The god Journey

One Year Ago Today

14 Comments / Behind the Scenes / / , , , , , , , ,

On April 11, one year ago, I spent most of the day flying home from a ten-day trip around the Carolinas, looking forward to being in Sara’s arms again. I hadn’t the foggiest notion that I was about to drive off a cliff at 180 miles per hour.

My first indication that all was not well was a cryptic text I received when I landed at LAX that Sara would be unable to pick me up. She had arranged for a driver to bring me home, something she had never done before. I tried to call or text to find out what was wrong and got no reply. That’s when the knot first formed in the pit of my stomach. After an hour’s ride home, I had concluded that she must have left me, but I had no idea why. Our marriage seemed to be going well as we approached our 47th wedding anniversary.

When I got home, she was gone, all her stuff was gone, and I was left with the most painful of all letters telling me she was divorcing me. The next three weeks were filled with heart-wrenching pain, not only for my loss but also for whatever Sara was going through. I re-examined everything I thought I knew about myself and our relationship. If Sara’s letter had been true, our 46 years together would have been a lie. I know I haven’t been a perfect human or husband, so there’s always stuff to probe inside.

Slowly, however, we began to find our way back to each other, and the truth unfolded. Sara had been experiencing PTSD, and a therapist she saw assumed I was the cause without ever consulting with me and even though Sara’s symptoms were present in her childhood. She coached Sara into moving out when I was completely unaware of her plans, as one does to escape an abusive husband. My wife was in trouble, but it wasn’t from me. I knew there was something darker in her life and prayed earnestly for her during the days of our separation. As much as I hated the pain of those days, I love what Father did in my heart through them. Unmerited rejection by someone you love is fertile ground for his Spirit to rearrange things in your own heart if you let him. He prepared me to be an active part of the healing Jesus wanted to bring to her as he brought her back.

Sara began to question and regret her decision since I was not acting the way her therapist said I would. That proved pivotal. After all she had done to leave me, she was willing to look back and consider that she might have gotten bad counsel. I’ll forever be grateful that she was willing to open her heart again to me and let me inside her struggle. We began to spend some time together and began processing the PTSD she had been hiding from me. Finding a new, wiser therapist, Sara began to discover that she had been assaulted by her grandfather from the ages of 4-9. She had complete amnesia about it until those memories started to surface. It explained so much about things my wife has struggled with for decades.

For the past year, we have shared a healing journey into the dark recesses of Sara’s past with an exceptional amount of grace that has drawn us closer together than ever as it has renewed her heart and healed her mind. I have been with her in every recovered memory, and each one expands so much insight into Sara and helps her find freedom for how this trauma affected her for so many years though she never knew the cause. She lives with more joy now than she ever has. The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, M.D could be a history of her journey. One in three women in her generation was sexually assaulted by age 18. Sara never thought she was one until it all bubbled to the surface like a volcano in the last few years. She kept it hidden from me because it made no sense why she felt so horrible about herself. Now she has discovered that she was not a horrible person but that someone had done something horrible to her.

She knows the truth and has processed it into her story. I have not shared much about this on my blog here though Sara and I have on my podcast at The God Journey. We still meet friends who have no idea what our journey has looked like over the last year. If you haven’t heard Sara and I tell this story as it unfolded, you can listen to these podcasts:

07/08/2022 – Redeeming Love: Unforeseen Circumstances (#854)
07/22/2022 – Redeeming Love: Horse Whisperer (#856)
07/15/2022 – Redeeming Love: What Sara Faced (#855)
07/29/2022 – Redeeming Love: Finding Our Way Back (#857)
08/05/2022 – Redeeming Love: The Trauma Appears (#858)
08/12/2022 – Redeeming Love: Relational Repair (#859)
08/19/2022 –  Redeeming Love: The Journey Continues (#860)

08/26/2022 – Redeeming Love: The Aftermath (#861)

10/21/2022 – Wayne’s Happiest Day Ever! (#869)

02/17/2023 – A Safe Place for Broken Hearts (#882)
04/07/2023 – Redeeming Love: Good Riddance (#888)

This past weekend we were able to celebrate not only the Resurrection of Jesus but also our resurrected life together. As Sara continues to understand her past better, she’s becoming increasingly free to live in the present with a lighter heart and a clearer eye. Our mourning has definitely turned into laughter, and joy now earmarks our life together. What have we learned from this past year?

