Category Archives: Relationship with God

Humility – Like Learning to Breathe

In this life I never learnt to breathe. I learnt to please and all the pleasing crushed the air out of me instead of letting it in. I had bronchitis and asthma often as a child and still there are many days when a stifling lack of breath, a wheeze, has me reaching for an inhaler.
I understand it now, this not having learnt breath. It’s about the moments I couldn’t bear. I could never stop to be in the moments of my life. I was always scurrying to the next one, I was always afraid to stop moving, to stop pleasing and appeasing. My joyous instants were fraught with the fear of the one that may follow it. I never grew up learning to just inhale, exhale through the painful times, the scary instants and as I grew I learnt to chase them down with booze or anger or running away into the next ‘adventure’.
Humility, to me, feels like learning to breathe. It is finding space to feel, to allow the entire me to be present. And in this allowing me, it suddenly seems like there is room to breathe, to breathe into the moments that hurt. This new breathing makes space for me, in spite of the pressures to conform to others. It is breathing in and out through the put- downs and the push-arounds that once made me shrink myself. And as I do this there is a growing softness that feels like the rigidity is gradually draining out of me through a slow leak in my shoe.
God knows how hard this place has been for me to find. Like a caged animal I have fought myself, fought to keep running, to keep from feeling. I have screamed a silent scream of anguish caused only by my rebellion. How could I have known that this space, this living humbly, is the most precious and expansive awakening? I could not have guessed that it feels so gently nurturing and beautifully consuming.
Humility to me is not bashing a pillow, or sobbing my heart out. It is a state, a way of living, that I may embody.

Humility commences with my willingness to feel and results in me embracing everything and somewhere in the vital space in between there comes a birthing of true love and compassion.

This new filling of my lungs has also expanded how I see myself, how I see others. God has shown me our brokenness and our beauty simultaneously. There is new space in my heart; the dust covers are being tossed off disused and neglected furnishings, such as patience, giving and kindness.

I find myself surrounded suddenly by brothers and sisters, not strangers or friends. I feel a tender (and still tentative) unfurling of innocent desire towards my mate. I catch myself crying at the bright blue sky bursting with pure white cotton ball clouds. I find joy in the little things and am overwhelmed by gratitude for the great gifts God showers on my every day. I know now that humility is the soil in which our connection to all others must germinate. It is the fertile ground to which God may come and cultivate a place in our hearts.

And while I know I am still so imperfectly proud so often, this yielding to humility is like a new trend in my heart that I never want to go out of fashion.

In my stutters and starts, in this learning to breathe, I have glimpsed God. And I find myself laughing, because He’s been here all along. He’s there at every breath – it’s only me that kept running, running, running from myself, the labour of it crushing my chest and stifling every gasp for air. I left no space to know Him, to let Him fill me up, to have Him patch up all those gaping wounds I smothered and stifled and suffocated, denying them air to breathe.

All that trying to live in the ‘now’ was wasted while I, myself, stifled the very intake of air that would ground me in it. And all the old meditation, the reframing, the “its all good”s seem cheap in the face of what I feel now. The minutes are longer and richer. I am present for the first time in so long. My gratitude grows not through making the best of things, or minimising the pains of my life. It springs forth as I begin to welcome all emotions, resting in the knowledge that they help me remember my own story, my own self once squashed and discarded. My heart swells in thankfulness as I see that God is teaching me Truth and Love again. How can I not be grateful to a God who has designed laws that engineer every experience, so that I may have an opportunity in each moment to grow towards Him, to become whole again? How can I not appreciate a universe designed to teach me everything about Love once I submit to the simplest thing – my fully feeling self – something so vital and simple that once I stop fighting it seems just like breathing.
As I learn again to breathe and I make space for God to fill my lungs, to enter deep into me. And often now, as I exhale, a sweet new scent, that whispers something of love, liberation and contentment, wafts under my nostrils. Possibility and promise smell like nectar from an exotic fruit.
I give thanks for all things; I give thanks for every God gifted breath.

