Processing Pain with God
God has his ways to help me process pain. And what can I say…? It’s painful!
Today God had me review a ten page blog post called “Three Step Process to Honor Your Feelings While Decluttering.”
I highly doubt I would ever publish it with the vivid details it now holds. Yet reading those details was God’s way of getting to the heart of the matter.
In the post I identified the situation I’m dealing with that has caused clutter in my home, life and mind. It’s so helpful when I understand why I’m holding onto things that I need to let go of.
I’m not just talking about stuff and things, but also thoughts that shouldn’t take space in my head and relationships that need to be reconciled or ended.
It was helpful for me to get in touch with what things represent to me. Take books for example. Books represent people to me. Since I feel that I have often been kept on the fringe and away from people, books have literally been a lifeline. I’ve been able to get knowledge and advice and help when I couldn’t get it from the actual people themselves.
I have often felt that I lacked the resources to get what I need. That’s what happens when you are financially abused. Access to money is restricted. Whether it be counseling, going to the doctor for healthcare, how to remodel or decorate, how to…..
- garden
- cook
- take care of my kids
- save my marriage
- get free from anxiety
- draw close to God
You name it and there is a book about it that can help. Stories have taken me away to distant lands when I’ve been trapped under sick toddlers and babies. As a teenager I learned about overcoming through reading The Clan of The Cave Bear.
Stories of others overcoming have given me hope when I had none. The books in my life have been a lifeline and giving them up feels like I’m on a sinking ship without a life preserver while I cut the rope to the life boat. It just doesn’t make sense. Why would I willingly do that?
Yet that’s exactly what I have been doing. I’ve been methodically following a plan and so most of my books are all boxed up. I committed to a program called
which is walking me step by step down a path where I’m organizing my home, life and mind, so that I will be free to pursue all that God has planned for me in this life.
Here’s a post it note to remind me of the path I committed to. I also shared this with a few friends when I started so they could pray for me and help hold me accountable. I’m 72% done.
Commit thy works unto the LORD, and thy thoughts shall be established Proverbs16:3
Accountability always feels like an attack unless your willing to grow. I’m talking about the good accountability where people are for you and cheering you on. I don’t need people around me who diminish me.
A noteworthy mile marker I want to share is that I finished the first draft of the book God put on my heart. We’ll see what God does with it. I chose to hand write it. I started it during the pandemic and quite frankly I needed to get away from all the chatter in the digital world.
Writing a book longhand had it’s challenges to say the least but it’s done and now I’m putting it in digital form. I’d say it’s filled with Alison’s Truth. Perhaps those of you who don’t like what I have to say could write your own story. Albeit this was a very painful process nevertheless it resulted in a lot of healing. Truly we all need that.
God has given me work to do. Sometimes the world will see it and sometimes only God will see it. But I know that if he has given me something to do it will bear fruit and make an eternal impact. At the end of it all an eternal impact is the only thing that matters.
On this very painful life journey I have learned to love. I care about people I never thought I could or would.
I was talking with a woman I know whose Dad passed away. She doesn’t know if he was saved before he died. He was a mason and she said they had dressed him in his Masonic Apron.
We do good works because we are saved not to get saved. There’s a difference. For it is by grace you have been saved,through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. Ephesians 2:8-9
The woman whose father passed away is so precious. She has been a true gift from God in my life. I believe God brought her to me so I could see the peace she has about her father. She doesn’t really know if he accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior but she did her part. She told him about Jesus.
John 11:25-26 says, “Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.”
“Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6
Only Jesus saves and right now He has put a few people on my heart really strong. The door of salvation is only open for so long.
“So, as the Holy Spirit says: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the wilderness, where your ancestors tested and tried me, though for forty years they saw what I did. That is why I was angry with that generation; I said, ‘Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways.’ So I declared on oath in my anger, ‘They shall never enter my rest.’ ” See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end. As has just been said: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion.””
Hebrews 3:7-15
