Learning to See

April 26, 2013 Journal

I blogged the thing I thought He wanted me to write about- His grief, in particular- after I called mom. In general, I try always to let the blogs go into the mystery- that is, not to try and discern what impact that might have had, because how can I know, exactly?

And Jesus has been so close and so comforting. He was there as soon as I woke up. I thought of how I was with Him, and said, "I love these memories," and He said, I’m with you now.

So I was with Jesus, wedged up between Him and the couch, settled into His shoulder. He poured love over me, rich and strong, He is full of love.

I said to Jesus, "Give me some way to know You better," and I couldn’t express what I was asking for, so I said, "I can’t explain this. You must know what I’m wanting to say," and He said, you want more presence.

And that is what I meant. I wanted more of His presence, specifically when the ecstasy of knowing myself to be with Him becomes so intense that I can't remain there. I want to be more present in that, without absolutely overwhelming me to the point where I think my head will explode.

April 26, 2013 Published Blog

This is me:

(On the original blog, there were three or so pictures in this post.)

These are some of the pictures we took for the adoption but didn't use. You can see that I am a perfectly ordinary person with a tendency towards awkward posture.

This is just in case my blog has headed out into the ether of uber-spirituality. I live with me, so I am always aware of my being ordinary.

Last spring, I was busy attempting to make a religion out of my spiritual experiences. I didn't realize I was doing this, but I was and I was exhausting myself.

This religion that I was coming up with was based on a lot of assumptions. Here were some of them:

God prefers a person who has no emotion.

I must always be serene.

If I can't perceive His love, He must not love me.

I earn these experience of feeling by living in the fruits of the spirit.

I grow in the fruits of the spirit by continually judging myself, and then punishing myself for having any emotions or thoughts such as:

irritability

anger

sadness

bitterness

impatience

doubt

confusion

and also by never seeing or acknowledging any good thing in me, even when it was put there or grown there by God.

There were probably other things on the list that I've forgotten.

So, long story short, I was fairly anxious and uptight a lot of the time. My blog posts from that time sort of reflect this misery. In them, I was frequently trying to come to terms with the fact that God was not making me perfect immediately and yet seemed to be around me, loving me, all the time.

Then, I fell by the pool and really injured both hands and one foot. Suddenly I couldn't dress myself, shower, wash my hair, clean the house or cook and I couldn't walk very well and I was in a lot of pain.

It took weeks and weeks and weeks for the deep abrasions and cuts to heal. During that time, it was impossible for me to squelch my overflowing emotions of anger, bitterness, sadness, helplessness, doubt, impatience, confusion, irritability, etc, etc, etc.

I was really, really miserable. I was feeling miserable about being miserable. And it was then that God really closed the deal, you might say.

You are misunderstanding this entire experience, He said to me, point blank. You aren't earning this, you can’t force yourself to be perfect, I want you as you are, stop fighting and surrender to My loving embrace as you are and trust Me with the very things you are so ashamed of.

I tried and it was really, really hard. I was so used to holding on so tightly to myself, to being in control, to denying my emotions, to judging myself for Him.

Letting go of that actually felt frightening. It felt scary to acknowledge when I was feeling angry or bitter or irritable, or sad or abandoned. I worried I would fall out of the control I imagined I had had over myself.

It was frightening to let go of my self-judgment: if I stopped judging myself, how would I know if I was doing okay or not, if I was acceptable or not, if I was progressing acceptably or just being stagnant?

It took me all summer and into the autumn to practice this letting go and letting be. I still am; I probably always will be.

I learned and continue to learn.

I stopping jumping- or trying to jump- from one spiritual experience to another, desperately, as though they were stepping stones or light posts- something I needed to prove something to myself.

I learned to let God be God. I let Him be the savior, not me. I let Him be the judge, not me. I let Him be God.

Before, if anyone expressed anything differently from what I held to be true, I felt a kind of perpetual or brewing insecurity. I felt almost driven to find some middle ground. It robbed me of peace and made every blog I posted a source of intense, lingering anxiety. I still feel this, but I can acknowledge differences while remaining calmly where the Lord has rooted me.

