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“In my anguish, I cried out to the Lord, and He answered by setting me free” …        Psalms 118:5

Probably this is the story that I should have written first. It was the beginning of my Journey into Freedom….but it was a lot harder to write. I was in a really dark place.

Why is it that some of us seem to have to come to the end of ourselves, run out of all other options, paint ourselves into a corner, before we cry out…or whisper… in anguish… ..help! We couldn’t see He was there all along, waiting for us to turn, to receive His Heart for us. We think we can do this life with our own strength…until we can’t. And when we finally cry out, we think we know what it is exactly that we are asking for….“this is hurting me — MAKE THIS STOP!!” Instead, He offers us His Best Gift: FREEDOM!! “It is for Freedom that Christ has set us Free!” (Galatians 5:1). And “if the Son sets you free, you will be FREE INDEED!” (Jesus said it! John 8:36).  It is truly the greatest gift, and it starts with “you shall know the TRUTH, and the TRUTH will make you free.”  (again it’s Jesus’ own words. John 8:32). And so this is that story….maybe the very first chink in the wall the enemy had built around my heart.

I had come to the end of my rope….the church I had loved and served all of my life was disintegrating, my marriage of 20 years was ending, the Pastor I had held on a pedestal as “God” had fallen, and I had exhausted all of my co-dependency coping skills. (And I didn’t yet know the word co-dependent.) The wise counselor that I had been seeing for a few months had concluded that I had reached the point of desperation and was possibly suicidal. Suddenly I found myself in Springwood Hospital…against my will. I remember sitting in my room, wrapped in a blanket, crying for the first three days. All the pain I had pushed down and locked in the box poured out through my tears. And I remember the kindness and compassion of the staff that cared for me there. The nurses who would sit for hours it seemed, hearing me out, creating a safe place for me to fall….and to empty out. How could my world have come to this? I was a Sunday School teacher, a worship leader, made every effort to be a perfect wife and mother and servant to the church.  How could God have let me down so horrifically? Everything I had believed in was crumbling at my feet and I had nothing left to stand on, nowhere to turn. A heap of ashes, a mountain of pain, a Valley of Achor…and a perfect place for my God to reach me.  “If I make my bed in hell, He is there.”  (Ps 139:8).

And He came into my room and met with me there….in the hands and feet of the kind amazing nurses that ministered to me in my room, and in my group classes. And in the words of a young chaplain as he prayed with me there. I remember the kindness in his voice as he encouraged me to stay and to dig in to the classes offered. He assured me I was right where God intended me to be…in a safe place to let go. And as he prayed that day, these words came out of his mouth: “Lord, please send Toni a Joyful Surprise.”  Those were the only words I remember from his prayer. They seemed to be shouted out to me, and seemed so out of place. The words took my thoughts captive, starting a vivid conversation in my head as the chaplain prayed the rest of his prayer. I was arguing, are you kidding me??? Joyful surprise??? I’m in a psych hospital for pete’s sake! For suicidal depression!! How’s that for joy?? and surprise??? But now as I look back, I can picture the smile on the Face of my Papa as He set the hook, and wrapped the surprise that was coming, and put a big red bow on it…..big smile….

After ten life-changing days, I was released to go home. But I had been given some darkness-kicking gifts to take with me. The staff had unlocked a box deep in my heart and removed some of the cruel lies, replacing them with truths about addictions and co-dependents. I had been told by someone I held as “God” that if I were a better wife, my husband wouldn’t have his problems. I had been told to keep the secrets and just pray harder. I had been held up as a public example of how NOT to be. Words had been spoken in front of my whole church, words that crushed my spirit and my heart….”this poor husband has had to live with Toni all these years”…. words that left me feeling everyone in the world could see I was broken, but with all my efforts, I had no idea how to grasp it and to fix it. But here in Springwood, darkness and lies had been exposed. Those lies had been replaced with truths that would begin to change my life. One of the first books the staff had given me to read was “Co-Dependent No More” by Melody Beatty. For the first time in my life, I was being told that there are things that someone else may do that ARE NOT MY FAULT. And I couldn’t fix them, no matter how hard I tried. The shame and the guilt that I had carried was not mine to own. That didn’t mean that there wasn’t a ton of stuff still in my own life that needed to be dealt with — it just freed me up from trying to fix someone else’s stuff. There was a glimmer of Hope rising from deep within. Hope that maybe I wasn’t such a lost cause, that maybe I had some worth, that maybe I could help someone else. I wanted to become a Nurse! Freedom pathways beckoned. I wanted to know more. The day after I left the hospital, I made my way to the city library to the list of resources the staff had recommended. I pulled four or five books from that section and took them to a table to scan through. There  were several I wanted to read, but there was one book that captured me immediately. Within a few pages, I found tears welling up. The author was writing my feelings out loud, words of a desperate girl striving to be worthy of love, to be seen, to be heard, to be good enough, to be perfect. I checked the books out and headed home with my treasures… little did I know what had been set in motion. The gift that was waiting…

….And that again, He was smiling….

Over the next few days, I would open that book to read, and then have to put it aside because the pain that welled up from the deepest parts of me felt like it would drown me. The author stirred the unspoken longings, longing to be cherished, to be held, to be accepted just as me. The exhausting search for worth… And then it happened. It was on the third day of reading. The tears fell onto the pages. I closed the book. And the title of the book leaped off the cover. Somehow I had not SEEN the title until that moment. It shouted out: “GOD’S JOYFUL SURPRISE: finding yourself loved by God.” Speechless. Undone. He had set me up. He got me. And He gave me His Gift. It was the beginning. Of Life. Of the Road to Freedom. Of unwrapping the Gift of unconditional Love. He had  TaDa’d me with the thing my heart had yearned for…the things that every human being on the planet yearns for… I was seen. I was cherished. I was good enough. I was loved.  By God. That was the Joyful Surprise. And my Journey could now begin….and I hit the road running…. But first to the store to buy my own copy of ….

