I am sorry for the ways that Christians have behaved like idiots in your life.

I am sorry for the times they said one thing and did another.

I am sorry for the way you opened up your heart to them, believing they were representatives of a good God, and then they didn’t even really ‘see’ you, and they trampled over you with their agenda to earn badges for God.

I regret, I deeply regret, the hypocrisy that was portrayed and how it has left you with a sour flavor wondering if that is who God really is.

The ways that religion and its man manmade rules were purported as a higher way was wrong.  The things you were told you had to quit or change were told to you by people who did not understand the model of transforming love. They took a role God did not intend for them to take. Their assignment was to love you. In not doing that well, you got hurt.

I wish that had not happened. I wish you had not been hurt.

I am sorry that you were seen as a project that someone else could use to gain approval with God.

I am sorry for the dishonor-for the ways your culture and heritage were not respected. I apologize for the disregard of your personal story and history, and the way you were devalued as an individual.

I am sorry for the judgments; for the times when you were made to feel like a lesser than, or left feeling ignorant because the Christians all seemed to have a certain language they assumed you should know. I am sorry for the times you felt excluded. That is the very opposite of love. I am sorry for the times that ‘punishment’ included not letting you belong if you didn’t ‘behave’ according to their rules. How painful that is!

I just wanted to let you know today, I don’t know your story, but I would like to. When we sit down and talk, I don’t have an agenda. I have done worse things than most people, so it’s easy for me to not judge you. I don’t believe there is a set of rules that transforms me. I think it’s Love. I give you permission to call me out if I get religious. I think if we learn each other’s language we may be friends. I am hopeful that we can learn things from each other. I am sure we will find things to laugh about. I would like to try.

I am a Christian. To me, that means I follow the way of Love. I hope you won’t hold it against me. 

Since the healing part of my journey began, there has always been an external place where the Lord meets me. Different seasons have used different locations. But the premise has always been the same.

“Come. I will meet you there.”

In the Old Testament there is a similar structure around what was called a ‘tent of meeting’.

He has chosen certain shores, certain preserves, certain state parks, and in one season it was a particular parking lot! These past few years it has been a particular zoo. Those folks that know me, know that seeing animals in small spaces does not bring me joy. So it has been a mystery for some time. Why this place? But He shows up. So I go.

Sometimes the way He comes is during the drive, sometimes it is within a certain exhibit. Sometimes it is with wisdom. Sometimes its revelation. Sometimes its with kindness. Sometimes its for intercession. Sometimes He teaches through what I observe.

Recently I was sharing with a friend, the mystery of the zoo location. She laughed. “Of course!”, she said.

I was puzzled. She explained. “All those animals are in captivity. You deal with prisoners all the time. So of course He speaks to you among the captive animals!”

The truth of it was like a light bulb turning on. Of course, indeed! And I suspect, the next time I go, He will want to talk about that, too!

I remember I had just begun to dive into teachings about the prophetic. I was talked into taking a course from a guy named John Paul. The course was titled The Art Of Hearing God. I was arrogant and thought I already knew all about that. Eight years prior, I had begun a journey that included hearing healing words from God. Looking at my childhood, healing words were needed.

(Of course, prior to the season of healing words, I honestly believed if something bad happened to someone, they couldn’t ‘not remember’ it. I even had a story of dysfunction in my hippocampus that neatly explained why I couldn’t remember childhood. It seems like it is when I think I know stuff, that the Lord excels in revealing new things.)

Back to the course. The Art of Hearing God was astonishing. It was a course designed to make growth in this area safe, and offered lots of discernment tools so that hearing the Lord became available to all. I was happily disproved in my thoughts that I knew it all. I was excited and my life in God took on new energy and acceleration. The guy also had courses on interpreting dreams. But I didn’t want to take those. I didn’t even like to dream.

