Evil Mother Drowning Baby Kittens

I have come back to this post different times since I wrote it. Waves of guilt have washed over me for calling my mother evil. She was so highly lifted up for simply having all of us kids and it only got worse (her being molded into this idol) as the majority of the family members continue to "worship" her for her "sacrificial" life. It was this worship that made me feel so insane inside...like I had to have something wrong with me for not feeling the same way.

I was so depressed and she had no idea what to do with a child who couldn't shake that depression off and get on with life...becoming something, doing something. But what is true and lives asking me to accept...is this flattened corpse feeling. Like those movie scenarios where a man has been out in the desert without water and he keeps on seeing mirages...by the time he gets to it, he sees there's no water. And it happens again and again - this is what it was like to expect anything from my mom and after a while, I just gave up.

As I re-read this post, I see that it was true - my mom was so far away from feeling and as day after day went by and things kept piling up for her with no end of her work in sight, this ugly duty of ridding our home of yet one more litter of kittens was not anything she believed she could do any other way. Stone cold heart, unfeeling, a dead corpse...this is what I took on from my mother's generational "personality." To wake up in the mornings and not feel like someone has hit me over the head with a frying pan wouldn't be the truth. And I am really glad I only have to feel this shit a little bit at a time.

Desire, how do you feel about calling your mother evil, would you mind saying more about that and the waves of guilt. Why do you feel guilty? What do you think will happen to you if you call your mother evil - any bad things? How would you feel if your mother suddenly walked into your house?

I feel like a very bad little girl who has absolutely no respect for my mother when I call her evil.  The barrage of voices say: Who do you think you are?!  What the hell is the matter with you?! Who is the evil one here...wouldn't it be YOU, the one filled with anger and so many emotional problems?!  She can't be what you want her to be.  Who is the controller here, the one trying to make her into the mommy that lives in your own little girl's dreamworld...wouldn't that be you?  I don't even want to even look at you until you have enough sense to get over yourself.  It's time to grow up and live in the real world you big baby. How dare you drag our mother through the mud - especially now when she can not defend herself.  What a coward you are bringing all this shit up about her that is all about YOU and your own problems after she's dead.  I hope this is just a phase you're going through because you're making a fool of yourself by calling her names and defaming her.  Do you think that's what she deserves, Huh?  Huh? Well, DO YOU?!  Get the fuck out of my sight!  I don't want to hear from you until you come back to reality.

This is just a hint of what surfaces as the waves of guilt I referred to.  How is it my fault that I ended up this way? Why can't I express the truth of what I experienced as I saw and felt it?  Why does everything need to be edited to fit into the Perfect Mother Story that keeps twisting all of our guts up inside because it's not true?  If I were a parent, would I want and need my children to see me only in a good light...would I need to be known to have no flaws and to be worshipped forevermore?  And how is it that it's okay to rip others in our lives apart and piss and moan about the way things and people are these days but when it comes to seeing it within our very own mother, it's off limits?

“Judge not, that you be not judged.  For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you.  Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?" 

Fuck you, you bastard church asshole. A scripture quoted and used to keep me quiet no longer holds any power over me...not something that can "keep me in line" anymore!  And I hope that I may be judged as accurately as I am now judging.  I want to be measured by what's really true and not what will just make me feel good or be seen by others as "giving and loving" and "being of service".  It's all been a show I've put on to keep my own nose above water...to give me the "right" to take up space upon the earth.  But it's all been a lie, my heart has not been in anything I've done for others...just me trying to feel better than I really feel inside. And just who is it that is going to flush me down the toilet if I have my say of how I see it and feel it... and yes, if I choose to keep on assigning judgment and laying blame at the feet of my mother? Unfortunately the big ol' Boogie Man God is not the kind of God I know anymore and They get no joy out of me pretending that I feel things differently than how I do.  I do have a massive LOG of shit that has not been able to pass through me!  It has made me feel bad and evil for ever speaking up and saying how I feel about her.  So what is your remedy oh divine minister who likes to twist scripture to insure the truth never be told?  To button my lip and allow my body to live in putrid undigested shit?

