"Little Girl, get up!"

I had my entry for this week almost completed but then ….God. I apologize ahead of time for the length of this blog, its more like reading a small novella. Then again maybe I don’t apologize, maybe one person will read this , who too has been trapped in a season, for entirely  far too long. What ever, it is what it is, and I just had to get it all spilled out onto the pages, for my soul and spirit are overwhelmed.  There is so much I want to include and I get a little caught up in the details.

 So, as I sit here with my warm cup of coffee, looking out at the beautiful fall view over the lake here in Old Hickory Tennessee, both courtesy of Patty and Brian Halstead, a thought comes to my mind. These beautiful trees with their gorgeous reds, golds and various tones, which fully represent the hues we have come to expect in every Fall scene, are more representative of the season of life that I have been in for a while and am currently in. A season that I am certain the Lord is now bringing me out of.  The words new start, fresh fire, fresh wind keep coming to me over and over. New beginnings…that is the word that has been confirmed to me over and over again for weeks now and just this very morning was confirmed once again.

My last course required the reading of two books. Women Who Lead by Mary Paul was the second of the two. The previous book, like all of my previous text books, was torture to get through. Honestly, I did the minimally required amount and on the first, I just did not even get past chapter three. Most are historically based and while I like history, there is just way too much to absorb fully in such a short period of time. Dreading having to read a second book in a three week period, I procrastinated as long as I could and then the beginning of the book made me want to shout! Before reading the first paragraph, the very first words in the introduction “Little girl, get up!” were words the Holy Spirit spoke straight to my heart. I worshiped in the first line, I wept in the first line and I was healed in the first line.

For years now, I have struggled in my call, knowing that God had called me to this "thing". This thing that made no sense, this thing that came out of brokenness. The brokenness that has enveloped me like a dark, damp cloak that I have not been able to fully shake, has been a constant companion for far too long.  The enemy had stolen so much from me and though I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Lord’s hand was on me through this entire time, every step forward was hard fought, like walking in deep mud. The deep mud that grabs at your feet and legs and sucks you back in a little further with every step until it finally exhausts you to the point of submission and you surrender to its clutches. I think of the remains found in tar pits. Surely somewhere in the beginning there was a natural instinct to fight and survive, to do whatever it takes to press through and come out on the other side. Yet some get stuck. That was me, I was stuck. Drowning in the muck and mire, while all around me there were voices telling me what to do, scriptures to cling to, sermons to listen to, all well-meaning and an essential part of the healing process, it was not until that one voice said to me directly, “little girl, get up” that I could rally the strength to push one last time to stand up, to rise, to be resurrected.

Last week was one of tremendous battle in my home. The enemy of our souls hit hard and dirty and fought mightily to destroy me early in the week, speaking into my ear, every insecurity and fear and all the guilt and shame rushing back into me like a tsunami. Months of prayer, meditation, studying were all in forgotten in an instant with the words out of the mouth of the one the enemy uses to torment me most. When the enemy’s assuage against me was not successful, that spirit then attacked the only thing I possess that means anything to me any longer, my children.

In July of 2012, I stood before our assembly of at least 500 of my peers and leaders, knowing already the call that the Holy Spirit was leading me too, and with trepidation, I with a heavy heart uttered the words to admit to and confess the emotional affair that I had been involved in that was my portion of the downfall of my marriage. Knowing full well, that one day these men and women in positions of leadership in my district would be my contemporaries, I had no other choice, but to obey the voice of the Holy Spirit that said "speak the truth".  When all was said and done, a gentleman walked up to me that evening, I did not know him, just another layperson in the crowd, he said to me “the Lord wants me to tell you to stand, stand up”. Years later, I still will, from time to time, receive a word from the Lord in the most unusual places; the evangelist that says “thank you for standing, continue to stand” , the layperson who will quote,  Ephesians 6:13-14, and the random sermon. My stand began with Ezekiel 37 in the Valley of the Dry Bones, when I received the promise, before my world fell apart, that God was going to breathe new life in my old, tired, dead, dried-up, and wasting bones.

So as I read the first line of the book by Mary Paul, I felt that fresh wind from the Holy Spirit, saying to me “This is what I have been trying to say, this is what I want you to do. It’s finally time to get up!” Most of us know well ahead that there is a specific call on our lives. While every Christian is called to be carriers of the Good News and stewards of service, there are those of us that are placed in positions to be used for assignments divinely designated to impact in broader fields of harvest. The need to share the Gospel goes beyond the telling of the neighbor and there is a deeper sense that there is more to be done.  That is the only way to say what I feel. That bubbling up inside of me there is something, anticipating, effervescent and waiting (impatiently, I might add) to burst forth and be bigger than myself.  For me it is a tangible thing, I feel it, I hear it, I see it and I crave it.  I sit in my cocoon in a position of slumber, of crouching; of helplessness (and sometimes hopelessness) agonizingly anticipating the moment that the Spirit calls me forth to be whatever it is that I am called to be. 