  1. You can never truly know what’s just around the corner.
  2. Without Jesus to guide us through this shocking time, we would not be together today.
  3. Tenderness and honesty mark the trailhead where healing happens. Being willing to admit our failures and doubts while affirming our love helped us recapture our relationship and move it forward into a more glorious space.
  4. Admitting when you’re wrong and expressing your sorrow about it repairs damaged relationships.
  5. Being willing to stop and shift everything, and I mean everything, allowed us to find new pathways together that we treasure today.
  6. Having people honestly and caringly speak into your heart is invaluable. We were blessed to have many people hold our hearts during this season, and we are grateful to each of them.
  7. Holding someone while they heal from trauma is one of the most amazing things any human can do.

Given that last one, our hearts ache for those of you who have been impacted by trauma in your own life, whether it be something you suffered at the hands of someone else or you’ve been affected by the traumatic struggle of someone you love deeply, perhaps even your spouse. That’s why Sara has wanted to share this story so publicly, not to seek sympathy for our pain but to offer hope and help to those wrestling with similar darkness in their own journey. We know how alone you can feel and how hopeless the future might look. But God is a healer. He came to bind up the brokenhearted and set the oppressed free. We pray that you will let him draw you into your own healing as we look for ways to encourage and help those impacted by trauma.

So, this anniversary today is not a painful day! It’s a joy-filled one. We remember well the feelings of a year ago, but now they are markers for a turn in the road that drew us into more freedom than we knew we needed.

_________________

One more note:  Yesterday, a podcast dropped that I taped a couple of weeks ago. I was with Daron Maughon on his MiDentity Podcast if you want to give it a listen.  

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Completing the Work God Gave Us

4 Comments / Kenya / / , , , , ,

Fifteen years ago, God linked our hearts with a group of believers in Kenya who had been captured by the message of He Loves Me, even as they were caught in the tribal post-election violence that ravaged Kenya in 2008. When I met Michael, he had already taken a dozen parentless children into his home to raise among his family. We helped them care for the widows and orphans who had been displaced and even did small business loans to help them start income-generating activities. We also built a petrol station, so the profits could continue to meet these ongoing needs. Today, only six children remain in that Living Loved Center, and the facility will soon be repurposed for other needs.

Over the next decade, our involvement escalated there as they discovered more than a hundred thousand people in West Pokot, dying of hunger in a drought that had destroyed their nomadic way of life. We sent relief and medicine immediately and eventually drilled wells and started irrigation projects to feed them in an ongoing way. We also helped them start schools to teach their children, and coaches taught them all about hygiene because the lack of it was causing ninety percent of their diseases. The Gospel also took root among these people who had worshipped their ancestors for previous centuries.

We also began an enterprise to buy and store grain at harvest time and re-sell it later to generate income for ongoing relief work. We also helped a new school Michael’s wife had started in a forgotten community to educate children who were not in school. Later, a flood destroyed the school’s water supply. We helped drill a well so vast and pure they could also give free water to the entire community and bottle it to sell to generate money for the school. Then, one year ago, over 300 children were abandoned on the steps of the school by alcoholic and desperate parents who could no longer care for them. We spent over $400,000 in 2022 to buy land and build a rehabilitation center for their care. We added more to the grain enterprise to pay for their food and education, and have now posted a bond to ensure their health and higher education.

For the past five years, we have felt the season was coming to an end where we could help them with these large projects. We did not want them to become dependent on Lifestream but learn to trust God as their provider. We have left them three income-generating enterprises as tools for God’s provision. Over the last fifteen years, more than three million dollars have flowed from the Lifestream and The God Journey audiences to these needs. Not only had we never envisioned that this would be part of our mission in the world, but we were also continually shocked at how generous you were with their needs. Every dime you gave ended up in Kenyan hands. We took nothing out here for administration, or financial and conversion fees.

Incredibly, this also coincided with Jesus inviting Sara and me into a new season personally to live more simply and more focused on the journey God has for us. While we will stay in touch with our friends in Kenya, we are grateful to lay down this mantle of helping them find the resources they need for their work. The needs are still great there, but we trust that Father will have other ways to care for them. (If any of you reading this feel a nudge in your heart to pick up that mantle, please get in touch with us, and we will link you.)