Underneath all of these words I belt out is the little girl scared to death of hurting her mother.  I don't want to be the cause of her feeling pain.  I don't want anything that I say to be seen as the whole story about her.  The belief inside says that it is never okay to air dirty laundry in public and that when you do, you show what a sad, pathetic soul you really are.  Oh, it's okay to air dirty laundry when it comes to how other families are screwed up, but NEVER your own.  One must line their thoughts and feelings up to align with the kind of picture that is respectful and honoring of parents.  Fuck...it's the bible bastard again, quoting scripture to try to keep me towing the line! I am really seeing how my own evil mind has held me prisoner...beyond being a "spell check", it is the final AUTHORITY and editor of all thoughts/feelings that do not coincide with the family's secret code of emotional etiquette.  It leaves me with absolutely no venting room...no place to blow steam, pass gas, or take a god damn shit!  Of course what I feel will sound shitty and smell foul...it's been pressed down and cooped up for half a century.  

What bad thing will happen if I call my mother evil?  I, myself, will be seen as the pathetic ego-centric child who seems to never be able to grow up and let go of the little blips of things that I make out to sound like they are the end of the world. When will you ever get over it?  Why should the world stop and pay any attention to your take on what you saw and heard when you are so obviously screwed up? All you're looking for now is attention and you'll get it any way you can.  How low can you go - using all your stories about how your mommy was evil and to say it's right and good for your healing?  Can't you see you are dragging everyone through the mud when you do this and that it isn't good or right for anyone?  Why do you try to make others feel as bad as you do...does that make you feel good? If you want others to think you are crazy and make them reject you then keep at it, you idiot.  Do the opposite of what the church taught you and just see if you'll be "blessed." If others begin to feel bad from hearing me finally have my say and feel how I feel, then they are being blessed more than if I paint one more layer of pretension over all of the shit I yet carry inside.  I have been taught that to have my say my way is selfish and that to suck it up and let by gones be by gones is living in maturity.  I have been taught that spilling all this shit inside me out is just WRONG and only opens me up to more of the same...and how could that be good for me or anyone around me?

So this fear I run into surrounding saying how I feel and think, allowing all of my foul sludge inside safe passageway out...is it all just a bunch of hot air of all of the generation after generation of voices who fear if they tell it the way they feel it, that they are murdering their own parents?  You know what they do with kids who murder their own parents in the real world...dope them up with massive medication and keep them isolated away so that they can never do harm to another again. Well, keep it up kid and don't come crying to me when you're put away for good.  As I read this threat, I know logically it holds no weight - none of what the religious voices or others who call me bad for seeing my mother as evil have any real power over me.  So the guilt I feel is beyond what the authoritative anti-truth mind says to me.  And the only way to release myself from the pressure I feel in my emotional gut when I state that my mother evil is to FEEL IT...what ever is in  there is the truth of what is there and if I wait until I can pass it by the anti-truth mind and find favor with that authority, I will never give myself permission to feel it.

So if my mother walked into the room, how would I feel, what would I say?  I think I would tell her what I have learned and why I find it important to open up my pandora's box of feelings.  On the surface, I don't fear her per say...it's that part of her taking how I feel upon herself and "having her feelings hurt" that I don't like.  There was never the possibility to be allowed to say how I feel in order for me just to be who I was in the moment.  If it was something I didn't like about her or what was going on, it was taken so personally that I believed I was responsible for how she took it in and made it all about her. So the message is that if you don't have anything good to say, then don't say it at all because then you are only trying to hurt people and what kind of person are you to want to hurt people? Why wouldn't I feel bad and guilty for doing that? If the truth inside you hurts little girl, it's too bad.  We don't want to hear it and we are not responsible for your own interpretation of what things look like to you...so keep it to yourself.  Do you hear me?  Keep it to your fucking self and leave the rest of us the hell alone!!!!!!!

Last night before I went to bed, I asked to be shown about my feelings of guilt concerning calling my mother evil.  For what seemed like a couple of hours in the wee hours of the morning, I felt like inside of me I was being taught about how really seeing that we are all evil completely pulls the plug on all of our fantasies.  For me, it's time for all of the charades to end and in order for that to experientially happen, I have to keep on releasing all of my compacted emotional shit. If I'm in the toilet all day, I sure won't be much use to society (in the way that society deems one being useful).  This is okay with me.  I don't have much of any contact with my blood family members...and this is nothing new for I have lived away from family geographically since I was in my 20's. So all of this guilt seems to me to be a lot of what I took on as a child..."you'd better not ever betray the family or else it will not be fun for you",  a type of hypnotic trance I lived within.  Again, what ever the reason logically for the depth of it, on an emotional level when I cut my own throat (by seeing and feeling through the fantasies of who I thought I and everyone in my family was) I accentuate the fact that we've all been pretending about all of our "good-ness".  And all of the ways we found ourselves to be better than others in this life, to feel good about ourselves has just been forced, not natural.  For me, this is such Good News!!!  It finally makes sense why life has felt so shitty and why trying to become a better person has been such absolutely HARD WORK! I was working against the flow instead of with it.  

