Stop the Pain, NOT Your Life! 4

Summary:

1.  Matured friends/spiritual leaders have a part to play by holding up your hand when you are down and tired.

2.  You have a part to play by bracing yourself up, letting go, forgiving, learning from the past and hanging in there in God’s presence never letting him go. As Jacob told that angel he wrestled with “I will not let you go, unless you bless me”. Don’t let go of His presence. You need it….it’s your lifeline!

3.  God has a part to play which He will never fail to do. He is faithful. He is the Restorer, and He gives BEAUTY FOR ASHES!

Sometimes I look back, and I wonder to myself how I ever went through that ordeal without going on leave from work, or going crazy. I had to leave my work in church for a while because at that time I was a minister for married women and I had just lost a marriage, so I felt I didn’t have anything to offer them at that time. I later came back after a month to join the work force and this decision blessed my life tremendously because we shall SERVE the Lord our God, and He shall bless our bread and our water and take sickness away from our midst. All Glory to God!

The answers to how I went through the pain with my life not stopping are the major lessons that I have shared above. Your healing process doesn’t have to take several months or years. Some months after my experience, I was already radiating JOY, it didn’t take too long after then, I was bubbly and jumping all over the place. Even my colleagues at work could not understand what had come over the usual ‘quiet me’. I was more alive; the dead look was gone and gone forever. Praise God!!!

Today as I write, several months down the line, I am free of every pain and regret, and my life has progressed remarkably, and it can only get better. 2 Cor. 1: 3-4 says “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulations, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. I have received this comfort, and I constantly run to Him…and so I can tell you this: Don’t let this pain kill you or make your life stop my dear, maintain the right attitude and you will give birth to more in the future than you have lost in the past. (I learnt that statement from a book I read by Joel Osteen) – Becoming a Better you! A must read for every believer, I must say. Joel Osteen made a statement that changed my life, marked my mind and stayed with me. He said “I don’t believe that divorce is God’s best. Unfortunately, sometimes it is unavoidable, when all the options are placed on the table, divorce sometimes is the ‘best’ option there is to follow at that time, else a destiny destroyed, a life crushed or worsened and more havoc caused. If you have been through a divorce, understand that God still has another plan for your life. Just because someone rejected you or walked out of your life and left you hurt, doesn’t mean you should retreat and settle where you are. That rejection or failure of a marriage doesn’t change what God has put on the inside of you. It doesn’t mean that you cannot be happy. When one door closes, if you will keep the right attitude, God will open another door. But you have to do your part and keep pressing forward”.

In conclusion, don’t add to the population of the bitter people we have on earth you deserve a better life. Rise up and brace yourself. No pain is worth you dying, no pain is worth you losing your mind, no pain is worth you losing that glorious destiny of yours, no pain is worth killing that BEAUTIFUL YOU! Rise up and come out of that fire stronger, better and wiser such that your world would have no choice but to celebrate you.

If you need help or assistance to walk/work with you step by step on your specific situation or someone to talk to, kindly send an e-mail to thistooshallpass@gmail.com, someone would respond to you and we would all learn from one another and grow together, we can affect lives and be a help to our generation. God is mindful of us, and He sure will see us through. I love you all dearly, and I see a greater and better you! Rise up to the challenge, Yes we can!

For all kinds of pain, this is applicable. Is it something that you have done wrong? Is it a sin that so easily entangles you? Is it a habit? You still need to stay accountable, seek help, brace yourself and forgive yourself. Let it go and go for God’s presence like never before. Hang in there in His presence and His WORD by praying in the spirit and speaking His word. These perform wonders ICor14:4!!! Pray in the Spirit like never before and refire. James 1:19:20. You would need a lot of patience, be swift to hear and slow to speak cause so many people may judge you based on your pain, but just let it all go, and refuse to react in pain. THE SECRET TO STAYING BEAUTIFUL IS HIS WORD AND HIS PRESENCE! The beautiful story continues….........