Mary Paul states in her book, “Little girl, get up” is the deep call of God with the good news of the resurrection to all women who have been bleeding out like the hemorrhaging woman, with no place to go, as well as those who are slowly dying in a limiting state of privilege like Jairus’s daughter.”  Oh my! How I gets this statement. For the last 18 years, I was involved in music ministries in varying degrees. Singing in choir at our local church, performing trios with our minister of music, traveling with various evangelists and leading worship, performing in our own full time Southern Gospel mixed quartet and eventually singing trio with our oldest son, I traveled throughout the southeast sharing the message of Christ in song. Thousands fell under the sound of our voices and yet in our privilege, I continued to walk in the shallows of our calling until the enemy slowly and subtly lulled me into his snare to slumber. The guilt of our fall, what it did to our children, to our extended families, to the church family and to the thousands of anonymous faces, had me “bleeding out”. I could not get the guilt to subside and single-handedly carried it around like a martyr.

“Sometimes the call is to rise up to the fully reconciled relationship of love with our God”, I understand this fully as well. Being raised in a sporadic Calvinist background, born into the charismatic movement which the Baptist Church desperately tried to disassociate itself from at the time, the God I grew up hearing about was angry and vindictive and was constantly searching for some reason to damn my soul to hell, as if I didn't give him enough reason already.  There was little talk of the love of God with the exception of Christmas and Easter, you know the feel good Holy days. The bible stories were just that, tales of days long ago and seemingly so far-fetched that if they could indeed be true, surely this God that the preacher spoke of every Sunday, had given up on humanity since rescuing Daniel from the lion’s den.  It has taken quite a journey for me to reconcile my guilt and shame and fully acknowledge that the One truly unconditional love is available to me. My father and grandfathers having died when I was still quite young, being abandoned my first husband after only a few short years and then once again being abandoned by the love of my life, the enemy whispered constantly to me that I was unlovable and that therefore, God’s love and acceptance was conditioned on how “good” I could be.

Oh how exhausting it is to constantly be performing.  I can imagine the exhaustion of the hemorrhaging woman. In her illness, I’m certain she performed daily. At first she performed that act of seeing physicians, trying to hide her illness, then desperately seeking more and more medical attention, to cling with any hope to anyone with whom she had had intimate relationships. Did she have a spouse, children, a mother and father, that she could no longer touch, caress or even come into their presence because, despite her helplessness in the matter, she was considered unclean? In 2009 I spent a six month period of time, bleeding for 25 days out of every month, due to a condition called hyperplasia. With the discovery of this illness and another separately occurring disorder, the decision was made to perform an immediate, partial hysterectomy. In the months prior to the surgery, I would become weaker and weaker with each passing month. Fatigue has always been a companion of mine, I do not every remember a time when I have ever awoken feeling fully refreshed. But to understand this to a little degree is to be completely overwhelmed at the thought of suffering with bleeding for twelve years.

The woman was desperate for relief; the very language of the gospels implicates her exasperation. She pressed through the crowd, implying that she had to use great force, but then the woman says, “If I can just touch the hem of his garment”. The hem being the lowliest portion of his attire, meaning that she would have been risking her very life to press through this mass of pushing, pulling and grabbing humanness, on her hands and knees. In a place of supplication, very much like the death slumber of Jairus’s daughter, she was as low as she could possible get, and yet she still had the hope that if she reached up, not even to the man, but just to his garment, his power would make her whole. 

 I believe in both stories God meant to reach human kind with the message, “at your lowest point there is hope, look up”. In that one phrase, “Talitha cum”, my hope was restored, my spirit resurrected and my soul refreshed. I like to use a term called “Godisms” these days, yes I made it up, but there is no other way to explain these unexpected nuggets that come from nowhere and reaffirm everything the Holy Spirit has been speaking to me. This one line spoke to me in ways that left me weeping with tears, springing finally from that joy that had so long eluded me.  The joy that in my soul, slumbered, hovering at the brink of death, that joy that with two words once again is able to leap forth to tell the world what the Savior has done for me.  

Many of the studies I have participated in, many of the sermons I have watched recently and the advice that has been given to me was to praise my way through this and out of this.  In my own experience it has been praise has been the thing that has kept the smallest glimmer of hope alive inside of the shell that I had become.

