Moving on

It was so good to go back and really think about my testimony. Where my heart has been. I never really sat down and just in my heart recalled all of what has taken place: the sin and iniquity, the shame and void, the disappointments and heartbreaks, the tragedies and triumphs. The human heart undergoes such excruciating circumstances. I want my heart to go through what God has, without Satan's junk that he tries to get me under by putting his spin.
I don't want to look back at what transpired 3-4 years ago, meaning focus on it. By going back over my testimony, for the first time I truly see where my heart was, how I was wrestling against a God who was calling me out of hiding into repentance and restoration. Most importantly, Salvation is both a finished work done by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ AND a process to walk into by faith all that this entails, which is our inheritance. The most significant thing I have to remember is that I am a friend of God and because of Jesus I can walk with my Father in the cool of the day and just be his friend. When I'm really honest with myself, that is still so much theory. Oh, it makes sense theologically considering that Scripture points to sin being what separates us and if the veil was torn, then that separation must have been dealt with. But in my life, I still tend to think more along the screwed-up lines of 'I must be doing something wrong', and I see unreal expectations that I have on God that breed disappointment. It's about knowing Him. What a priviledge to know that Christianity is about more than getting the foundational doctrines down, altough they are significant and heresys lead to deception and false conversions, etc., it is truly about KNOWING our Creator in a real and tangible way. I no longer get irritated about churches that are stuck in the theology or going through the motions stuff. God will deal with that and draw them back to the reality and whatever they've been clinging to will have a new savour because it will be out of Knowing Him! I believe that in the coming years, God is going to deal with the religious and pagan, the Jew and Greek, the Pharissee and the Sorcerer, the slave to sin and the slave to law, on what is really in their hearts and what they really believe about God.

My testimony

This is a synopsis of how I came to know Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. A long journey through despair and darkness, but I wouldn't trade it for anything.

So much of my life has been lived out of fear. I don't want to be rejected. I don't want people to think ill of me. I don't want people that I'm not comfortable around to make a pre-conceived judgement. My decisions revolved around appeasing others and trying to earn a faithful, nice guy persona. I never grew in doing this, I only grew hopeless when I thought it wouldn't work out, until the cycle went back around saying if I just buckle down and try harder I will be good enough, I will arrive.

My father at first gave me a legacy to be proud of. We went to baseball games, camping, hiking, and traveled to more places in the Pacific Northwest than most people who have lived there their entire life have been to. I had a place in my father's heart, in spite of only seeing him two months out of the year. When he began taking things out on me at about the age of 9, I thought it was my fault. If I only picked up the right tool, or looked harder to find the tool that was obviously not in the place that he said it was, if I only had spoken up a split second sooner when he wasn't paying attention and hit his dog as we drove from the house to go to town. A legacy of shame, pain, and blame came in, distorting the meaning of being a part of a father's story. I associated things that required responsibility - required something noble of me - as something I could never be. So why try? After all, I was never good enough. There was always something that made him unleash his hot anger and I couldn't fix it. I couldn't fix him. It must have been my fault.

School years centered around being liked by everyone, but never feeling respected or fully valued. I had friends, mind you, but I was always the weak one, almost always the last to be picked for a playground two-below football game. I had no idea back then that a true man lays down his life for others, uses his strength for fight for the hearts of those around him, gives his all because that's who he is. That is who Jesus is! The only real example I had was my grandad, but I felt wronged during those years because I was moved two thousand miles from my father, and my grandparents could not understand why I would be depressed for a month after I would return from my summer visit. They never had to deal with divorced parents.

Warren came in the picture when I was 9, and suddenly there was someone else who saw things in me that made me feel like I had a place in a father's heart. He saw and encouraged my strengths and handled adversity so much differently that my father. He became the father that I never had. Grandad and grandma never understood me and I pointed mostly to narrow-mindedness on their part. I now see that some was just the usual benign generational differences and some was not either parties fault, just difficulty working out differences.

