I’m overwhelmed at the love and mercy in the sweet, compassionate comments from my last post Working Harder is Not the Answer. Thank you so much for your kind words.

Henri Nouwen said this about the gift of friendship in Bread for the Journey:

Friendship is being with the other in joy and sorrow, even when we cannot increase the joy or sorrow. It is a unity of souls that give us nobility and sincerity to love. Friendship makes all life shine brightly.

My blog friends make my life brighter. Thank you for your unconditional love. (There is a difference between unconditional love and unconditional approval. You don’t have to approve of one’s actions to love them). Thank you for following Jesus. Most of what Jesus taught people was concerned with how we love other people –in kindness, justice, and mercy.

Score Keeping

A lot of ladies related to the post. The battle of trying being good enough and trying to earn approval from God is wide spread in the church. We speak of “not earning by works” but there seems to be a lot of score keeping going on. Our busyness and volume of our good works can drown out the still small voice of God.

Adam and Eve lost sight of God’s love and made a real mess. The thing is, we can’t make God love us any more or less. He loves us with a perfect love. Keeping our eyes on His love–Christ is what it is all about.

Religion offers us the illusion of earning acceptance, but it is only a cheap substitute for the reality of life in him. God’s desire is to engage us in a life-changing relationship. He knew the ‘life-changing’ would come only out of the relationship. Thus he demonstrated his love for us before we did anything to make ourselves worthy of it. By doing so, he wanted us to stop trying to earn it and just live in light of it.

What would you do today if you knew God absolutely loved you? God knows the answer to that question will lead you further into his life than the strivings of religion ever can. The key to living a productive Christian life is not waking up every day trying to be loved by God, but waking up in the awareness that you are already his beloved…

As you grow increasingly certain that his love for you is not connected to your performance you will find yourself released from the horrible burden of doing something for him. You’ll realize that your greatest ideas and most passionate deeds will fall far short of what he really wants to do through you.–Wayne Jacobson, He Love Me.

Jesus Didn’t Come to Give Us Guilt and Shame

Jesus paid for our sin. We have to stop trying to pay twice, we need only accept His sacrifice. (1 John 1:9).

“…that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.
—Phil 3:8-9

Our disobedience need not become the permanent road for the rest of our lives–this is a deception. God can use our failures for His purposes. God is able to use our weaknesses, mistakes, and sins. When we can fix our eyes on Christ, accept His forgiveness then we can enter His rest.

When we remember we are His beloved, even while we make mistakes, He will forgive us, lead us, heal us, and bless us as we abide with Him, the Alpha and Omega, the Author and Finisher of our faith.

Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform [it] until the day of Jesus Christ. Philippians 1:6

I continue to learn to turn off the voice of condemnation, listen for the promptings of the Holy Spirit, and the joy of resting in Him.

Thank you again sweet Sisters.

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I write for homeschoolers to motivate and help other moms avoid some of the mistakes I’ve made. The writings are positive and encouraging, so they may leave you with a false impression of my family.

I’d like to set the record straight. We are not the perfect homeschool family. I am not a super mom that has it all together.

Most of my life I have run on a performance treadmill attempting to earn love and acceptance from God and others. The result has been a mess.

My childhood was difficult. I was often left alone (due to family illness) and as a result sexually abused for over a decade (from age five).

The shaggy hairstyles, bell-bottoms, rock and roll, make-love-not-war seventies welcomed my rebellious spirit. My life was broken – littered with hurts, failures, and mistakes.

My sweet godly Grandmother was faithful to plant spiritual seeds in me. Each summer I spent time with her I saw Jesus in her love. I longed for a relationship with God and talked to Him often.

Seeking Acceptance in Religion

I became a Christian as a teenager and deeply wanted to follow Christ. But I was full of shame and guilt, enslaved in bondage, unable to accept love and the forgiveness God offered. The treadmill kept me from freedom to enjoy the blessings of God. I married at 17 and had four children in five years. I was determined to raise my children in a Christian home.

