My broken heart was part of His sweet plan

Our greatest desire can be directly linked to our greatest fear.  The desire to be fully known and unconditionally loved.  Man shares the fear of being rejected by God and others.  We want to think we are better than we are.  We want Gods glory.  We think man and his approval can make us happy and whole. Others love was not intended to meet our deepest need but to be enjoyed.  We fear being alone.  The bible calls this the fear of man.  We are to be in awe of the love, acceptance, grace and mercy...the very holiness of God.  The bible says we are to fear God. Not man or any spiritual forces can separate us from His love.  This is a fear of being amazed and captivated by the great beauty and power of God.  Not a fear of guilt, shame and condemnation.  These things were taken care of by Jesus on the cross.

I have dealt with the pain of thinking if God really knew me He might change His mind about me.  That I might not receive the love and blessings of God now and eternally.  This was part of the sickness.  Christ suffered for my sin and to bring me to a beautiful relationship of honesty and faith in God.  An assurance that He is with me even if it isn't as I had thought.  This is faith.

It has been called a dance with God, Father, Son and Spirit. My suffering is real. God hates my suffering and cries many tears with us when we do.  It produces many things in us the God loves.  Both of these things are what we are promised.  It is to know Jesus more fully through suffering and we will.  The very life and death of Jesus is mine.  His resurrection is also mine.  His surrender, love and power is mine.  This realization did not come easy but from God, His word, others and the precious Holy Spirit.  He can use anything, even my psychosis to work His good pleasure in our hearts.

 I have not fully come to the trust I strive for in Christ.  This has been at the root of a lot of my pain and struggles.  I wanted to be better than I really am.  I saw my selfishness throughout my life.  It is not putting myself down but loosing myself to be hidden in Him.  It is about Jesus

 I thought I had to be good to earn the  love of others and by God.  I wanted to do the right thing.  This is the battle Paul fought.  He was so oppressed by this thinking and warfare that he actually wanted to die.  He came to know he was nothing. He knew nothing but Christ and Him crucified.  The least of all sinners even.  He counted his good works as rubbish.  He strived to rest in what was already true about him and God.  God in His mercy even gave Paul a thorn in the flesh to help with his pride of thinking about himself.  We all are born selfish and thinking we know what is right.  This has to die.  Gods ways are not ours.

I have come to see that doing the right thing.  Making the right sacrifices. Having the right theology. Doing a great ministry  cannot produce a broken and contrite heart.  If I do these things without love it is of no value.

I hate my mental illness.  God hates it too.  The way God has used it to bring me into this beautiful knowledge and experience of His wonder for me. Christ is in me the hope of glory.  It is what Paul calls the great mystery.  It is the battle we strive to rest in.  The war has already been won.  The work has already been done.  We can relax, enjoy and delight in who we are as a child of the King.  It is Christ in me, the hope of glory.  The very Spirit of Jesus dwells in me.  I am totally righteous with His perfect life given in my place.  God does not see anything wrong with us when He gazes upon me but the precious finished work of His Son.  I am already redeemed.  I am already seated with Him in the heavens.  Secure, loved no matter what I may fear.  He who began a good work in us with complete it.  We are to hold fast and firm to the faith that it is He who works in us to give us the strength, will to do His good pleasure.

So I need to die daily of any thinking I can earn anything from God.  It is all of grace.  The flesh in us wants to be strong, capable, have our own way, even be a good person for God.  We want to earn grace and are fearful because we just can't.  We are given precious gifts by God.  We cannot earn these gifts.  We can ask the Spirit for these gifts.  He delights to give us the precious gifts of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience and kindness and gentleness and so much more. He has given us the precious Spirit and He is our seal.  We have all we need.  Our good, good Father knows what we need.  He has given us the perfect gift.

Jesus is living in me.  He is holding on to my heart.  My broken and contrite heart is part of His plan for me and for the joy of the eternity of His Kingdom. I see my self-centeredness in all I do.  We never have pure motives in this life.  We are righteous and loved.  We are in Him and Him in us by the Spirit.   This is what Christ died for to live through us.  It is all to the majesty and glorious riches of Christ my King.  It is Him and His love that shines through my brokenness.  I am but a vessel for the glory of God and His Sons righteousness.  I cannot mess up His glory.  He has promised to be my King and I am Gods child in spite of me and my selfish ambitions or pride.

We are beautiful.  We are His.  His work in us is so much more grand as He lavishes HIs love on us through the work of the SPIRT!  From us to others.  It is LOVE.  It is GRACE.  It is HIS GLORY!

We have a glorious and extravagant SAVIOR!  JESUS!

God does not see our sin when He looks at us but the perfect holiness of God.  We are growing in love and selflessness throughout our lives.  It is the precious life of Jesus!