When I reached my junior high/high school years I was scared and felt I was a wimpy nerd. That's what people said about me, and my timidity and the way I looked fed to that image. I never participated in any sport in high school for fear of rejection and humiliation. My face would turn beat-red when my name would be called in class. I had such social anxiety, just waiting to be called out as being an nobody, that I would be in a fear-driven daze when walking down the hall between classes. Junior year was the year when things began to change. I began to forge an identity with Warren at the drag strip. I was proud to be his son, and I could possibly become a great racer myself. During this period, though, he had begun to be more critical of me, feeling that I would only become a man when I learned to take ownership and responsibility. I remind myself that I had shame and blame for an identity from my father. Learning to do so with that as a foundation is like expecting an unregenerate sinner to display God's character. They can't - the foundation is made of sand!

Even after I won the Division 4 High School Championship at the beginning of my senior year, I still felt like I was never good enough. No matter how good I did or what feats I accomplished, that was wiped away by the impossibility of holding the weight of my world the next day. I could never be a man.

Then my mother and Warren became distant and almost divorced. I felt a divorce in my heart from the warm home that I had. Increasingly, I felt that I had to have everything right, yet even when I did try I never felt like it was good enough. Along with this was the guilt of my own lack of interest in being faithful to the chores and tasks of living in a home, and the shame for the constant cycle of rebellion and remorse. I had trouble balancing between friends and home, knowing that family is important, but friends just accepted me and never required any growing up in my life. Increasingly during my last two years of high school and Hill College years, I turned to friends. I had physically matured, and I no longer felt like the wimp. I could breathe into life this macho Jacob that had come out of nowhere. All the while using the excuse that I never got this chance in high school because I largely spent my time looking after my widowed grandmother, and distancing myself from my home even though I lived there. By the time of 2006, I was a popular college guy who knew lots of girls, drove his mom's truck, worked for his step dad, and finally achieved the ideal guy that I wasn't in high school....or so I thought.

Things at home between my mom and step father at least came to a terms of armistice, some reconciliation and agreement to at least tolerate their differences, but there was still a deep tension there. I worked for Warren, but I did my share of taking advantage of my privileged state and used him. I was dishonoring my mom by not being faithful toward helping out with whatever she needed help with around the house. I only did things for them when they specifically asked me to, and quite often I would put things off until they got tired of me hoo-hawing around and said this needs to be done.

By now I had become an ego-tistical young man who was not wanting to go back to the home-body that I was in high school. I had found a story to live in at community college. I still had the same habits as in high school, and the same shame/blame tugging that left me clueless as to how I could change and believing it was hopeless that I could. I was popular with the girls(a plus in the becoming a man arena) as well as gaining muscular fitness(another plus). I did not want to give that up and take up my rightful place in the home that I had - no matter how fragmented Satan had left it, I was still needed there. I saw their constant criticism for things they saw that were hindering me in growing up as them trying to destroy what I had attained and was so secure in. In truth, they saw that my priorities in life were want before need, the typical immature person's paradigm. It was godless, and as friendships that I so effortlessly built began to shake, my identity in this 'popular guy' ego was beginning to sever. This was all firmly in place in 2006.

Then I met a girl named Jennifer at a coffee shop called Java Lounge. I met her through a friend Ross, who remains one of my best friends even though we rarely communicate now. At first, I though it was just a curiosity of Ross' because she had lived in England, and it did not feed my carnivorous desire for friendship based on popularity. As we got too know each other, the Lord became an increasing topic, and I was honestly weirded out that she talked about God as if He was somebody she talked to face to face everyday. I had been comfortable with the 'believe in God and try to be a good person' scheme, so this seemed impossible to me. I began to meet other people that she was connected with such as the Rayburns, the Barnes, her brother Michael, the Giles, Rebecca Fogarty, and eventually, Jennifer's church which was then called Church at the Park. All of these people assumed by their own testimonies that God is actively involved in peoples' lives and can be known like a physical person you see everyday. The Christianity I had assumed to be normal was actually more on the lines of Deism! My mom also during this time would slip me an encouraging tract that she would find, planting seeds the only way a caring mother can, although at the time I didn't understand that I needed God.

