When Fear Won't Release It's Grip

 

I know it's difficult living life when much of the time fear is our companion. I know its grip can be intense, at times. I know fear can chain you to what caused it in the first place. I also know we imprison ourselves by allowing it to rule areas of our lives, and once we've conquered it for the time at hand, doesn't mean we'll never face it again. So, how do we release ourselves of the locked room in our brain that constantly keeps us alert to what created the fear in the first place? Good question!

Some say. "Just trust God." Well...I DO trust God, but please don't ever say that to someone that has lived through hell and are possibly still there. I trust that God has me. I trust that He is my true Father. I trust that He cares about everything I go through. I trust that at the end of my journey, it will be to Him I return. I also trust this is my battle, that He equips me to win. He won His battle, so we could win ours. When we say "Just trust God" to someone struggling, has become an easy way out of helping someone in the middle of a battle (in my opinion). What if we said, "Share your struggles with me. I will prepare you to fight them, and find you a place of rest while you are contending with this." It's basically the same thing as saying trust God. Just a little more detailed about how. When the Israelite children came to the land God had promised them, He also told them there would be giants to fight, but that He had equipped them to do battle. While they were circling the wilderness (for 40 years!), He provided for them. But once they got to the Land of Promise, God expected them to do their own fighting in order to live their lives by whatever their hands could provide. He never left them, but equipped them to do their own work.

Granted, it seems at times He miraculously steps in and switches things up on our behalf. But, mostly (in my opinion), He wants US to overcome the "demons" of our past, present, & future. Just think about it for a minute. If you ran to your child with every little problem they faced, and said, "Don't worry baby, you can do whatever you want, because I will erase the problem. I will take care of this." What sort of person do you think they would grow to be? Certainly one without tools to overcome whatever came their way. But, if we walk through the problem WITH them...not FOR them, then they would learn how to overcome any challenge they faced. 

True. Some things are bigger than we are, and we need someone (like a strong dad, or mom, or close friend), to right the ship, on occasion. But if we have the example of how, but never have to fight our own battles, I fear the thing that has chained us up will only become more powerful.

God has given us the necessary blueprint for overcoming any challenge we face. We can't just ignore the problem and it will go away somehow. We must face whatever is causing a disruption in our lives.  "Stand your ground." "Do not be fearful." "I will be with you." We can win any battle that rages in our mind. And when we do, we will find that "Trouble produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope never disappoints." ~Romans 5: 3 & 5 

So, yes...we may run to those who know a way through, but when we run to the Father of all, we not only find a way through, but we find an unrealized peace we didn't think we'd find. It's then that we understand that many of our battles come from a mess stored inside our brains of days gone by. We have to quieten that noise and agree to "do it afraid"! Be strong. Be brave, for it is the Lord your God that goes before you to do battle. ~II Chronicles 20:17

This one is for me...

As always, here you will find me...in Mary's World

Road Rage & The Big Bad Wolf

Last nights road rage event still haunts my mind. I'm able to forget it while doing other things, but once I stop, or get in the car to go somewhere, it's up close and personal, once again. I allowed the world to know of it by posting on FaceBook, which I swore I'd never do. Too many posts about every little thing that happens, and it gets quite boring. To be honest...

I've been looking into the situation (a bit), today, as time allowed. And many of my FB friends have given excellent advice, as well! Still, I wanted to see what the law enforcement community recommended. 

Someone that goes by the name of Pam Shadel Fischer, and holds the title of Senior Director of External Engagement with the Governors Highway Safety Association, says, "It's like the Wild West out there, and it's just unacceptable." Law enforcement officers tell her "There are so many angry drivers, road rage aggressiveness, people going at incredibly high rates of speed and people being really unpleasant to each other,” she said. “It is very concerning.”

Not to belabor this, I'll just leave you with what little I have found.
Friends from FB: 

1) Keep doors locked and windows up. 
2) If you are headed home, make sure they aren't following you. If necessary, pull into a police station parking area, until they drive on by. Then later go the opposite direction, in case they are waiting on up the street. 
3) Carry a taser/flashlight with you, that can be used as either. You can buy a long one that is like a nightstick and if they try to grab it, it will zap them. It also has a very loud noise when it goes off.

And this from the internet...
How to respond if you’re being targeted: 
If you’re on a multilane road, move out of the angry driver’s way. You could turn off the road to get away, said Fremin, the retired Houston police captain, but you shouldn’t pull over. “If you pull over and stop, they’re going to pull over and stop,” he said. “That’s what they’re wanting you to do.” If you do end up in a scenario where someone approaches your car, lock the doors, lay on the horn and call 911. Don’t get out of the car, Fischer said.