A Note to Those Reading:

I still have so much to learn and I know that sometime soon, I will realise that where I am now, this new type of breath, is only a glimmer of the humility I will need to truly know my Father.  This offering stems only from my desire to share with you the deeper peace I am finding through staying with my emotions, through desiring to know myself and see myself, not through the eyes of the world, but through the eyes of the One who loves the most. He loves me, its true, and in the light of His Grace I am so humbled by how much I still have to learn and grow. Thank-you today for reading my simple words. I am blessed to share this journey with you.

Humility Study Notes

Many of you who have spoken to me recently would know that I am really working at the moment with willingness towards true humility. I am praying constantly for ‘the awakening’ of my true soul condition that allows our God connection. I feel passionate about it. The reason being that, as I step into this process I have found that, what I thought would feel humiliating actually feels wholly liberating and what I thought would make me unlovable to everyone (i.e. owning and sharing all my imperfections) has actually opened me to feeling more authentic and I have received the most awesome gift – the beginning of a connection with God. 

As I began to pray and desire this process I found a book (which I also mentioned in my last post) called Brokenness: The Heart God Revives by Nancy Leigh DeMoss. The list I have pasted below has been adapted by me from a chapter in the book. I have it printed out and incorporate into my daily prayer time most days now.  Some of the words in the prayer that I have written that follows the list use a concept that Nancy refers to in the book i.e. (my paraphrase here) in order to be truly ‘broken’ or humble we must learn to become humble with others, walls down, as well as with God, roof off.

For those who attend the Wednesday group at the Wilkesdale Learning Centre we agreed yesterday to discuss the list at next weeks meeting. I’m posting it here so that everyone may have the chance to read it before then.
By the way if you have never attended this group everyone is welcome. It starts at 10.30am.

I’ve enjoyed being present with you all the past couple of weeks and I’m excited to think that we all may grow and share in humility.

Love to all,
Mary

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The following list has been adapted from the book:
Brokenness: The Heart God Revives

Humility & Pride
Proud people focus on the failures of others.
Humble people are overwhelmed with a sense of their own spiritual need.
Proud people have a critical, fault-finding spirit; they look at everyone else’s faults with a microscope but their own with a telescope.
Humble people are compassionate; they forgive much because they know how much they have been forgiven.
Proud people are self-righteous; they look down on others.
Humble people esteem all others. They have faith in the potential for good in others.
Proud people have an independent, self-sufficient spirit.
*Humble people have a dependent spirit; they recognize their need for God. They value gifts from God and from others. They do not resist giving God or others credit for the wisdom or gifts they have given them.
Proud people have to prove that they are right.
Humble people are willing to yield the right to be right.
Proud people claim rights; they have a demanding spirit.
Humble people yield their rights; they have a meek spirit.
Proud people are self-protective of their time, their rights, and their reputation.
*Humble people are able to love themselves. They do not DEMAND attention or love out of lack or fear. They do not value themselves above others.
Proud people desire to be served.
Humble people are motivated to serve others.
Proud people desire to be a success.
Humble people are motivated to be faithful and to make others a success.
Proud people desire self-advancement.
*Humble people desire to promote love and God.
Proud people have a drive to be recognized and appreciated.
*Humble people recognise their relationship with God is their primary relationship. They are humble to feelings of unworthiness and sensitive to when they may be becoming arrogant.
Proud people are wounded when others are promoted and they are overlooked.
*Humble people are eager for others to get the credit; they rejoice when others are lifted up. They are humble to their feelings if overlooked and turn to God with these feelings.
                                          
