Oh How Deeply Pain Can Sting!
Sometimes our deepest spiritual experiences come when we least expect them, and so very often when we are closest to despair! When it feels as if the world has turned upside down with trauma and betrayal.
It’s then that the masks that we wear are stripped away. We are at a point of complete vulnerability and this is when we are most fully open to God, and that God is most fully open to us.
“The Lord is close to the broken-hearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit,” Psalm 34:18.
God “heals the broken-hearted and binds up their wounds,” Psalm 147:3.
A wise Rabbi by the name of Rav Nachman once said, a person needs to cry to his Father in heaven with a powerful voice from the depths of his heart.
Then God will listen to his voice and turn to his cry. And it may be that from this act itself, all doubts and obstacles that are keeping him back from true service to God will fall away from him and finally come to an end. ©Rav Nachman
We find God not only in holy or familiar places, but so very often He is found in the midst of a hard journey, alone at night.
In our aching loss, when words fail to explain anguish, He is there.
He has said to us, “I will never [under any circumstances] desert you [nor give you up nor leave you without support, nor will I in any degree leave you helpless], nor will I let you down or relax My hold on you,” Hebrews 13:5.
The most intense of all spiritual experiences, and the very bedrock of all others, is the knowledge that we are not alone.
God is holding us by the hand, shielding us, lifting us up when we fall, forgiving us when we fail, healing the wounds in our soul through the power of His love.
Though we may fall, we fall into the arms of God. Though others may lose faith in us, and though we may even lose faith in ourselves, God never loses faith in us. And though we may feel utterly alone at times, we truly are not.
God is there, beside us, His spirit within us, urging us to stand and move on, for you see my friends, there is a task to do that we have not yet done and that we were created to uniquely fulfill.
In His Shadow,
~ Mary Lindow ©
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” THE MESSENGER ” ~ Mary Lindow
www.marylindow.com
Global Prayer Rooms
Mary Lindow has a passion for encouraging others – all generations, careers or vocations to live expressing excellence through personal integrity, healthy accountability, and wise management of talents and skills. She’s a sought after keynote, inspirational, humorous speaker and teacher across the USA and internationally in Ministers & Spiritual leaders Conferences, and training seminars for various organizations.
Open Letter to all Men from a Dying Heart of Woman, 9/11/17
I cannot stop trying to contact you for one simple reason. I don’t feel that you remember who I am and what my heart’s desire has always been. So I figured the only way to communicate it to you, since we can’t seem to talk together is to give you my heart on paper. So please close your eyes to the world and current situations and your facts, rather open your heart and receive what I am intending to say from the heart, the Truth from my perspective…. I pray to God that you can finally hear my dying heart….
I was always looking for my Prince Charming. Someone to sweep me off my feet and adventure through life with. To create a happy ending of growing old with each other, through a life-time of being friends, lovers, parents and grandparents. To cheer each other to higher ground, to be in the fox hole together, to face life as indiscernible partners, to become one on every level, to put each other’s needs above all else, and enjoy whatever time we had together, comfort each other, and love one another deeply to the exclusion of all other potential partners. In some ways we have done these things…. But we wouldn’t be where we are if we followed God’s plan for a husband and wife.
God’s story of creation of Adam and Eve serves as a plumb line, a true north of what He intended, and what is possible for men and women who enter into marriage with Him as the leader of their lives, even now, even after the fall. God doesn’t show us the Truth and not give us a Way to live in it. That’s why admitting our mistakes to God and each other comes with the promise of Forgiveness from Him and potential for Redemption if both parties are open to doing things His Way, to the exclusion of all else including your own human ways.
God created Adam and knew it was not good for him to be alone, however, God let him figure this out on his own first, that he needed a wife. Adam had to feel alone and realize that there wasn’t a suitable life partner for him, before God acted. It’s been my experience most men hate this part and belligerently try to fill themselves with distractions rather than learn the lesson of longing for the one thing to make them whole (keep in mind Adam already had God at this point), so when a Gift comes along they may not even recognize it. How much lower is a earthly father from God, no comparison really. God the Father is perfect, He alone knows all our needs and He alone can gift us what will satisfy the purest desires of one’s heart.
Is wanting a son, regardless of the wife what Adam needed first? No, his clear need was for a life partner, God intended a man to leave his family and start oneness with his wife, not a child. Things would be horribly out of order any other way than how God Himself intended it to be in the first place. Do you think our Creator is unclear or wrong in His intent? Or maybe, is something in your desire to have a son regardless of the brood mare involved, wrong? Is what is off here God’s plumb line or your desire? How did you come to have that desire? Why can’t you see that desire is out of order, and was never what God Intended for you?