 Jentezen Franklin, in his book The Spirit of Python, states “Because when we begin to praise the Lord chains are broken, prison doors are opened, the fog of depression evaporates and fears back up. Our worship is a powerful thing. Expressing praise to Jesus is denying Satan the very thing he wants most.”  Mary Paul demonstrates that it is not so much Satan, but our own rebellion that ushers us into oppression. She attests that is not so much by one individual choice but the hardening of our hearts a little at a time that lulls us into the slumber of death. I would whole-heartedly agree with her statement “she has listened to no voice. She accepts no correction. She does not trust in the Lord. She does not draw near to God”. Paul could very well have been writing about me in the year of 2011, just prior to my beginning my indiscretion.

Roll back the curtain of memory now and then, Show me where you brought me from and

Where i could have been. Just remember I'm a human and human's forget, So remind me, remind me dear Lord

Sunday morning, I awoke as I frequently do, with a song that the Holy Spirit placed in my heart. Remind Me Dear Lord was the song this morning. I began the morning believing that the Holy Spirit was taking me back into the past to show me some error of my way. For many people strolling down memory lane is just that, a stroll down memory lane. For me, it is like swimming in shark infested waters, there is always the possibility that something can go terribly wrong. There are so many painful memories juxtaposed with the good, I have to constantly remind myself, as Jentezen Franklin says, to "not let the bad, eat the good".

Several years ago, a reoccurring theme in movies was time travel. It is for people like myself that in God's mercy time travel is not possible. I will already relive a moment over and over, out guilt, frustration, desperation, I will replay the scene constantly wondering what could have been done differently. It is this personality flaw in me that often causes me to sink quickly and deeply in the mire of the past. It is this flaw that invites the old friend despair to come and sit a while, to take up residence in my mind and inhabit its innermost corners.

In the last couple of years, I have been privileged to meet and get to know many truly gifted people. Song writers who can sit down to a piano, play a couple of notes and within minutes have written a song that speaks and ministers to millions. Artists that can use their media and talents to encourage the masses and so adequately express the love of the Father, yet with each there is often a season just before extended periods of creativity, when depression and despair attack from out of no where, when hopelessness shrouds their days and nights. Scattered throughout the Bible there a multiple examples of this same pattern. Elijah, having fought so valiantly against Jezebel and the prophets of Baal, once having victory, entered into a cave, so depressed, feeling so alone and hopeless that God himself had to send him the very little food he ate. David often battled periods despair, just before great victories.

So as I sang the familiar words to the song, I was afraid, once again, that I was being transported back to glean yet another lesson that had not been learned before, while wading through deep waters of regret. Oh how merciful God is. "Little girl, get up" once again rang in my spirit. God so mercifully said to me, "I want you to see have far you have come."   As I lay there in the early morning hours, once incredibly painful memories played out in my mind once again, yet this time there was a strength and hope that stirred inside me that had not been there before. It was as if God was saying, "I've been there all along, I've held you in my hand, you do not have to fear the unknown, I will be there as well."

The enemy has wanted me dead. There is no question in my  mind, this is so. He has continued to assault my mind and body to wear me down, to give in, to succumb to his plan... But God has had a plan all along. Now I do not subscribe to the fundamentalist thought that God is in control of everything. My God would not cause pain on purpose. It was not God that caused my father to die early, not God that caused my first husband to emotionally and physically abuse me, not God who cause my multiple miscarriages, not God that has allowed these migraines for twenty five years, not God who brought about the destruction of my marriage. It took me a very long time to understand that this world was placed in chaos when man fell. Ron Carpenter, in his sermon “Glory”, describes how that through the evil that caused man to fall, evil entered the world. I said very early on in my journey that I chose to believe that my God did not see all of this coming. I could not have believed in a God who had caused all of this, but yet chose to cling to the God that held me while evil came at me in an onslaught.

Last January, while in a season of fasting, God graciously revealed to me some answers this side of Heaven. I have this habit of trying to fill every moment my kids are not with me. It is self-preservation to an extent, that I keep busy when they are not with me. This particular Saturday  morning I had many plans to busy myself and keep my mind occupied, however, the enemy wanted me down and depressed that morning and I awoke to a migraine yet again. At 5:45 I awoke to the familiar pain that begins over the left eye and sears its way through the skull and brain to the back of my head, and then wraps its tentacles around the base of my skull, squeezing the muscles so tightly that it causes ridges along the scalp. Then the fingerlings creep down into the spine into every nerve in the spinal column and feels as if the pain is attempting to wring out the spinal chord of every drop of life giving fluid. It was this pain that I awoke to that morning as I do so many other mornings. I immediately went to my devotions that morning. and discovered the words that have become my life verse. "Satan has asked to sift you as wheat from the chaff, but I have prayed for you. that your faith  may not fail, and when you turn once again, strengthen your brothers".  Medication taken, I drifted back into deep slumber that only medication can bring to me. I awoke again a couple of hours later, the pain still present, I again went to a devotion, and there once more was Luke 22:31-32. One more dose of medication taken, and again sleep came. All day long, I drifted in and out of sleep, and all day long I continued to get this same verse. Satan had asked to sift me as wheat, to destroy me, to destroy my testimony, and Christ himself had prayed for me!  I knew immediately that there was more for me to do.

