This is the 3rd and final blog post of the message I spoke at the LIFT Growth Weekend. You can read part 1 HERE and part 2 HERE.
We have surrender, we have community, and the last step is obedience. Whatever God says, do it. I struggled and struggled for so many years trying to break myself free from the chains and the cage. But I couldn’t do it on my own. I had to rely on God. Thankfully, I had finally got to the point of desperation that left me no other choice but to listen and obey. So I made the choice to finally do whatever He told me to do, which meant asking Him. I’d really never asked before, I simply told Him what I wanted and was then frustrated and stuck when it didn’t work. I had to trust the people He put in my life to help me. God directed me back to AA. I wanted to go to the christian 12-step program, celebrate recovery. But I prayed and He said no. It didn’t make sense to me, but I went to AA. Celebrate Recovery in the area where I live only has a few meetings, I could only get to one a week. I needed more than that. God (and the people in AA ) said go every day. I prayed for help to heal the inside of me. He led me to a Christian counselor who helped me make sense of all the thoughts, feelings and actions I had. And he taught me how to deal with them on a daily basis in a healthier way. Every day, I surrendered myself to God, asked Him to lead me and when He spoke, I obeyed. Even when, and it usually didn’t, make sense, I obeyed. 1 John 2:3-5 says, "Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. He who says, “I know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him." Of course, I’m not perfect and I messed up along the way. But like we talked about earlier, in the surrender His grace is sufficient. And in that surrender, in that community, in that obedience I found sobriety. 1st 30 days, then 60, then 90, 120 days, 6 months, 1 year and now I’m almost at my 2 year sobriety date.
Oh, and there have been more triumphs along the way too. Being sober was just the beginning. I was finally able to forgive my Dad and release the pain and anger of the abuse. I’ve been given many opportunities to share my story to offer hope to others. The greatest gift of all though is my relationship with the Lord. I have learned how to hear His voice. I have learned that He is faithful beyond anything I’ve ever experienced or could ever understand. I want to share something I found in one of my journals as I looked through them as I writing what I would share today. I had written out that scripture 1 John 2:3-5 and a prayer that I was struggling with not following God’s commands to me. God is so good, He will answer me sometimes as I write and this is what he answered to my prayer that day… you know me more because you are healed, you are restored. Take heart in knowing your testimony is richer, deeper because I have worked a miracle in you. Your knowledge of me is now first hand. Trust is deeper, belief is more grounded, faith is stronger. And that is my glory.
I was still struggling with alcohol at that point. But God knew I would be healed and redeemed. And He spoke that over me that day. And I think that journal entry was written out just for today, so that I would go back and see it and share it with you today. So that He gets the glory for what has been done in my life!
I have learned that by surrendering and obeying the chains fall off, the cage is busted wide open and dreams, visions, hope and promises burst forth before me. And God says, Dawn, let’s go after that together. There is a place of deep significance out there for you. A place that I expertly designed and crafted just for you and me. Dawn, let’s go after that together. And when I say yes, my feet come off the ground and my heart begins to soar like it never has before.
My question to you today is this – What is the thorn in your side that you need to surrender to God. We all have one and I’m sure that as I was telling my story, God was speaking to you about yours. Saying this, this you have to surrender. Will you hear His voice and obey? This is a safe community of women where you can shed the shell of perfection you are hiding behind. He wants the real you. Not the fake, pretending you. And when you give him the real you, that’s when your wings will really fly!
Excuse me…But these wings were made for flying.
How could I ever fly? Please. That statement was written just for me. Me, right here. The one with the broken past. The one with the messy story. The one with the heart surrendered to God. Yeah, me. I can fly. Because my God made me that way.
Most stories would stop here with the words, The End. But I think The Beginning is much more appropriate!