All the while, my issues of desiring the approval of man led to an increasing double life in which I could be a genuinely nice, compassionate young man but disconnected and absent when I needed to be. My friends had become my parents and I had virtually disowned my parents in my heart. After all, they couldn't meet my needs for affirmation, and I truly never gave them a chance. I didn't want to face all of the disappointment from years past. It was a self-made attempt to save myself from my shame, sin, and brokenness by living out a hollow self(a fig leaf) in front of those that I was comfortable with while practically disowning those who also needed me and loved me the best way they knew how(including my father).

I worked for Airmasters A/C in Cleburne that summer, and spent about 80% of the time that I was not on the job working out and going out with friends, spending lavishly the money that I made and stubbornly refusing to take heed of my parents' warnings to spend wisely and with purpose. In my mind, they were trying to ruin the best thing that had happened to me. During this time, I went through a trail of infatuations with a series of girls that I felt would be the one to take away all of my problems. The feeling that I got from the attention fed the part of me that wanted to be seen as a valid grown man who could eventually be a good husband and father. My time and money revolved even more around them, as well as my desire to gain notoriety in the church circles. The second casualty in this chain of unrequited emotional attachment told me that she was not the one for me and left it at that. I was very disappointed but I at least cared enough to not let it ruin a friendship. One night shortly afterward I cried out to Jesus to help me in my disappointed, downcast shape, and He came through, taking away those strangling emotional ties that bound me to a person that I didn't know I was looking to to find redemption.

Around this time, my lavish spending caught up with me. As the summer ended and I went back to Hill College and worked only part time, the early fall that came suddenly put me out of work. I had worn out my welcome in my step dad's business the previous spring, as my disinterest in being present in my heart to my step dad and his mission led me to not show up on time to do something that I was supposed to do and went instead to an after-school student government meeting that I was not required to go to - I was only interested in what was going on, not even a member. I actually went because I wanted to be around a girl, the first in my line of casualties. So here I was jobless, going to college, and over $1000 in credit card debt. I was receiving VA benefits through my father's status as a disable vet, but that was not enough to knock any chips in my debt due to other expenses such as cell phone and vehicle upkeep and fuel. My parents enforced an ultimatum that I must cut off all leisure spending including time with friends and my gym membership. The two things that I looked to find an identity as a man were being pulled out from under me. I felt completely isolated and wronged, not seeing that they wanted me to learn to walk out of my situation and overcome. They had bailed me out of overdrafts a few times before, but continuing to do so would only cripple me in the long run. My relationship with the second girl had become a solid friendship, but panic at the thought of losing it due to distance made me cling to it with everything I had. I continued to run up my text messages, and hang out with her at the coffee shop when I needed to be studying or looking for a job.

God has often been called by His children as the Divine Thwarter, where He seems to be set against us in our attempts for find Life outside of Him. It feels like it will kill us, but the only thing it kills is that Knowledge of Good and Evil that is our carnal nature - determined to set up our world with us on the throne and trying to arrange everything in life to our favor. It's just not possible. Eventually, the weight of this burden will leaving us teetering on the edge of a knife. God indeed began to thwart my desires for this friendship that I thought would be a redemption. First through conflict with another friend who began to appear in the picture, as God put them together for a season and I began to feel abandoned. All the while an increasing feeling of hopelessness and disappointment began to take over in it, as it began to not seem to be what I had intended. Then He specifically told her that our relationship was wrong. We needed to halt our contact so that it would not be so self-absorbed. I thought that my life during this time was being compressed in a wine press, being squeezed of everything that I felt meant value to me. I learned to cope with it, and during this time began to develop friendships with godly young men, namely the brothers of the two friends involved. A good start, but I was still completely determined to salvage what little I could hold onto of the identity that was not panning out. I still did not trust my parents, and I refused to see the damage I was doing by being their son in existence but not in action.