Alice Miller claims that "many people suffer all their lives from this oppressive feeling of guilt, the sense of not having lived up to their parents' expectations....no argument can overcome these guilt feelings, for they have their beginnings in life's earliest period, and from that they derive their intensity."[5] This may be linked to what Les Parrott has called "the disease of false guilt....At the root of false guilt is the idea that what you feel must be true."[6] If you feel guilty, you must be guilty!

There is such a DENSITY to this guilt...and what Alice has said rings true with me...that there is no overcoming it by argument.  And so I continue to live open to being taught from it's presence when it arises within me just allowing myself to feel it.

There was also a recognition within being taught about guilt having to do with the pain of loneliness that resides underneath it.  I only got a sense of it as I laid there in bed and know that it was just a preview of what I will be feeling if I continue to say YES to all that I feel. 

And I was wondering Desire, the voice of the authority in the italics you say is speaking within you, do you have any idea as to whom that might be? And is there anything you fear they will do to you if you keep going standing up to them, calling them on all their deceit? Do you fear they will physically hurt you in some way?

You who have come to speak to me as I work through my guilt, are you willing to share who you are?  Are you blood relatives?  Spirits I have gathered around me while in different religious circles? I am hearing your side of things as I work through becoming more honest with my emotions and the more I choose to keep to putting my feelings first before all I have housed in my intellect over the years, it seems the more it upsets you.  Is there anyone who would like to talk about this with me?

I will speak first.  My name is Harold and I live among a troupe of other male spirits who are sick and tired of you blubbering on about your feelings. We feel you are in quite a hopeless condition and are here to help you to see the light and get on with your life...that you may be of service like we are. We have seen women like you before, thinking you are getting a handle on what life is really about all the while making it more difficult for everyone around you to move on with their own lives beyond all this childhood garbage you are calling feeling your way into healing.  We are here to call you back and make you pay attention to what's important - insuring all become moral upstanding citizens and being the kind of leaders this world needs.  Many of the older religious guard are dying and many close to death and we are charged to wake up those who have lived among our teachings to put away childish things such as you are involved and continue the evangelization of the world to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  When you have been a part of those like us who gather, you were very loyal to those men who were in charge and others watched you serve and wanted to emulate you.  We are very bothered by your current actions that seem to us that you have hit the delete button on all we trained you to know and do.  We wouldn't waste our time on you if we didn't think that you are valuable to our cause and we are doing our best to literally slap you out of this current trance you are in.  It's time to leave these things where they belong and start exercising your gifts and talents where they will make a difference. You know the parable Jesus gave regarding burying your talents...you are living now in your adult years where it is time to focus upon all that you've been given through the years instead of what you are saying you never had.  How very sad it would be, you on your deathbed still moaning about what mommy and daddy never gave you that you wanted. Are you hearing me?