One night, after I had done some of the exercises in the course, I went to sleep. I woke up in the middle of the night. John Paul was sitting at the end of my bed. Knowing he was prophetic, I asked him, where we were on the timeline of humanity. He said, “I am not permitted to say.” Not to be diverted, I asked him where we were in the book of Revelation. He said, “I am not permitted to say.” Hmm. I thought for a minute. Then I asked Holy Spirit why he was there. He looked at me and he asked, “are you training your children in this gift?” I knew he was talking about the supernatural, and about the ability I had to connect in spiritual ways. I said no, I have been too afraid.

He finished what he had come to say. “if you do not train them, the world surely will.” And he was gone.

The intensity of his gaze and his words stayed with me. I took more seriously the charge to help my children understand the nature of our God is supernatural. Was it a dream? Was it a real experience? Was it an angel? I think the bigger question is- did I need to have that all sorted out and understood before I took to heart the message that was brought to me?

There is still so much I don’t understand. But what I have learned is that if it leads me closer to the Lord, and his ways, I don’t always need to have understanding. And through that avenue the Lord has built into me a trust that I did not get in my growing up years. To not understand, but to recognize love. That is what I continue to learn.

For eleven years I was a part of team that went to gatherings on the earth that were not God focused. We went with as little agenda and religion as we could. We went to love the way we had been loved.

Our camp offered a variety of gifts to the community. One of our gifts was to offer words of light, encouragement and healing. That gifting was offered under a MASH style tent, and we worked in teams of three. Greeters for those that came would discern who to sit with which team. I remember a particular tale when a young man named Brit came to sit with us.

The left half of Brit’s hair was dark and curly. The right side of his head was shaved. Alternatively, his facial hair was shaved on the right half, while on his left side, his beard was full. I was the team leader this time, and was training two men that were new that year to our group. We exchanged names and greeted each other. Then Brt said, “I know what I want. It’s not on your menu. Is that ok?”

He went on to explain. Here he was at the festival. His girlfiend wanted to touch his bottom. He felt uncomfortable and ashamed. He had gone to a psychic camp a few blocks away. They had led him in a meditation that had led them to believe he was molested in a different life time. He wanted to know if there was anything we could do.

My soul had opinions on what is appropriate and not. My soul would have tried to correct his thinking to match mine and he would have one more religious hypocrite story to add to his repertoire.

I checked with Father. He was clear. He wanted to love his son. He wanted to use me to do it. He gave me language.

I asked Brit if it was okay to invite the Creator of his anal region to come. He nodded. The tears began. Father came. Father healed. Father loved his son. And Brit knew he had tasted something different. Something indescribably good. Some one who loved without condition.

Honestly by the time he finished his encounter I felt a mother’s affection, and almost patted his behind as he headed out. Watching Father do what he does, what he has done for me, always wrecks me. The two young men I was training came away changed too. Challenged, with new questions for their dad, and new revelation of the size of his love.

I did not have the responsibility to parent Brit once he left the camp. That was not given to me. My job was to create an environment for him to meet the one who created him. Oh, that more people would!

Sometimes, my thoughts are so small. I think I know, because it makes sense to me. One of the lovely things about becoming more humble is that I am actually open to a different type of revelation. It is being teachable in a moment I hear, don’t understand, AND don’t discard.

When I lived on the west coast, I belonged to a spiritual community that gathered in a building that was previously a bar. This group thought outside religious boxes. For fun, we would gather instruments and amplification, and go out to the boardwalk by the ocean. We would worship the Father of Lights with no agenda other than to offer Him what He is due. Sometimes we would repent to the crowds that came to listen, for keeping the party inside the ‘church’. Those years brought life to an area of my heart. Moving in the Light healed what moving in darkness had crippled.