***I am blessed to have someone share this with me, it takes experiencing pain for a lot of people to realize the truths in this message but alas, not everybody learns the lessons, even after going through trials. We still have loads of brothers and sisters harbouring hurts and pain from the past, walking in unforgiveness and being unable to let go and grow to be a better person. No matter how hard and profound what happens, it doesn't matter, your peace of mind and destiny are so much more important than the rocks life throws at you. We have a very present help to run to, He's ever faithful, ever near, ever true. Reach out to God and watch Him transform your life such that you wont even recognize it.

So this is kinda different from my usual love posts, not to worry, I'll be back at ya with some lovey dovey stuff real soon! :D

Muchos Lovos! 

Stop the Pain, NOT Your Life! 3

You can read the previous posts here and here

Above all, I knew deep down in my heart that all these emotions were not going to take me anywhere, I couldn’t even pray, and I knew that I couldn’t carry on that way for too long. I wouldn’t have lasted long if I had carried on that way for long, cause I was going to wreck my mind and health If I so did, I had to wake up to REALITY, I had to face myself in the mirror and tell myself the stark undiluted truth –There is absolutely nothing that could be done to change or rectify what had already happened, it was already in the past and I had to treat it as such - THE PAST!

I kept telling myself over and over “It’s all in the past, my past will not affect my present or my future and I choose to let go and move on”. I wasn’t exactly liking or feeling what I was saying, but I just kept saying it. With the help of my senior pastor, I kept pushing ahead. I would remember him, and I would push further. His help I cannot over emphasize because he was there for me. By choosing to let go, I was able to do a proper evaluation of what had happened, I took responsibility for where I had made mistakes, I took to lessons that could be learned, new and better ways of doing things if I was given another opportunity and if I was to go through that situation and circumstance again. I generally learnt to be a better person. Somehow, the knowledge and realization that I had become a better person for it made me start feeling good about myself. That feeling of ‘goodness’ however little did a lot of magic, and it did me a world of good. I was beginning to get excited that I had become a better person.

I started practicing God’s presence again on my own, I would call God, and not be able to say another word, sometimes I would only be able to say “God help me please” but I stayed there. I would stay there and all I would be able to do is playing a song repeatedly and not  be able to sing it but I just kept staying there. It later became a heart to heart communication with God, I still could not say a word to God, but my heart started communing and crying out to God. In my heart, I would pour out my heart to God telling Him exactly how I felt leaving no details out. I told Him that I didn’t feel like talking to Him, but that I didn’t have a choice; I told Him that I wanted to go have random sex, I told Him that I felt very lonely and I needed someone to hold me, I told Him that I was angry at Him for watching me all those painful years, I told Him that I wanted to just disappear and just relocate to another side of the planet where I could start a fresh clean life with no histories, I told Him all sorts, but above all, I told Him that doing all these things won’t help me, and I needed Him to help me. I told Him that I needed Him DESPERATELY because I didn’t want to go crazy with the loneliness or the pain and anguish.

In dealing with the pain, I couldn’t cry for a long time, but in one of those heart to heart sessions with God, I broke down in heart wrenching sobs. Believe it or not, I cried in a way that I have never cried all my life. The tears just kept flowing non-stop and it was almost like I couldn’t stop myself from crying. All the tears that I had bottled up whilst trying to play the ‘macho gurl’ came springing forth non-stop, and the tears continued throughout that day, after which I actually began to feel alive and better again. I had become broken by the presence of the Holy Spirit, and He had begun a good work in me on every side.

In my sessions with God, my talking started gradually and in His presence I got my daily dose of strength to face the world and the healing to embrace the future! Wow! Because God lives, we can always face tomorrow, my healing process had kicked into gear one! I received the comfort of the Holy Spirit!

In His continued presence, I started experiencing His love again; I experienced His PEACE, His JOY. I felt so much love and joy that I couldn’t hide it anymore. Left, right, center, people said I was glowing, they wanted to know the secret, but alas, it was GOD AND GOD ALONE!