Proud people have a subconscious feeling, “This ministry/church is privileged to have me and my gifts”; they think of what they can do for God.
*Humble people know that the true way to teach or ‘minister’ is through humility and demonstration of God’s Grace. They are not afraid to expose their true selves. They realise what God does for them in every moment, especially when teaching others. They recognise all Truth comes from God.
Proud people feel confident in how much they know.
Humble people are humbled by how very much they have to learn.
Proud people are self-conscious.
Humble people are not pre-occupied with what others think of them.
Proud people keep others at arms’ length.
Humble people are willing to risk getting close to others and to take risks of loving intimately.
Proud people are quick to blame others.
Humble people accept personal responsibility and can see where they are wrong in a situation.
Proud people are unapproachable or defensive when criticized.
Humble people receive criticism with a humble, open spirit.
Proud people become bitter and resentful when they are wronged; they have emotional temper tantrums; they hold others hostage and are easily offended; they carry grudges and keep a record of other’s wrongs
Humble people give thanks in all things; they are quick to forgive those that wrong them.
Proud people are concerned with being respectable, with what others think; they work to protect their own image and reputation.
Humble people are concerned with being real; what matters to them is not what others think but what God knows; they are willing to die to their own reputation.
Proud people find it difficult to share their spiritual need with others.
Humble people are willing to be open and transparent with others as God directs.
Proud people want to be sure that no one finds out when they have sinned; their instinct is to cover up.
Humble people, once Humble, don’t care who knows or who finds out; they are willing to be exposed because they have nothing to lose.
Proud people have a hard time saying, “I was wrong; will you please forgive me?”
*Humble people are quick to admit failure, to feel the cause of their unlovingness and to seek forgiveness when necessary.
Proud people tend to deal in generalities when confessing sin.
Humble people are able to acknowledge specifics when confessing their sin.
Proud people are concerned about the consequences of their sin.
Humble people are grieved over the cause, the root of their sin.
Proud people are remorseful over their sin, sorry that they got found out or caught.
Humble people are truly, genuinely repentant over their sin, evidenced in the fact that they forsake that sin.
Proud people wait for the other to come and ask forgiveness when there is a misunderstanding or conflict in a relationship.
*Humble people take the initiative to be reconciled when there is misunderstanding or conflict in relationships. They are loyal to the principles of love and truth first and always and do not allow pride to prevent them from admitting a transgression.
Proud people compare themselves with others and feel worthy of honour.
Humble people compare themselves to the holiness of God and feel a desperate need for His mercy.
Proud people are blind to their true heart condition.
*Humble people walk in the light – they fully face their true condition and reach out to God from that space.
Proud people don’t think they have anything to repent of.
Humble people realize they have need of a continual heart attitude of repentance.
Proud people don’t think they need revival, but they are sure that everyone else does.
Humble people continually sense their need for a fresh encounter with God and for a fresh filling of His Spirit.

List adapted from http://www.reviveourhearts.com/pdf/uploads/TheHeartGodRevives.pdf
Notes with * beside have been altered from the original text by me. The word broken and brokenness has been replaced with humble throughout.
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“God please help me to be Humble before you today and everyday. Teach me to live with the walls down and the roof off.
I desire to be near you and to bring glory to you. Help me to be humble to my failings and pain so that I may never cultivate addiction and instead live in the shadow of your love every hour and moment of my life.”

Little Seed

Anna and I shared a beautiful conversation on Tuesday. Between her planting and me processing we happened upon a magic window in which we talked about letting go of being the ‘good girl that everyone approves of’, our fears of feeling alone, and how much we love God. I received this message from her today and I thought it too beautiful not to pass on.
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Hi Mary,
I had a nice time talking to you yesterday.  I know you’re probably really busy, but I wanted to share this with you, as it’s kind of an extension to what we were talking about.
Last night after I got home, I sat in the shed (all alone!) with the candles on, listening to Amy Grant.  And I prayed to God from the real place in my heart.  Prayed to Help me to want my self, my true self, despite the conflict this brings up inside of me.  Teach me to be brave, and return to my childhood vulnerability and humility.  To remain true to myself and to my relationship with you, no matter what anyone in the outside world thinks or feels or does. 
I cried as I connected back to the glory that I have come to know as God. 
But it’s not easy for me at the moment.  I have just begun to notice that most of the thoughts in my head are me looking at myself as I think another person see’s me.  I’m not connected to how I feel, I’m connected to what other people see and feel about me – really, how my parents felt and saw.  I’m constantly having to stop myself and try to block, then dig beneath these thoughts, to find my own humility. 
This morning I realised that the same addiction that is driving these thoughts (wanting people to see me as great, so then they will envy, or love me) is in play in my relationship with God.  For, in trying to present myself as more ‘loveable’ than I am, or feel, has meant that I cannot connect with neither myself or God, because I’m not really me. 
This brings me to my analogy about the seed that my spirit friends helped me to see this morning. 
I’m a seed.  A little seed.  Full of potential, but to say I am a tree yet, would be untruthful.  To see myself as me is vital, because I can’t grow if I’m trying hard to not be the little seed I am.  Rather than denying I’m a little seed, and proclaiming, “I’m a plant!  Can I’ve some Love now everyone!?”, it’s going “Hey God, I’m a little seed, and I want to grow, can you please help me grow?”
To grow, I must;
  1. Sit in the truth of who I am.
  1. Desire Love from this place (including learning to love myself, as a little seed)
  1. Release the false belief that to be loved I have to be a tall, impressive plant.
Just wanted to share that with you Mary.  I feel it’s going to be really important for my growth from here.
Hope you, and AJ are feeling good today. : )
Lots of Love,
Anna