Thanks for coming forward and sharing with me Harold.  I understand what it's like to be operating with the mental map of spirituality that your life is being guided by.  I had no clue that while I have been out sampling all of the religious platters that I was being watched and that I was being groomed for what you see is the only cause worth living for.  If you were really watching me and had any of your other senses in operation, you would have seen how that all the while I was parroting back and doing what I was being told, thinking it was the Christian way of living, that inside my heart was aching.  I would watch how some are treated better depending on their outward personality or if they had money and others looked down upon because they couldn't bring themselves to evangelize and do the good works you believe we all are called to if we are serious about our faith.  Women in general were used to be the greater percentage of the crowds that would listen to the sermons and the male leaders loved it when they competed with one another for their attention and time...looking to them for what they should do in their marriages, jobs, households, what they should wear or not wear and of course to keep those pot luck casseroles and desserts coming at any gatherings outside of the church services.  It took some time, Harold, but I began to see through it all and found that trying to perform and be a part of these kinds of congregations took me further and further away from who I really am...I had become a robot, able to spout out the company line and promote the beliefs and felt so lonely within the crowds of people.  It all seemed to be a business to me...people who were on a power trip and believing they were the only ones who knew anything and acting concerned for those who hadn't been yet won to their own ways. Like I said, it took a while, a long time actually for this life style to wear me down and as I felt this way, I began to cry out for God to help me.  I understand that you believe I am being taken away on some emotional roller coaster ride that will not win anyone to believing in this God who has come to help me.  I would have to agree with you, that those who live to maintain living only in their minds as religions do, will not be impressed by my life...no doubt I would be called a laughing stock by them. And I understand that this is not far if not exactly what you feel about me.  Your taunting and yelling at me as I enter into my feeling work is something I take in on a certain level, but because I have seen through all of the words you are using to try to get me to go back to where I started with you and your kind, there will never be any going back to that for me.  Should you stick around, you need to know this up front.  Your goal of waking me up out of this will never be accomplished.  Should you desire to hover and watch over my life for a while, it will bring you to see the way I have learned to have a real relationship with my Mother-Father God by including my emotional self and constantly asking for help from Them to unwind out of all that I repressed as a little girl.  This is the way of becoming as a child to enter the Kingdom that Jesus spoke about.  I understand that it my be difficult for you to understand that you are not responsible to win me back.  Obviously if you are here talking with me, you are not wanting to waste your precious time by listening to what I have chosen to learn, leaving all you and others have taught me behind.  But I also know that there may be a possibility that you may have also run your course with living like a robot so far away from your own feeling heart.  If there is any of that at all going on, I welcome you to keep an eye out my way...if you have any curiosity of how this is going to all play out with me.

If I feel anything, it is sorry for you.  Yes, I sincerely pity you.  It seems that you have had some kind of lobotomy and that you are not at all alarmed at this happening to you.  I see all of the red flags, but you can't see any.  Your life to us holds such promise and we so value you.  You say you must compromise who you really are to follow our ways, but this is just what Jesus asks of us.  To give up our lives...ALL of it, and that includes your whole childhood.  Yes, this is a great sacrifice and that is why there are so few of us who will receive our rewards for serving God when we go to heaven.  You have a very good mind, perfect for maybe one day teaching other women folk and children our ways.  I hear what you are telling me...that I (we) have no real influence with you concerning your turning back around to us.  I believe that you believe this, but I myself am not yet convinced.  We will continue with you, but not to learn from you.  There are cracks we see in your mental faculties that are just waiting for us to be persistent with you. You see, we really are the ones who love you.  Many sheep have left the fold for a time thinking they will find greener pasture, but sooner or later they find their way back home to us.  I have faith in you and will not leave you yet.

Harold, you definitely are persistent and I appreciate your desire for my well-being.  But each of us have our own soul journeys...each of us so unique in where we travel, what we take in and are attracted to and why.  As you say, you've got more to be convinced of regarding me sticking to Divine Love Spirituality.  What you probably see as my weak points being emotionally open, is actually my greatest strength that keeps paving my way deeper into ALL of my childhood repressed feelings. Hover around if you so choose believing you are caring for and loving me and I will get even more aware of any places yet left within me that believe I am to be pitied for coming back to live through my feeling heart.  You can be quite the thug and actually do wake me up further and further out of where I was for so many years.  You are helping me see how mean and nasty of a person I had to be to help others stuff down all their emotions while teaching them to pray, pay and obey the leaders in the church. I became the one with some control and power over others thinking this was pleasing to God and being devoted to Jesus.  It is all a time I would rather forget, but if you feel the need to stick around, I am sure that Mother-Father God has more for me to see and learn from all that I lived and learned while in your company. Thanks for taking time to speak with me today.  Is there anything else you'd like to say before I sign off?

No, not at this time.  We will be in touch with you, especially as you try to over-ride all of the circuitry yet embedded within your mind.  We have high hopes for you...great things planned and we will not abort all of the time and energy we have invested in you simply because you say you are done with us. I know you say you don't believe us, but we really do love you and only do things for your own good...you have become confused and believe that because we don't want to spend time listening to your feelings that we don't care.  If you could only see the bigger picture the way we do, you would never question our loyalty to getting you back into our service.  We've got time on our side and will be patient.  Why?  Because this is what love does.  From me and my men who are serving you for your highest good, I bid you goodnight.

