Made to Serve: In God’s Image He made them

Dear Soul are you a happily grounded Christian?   Tread carefully!!  Until 2010 I thought my life was on a reasonably steady track.  I thought I was following God's way and serving as He asked of me. I had forgotten the prophecy given me when I was about to leave Nailsea (near Bristol) in 1993, where I had been led back into the Church. I was told, 'Your ordered life will be disturbed.'  

Lets go back. I had come back to faith and the Church, in an Evangelical, Charismatic Anglican Church.  The Holy Spirit had immediately given me a hunger for the EUCHARIST, so it was no real surprise when after 3 years in the Anglican Church, getting seeped in Holy Scripture, and given gifts of the Spirit, to find myself led into the Roman Catholic Church. 

I needed to know about repentance and confession - and the wonder of 'remission of sins' as a Sacrament - ie bringing us back to God.  My first sin that God showed me, was after I visited a Vigil Mass of Palm Sunday.  The priest had invited his parisioners to come to the church during Holy Week and do the meditations of the Stations of the Cross. I didn't have a full understanding of what this meant, but I knew without doubt I was being encouraged to come and do them.  So there I was in the empty church on this weekday of Holy Week - and 3 hours later and after many tears I knew I needed to confess my hatred of myself as a woman!!

When I look back on that confession and the following years, I realise, the hatred was the internalisation of the denial, dissociation and repression of all the traumas I had suffered in my childhood. How could I love myself when I had in effect taken on myself the guilt of these events?  Yet the Lord asked me to trust Him with my pain and suffering, and after an initial year of many retreats, healing courses, and surprise gifts of Love from God; He led me to broaden my life in many ways. I came to learn through the Word, and through the gift of fellowship with the Eucharist that 'self-condemning' was more of the devil's work than God's work. And I grew in knowledge of God's way of pure conviction of specific sin, not a generalised 'you are sinful' which came from evil.

Lets fast forward 20 years and I found still lived with the pain within, after the prophecied 'disturbance of my ordered life' came into being.  It came about when the 'monastery' plans I thought I was to be part of were removed from my involvement. A loving Abbess of a French Orthodox monastery I used to go to, told me I should remove myself from the situation!! That was the beginning of a period of confusion in my heart and mind, leading to 'listening to the pain' and finding the Truth of Christ's Cross, in a hermitage in Wales. This led to obedient service in Love, without any self-will, but eventually to 7 years of service in a parish. 

Only God knows why things happened as they did, but the outcome of all the trials, and the awareness I was crucifying the Christ-self at times - led to my suffering as a child being brought fully to the Light. I came to see that in Love, before God, I was not guilty of any sin when a man would act totally 'out of order' in trying to control or oppress me. The Lord taught me how to respond in Love and Truth, rather than react in fear or denial.   But because I believed I was bound by obedience in this Church context, I needed God the Father to act to re-create the whole situation .

Suffice it to say that God provided a way to a win-win situation and I was blessed by a new Spiritual Father to move back to Scotland. Here I completed the icons of the Crucifixion, and Resurrection for the old parish.  

But moving away from a situation, does not immediately solve it!! It has needed time.  Now I have to be 'whole-hearted' with all my Heart and mind and Inner Being united and at One with God's purposes for my life - even now at this phase of my life!  I have needed to embrace more commitment to writing, and being alone in God's Love.  I have needed to re-commit myself to Holy Scripture as in my First Love for Christ,  and to particular writings of the Fathers to inform some of my writing. I need to surrender all my agenda, and re-find God's purposes for all He has taught me through the suffering.  And He is Love, gentleness and purity.  He will enable me in Love, and compassion - using the gifts He gave me, but re-fashioned and 'full of grace'.

I don't know exactly what I will be doing, but in His mercy He will give me grace to persevere with what He has started and so far blessed.  'The Treasures of Darkness',  The First Book of the Trilogy, 'He Heals the Broken Hearted' ; is well on the way; and the next two started. The online courses pointing believers back to the Truth of the Holy Spirit alive in us, and Heaven being in our Heart are gently moving forward- with Facebook pages and interactions with people throughout the world. Closer at home I am blessed to be able to love those who have need of kindness and care; and now I am in Scotland, I have greater opportunity to be close to my son Chris and his family.  

But above all, I can do none of this without the Surety of Christ's confidence in the Father, and the leading of the Holy Spirit.  I am daily aware of, and grateful for, REDEMPTION...the very restoration of our soul, hidden in Christ in God.  Daily I surrender my will and any remaining fear, wanting, or pride, and let the Holy Spirit, and God's Love and Purity of Heart remove me from judgement in order to serve as led!!  And when I fail, I repent, and ask that next time I surrender immediately to His Grace and love.  Amen.

Good journeying dear Readers...and never be afraid of surrender, wherever you are on your journey of faith. God IS Love...and suffering is our denial of His mercy, Truth and Provision...in Him is no darkness at all..... once we face it with Him, it changes.