Guess what?! Things in my life started responding to the change in me. The joy of the Lord filled me so much and transformed me such that I got better at my job in the office, got redeployed and promoted to a department that I had always wanted to build a career in; I made new friends and generally just moved on in every sphere. I gave out most of my old stuff and I started living my excited rebranded life. Yay!!! I was back, not just back, but BIGGER AND BETTER!

My change was so evident that people (even those that condemned me) became curious as to what was going on in my life. I became a mystery they needed to unravel.

I really can’t say that this is the exact day, method or style God used in seeing me through, all I did was to hang in there with Him and I just REFUSED to let go. Nobody can do this part for you my dear; you have to DO IT YOURSELF! The best people can do for you will be to try and be there but you have to win this battle yourself in the place of prayer and fellowship with God.

Attitude: You may be going through deep pain, but keep your head above water, and don’t let that pain make you become a pain to other people. Your attitude must be top notch such that you don’t make matters worse for yourself. Be humble enough to receive grace and strength from our Father, and maintain the right attitude towards people too. It’s God and GOD ALONE peeps; only Him can do that which He alone as God can do. Don’t misunderstand this for Accountability; you need the right people around you to hold you up when you are down and hold your hand while the battle is raging, but ultimately, only GOD HEALS AND RESTORES COMPLETELY! Don’t let go, just hang in there.

The arm of flesh will fail you if you trust in them, it failed me BIG TIME! I didn’t have any other choice but to face God squarely, and I stayed there, even when it didn’t make sense to me. I had nowhere else to go for succor or strength. The beauty of it all was that, He didn’t leave me, He didn’t forsake me, He didn’t get tired of me, He didn’t give up on me, instead, He HEALED ME, HE RESTORED ME, HE GAVE ME BACK A BIGGER AND BETTER LIFE, HE FILLED MY MOUTH ONCE AGAIN WITH SO MUCH SINGING, HE GAVE ME NEW STEPS OF REJOICING, HE GAVE ME NEW REASONS TO DANCE, HE GAVE ME SO MUCH JOY and guess what? It CAN ONLY GET BETTER, because the path of the just is like a shining light that shines brighter and brighter unto the perfect day! Halleluiah.

Some of the scriptures that helped me are: James 5:14-16; Eccl.4:9-10; 1Cor.14:4; James 1:2-4, James1:19-20; James 4:8, 1Peter 2:24 and Jer. 29:11-13.

The story concludes in the next post :)

Stop the Pain, NOT Your Life! 2

Lesson one continued from the previous post

1.       Accountability: Accountability is in two forms namely vertical and horizontal.

a)      Vertical: In this context, it means submitting to people that have been placed over you as spiritual leaders/elders or pastors. I did that by leveraging on the relationship I had established with my pastors which allowed me to be open to them about my issues. I maintained this openness during my trying times by consistently speaking to my senior pastors about the situation of things. They were aware of my pain, and they helped a great deal. The pastors were always willing to hear everything I had to say even times when I did not have anything to say and all I needed was just a shoulder to lean on.

b)     Horizontal: This form of accountability is to your friends that are mature and have integrity. They play a key role as well, because your pastors and spiritual leaders would not always be available as they are usually very busy and need to attend to so many other people and things, but your true friends whom you relate to on the same level would always have time for you and be able to understand and go through with you on your level. They play a vital role that your pastors cannot play. It’s important to always have the right association of friends around you. They always come in handy as you would for someone else. 

The words of encouragement I received from these relationships in my life kept me going and I knew that I was not condemned by all, some people still loved me and I was glad.  

Lesson Two: Accept what has happened as the past and let it go! Acceptance is KEY! Evaluate the situation and learn from it without playing the blame game. Assess the whole event objectively; take responsibility where you ought to and MOVE ON! Make up your mind not to let the past ruin your present or your future, and most importantly, FORGIVE whoever is involved that has caused you pain, grief or hurt. Be it yourself, forgive yourself and move on. Forgiveness starts with a conscious decision and it helps you to let go and move on. Without forgiveness, you won’t be able to move on completely and you would be scarred for as long as the unforgiveness remains. No amount of unforgiveness can repay how you feel, so what’s the point?!!! Let it go! You deserve a better life, not one filled with anger or bitterness. You are too much for all that crap!