(I have reworded this extensively, but this is in order to more clearly capture what I was trying to express in the original blog. I try to keep the original language and arrangement, but I do a fair amount of editing as I am preparing to repost them. Especially in my journal, the original language was highly repetitive and carelessly structured. I didn't plan on anyone reading it. I just wanted to record what had happened the evening before as quickly as possible while it was fresh in my mind. Also, I quickly discovered that no vocabulary word or phrase of language was going to work the way I wanted it to, because words cannot really capture such things. Instead, I used words like a form of short hand. Even now, when I am rereading a journal entry, I will see a word, and see through it to the much larger experience beyond it.)

And I learned, most of all, to let myself be myself. When I was angry, I was angry! When I felt grief, I felt it! I let it flow up and through me.

This was the hardest thing to learn, but the most freeing, once I began to get better at it.

I've been learning lessons all my life. I expect that I always will. The point in life is not, I think, to reach perfect understanding, because is that even possible? But to be fully present where one is, in order to learn the lessons that are right in front of one.

April 27, 2013 Journal

So last night, I won’t lie, was strange and challenging. I continue to struggle to believe that these things are reliable and true- especially when Jesus seems to take me out of what I’m used to experiencing with Him and into new settings that I have to almost feel my way through, because I keep seeing things shift in and out of focus.

Last night, I was with Jesus and I was telling Him that I was confused by all the different thoughts and doctrines and ways of making sense of God and God’s plan and purpose etc,

And as we were resting together, Jesus said, would you like to know more about My official business- the plan, the way I do things?

I won’t lie- my response was utter shock, like, “Oh my goodness! You keep giving me these unbelievable choices! What am I supposed to do with this? Should I accept? Is this a trick question?”

And then I was all, “Okay! Yes. I would. I would like to know more. I would love to know more.”

Then again, I felt Jesus offering me the first choice- that I could go see the official rooms and I actually fell to the floor. I huddled up on the floor and put my arms over my head and was all- “This is terrifying!”

And I said to Jesus- “Why won’t You make these visions more clear?”

Because the static was huge and the image kept wavering and this increased my doubt. It was like seeing through the “snow” that used to fall over the old screens of black and white TVs.

Jesus didn’t answer, but He was kneeling beside me, stroking my back and being comforting, as He usually is.

So I said, “okay, yes.”

Immediately I went up- Up!- into an upper layer. It was like a layer of cloud. That was my first impression. That I was actually standing on a cloud, in front of some massive white structure.

I was all, “Oh my goodness. You can’t be serious. This cannot be. This is so hackneyed. There is no way this can be real. Clouds? Seriously? Seriously? I can’t believe this. I just can’t believe this.”

And it was like I was struggling to see! It was like those dreams where you can’t see clearly and it was perfectly obvious to me that it was my doubt that was making the difficulty. The correlation was obvious. The more doubtful I was, the harder it was to see. The more I simply accepted where I was, the more clearly I saw it.

Despite this, I couldn’t get to a state of quiet, trusting composure. It was overwhelming and I didn’t want to lie about my internal state of being- my doubt- I didn’t want to pretend I wasn’t feeling it, so I was constantly bringing it up, as though doubt were something I could hold in my hands and show Jesus, like- look at this, look at this! This is here, this is present, this is affecting me.

I felt His overarching compassion and intimate knowledge of me- me personally, my internal self, all my states of being and overall, His loving compassion, His acknowledgement and then His love- His tender loving kindness.

So I tried to just be there- wherever there was and in whatever way I was there, and I began to focus on it more and it came into focus and what I realized I was looking at was a gate.

A GATE.

A huge gate of white stone and the doors of the gate, incidentally, were open. And they led into a large stone courtyard and inside the courtyard, to one side of it almost, was a massive building of white stone with broad stairs that led up into a huge opening and I could not see beyond the opening.