Shortly after that God moved us to Charlotte and planted us in our church. Our Atlanta pastors knew our Charlotte Pastors very well. So we connected quickly at church. But I knew that I didn’t want to get back into the irresponsible behavior of taking on leadership positions or even volunteer positions while I was still living such a lie, caught up in such sin. In my 2nd stroke of genius(or miracle of God) I went to my Pastors wife and reached out for accountability. She plugged me into a women’s life group she was just starting. These women were dynamic, beautiful, talented, smart and strong in their faith. All the things I wanted to be. But the biggest difference between them and me was that they were honest. Really honest. It blew to smithereens the belief that I had that everyone else must have it all together if they do x,y,z so well. I remember one discussion in particular when one woman was sharing some of her struggles and I replied back to her, “but I look at you and you are so pretty and so talented….” I couldn’t even finish my sentence, because she interrupted me by saying… “What does THAT have to do with anything?” Again I had been holding on to the core belief that if it all looked pretty on the outside, the inside must be okay. These women took risks with being honest, real and authentic. And they made it okay and safe for me to do the same. It was time. Time for real confession, for real accountability, I had nothing else I could do but reach out for help. I could no longer stay chained to the wall of my past and my addiction. I had to wake up and step out into the complete unknown, because finally the past, and the addiction and staying chained to it was scarier than facing the uncertainty of the future.
The 1st step is surrender, the second step is community. You cannot break free on your own. You must get yourself into a community of really authentic and safe women who will challenge you, support you and dare to refuse to let you stay the same! Keep going after that until you find the place for you. Don’t give up if the 1st group or 2nd or 3rd doesn’t fit. I honestly believe, because I’ve walked through it, that we will never reach our full potential, or ever recognize our own true nature until we are in authentic community with other women. Proverbs 13:20 says that whoever walks with the wise will become wise. And we all know Proverbs 27:17, as iron sharpens iron, a friend sharpens a friend. Look carefully at those scriptures though, it’s not just about having friends or getting together with just anyone. You must walk with the wise. Women who seek God and His righteousness. Where does wisdom come from? Proverbs 9:10 teaches us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Don’t settle for just anyone to walk with. Find women who fear the lord and walk with them. One last thing about community, satan hates it! He wants you to be isolated. He’ll even convince you that just because you have lots of friends and a busy life that you aren’t isolated and alone. But in reality true community isn’t about shopping buddies or lunch buddies or old college roommate buddies. Real community is a group of women who dare to drop the facade, get up in your business and let you get up in theirs where spiritual growth is concerned. Don’t fall victim to satan’s schemes of fear or offense or to his lies that you are too busy. Don’t let him rob you of the immeasurable gifts, the freedom that you will attain by being part of a healthy, nurturing group of authentic women.
I had the awesome privilege and honor to share my story recently to a great group of women at the annual growth weekend for LIFT Women's Ministry. It's a little scary for me to be vulnerable in front a group of people, but when asked to speak, I didn't even hesitate in saying yes. My spirit answered before I did. God was at work! In the lives of the women and in my life, too. I started writing my story out on this blog but had kind of stalled in the process. It's a really big story and I was breaking it up into chapters, but it's been a while since I updated it. Even though I haven't finished that process, I feel like it's right to share what I wrote and spoke at the growth weekend. It is long too, so I'll break it up into 3 posts. That's sort of how God broke it down as I wrote it out....Step 1, Surrender; Step 2, Community; Step 3, Obey. The theme of the weekend was "Excuse Me....But These Wings Were Made for Flying" and that's what I used to begin and end my story.
Excuse me…but these wings were made for flying.
How could I ever fly? Please. That kind of statement was written for someone else. Her, over there. The one with the nice, loving parents. The pretty one. The thin one. The one with all the talent. The one with the good job, the great friends, the well behaved kids. Not me. I could never fly. I’m not good enough to fly. And, yet, deep down I always wanted to, I longed for it…
I grew up in a home of massive dysfunction. Love was skewed and distorted so out of shape that it would take me a lifetime to truly learn what real love is. As I grew into a woman, when I encountered real love, I wouldn’t trust it. Instead I would destroy it out of fear. My father physically and verbally abused our entire family, on a very regular basis. Suffering abuse personally is devastating enough, but watching it happen to everyone love and having no power to stop it destroys you to a place that is difficult to explain. What was left behind was a shell of a heart, so broken, confused and hurt that I describe it as a black hole. My heart was a black hole of emptiness that desperately searched everywhere for something to fill it and make it happy.