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…and the Journey continues… One of my favorite scriptures that has been written on my heart since 2006, and one of the foundations of HeartQuest, is this one:

Hosea 2:14-15. “Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her. There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make her Valley of Achor a door of hope.” 

Some translations say He will speak “kindly” and “gently” to her. Until my Journey into healing, I don’t remember knowing that God could speak “kindly” to us. How many of you grew up with the picture of God as a hard-to-please Father full of “thou shalt nots”, holding up a list of things and adding, “if you do, I’m going to punish you good.” I remember my siblings and I saying “if it’s fun, it’s probably sin”…. And we made up a little song to drive my mom crazy on our long drives back and forth to church: “read your Bible and pray, that’s all you can do every day.” Who knew that He’s not like that? If you raised your hand, I’m envious of you! When I had finally come to the end of my rope, and He came and rescued me, He began to dismantle all the lies that had been my “truths” and replace them with this one: GOD IS LOVE. Always has been, always is, and always will be. And everything that He does, is from that heart of love for His kids. As He drew me to the Journey that would lead me ultimately into the Heart of that Father, He used to show up in HUGE ways — those TaDa! moments— because that’s the only way I could hear Him. This story is one of those first times that I “heard” His Voice inside my heart, drawing me with such tenderness to come follow Him…

I’d been on my Healing Journey with Him for about a year. Along with a group of friends, we were deep into a Bible study by Beth Moore: “Breaking Free.” Almost every morning, I would awaken before the alarm clock went off, and realize that my soul was in the middle of a worship song. I would come up out of bed with a huge smile on my face and join in singing. This was one of those mornings. As I showered and dressed for work, my insides overflowed with worship and awe of this God who had come for me…for ME! I had backed the car into the garage the night before, and as the garage door opened, this huge full moon was lighting up the yard in majestic brilliance. The beautiful scene took my breath away and tears were flowing already. (I had learned to not put my makeup on until I got to work because these 30-minute early morning drives to work were frequently met with tears…good tears.) I turned my headlights off — there was no need.  The minute I left my driveway and headed down the road, I began to hear this beautiful quiet Voice speaking to me inside my heart with such kindness and tenderness, Words that were not coming from my head. I was captivated as He said: 

     “You know that the moon has no light of its own, right? What you are seeing is the light of the sun…the moon is just doing what I created it to do. It’s hanging where I placed it, being the moon, reflecting the sun.” And then a pause as I took that in…a Selah moment. He continued with such quiet love, “that’s what I want YOU to do, sweet baby, I want you to be a moon and reflect the S-O-N.” He spelled it just like that for me. And He called me “sweet baby.” I was undone. My heart was His. What could I say but YES, I’ll try so hard to do that…with all my might, I will try. Little did I know what I had just signed up to for my life….but He did.

I basked in that moment and those words all day. And the next night at Bible study, I shared it with my group, starting with “did anyone see that beautiful full moon 2 nights ago?” They were all touched by the story. After a few days went by, however, another voice with condemning thoughts rose up….who did I think I was? Would God really talk to ME? Everyone knows that the moon reflects the sun — maybe my mind just made up the conversation. That would make a lot more sense than trying to believe that there is a God who would actually take time out of His extremely busy schedule to visit with me in my car….really, who did I think I was?? The Glory slowly faded and I began to feel a little embarrassed that I had told my friends about it….

You can see that God had His Hands full when He took on the task of healing my heart, but He was up to the challenge! A few days later, I made a run to Mardel’s to pick up a CD that one of my friends had mentioned at Bible study. I wanted to have it ready to play for them the next meeting. I’m standing in the music section, and in my peripheral vision to my right, in the distance I saw a wall covered with t-shirts. It felt like I was placed on a moving walkway, like those at the airports, and was slowly transported to a spot standing in front of that wall. There were probably forty t-shirts on the wall, each one with a bin number pinned to them. The t-shirts were rolled into logs, rubber-banded, and placed in the assigned bins below the display. But my eyes could only take in the ONE t-shirt in the middle of the wall. It was black and had a huge full moon in the front with these words:  “Be the moon.” With trembling hands, I pulled one of the shirts from that bin, and my hands traced the moon on the shirt. Then I turned it over to see the back and my jaw dropped as I read:  “Reflect the SON”….  TaDa!!! I know, right??? He LOVES to do that!  Boom! In your face, kingdom of darkness! I fell to my knees right there in the store, in awe as I realized that it truly was His Voice that spoke to my heart and made His request for my life….be a moon and reflect the S-O-N. Yes, I bought the t-shirt and wore it until it was faded and worn out, and then bought another. And YES, I wore it to Bible study the next week, underneath a jacket, so I could re-tell the story, and then reveal the shirt with a big “TaDa!!” 

And my Faith grew stronger as I began to get a glimpse into the nature of this King who was my Father….I have a dear friend who calls Him “the real Dad.” What an amazing Journey He was calling me into! Years later I can tell you that every single time I have heard His Voice speaking to me like that morning, it’s been with the same tone of love, kindness, and patience. If I’m hearing words of condemnation, contempt and especially discouragement, it’s not Him. And I don’t have to listen to that. His is the Voice that changes everything. And He had called me with tenderness into a Great Adventure, and I was in for the ride of my life! Was I strong enough to survive it? Time would tell…..but for today, I think I’ll wear my t-shirt and remember…. who I really am….