Just Be True, The Third Sphere & I Heart God

A new day was just beginning and I, sitting on the floor of our ecotent, looking out on all the freshness, was reading the Padgett messages….

“Be true to yourself and you will soon be in God’s love and favour…”[1]

The message continued but I found myself drawn to these words. I scribbled them in my journal and kept reading.

Again I paused; I looked back to my journal and circled the first four words in the sentence. These are well worn words in our world, bandied about in all kinds of situations. But now here they were at the beginning of a sentence that Helen had impressed upon her beloved mate. There was something big there that I was missing. I could feel it. It was niggling at the edge of my understanding.

“Be true to yourself…” – no don’t brush these words aside as obvious for their true meaning is huge.

“Be true…” to what you feel right now, surrender to your emotion, embody it, allow it. Don’t act it out, or avoid, don’t analyze or understand it. Just be true.

It hits me, a dawning no less significant than the one unfolding around me.
To know God’s Love I must go to Him in Truth. Go to Him in the truth of what I feel, just be true…

Yes I know you’ve heard all this before. But have you really? I hadn’t understood it – in my marrow. I didn’t feel what it meant deep within me.

Lots of us have heard that we must be in truth to receive the Love but do we go to Him in our messiness and sorrow. How can He connect to us if we do not share ourselves with Him, and how can we relate to Him if we avoid the state of complete humility and honesty about our own selves?

In all of my talking, journaling, channelling, processing and yes, even blogging I’ve been missing the point. I’ve been seeking to figure out my feelings instead of just embodying them while I cry out to God for Love and Grace. This revelation of my own smug self reliance stings me. The sin as old as mankind itself, has kept me in its grips. In all of my struggles to free myself of emotional error I have overlooked the arrogance in the way I am approaching the entire process.

I’ve been trying to sort myself and my feelings out so that then God can Love me, (now this sounds ridiculous but only if I remember that God is a Loving Parent who accepts me just as I am, and I forget that most of the other people in my childhood wanted me to hold it together and sort things out, and they found me far more ‘loveable’ and adorable then).

I haven’t been asking God for Grace or for Love, for I haven’t believed myself worthy of such things. I’ve been asking for Him to help to me feel – pleading and needy sometimes. And yet I’ve been afraid of His Love and of truly opening my heart to share my feelings with Him.

I haven’t understood that I must use my will to feel and He will use His Will to ease my burden.

I realise now that in order to truly heal I must take my whole self to Him and say ‘Here I am, teach me to love myself just as I am. In this precious, imperfect moment of my existence show me I am worthy. Let me feel your Love.’

My fear and desperate desire for control has made me, in my heart (the place where true longing begins) resist His Love because of what it may dislodge in me. I have been guarding my worthlessness from Him.

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It occurs to me that this is the true transition to the third sphere, or some big step in love, where I stop trying to ‘figure out’ my emotion, and instead am just willing to surrender to it, whatever it is, and to trust God to heal me of it – through His process, not mine. It is the place in which I am willing to be, just be, in the truth of my emotions[2] (not my addictions) and to experience them, at all times.

It is vulnerability – the lesson of my year – that is required. It is saying to God  “I’m terribly afraid that you may reject me but I can’t do this without you. But in order to do it with you I’m going to have to share myself. I’m going to have to ask, really ask for your Love.”

“Man has a will to either accept or reject the Love of God, and until he exercises his will in a way to show that he wants that love, it will not be given him.”[3]

God, I haven’t wanted your Love. I’ve asked for guidance and for courage but I haven’t wanted Love.

I have paid lip service to your Love and haven’t yet yearned for it, in the way of a winsome, lovesick teenager, of a mother for her lost child, of a son for his absent father.. his Father.

