Categories: spiritual-journey
Date: 31 March 2010 10:01:28
I am used to Facebook throwing up invites from people from the past, people I have known but now moved on from. However, over the last couple of weeks I have had something a bit, well wierd, happen where people who were siginificant in my journey, in one way or another have reappeared after a huge time of non-contact.
One of these reappeared after I had been off exploring, and found out that a contact I made on the weekend had somebody as a mutual friend in common. It has been really good to make contact with this person again and a very positive experience.
The other was an out of the blue friend request from somebody, to be honest, I never expected to hear from again. We had not cut contact on bad terms but there had been a definite line drawn under our friendship, I thought. Anyway, as I say this friend from a time long ago has reappeared via FB. It has been great chatting and beginning to catch up on the intervening years. I am really glad her life has turned out as it has. It has made me smile.
Both of these contacts have made me travel back to a time and town that I acknowledge is part of my journey but I had mentally consigned to another lifetime, if that makes sense. I have not been back, even to watch the footie since mum died and my football allegiance is the only connection I have consciously chosen to keep with the town. Yes, I keep a distant eye on it and have family and friends who I am in contact with who still live in the area, but I have moved on. It is very much part of my past rather than my present.
Yet, these faces reappearing after a time of absence have made me acknowledge that period of my life in a way I haven't for a long time. Looking back as a "grown up" on a period when I wasn't, and from a place so far removed is strange. I have been forced into acknowledging the complexity of situations and realising that whilst life moves on the past remains apart of you, even if it comes to be read differently. The experiences I had as a child, teenager and early twentysomething are not something I can just remove myself from saying "they happened to somebody else". Those experiences, those interactions, those mistakes, those people, those places helped form who I am now. To say I have "owned" the past in order to "overcome" the past is not enough. I have to acknowlege the past. I have to allow myself memories in a way that I think I haven't.
It's strange, I'm now in a place where there is not hurt or regret with memories, there is simply an understanding of it was as it was. My coming to terms with myself has allowed this I think. As I said to somebody yesterday when I was discussing how I was doing and my likely plans for the future "I am doing well, because it feels like I have been released".
Having had this "experience of release" over the last few months, although the journey has been a much, much longer one it is not perhaps surprising that these people have reappeared now. Somehow it just feels right with everything else going on. Whilst not into signs, wonders or release from demons in the charismatic sense I know God has been doing something extraordinary in my life recently. The coming to terms with the relationship between my own sexuality and faith, (particularly the church and calling) has led me to be released from fear. I can feel within me that something has changed, almost like some kind of tumour has been removed from my soul and being. I can't desribe it fully, but the freedom and emotional health I feel as a result of being freed from nearly two decades of pain and confusion is something akin to God releasing a demon from me, I think. The way the "magnet affect" towards a calling I think I have has been working and the release into a new chapter of life and service, even if it doesn't lead to where I think it might be, has been like a new filling of the Holy Spirit. I can't describe it fully, but having had charismatic fillings in the past and a real "baptising in the Spirit" this has a similar feeling to it, although it is much more grounded. Again it's something I can't explain but God has done "something" and it feels kind of "supernatural" in a way that I can't put into something comprehendable. The effects of it are clearly observable though. I am in a loving, serious, long term relationship for the first time in over a decade, I am not scared of my sexuality anymore and no longer see it as an insummountable barrier to full participation in the church, I am using a range of gifts God has given me in ways that I haven't before in order to serve him and his church and I am seeing ways that perhaps the dreams and visions I have had may become reality at some point in the future, although some of them have started becoming reality in the present. I have made peace with my evangelical past and with evangelicalism in general. I have had a real healing experience relating to my emotions and soul. This does not mean that I am off the happy pills or that I will never experience depression again. But going in, more objectively, as a researcher and looking at the way churches operate in relation to one particular section of society has made me see much more of "the reality" of the situation in evangelicalism and more of the subterranean level. As we approach Easter Sunday, I have recieved a deeper understanding and experience of the power of love and freedom that comes from the ressurection. I also understand more, I think, of the way our choices are important and shape our destiny. Just as Jesus' choices led to the cross and a horrific death, in order to give us that ressurection hope we all make choices to. We make choices that allow us to grow and recieve what God has to offer, or to repress and block it. God does not offer a "happy ever after" on this earth, but he does offer us the freedom to truly live and truly be even when that involves taking risks that we will not necessarily lead to easy lives or happy conclusions. That said it does give you a strength to "endure" everyday life in ways which may not otherwise be possible I think.
Sorry long post that went off on one, didn't know where it was leading but ended up wanting to share.