Precious Lord, Take My Hand

by Shelly Beach

Photo Credit: Unsplash

In the past weeks our nation has faced extraordinary challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic forced us to tackle roles and realities we never imagined. We’ve become barbers, beauticians, manicurists, cooks, activity directors, caregivers, foragers, and chemists. Parents now work at home as teachers while fighting to remain employed and negotiate their relationship with their spouse 24/7.

Realities

Millions of Americans are now unemployed. Many who are still working are trying to carry the loads of staff that has been let go. And tragic numbers of business owners are watching their businesses slowly die.

We’re confined to our homes, hoping and praying we can protect ourselves and our loved ones from the plague that has decimated our “normal.” We’ve planned vacations, weddings, respite breaks, anniversary celebrations, graduations, “firsts” and “lasts.” But instead, spring finds us outside with shrouded faces clutching antiseptic potions.

Tomorrow I’ll venture out for the third time in seven days to try to find a package of toilet paper that costs less than my first car. Of course, I exaggerate, but what does it mean to find pride of ownership in toilet paper? How our priorities have shifted.

The perfect storm

Clinical psychological scientists at the University of Washington’s Center for the Science of Social Connection state that Covid-19 presents a “perfect storm of depression risks… Depression lays waste to our capacity to problem-solve, set and achieve goals and function effectively.” The Covid-19 crisis has created a unique set of circumstances that contribute to depression: stress and loss, interpersonal isolation, financial difficulties, and challenges to recovery.

Many of us feel overwhelmed. Where do we turn? What do we do? Will we ever re-capture the “normal” we once had? Where do we find strength to move forward in the middle of chaos?

Photo Credit” Pexels

Human limitation

The most important truth for us to recognize in any crisis has nothing to do with how much information we can gain or control we think we can muster. We will always be ambushed by human limitations and flawed hearts. Left to ourselves, we head off on our own path without God.

Covid-19 illustrates our limited human intellect, self-driven motives, and the resulting complex problems of our fallen world.

Unfortunately, the next pandemic or global crisis is not a matter of if but a matter of when.

We cannot rely on national or even church leadership for security. Our only hope lies in our all-powerful, all-knowing God who promises to carry us through any circumstance. He was with us when we drew our first breath. He is the mystery behind our beating heart. He walks beside us, ready to take our hand. But we must acknowledge his loving presence and power. Without God, we have no hope.

God’s strength is our strength in this and every crisis.

Precious, Lord, Take My Hand.

Click on the link above to hear the song Precious Lord, Take My Hand, written by Steve Siler, founder and Executive Director of Music for the Soul. Scroll down the page to Precious Lord, Take My Hand and click on the arrow following the word Preview >.

When has God walked beside you in a time of crisis? I’d love to hear from you.

Describe your experience in a short paragraph or two. Or tell us how he is walking beside you through the Covid-19 crisis.

Blessings,

Shelly

You are Not Alone

by Shelly Beach

Photo Credit: Shutterstock

The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.
Zephaniah 3:17 ESV

I recently spoke at a camp in California when the coronavirus pandemic was beginning to escalate. My anxiety soared whenever I thought about fulfilling four weeks of commitments and appointments in California. I wasn’t even sure if airports would still be open in 30 days.

I was far from home and fought feelings of isolation. My husband and son’s family were in Iowa. My daughter’s family lives just north of Seattle. My brother’s family resides north of Detroit. It was easy to tell myself I could be trapped in California. Should I make a plan? Cancel my plans and make a run for it? What would that even look like?

I stood on the balcony of my room the final night of the retreat, drinking in the beauty of the trees and wondering what to do. I leaned on the railing, and my eyes traced the angles and offshoots of the myriad branches on a tree. As I noted the complexity of that single tree, the truth hit me.

God knows every crook in every branch of that tree. He designed each branch and bough before he created the universe. He knows every limb and twig and crook and knot in every tree on the planet.

Photo Credit: Shutterstock

That one tiny truth about God’s greatness stunned me for a moment. But it also comforted me.

God is not sitting in the heavens far away. He’s not waiting for us to make a plan and get things “right.” We will never get things right in our own power. Heartache and abandonment and loss and disappointment will tap us on the shoulder every day. That’s why God became a man, stepped into a human body, and chose to suffer—so we would never be alone. There is no darkness too deep that he would not go for us.

You are not alone. Jesus never leaves your side. When you can’t believe in hope, he is your hope.

Be blessed by the song “You Are Not Alone.” Click on the link or the title below. Then click the word Preview on the song page.

You Are Not Alone

Words and music by Steve Siler

Blessings,

Shelly

Immanuel: The God of Hopes and Fears

               Photo Credit: Shelly Beach

For many of us, 2016 was a challenging year. 

Maybe “challenging” is the PC word you’d use if someone at church asked you about the year you had. In the privacy of your self-talk you might choose another word.

Heartbreaking.

Shattering.

Crappy, or other similar adjectives.

You may have lost a loved one. Been blindsided by abandonment. Been kicked to the curb in the face of injustice or self-interest, in spite of your faithful service. Or faced a dreaded diagnosis-yours or a loved one’s.