I haven’t unlocked the desire that consumes a soul, that is in the heart beat behind every action, present with every word and flavours every minute.

I quake at the thought of unleashing my sheer, unadulterated longing, that my heart may run free and ‘into Your Arms of Love’.

Could I give you my heart God? All the lost and fragile pieces of me, could I offer them up to you? Could I want Your Love so much that I would face all fear and give up all my feeble attempts, these shameful human encounters where I try to earn approval and appreciation, all in an effort to find a substitute for the Love that would fulfill me complete.

In the early dawn, in my dawning, I realize that I have focused on the eradication of sin and error and neglected (because of unworthiness and fear of grief) the inflowing of God’s Love. And now I see that the fastest way to eradicate sin and error is to focus on the Love. The process of emotional, causal release will be the same but it will happen as a natural part of my relationship with God. It is sharing with God in complete humility that changes our soul. When we truly open ourselves God’s Love gives us courage to step into the depths of pain and She takes the cause from us. The gentle surgeon removes the barbs. It is a process with my Maker – not a trial I must endure before I can relate to Her.

It seems to me in our initial unraveling we do and perhaps we must, engage our intellect. God does seem to many of us a far off figure, shrouded in misconception borne of our upbringing and background. We cannot neglect the important work of unhooking from our re-framing and rethinking, and the breaking down of the addictions that have run our lives. This next step though is the substance of the teachings. All of the thrashing around beforehand is just us lost in the bush, trying to orientate ourselves. This realization is suddenly stepping into the clearing and seeing the luminous Path stretch out in front of us. We must each have our awakening of what is truly within us.. just be true.. and be willing to share this self with God.

‘…for until such an awakening comes to (the soul) there is no possibility of it receiving the Love of God into to it..’[4]

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“When we pray to the Father for an increase in faith, it is a prayer for the increase in Love”[5]

If  I block the Love, how can my faith grow?

It ALL depends on the Father’s Love.

I AM NOTHING WITHOUT HIS LOVE.

As I read my notes to Yeshua, he hastens to correct my last statement. It is not true that I am nothing without God’s Love. I can become God’s creation, perfected in natural love. I explain to him that when I wrote the statement I was feeling so acutely how limited I am without this relationship, how insignificant I now am compared to what I once was when His Love made me His child ‘in substance and not in image only’ In my moments of explaining its hard to contemplate how I could even grow in natural love without the Love of God.

And yet in the next breath, I feel the errors of the first human couple still alive within me – this searing, desperate attempt to prove that I am something and someone, on my own, of my own creation. The utter limitation of this state, of trying to have my ego prove its worth, overwhelms me. I’m locked in a futile struggle to prove my value, that blocks the most significant relationship of my life.

Even now, the idea that me, alone;

without doing good works,

without saying smart things,

without knowing,

without showing that I am worthy,

the idea that I am loved and am beautiful without any of these things is so alien. I feel I must make good before He (and he) can love me, before I show myself to Him.

And yet His Love will prove His Love for me.

But I must have humility and openness to receive it.

If I am needy or demanding I won’t receive it. My neediness is a plea that he make it easier so that I may avoid my darkest sorrow. My demand is anger and expectation that I should be able to avoid vulnerability and openness with Him. Instead I must ask ‘with sincere longings and earnest aspiration’, I must truly desire it and be willing to bare my whole self to Him, in recognition that:

“Man is a mere creature and cannot create anything higher than himself; so man cannot rise to the nature of the divine, unless the divine first comes into that man and makes him a part of its own divinity.”[6]

It’s not about saying “God help me feel….”

It is saying “God I feel….”

“God please be with me while I feel.”

“Could you show me your love so that I may have faith enough to step into the darkness?”

It is stopping trying and simply desiring – desiring God, desiring Love, desiring Truth, desiring emotion.

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So why am so I afraid to ignite my yearning for God and for Soulmate? So afraid that I hold myself back in the second sphere (and sometimes lets face it, right down in the lower first) – figuring out, analyzing, resisting surrender to the truth of what I feel….

The answer, the reason for my headstrong self-reliance, is that I don’t want to soften into the feelings that for nigh on 2000 years I have relied on a Father of Love. He has guided me. And the love of my mate has nourished me.