As a female child I always wanted a baby brother to play with and love, I never got one. So when I got pregnant with a son I was thrilled, it was of sorts; a dream come true, a son, not a brother, but I always knew the difference between a brother and a son and treated the son as such, not like a brother I had always wanted, or as some women do they treat their children as the father they never had, or the husband they always wanted. No I treated my son as a son. I am not emotionally connected to him as anything other than what was intended, a mother. Yet you blocked me at every turn to be the mother I wanted to be with my son and to your son as well. Why? Because I didn’t know how to be a mother? Or because you didn’t know how to be a Father or a Mother? So being a woman and a mother I overcompensated, where would God put the responsibility of that? On me? Or You? Remember He is supposed to be your leader; you were supposed to be mine.
And to the best of my ability I tried to give my son the love of a mother, not a sister. Did I screw up as a mother, of course I did. I wasn’t committed directly to God, I was committed to a husband who was supposed to be committed to God directly. And in my husband’s commitment to God, God Himself would guide the leader of our home, you, the husband, and I could take confidence that when my husband said what to do it would be Divinely Guided.
But the men in my life, never chose God as their leader in the first place. So I was stuck knowing parts of God’s plan for my life, but having no power to override my husband, or father. Enter the concept of generational curses, like child abuse, or watching a father treat God’s gift his own wife, like a servant.
Oh I’ve prayed, cried, begged God and hoped that my husband would realize he was responsible to God and for me and our family. But because my husband knew how everything should be and if we would just shut up and follow his rules everything would be fine, at least for him all the while slowly killing what you so claimed to Love. God Himself is Love. A true King understands that rules are for things, and people need structure and guidance. Just like what God demonstrated in Creation. What the husband didn’t recognize is His Way could not ever be accomplished through one man acting on his own best intentions of how everyone else should behave. Rather than listening to God and following His path, he listened to himself first and foremost and created rules to be followed by his subjects. What is that called?
I always knew, however, that my greatest need was for a man to love me as a gift from God Himself, just as my mother and father loved me… unconditionally, with depth, understanding, and warmth, wisdom, but most of all patience to let me grow and forgiveness for making mistakes and falling short. You see one of my drives is to not hurt people, and try to please my husband, or my parents when I was a child, that is part of being made in the image of God is about for a girl growing into woman.
When this gets off track it displays itself as people pleasing, or men chasing which was always intended to be aimed in one direction, pleasing my husband and thanking God for my gift, my soulmate.
But the Love of my husband would surpass even a parent’s Love, because we could become One Flesh and create on our own with God as the leader of the husband and a God seeking husband leading his wife and our family.
You see I knew the order of God…. Soulmate and oneness first, then be fruitful and multiply. Let the children grow up seeing the oneness God had intended between husband and wife, in his or her father and mother. For parents to become living examples of God’s Word and Intent and forgiveness from God and each other for falling short. A submitted life to God the Father, covered in the Blood of Jesus, and filled with the Holy Spirit is the only way God could get us back to the Garden or Paradise here on earth. Is your way producing for yourself and your family what God wants you to have?
This is how a good father should be, let the child unfold before you. Who did God Create them to be, how has God Gifted them, let the child reveal themselves then offer guidance. Not dictate to them who they are or who you want them to become. And let the child learn through the loneliness and questioning to find out what they need, and who they are, not just hand it to them without first struggling to find their own answers and what is blocking them from receiving God’s precious gifts intended for them. Do you know what is blocking you from receiving from God what He has for you? Is your life so filled with love and gifts from God that you don’t need anyone but yourself and your child?
By not making Eve out of the dust like Adam, but from Adam himself, God created the opportunity for husbands and wives to complete each other and truly become One with and through God Himself. Unfortunately some men rush this process and let their hormones rule over what God had intended, that’s part of the fall isn’t it.
What men don’t seem to realize your wife is a reflection of your leadership. When you consistently and unrepentantly hurt us, you kill yourselves and all your dreams and destroy our woman’s heart in the process. The story book ending has always rightfully belonged with us as women, that was our responsibility and part of God’s intended Gift to you, to inspire you to be like Christ and follow His example of what a leader is and does.
Anyone knows that if you rush into Baskin Robbins and sample all 31 flavors one after another, instead of taking a moment to think about what one flavor is going to satisfy, well you are going to end up confused and potentially missing out to what you wanted and needed all along. Eventually for some men it becomes an obsession or goal to sample and have them all whenever he chooses or even buy a franchise and explore creating new flavors on his own.