One of the leaders was a guy named Mark. Mark was a punk hooked on heroin and headed for fame in the rock-n-roll industry when Father revealed his love to him. His passion to love God back made him incredibly safe for me. The transformation happening in my heart was so real! It was in those days that the Lord started softening my hardest days by giving me songs. I even shared some of my songs with Mark, on a dorky little cassette tape, risking that he’d make fun of me and talk to others about my stupidness. I remember being afraid the next time I saw him. He came straight towards me. He gently said, he felt like we were kin. I wept later, at the beauty of it. Part of a family that was on the side of Love.

Mark went home, he passed away in 1999.

A few years later, I was driving into a city in the Midwest to go to a gathering of a different spiritual community. I was singing, alone in my car. Then, Mark was in the passenger seat. I knew it was him, although he was not physically in detail there, the way I had known him when he was in skin on the earth. He said he had a message for me from the Lord. He went on to share that every time I worshipped, in heaven it was his gain, because he had sowed into my gift while he was yet on the earth.

Again, I wept. How small are my thoughts, that I would imaging the barrier between heaven and earth to be to very black and white, and understandable to my very small mind.

May he continue to gain today, as I worship. Selah.

I have asked the Lord many questions over the years, since He has grown me in relationship to Himself.

He never minds me asking. He knows which answers I am ready to receive. He knows which answers I cannot yet comprehend. He knows what is in my heart when I ask.

Sometimes, what is in my heart is a demand to know. He knows those are the unyielded parts of the garden of my heart. How else will this territory be discovered unless I ask? Because how I respond to the answer is His method for developing intimacy.

As a healer, I hate to see people get hurt. There was one particular person, a number of years ago, that got hurt when I felt they were my responsibility. Not only did they get hurt, but I did not even know they had gotten hurt. The guilt that I felt was hard to hand over to the cross, where guilt absolves. I kept myself on my own hook, for years. I knew the cross was ‘enough’ to forgive me, but somehow I could not ‘let it go’.

Recently the Lord initiated a conversation with me about it.

“you felt like you didn’t keep him safe”

I didn’t, was my response.

“did I keep you safe?”

I contended that his definition of safety was different than mine. I remembered his wisdom in Matthew 10: 27What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the housetops. 28 Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Instead, fear the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell. 29Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father.…

I argued that his definition of safety was investing in me so that I might live with Him in eternity.

“oh” pause “what if we applied that definition of safety in this situation?”

I thought about that. I have been thinking about that. In this person’s life, I did sow heavily towards truth that made the bridge into eternal life. He brought to mind moments, experiences and teachings. he reminded me of illustrations and teaching and exhortation I had done. His question back to me, if I did indeed keep them safe according to his definition, feels like a nugget I need to examine from many angles. If this is how He sees it…

How many of the places I have carried guilt or shame is because I have not understood the perspective, definitions and currency of heaven?

I am challenged to be larger than my limited human perspective, again. Because when my questions are asked, but not as a demand, I hear and respond differently to his answers.

I remember the day she came. We sat on the gazebo. She had just recovered an incident that had happened to her years before. She could report the details. From a clinical place it made sense to her.

And then there was the disconnect. She certainly could NOT feel anything about this incident. Not the pain and trauma during it, nor the grief that followed. Not the shame /guilt that had kept it hidden all these years. Not the loss that had happened and followed her, costing her relationships and intimacy throughout her life.

So, we sat. I remembered Job’s friends, and how very good they were in friendship to just set, and quiet with their friend in the place where words become useless and interruptions.

It was ten am, on a cloudless day in the Midwest. To the west and north, beyond the old oak, were the farm fields, expanses of land that were vibrant with life. To the south were the woods that rehearse how it was before man, and to the east lay the pond, a 3.34 surface acre of all-things-pond.

I wondered if the Healer would come on the wind. Or with the birds. Or in squirrel antics, or any of the other innumerable way he comes in his time. And I just sat with my friend. We all need someone who can hear the terrible and still want to be with us. I can do that. He has done that for me.

