Poem #3 Untitled

I am broken before You Lord.
Only You know how to mend me.
I lay with my face at Your feet,
And my hands toward the sky.

I laugh at the joy You give,
And I will thank You every day I live.
Thank You Father for Your love and grace,
And the promise of Your face.

No other is as powerful and mighty.
Everything with breath praises You.
For Your wonderful compassion,
Can save them from destruction.

Poem #2 Untitled

Dear God, I kneel before Your glory.
Consumed by the love You have for me.
I can't wait to see Your face,
In that Heavenly place.

This is my prayer to You:
God please keep me always in Your view.
Guide my footsteps in this sinking sand.
Walk alongside me hand in Hand.

Thank You God for each new day,
for each opportunity to pray.
Thank You Lord for the mercy You give,
With each breath I will die to live.

Poem #1 Untitled

Oh Father God I am torn.
My heart is wounded and worn.
This world calls me to salute,
to bow at the sound of flutes.

My heart is healed in Your Presence.
You are my very essence.
Teach me Your ways,
So that I will not from Your path sway.

Longing to be wholey enflamed,
Yet this flesh is so ashamed.
I run into my own dark night,
Against my flesh my spirit fights.

Oh to be perfect as You are.
To be from this sin so far.
I regret my life as I have lived it.
But You always forgave all of it.

I surrender to You.
Shape me, mold me, make me new.
Let me never grow away from Your light.
I love You, my Lover and Creator of life.

Poetry...for the next few posts...

Most of you who follow my blog, or have in the past know that I've been blogging at intimateteam.blogspot.com for a little over a month now. Since I've been blogging there I've not blogged on Thrive in quite some time.

Tonight I was digging through my hope chest to clear out some things and to make more room. I came across an old book of poems that I'd written several years ago, from about 2003-2005. I wanted to post them, as I am just blown away by them. It's amazing how reading these just reminds me of His faithfulness to me, and that He's brought me so far since 1998 when I came back to him. Amazing...well hope you enjoy! :)

I posted this on my Myspace page on January 4, 2009. I think it's no coincidence that I've found it again on December 31, 2009! :) This is what the Lord began, and has completed in me during this past year. Praise God! :)



January 4, 2009 - Sunday

Free At Last, Free At Last, Thank God Almighty!
I cannot begin to explain the transformation my heart has been enraptured in these past few months. There have been so many burdens, wounds, scars, memories healed and removed from me. God is amazing. At some point in my early childhood something very bad happened to me.

The full memory has been taken from me, by God's grace, because to remember every detail would take too much a toll on my psyche and spirit, and undo all the healing that has taken place. I remember snip-its, remembering and knowing things that no four year old should know, and being "aware" of sexual things as far back as I can remember.

But you may say, "If you fully remember then maybe you can have justice." And that is fully something I had tried to embrace, to understand, who, and why, and what I had done to bring such abuse upon myself. Well God has healed every wound inflicted on me by that person, and in conjunction with that every wound that I had inflicted on myself through self-hate, loathing, and utter abhorance of everything that I was.

I could feel God's great big loving heart for others, but not for me. How could he love something so foul and broken, so disgusting. I was such a little whore, or at least that's the twisted perception that had been burned into my very core. I always felt dirty, used, abused, and tossed to the side.

I moved from one user to the next, always letting guys have their way with me, abuse me, treat me like a piece of meat, (although God protected my virginity for my husband, and I'm thankful for that). I longed to be loved, to be treated like a princess. And that is what God has done for me. He gave me my Paul, who loves me and has stuck this long grieving process out. Who, although at times he could never fully understand, the depth of my agonizing pain, he saw a flicker of who I am meant to be underneath all the scar tissue that my life had become.

I say all of this to say, over the past few months God has healed every wound from this sexual abuse that happened so many years ago. I no longer blame myself for what happened. I love myself unconditionally, and I embrace my flaws with my strengths. I have more joy now than I ever did, because now it is not tainted with the self-hate and self-abuse that lasted for twenty years.

God is amazing, I was at Onething Prayer Center just the other day. I was burdened and weighed down by a sense of not being able to fully let go of my anger toward this person. And suddenly God allowed me to feel His pain and anger toward this person, although there is still grace for this person, his dicrepid acts were not forgotten, that I had not been merely looked over, that God's justice was perfect and that I could finally give that up. And from that time I have felt so much peace.

And then tonight, God gives a wonderful man of God a dream of me, in full color, spinning and dancing in a beautiful blue dress, and so full of freedom, and the funny this is that's the same imagery God gives when I feel the closest to Him, and that is a sign to me that I am finaly, truely, etirely, and completely set free and this will no longer harm me or my future children. And that is something I could never, ever repay my Father God for!

I know that this is a lot of jumbled emotions, and I hope that you understand my need to get this out there, I feel like I could scream from the rooftops what the Almighty has done in my life. Let Him into the dark recesses of your hearts and minds, I promise He will be gentle and He will right the wrongs that have been done and create a new and perfect you, the person you were intended to be, but that this would has inhibited or nearly snuffed out entirely. Trust Him with your hurts, and He'll give you robes of righteousness and healing instead! : )


God Bless and Love You All! : )

A New & Free Nickel : )

Suddenly..

God is amazing! I am just absolutely baffled by the way He works sometimes!

