Chords of Love
by Priscilla Van Sutphin
November 28th, 2008
A couple weeks ago, I was listening to bible on CD and it came to Mark’s account of Jesus suffering I think it was, and they were dramatizing the blows to Jesus by the Pharisees, giving the punching sounds, and I suddenly felt as if it was going deep into my heart how he took the blows without any fighting, just taking them for us…and I began to weep and sob really deeply. I knew God was healing something in me of the self defensiveness I’d been asking God to remove. It was a small revelation of the cross, but still something very significant for me. How awesome is His love !
The Sunday before a young adult – almost middle age now, came to our Sunday group, suddenly, and uninvited, and I found it hard to handle because although when I first met him, I know the group I was working with changed, and Jesus started to come in a very powerful way. But this young person has been stubborn in his ways, and unwilling to be truly discipled, unwilling to read the Word, and everytime progress would be made, his family conditions and the deep hurt in his heart seemed to rob him of ability to change. So at first I thought, maybe God is changing things, but after some ruminating, have felt it was only an old behavior of running to me for comfort, but not really wanting to pay the full price for discipleship. There has been no communication since their coming so felt it was just another way for the enemy to try and disrupt what God really wanted to do…
Then the next week on Tuesday I found out about a good friend of my son’s having osteosarcoma who is only 28 years old. My heart was breaking. I’d spent a year and a half down at the coffee shop for a time, speaking with young people and listening to conversations, playing cards with some of them, getting to know them and when led, testifying or praying with them or some of the adults there. Josh was the most consistent person I saw because he was there almost every day talking with people. So I asked him to dinner on Wednesday and went to hear his story and all that was going on with him, and he let me pray with him in the car. I am continuing to pray for him and ask that you do so as led.
Then next day was texted by a young friend who I had counted on to help with the healing group, telling me she was thinking of staying in Seattle for two years. I was not feeling very happy about the idea because selfishly, I love her like a daughter and would be very sad at her leaving and staying up there, and I expressed it to her, maybe too honestly without being sensitive to her needs. Later, I thought how when I was young, I wanted something new, and I didn’t stay in jobs for all that long…I liked new challenges, and learning new things. And I was hired as a change agent which made me not very loved when I was hired in a new place. So the Lord reminded me again how it was to be young.
Then next day my son called me to tell me he didn’t need me to take him to the hospital for his hand surgery, as his friend Mike was available to take him which would save them a trip taking me home later in the day. But as a mom, I had really wanted to go with him…
But I was surprised at how deeply this accumulation of events affected me and I found myself wanting on the inside to throw things, and to give in to rejection and abandonment, feeling worthless and useless. I felt ANGRY on the inside yet wasn’t acting out, just aware of feelings deep inside, a demon deep inside…so I called my friend Cyndee, as I’ve also been asking God for deliverance from all the anger at rejection in my life. So Cyndee in Oklahoma, prayed and I repented of some more things and giving in to rejection again, etc…and I started to cough, and more came out. I felt a WHOLE lot better after that.
God was the ONE putting on the pressure, so that it would come to a head. You know how pimples sometimes grow and they have to come like a carbuncle to a head before you can squeeze them to get out the pus ? Well healing is a lot like that ! The infection has to surface before you can adequately see what is going on and why. Then you can get rid of the pus, and like the pimple or carbuncle, it will still leave a scar that needs healing, which then God comes and soothes with His love. Now I noticed how when my son came with a huge hangover yesterday, the Lord’s grace was on me to not condemn or chide, or say anything negative, or even to think bad thoughts. I knew God did something major on the inside of me.
When I was young I had a mother who was neglectful and had tried to abort me and who abandoned me at birth to my grandma, and later to foster homes, and as a young adult I rebelled against some authority. I was not very comfortable with women who were older especially, because of the mothering thing. I still had hated my mother. So the very thing I needed in having a mother figure who did love me, I often pushed away. I remember one lady who I was drawn to, who was a friend of my mother, and when I got close to her, my own natural mom, got jealous and pretended to commit suicide to get attention from me. That made me even angrier.
A lot of the rejection I experienced and abandonment, also makes me hold on to things tighter than I need to. I have had a hard time letting go. That is what made me a controlling mother, “overprotective” etc. So GOD has been working on me gently and steadily to learn to let go. People’s lives are in His hands, so ultimately, we have to entrust others to HIM. This is easier said than done. It is a particularly painful wound if you love someone more than they have ability to love you back, or you love them, but they aren’t commited in the same way, like my ex husband, or the many pastors who rejected us. I have learned to have a lot of grace for people for the most part.
In the midst of this, I found a stray kitten who looks a lot like my Jubilee, charcoal cat who is very old now. This kitten is male, and very frisky, but was shaky and almost shocky when I found him, so scared. I had the sense he’d been thrown out or got out of another home so put a sign up in the laundry room. I know I can’t keep him due to allergies, and already having to female kitties, so this was a challenge in the midst to teach me a lesson about letting go I think. At the same time had forgotten how fun little kitties and be, and how mischievious, so in the midst of tears, God brought a source of joy and laughter. How good God is !
Like the kitty, often due to the lack of fathering as well, I felt like an orphan. This made me very independent and not really wanting to get close to people sometimes. I had a fear of intimacy, that if I got close it would resemble past experiences, and I’d be rejected or abandoned again. Also because it was hammered into my head as a teen, that “I needed to take care of myself, as no one else would take care of me” by my foster mom, isolation, self sufficiency, and independence were fostered by the enemy in my life to keep me from healing.
I also tried to find fathering when I became a Christian in the father figures in the church, the pastors. But I was rejected by them all - except for Josh Stewart in the Tustin Vineyard who seemed to allow my husband and I grace for helping with a home group. We were too difficult in their eyes, and not many will become father or mother figures to adults who are damaged. Before and after him, we were not all that accepted. In fact some were quite cruel in their rejection only making the rejection all the more cementing of my hurts and woundedness. My ex husband was also abused badly as a child, so we were both kind of a mess, and quite a challenge to any church.
You have had a lot to shoulder in your lives given the times we live in. Like my son, many of you are victims of victims. But I don’t want any roadblocks for you, like I had or clung to. So I share all this for you to think about and ask the Lord about so that He will bring healing into your life even more. So many have been taught NOT to share, NOT to trust, NOT to speak and share their lives. So many young people are living with the weight of the world, a world which is rapidly catapulting into end times. The Lord is coming soon, and HE has promised us healing and deliverance…and HE WILL do it, as we press into His presence, and lean on HIM, Our Beloved. He loves us so much and wants us to be FREE to be all He wants us to be. Finding out what we are to be is sometimes hard. But we can trust that all will work to the good for those who are called according to HIS purposes…GOD BLESS YOU !