I still held my father, and now my step father as well, accountable in my own self-justified eyes as the cause of all of my hurt and lack of meaning in life. Granted, their actions did plant more seeds of an orphan who will never live at home at rest in a father's heart. But I did not know how to loose my grip from them and let God deal with them while choosing to love them where they were. My identity of self-pity was forged on a platform of the verdicts I felt they had cursed me to. During those times of feeling hopeless and isoloated, pornography was an easy escape, offering five minutes of feeling like being 'the man' and quick fix to my need for intimacy while not even requiring the pursuit of a woman. Godless! By November 2006, I finally got a job at Cinemark Cinema 6 and was very successful there, becoming an assistant manager. My money-spending habits had been reigned it, mainly because of the debt that was staring me in the face. In early 2007 I began to develop a relationship with a younger girl who went to my church. She was the younger sister to one of my new friends that I had become close to. After a few months, our fondness developed into mutual attraction and we voiced it to each other. I thought that now, finally, I maybe had found the one. I had not been accustomed to hearing God's voice, really I didn't know how to decipher what He was trying to tell me due to insecurity in His love for me and my walk with Him and those conflicting tormentors that wrapped me up in it. I now know that He told me then that before he would allow me to marry I had to make things right with my parents. I had been exhorted by now countless people to honor and submit to my parents and lay down all of me before God and let Him hold my life together. It was still at this time only an idea to me, not a revelation. I still felt that living right with my parents meant letting go of what was life to me - my egos.

Once again, the Divine Thwarter told this girl that it wasn't right. Period. Bam! Disappointment number 3. I was completely blind-sided by this, and it left me confused about God's intentions for my life and also ashamed that I didn't 'have it together'. After all, if I had it all together, none of this would have happened. I continued to go to church with an increasing sense of God but also an increasing void that left me uncomfortable during sermons and too afraid to fully bring out into the light what was plaguing me. There were numerous times where somebody in church would sense that 'somebody' there needed to lay down unforgiveness, or thought that things in their life were right but really weren't. I was so paranoid that I would be found out as a fraud, naked and ashamed. I clung to my fig leafs with increasing stubbornness. If I had only known then that God was doing to me what He did with Adam and Eve after they fell and immediately ran and hid - crying out 'where are you'?! to them.

It had been decided that I should further my education at the University of North Texas in Denton in the Fall of 2007. I wanted to go mainly to get out of the house. I knew that God has something bigger in my life, but my refusal to come forward kept me pinned down, and my parents wanted me to move forward in my life. They felt college was the best way. No matter where you are, paralysis only feeds to the situation. I left for UNT that fall not knowing how things would go. Was still recovering from the denial that I was in that the third girl was not right for me. I was scared that my lack of spiritual transparency and boldness and weakness towards timidity would lead me to giving in to the peer pressures of the college life. I left, having been filled with the Holy Spirit, but I brought all of my issues with me.

I was resentful towards my mother for wanting me to do what she felt was best for me, and I blamed her and my father for my confusion. My feelings towards the third girl slowly dissipated with distance, and I kept my guard from being absorbed into the Vanity Fair lifestyle that so many young believers get sucked into at college. However, because I did not know for sure if UNT was the place for me, and because I was still running from issues with my parents, I neglected my studies and skipped weeks worth of class, feeling justified that once again I was doing it for my mom, not me. I would come home almost every weekend but spend most of it with friends, staying Sunday nights at a friends house and missing class on Monday. My mom had no idea that I was doing this. As my mom began to ask me how I was doing in school, I tried to play it off with the 'it's fine' white lie. I knew that it was not right, but I still was afraid to come forward and admit that I couldn't make a go at life my own way. I was only willing to be honest when the cards were stacked in my favor. The turning point came one weekend when my mom again asked me how I was doing, and I slipped up and told the partial truth that I was struggling in a math class because I could not understand his Indian accent. This was a frustrating factor, but I rarely went to class and didn't try tutoring to have a chance at passing. My mom continued what I felt was prodding me by voicing that things weren't adding up. If I couldn't understand the instructor, why didn't I get notes from a classmate, or ask to meet with a classmate to help me out. I knew alot of classmates, so I certainly could have. I just didn't care. This was the point were the mountain of a monster that I had built began to reveal itself. My mom would eventually find out that I failed the class anyway at the end of the semester, so there was no faking it saying I was simply struggling. Trying to cover it up and play it off would only serve to cause even more distrust in the long-run than if I just came clean. The following Sunday morning I had already come to a place in my heart that I knew I had to stop making life work, because it obviously wasn't. I told my mom that I probably was going to fail, and that night I went to an Ivan Tait meeting at Eastern Heights church in Cleburne. His selfless service to God gives him a powerful annointing that makes it hard for people who are ready for change in their life from not changing. A huge shift in me took place, and for the first time I began to really desire the things of God in my life like never before. I wanted to be right with Him and with others. The end of that semester, I entered what I call my 'First Love Season' in which I felt His presence and His peace like never before.

