Hope Without Limits

It is time for more transparency which means I must confess to you …

I’ve been trying to crawl back into my cocoon recently because my heart had been wounded, but my Heavenly Father wouldn’t let me.

He sent a friend to literally tell me I am a butterfly that needs to fly, flutter and display it’s colors when all I wanted to do was withdraw.  It didn’t feel safe to be me, to be seen and be that butterfly.  I’d tried that and been rejected.  I was certain that if I could just withdraw, i.e., crawl into my cocoon and fold it round me, my heart would be safe.  But the truth is, if a butterfly was able to do that, it wouldn’t be safe, it would die.  The same holds true for my heart.

My Heavenly Father didn’t stop with sending my friend.  He sent me a prophetic Word that literally “read my mail”.  He showed me truth in His word.  He sent me revelation during my acupuncture treatment.   He sent me another friend to confirm everything He’d already told me.  After that came dreams and revelation.  All these things to tell me who I really am and what I really need to truly keep me, my heart, safe.

You see what I wanted was for my world to change.  I believed that was the only way the emotional and FMS pain would stop.  The problem with that perspective is it included the fact that I couldn’t see anyway for my world to change the way I wanted it to change which left me feeling overwhelmed and hopeless.  A very difficult thing to admit when you write about unconditional hope.

As I lay on my acupuncturist’s table, I told him this pain feels overwhelmingly familiar and I don’t know why it keeps happening.  When will it ever stop?  He was quiet for a moment and asked a very simple question “are you sure you don’t know why”?

Truth seared through my thoughts.  I knew why.  I just didn’t want to actually see the truth because I thought all the options the truth contained were not acceptable to me.

In the same moment that I had the courage to allow my heart to express what it had known all along but my intellect had not wanted to hear, a portal to heaven was opened by my mourning and the promised comfort was immediate (Matt 5:4).

What was that comfort?  It isn’t my world that needs to change, it is me. The pattern that keeps repeating itself and triggering the stress and FMS pain is how I respond to my world.  Or to quote Dr. Mario Rivera “I don’t have problems, I am the problem.”

There are 2 facets I have seen this week.  First is I try to morph myself into whatever it is I think you need in order to make your world a better place; to solve your problem; to rescue or save you. Second is when I have FMS pain from all the stress of morphing myself – my response is “I hear the pain telling me I’m not enough, push harder”.  Which spins the stress wheel even faster because if I’m not enough for me, I’m certainly not enough to help anyone else!!

It’s a very old and familiar pattern to me.  I’ve dealt with other layers of this pattern before now.  But what I’d just discovered about myself felt like bedrock.  How in the world would I change this about myself.  It felt as old as time itself.

Enter Jesus.  Can I get a woooooo hooooo here???

My Deliverer.  (1 Thessalonians 1:10)

After I read this verse in several translations, I looked up the Greek and discovered the word for deliver is “rhyomai”  and means “to draw to one’s self, to deliver, to rescue, the deliverer”.  The greek word is made up of “rheō” to flow and “rhysis” a flowing issue, i.e., something constantly moving in the present.

Whoomp – there it is 🙂

Jesus, Your presence in me is a constant flow/river of deliverance!  That’s how I will be set free from these ingrained patterns.  River’s can wash away rock; the river of Your presence can wash away what feels so impenetrable/unchangeable in my life by my own efforts.

I see the caves on the beaches of Pompino, how the constant washing of the tide had literally washed away rock and created open space.  Space for people to laugh and play; space to be completely filled with the tide so that even more space can be created.  The flow of the water just keeps taking away the layers.

Part of me wondered if in the waiting I would be destroyed as I wait for the change.  Immediately Jesus brought to mind pictures of the river bursting through the rock wall of one of the quarries belonging to the company for whom I work during a 500-year flood in May 2010.  The river didn’t go over the wall, it went through it!

Click here for video footage.

The water literally burst through the rock, instantly creating that gushing waterfall.  Everything was changed in a moment by the river.  700 billion gallons of water flowed into our quarry in 5 hours.  It was frighteningly powerful, mesmerizing and created so much change it felt chaotic, but it actually saved lives because the surrounding neighborhoods were spared.

Yes Jesus, My Deliverer.  Yes to the power of the river of Your presence changing me over time or in a moment.  Yes to how different life will look and letting go of familiarity as my guide and safe guard.  Yes to the life contained in the change.  I trust You, Jesus, My Deliverer.  My hope.

Withdrawal or freedom.  Which do you choose?