You should also call 911 if you’re being followed. “Tell the dispatcher you have an aggressive road rage driver that’s following you, and the dispatcher is going to start quickly relaying that information” to an officer, Fremin said. Don’t hesitate to involve the authorities, he added. “It’s just a very dangerous issue we have happening right now,” and it’s best not to take any chances.

(copied and pasted from the Washington Post...an article written on April 19th of this year) If you’re being pursued by a rageful driver, resist engaging in any way. “You don’t want to respond to their aggression with your own aggression,” Fischer said. “Absolutely don’t make eye contact, and refrain from gesturing. If you show your frustration, it’s going to escalate even more.”

I hope you never have to experience this, but if you do, knowledge is power...

As always, here you will find me...in Mary's World
P.S. How does the Big Bad Wolf fit in here? I have no idea. It just sounded like a good attention getter...😂

Facing the Darkness: Where It All Began...Volume 1

If you haven't read the Preview edition of this story, it may make this entry a bit more understandable. It was posted in January, so if you'd like, just search for the January post, then come back to this one. 

This may be the hardest part of the telling of my life's journey. Exposing the life I lived before surrendering to Christ. Yes...even worse than the physical & mental beatings I took for 4 and 1/2 very long years. And that is why I am having a difficult time remaining faithful to the telling of this story, and have decided to give a little more insight to the time spent in my first marriage, before moving into the years of choice. Let's pick up where we left off in January, but heading back, as if looking in a rear view mirror... 

I suppose one could say the beginning of anything would be birth. But I'm on a mission of shining a light in the dark places that unfolded in this life, as I journeyed back to the light. The light I had yet to walk in, but I knew was there. My purpose for telling these stories is to give others hope in their journey that may be filled with questions, with fear, with hopelessness. When one has been blinded by fear & hate, the darkness becomes home and the only familiar place that will in turn, bind them. As if they were in chains, without any hope of escape.

As a child, I was sexually molested by a male family member. Occasionally, he would try to get me to go with him to our barn loft only a hundred feet, or so, from our house. He "wanted to show me something." I felt it weird that he wanted to hold my hand as he led me to a place I learned to fear. Had it not been for a very protective sister, it could have been so much worse. It is said that one cannot be in two places at the same time, yet she sure did try. I don't think anyone else was aware this was happening...just my protector. She also had been violated by an older brother, so she knew what to watch for, but it just wasn't something you ever would want to talk about. Especially when coming from a large Christian family with roots deep in ministry.

Later, once I had graduated high school, I married the first guy that asked me. He would become my second, but much worse, abuser within the first two months of marriage. We had moved out of a cleaned up shed that was on his parents property located in Peoria, Oklahoma. We slept there, but ate at his parents because we had nothing to cook with, clean with, or bathe with. It was a shed. 

He had been hired by a tire and lube company in Pryor and so we packed our suitcases and left. The first time there was physical abuse came on a day I had laid down for a nap. I slept through the time I was suppose to pick him up, and since he had left the car with me to go for groceries, he had no way of getting home. The anger started the moment he saw me. It didn't matter to him why I wasn't there on time, it was the fact I "did nothing all day" while he worked to support us. It started with a slap across the face, followed by an immediate hug and begging forgiveness. He didn't mean it, didn't know why he did it, would never do it again. Crying...whatever it took for me to give him another chance. Then he began blaming me for his outbursts. If you would just...if you didn't always...if you would just focus on making me happy. It was all about him being abused, not him being the abuser. Many were the nights I took a beating from his hands, his body. He would throw me on the bed or the floor, straddle my chest and begin with a choke hold as he questioned me about things I had no idea what he was talking about. He would let up for a minute, still crushing my chest with his body, slap my face from side to side, then back with the choke hold. Many times he would choke just long enough for me to either completely pass out, or just to the place I was whispering for him to please stop, because I couldn't breathe. I blame those terrifying experiences for a loss of memory of certain time frames in my life.

We eventually moved to Baxter Springs, Kansas. That's where he became unleashed, as it were. Usually he was drunk when the beatings happened. But not always. He was a jealous guy, and if there was any remote possibility of betrayal he could imagine in his head, he would go into a rage. I couldn't look at another guy, speak to another guy, or come within close proximity of another guy, without him being certain I was having an affair. Going to the grocery store was like running a race. I had to be back within 30 minutes or it was interrogation time. He was a very angry man, and I was terrified he would carry out the threats made of killing me and my family if I ever decided to leave him. "I WILL find you," he had said. That, along with beginning to believe his lies that the beatings were my fault, was why I stayed with him as long as I did. Four and a half long years. I was so afraid. Terrified of him, actually, never knowing if tomorrow would come for me, because he had gone too far and I had slipped from this life into the next.  

