Deserts, Vultures, Boxes and Life!

“Sometimes you've got to believe in something get up from the desert floor” (Desert Floor, Full Devil Jacket 2013)

I recently went to my first live Metal Show at the tender of age of 51. I have been a closet Metal Head for years but because of the pressures to fit into the boxes I have found myself in over the years I never allowed myself to indulge this secret passion much. When the subject of attending this show first came up that last little part of me that wondered what people would think reared its ugly head for a second. I promptly stomped on its very ugly little head! Now for those who know me and those who don’t, a few years ago I would not have been caught dead at a Metal show or admitted out loud to most people that I liked the music. It would not have fit my perfect church lady/mother/wife gig I was working at that time. My oldest now loves to remind me of all the s**t I gave him when he was growing up over his love of metal. But I also know he is proud his ole momma finally got out of her coffin and joined the world again. I said all of this to get to the point of this blog.

I recently listened to my testimony from 2009 I have posted on youtube (the link is at end of this blog for those who have the need to know. A lot has changed since then so read the rest of this blog for the updates). I talked about the labels the world put on me and the labels I had put on myself. Truthfully they weren't labels so much as they were boxes. Over the years I buried my hurt, pain, my gifting’s and talents, even my true self in those boxes trying to fit somewhere... anywhere. I spread out the pieces of me in these boxes to protect myself and others around me. God over the years has dealt with many of the labels/ boxes I picked up in the world but truthfully I found just as many labeled boxes to climb into during my years as the perfect Christian as well. Now about this show, album and song. It preached,  it pinched and shoved me out of one of my boxes I have lived in for most of my life. The box of what others think of me. Over the last 2 years, I have done a fairly good job of climbing out of that box but it was still there waiting to draw me back. Whatever title you give it, label, box, what others think of you, the expectations of what you think the church and others wants from you... they are all the same thing TRAPS. We allow our experiences and those around us to put labels on us. These labels, boxes and expectations can become a death trap for our soul, spirit and sometimes even our very life.

Over the years I have been boxed or labeled by many things. The box of sexual, physical and emotional abuse. The box of condemnation heaped on me for being a promiscuous teenager and teen mom. The box of a woman who has been divorced, remarried and divorced more than once. I learned early in life that my worth according to the world and those around me was based on what I could provide a man. I learned all the skills to do or be whatever it took to please others around me so that I might find what up until then I thought was love. Somewhere in all this I had brief brushes with religion, not God, religion. My abuser was considered godly by most and hide behind that cloak for years. I had well-meaning people try to witness to the wayward teen I became. I tried to reconcile my life with the “God” they claimed was all that and a bag of chips. Sadly by the time I heard about the real GOD for the first time I was so damaged I could not believe He had time for me.

By the age of 18 I had given birth to two children, one I kept and one I gave up for adoption. I had been married briefly at 17, divorced and getting ready to remarry again. This second marriage added to my life in many ways good and bad. But with this marriage I once again entered the box of expectation. My behavior determined how I was treated and of course I never measured up and punishment always came. The trap of this box called expectation is when someone always has expectations of who you should be and it is not your authentic self, you will always come up short. No matter how hard you try it will never be good enough because you can’t keep up the act when you are going against who you really are. From time to time brief moments of joy would slip in with my children and even with my husband, but they never lasted long and the darkness that had followed me around most of my life had taken up permanent residence in my soul. The desert floor will always invite you back over and over again... the vultures love the company.

By the time I was 32 I was once again divorced with two more kids in tow. My children are and always have been the shining stars in my otherwise crazy life up to this point. But the danger of living in those boxes is that it affects all who are close to you. My kids have enjoyed me in stability and survived me in chaos. If I was told I could only point to one thing that convinced me there was a God, my beautiful children would be what I would point to. After 9 years I once more I found myself on the desert floor. I was remarried to a raging alcoholic and serial cheater. This box almost did me in, thinking I would be happy if I could fix him I realized the sad truth was that the only person I needed to fix was myself. Unwilling to take that task on at that time, I decided it was easier to simply die.

In 2004, 8 months after my last separation from the serial cheater I woke once again in the hospital after a suicide attempt. I say again because I had tried this solution before when things got too much throughout my life. I almost completed the attempt this time as I was five minutes from my heart stopping from a fatal dose of antidepressants and Xanax with an alcohol chaser, when my then 14 year old daughter found me. You know you messed up when you wake up in the cardiac unit and not the psych ward after a suicide attempt. But this time it was different, because during the last 9 years I had dated God off and on. Now don’t get me wrong, I was not able to stay in any church for to long, I had a hard time with men and their definition of religion. But somewhere along the way God had gotten His hooks into me. My then brother in law was a Baptist preacher, one thing I will say about the Baptist is that if there is a sinner in a 10 mile radius someone is getting saved... one of those people had been me. Three days after I left the hospital, God met me in a dark mirror and for the first time in my life I surrendered (my right to screw up my life) to Him. Bit by bit He started peeling off the labels and there were visible cracks in a few of those boxes.