Honoring my Dad.

My dad was a paratrooper.  He was a risk taker.  Fearless as he traded uniforms with his captain and was the first out of the fighting airplane.  The captain was too fearful to jump.  Many had to be pushed out.  He was in World War II.  He built a shoe business out of nothing.  I remember him being a milk man.  A TV repair man with no prior knowledge at all.  He was a building inspector.   My son reminds me so much of my dad.  He is such a neat son to his dad.  Happy Fathers Day Danny.  Lee and my dad are masters at fixing anything.  My daughter was to me as my sister was to my dad.  Flying in an airplane is at the top of my bucket list.  I have loved flying as a coaches wife and parasailing when I was a young thing.

My dad got mentally ill about the same time I did.  Our ages were similar.  It was said that this doesn't usually happen so late in life.  I was about 42.  So was he.

Thinking back on his memory today I remember him teaching me lots of things.  He taught me to skate even though  he could not skate himself.  I didn't know that at the time.  We dug underground steams in a lot of the house he built.  No one would buy the lots so he got them at a good price.  He would build one house, sell it and them make a profit.  He did this so many times he paid for our home.  I was the only girl I knew with a swimming pool.  It was lovely in the day.  This was my inheritance from him and mom.  I treasured it so.  I never lived there after my parents died. My children didn't want it.   I did sell our home.

Mental illness moved dad to his safety zone.  His work was limited.  He would sit for hours on end at the kitchen table,  thumping his fingers on the table and having a head full of paranoia. I wonder if he was drowning out the voices.  Maybe having a bored mind was the reason.. It was so hard for my mother.  She finally gave the store to my sister.  Her inheritance and it provided well for her and her children.  She cared for both my parents when I could not.  During those years of isolation it changed my dad, our relationship and his life.  But not my love for him or for me.  Some of the sweetest times I had with my dad was sitting on his bed asking him to tell me the stories of his life one more time.

I have been where my dad was.  Isolated and in my comfort zone.  My world got so small at one time I sat on the computer day after day.  

These thoughts came together to me yesterday.  Of our we limit Gods work in our life as we draw back to what is familiar and give up living out of fear.  I often prayed that God would redeem the years the locus have eaten.  He has and is.  People have shared with me things we did during these years of being in such deep psychosis.  I hardly remember but that is a good thing I guess.

So the last years I have been able to function, serve and love in the midst of the psychosis.  My family has seen me spend time just sitting on my porch and I do.  Too much.  I would love for them to remember how God moved me out and taught me so much during these years.  It seems I have been sick, moving to wellness then back to sickness again.  Would you pray the cycle is broken with me.

I never thought mental illness could be my enemy personally.  I was such a doer and a being person.  Years of searching for God in my isolation.  Having it all together was a burden I was not meant to carry.  I miss the younger years with my dad.  Mental illness is such a sad thing.  I pray for the 3rd and 4th generation that these patterns might be broken.  The way we deal with life.

So I honor my dad.  I am having more of a life and more freedom than I ever thought I could have.  I have a family who knows more.  I have more children and more friends and a good church body.  My dad was so limited by these things.  Many days he went from home to the shoe store and that was it.  It was his comfort zone.   I think we are further along than he was in his generation.   I wept this morning as it was just too much for me.  The voices are now better.  Sometimes we just need a good cry.  I have so much joy and thankfulness for the kind man my dad was.  The times we shared and the life he gave me.

It is my home I will end my life as dad and I began ours.  A risk taker.  A lover of God and people.  To reach for joy in the midst of this fallen world.  To see the good and trusting God in the midst of it all.

My dad was a man of his word.  He kept his comment to my mom for better or for worse.  They were together until death did they part.  My dad smoked until his last days.  He liked a good beer.  He was a church goer.  His pastors always had new shoes.  He enjoyed his family and I do mine.  I want to move out more than I am right now.  My daughter and her friends and mine have pulled me out of my comfort zone.  They have helped me keep up my home.  My fears have been such a pull these last couple of weeks grieves me.  So thankful to you and those who have prayed and helped me break the chains that bind me.  I am not giving up.  Surrendered more and more pain in this last psychosis than ever before.  So desperate and so loved by you, God and others make it worth it all.  This has been my quickest recovery ever.  I am no giant.  But I have had many in my past to fight.  I am not strong but the love of God and my friends and family in my weakness is a beautiful humbling thing I never expected and didn't comes easy for me.

Thank you for washing my feet.  My dad was a great shoe salesman.  He met no stranger.  I am so thankful this Fathers Day for the man my dad was to me and my sister.  To a community he loved so very much.

Deborah Ford

www.desperatedelight.blogspot.com