Even more remarkably, this season-ending came from their hearts as well. Earlier this week, we received the following correspondence from those who have been our partners in Kenya:

On behalf of the Kenyan family, we wish to thank you for the great support of pouring your love, prayers, and resources into every area of our lives for over 15 yrs. We send our sincere gratitude to every individual, couple, and family for their sacrifices that have touched so many lives.

Your help rescued many dying families in Northern parts of Kenya and Turkana , through humanitarian aid, health, relief, and long-term solution – through irrigation and soft loans. Also, you helped orphans starting from Living Loved Orphanage, Forkland school, and now Rehabilitation Centre for expansion of the land, buildings, food, and bedding.

You brought hope to the hopeless and rescued the destitute with tender-loving hearts, and you helped us with long-term solutions – a water bottle company, grain enterprise, and petrol station. You have helped us reach the place where we can now stand on our own and use the resources you provided to continue moving forward. Only one thing we may need from you is prayers for wisdom and understanding that we may continue encouraging others with the same love you have taught us.

God connected us when we could not know how to move in the midst of an institution that was focused on buildings and organization. Your books and materials really changed our lives and the love of many, and we now understand intimacy with God and the Father’s affection for us. We shall be downloading more materials from the Lifestream website. May the Lord bless you so much for guiding, correcting, and pouring your love toward us.

We have now winded the projects in Kenya with great love and joy. All your deeds will remain in the book of remembrance with all of us here forever. As we end today, your support for our projects over here, we continue to love you, pray for you, and continue communicating with you in spiritual matters.

We will not return to ask for funds for any projects; now we are able to stand for ourselves. Thank you for your great support and sacrifice.

Michael and Thomas

We have many mixed emotions about this shift of season, but the pathway seems clear to us. We were part of an amazing miracle of God’s provision and their generosity to bless others in their country in more need than them. Your generosity has changed the lives of many people, and we have been honored that God would ask us to be part of something so extraordinary.

We still have a few thousand dollars left over in our Kenyan Fund and we will be sending that for whatever future needs they might have. If you would like to add any money to that as a parting gift and added resource as they make this transition, please let us know in the next few days so that we can send it all together. Beyond that, we will keep the fund open should people have it in their hearts to share in the ongoing needs there, but Lord willing, we do not plan on raising funds for any large-scale future projects there.

If you want to join us in this donation, please see our Donation Page at Lifestream. You can also Venmo contributions to “@LifestreamMinistries” or mail a check to Lifestream Ministries • 1560 Newbury Rd Ste 1  •  Newbury Park, CA 91320. Or, if you prefer, we can take your donation over the phone at (805) 498-7774.

What can I write to end this posting? I know their hearts have been touched by your generosity; I want you to know how much Sara and I have been touched as well. To watch vast sums of money go through Lifestream to meet these needs in Kenya has blessed us beyond words. He did so much more beyond anything we could have asked or even imagined. It has saved so many people and offers Kenya a wealth of young men and women grounded in Father’s love to be his witness in that corner of the world.

When Paul and Barnabas returned from their first missionary journey, they reported to the church at Antioch that they “had completed the work God gave them to do.” We celebrate that now with you and our Kenyan brothers and sisters. We have completed the amazing task he gave us through his incredible mercy and strength. Generosity upon generosity is a great gift to put into the world. Thank you for being part of it with us.

Now, we commend them to the Father’s mercy for whatever purpose he has ahead for them. We pray he will guide them with his love, hold them in his grace, and make a way for his kingdom to be revealed through them. We are grateful to have been part of it and to have left nothing of Lifestream in Kenya except the fingerprints of Father’s love.

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No Better Place to Be

7 Comments / Growing in Trust / / , , , , , ,

There’s probably not a week that goes by or a trip I take where these two questions don’t come up. This email asked them as succinctly and clearly as they’ve ever been asked. I thought some of you might also be interested in the answers. I hope that someday I’ll be able to travel somewhere and not have these questions come up. Religion has put so much fear into humanity that we miss the more critical things Scripture teaches us—that the Father behind all this is incredibly trustworthy to sort out all things with love and justice we can’t even imagine.

The message of salvation is that there is no safer place for us to be than in the palm of his hand, yielding to his desires for us.