(At this point, I had almost no understanding of spiritual symbolism, so I was constantly stumbling over things like the gate being made of white stone. My line of thinking was- "The gates of the New Jerusalem are made of pearls, so this cannot be really happening, because if it was, I would see gates of pearls.")

At first the courtyard was empty and then suddenly there were people in the courtyard and this frightened me so much that I put my head in His chest and said, “No,” and the people were no longer visible. But I knew they were there.

That was the funny thing. I knew that I couldn’t see them because Jesus is compassionate- and so are they- but that they were there, regardless.

So, eventually, I said, “Okay.”

Immediately, I could see them. But still not clearly. I don’t know how to emphasize enough how unclear everything was, at a certain level. It was like looking through wavering glass or without one’s glasses.

And a person come up- so quickly- one minute one place, the next another place.

And this person was so nice and loving and eager to spend some time with me and moreover, I knew who he was- his name echoed around me, within me and outside of me-

John, the beloved disciple.

I was so overwhelmed that it was as though I were a kind of spiritual fit of doubt and disbelief right there. It was just like that. I was doing that, and wanting to and going to hide behind Jesus’ back, as though to run away from this whole thing, and my thoughts, hardly coherent, were all pouring out in this stream, like, this can’t be happening! I cannot actually be meeting John the beloved disciple here and now in some way that I don't understand- some spiritual way.

Then I tried to pull myself together and just accept in trusting composure and then I was standing in front of Jesus again, and everyone was so nice! It was like they were so nice and compassionate that they just pretended that I wasn’t having convulsions of doubt and fear right in front of them. They just forgave it or looked past it, or just lovingly accepted it for the time being and it made no difference to them- them being Jesus and John.

I asked Jesus about this and He said that if I had a small child, I would understand- or to think of it in that way. No one expects a small child to know how to behave themselves perfectly. It would be weird and unreasonable.

It was as though I were a very young, small child in terms of spiritual understanding- the spiritual understanding of that place- the fullness of understanding that they live in.

Anyway. I was standing in front of John- John!!!!!!!- and he put out his hand, as though to shake hands and he was so eager, friendly, loving, and excited to meet me- as though he already liked me.

So I took his hand, and I tried to look at him, to see his face, but I couldn’t see it clearly- his face persisted in not coming into focus, and each time I tried to look more closely, the less I could see, and then I gave up trying and just was present and

As soon as I did this, was just present, he lunged forward in sheer delight and kissed my cheek.

Kissed my cheek!!!!!

That was way, way, way too much. My response to this impulsive, friendly, generous gesture was that I purely dropped right out of the experience.

When I returned, immediately I was back behind Jesus. And then we were alone, but there still, at the corner, where the gate was. I could look down the wall- a great distance down- I thought, “Wow, I can’t walk all that way,” to the next corner and then I was at that corner. We were at that corner- Jesus was there too, and I could look down the back wall, which also stretched, unbroken, a great long way.

And there was, connected to the corner where we were, a passage of cloud and stairs or just a path, I wasn’t sure, that went up to another cluster of buildings and I wasn’t sure what they were or were for, and when I thought about going there, I thought, “Better not.”

Then we were back at the corner where we began and I looked around and there was nothing but white light or sky all around and I said to Jesus, “This can’t be all,” and He said, this is all you can see right now.

Then we were back down in our own rooms and I was amazed and still unsettled and also doubting everything.

I paced up and down on the cool stone floor in bare feet. The room was so familiar! So comforting and all as usual. But even the room seemed to waver, if I stared at it.

I went to the opening and at first it seemed like a door way and then I remembered it was pillars and it was pillars and I touched one and it was fluted.

(This sort of thing still happens. The images that I see can waver and change like water. Out of these ripples, certain patterns become clear over time, and those patterns form expectations that I can rely on, like the room being made of stone, and being of a certain shape. The more intently I attempt to see clearly, the less I am able to see. The more quiet I can become, the more I am able to receive. That is, I cannot make myself see, but I can learn to make myself quiet enough to see what is given.)