Paul was away Thursday through Saturday at Skate Conference, and I had Friday night free, so I invited some ladies over for dinner and some chick flicks. God had other plans!

I'd finished making dinner and sat down to eat with Andrea and Makaila. I got maybe two bites and felt that I needed to be really transparent with them. I just told them how I felt so out of place, and that I didn't fit in. I told them how I just couldn't relax and just be myself. Instantly Andrea started asking me more in depth questions, as to why I felt this way, and basically just pouring truth over me. The whole time I'm just sobbing. God had spoken to me earlier in the day, an old work friend killed himself a few days ago, and I was just thanking God that all the times I'd wanted to kill myself and by the grace of God I didn't. He told me that although I didn't kill myself I also didn't want to live, so I've been in this sort of limbo between the two. WOW powerful.

So back to dinner...Andrea is speaking truth into me and not letting me hide behind my fascade. She's telling me she's been in the same place, but that I can overcome it. The whole time her hand is shaking and she finally looks at me and says, "I can get you drunk RIGHT NOW, do you want to be drunk?" I say yes, and she comes to where I am sitting at the dinner table and starts praying for me and the Spirit is just overwhelming me. Eventually we had to just move to the floor.

For the next four hours I was prayed for intensely, and God really pulled a lot off of me and just filled me with His joy and His truth. It's like the identity that God's been telling me He's bringing to me was downloaded in a large chunk. At some point and time we were joined by Hayley, and it just began this huge spiral of prayer, with Makaila and I at the center of the receiving. It was absolutely incredible, and clearly a divine appointment!

I've struggled a bit with not worrying, but God's defining the grey areas of worry for me, and really just ridding me of the oppression I've been under. I know identity is true now. There may be a few strands of my old identity holding on, but I trust that those will soon be gone too!

God also spoke to me that I've been wearing the wrong armor. Much like when David wore Saul's armor. He couldn't move in it, couldn't fight in it, couldn't do anything in it. But once he took off the ill-fitted armor and put on the name of the Lord he could strike down any giant. I think this goes hand in hand with walking in the wrong identity!

WOW...I think this has been one of God's "suddenly"'s!

WOW :D

Wow...God is doing a work...and it's totally caught me off guard. It's so true that God's a gentleman and He doesn't rush us into what He has for us. He's so often the God that Ed's been portraying through this "consider the lilies" walk. He has the gifts and blessings we need we just need to ask for them.

In the past two weeks God has really shown me that my identity is false. This identity that I've walked in for almost 27 years is partly me, but a lot of what the world has told me I am, or what I've become out of necessity to survive. But that's not who I am called to be, nor is it me living an abundant life. So, that's a bit shocking and a bit of a blow you might say, but the Lord has ways of saying what you need to hear in a way that you can accept it. As harsh as it sounds, it was what I've heard from Him for a long time. Deep in my heart, but this time, my mind finally caught on. And something clicked.

Now I can honestly say this is something the Lord has "brought about", as I have not put any effort into praying about it to a large degree, I've been more aware of it. I've been trying to examine areas to see if that part of my identity lines up with the Word of God. If it doesn't then it's not MY identity.

Let me tell you, my life has changed so much these past two weeks. And not on the outside or in the physical, but I feel brand new on the inside. I feel stronger, more secure, more accepting of myself, and less aware of people's opinions of me, which if you know me well enough you know that this is beyond amazing for me!

I know it's a process and there's a lot to work on, but I am so excited that the struggles I've had for so long seem to just be melting right away!

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In Beatrice news...

I've learned a lot from that little plant as of late. Unfortunately Beatrice almost died in the process of me learning. The day after Ed told us we were no longer doing our walks with our plants I was very dishearted. SO, I left Beatrice in my car. Now mind you my husband had left Gary in the trunk of the car on numerous occasions and to this day he is very green and lively, so I thought she'd be okay. BOY WAS I WRONG!

The poor thing wilted so badly I thought she was dead. She was depleted of any and all moisture. When I saw her I just cried. She looked terrible.

Again, out of this despair God spoke to me. "Nickel, this is what you do with people". Wow, now that's a blow to the gut, but so very true. When people hurt me, or my heart hurts because of them I push them away so I don't have to deal with it. But in the end I have to deal with the injury to the relationship.

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So needless to say I was ashamed to bring Beatrice to the prayer center because of how badly she looked. I felt like such a failure. Then I trimmed her way down, she only has two leaves now, but I had to cut off all the dead stuff. Then when Friday rolled back around and it was time to head back to the prayer center God told me to be proud of her, not to be ashamed of her. She is an extension of me. And just like I've been through a lot of abuse and drought, God's trimming me down to grow me the way I should be grown.

That's something that God showed me the other day in the prayer room. All the potential for me to be what I need to be is within me, He's already put it there. It's like a seed. It's encased in a shell full of nutrients and it has the makeup of everything that seed could ever be. It's covered by soil, which in essence is dead, decaying compost. The seed can choose to forever stay a seed, and stay in it's comfy soil home. But the seed will never reach it's full potential, and eventually it will die. But the seed that longs to be it's full potential will push through the soil (all the dead stuff) and grow toward the light.

This is the process that God's got me in right now, and I am so thankful that He is so faithful! :D