In my own case, when I made the conscious decision to forgive, I realized that with time I started praying for the parties involved, instead of hating them and casting blames. I made excuses for them, and I just moved on. I also forgave myself for the mistakes I made and I kept improving myself, turning to God’s word to renew my mind like never before and I depended solely on the Holy Spirit. It was a tough one, but God’s grace saw me through. I had done a profound evaluation of the whole process and I had learnt and grown. It became my sincere heart desire for the parties involved to learn and grow too, and the only way I could reach out to them was to pray for them.

I had finally let go of the event, but there was still pain and grief somewhat and I still lacked my energy, the zeal to live life was nowhere to be found. You may say to yourself “How sure am I that she even knows how I feel or the depth of what I am going through?” Well, I may not know exactly how you feel, but believe me when I say that I have felt deep excruciating soulful pain, and I have dealt with pain, and here I am today standing and sharing my victory over it. When I had that ordeal, I seriously had no clue as to how I was going to face the world, the society, church folks, my family members or even my everyday life. I literally thought that the earth was going to open up and swallow me, because truly I felt that there was no point living anymore. I struggled with so much hurt, pain, low self-esteem, rejection, anger, depression, hatred, betrayal, condemnation and regret. So many conflicting emotions and thoughts raged through my heart piercing my every moment. It was a period of torture for me. I felt so stupid at having “wasted” tangible years of my youthful life at something the court dissolved! Did it mean that I had willfully just thrown about 4/5years of my life into “nothingness”? I was inconsolable. I felt like a huge failure, like what on earth was I thinking or doing all these years, to what end??? Wow! That was a blow that I felt for a while. I remember each time I had to appear in court, I left the courtroom with the memory of the eyes of the judge, several lawyers, the sociologist, the psychologist, and members of the public in court on my frame as I stood within the box barely hearing my own words waiting for the verdict. It seemed as if my whole world had just collapsed! The future seemed so bleak, and I literally felt like I was not going to make it.

My pain worsened when some of my family members revolted against me at having soiled the Christian name and faith of the home, some were of the opinion that I was very stupid and had not represented the family name well. Alas! I was a disgrace to them.

It was so bad I couldn’t pray, and truth be told, there were times I couldn’t even be bothered, but other times, I knew that I had to get back to my altar, because it was my place of strength, wisdom and power, my prayer house, my place of fulfillment…so what did I do? I felt very numb and I was in deep shock, I couldn’t feel a thing, it was so hard for me to accept that life would just continue and go on as usual, I would go to church and wouldn’t hear a word that was preached or said, but somehow I knew that I had to hang in there for my dear life.

Part three coming up shortly.......... 

Stop the Pain, NOT Your Life! 1

'Life has a way of bringing hard times that can mess with your peace of mind, but don't let the troubles on the outside take the love you have on the inside....' 

Each time I listen to Deitrick Haddon sing those words, I nod in total agreement that life sometimes can feel like all hell let loose on you and you are so down and strung out because you cant seem to figure a way out. I will be sharing a story that has encouraged me and taught me a thing or two about how to get up and back on the horse when life knocks me down. It is inevitable that we would get the ugly part of life, we would go through trials, storms, tests, tribulation BUT we can be victorious and come out stronger and better if we set out to be. This is told by one who has been there..............................

When a lot of people go through pain, life’s issues, life’s challenges, they oftentimes do not know how to deal with the pain or go about it. Sometimes the pain is so heart wrenching and cuts so deep that they become numb and estranged to themselves. Sometimes it is cloudy and biting, and all it wants to make one do is go drinking, go have sex, go on a wild dancing spree or generally do something crazy like take out the feeling of pain on someone or something or even generally indulge one’s emotions by snapping at people, eating junk, going on a spending spree and not caring how much you spend and generally losing every sense of care and caution!