That’s when I developed the core belief that if I had the things I thought all those other “flying” girls had…you know, a good job, a good husband, good friends, good kids…I’d finally be happy, well and content. I faked my way through life, a master of disguise. I pretended to be outgoing and fun, because when you feel unlovable, that’s how you prove you are lovable..by having lots of friends. I pretended to be a leader; bold and outspoken. Because that’s how you show people you are confident and secure. No one would like the scared, insecure mess I really was. I was a perfectionist in every area of my life—spending hours a day getting dressed and made up just to leave my house. Making up for how ugly I really felt on the inside by trying to pretty up the outside. At work, I wouldn’t, couldn’t let myself make mistakes. Compensating for the incessant voice in my head that said you are so stupid.
Living this kind of “double life” was exhausting. I went through life feeling like the biggest fraud ever and using all of my energy to pretend I wasn’t.
And then somewhere in that messy life, I started drinking. At 1st it was just like any other 21 year old college student. Parties or barhopping on a Friday or Saturday night. I mean, I wasn’t a 21 year old college student, I was a 25 year old single Mom whose son was with his Dad. But the point is, when I started drinking, I thought it was no big deal and I had no idea where I would end up.
Now when I look back on my drinking I see that it became just another way for me to pretend. To escape the voices in my head – the ones that said you aren’t good enough, you are ugly, you are stupid, no one likes you. The voices would stop. I could just relax, let go, let my guard down. In reality, it was just a new level of faking it. When the pretending exhausted me, I would escape into a night of drinking.
I went through many years of my life this way. Pretending, faking, drinking. And I was a master at it. So good in fact, that I even had myself convinced I was okay—almost.
One of the worst days of my life was the day I got truly honest with myself for the 1st time. I looked at myself in the mirror as I had done many times before and the feelings of self-loathing, unworthiness and hatred came rising up. And I thought, what is wrong with me? I have all the things I thought a person needed to finally be okay – a great husband who really loved me, a good job that I did well at, a few really good friends who I believed truly like me, I was even a good mother to a well behaved child. I was thinner than most other girls and most days even I could put up with my own appearance. Why then, when the outside was finally all coming together, did the inside still feel like the most black, deep, dark, ugly hole ever? Do you remember the scene in How the Grinch Stole Christmas when the Grinch finally realizes that Christmas wasn’t about the presents after all? I had a realization like that too…only it worked out a little better for the Grinch than me. I finally realized that it wasn’t ever really about the outside – it was always about the inside. I walked over to our bed and lay down. I stared up at the ceiling and felt the most hopeless, most empty, most numb I have ever felt in my entire life. I didn’t even cry. I just decided I must accept that this is just how I’m always going to be. This is as good as it gets, Dawn, get used to it.
But God – my 2 favorite words in the Bible – but God had a different plan. I just had to be desperate enough to be willing to try it. Unfortunately, I wasn’t there yet. I had been honest with myself that hopeless day. But I wasn’t ready to be honest every day. I had become too dependent on living a lie, faking my life.
The environment I grew up in destroyed the freedom and security we all should have to spread our wings and fly. Fear and insecurity clipped my wings. And that fear and insecurity that kept me on the ground became my comfortable, normal foundation. And over the years I began remodeling by adding my own design elements. But see I was working with broken materials, so instead of building a life I could live in, grown in, mature in, soar in; I constructed a cage that entrapped me. My drinking progressed from a Friday night escape, to a weekend escape and eventually to a daily escape. And it left me so full of shame, guilt and despair that I didn’t have the strength to face it. It was an endless cycle of despair and cover-up. I was getting desperate. Getting but not quite there.
But God – he was constructing too – somehow he got us to church. My husband and I decided it was time to take our children to church. God will use any method he chooses, you know, and through a decision to our children to church, God got me, his precious daughter, into church too. A few foundation shaking events in our life caused us to gingerly start exploring other ways of doing our life. One day in an act of pure genius on my part (actually, we know it was really a miracle of God) I convinced my husband that we had to join the life groups forming at our church. My exact words were – our life is falling apart, we have to do something different because what we are doing now is not working!
This was just the beginning of the process God was going to use to break me free from the chains that held me to the floor of the cage that I had constructed around my life.