There are so many stories I could tell you of day-to-day living with this guy. From being forced to do his bidding, to watching him with other women he would bring home to parade in front of me. To mocking me, belittling me. But when in public, he was the nicest guy you'd ever hope to meet. Everyone thought he was the one to look up to as a role model. He was loved. Except for the times he wasn't. Those times were filled with drinking and being just plain mean to his friends. And, at home he was a monster. Once, he literally destroyed the entire interior of the house we were renting. Everything. Every kitchen item, every living room item (he actually threw a can of hairspray through the tv), every bedroom item. It's still so vivid in my mind. He dumped and smeared makeup I had, all over the dresser, and wiped every piece of my clothing (which wasn't that much) all through that makeup. No window, mirror, or door, was left unscathed. He literally destroyed our house. But, I'm getting ahead of myself.

I had left him after a night of fear as he forced himself on me. Some would say a wife can't be raped by her husband. They would be wrong. Covered in bruises from the waist down to my knees, I was barely able to stand, without shaking, the next morning. When he left for work that morning, he thought I was headed out to work, as well. But I didn't go to work. I went to my brother and sister-in-laws. I wasn't planning on going back to the house for any reason, simply because I was afraid he would show up and trap me. We lived at the end of a long, private back road where one never knew if a car was approaching, or not, until it pulled up outside of our one, and only, door. But a couple of my older brothers said they would go with me, keep the monster away from me should he return, and we would together, gather my belongings. Once we arrived, none of us could believe the damage that had happened to the place. It appeared as if someone, or someTHING, had came in with a vengeance. I don't remember if I was able to salvage anything. Replaying that awful day in my head, I don't think we left with anything. That was a day nightmares are made of! I can only imagine what my brothers were thinking.

He came looking for me. And once again, talked me into going home with him. I couldn't tell you why I went back. Just his touch caused me to shiver. I had left him several times, and gone back. Back to the bondage he offered. Maybe it was because I really felt it was my fault he was like this, just like he had said. Maybe if I would just try harder to be a good wife, everything would be good. It had to be my fault. I know this because he constantly told me it was. I became a pretty quiet person. Afraid to speak. It wasn't until he began threatening death to me and my family, that I stayed put. After the destruction of our cabin, he rented a place not more than half a mile up from it. It was a converted hen house. A narrow building with a tiny bathroom just big enough to shimmy into and out of. A tiny kitchenette provided the one entry door the house had. There was a small apartment sized stove and a very small sink with a tiny window above it, in that room where love was suppose to bring people closer together as meals were shared. There was no room for a table of any kind. We just ate on the floor where we slept. I think it was his mom who provided a mattress for us, just so we wouldn't have to lay on a hard floor all the time. Someone gave us a small end table and a lamp. That was it. No closet, no dinning area, no shower (or tub). We had to wash up with just a washcloth, in the kitchen sink. Then he began accusing me of his infidelity. It was somehow my fault he was cheating.

During those years, I wasn't sure what was reality and what wasn't. Those waters were very troubled. He would throw full cans of beer at me, call me awful names, threaten me, accuse me, whatever he could do...he would. I was constantly questioned if I had to go anywhere without him. One day, after work, he was filling his car with gas and saw me go by on my way home from work. I had pulled up beside a co-worker (male), to tell them their back tire was going flat. He accused me of flirting. It was a bad night.

Many days I would fall asleep at my work table because I'd had very little sleep. I wore my hair long so it could fall over my face to hide the bruises, but it also gave me a chance to nod off at my desk with the hope of not being noticed. It was only because of a very compassionate boss who knew the signs of abuse, that helped me decided I'd had enough. If I was to die at his hands, so be it. I couldn't live another day in fear that I would not see the next day. That decision caused an immediate, and very heavy weight, to be lifted off my shoulders. I no longer cared.  He couldn't believe I could "just stop loving" him. I  told him he had beaten any love I ever felt for him, completely out of me. One just can't grasp what true freedom is, until they have been in debilitating bondage to another human being. I had been in a prison far worse than death, and had decided I would rather be dead than to stay there. I felt as if I had been buried alive and had given up of having any kind of life worth living. Until that one decision that lifted all guilt of leaving an abusive marriage

It went from bad to worse once I was free of this guy. Oh, the physical abuse had stopped, but I had been mentally abused for so long, living in fear, that once freedom came my way, I didn't know how to live. I had come to believe the blanket of lies he had laid upon me. That it was all my fault and that I was so ugly, no one would want me, and that he just allowed me to live with him because he felt sorry for me. On one occasion, he had grabbed me by the hair of my head and slammed my face into a mirror. "Look at that. Who would want THAT?!" 