Oh Jaaaaames...I have no idea if any of that was legit, but I figured it was worth a shot to try and see who would speak if I welcomed them.  I feel like at this time, as I continue to call them on their deceit that they are not taking me very seriously...thinking I'm pretty much like others who have "backslidden" and that guilt will bring me back to their turf.  If it is anyone who has really kept an eye on me, they'd know better, but to this man who may just see me as a silly woman thinking she knows better than they, it seems they don't think I mean what I say.  No, I  don't fear being hurt physically.  I have a history of being "battered" by arguments through the years I have been married where I used to go round and round to try to resolve shit that would come up...that was before I knew that what ever is triggered can be used to take me back into my own childhood emotions.  I am not pulled off course trying to solve or resolve things with the mind like I used to, but this may be what is being talked about by Harold and where he sees I can be brought back around to seeing things his way...who knows.  What do you think, James about how all this came through when I asked about who this authority is?  I don't really enjoy this kind of thing...I much would rather converse with higher spirits if I converse with anyone at all!

James, I am so glad to have helped some more crap come spewing out of you -  Especially since I am living focused on ME, ME, ME and letting go of needing to invest energy on "bringing the light" to anyone else.  There comes a joy when just staying with what is mine to deal with ends up opening up for another more truth without any effort on my part for it to happen. YAY!
 
Within this writing, I took on the role of  a news reporter interviewing Harold as opposed to choosing to allow myself to feel my personal feelings in the midst of what he was saying. I wanted to allow him complete freedom to be himself and say as much as he would to help me encapsulate the evil mindset and culture I found myself drawn into. UGH!!!  As I have re-read his words, I can feel the slippery, sliminess of it.  When it comes down to it, it all was just business and if I was to be a part of it (part of the Family of God) then I best get my lines memorized and leave my personal feelings and any unruly emotions out of it...a cog in the big machine that will one day win the world to Christ!  One of the classes I had to take in bible school was called evangelism. I ended up flunking the class because I just couldn't go with the group getting dumped off into one of the poorer neighborhoods where we were to go knocking on doors to "spread the Good News."

This mentality of knowing what's best for EVERYONE (and all of the twisting of the gut that goes on in order to stay submitted to this kind of shit) truly fries one's ability to exercise their free will to share what one really thinks and feels. And yes, being drawn into this type of "family" only takes me back to my home of origin where the dynamics were generally the same.  "It's my way or the highway" is where my father lived in his being the head of the household where everyone had better stop drop and kneel to him when he walks in the door.  Yes, that is exactly the way those of us in the church acted when the pastor walked in the door. No, it was never this obvious...always always covert, secret code behavior we all just knew and didn't have to be taught. And what does that tell me?  That all of my own baggage of not feeling significant and good enough would feel right at home here...where women have a place that I was used to being.  I could keep my mouth shut and live as a support to what the men decided was important...I was used to it. God how dead to every true wit of feeling in me did I have to be to do this!  It makes me sick to see this.

Just yesterday, I was finishing up eating this frozen dessert I made my husband and I. While I was talking to him and watching how the frozen fruit was thawing in my bowl, he had moved out into the kitchen to do something while we continued our conversation.  He ended up coming back to sit down and I saw his dessert was no longer in front of him and bowl was gone.  "So how did you like the dessert?" I asked him.  
"It was good. I couldn't finish it.  Didn't you see?  I just went and put the rest of it back in the freezer! Why can't you pay attention to what is going on around you?!!" he said with irritation.
"No, I had no idea, I was completely absorbed in eating my own and saying whatever I was saying to you."
"You're so unable to pay attention to what is going on, I can't believe you!"  He was just so pissed at me for not staying completely connected with him as he went out into the kitchen.  I told him, "It isn't my job to keep constant tabs on you...what you do, when you do it, how you do it, why you do it!  Yes, I USED to live that way believing it's what a supportive wife does, but now I see it was wrong and not helping either of us learn to live our own lives!"

Yes, this is the kind of worship I am working myself out of...the role I got used to living in my childhood home from watching my mother do this with my dad.  Being I was so at-one with my mom, whatever she did and however she felt while doing it, I took it all in. And it was so mean and nasty and like "what kind of pip squeak brain to you have to have to not know that every move I make and everything I say is IMPORTANT!  Now lay down, my little rug...I need to walk over you in order for you to really get this through you head this time!" 