During this whole time, the underlying rumblings of anger towards my father had never been dealt with. Everytime I felt like my mom or step dad only found wrong things with me, my immediate anger was towards my father. He had left a lasting imprint of anger, shame, self-reproach, woundedness, and confusion that I did not know how to deal with. Most importantly, it left that orphan heart even more empty and weighed down, feeling that it would never have a home. No matter how hard I tried, I could never be good enough. This contributed directly to my dysfunction in my relationship with my step father, especially after issues in his heart led to his own retreat into shame and hiding. I would totally ignore my dad when he would call, feeling justified that he was trying to exert his influence in my life. The bitterness and slavery to unforgiveness made me feel like it was the only way to deal with the hurt and protect myself from being continually being hurt again. What I did not see is that if left the issue unresolved and made me powerless to deal effectively and lovingly with any influence that he may have been trying to exert over me that would not be healthy to yield to. He actually wants to be a part of my life, but attached to it is this image of me as his own scape-goat to redeem his problems. I am still having difficulty in dealing with this in love, not wanting to crush him or make him feel rejected, but that is beyond what happened during that season. The Holy Spirit finally was able to draw me to repentance of my unforgiveness so He could forgive me. I forgave my father, and for two weeks, whenever I was taking a shower or alone in my dorm room, I grieved(in purity, not self-pity) away years of feeling rejected, never enough, and like I was my father's scape-goat. I even was able for the first time to feel his pain, and I grieved even more to think of the decades of sadness, emptiness, rejection, and orphan heart that he himself has carried. Whatever baggage that we choose to carry, they become entangled in our identity. We treat others like we treat ourselves. No matter how hard we try, that baggage will eventually be projected to those around us. He passed this on to me, not knowing that he was doing this, angry at his own father(who I recently learned lost his father when he was 9 years old, probably a major seed of anger and confusion and loneliness that he passed down to my father and his siblings, thus down to myself and my cousins). We have to choose to break away from this identity and take on our redeemed identity in our true Father, if we just let go!

Since 2007, I have had my returns to the old me, mainly from not knowing how to handle the intense opposition that I felt towards this new identity and the journey I knew God was wanting to take me on. Fear has still effected me in such a way that I have retreated into isolation and a more passive person that refuses to rock the boat by being me and instead choose the more 'safe' status quo. God, however, has proven faithful time and time again to come find me in my hiding places and draw me back out. I recently apologized to my mother and step father for the years of dishonor that I inflicted on them in those teenage/early 20's years. I thought that I should approach my step father for over a year and a half because there was this brick wall that satan came in and errected that caused me to mistrust him accepting my vulnerability. When God re-affirmed this desire to me to approach him this past May-Mother's Day actually-I tarried for a couple of months. Actually it came about when my mom pointed out that I did not need to take my truck to a shop to get the oil changed or checked out when I still had home to bring it to. I felt that I needed to break off from my dependence of my parents, but God convicted me that I was actually not going back home because I was refusing to open up and be vulnerable with my step father out of fear of being disapproved of. In doing so I wasn't even giving him a chance! I had closed off part of myself. I finally told him this past Sunday, and he accepted it and respected me for it. Healing is coming.

