Edited and Reposted from the original March 9, 2011 writing
In a class that I'm currently taking, "Breaking Free" (which works hand in hand with the "Healing Heart" class that I'm also enrolled in) I thought I was making some good progress in "Breaking Free" after the first week!
After each class the first week I was anxious to jump into the homework and start getting that Spiritual Freedom that I had been longing for, my class was on Tuesday, I did my homework within the next couple of days and by Friday when I went to church, I had finished it.
I was glad I had done the work and thought that I had gained some ground through the forgiveness for both, people and things in my life that I had worked through. Friday at church I realized how much ground I had taken back from the enemy! As we were singing praise (which seems to be the prime time for my encounters with God, Abba) I felt the presence of God settle around me, I started bowing down, not by a decision I made mentally, but my body started reacting to the weight of His presence that I felt around me. I was bowing lower and lower until almost doubling over, then I moved to my knees. Once on my knees, I felt a heat build around my heart and then a fire with a quick intensity. It didn't last long, but I knew my heart had been cleansed, God's cleansing fire had cleaned me of the things (memories, hurts, accusations, opinions) that I had been harboring before I went through the forgiveness steps. Soon my knees weren't even low enough and I knew my spirit wouldn't be able to rest until I was as low as humanly possible to get before God, I was on the floor, flat on my face, completely submitted. Then I found the peace I was looking for. I was totally His, no holding back.
Now in the third week of class, I thought I had been through the larger part of the process. I had known about forgiveness and had already practiced it for a long time. As we studied forgiveness in class, this was a breeze, I could and would freely give my forgiveness, even to the point of previously being in abusive relationships and forgiving things that should have been dealt with. Being asked to forgive someone was like kryptonite, I lost all of the power from "anger" and forgave freely.
But then we went through a step I hadn't expected, Being in two classes meant I wasn't looking ahead in either class, I was doing good to keep my homework completed for both and I think it was a good thing that I was unprepared, it made it easier to go through the next part. The lesson was a part about two strongholds Rejection/Rebellion that can take root in your life, it starts with Shame/Fear/Control, a cycle that once started is hard to break. During our class after learning the technical parts, we went through steps to free ourselves from this stronghold in our lives. I was going through the "steps" and repeating all of the words as instructed and was totally blind-sided when the Holy Spirit showed me where I had opened the door for an ungodly belief in my life. In relationships I have always dealt with rejection, I thought it was because I wasn't good at small talk or I was too opinionated or I had any number of reasons, but I was being shown that in truth I had a spirit of rejection. Everywhere I went I took my own rejection with me. Whatever happened to me, I saw it through the filter of "rejection". Of course, being a woman of a certain age, I've done some introspection and self-healing and thought I had dealt with parent/sibling/criticism/
While in Junior High School, it was discovered that I had very significant scoliosis(a curvature of the spine), as the first result of that discovery, it was required that I do exercises daily such as having a head harness put on and then being tugged up to a bar at the top of a door by my parents(until they decided I should pull it myself) to try to stretch my back straight, then I was supposed to lay on the floor while my legs were actually pulled to try to "straighten" me out too. Well, I wasn't that easily straightened, so the next step was a body brace. I was measured and "my" back brace was created just for me, yippee! My brace consisted of three bars, two in the back and one in front that ran from a large leather form(about 6 inches) that fit around my body at hip level and up to bars that ran around my neck, holding my head up with pads against my chin and the back of my head. There were two straps inside of this contraption of torture that was to pull my backbone straight from opposite sides. I describe it in detail so you can visualize how uncomfortable this was for a young girl to endure at the time of life that she is so much trying to fit in with the other kids in school, but also so you can imagine how physically uncomfortable the brace was.
This brace was my undoing. I had gone through eye surgery, and wearing glasses from the age of 2, a childhood of never having a report card that was acceptable, being the third child of four(this carries its own share of challenges), dealing with shyness, every effort never measuring up, you name it and I shared it with a great deal of our society, but when I had to wear this brace and walk down the halls at school I was humiliated to the point that I rejected myself.
Imagine at the age you would most like to be able to disappear from sight that you are put on public display in a metal cage that stretched you out, holding your head high with nowhere to hide. Other girls were laughing and planning to go to dances, I was the girl that had metal rods around me and holes in her dresses from where her metal brace would bump against the desk until the fabric was worn out, I was the girl that woke up years later having nightmares that she was still in the brace. That is when I gave ground to the enemy. That is when I chose to believe all of the messages that the spirit of rejection delivers. I was not acceptable! I was a reject!
All of that period in my life I had stuffed away and never thought about or spoken of. Not until this class. As we went through the steps to face our rejection/rebellion issues all of this flooded into my consciousness and I was completely caught by surprise. In the process of breaking free, we were led to ask Jesus where He was during this time (each person had their own times that they were dealing with and we spoke to Jesus silently). I asked Him and He showed me that He walked beside me, with His head held high, just like I had(but while He held His head high in courage, I held mine high in bluff and besides with that brace, I had no choice!). He showed me that when He was led through the streets carrying His cross that He felt much more rejection than I had endured walking down the halls at school, I even argued that He only had to do that once, I had to go through mine every day, over and over. He showed me that through this time of being an outcast from all of the things that a junior high girl thinks is important (acceptance, beauty, popularity, dresses, boys) that He was creating in me the ability to walk outside of peoples acceptance or disapproval. He showed me that this was when I had made the choice to believe all of the previous rejection messages that I had fought off before and that in so doing I had developed a rebellious spirit to escape the other issues in my life of not being able to live up to parental or teacher demands, but that scoliosis and the brace was something I couldn't escape through rebellion. I was shown that this was when I deemed myself unacceptable and rejected my own self,
Now in our class, I was crying, reliving the humiliation, the hurt, the rejection of those days. The fact that I rejected myself was even worse than dealing with the rejection of the kids I went to school with, I betrayed myself, now it was time to forgive myself. I am praying for grace for the healing of this Soul/Spirit wound. The scab has been pulled off and now it will heal, I will be doing my homework and examining ungodly beliefs that I have let develop because of the rejection I had allowed in.
(The Lord is having me go back and tweak all of my writings, in reading this blog entry to edit it, I have also realized that I betrayed God in not accepting who I was and instead found myself someone that was worthy of rejection, my faith should have been in Him, not in my acceptance by those around me. There's always more to learn!)