I hated my mother for allowing this.  I hated my dad for doing it.  It really messed with my mind and I really felt like I was going to go crazy.  It scared me at times when I felt like I was going to go nuts.  I could see in my mother's eyes that she had no help for me...she was feeling just like I was, I knew it.  And the more stirred up my dad could get my mom, the more he enjoyed it...it gave him a sense of power of control over her if he could make her mad at him.  It was like watching a puppy get poked by a man who kept prodding and prodding and prodding it with a sharp stick.  I tended to just collapse inside, unable to feel through all of my hurt, pain and anger as I watched it happen...and the weird part of it all is that I was drawn to be on site when I would hear the rumblings of it all starting up.  Something in me felt like if I wasn't there watching it, that my dad would do my mom in in some final way that she would never be able to recover from.  If I was there, I must have believed that it would enhance my survival in some way...I can't quite get a grip on the logic of it all of where I was at in my head.

And this dynamic is similar to what I saw happen in church a lot.  I had a love-hate affair with the desire to be in some kind of elite leadership within the church.  It was like everyone knew that to play a special role right underneath the pastor was the ultimate thing to accomplish and prove how spiritual you really are.  As much as I wanted it, I also feared moving into that place.  I would watch how when people got into the inner circle that they would become more of a brown-noser, kissing ass and acting like they were above the rest of us who were relegated to be their "supports."  It just strikes me now also how the wives of these Great Men of God were to live at the butt of the kind of jokes that are acceptable to express within the church from the pulpit.  The kinds of stories told in order for the pastor to make his points always made him look like the wise man and his wife and family, the doting loyal little dogs fit to be used within his ministry how ever it best suits him.  Being on the scene Sunday after Sunday watching the "show" has a lot of the same feel of watching what would go on within my family at home.  I can see now I was continuing to get my fill of living my usual supportive role all the while having to keep all of how I was feeling stuffed in order to not cause the spotlight to be turned upon me.

What has been going on inside of me feels like a fire burning...and it is the fuming fire of being fucked up and for my whole life not having any vent hole for words or emotions to escape.  When my husband brings it to the surface in me to feel it, I see myself getting the hugest hatchet with the sharpest blade and cutting this umbilical-like cord and chopping it over and over and over again. Anything we may have had planned to do, I want nothing to do with...I want him dead and gone so never to have to feel how shitty he makes me feel again. (Sometimes I wonder if my words will somehow be scoured out from the computer and seen as what I really want to do for real.  If that is possible, no, I don't want to seriously kill him, but sure do FEEL like it as this whole pile of crap asks me to fully digest it!)

After writing some of this, I feel now that what was given through Harold may have been given to me as a composite of what shit I have sat in and been a part of to bring me deeper into this burning fiery anger.  The "reporter" role I took on with him was one that I lived as I was within the walls of my home and churches..."Why thank you for treating me like shit, that's so nice of you, tell me more."  Whether Harold is just a figment of my imagination or a real spirit doesn't even really matter to me.  I am glad to see it all keep bringing me closer to seeing all I have lived and survived through while having to keep a lid on it all.  Man, if all of my volcanic anger spew at one time, I think I'd blow up the planet!  

The thought came to me, "If Harold is a spirit in one of the mind mansions, why would you want to keep communications open with him...giving him opportunity to keep on throwing up on you?" I think I've heard enough from him...I know I've heard enough.  If it be his mission to never give up on me, I hope he enjoys the emotional roller coaster rides I will be experiencing as I come out of my numbness more and more.  As I end this post, I want to include an example of one of the current "leaders" of the type of environment I have come out from.  I continue to be part of his email list receiving his newsletters for the specific reason...to keep seeing deeper and deeper into the shit that I am coming out of.  This is just an excerpt of it.  I blotted out any specific names given in his email.  May it continue to stimulate all the rest of the crud in me to the surface and any one else that identifies with it.

When I became a Christian, my life radically changed. Years of nightmares disappeared, my marriage was healed and I was delivered from alcoholism. That was enough right there if Jesus never did another thing for me, but God didn't stop there. He had so much more for me than I could ever imagine.

My career as a criminal investigator really took off after I became a Christian. Promotions, raises and a good reputation in my community. That was great. But that was just a warm up for what the Lord had in mind. As proud as I was to be a "former Marine," I was asked to enlist in God's Army and go from the reserves to Combat Active Duty. I was saved to serve.