I can’t take the next steps until I acknowledge this – that my Mother God sustains me and that my mate, Yeshua, completes me.

I feel so nothing without them. And it feels that I must pass through this abyss of knowing that, feeling that nothing, in order to have them with me again.

I have missed them so much that it terrifies me to crack open the cache of my longing, and have all of my loneliness tumble out with it.

Oh God give me strength…

    dare I ask….   show me Love?

This is the narrow way.

It must be through a relationship with God. Until we have this we are not truly on the Path. We are bumbling along, preparing, removing our blocks, until we reach the point where we are ready to open ourselves to the greatest, most life-givng Love there is – until we are ready to enter a love relationship with our Creator.

I am humbled to admit to you this morning that I have been dallying all this time, on the Natural Love Path. Yes, I have felt and released some emotions and I have come to know the Father a little. But I am hit like a freight train by the understanding that my growth has been seriously stunted by my unwillingness to ‘ask in a way that shows I want His Love’.

My friends, we must learn what it means to ask Him.

To ask with our hearts,

our whole hearts,

our broken hearts,

our shameful hearts,

the parts of us that don’t feel whole because in Truth they lack

His Love.

We must unearth the parts of us left in the shadows and corners and forgotten caverns in our souls so that She may shine the light of Love and Truth upon them.

I saw a book advertised the other day. It is called ‘Made to Crave’ by Lysa Terkeurst. I haven’t read the book but the short blurb I read about it came back to me as I finished writing this post. I think I’ve gleaned her basic premise (apologies to Lysa If I’m wrong) It is this: We are all made to crave God and all of our other addictions with food, (and I would add with television, in relationships, in our work etc, etc), are just distractions and a poor substitute for the Love we crave the most.

If we want to know God, to receive Her Love, we must open up to our craving and know it for what it is. When we do this our addictions will become unsatisfying and meager in comparison to what awaits us. And this craving and desire will inspire us to face our fears, to face our true selves and expose them to the One who Loves the most. When we do, God in all Her Grace, will clean us and teach us Love.

[1] Excerpt from a message received by James Padgett from Helen Padgett, November 30th, 1914

[2] I want to make a clear distinction here between living in or allowing our emotions and living in addictive emotions. The first is healing, the second is damaging and even more damaging when we tell ourselves and others we are doing the first when we are in fact doing the second. I see many living in addictive emotions and crying non-causal feelings. While we live in addiction we cannot connect to our true emotional state.
[3] Excerpt from a message received by James Padgett from Ann Rollins, December 12th, 1914
[4] Excerpt from a message received by James Padgett from Jesus, October 10th, 1915
[5] Excerpt from a message received by James Padgett from Jesus, March 2nd, 1916

[6] Excerpt from a message received by James Padgett from Jesus, January 24th, 1915

A Poem to God

Could you love me God? Little me?
Could you love me THAT much?
Could I really become clean?
Help me find my true self, my desires,
Help me find the pathway through the dark,
Help me LOVE.
I want to love.
I want others to want your Love,
and to know its power ,
through seeing me change.
I am just a little girl, a little lost,
Bewildered by this BIG world I find myself in.
Help me touch my sorrow.
There is so much sadness
It feels knit into the fibres of my being.
Help me love the colour of my soul,
Just as it is,
Right now.
Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you,
There are no words for you.
I am just a little girl
with words, far too few
Help me find the words, the will,
to share your Glory.
How can I know you well?
I am humbled by You
Your presence makes me want to bow down for you,
How can I face you?
You know me so well and I feel shame,
How could you love me after knowing me?
I am so broken
and oh so little.
Help me have faith that I may heal.
Help me have courage
to stand on your doorstep
and knock on your door
Let me feel worthy enough
to ask….
to ask for your Love and your Wisdom.
I do not feel deserving of such things
I am little
and a lot broken.

Hey everyone, this is my first ‘Poem to God’

Last year when I ran the workshops one of the activities was for you all to write a Poem to God and it was always, inevitably my favourite part in every weekend. I loved watching you all shine as you shared your poems with each other. After the workshops some of you sent me your poems and I have them stored in a folder on my computer. Can I say I love them all. I cried as I read every single one of them. Each is as unique as the soul who created them. I find it one of the most precious things in the world to hear a heart call out to God, to want to talk to God.