I recently left a job that was a trap of working to utter exhaustion, being so run down from having constant expection from more than one people constantly expecting me to do something for them, dumping everything on me. Now, I know that Jesus says that if somebody asks you to go one mile, go two. Notice the wording. He says if somebody asks. He did not say that if somebody manipulates/guilt trips/tries to intimidate you into doing something that you should yield. That creates a slave to expectation - not from God! We can't be free to serve others and meet their needs if we are slavishly being their milk cow! I know this sounds harsh and can be twisted into a selfish justification that can actually be pride, but we must have understanding and disernment. I did not know how to handle the overwhelming weight of expectations of being expected to bottle feed people so that they don't have to do anything. I lived in shame and confusion because I did not know how to turn the other cheek without running from confrontation. Notice that He does not say run from an issue, we're supposed to turn the other cheek, meaning not to try to redeem ourselves out of pride like what most violent men do. We still remain facing the issue, and certainly don't yield and compromise to their demands. This was leaving me confused as to who truly was my supervisor because several people thought that they could just get me to do something because I'm 'nice' and it left me falling behind on the specific job responsibilities that I had. I was already having to deal with having to unload every truck that came in with stock and dropping what I was doing and having more piled on me, then I was always having other people expecting me to do their stuff for them as well. I was running from my issue of timidity and not knowing how to simply say 'no'. I felt like I had to carry the entire weight of the warehouse, and alot of mistakes happened at my hand simply because I could not focus on my job. I felt ashamed for struggling with this and weak that I should want to leave the job for something different. A spirit of intimidation has plagued me for years, trying to make me feel like passivity and conformity is the only path to safety. I was afraid that if I left I wouldn't have an income and would have to move back home. I was also retreating into isolation outside of work because I didn't want to deal with anybody having expectations on me, and I skipped church for six months! That sounds more like a trap than a place where God's grace is in my life! There is no scripture that says 'He leads me to utter exhaustion'! He doesn't promise us a rose garden by any means on this Earth and there are situations that stretch us and may make us feel drained, but that is temporarily. The Enemy's stretching of us is to keep us trapped in fear and intimidation and feeling like there's no way out and we should be ashamed for wanting more out of life. We have to be honest with where our heart is. If the situation cannot be reconciled to where we return to His feet in those circumstances, then we have to walk away. And He told me that despite of the defeats and feeling emasculated and confused, I won because I walked away. I was honest with myself and accepted that this place is not where my heart is and even though it may appear from the outside to be compromise, being honest with yourself and where your heart is in reference to where it could be - where God's grace is completely covering your life - is not compromise.

I have gone through years of fatherlessness, shame, self-protection and justification, and confusion about who I am and my purpose. I don't have an answer on how to deal with confusion in any given situation. We have our pride side of the flesh that refuses self-denial and to give of ourselves, and we have the shame side that compromises and submits to godless expectations and slavish pursuits to win others' approval. I'm learning that if I'm not myself in a given situation, and choose to try to give something that I think will please others, I'm compromising who I am and who God has called me to be. I also know that God expects me to give myself away freely in selfless acts of service to display His unconditional love towards them. Jesus says that whoever seeks to save their life will lose it. I think that this means something much deeper than just trying to save our physical life, or ducking away from martyrdom and persecution. To have Life, we must repent of our fallen nature's desire to redeem ourselves(in order for a seed to be planted, it must first fall to the ground and die), and put our entire meaning and center of identity in God. This does mean denying self, if we lose our life for His sake we will gain it. I think that denying self also means putting to death the self-reproach and false piety that our flesh tends to operate in out of shame in which we get into a state of ascetism(like the old priests that used to try to discipline themselves by torturing their bodies). Die to self does not mean kill yourself. Suicide is just as much looking for a way out as dishonoring somebody to try to cover up our own problems.

Anyways, I believe with that verse, Jesus was stating what the entire human race is trying to do, to save their life- to redeem themselves and find their own way back to Eden. My testimony of how my Daddy came looking for me, asking 'where are you?!' - which is continually growing and molding and changing - is a testament to that.

Thinking

About to go to sleep, so I will expound more on this at a later time. I was wrong in my perspective on my parents in many ways. They are not trying to wreck my destiny. I left home with unresolved issues, but being away from home has made me realize that the home that I thought I didn't have was there all along. I want my memories of all of my past to be good. If it's hurt, I want to see God with me thru that, as well as the root hurt in the offending party that decieved them into acting like they did. If there's sin, I want to see Gods redemptionand grace that never for a second stopped pursuing me. The only way we can regret is because we run from something and refuse to take that to God, no matter how much it hurts.