For ______ (he names his wife) and I that became full-time ministry with _______ and for the past 36 years it has been an honor for us to be a part of this life changing ministry. We had no idea all this would entail, but we have never looked back.

I want to offer a challenge to you. What is the Lord speaking to you right now as you read this? Do you hear the still small voice of the Holy Spirit saying that He has so much more for you? Do you feel the tug on your heart and inside you know there is more for you to do?

The Lord is looking across our nation today for "a few good men" (and women) who will respond to His calling. Our nation is experiencing a crisis unlike anything that I would have imagined in my lifetime. Character and integrity are no longer looked at when we choose leaders who are supposed to serve the people, not the other way around. There is a growing "leadership deficit" on nearly every level in our country. Business, military, courtrooms and yes, even the pulpit.

I believe that we are on the verge of one of the greatest moves of God we have seen since the Second Great Awakening over 160 years ago. A move of God that for the second time in our young nation's history swept the nation and changed the moral fabric of our society. Revivals are great, but it is too late for that. We need a mighty move of God to save us from what we deserve, judgment, to give us what we don't deserve, Mercy!

It is my prayer that the Lord would use these few words to challenge you to a life of purpose and destiny. The Lord is not looking for superstars, He is looking for faithful "foot soldiers" who will go wherever He assigns you. What will you do, what price are you willing to pay to follow Him!

Saved to Serve,

Harold also has been used to allow me to see in a deeper way, our great need to have "power over" something/someone especially when we are still living trying to get what we think will make us feel good and loved from this world while denying our feelings.  The thought came crashing in:  Why would anyone expect that just because a person goes through rehab, that they would be able to stop drinking, drugging or what ever they are using to stay away from feeling?

My mom had so ingrained me as a child to believe that all my dad needed to do was commit to a rehab and then just say no to alcohol after he got out. I understand that this is how our minds gear up when feeling healing is not known about.  There are those with strong will power who grit their teeth and just throw away the bottle (and of course just transfer their addiction to something else), but it seems that these few are held up as the standard of "if you try hard enough, care enough about yourself and your family, are dedicated" then you too will no longer have to be driven by this evil addiction.  

Seeing more into this (when feeling healing is on the table to include and choose from), it completely destroys the co-dependent relationships set up where the one uses a substance of some sort and the other uses their life energy to get them to see the light and stop (the enabler).  The wife would no longer "show her love" to her husband by interfering - trying to make him stop drinking, but instead would allow his drinking to help her begin to feel how him not stopping makes her feel inside herself. 

This whole bondage in relationships/marriage that happens has to be - these co-dependent dances must be danced - unless one of the partners leaves the dance floor and becomes what the many now call selfish navel gazers. And the reaction of the partner left out on the floor by him/herself is: "What the hell?  Why'd you just leave me?  How rude, unkind and selfish of you to just let go and leave!"  It brings up suddenly in the moment all of one's abandonment issues and who wants that dropped heavy in their lap? 

Harold represents to me the guy who  uses his own relationship with Jesus Christ as his primary addiction to keep from feeling how powerless he feels. If he is going to be a faithful "bride" to his husband, Christ, then he has to become a full blown enabler to the world, trying to "help and save" them by using the power of being in the church to have the right to interfere and give them what they might not realize yet is good for them (according to his understanding of the gospel).  As he tried to give me what he believes I need to hear, I could feel his manipulation...that sliminess.  By doing my own healing work, he sees me moving further and further away from what he believes is the truth and if he actually let go and let me be, he would be letting God and Jesus down. Just like my mother with my dad, it took her years and years before she (ended up divorcing him) gave up trying to make my dad do what he wasn't wanting to do...she was trying to be "faithful" to her husband showing she did care and did love him (by trying to control/manipulate him).  

This way of showing we care and love by controlling and using power over others is all we have in our survival-mode arsenal when moving toward doing our own CR work is not known about yet.  Co-dependent relationships (with these heavy duty cords that bond-age us together) has to be the evil norm.  And this is what we and the rest of the world must experience thoroughly in order to begin to finally hunger and thirst for the truth.  There are so many ways to live underneath this blackness of evil coercion with one another.  It's so easy to look around and compare yourself with the appearances of other so-called healthy marriages and get lost in the myriad of phychologies that tell you to change your thinking or behavior this way or that way and wha-la, you'll have a brand spanking new love affair with one another in your marriage that sucks.