The bullfrogs began their chorus. It was an odd chorus for the morning, the song they make by taking turns with their sounds and rhythms. I watched as the first tear fell from the eyes of my friend. I knew then that the Healer had added his sound into the bullfrog chorus. He was infusing the comforts and permissions she needed to safely feel. I felt the pain come first, up and out, escorted by Wind to He-who-carried-all-pain-to-reconcile. Some trauma followed. Grief was mingled in. I watched as her brain and heart began to reconcile in the impossible place, but not without hope, because healer was there. Sometimes the privilege I have to witness his work in the hearts of men is beyond language.

She came stuck. She left free.

And I am undone again, as I remember, the power of the cross.

In the end, it will all be finished.
It was declared to be so long ago.
That alignment is coming.

So, everything that was not healed, everything that was not aligned, everything that was remained untransformed by love will end. Sin, rebellion, iniquity, covenants and curses will no longer be causal.

Eternity is the completion.

For those of us who pursue inner healing, the question that comes is –why?
If it is all going to get fixed anyway, why try so hard here? Yes, it is appropriated by the cross. So what if it is not in evidence yet? It will be.
My answer is this- it is in me to pursue. God has written a passion for wholeness into my code. For me, there is deep fulfillment when a new layer of the majesty he intended my to know through the cross is uncovered.

That does not mean it will be in you, to pursue the way or in the depth I do. For you it may be overwhelming. Or feel unreachable.
It does mean you must find what is in YOU to do, and do it with all the passion you have!

Life is the gift. Finding the reason that is written inside YOU to live it is a drive best found. Trying to live someone else’s reason results in jealousy and despair.

Surely the reason he gave you is just as legitimate as the reason he gave me. And if both of us are running the race we were designed to run, we are both richer.
It is also important to have friends who run outside the path you are called to run. That was we can grow beyond what we know. And the larger picture gives us a plumb line for our own path.

Stay true to who you are. Run the path you were born for. And when your pace is steady and the terrain is familiar, encourage others in their path. And when the path is obscure, or the terrain has become uncertain, rest and receive from others.
In this way we will all finish our race. In this way we can all win.

I gave up my rights, this time in San Diego.
I had been there three days and not seen a sunset yet. The fourth day, I arranged to have it. I movede my schedule so I could go, alone, to the shore to be with him.
I associate sunsets with intimate moments with the Lord, where he says something profound, of love or of wisdom, and it becomes one with me as I process it in the weeks and months, and sometimes years, following.
Of course I want to be known as one who followed God faithfully, once I am gone. I expected, in fact, perhaps even demanded it as my right before the Lord for choosing the righteous path. He was bound, in my thinking, to make sure I was defended by him, in reputation, after my body had stopped.
I figured, an hour before sunset, to drive to a place by the shore where he has met me before.
I was slightly disturbed when he spoke before I left the hotel- he said, “I go to prepare a place for you”. And I got a picture of the tidepools in Point Loma. But I knew. It was valentine’s day weekend, as well as president’s day weekend and the weather was warm- the beach would be crowded. So off towards the tidepools I went.
Yes the earth bound spirit of my stepdad had made himself known to me the previous days. No, I did not want to do an eviction. Yes I would do it if God came so strong that it would be disobedience to not evict- and yes, I preferred not to facilitate that eviction. The Lord did not push me. He did not loose anointing for it. He is so patient with me.
I got to the tidepools at 4:45. Sunset was at 5:30.
Lo and behold, they close at 4:30. And the question- was that what God said? It comes as clearly as it did in the garden for Eve. Along with the enemy accusing God, there are the self doubts of my brain and my soul.
Quite by extraordinary miracle, I have learned to recognize and combat these. I am his child and know I have grace when I miss it. So I turned around and thought to park in Ft. Rosecrans National Cemetery. My mom and step dad are laid to rest there. It overlooks the ocean on the west side. I knew the view of the sunset would be magnificent. And as I drove the ¼ mile to it, I heard again- I go to prepare a place for you. I enter the cemetery and I realize- this is of when he spoke. These words apply to when he leaves and when he returns. They apply to my leaving here. They are current and truth in all of the time of my existence here. This is not all there is. He went, he has gone, he is going, it is an eternal preparation he is doing for me, and in me by my knowledge of it.
Demanding myself to be remembered a certain way might actually impede what the Lord wants to do with others around my death- the way of it, the time of it, and how it looks.
And I yield. I yield for my passing to be anything more or anything less- than what God chooses for His good. My times are in his hands.
I remember the story my brother in law told me the day before. The guy he knew had cancer. When he died, in his autopsy, no trace of cancer was found. He actually got healed. But he had liver failure because of the cancer, before it was healed and that ended his days. My brother in law thought that was not right. He should have lived! But was the testimony of healing for God, or for the person? The man’s passing did not diminish, but rather emphasized, that the healing belonged to God.
And I realize, I had demanded this sunset from the Lord. And all sunsets belong to him.
Repentance came. I yielded to his beautiful truth. My step-dad was waiting. He had been concerned about how his daughter Paula would do, if he left, but he relinquished that responsibility to Father as I witnessed. And he went partially home, during the changing of the guard that occurs on the earth when transitions are witnessed. I heard the great sigh of change. He paused, there, in the Way. And there were others, who fumbled around in the darkness, that he was allowed to help home. It was justice for him. It was the timing of God. And it was holy.
Following him, it costs my own way. It defies my understanding. It rearranges my priorities. It often takes me where others avoid going.
But the beauty that comes, in the rightness of his timing, always enlarges me. More importantly, he gets more glory from his time (my time) here. He becomes history in me. He makes everything beautiful in its time. If today you hear his voice, harden not your heart.