We look forward to a new year with hope that life will be better. Why?

Our hopes and fears are almost always intertwined. 

My first brain episode almost took my life. Doctors feared they might not be able to turn around the course of my rapid decline. My survival was in question, and it took over sixteen years for doctors to determine a diagnosis. During the first five years following that episode, I feared every symptom that struck my body would return me to a hospital bed and a dreaded diagnosis. I hoped and prayed I would remain healthy and thanked God for the measure of health and strength that returned to me. Many of my hopes and fears were tied to my health for years.

This year as I caught the phrase, “hope and fears of all the years of all the years are met in Thee tonight,” I’ve listened to the words of “O Little Town of Bethlehem” with new insight.

The hopes and fears of all humanity throughout history were met in Jesus’ birth. He lived among us, defeated death, and rose again. 

From the moment of His conception, He shared in our human experiences–our pain and suffering, sickness, heartbreak, disappointment, abandonment, hopes, and fears. He took the punishment we deserved to the grave so we could live with hope, free from fear of sin’s punishment and death. We all sin and fall short of God’s glory; we all demand our own way like the selfish rebels we are–yet He loves us so deeply we could never comprehend it.

Because of Jesus, I can look into my future without fear–no matter my diagnosis, income, feelings, or any human circumstances, because He is the source of all hope that has ever or ever will exist and the answer to every fear that has echoed through history.

IMMANUEL–God with us!

 

Your Story: The Power to Set the World Ablaze

Photo Credit: anglicansablaze.blogspot.com

I was 19 years old the night a serial rapist crawled through my parents’ kitchen window and attacked me in my bed.

The perpetrator–a man named James–had raped more than forty women and been prosecuted seven times.

Each time, he was freed to rape again.

And again.

And again.

My parents were shocked. Unthinkable things like this didn’t happen in their world–certainly not to their children. My father instructed me not to talk about what had happened. He perceived my assault as shameful. Talking about it was simply beyond his reach.

My dad had Asberger’s (although I didn’t know it at the time). God was good–all the time (which he is). But to Dad, acknowledging anger, grief, questions, and doubt was an abandonment of faith, not an acknowledgment that God is there for us in our worst moments. Later, as my father grew into his senior years, he forgot my assault ever happened.

I never forgot. My memories had taken me hostage.

I struggled for two years–haunted by memories, flashbacks, fear, depression. The churches I attended viewed depression as either a sin or a mark of spiritual weakness. No one knew about trauma or PTSD. And Christians were overtly and subtly fed the message that they were supposed to be “in-right, out-right, up-right, down-right happy all the time.”

 

So I denied my anger and questions–for a while. Until I decided that I was only fooling myself. If God really was love, he had to care about me in the most painful times of my life. God must care about my anger and my questions and my

doubts–perhaps more than anything about me.

In my questions, I discover who I believe God really is and face my self-deceptions.

And like the psalmists who expressed pain and questions and doubt, God wants me to come to him in my suffering.

In his book To Be Told, Dan Allender tells us, “So take seriously the story that God has given you to live. It’s time to read your own life, because your story is the one that could set us all ablaze.”

Two years after my assault, God brought me face-to-face with my bitter, unforgiving heart toward the man who’d assaulted me and so many other women. God taught me what it meant to forgive our worst enemies and those who despitefully use us. God showed me my own murderous heart and that the ground is truly level at the foot of the cross.

As I discovered forgiveness and gratitude, I was overwhelmed with the desire to tell my story.

Not because my story is important–but because we are all connected at the soul level through our stories. When we see a glimpse of ourselves in someone else’s story, we begin to believe that their healing, their grace, their miracle is also possible for us.

We have the power to set the world ablaze as we share our stories of hope and healing.

And as we give to others, we receive–healing, renewal, and actual rewiring in our brains. “Stuck” parts of our stories are healed through the power of truth. They become integrated and appropriately filed into memory. And we experience the “renewing of our minds” (Romans 12:22)

Your life is a flickering flame…waiting to ignite hope in others. Tell your story.

Whose story has inspired your life? In what ways have they influenced you?

When an Addict’s Confession Goes Bad

 

 

Today’s guest post comes from friend and fellow writer Lori Lara.

When I was in my late teens, in a rare moment of vulnerability, I confided in an older Christian woman about my struggle with an eating disorder. My healthy, athletic body had turned rail-thin. Exhaustion and aching, atrophying muscles took over. Baggy clothes no longer hid my private efforts of controlling food, and I could feel everyone’s eyes scanning me top to bottom, measuring how sick I was. I hated feeling exposed like that. I was out of control and my life was in danger.

But I had no clue how to stop my addiction. Good Lord….He knows I tried.

Having been an extremely private person, my confession was no small feat. I was embarrassed and ashamed and disgusted with myself for not being able to be “normal.” Just eat. And don’t throw up. How hard can that be, right? You might as well have told me to live under water. It was that impossible to do.

So there I stood with my jugular exposed to this woman, admitting my secrets in a Hail Mary attempt to get help. Addiction had whittled my worth down to nothing. My self-loathing held the knife to my neck, getting a head start on the slicing.