In my zeal, I went from the life of a sinner to a religioholic (an alcoholic is preoccupied by alcohol, a workaholic is preoccupied by work, I was preoccupied with legalistic religion). We joined a legalistic church and went every time the door was open. If we missed a service, the guilt would drive me to volunteer for something else. I kept the nursery during church and taught Sunday School. I wasn’t fed much spiritually because I was busy earning love and approval. Artificial rules and regulations sucked the love of God out of our family.

Recycling the Misconceptions

I sincerely thought I was on the right path. I tried to control our family with my lists of Christian rules. Church attendance and Bible studies were duties. My husband was rejected by the church because he drank beer on weekends. After that, he had several affairs; he finally abandoned us and we didn’t see him for 15 years.

I was completely rejected by the church I served. I was told, “I must not have been submissive enough.” It was a small church and I think they were afraid to have a single mother with four children and no income.

I emphasize with the millions of single mothers in America struggling to feed their children every day. I was raising four children without child support for six years. We slept on mattresses, ate meals off a cardboard box, skipped many meals, and collected soda bottles in ditches to buy medicine. I was desperate to feed my children. I worked waitress jobs and even got a job in a nightclub for a while. The churches we visited were afraid of us or too legalistic for a divorced mother. After a few rejections, I stopped trying to go.

I joined the Orlando Police Academy when I found I could work off-duty jobs for good money. I was a scrawny 110 lbs but I made it through the academy. I was able to work 80-100 hours a week which I needed to to pay for child care for four.

I then married, this time to a man with an unsavory past, but he promised to take us to church and he did. We were involved in a mid-size church without all the extreme legalism. I had three more children. I worked hard toward the Proverbs 31 goal and we began homeschooling. Our family was dysfunctional, as most families are, but I was determined to work hard and protect my children from the evil world.

Externally we appeared to be a godly family, but internally each of us was unraveling.

I passed down unhealthy habits of performing to earn love and acceptance to my children. Instead of teaching the love of God, I taught them (by actions, not words) how to run on the performance treadmill and jump through behavioral hoops. While I was running on this treadmill I had a judgmental attitude towards anyone who wasn’t on the same treadmill. I was extremely critical of myself and others. Where is the love of God in that?

Homeschooling brought in new artificial rules and regulations (wearing dresses, baking bread, using the right math program, the number of school hours, etc.). I had new rules to follow–maybe this time I could get it right! I was willing to work hard. I truly believed I was on the right path, but the fruit proved otherwise. When my children hit their teen-age years they rebelled.

I was in deep denial. My closest friend once told me, “If being in denial was an Olympic sport, you would be a gold medalist!” My formula for coping with the dysfunctional mess went something like this:

• Step 1: Denial (Pretend there is no problem or pretend I don’t feel the way I feel)
• Step 2: See some of the problem, blame myself, wallow in shame.
• Step 3: Work harder, try harder
• Step 4: Fail.
• Step 5: Blame myself, wallow in shame.
• Step 6: Lose it.
• Step 7: Blame myself for losing it, wallow in shame. Emotional collapse.

That marriage ended in divorce. My adult children struggle with the consequences of our broken family. Ten years ago I married a man with two daughters and together we had two more children (now 7 and 8 )

These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.
(Mat 15:8)

I’ve repented and apologized for those many years that I was wrapped up in this spiritual self-reliance and cheated them of the joy of life in Christ. By God’s grace we are all in different stages of healing.

We Needed Relationship Not Religion

Jesus came to give us Life– it has nothing to do with our ability to perform. The Christian life is dwelling in Him. We need to simply enter His rest and watch the freedom from our mess begin to unfold. As we dwell in Him we become transformed into His image, being changed by His glory. Without the Vine to bring nourishing sap to the branch there can be no fruit.

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Heb 12:2.

I love the way Mike Yaconelli explains this:

Spiritually is not a formula; it is not a test. It is a relationship. Spiritually is not about competency; it is about intimacy. Spiritually is not about perfection; it is about connection.

