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Lately, I have felt all the feels that Katherine is talking about in her devotional that I shared. I have felt alone, distant, unseen, and separated from God. I recognize now that I have subconsciously let my pain separate me from Him as I have heeded to the themes of the world.
Recently, I’ve reviewed a list of ideas that come from our culture through the course called “The Calling” that Seth Barnes sent to me. It talks about living a life of story and that the world has it’s themes projected in movies while God has His themes He projects throughout the Bible. I’ve been in the trap in believing the idea that life is to be painless. I know this is not true, but as Chapter 4 in Perfect Presence calls out, we have been brainwashed and it takes some real effort to counteract that brainwashing. The brain washing teaches that “anything that is hard [and may cause us pain] should be avoided”.
On the Race I have experienced pain and I have endeavored to avoid it or strived to survive through it rather than seeing and acknowledging God’s Truth through it. I know that God does not promise that there will be no pain; instead He promises there will, in fact, be pain, but He will bring us closer to Him in that pain and He will walk with us during that pain.
When we avoid pain we avoid the walk and opportunity to deepen our dependence on and intimacy with God.
I should know this, but evidently I have really only grasped this intellectually. Writing this feels like a “duh!” moment because Jesus says and teaches this in the Beattitudes. But again Perfect Presence assures that this is the affect of double mindedness and the fight of heeding the mindset of our culture rather than the mindset of God.
I think in some ways I have had this pain and done nothing with it or about it. I’ve tried, to no avail, to process it, wrestle with it, release it, and avoid it. The combination of the book, the Calling course, Katherine’s devo, Caleb’s challenge, and this extremely sucky situation has brought things into a different perspective for me. As I experienced the pain of dealing with the violation I felt I asked God “why does my Race have to be about this?” Month after month and violation through discrimination, racism, and physical violation has been tiring and no matter who I talked to or what I tried I wasn’t finding freedom.
Katherine talks, in this devotional, about the encouragement God gives us, but then He turns and speaks to our circumstances, our problems, and our pain and commands it to separate us from Him no longer! God is speaking to pain and saying “no longer will you come between me and my child, my daughter”. And as things that separate us heed and yield to His first direction, they also yield to His second direction… “Bring my daughter back to me!”
We all have experienced pain and I would go as far to say we believe we know our limit, that we know the extent to which we can survive under pain. But what if our Father, the God that created us, the one that knows us better than we know ourselves is saying “no, there is more that you can withstand. There is more relationship and intimacy to be had with me and you must go through this to get there.” He’s not causing it to happen, but He is most definitely using it. But through the filter of our brainwashing, hearing that is terrifying and encourages us to avoid exactly what we need. When we avoid the pain we miss out and inadvertently avoid the deepened intimacy that God is trying to experience with us.
Independence is the opposite of relationship. Interdependence is the essence of relationship.
Rather than speaking to His children, to me as His daughter, and chastising me for being distant, distracted, and avoiding His love, He speaks to the thing that keeps me from Him. He chastises my pain and says “Racism, Injustice, Discrimination, Fear, Pain RELEASE MY DAUGHTER! No longer shall she be blind; no longer shall she be deaf, no longer shall she be mute!”
As I sat on the bus crying and feeling the pain and violation that just occurred, Caleb challenged me to find God and to be awake to His presence in every second of what just happened, what was currently happening, and what was going to happen. I started to cry, but as I thought about it in reflection, I finally saw the Truth…
God was sitting with Caleb and I on that bus and He was crying with me. Sitting on my sleeping pad with background music of worship songs with tears streaming down my face, Papa snuggled up behind me, wrapped me in His arms and pulled me into His lap and let me cry. He said nothing; He didn’t condemn me; He didn’t ask me what I felt in my heart; He didn’t tell me I needed grace or mercy, nor did He invalidate my feelings by telling me “everything will be alright”. He quietly held me and allowed me to feel… to feel the pain, but to feel the warmth of His embrace and the depth of His love by simply being with me.
Though my pain separated me from Him, He has been redeeming the separation and bringing me closer to Him and He has chosen me to be a witness to declare and show the glory in my separation. He has worked it all for His glory and His good and to grow our relationship and intimacy.
As I shared this with Mariah, the Spirit plucked me in the head and clarified “finding My presence in every moment in every day is not about seeing what I am DOING; instead it is about acknowledging My presence; acknowledging that I AM here and never left me.” Then the Spirit dropped the mic and walked out of the conversation LOL. I’m being silly; that didn’t really happen, but I’m saying that to say that was a big shift of mindset for me. I want to brainwashed with that mind set.
“…When I am your life, submission is the most natural expression of my character and nature, and it will be the most natural expression of your new nature within relationships.”
“And all I wanted was a God who will just fix everything so no one gets hurt.” Mack shook his head at the realization. “But I’m not very good at relationship stuff, not like Nan.”
Excerpt From: William P. Young. “The Shack.”
“To all who received him, he gave the right to become children of God. All they needed to do was to trust him to save them” (John 1:12b TLB)