It was a seed of a dream that one day someone, maybe Joseph (I have asked him yet!), may want to include some of your poetry in a publication. Who knows maybe someday we can do this…

A Fork in the Road & The Wounded Dog

A Fork in the Road

I’m passing through a season on this path where life seems difficult. In the past month I have come to confront some big residual addictions (that I found hidden below the obvious ones J). It’s felt tough and I’m still in it. Lots of my other avoidances – food, alcohol, anger, running away etc – all seemed easy to give up compared to these. I am really attached to the feelings of being ‘Daddy’s little girl’ – it helps me avoid so much shame and worthlessness. It helps me avoid all the loss and longing for my Soulmate that feels so consuming I doubt my capacity to breathe if I submit to it. I really, really want to feel safe and protected – instead of feeling terrified of losing him, of being harmed, of people hating us.
In the past I’ve felt my passion to become more loving and closer to God has pulled me through so much processing. Often, even just realising my addictions, has helped me to begin to break them down. These last few weeks though, I’ve had to get brutally honest with myself. Just because I can see that this set of addictions prevent me from loving more completely and that they block my connection to my Father, doesn’t mean that I want to give them up. Facing my deepest unworthiness, my Soulmate grief and my terror feels like a task I am not up to yet.
The place I’m in feels harrowing. The roads divide before me – one path is the path to God and my dear, sweet mate. The other is a continuation of the well worn road of my life till now. It’s the road where I get to feel warm and fuzzy because people accept me and tell me “wow, you’re a great girl!” It is the road where I accommodate everyone else’s demands and desires because I don’t want to feel alone or rejected. It’s the road that keeps me in addiction to love’s substitutes – approval, reassurance, avoidance and hugs that help me deny my pain.
The former road means facing feeling alone, unsafe, unworthy and ashamed. This road, the one to God, takes a course through the dark emotions. The second takes me around them, on any number of detours, escaping the lows of shame and grief, for ‘higher’ ground. The only problem is that on the second I seem to tire so much and it never, ever, leads me to God. That road only leads me to a cul-de-sac and when I get there at the end of my long and tiring life I know I’m just going to have unpack my backpack and in it I will find the shame, unworthiness and grief I was trying to avoid all along.
On the first road I don’t have to carry a backpack. It will be painful at first but I know as I go the scenery will improve and I may even start humming a tune or two. But there is pain in starting out, and there will be pain in staying the course.
How much do I really want it?
Am I willing to step directly into the things I fear?
The second road still calls me. It tempts me; it masquerades as the easier route. The surface is smoother underfoot… but it’s that darn backpack that weighs me down.

I feel frustrated that I know the best path to take and yet I do not take it. I’m sitting dawdling. My backpack gets heavier by the minute and I have a tendency to whine about it. How uncaring is that? I want to whine about how heavy it is when it is my choice to keep lugging it about. It’s tiring all this lugging. It’s more than tiring it gets painful. Which leads me to the dog..
The Wounded Dog