I think of the Old Testament prophets. They experienced God once in a while, and for the rest of the time there was the law.

Then came Yeshua. He came to fulfill all the law and transcend us into grace.

I am in 1 Corinthians 15 today, reading how the sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law.

Anytime we operate with the premise that we only have the law we are implying that Yeshua never came to give us a way that transcends the law.

Sometimes his ways even make the law void.

But each of us have different level of encounter, and it is when the encounter comes that law takes its proper secondary place.

Encounter is the place where trust transcends understanding.

Law is the area where one can trace back to the roots to understand.

In my life there has been a great undoing of understanding. That is my gain. When I am asked to do something without understanding why, there is no hesitation in me if I feel the breath of the Lord. I may have questions later, perhaps even disagreements to work through, but I marvel at the ability he has gained within me to say ‘go’ and see me ‘go’.

I would be among the persons least likely to trust. Everyone in my family of origin sexually abused me. Betrayal was used to make me the keeper of secrets. the theology of satanism I was taught included a distant God that did not care and had given me over to the powers that harbored evil intent towards me.

I broke on my own. I was broken intentionally. I was sold. I was tortured. I believed my existence was for, through, and from the cult. I was brain washed. My mind was controlled through trauma based programming.

For me, the idea of life that transcends the law is liberty. The One who leads me in waters I do not understand has proven His love. I would gladly go with Him. I have learned to trust.

I think about coming from God, who is love, and being sent into law, which is death’s sting. I think about how people get religious when all they have in terms of power is the law, and they perceive that law keeps them from sin. And I read that sin’s power is the strength of the law. And I understand. Slave mentality.

Without encounter, if I desire God, all I have left is the thought that if I follow his law he is required to save me.

But to have encounter, one must trust that their life does not always get to demand to understand. It is a yield of who owns the life, me or my God.

I consider that the counter of law which leads to sin which allows death a sting, is love which leads to trust which allows grace that transcends death.

In my father’s house are many mansions, if it were not so, he would have told us. (John 14) Where he goes, he will come again from, to receive us. Where he is, we also may then be able to be.

Then we will know where he goes, and we will know the way.

We are in the process of that coming to pass.

And he makes everything beautiful in its time.