I turned and leaned against the pillar and Jesus was standing back inside the room and immediately feelings of love and recognition and relief welled up in me and I smiled up at Jesus, as I leaned against the pillar and then He was leaning against the same pillar, standing in front of me, smiling down at me and I reached out and gathered up His robe in my two hands and I said, “I know You! I know You’re dependable and true! You, I recognize.”

The entire experience so unsettled me, however, that I could not rest deeply in His presence. I couldn’t trust that much.

*** Some things I read yesterday that so overwhelmed me I had to lean against the door post and try to breathe.***

(Because of the intensity of what I was beginning to see and my inability to understand it or put it into context, I had done a google search on visions and the like. There are, of course, a lot of secular material on these things, but for myself, I wanted nothing to do with anything outside of the Christian faith. Though I would not have said this publically for fear of offending others, I did not want to be spiritual only for its own sake; I wanted to know and to see and to be with the Lord Jesus. Almost the only place where I could find information about visions and spiritual experiences within the Christian faith was in the Charismatic/Pentecostal churches.

(I found a fair amount of material, and after I reassured myself that I was not crazy and not the only one experiencing these sorts of things, I then put those articles and websites away, and I did not return to them until a few years later, when I started feeling terribly lonely and isolated.

(However, it was at this point that the Lord made clear to me that, although He had made me a prophet, He would never place me in the office of a prophet, which was something I had just learned about, or give me a public prophetic ministry. He told me that the bulk of my prophetic ministry belonged to Him alone, and as a consequence, I would remain hidden with Him.

(This does not mean that He had no intent of using my writing, of course He has. But I rarely know how or in what way. How He brings people here and what He says to them through this writing, I know very little about. One of the things that I remembered most about a prophet is that they must trust the Holy Spirit to take the word the Lord had given them, and bring it where it needs to go. I forget which website I read that at, but I never forgot it.

(Because the Lord explained this to me at this early point, I have not pursued a path that would lead eventually to a public ministry or a defined platform. I would do so if the Lord had given me other directions, or even if I had begun to realize that I had a calling, but wasn't yet sure what the will of the Lord was concerning it. My position has not been like that, but I am grateful to those to whom the Lord has given a public ministry and platform- if He hadn't, I wouldn't have been so well encouraged, convicted, strengthened and comforted over the years. 

(The following article I had found from the Elijah List, which was the first time I'd seen this website, as well as other articles and material on line. This, and another section from another article, I cut and pasted into this journal entry because it was significant in that it spoke directly to my situation in an encouraging way. I could not find a live link to the second article, so I include here only the except and the link to one that still works.)

*

"Like Paul, we need to be a people of vision. Let us set our sights on the Lord and aim at His goals. The seer will move your heart and stir up your hunger for intimacy with God, because "the seer's goal is to reveal the man Christ Jesus!"

“What is the purpose of the Seer? Like all true seers of old, we must reach high. We must look heavenward. We must think otherly. We must passionately pursue the God of visitation. For years, the Church at large has struggled just to believe and teach that God speaks today. But now, the Church is beginning to grasp the many ways God speaks, including how he speaks to the SEER.

"Formerly considered "strange," the SEER anointing is becoming known as much more mainstream in the Church today. And that's good news for you. I can hear many of you saying, "Finally, they'll know I'm not crazy... in fact, I'll know I'm not crazy!"

"Times are changing! The seers are being restored to their place of insight, counsel, and the word of the Lord! Here come the Seers!

"If there are true seers today, and there surely are, then we must have our aim and focus clear. We must see Jesus! In all our seeing - let's be like John the beloved. Let's get in the Spirit and release the true prophetic spirit by revealing a testimony of Jesus (Revelation 19:10). He is the one I long to see. He is the one for whom my heart yearns and pants. He is the goal and prize of my life.

"In all our seeing - let us see and reveal the man Christ Jesus!”

-Goll, Jim W. "The Prophetic Power of the SEER," Sep. 25, 2004, The Elijah List, Link: http://www.elijahlist.com/words/display_word/2480