I wanted to share a story with you about a dog full of barbs. It was told to me by Yeshua and comes from our brother John, who while here on earth the second time, was given this story from his spirit friends.
Imagine a dog who has been shot full of arrows with barbs on their ends. They are stuck in his skin and he yelps as he moves. He is in constant pain.
There is no way to remove the barbs without more pain. Barbs by their nature become lodged and stuck; their prongs embed in the skin at different angles. The most loving thing we can do for the dog is to ask him to lie still and allow us to remove the barbs as gently as possible. We can’t prevent the pain but if he doesn’t thrash and kick he won’t be injured further.
Now imagine yourself as this dog. The process of birth and growth from childhood has left you stuck full of barbs – not barbs from God but from our forefathers’ decisions to neglect God and love, from our own life’s choices which have placed pain within our souls. So we are now full of painful wounds, tender to touch.
God is so tender and loving and He wants so much to see us free of barbs and wounds and all of the sharp things caught in our coat. He will do everything he can to ease them out of us gently. The barb that hurt so much going in is going to sting coming out. There is no avoiding it. But if we lie still, if we surrender and allow God’s Hands to gently work, it will happen quickly and we will feel the sheer relief of it leaving us.
It is when we fight and resist that the process becomes painful, we cause more injury to ourselves and those around us when we thrash and rebel against what is most natural. In trusting and allowing we liberate our pain and in letting go it hardly hurts at all. Like the prick of a splinter exiting our palm, the quick, sharp, pinch is nothing compared to the feeling of relief as it comes out.
And this is the key lesson our spirit friends were tyring to teach us – our pain now is almost entirely due to the fight against feeling what is already within us. We are so terrified of the removal of the barbs. We believe it is the ultimate pain, not realising that it is actually relief.
So instead we fight and struggle or we try to find a comfortable way to numb the pain.(1) But this only augments our suffering. The barbs can start to fester, an infection can spread throughout our entire lives.
The greatest way to relieve our pain is the simplest – to allow and feel what is there while we let God’s Love and Grace remove our error.
“The new birth is the flowing of the holy spirit into the soul of a man and the disappearing of all that tended to keep it in a condition of sin and error. It is the love of God that passes all understanding…
Your will is the thing that determines whether you will become a child of God or not. Unless you are willing to let the Holy Spirit enter into your heart, it will not do so. Only the voluntary submission to, or acceptance, of the Holy Spirit will make the change.”(2)
Submit and allow the barbs to be removed.
At my fork in the road I so desperately want to fight. Indeed I spent some hours yesterday just fighting with God about it all. I feel angry at love. Can you believe that? I want to be angry at AJ for just loving me because it reminds me of how much I hurt, how much I missed him. It’s like, because I don’t want to feel the pain of loss I have deadened a part of my heart. Now that I have AJ in my life everyday it is harder and harder to avoid the pain of this partitioned off part of my soul.
I have screamed and sobbed at God, wanting another way out, any other way but through, any other road but the first. God, in all Her tenderness, just waited, waited for me to stop thrashing while she gently tries to remove the barbs.
It’s hard to trust Her.
She’s still waiting and I resist Her Love.
You know what it’s like when you’re having a bad day at work. You’re OK while everyone is just doing their thing. They may even be terse and bossy with you. You’re fine until that one person just reaches out and says, ‘Hey, you look beat, would you like to talk?’ The sudden kindness is the thing that tips you over the edge and you find yourself crying.
I feel like my whole life has been one long work day, with me beating up on myself for not doing well enough, and others around me demanding I give more. Now when I consider opening up to God, who just wants to hold me and says ‘I love you no matter what’, it feels like I’ll loose it, completely loose it.
So I push Her away.
I push away my Heavenly Mother who Loves me.
I push my mate away.
I resist anyone who is tender and gentle because I can’t bear the contrast between what life has been and what it can be.
There are so many barbs.
I’m praying now for the strength to surrender to myself, to God’s process. The process She designed with infinite care, the road that brings me back to Her.
I’m praying for you to, that you may also find this courage.
Sometimes we get so used to the barbs that we feel they are preferable. Or we decide we don’t mind the heavy backpack, we believe we deserve it.
Sometimes the hardest thing to surrender to is LOVE.
“Surrender dear sister, surrender” I hear my guides whisper “Take the shorter route, though it feels you will plunge directly into darkness, trust the Father, for from that point on your load will be lighter and your steps will be surer.”
“Take the narrow road that leads to God.”

[1] The Pharmaceutical industry is based almost entirely upon this principle; “How can we help you numb your pain?”, rather than release its cause.
[2] Excerpt from a message received from Yeshua, channelled by James E Padgett in 1915. For further information on where to view or purchase the Padgett Messages see here, here and here.

Sharing All The Pieces

“It is wonderful what God can do with a broken heart, if He gets all the pieces.”
Samuel Chadwick
I love these words. My challenge is to dig deep inside to find all of those hurt and broken pieces and then be brave enough to hold them, to be with them long enough to share them with God so that healing can begin.
Wishing you (and me) the courage to share the tenderest parts of your heart with God, He so loves us,
Mary

P.S. God whispered something to me recently, right after I had been brave enough to share a part of my brokenness with Him. He told me simply (in feeling not in words)
“You are worthy of love”
The beauty of that feeling is still reverberating around my soul. It hasn’t settled as a truth inside of me yet. But I wanted you to know because He’s been trying to tell you the same thing.
M xo