This past Saturday evening the owner of one of my prayer groups on Facebook, Janice Le, posted a question to the group. Did anyone else feel like they were coming into a new season? The response was encouraging and something akin to sad, so many broken people, so many desperate circumstances, so many women going through incredibly difficult season, with two things in common, 1) all had been in the darkest times of our lives and 2)all felt a sense that the seasons were ready to change and usher us into something bigger and better than the season before this. Amongst all the evidence of dead situations, we all still clung to hope in our Lord. 

So as I climbed out of the soft warm bed this Sunday morning, into the cool early morning air and began to get dressed for the day, I felt such encouragement. I knew that I had to get to the house of God . The old enemy tried his best to get me stirred up, (poor ole idiot has tenacity, I will give him that), once again using my kids to try to discourage me. My daughter tried her best to convince me that she did not need to go to church, and I do not know how to make her understand that the enemy uses these "little tricks" to lure us away from the Holy Spirit. Finally, we stepped out into the crisp, cool fall air and headed up to Hendersonville for church.

As I walked into the church the atmosphere was charged with the presence of the Holy Spirit and I knew instantaneously, that in this moment, this is where I was supposed to be. I have not felt such freedom to worship in far too long. Back in July, Amanda and Aaron invited me to the church they were planting just outside of Nashville. I had been in Nashville several times, since then, but had not had opportunity to attend church there yet. Walking into the building, my son who has been even more clingy if possible, since the divorce, agreed to go to the children’s department  with no argument ( a miracle in itself!) and my daughter very unhappily sat down beside me.

The praise and worship time washed over me like a balm, calming and invigorating at the same time. Amanda began to speak at the time before the offering and read from the account of Jabez. How even his name had been a curse and he prayed for God to not only prosper him, but to enlarge his territory. And then he prayed for God to keep him from evil, asking for God’s hand and His heart. Oh how precious to know that we can ask for and receive God’s hand and heart! That is what I long for. To be in the center of his will, to have His heart and be guided by His hand all the days of my life.

Then Aaron began to preach, and oh can that boy preach! His mama is proud and should be, lol. He spoke out of 2 Samuel, how the Ark of the covenant represented God’s presence and how when it was captured David knew he had to get it back, how Eli fell dead at the knowledge that the presence of the Lord had left them. This is what happens with us as well, when we walk out from under the Grace into sin, when we ignore God’s instruction and walk in our own path, when we are intentionally disobedient, we are as dead men. Though God will never leave us or forsake us, we can walk out of His presence.

Every song sang, every word of the service just more confirmation of all that the Holy Spirit has been speaking to me for weeks on end.  I left feeling something I have not felt in so very long…joy.

Now if you know anything about me, one of the things you know is that I am not a morning person by any stretch of the word. I awoke this morning to my 5 am alarm, which is highly unusual, perhaps it was the incessant barking of my grand-dog Harlow, that rousted me from my slumber most of all. Whatever the reason, I arose at 5, dressed warmly, and drove to the church for the 5:45 prayer meeting. Because, I know very little about the area, I had to rely on my GPS (Backroads Betty) to guide me, apparently she knew little of the area too, and I pulled up in the parking lot about 10 minutes late. All was well as the Holy Spirit was already there, and I got there just in time for the corporate prayer. My goodness, once again the spirit was moving and I felt the spirit speak to me, “you are right where I want you to be”.  Visions were shared and God was exalted. 

I have had a hard time as of late, in that yet another relationship has come to an end, amicably, but it is hard to let people leave your life, even when you know they are only there for a season. And since this friend has been in my life to bring about other Divine appointments, it is even harder to see them go. But Aaron had a word this morning that I know was just for me, once again, new beginnings. That a new season is being ushered in and the old has past away, even what was good is to be left in the past and in the new season, God will bring about His purpose.

So it is with renewed hope, renewed joy, renewed peace that I write to you today my friends. To share with you that there is hope, there is a God who sees you in the blackness of your night. That Jesus came and died so that His blood would be the atonement for all our sins and that His resurrection power can be alive in you; both, giving life to new dreams, new visions and new seasons.  I share with you now the words that will usher in my new season, my season where God will enter me into His presence and the fullness of His purpose for me, a purpose far greater than myself. The words I will claim as my anthem, that will forever be a reminder of the resurrection power of Christ in my darkest season, when all seemed  lost for so long and only smallest the glimmer of hope survived in the deadness of my circumstances. I will say it as a mantra and as a prayer. I will carry it in my spirit as testimony to the strength the Holy Spirit has instilled in me. Talitha Cum! Little girl, get up!