If God loves people so much, then why does He not stop horrible things from happening to them? As for this first question, I am mostly at peace in my heart. Scriptures, the voice of the Holy Spirit, your writings and podcasts—all of these things have played a huge role in helping me understand that horrible things happen to people as a result of living in a fallen world, not because God sits by and “allows” them. In my own experience, I’ve seen what God is able to accomplish in us through these difficulties that probably would not be accomplished any other way. I still hurt for people who have experienced more pain, abuse, and heartache than I could ever imagine. But the Holy Spirit helps to direct my thoughts on these things now, even though my human ability to understand is limited.

That’s a timeless question and difficult to answer. We’re trying to put human-sized brains into a God-sized reality. There’s something about the gravity of pain in our world that draws people to him, and there’s something about free will on a planet he gave us that makes us victims of the free will of others. It is the source of evil in the world, and evil does have consequences even for innocent victims. And some people bear a disproportionate weight of that pain. We are assured that his love is bigger than anything this world can deal out to us and that he can work good out of very tragic events, until the end when the kingdoms of this world become the kingdom of our God! What a great day that will be when Jesus gets the last word on everyone and everything. He just hasn’t had it yet.

In the meantime, when you know others who suffer more deeply than you do, don’t seek an answer in trying to figure out if they have deserved this in some way. Instead, find a way for you to lighten their load, salve their pain, and provide for them. Handle your struggles inside his love and help others with their suffering by inviting them inside your love. That’s all we know, but it’s enough to get up today and go out and love in the world.

I’m confident enough in God’s love and character now that I don’t let it eat away at me. In fact, I’m able to hold it fearlessly before the Lord and ask Him to help me understand. But I’d still really like to hear your thoughts on it. It’s one of the things my husband says drove him to question, and ultimately walk away from, God. If God loves people so much, how can He send people to hell who have never even been given the chance to accept or reject Christ? People in remote places who’ve never heard even the name Jesus, as well as people in populated places who have experienced so much pain (abuse, neglect, etc.) that they have absolutely no frame of reference to connect with a loving God. See, when I encounter this pain, I am almost in a panic to get out there and spread the love of Jesus, so people can know how real it is. But then I become completely overwhelmed by the sheer number of people in need of this. And that’s when I’m faced with this question. There are so many people. Will Jesus make Himself known to every person somehow, in some way?

Your question is based on a number of assumptions that I am not convinced are true.

(a) God doesn’t send people to hell. He is doing everything he can to rescue people out of it. Hell is not God’s punishment; it is the culmination of sin’s destructive power. He’s the rescuer in the story, not the punisher.

(b) Who knows how many are lost to destruction, and how many turn their hearts to him in the face of death? I’ve seen and read countless stories of people turning to him at their last breath. So, we just don’t know how many he gets to redeem even at the very end.

(c) With a loving and just God, I’m sure everyone will have their chance however God makes himself known to them. I don’t think it is up to us, but at the same time letting his light shine through us to others opens a wider door for them to come to know him. So, we’re part of it, just not the whole part, or even the biggest part. I also know that sharing God with the world through our panicked fear will not win them anyway to his heart. Notice that Jesus didn’t do anything like that when he was here. He stayed in one relatively small area, sharing with those God had given him. Those at rest in his love and confident in his work are in the best place to present the Gospel to others around them.

And (d) as to the existence of hell itself, I don’t claim to have the after-life all sorted out anymore. The Scriptures on heaven and hell are some of the most difficult to interpret, and while some of them seem to contradict each other, I know that can’t be true. I believe Scripture is describing a reality too marvelous for us to understand from our limited perspective here. So we see hints of the joys of eternity and the consequences of sin’s devastation. But I wonder if heaven is really about mansions and streets of gold and if hell is a place of eternal torment for unregenerate humanity. Revelation calls it a “second death.” Could it be where the devil and his host are contained and others consumed? I don’t think Scripture is crystal clear on any of that.

What I have come to know through the Scripture is a Father wise and gracious enough that I can entrust all to him. He is so incredibly loving, so full of wisdom and righteousness, and so committed to justice that when we finally see how it all plays out, we will turn to each other and say, “Wasn’t that the most incredible way he could have done it? We’ll see he was loving and just all in a way we would never conceive. Every factor was accounted for, and he has proved himself to be the God above all Gods, abounding in lovingkindness that mercy and endures forever.”

That really is enough for me to lay all these questions and all the others I have in his hands. He is the potter after all, and we are the clay. He’s promised us enough wisdom and grace to navigate each day’s challenges, but not to answer all our fears and curiosities about the future.

The more we know him as the Father he is, the less any unanswered question will disrupt us.

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