There's so much that I am learning from becoming willing to feel through the craziness of my childhood home life and all of the religious/spiritual pit stops I hung out at in my adult life searching for God. There's just nothing that is here today in my life that has to go to waste...it's all waiting for me to feel into it...tumbling down into the rabbit holes becomes the daily adventure.  We talk a little about how hard it feels when we are in the thick of shit, yet to live repeating in the cycle of control and manipulation with one another and not having any clue the way out...that despairing hopelessness, living in that is HARD! Yes, I hear you James...give her time...after 5, 10, 20 more years will she still be saying how glad she is to find her way into this?!  

So glad I opened up some more with my initial post about calling my mother evil...feeling guilty for that.  Without being willing to feel through it, I would not have seen the guilt that has become heavy and burdensome as a result of my own controlling and manipulation of others while in my feeling-denial states.  No doubt I need to go through this process in other areas many many times as I keep waking further out of denial.  Thanks James, for asking the questions that helped this keep opening and thanks Harold...really I do thank you for pressing me deeper into this. 

Is your whole psychological perspective changing due to your work with your feeling acceptance?

James, I believe the readiness in me to receive the truth that comes as I feel through what surfaces in my marriage (following the emotions back to my parents and their relationship with e.o and with me)...the desire to see it all is significantly derived from reading your writings.  You have provided me the foundation I was looking for, yearning for in my heart to know.  How you write - being the living example showing the way (still unwinding out of all of your fucked up ways)  instead of just preaching a sermon about feeling through your childhood repression - sparks something in me.  It's like joining a family that is already operating in the amount of truth that comes from the years you and Marion have been doing your work together. I get the benefit of all your learning as you have provided it here in writing...and not only does it provide general knowledge for the mind, but it has created a deeper desire within me to open WIDER without fear to Mother Father God exposing right where I am at currently without feeling ashamed. I can't tell you how much your own willingness to speak about the details of that which normally is considered taboo territory has helped me feel a load or relief when it comes to handling my own.
This truth that comes through feeling is the complete opposite from what the world and religion has dictated to me about truth.

When I chose to re-marry my husband (last August) who I had been with in marriage for 19 years the first time around, the main reason I came back was because it became clear that he was the one that I was to begin with as I do this work.  I had no romantic feelings toward him at all and I remember the day our re-marriage happened I spoke to God about that very thing and that I was concerned about how crazy that seemed at the time.  The sense I got in answer to this was that to begin this way was "just right...no worries." I knew I was to be straight with my husband in why I wanted to go a second time around, this time using all that would surface between us without wasting any of it and also without throwing what needed working through emotionally in me back at him, blaming him for what he'd bring up in me.  Yes, that sounded good to him.  This was all before I stumbled onto your site.  So I was making my way with bits and pieces of things I had picked up along the way of searching for truth since my mid-20's. And then I did find your site and began to read James and Marion's story...feeling like a kid in a candy shop! And I am still feeling like that having that "family tie" feeling with you as my own personal work has really taken off.  Finding your writing has catapulted me, like the one who assists the rider who wants to ride the horse being given a "leg up" to be helped in a direction I had already been longing to discover.

You ask if it puts me off or makes me feel bad at all to hear you saying that I may not be so glad to have walked into working with life this way when I still find myself slogging through shit in 5, 10, etc. years:
Maybe it has to do with how from so very young I have hated my life and lived with the cloud of depression that this way of working with life feels so good to me...even though it does feel so very very bad and painful to feel it. I seriously have not had any hope for so many years and was not finding the truth I wanted no matter how much I cried out for it until I was willing to own up to how shitty I felt underneath all of the spiritual  knowledge I had acquired. The way that it feels at the end of processing through what surfaces...however long it takes, just staying with it...how the truth slow but sure rises like a sunrise in the morning - there's just nothing like feeling it inside me when it reveals itself.  The spaces in between these moments of shitty agony, feeling confusion  and everything else that must come as it too waits for me to want to learn from it, SUCK! And this relationship that continues also to develop with Them (Mother Father God) moving from theoretical into a real one as I deal with my pain with my blood parents...who can put words or a price tag on that?
All this to say, James, my own path and work has not yet moved into the physical body pain I have read from your writings concerning what you and Marion have experienced.  So should I find myself there day after day after day as the emotional work continues to ask to be dealt with as well, I may just need to sing another song.