The recipe of Love Pt. 1

My Painting- Tunnels Beach Kauai

I have been working a lot lately on a book I am writing about the story of my life and the journey that has taken me to hell and back more times than I can even count. Sometimes I have even joked  about knowing that road so well that I give guided tours. I know what it is to be in the prison of hell totally stuck within the suffocating confines within the darkness of pain, suffering, rejection, abandonment, perversion, ego and the heaviness of the all encompassing shame. I also know what it took for me to walk the road that was leading me to true freedom. What I never would have imagined is that freedom has absolutely nothing to do with security or anything that exists outside of me. 
 

When I was growing up I was taught that thinking of yourself and looking within before you reach out to help or make a difference in someone else's life is selfish. The truth is that you can't give what you don't have. I grew up hearing very little about the love that Jesus is and instead the focus was the 10 commandments, the rules, and the punishments that followed if you didn't live them. As a result I grew up drained on the inside because I never knew that in order to give love to someone else, it is necessary to receive that love first from the one who is love.

I am pretty sure that the word “Love” is the most overused and misunderstood word that exists. It is spoken about so much to the point that it has become as common as using a word like “the.” Words are containers for the powerful feelings and emotions that are supposed to be filled first from the depths of our heart. Without our heart which is where love lives there is no power. Only empty words that end up becoming the weapons of broken vows and promises.

I grew up in a very religious home with my mom, and I spent my life growing up going to church Sunday morning, Sunday evening and every Wednesday night. The dogmatic principles I was taught at church and in Sunday school became so ingrained within me starting from before I was even a year old. When I wasn't at church, I went to school at a private Christian academy which was an extension of the church we went to. So every day of my life was immersed within the doctrine and teaching of the Bible.

As far as I knew, “our way” was the only way. Why would I think anything else? That was all I knew. Which set me up at a very early age to judge anyone who didn't beleive the way we did, or even worse to tell them that they were going to hell. There was no way that I ever would have thought of exploring anything else. Because anything other than what I was taught to believe was a terrible sin and I was terrified of missing the mark and going to spend eternity in hell!

I was taught not to question anything that I was taught because to do so was to question authority. As a child it was nothing more than being disrespectful and would get me spanked for sure. I grew up in the children are to be seen and not heard era. I also grew up where the punishment of choice was backed by the scripture in Proverbs that says spare the rod, spoil the child.

Growing up I was an only child and my exposure to much outside of church was extremely limited. When everyone you know is either a part of your school or church there really arn't a lot of outside influences or distractions from people who were not “saved.” So I grew up believing that everything I was told was truth and fact. Why would I have dared to question it? I grew up being demanded to do as I was told or face the punishment that came with disobedience. Asking questions wasn't even part of the equation because whatever adults and the pastor said was just what it was. There was no discussion. So I grew up ruled by fear and pretty severe punishment at the hands of the people who were supposed to be “Christians.”

I also grew up highly conflicted and tormented by all of the “rules” and demands that religion placed on your life. I was never like “other” children and being an only child I was more like an adult than a child ever since I can remember. I was always around adults except when I was at school. Everything in our home was centered around God and I am certain that where it says in the Bible to train up a child in the way they will go and when they are old they won't depart from it, is totally true. No matter how far I have drifted, run or fallen I have always found a way to run into the arms of the one who made me.

However, I'm not going to lie, most of the roads I have traveled have been riddled with nightmares of epic proportion because of the dogmatic demands associated with being “Saved” and “Born Again” as well as everything that people have done to me all in the name of the Lord. However, as horrific as the things that I have faced are, it was all preparation and training because it has led me here, and I would go through it all over again because I have discovered that it is possible to experience and live heaven smack dab in the middle of hell.

When I was 36 years old I asked myself a question that has helped me stay true to myself and my Lord who made me. I asked myself, “If I never said the name God or Jesus to anyone how would they see Jesus within me and notice something different and want what was burning brightly in my life?” I had been saying for years that I was “saved and born again” but to be totally honest, my life was laying shattered beneath the mounds of smoldering rubble. I thought, “Who in the world would ever want anything like what was going on in my life?” Saying the words and knowing all of the religious catch phrases, terminology and lingo is only surface deep. Anyone can do that and sound “Christian.” I was sick and tired of sounding like I was saved when nothing in my life reflected any part of the Kingdom of Love.

Then I thought some more about it and said to myself that it's no wonder that so many have such a bad taste in their mouths about this God we claim is Creator of all.

Why would anyone ever be excited to serve the Lord when “Christians” seem to have a never ending overflow of devastation, constant struggle and lack? I can't say that I would have been drawn to “Christianity” if I hadn't grown up in a home where it was a requirement to be a “Christian.” I thought about how many people who aren't what we label “saved” and they seem to live a good life, they have solid morals, they like who they are and what they do, their life seems filled with less adversity, they are prosperous and even have sound relationships with friends and family.

As a Christian it was widely inferred that if you aren't going through hell and facing nonstop hits on the battle field of life than you probably aren't saved. The rationale for this belief has been that the devil doesn't need to harass those who already belong to him so “they” wouldn't undergo the kind of fire that a Christian does.

