Healing

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There are people who come into our lives that change our lives irrevocably forever. Sometimes these people touch our lives in a good way, sometimes they touch our hearts in love and other times they change our lives in such a way that we are never the same again. They leave us feeling empty and lost and as though we will never recover. They shake our very foundations and make us wonder about all the things we once thought were solid in this world.

My story revolves around one such person. I will name no names as I do not want the family being hurt and want no blame to be laid. I will begin by saying that I have known Christ most of my life, my grandma took me to church when I was very young, and when I was thirteen I made my own choice to be saved and follow God. I continued to grow in my faith throughout the years. When we moved to Traverse City nine years ago I met my neighbor at the time who told me about her church and how wonderful it was. I began going with her and was very touched by the church, as well as by her friendship to me. We became good friends and I looked to her for spiritual guidance and leadership. She hosted meetings and was a vital member of the church. I now know that I put way too much faith in a person and not enough in God. But those lessons are learned after the fact and are in fact why they are lessons. They would not be so well received if they were simply spelled out and not learned the hard way.

So we became good friends, and at that point in our lives we were having financial hardships. My husband had started a new job here and I was recovering from a career ending back injury. We were renting an old farmhouse that cost way more than we made a month and were way beyond our budget. So when this friend of mine offered to pay James to finish her basement, we believed it was just the help we desperately needed and had prayed for. And at first it was, but as time went by she grew more and more demanding and things began to take a turn. She would call nonstop all day, even when she knew that James was at work. She would be angry if he was not over there anytime she saw his car in the drive. I was at that time still doing physical therapy for my back injury and had a lot of doctors appointments to go to, so James would have to watch out two young children while I went to these. She was not happy with this and the situation became heated. We decided we needed someone else involved to help handle this situation, so we asked one of the pastors of the church to help us mediate this problem.

Even this did not help and she left the meeting more mad and angry then before, even with the pastor trying to get her to see reason and understand that James had a family to feed and his full-time job was the most important. And to just give him more time to finish the job. This would not be the case, days later she filed a suit against us. I was greeted one morning by a man at my door asking me to sign for some papers. We went to court and she won a judgement against us, because James was not a licensed contractor. He was very clear from the beginning that he was not licensed, and this would be a side job and that there were things he could not do, such as electricity and plumbing. I should also explain that we had never been sued before, we tried in all things in our life to be fair, honest and loving. So not only was it cruel beyond our understanding, it was also embarrassing and a source of shame. Shame that still haunts us for seven years on our credit report.

Now at the time we were in the process of buying a house here and trying to get out of the very costly rental that was burying us every month. We had our down payment in the bank. Once the judgment was final our bank accounts were seized, James' paychecks were garnished and assets were set to be seized. I come home one day from dropping the kids off at preschool and find a strange man in my driveway. He shows me paperwork claiming that this woman has demanded property to be seized, even though at this time they have already frozen our checking account and taken James' paycheck. So the judgment owed to her had been more than paid. I look over the paperwork and it said that she had demanded to have the dogs taken. Now for all of you who do not know me well, I must explain that I raise German Shepherds, so at the time I owned two nice German Shepherd males that I had planned on using to start my business. I could not belive what I was reading, I looked up at the man and said "She really wants to take my dogs?" Yes, that is exactly what she wanted, because as I still believe she knew that would be the one thing that would hurt me more than money. It would not only destroy my plans of a business it would tear from myself and my family our faithful and trusting companions. I looked from the man to my dogs who were in crates at the moment, they were barking and snarling obviously feeling my fear and frustration, I am sure. I looked back at the man and said "Well be my guest, if you can get them out of there." He took one look at them and changed his mind quickly. He left, I fell to the floor sobbing, even though he had not literally taken the dogs, I was shaken to the core. How could someone be so cruel, so hurtful, how could I have once called her my friend? And most of all how could she call herself a Christian?

In the end the accounts were unfrozen, she took what she had been awarded by the court, which took from us our down payment on our home. Which we desperately needed to move into before winter because we could not afford to heat that old farmhouse another winter. I was able to borrow money from my grandma to cover what was taken and ended up having to sell one of my dogs anyway to raise the rest of the money for our down payment. It was what I have now realized a huge dark pit that would envelop me for five long years before I had release from it. It changed my view of the church, of Christians, and of friends. I wanted none of them. How could a person call themselves a Christian and hurt others so deeply? That was the question that loomed in my mind for five long years.

