ quicker. He waited to say he forgave her until he knew he had so as to not make their connection emotionally cheap and forever wounded.
So, today is my turn. I am the adulterous woman in the worst case scenario. The scenario everyone wants to avoid or survive. Like a disease.
If grace wasn’t real, if the hell wasn’t so aggressive, if the hopelessness wasn’t so terrifying, I would live my life with a buried secret and let everyone think good things about me. The only problem with that is, I know for a fact there are others, like me, out there who are screaming silently to be saved and given another chance. I can’t leave them. I can’t let them feel alone. It was too real for me. Forget about what you think of me, I’m going out there.
Jenni is letting me take up two days on her blog. (I get long winded, so she had to spread me out.) Then, she’ll write her thoughts on my book and host a giveaway. Go check it out and, please, let me know you were there. If you need or want my book, then enter her giveaway. I have it sitting on my desk, ready to put your name on it with my fancy pen.
Writing for the public is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Not the writing part, but the ‘for the public’ part. I’m a very private person. I keep to myself and don’t particularly like a lot of attention. I say ‘particularly’ because there are times when I do, but you know…if it’s good attention. Even then I can only take it in small doses.
Writers, who have a book out or want to be published, have to self-promote the heck out of themselves. ‘Look at me! Listen to me!’ Ugh. We have to build a ‘platform’, build a ‘following’ and (Lord, help me) speak in public (with a microphone!).
I get hives before going out in public. Clicking ‘Publish’ makes me nervous. Sometimes I write at night and schedule my blog to be published in the morning. Then I toss and turn all night and panic in the morning trying to catch it before it goes up. I do video blogs and never watch them once they’re posted.
I’m not good at it. Self-promoting. I think I’m failing at it. I want people to comment on my blogs, but I’m scared of what they’ll say. It’s a double-edged sword, because when they don’t comment I feel like I’ve failed again. I’m not writing for the comments, but that double-edged sword, …you know.
There was a time when I knew, for certain, that God called me to share my story and write what He teaches me. But, there are so many times when I doubt that. Times when I don’t know who is reading or if they’re reading at all.
My story is not an easy one to hear. It’s all about grace. It represents an uncomfortably (but encouraging?) heavy dose of grace. I don’t write so that I can say what everybody else is saying. I write to say what hardly anybody is saying. That means I say things that may be controversial. Or, maybe not controversial, but challenging. Challenging is not easy. Especially for someone who doesn’t like to be noticed and especially doesn’t like to be disliked.
I’m not an ego stroker. I’m not a networker. I’m not too insecure or shy. I’m just private and sort of reclusive. The more I put myself out there in writing, the more I pull back in public.
The way I deal with all of this is by trying to remember that God called me to something that is outside of my comfort zone. I don’t belong to myself anymore. I use the love of writing, the gift of literary gab, to blindly stretch my hands out to reach whoever I can. It’s rewarding at times and raw at others. If it’s not about me, then t’s about lining my will up through obedience even when it feels like it’s for nothing. Trusting it’s for something.
If you want something tangible to take away from my obscure little rant, then take that. More than likely, your calling will be something that takes you out of your comfort zone and makes you feel inadequate. That way God has plenty of room to move because you don’t know how. And half the time, you may not get to see what your work is doing.
I know I offered that up for you, but maybe it’s more for me. Hmmm.
I’ll work on my end to stretch out in this spacious scary public place (this post, for instance). What are you going to do in your own space?