The way of spiritual life begins where we are now in the mess of our lives. Accepting the reality of our broken, flawed lives is the beginning of spiritually not because the spiritual life will remove our flaws, but because we let go of seeking perfection and instead seek God the One who is present in the tangleness of our lives.

Freedom comes from knowing truth – and the One who is the Way, the Truth and the Life. Freedom does not mean lawlessness. Freedom in Him is freedom from shame and not from responsibility. We have a responsibility to submit. God’s Spirit can do His work only as we yield to Him. Jesus came to show us the love of God; when we yield, that love flows through us.

Our standard of conduct should be holiness (Col. 3:1). We are not without law but we are under “the law of Christ” (Gal. 6:2), the law of love (James 2:8), and “the law of liberty” (James 2:12).

Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall by following their example of disobedience. (Heb 4:1)

In Christ is the storehouse where God has placed all the “treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col 2:1–5). Spiritual fruit–love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control–beginning with the knowledge of God through Christ and the Holy Spirit.

Getting off the performance treadmill was a long, complicated, and messy process. I had a lot of shame and assumptions to overcome. God took me on this journey to learn of Him through the Hebrew roots of Christianity (which can also turn into legalism if one is out of balance) to prepare me for His plans for me. I got to know Him by dropping preconceived ideas and assumptions. I learned of God’s grace through the wonderful stories in both Testaments.

Not everyone goes this particular route. But no one experiences real spiritual fruit until they have accepted His love.

You will trust God only as much as you love him. And you will love him not because you have studied him; you will love him because you have touched him—in response to his touch…Only if you love will you make that final leap into darkness. “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” Brennan Manning in Lion and Lamb

I continue dealing with the consequences of my life of sin. It’s a journey and we have come far, but we have far to go. It’s easy to lose focus and rely on working overtime to please God through our good works and righteous behavior. But we can never do it in our own strength.

At the very root of all Christian life lies the thought that God is to do all - that our work is to give and leave ourselves in His hands, in the confession of utter helplessness and dependence, in the assured confidence that He gives all we need.

The great lack of the Christian life is that, even where we trust Christ, we leave God out of the count. Christ came to bring us to God. Christ lived the life of a man exactly as we have to live it. Christ the Vine points to God the Husbandman. As He trusted God, let us trust God, that everything we ought to be and have, as those who belong to the Vine, will be given us from above. (Andrew Murray, The Secret of God’s Love)

Today my focus is on my relationship with God and teaching my children how much God and I love them.

The rest of the story…I have not listed all my sins nor all my consequences in this post (it would take a book, a very large book) but you get the idea.  I still struggle daily, but God reminds me how much He loves me and then I can rest in His strength. He reminds me that He used David, the woman at the well, and even a stubborn donkey, and He can even use me.

My response is to get down on my knees before the Father, this magnificent Father who parcels out all heaven and earth. I ask him to strengthen you by his Spirit—not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength—that Christ will live in you as you open the door and invite him in. And I ask him that with both feet planted firmly on love, you’ll be able to take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God. (Eph 3:17-19)

Are you living in religion instead of resting in a relationship? Take this quiz.

The book The Shack by William P. Young was special to me because the main character, Mack was delivered from shame and the performance treadmill. See my book review here.

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4. Daisy Petal Christianity (Free Book: He Loves Me)

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Thank you for your prayers. God answered them!

I went to the local Emergency Room on Monday afternoon after experiencing several days of chest discomfort (not helped by nitroglycerin)  The EKG showed some irregularities so I was transferred by ambulance to Vanderbilt hospital in Nashville.

I have left main coronary artery disease (LMD). Last July, I had open heart surgery, then a few months ago I received stents. Since then I have had several bouts of unstable angina. Angina is chest pain or pressure that occurs when your heart muscle does not get enough blood.

Angina is stressful. It’s somewhat like having Braxton hicks (pre-labor) contractions in your ninth month of pregnancy. You know something is going on but you aren’t sure when it is time to go to the hospital.

Angina brings on anxiety, which leads to more chest pressure which leads to more anxiety–it’s a frightening cycle.