What I wanted, and felt I needed to do, was find out HOW anyone could be so violent to another person. And what the attraction was, to cheat on a spouse with another married person. Especially when they had vowed to love and cherish each other until death separated them. In my quest for truth, I took a major detour that landed me in the heart of deception. Before moving to Tennessee, I had moved in with one of my brothers, his wife and son. And even though they gave me love and the comforts of home, it wouldn't be long before I felt the need to move away. To get as far away as I could from the monster I had just left.   

Here, I will leave this journeys story until another time. Please remember, as you follow along, that I did rise up from the ashes. Life was just waiting for me to choose it.

Until next time, as always, here you'll find me...in Mary's World.

The Freedom and Bondage of Being Alone

We were never meant to be alone. Yet, many are. God said it was not good for man to be alone, so He created a helper fit for him. (Gen. 2:18).

I know we women-folk believe (at times) we don't need a man. We believe enough in ourselves to think what needs to be done, we can do. After all, we're the ones created to "help", right? But I've watched, over the years, as strong women with this view, become lonely women, in time. They say they're not...yet it's visible in their eyes. Truth is, it makes life worth so much more when we have someone to share it with. Someone we are suited for. Someone to share in our joys, our sorrows, our fears, our achievements. Someone to share life and all it brings to us.

The operative word is "SHARE", not simply exist with, having two separate worlds, so-to-speak. It's so much easier to be alone when your mate rarely knows you're around, or rarely-to-never helps with anything, but actually makes life harder by adding to your "helper" list, while it seems they have nothing better to do than entertain themselves with the latest technology available or who values friends more than their mate. Or when you suddenly find yourself looking at what once seemed good, as now not being so good. What caused the "eye-opening" change? And that's another story...

Freedom comes with a cost. Sometimes a mighty big cost. Sometimes a painful cost, which initially seems like relief, but eventually shows itself ugly. Sometimes, actually feeling like bondage. Ah...the despair of freedom. It's never easy, but what is? And the age old question rages on in many the mind. "Who am I?" "Why am I here?" "What is the meaning of my life?"

Change happens when we least expect it, either because of our choices, or because of someone else's choice...yet God has planted eternity in the human heart. We were created for immortality and life's changes prepare us for that eternity. There we find our life's purpose. In Him alone. And I fear THIS, this is where we get confused and make decisions apart from consulting our loving Creator, as we put our eyes on the earthly, the mundane, the exasperating, and the difficult situations that all life brings. Fears of not being in control.

And because we choose to go on our own steam, our own secure thoughts and determinations blow high and wide. Some may have even been "thought out" and considered, with thoughts of making it all better. Some are great decisions. Some are not.

I've not always faced my fears, like I do now that I'm on the back side of the proverbial hill. Back in the day, I let fear rule my actions...and I was held captive to an aggressive man that nearly took my life. Twice! Then everything changed. I decided (or was it the veiled encouragement of my God), that I would rather be dead than live each day not knowing what it would bring. Maybe, just maybe, God knew what I needed to escape the prison I was allowing myself to be in, even though I was not serving Him then. He showed me a way of escape, where there seemed to be none. Then, in the natural realm. Later, in the spiritual realm. And I boldly took that step. Both times.

At that time in my life, I wanted nothing more than to be alone. Alone and free. Free to be me. Free to not be watched over every second of every day. Free to make my own choices. Free from accusation. Free from abusive hands/fists. Free from threats. Free from lies. Free from alcohol induced behavior. But even that freedom brought bondage, eventually. Simply because I had not learned who I could trust, and I trusted no-one. It's still very hard for me to trust in humanity. But I do know who I can perfectly rely on. It is God. He never fails me, never leaves me to my own devises. He corrects me, guides me, walks beside me, and whispers in my ear. Okay...so that sounded a little creepy. By whispering in my ear, I simply mean He has a way of getting my full attention. And I so rely on that, because I know how crazy I can be in making decisions on my own.

Freedom/Bondage...it can actually be a good thing. In Christ alone is there true freedom to be who we are/were created to be. In Christ alone is there true life giving, bondage. What? Yes, the good bondage of knowing we belong to Him. We serve no other. A slave of the One who Created us. How simply wonderful it is, to not venture out and listen to (or serve) someone who wants nothing but to destroy us; to take our freedom to be anything other than who we were created to be.

Fully free, fully in bondage, and thankful God knows me better than I know myself...here you'll find me...in Mary's World.