Throughout this journey I am continually amazed that I discover God is truly nothing at all that I was taught to believe He is. He is so cool and even cooler than anything I ever imagined! He doesn't see us at all the way we see ourselves and then we end up judging others through the lens of the standard we have been taught is His. I'm pretty sure that if we sat down face to face with God to ask Him about what He really thinks about all of what is taught to be truth's that His responses would floor us! They might even sound like what we call blasphemy!

Somehow I'm pretty sure that those who are “Religious” would quickly be overcome with emotional attachment and defense to the doctrine they have come to believe and believe they are willing to die for. It might even be easy to deny that the one sitting before you is even the Lord God, creator of all. Instead it would be easy to make a judgment based on the words they had been taught and believe that it was not God sitting there with them, but the “devil” himself!

I realized that the power in life does not come by classifying ourselves with some label or group to identify who we are. The whole entire tone of what Jesus came to give us has nothing to do with religion or how much you go to a building called a church. He said we are the church and so we can't take some things He says as “word of God” and not others! His mission has never changed. It has always been unification. Bringing together, not tearing apart. I am certain that God is a God of One. The God of Unity which is only found through the power and heart of Love. Ready for what probably sounds like more blasphemy? God is not religious. Man has created that term and movement which has become “The” weapon of mass destruction from generation to generation.

I was so sick and tired of claiming to be a “Christian” and having nothing in my life that ever really changed my life. Nothing ever stuck. My behaviors may have changed and I may have even stopped doing certain things, but sadly none of that means I had changed at all in the inner places within my heart.

I was tired of listening to others profess their undying love and devotion to God and refuse to do anything to help anyone else in their time of need because they knew it was going to cost them some of their time, money or both. But I heard the phrase “I'll pray for you” so much that it began to feel like it was nothing more than a cliche. That really isn't any different than what Jesus said in the Bible about how if someone comes to you hungry or in need that you don't turn around and say be warm and then send them away. Yet this is what I have watched throughout my life.

I thought a lot about all of the things that Jesus said when it came to what makes someone a “Christian.” I was going through the most unimaginable seasons of my life and I was going to church. The services were always really good. The music rocked and it felt amazing. The only thing is that I was living my worst nightmare and from moment to moment it felt like I was a fish out of the water doing some kind of survival croppie flop on the inside. I had been told all of my life that God is the God of miracles and abundance. He is a God who heals and turns everything that the devil meant to destroy me with into the very message that He uses for His glory and life giving testimony. While all of this is true I had never been so destitute emotionally at any other time in my life than I was in 2009, and I had never needed a miracle like I needed one then!

I was on my 3^rd marriage, married to a man I had no idea how to love and no desire to even if I would have known how. I think I was subconsciously addicted to being mistreated and abused even though I loathed being hurt I didn't seem to know how to walk away and stay away. This ended up costing me everything including my children. I had spent my life being a strong willed woman who was a control fanatic and egomaniac. I didn't trust anyone because everyone who ever promised to protect me while I was growing up and even in my marriages always lied and bailed when I needed them most. I had been thrown from pillar to post throughout my life because I was abused for a long time by my dad who I didn't meet until I was 11.

After I told what he did, my parents abandoned me. They left. They totally disappeared. It was like they totally vanished into thin air, and my mom never came back for me. Once they were gone I grew up in foster care. I spent most of my adolescence years going from foster home to foster home trying to find a family who wanted me or wouldn't think I was a problem child just because I was always unsettled and restless. I was living in an inescapable state of grief. I didn't know whether my mom was dead or alive. I thought that my dad had forced her to go with him and that she was being held like a hostage even at gunpoint. He did things like that while I was with them.

As a result I was needy, clingy and terrified of people leaving me, and I grew up and became an emotional nightmare; a force to be reckoned with if you ever hurt me, but desperate to know what it is to be really loved. I had no idea then and I never would have believed that love is something that can only fill you up from the inside.

It wasn't until I experienced this for myself over and over and over again that I realized that when you are filled with love only then can the overflow of that love pour out into everything and everyone around you. Love is too constant and too great to be contained, but in order to overflow you, the container of love, first I had to allow myself to be filled. I had to create space inside and clean out the closets of my heart so that I would have room for the love to come in. This is the first time that I finally saw that the love I so desperately needed was not going to come from another person, thing, experience, or what looked like outer security.

I continued learning this the hard way until I finally followed the recipe of love. It is a 2 part recipe. The first step is love the Lord God with all of you Heart, mind, soul, and being. Part 2 is to love your neighbor as you love yourself. It is a magical formula because it provides the clear order and order of operations to activate the formula of Love. Trying to love your neighbor as you love yourself is only possible if you first know how to love yourself. Anything else is not really love at all. Because remember, it is impossible to give what you don't have.

So starting at the beginning, in order for me to love the Lord with all of my heart, mind, soul and being, I was going to have to allow Him to love me. I had to be willing to receive His love and then through the example of how He is loving me, I was able to turn around and live that very example for others who are all our neighbors! 

I will be continuing with Pt. 2 next week. Have a fabulous weekend and know you are loved more than anything!