Unfortunately, death spoke to me that day. I squirm with knots in my stomach every time I remember her words.

“It’s a sin,” She said in a flat, as-a-matter-of-biblical-fact tone. “You’re living in sin.”

I stared blankly. It’s a sin. That’s it? That’s all you can say? That’s your summary of me alternating between starving myself and throwing up every bite of food? That’s all you have to say about me standing here in front of you exposed with the burden so heavy I can’t bear it any longer? Jesus, I’m barely over 95 pounds and I can’t stop this freight train. Really? It’s a sin. Just cold, hard sin? If God had appeared in the flesh and slapped me across the face, it wouldn’t have wounded me more. That woman unknowingly buried me that day. She closed tomb of secrecy on me, leaving shame to devour me in my private hell. I felt nothing but pure humiliation and completely severed from God.

It would be another ten years before I’d trust another soul with my battle; and another fifteen years of addiction, losing a tiny bit of myself each day, before I received the healing that saved me.

Because most addicts suffer from depression and severe anxiety, confession is painful and scary. We expect rejection. We know judgment is coming. Yet the most tender, wounded parts of our hearts yearn for understanding and a soft place to fall. So when our vulnerability falls on the hard stone of someone’s icy judgment, it can feel like a death. The death of the hope of getting well.

Through my botched confession (and the subsequent ones that ushered healing), I learned there is no short cut around vulnerability; it is paramount in an addict’s life. No matter the addiction (food, porn, work, alcohol, sex, drugs, fill-in-the-blank); if people want to get well, they must share their most vulnerable moment of truth. It is sacred. It is holy. And if we’re privileged to sit across from someone who’s confessing the darkness, we need to handle that precious, brave soul with the utmost care, respect, and love.

Because Love is what heals, not judgment.

“Death and life are in the power of the tongue…” Proverbs 18:21

Lori Lara is a writer, blogger, trauma survivor, and black belt martial artist. She’s passionate about sharing the hope and healing of Jesus through her raw journey as a mom and wife recovering from PTSD, depression, and addiction. Lori is a contributing author for Hope in the Mourning (Zondervan 2013) and The Multitasking Mom’s Survival Guide (Chicken Soup for the Soul 2014). She’s a guest writer for MOPS International and numerous recovery blogs and websites. Lori lives in Northern California with her husband Robert and two sons. You can find her blog at www.lorilara.com. Email: Lori@lorilaraphotography.com.

Trauma Queens Tour Launched

A new conference will kick off its national presence in Rockford, Michigan, on October 20, from 8:30-3:00 at Rockpoint Church (formerly St. Stephen’s Church), at 6070 Kutshill Rd.

WHY A CONFERENCE?

The Trauma Queens Trading Hurt for Hope Conference provides an intimate, supportive environment for approximately one hundred women and church and community leaders to address some of the most painful issues facing women in the church: sexual and physical abuse, abandonment, neglect, self-abuse, obsessive behaviors, addictions, and other symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

This conference provides spiritual encouragement and hope in Jesus Christ and creates an environment of safety, where women’s stories of hurt, hope, and healing can be shared. We also provide practical resources that help participants move to the next step in their healing journey:

o True stories of hope, healing, and the love of Christ

o A safe, supportive environment, where women are free to share their stories with a friend of prayer partner, if they desire

o Biblical support and encouragement

o Counseling resources

o Small group sessions on topics like finding hope, getting past the pain, understanding PTSD, and other practical and heart-hitting issues

o Free resources: When the Woman You Love Was Abused,by speaker Dawn Scott Jones, as well as The Silent Seduction of Self-Talk, by speaker Shelly Beach. An additional gift, the ebook, Truth about Trauma: What It Is, Why You Should Care and What You Can Do

MEET THE TRAUMA QUEENS

DAWN SCOTT JONES: Author of When the Woman You Love Was Abused(Kregel Publications 2012). Dawn is an ordained pastor, counselor, and national speaker who has shared the platform with some of the nation’s most noted communicators.

Dawn touches the lives of people through her powerful personal testimony, wit, humor, and deep insight into the Word of God.

Dawn is a survivor of abuse who knows the journey to hope and healing. www.DawnJones.org

WANDA SANCHEZ: Co-author of The Hope Bucket: A Story of Shattered Dreams, an Unlikely Friendship, and a Journey to Hope. Wanda is the executive producer of one of the nation’s top talk shows for the Salem network. She is also president of WLS Communications, a publicity firm that promotes authors.

Wanda is a trauma and sexual abuse survivor who has experienced a profound journey of hope and forgiveness. www.TraumaQueens.org

SHELLY BEACH:Author of eight books, including The Silent Seduction of Self Talk and co-author of The Hope Bucket, with Wanda Sanchez. Shelly is a national speaker at women’s conferences and writers’ conferences, and she also speaks with Wanda on post-traumatic stress disorder to medical and professional communities.

Shelly is also a sexual abuse survivor who has walked the road to forgiveness, healing, and hope. www.ShellyBeachOnline.com