Tuesday, January 1, 2008

Wing to Fly - 19

Memoir Index

God is Light and in Him is no darkness at all…
It was a song I loved to sing and I sang a lot as a young saved person.

When God shined His light into our hearts, into the crevices of our hearts, healing ensued. I have experienced this over the years, not knowing exactly how it came about. We had in our church the practice of calling on the name of the Lord. Calling in sincerity, from the depth of my heart, I was able to touch the Lord. Yet permanent change in my being was rare. I learned so much of God’s truth in the Word (we were very much teaching oriented congregation) yet the ability to make that doctrinal truth my own truth escaped me. Best doctrine had very little change in my being.

An example would be, I was insecure if someone disliked me. I knew the biblical truth that God is my security therefore it should be OK even if everyone disliked me, as long as God approved me. That to be a God pleaser is the goal rather than to be a man pleaser. Another example would be my feeling of insecurity because Tom did not have an income earning job. To me serving God with no compensation was to be a slave, a shameful position. His trust in God did little for me. Tight finances made me nervous even though I knew that God will provide. So the truth in the Bible was not my experiential truth. Prayers and calling on the dear Jesus name from the depth of my heart gave me some peace and rest yet so briefly.

Tom and I realized that he did not have those fears because he was programmed differently than me. Also his assurance came because Tom felt that he had God’s calling… For him to live in a successful corporate job situation was to live a compromised life, or a wasted life because too much of his time was usurped by the world. For me that would be the proper and proud way to live. It is mind boggling to realize, in spite of our vast differences, we have accepted each other’s ways.

It is wonderful to understand who I was and why I was. The want of security I strive so hard to obtain only to realize I already had security. Yearning for love only to recognize the love was already there. Pain of insecurity, loneliness, desire for love, the need to be approved and liked, all of these were filed away in the deepest part of my heart until life triggered the corresponding emotions to rise up and cruelly scorned and laughed at my sufferings. Now I treasure the confronting of those moments with God and watch Him free me.

I love long drives. It is here that I have no interruption. Whether it is 90 minutes or 3 hours, that time is spent in dealing with my heart. I start to talk to the Lord. “Lord, where should we go in digging out some unwanted things (garbage) within me. As things would rise up my conversation would be like, “I am so sorry Lord for being such a mother. I felt I did not give my all to my children. I did not love them the way they needed to be loved.” As I continued to talk of the love not properly given to my children, I would sense His response, “It’s OK. Love them. I love you.” Often tears would stream down my face. That little car was filled with God’s love and I was swimming in the love of Christ. After this I would no longer torment over my lack of love in mothering. I would experience so many of repentance, forgiveness, then His speaking along with a change in my person.

Working in pharmacy triggered lot of things for me that caused me to think that my profession and I did not match. Slightest error on my part caused me to freeze up with panic, that something is wrong with me, I am not worthy, I am useless, I will be fired, I cannot face anyone … on and on… Logically I recognized that it is not the end of the world for this mishap, yet the emotion of panic nevertheless would surface and taunts me.

Not too long ago when I was working in Chicago, I got a job in a very prestigious hospital in oncology department. I was hired after 10 years of leave in the same Pharmacy. The use of technology, the speed required for the calculations required, the new therapies, were overwhelming me. There was one senior pharmacist whom I will call Stanley and he disliked me. I was learning too slowly for him. I could hear him bickering about me to other pharmacists. If there were things he needed to train me, he did not and complained about how I did not know how to do a certain thing. This kind of situation would totally unnerve me. One afternoon, he called me and told me to do some errand in a very demeaning way. I felt futile, useless, unwanted, worth less, stupid…oh the list went on and on.

Such incidence was my opportunity to interact with God in healing. Instead of seeking the Lord to raise me above the situation, only to experience the same thing at another time in another place, now I was out to resolve the situation for good. Then that same trigger would not bring up the same panic. “Lord, we have a big job ahead of us. I need to resolve and understand why I fall apart in this scenario. Lord, take me to the place of origin where I first took on the belief system which is causing this reaction.”

This may take several days or weeks. Understanding would eventually come to me. My child world was not a secure one. My father was absent in his responsibility to take on all of his family, his parents, six siblings, their spouses, children and then there was his immediate family. My mother was too busy in practically running such a large home where she was the main cook, cleaner, and caretaker. I was lost in the midst of many relatives. I learned that it was not safe to be not approved or accepted by those surrounding me. At all cost I must behave well and liked by those who does not really care for me (aunts and uncles). In a world of insecurity, I longed for safety, acceptance, and love. The desire was so strong in me all through life. With this understanding I continued to talk to the Lord. Once we (the Lord and I) completed the issue, I was changed in that area. To experience the same trigger and to have different response coming from me was beyond my belief. He always replaced for me the troubling emotion with the truth, which would be His love, His security, etc.

Back in Oncology pharmacy, Stanley continued to be very difficult person to work with. Yet I was changing. I would come into pharmacy with a big smile, “Good morning Stanley!” Now I looked forward to our interactions. He did not know how to respond. Same bitter treatment towards me would wash off of me like a raindrop on a glass. His attitude no longer would cause panic for me. As I changed one step at a time I saw the shift or renewing of my mind. And Christ became ever more real to me.

I started to see human beings differently. When I meet a person, I realized what was ticking for him, what bondage they held, what were the walls they have created to protect themselves, how everything they saw had to first go through the filter of their understanding, how they were judging according to the world that they understood. As the Lord began to free me, I understood people more, as I understood people more, they opened themselves up to me readily.

I am thankful that Ed Smith’s ministry was introduced to me. He showed me another aspect of Christ in my relationship to Him. It is called Theophostic (Theo – God; and Phostic – light) ministry. We can learn to bring Christ to the depth of our being and watch His work as he heals us systematically and frees us … the way we saw so many people healed in the Bible. I think this aspect is often overlooked in our pursuit for Christian theology, ideology, and pursuit of knowledge.

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