Usually, in most cases, people around can’t even help because they do not appreciate what one is going through. This often brings a feeling of loneliness which makes one feel worse especially when these people from whom love, understanding and comfort are expected turn round to condemn and even avoid. Some people do not know how to handle these feelings and so begin to contemplate suicide.  Are the options mentioned above really the best way to deal with pain, or are they the only ways to deal with the pain…do people really have to take out their frustrations this way? Are these the only ways to have a clean cut breakthrough out of the pain? Could this be the only way to get closure on the past? Trust me, the answer is NO!

Let me share my personal experience with you and how I became BETTER, STRONGER, and WISER with it!

I am a young, born-again, spirit-filled, beautiful, purposeful, gainfully-employed lady but my marriage just ended in a divorce court! Did that sound funny? Well, it happened. I lost a marriage that I had invested about 4/5 years of my youthful life into. Like every other marriage, we had issues but I was sure things could and would get better but the marriage came to a point where it couldn’t go on anymore…things just got too complicated and unfortunately, the marriage had to be dissolved in court!

Much more than the issues we had in the marriage which were hurting enough, the dissolution hit me deep, it ate into my very soul and it cost me my sleep for several weeks. Going through that whole experience wasn’t fun for me at all, I felt like doing all the things I mentioned above: indulging my emotions by going on a wild alcohol spree, having random sex, eating a whole house down, slapping and screaming down the next person that would dare ask me what happened and all sorts of confusing emotions were constantly raging at my heart. At that time, it was an ordeal I never would have imagined I would go through. I remember finishing a whole bucket of ice-cream in a sitting (please don’t open your eyes wide in surprise, I look back, and I am amazed myself), I also remember finishing a whole pack of cornflakes, golden morn, several bars of chocolates, a tin of Milo plus regular food all in two (2) days! Thank God I did not loose my shape like I had lost every sense of right judgment; I also had to deal with low self-esteem. My situation made me feel ugly and insecure from within. This made me almost fall prey into the arms of a friend of mine. He was so kind and gentle towards me, at that time, he was my rock and he helped me a lot when I needed a friend, he always covered my tracks so well for me, he became my best pal. It took God for me not to have sex with him; it was a tough one, but all thanks to God I overcame…whew!  

All these feelings I felt were beyond the surface, they ran deep and I am grateful to God who did not leave me or give up on me. He saw me through it all, and even when I fell, He caught me right on time! During this time that I was feeling all these conflicting emotions, I knew deep down in my spirit that giving in to my emotions would only make matters worse, and not better, but even at that, wisdom was not wise to me at all, and I was ready to damn every consequence but… Yes, there was a “BUT” and it was the only thing that kept ringing in my head and kept me from and in check that I did not go overboard: ACCOUNTABILITY!

There are lessons that I learnt during this phase of my life which I would like to share:

Lesson One: No matter how much it seems that no one understands you or feels your pain, NEVER TRY TO GO THROUGH PAIN ALONE!

James 5: 14-15 says “Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven”. Friends, the prayer of the elders also works for the sick in heart. Maximize your spiritual elders/leaders.

Also, Eccl. 4:9-10 says that “Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labor, for if they fall, one will lift up his companion, but woe to him who is alone when he falls, for he has no one to lift him up”. This scripture encourages you to have someone that can hold you up, even when you are down. I strongly believe that one of the major reasons why I didn’t completely go wild and loose, was because even when I couldn’t pray for myself, I had people praying for me and so I was not alone. I had people who were lifting me up in prayers especially my pastors and some of my friends. These people are very dear to me now and I am sure God will reward them bountifully!

Thank God I had an established relationship with the people above and on the same level with me in life with whom I was and stayed open during the whole ordeal. This was my first stage of RECOVERY which was going on even when it seemed things were going from bad to worse. 

To be continued...........