The beginning of anxiety is the end of faith, and
the beginning of true faith is the end of anxiety.”

The cardiologist informed me they would be doing a heart catheterization and if they found a narrowing, I would need open heart surgery again. I can’t put into words how I felt.

Most of my posts are about resting and trusting in God, yet the chest pains punched me straight into anxiousness and fear. Oh I was praying, and I remembered all the times God delivered me yet I still wrestled with doubt and worry.

My deepest desire is intimacy (in-to-me-see) with God. He is my strong tower, my rock, my refuge, and my hiding place. He is the Creator of the universe, He knows the number of hairs on my head, and He loves me. I know all this but I was afraid.

My open heart surgery was done before I could  research the procedure.  Now that I know what happens during the bypass surgery I was much more apprehensive. I even watched actual videos of the surgery on You Tube (there are times ignorance is bliss).  I should have spent my time in Psalms instead of medical books.

Anxiety is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all others thoughts are drained.–Arthur Somers Roche

Yielding to God’s Will

My heart cath was scheduled for the next day. That night I talked to God through the night. It was the next morning before I was able to tell God I surrendered all.

He gave me the strength to accept His will. If He wanted me to have this surgery He had a plan. I didn’t understand the worry was bondage until I was freed from it. It was liberating. I felt the proverbial peace like a river.

The surest way to intimacy with  God is not to seek Him as a goodie giver, a problem solver, or healer in time of need, but rather by opening to His unmeasurable love.

May your unfailing love rest upon us, O Lord, even as we put our hope in you” Ps. 33:22.

God is so amazing. As I wallowed in anxiety, He lifted me above the circumstances and reminded me of His faithfulness. He made the universe, He shaped the stars. He made my body and my heart. He keeps my left main artery flowing.

He wasn’t angry or disappointed that my eyes weren’t on Him. He was there waiting on me with open arms as always.

A Shadow of Heavenly Things

Recently my son had a cavity filled. It was a major cavity close to the nerve. He was given gas and I held his hand during the procedure. It was so hard to watch him get the Novocain shot. My heart dropped when he tightened his legs and squeezed my hand. But I knew a few minutes of discomfort would ultimately save him excruciating pain later.

Our heavenly Father only allows pain with a purpose. The pains we have here on earth will quickly be forgotten in Heaven’s glory.

No Surgery Needed

It turned out I do not have to have open heart surgery. My left main artery is working efficiently. It seems I have a problem with the much smaller micro vascular arteries which can be handled with medication. Doctors and medicine help people live longer lives, but we know that God is the one who preserves our lives. He can call us home at anytime. His will be done.

Let us give up our work, our plans, ourselves, our lives, our loved ones, our influence, our all, right into [God’s] hand; and then, when we have given all over to Him, there will be nothing left for us to be troubled about.” –Hudson Taylor, missionary to China

Numbering My Days

My life prayer is from Psalm 80:12 “teach us to number our days, that we might gain a heart of wisdom.” Dealing with a left main  blockage makes numbering my days much clearer. Patients with a left main artery disease have a high mortality rate during the five years after bypass surgery.

Daily chest discomfort are frequent reminders–I am blessed–I have an alarm bell going off reminding me of the importance of being in God’s will, to pray for guidance, and prioritize according to the Spirit’s leading.

Right now the most important thing I can do is play Crazy Eights with my youngest sons.

So good night, and thank you again for your prayers.

It is well, with my soul.

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Robin called last night to tell me that she is not going to need any kind of surgery, which is a huge relief.  The doctors were very thorough and determined that her pain and low blood pressure could be controlled through medication alone.

Thank you all for your prayers - she said she could feel them.  Next time you see a new blog entry it will be Robin writing. 

God bless,

Kathleen

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Thank you all so much for your prayers.  Robin called to say that she is having a heart catheterization later this afternoon.  She will not know anything until the results are back from that test.  I will update as soon as I hear anything.

Please continue to pray that the doctors will be able to accurately diagnose the problem and will be able to fix it in the least instrusive way.

In Christ,

Kathleen

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