Women are not ice cream flavors to be sampled and that end up leaving a man desiring something else. And you, always seemed to be a one flavor, your favorite flavor kind of guy. I always admired that about you. It made me feel special. Other men I have known even though they chose me, couldn’t keep their eyes off the other available choices, and he nor I, couldn’t help but wonder if there was something else we needed or wanted.
Even though I thought I was his perfect flavor, because I had the audacity to believe what he told me. I didn’t give myself over to men because I wanted to be sampled, I just thought “I love you more than life itself” meant just that and went along thinking Prince Charming found his Princess.
Being child like I have always wanted to be the favorite of the man I married or hoped to marry. I always knew I was intended to be his Gift, Perfectly made to satisfy his deepest need, God Himself didn’t put in my heart a deep desire to please my husband and love him with all of my heart by accident. I was built that way from the beginning.
Adam must have longed for a partner for some time, because he was ecstatic when he awoke to find Eve. His greatest desire was for his mate, and God’s desire that in time they would be “fruitful” and multiply. The desire for a son above a wife where does that come from exactly? Not of God, his plan is clear for those who read and understand the simplicity of what He Himself Spoke.
So back to the fall…. What exactly did God say about that? They were cursed, but did He say they could not redeem wholeness through Him? Did He say “I can do ALL things through Christ who gives me strength!”? Whether you boys realize it or not, you could have had your goddess a long time ago…. Problem is as with most sin…. You don’t want to be held accountable to God’s stated plumb line.
Whether you believe in Truth or not is your choice… it’s True even if you don’t Believe it. You will be creating your own heaven or hell because of your own choices….. That’s a man’s responsibility….. One way or another fellas Every knee will bow… My prayer is it is a bow of honor to a Creator God that tried to give you a happily ever after (woman, your wife). What you are responsible for is how you treated God’s Gift, now there is a fearful thought isn’t it? I always questioned why I as a woman didn’t fear God, maybe because I married at 22 left my mother and father to be married eventually to 2 men for the past 30 years. Not perfectly, but I got the order of things right anyway.
My curse as a daughter of God, is I live as Eve did, with the knowledge that having your heart aimed at your husband is Good a Gift from God, and the curse of living under a husband that I cannot force or control, my husband, to follow God and I know that I was never intended to lead, you were. What a hellish dilemma…
God says “your husband will rule over you” Rules and facts on the ground are all men without God see and thereby turning God’s gift women into a servant of your own selfish rules you demand be followed to your liking…. What kind of leadership is that exactly?
Am I reduced to be a princess, your personal goddess, or queen as intended by God, to be locked and imprisoned in your hell with you and your rules trying to make me into something I was never intended to be, nor claimed to be? Life without God is like every other kingdom man has tried to create…. It ends in ruin and destruction. Doesn’t God Himself call me to come out of that place before He condemns it?
My thought is God’s done with man’s ways of oppression and self-proclaimed rule. The road to hell being paved with good intentions applies to your path as well. My final prayer is you wake up and do the right thing as God Himself prescribes… or face a judgement that is Fair, Right and Just for you not taking responsibility as you should, and blaming your Eve and questioning God Himself; just as Adam did in the Garden. His plumb line is Clear… become the leader He called you to be, not the Machiavellian one you created. But who AM I to question my husband, even when I answer only now to the Great I AM. When Eve ate the apple who did God address first? I believe that was Adam, and it will be you as well.
I respectfully request you spend time with Your Father in Heaven, Gen.3, then follow the example of your earthly father who adored me….. or stay where you are in the garden you created but never wanted.
As for me… well through God’s grace I answer to Him directly now….. that was His choice, forced upon Him by your choice to not take up your cross and follow Him yourself.
If God alone is God and If man represents (mind) flesh…. And woman represents (heart) spirit I would say that creates a three cord strand not easily broken, and reflects the triune God that is One. That is His plumb line. Your godless ways are meaningless to HIM.
Please consider my words and read them till you gain Understanding, as only God can change a man’s heart, and I am done living under His curse. Or you can think God didn’t know what he was doing in the first place and crumple up this paper and throw my heart out with it. Seems to be the popular choice now days….
Women who Love their Men suffer greatly for it….. If you have a problem with me, your wife then take it up with God or sit on your ass and wait for Him to bring it up to you. As always you are free to choose…. But remember Every knee will bow…..
My Heart,
Laura