For the next 6 ½ years I immersed myself in a new marriage to a Godly man, church, ministry work and anything that made me feel useful. My walk with God was fairly steady, but there were still parts of me in those boxes. I found many things to keep my hands busy with, anything but what I needed to work on...myself. I still had many parts of me in various boxes but I tried at all cost to keep the lids tightly shut for fear of what people would think of me. I had a few moments of pure honesty during this time but they were met with shock and quiet shuffling by some leadership in my life that kept me in my second class Christian place. I learned in church, honesty was no more appreciated than it was in the world. So in the box I stayed and the darkness lurked and the vultures called to me.

In 2011 my entire world was turned upside down by the diagnosis and subsequent death in matter of months of my husband to cancer. I was once again alone and without the person I had molded my life around. See the truth was that even as a believer I still tried to be what I thought others wanted me to be. At the time of his death I was in a church that accepted my past so that allowed me some relief from the fear that still stalked my soul. But truth was I still had this darkness that lurked in the corners of my mind and I had never fully dealt with it. I simply medicated it with trying to be the perfect wife and Christian and now that had disappeared. My husband was dead and I failed to pray him well so I had failed on both counts. In less than a year I lost my husband, my home and most of my material possessions. I was dependent on my children and my church family. I was adrift and realized a lot of my “faith” had been placed in the things and the people around me and not in God. I loved God with all my heart but truthfully I still didn’t trust Him to really love all of me. When I stumbled (their definition not mine) out of loneliness, I was lovely sent to deliverance and instructed that I was a valuable asset to the organization BUT my behavior would have to get in line. I was instructed by my then spiritual authority to put both feet back into the work of the church. There was work to do and so in my mind I had no time to finish grieving or deal with the darkness that still haunted me. The funny thing is that the enemy of our soul will always strike when we are at our lowest and frankly I believe with all my heart that God allowed it to strike at this time because the only one who was believing the lie about my fabulous Christian walk was myself. The time had come for me to climb out of another box! I truly felt like God put a boot in my a** and made me deal cause I did not volunteer to do it I assure you! LOL

So since 2011 instead of dealing with the darkness in my usual way I choose to honor the deal I had struck with God back in 2004, when the darkness tried to creep in, I surrendered. When life overwhelmed me, I surrendered. When the desert floor called and the vultures heckled me... I believed in something and got up! I have been out of “organized religion” since 2012 because as I began to walk out of the fog of grief and fear I realized I had put my trust in people and in a man made thing called church and not in God. The darkness that haunted me was brought to light and you know how darkness hates light! I have accepted that at this point in my life I have no box in which to climb into. I am not the person I was before God, but I am not the perfect church lady/mother/wife I was for 6 years either. I don’t fit in the boxes of my past even though I tried a few times to crawl back to some them I knew would kill me. God in His infinite grace was standing in the way each time I looked at the desert floor. I have people who have earned my trust that I go to for guidance and prayer but at this stage I am a little scared of anything that remotely resembles a box... just sayin!

So what does this have to do with a Metal Show and the song quote from earlier? The answer is this, the darkness that once haunted me was simply my fear of finding out who I really am and my willingness to accept all of me. The darkness held the false fear the enemy instilled in me a long time ago that there was nothing in me God could love.... LIAR LIAR LIAR! I finally got up from the desert floor and decided to live...to live a life that for the first time ever is as real as I have ever lived. The real me who loves metal and does not always follow the “rules.” The real me who loves God but who does not fit neatly into that box most call church, I call it religious tradition. The real me who for the first time can accept the good and different that is me. The me that has a someone in her life who doesn’t have a box for her to climb into... that by the way is something I at first found very hard to do even on my best day. I used to hate the statement, “No expectations” but now I find it somewhat comforting. I know I am part of his life because he chooses for me to be and not because he expects something from me. For the first time in my life I only have me and God to blame for the me I am today (yes I said blame God, get your panties out of a twist). Each day I make the choice to get up from the desert floor or lay there with the vultures and the past. Every day that I choose to get up I know God smiles because unlike men’s grace, God’s grace is new every day! And most importantly each day that I get up I choose to give myself grace.

Do I still have boxes I need to get out of? Yep! I didn't get here overnight so I am still and may always be a work in progress. But today I am okay with who I am, what I am and where I am on this road we call life. I am a metal loving ole girl who is enjoying living a very different life than I have ever lived. My motto in life is no matter what take each day as it comes and ROCK ON!

My testimony link as promised... http://youtu.be/mmZVeZvdU8c