I tried many times to go back to church, I tried many different ones, but it never felt right. A good friend of mine had been going to West Side and had been inviting me. I felt God was calling me home and it was time to listen. I made a personal commitment to try it, to really try it. To not miss a Sunday and to give my heart back to God. I still did not trust the people and just remained in my own shell for a while. Quickly leaving after service and making no effort to meet anyone. This is how I kept myself safe. I slowly began to open up, and it truly began to feel like home to me. I was baptised and felt the Spirit moving in me even more. I knew it was time to take the next step and become a member and give myself and my family up to God once and for all, no strings, no pain and no grudges.

I attended a membership meeting at West Side Community Church and at a certain part in Pastor John's speech he said a part about not joining if you have in any way been wronged or feel wronged by another church. I swear I was rocked in my seat, I knew he was talking to me. There was no denying it, I had to somehow fix what had been done to me, I had to right the wrong myself. But there was one big problem with this, the woman had died three years prior.

So as the week went by, it continued to nag at me, I knew I had to fix it to move on in my journey towards God and membership in his church, but I did not know how. I had seen her daughter a few times in the past, but she was so young when it had happened she really was not the person to talk to. And then there it was, I knew that I needed to talk to the woman's husband. But how? How could I just call up a man I had not seen or heard from in five years and say "Hey, I forgive you, I am sorry, can we move on?" So as the week went by I made excuses as to why I did not need to talk to this man, such as; "it was never really him I was mad at, or why should I even talk to him at all I was never mad at the church. I would even be willing to go visit, I even have friends there now."

But I was lying to myself, I knew deep down that the pain she had caused was intertwined with the church to me. And in my heart and mind what she had done had changed the way I viewed all churches and all Christians. I needed to fix this. So I continued to pray for an answer, for guidance, for this painful event of the past that I thought I had buried so deep to be healed. Sunday comes and I take my seat in church, and there right in front of me is this man. A man who does not normally go to this church. A church that is so big, I oftentimes cannot find people I am looking for, let alone someone who I was not. And I knew in that moment what I had to do. Pastor John had been doing a series of sermons titled "How big is your God?" Todays sermon topic... "Facing your lion"....

All through the sermon I listened, stunned to her John talk about how to face life's pits and with God's strength how to face your lion's or life's challenge's. I knew clearly that this was not by chance, God had placed that man in front of me and had given Pastor John the words to give me strength. I have to take a moment to say, I am a pretty shy person, I do not walk up to people I do not know and chat. Sometimes I feel uncomfortable walking up to someone I do know and chatting. But here I was faced with my lion and I could not, and would not let the moment pass. No, I should say, God would not let me, let the moment pass. The moment service ended I stood up, grabbed my purse, bible and put my youngest daughter on my hip and headed straight for him. My hands were shaking, my knees felt like Jello, but I just kept praying for strength, and every once in a while the devil would get in there and say, "Hey what are you doing, you are a chicken remember, you can't face him, you are too shy." No, I kept walking, I walked all the way around the chairs to cut him off from tha exit, I reached out my hand and touched his arm and said "Hello, How have you been? I have not seen you here before, Do you go to church here?" He stuttered and backed up a few steps and I could tell he was trying to place me. I said " It's Shelby" "Oh" he said in a stuttered and surprised voice, still continuing to take steps backwards. "Well" he said "I have not been going to church for a while, I was trying this one." And as he said these words, all I could hear was God saying to me "Look, look how broken he is, he needs your prayers and your love right now. He is no lion anymore." In that moment my heart was changed, I went from a person wronged by this man and his wife to a person feeling love and sorrow for this man and all he had gone through. It was as if someone had taken the hourglass of sand and shifted it upside down, and all I had bottled up for years was released in a moment. All I once held inside was released into pure love and prayer for this man.

The encounter was brief, and that was really all that was said between us, but as I passed through the doors of the sanctuary I knew that I had faced my lion, that I was indeed out of that pit. I was free! Free to become the Christian that God always wanted me to be. Never to forget His lesson, and always to hold onto the simple fact that God places pit's in our lives just to show us how big He really is. So go ahead, go face your lion today!

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