In that life group I learned that there is a God who created me just the way I am. A God who loves me just the way I am. A God who forgives me just the way I am. And a God who saves me just the way I am. And I was just desperate enough to believe it. One night in my room by myself, I surrendered my heart to God in every way I knew how to at the time. And he gently, yet extravagantly started loving me. He loved me in such a way that made the promise of a life with Him irresistible. Even though it wasn’t where I felt comfortable, his love made it irresistible.
Shortly after that night, He started dealing with me about my drinking. I’d see scriptures about excessive drunkenness and not inheriting the kingdom of heaven, or how drunkenness leads to death. He’d speak quietly to my heart… “You know this isn’t good for you”; “you are better than this”; and the most beautiful one…”I made you for more than this”.
He was right. So I decided to stop drinking. Drinking wasn’t good for me; it served no purpose in my life. So I gave it up.
The next day on my way home from work, when I couldn’t stop myself from pulling into the liquor store to buy a bottle of wine was when I realized I had a drinking problem. And that began a nearly 4 year battle to break free from the bondage of alcoholism. Let me say that most people would never have known I was an alcoholic. Alcoholism is just like any other mischievous, malicious idol in your life. It’s sneaky and crafty and if you love it – you can learn to hide it well. And you have to remember that I desperately wanted my life to look perfect so being excessively drunk everywhere I went just wasn’t an option for me. Of course I would get really drunk at parties or when out to dinner, but that was around people who drank as much or more, so they never questioned it. And I held my life together pretty well outside of drinking. I had a good job, took care of my children, and had a great marriage. On the outside I looked just like any other busy wife and mother with a nice social life. A few times I thought, well, maybe I have a problem. I should slow down or take a break. And I would for a while. But it was when I made the decision to stop altogether and I couldn’t, that’s when I realized I had no idea just how bad my problem was.
There were several big “God” moments when I thought for sure He was really about to deliver me miraculously from this addiction. Moments of intense emotion, deep and real repentance, long walks down to the altar. But within days I’d be drinking again.
There were probably hundreds and hundreds of hours of quiet prayer and not so quiet prayer. Asking, crying, and pleading for God to deliver me. But I’d drink again, usually that very night.
Can you imagine how hopeless I began to feel?
There were a couple of times of confession to someone close to me in my life. Close but also just far enough away too – does that make sense? A person that was close enough that I could say, well, I confessed this sin to another person but not close enough that they could offer real accountability.
I dabbled in and out of AA. 30 days here, 30 days there. I never really stuck it out or took the suggestions of those who were actually walking out real, long term sobriety.
I’m not sure exactly what I was thinking. I wanted the easy way out I guess. I didn’t want to face the real issues or problems that caused me to drink in the 1st place. I was prideful; I wanted to do it my way. And when that didn’t work quickly enough, I wanted God to come in and wave His magic wand and erase it all from my life. I wanted to pretend and fake like I never really had a problem at all.
But God wanted something else, something better. You see, God is real and true. He isn’t a pretender or a faker. And He desires nothing less for His children. He wants the real you. The messy, broken, ugly you.
But my life had become even more of a fraud. We had become members at our church. I started volunteering, went on mission trips, we were even life group leaders! I was incredibly selfish and irresponsible. I so desperately wanted to pretend that I didn’t have a problem that I abused the trust people placed in me, especially where the church was concerned. The turning point came almost 2 years after that 1st decision to stop drinking. Late one night after my husband and children had gone to bed and I was still up drinking. I was in our guest bathroom about to wash my hands. I stumbled a little at the sink and place my hands on the sink to steady myself. I looked up into the mirror, deep into my own eyes and a whisper came up out of my own throat – who are you? Who are you? This person stumbling in the bathroom is not the same person who went to church earlier this week, who led a life group a few days ago, who prays for people to get healed, a mother, a wife. Who are you? I backed away until my back touched the wall and I slid down to the floor, tears running down my face, weeping. Quietly crying out to God in deep desperation – Oh God, please won’t you take this away from me? You are God. I know you can do it. You can deliver me from this right now. You can take it away. And ever so quietly He answered – You’re right. I could take it away this instant. But this, this, you must give to me. And all of sudden the fogginess in my brain and the tears cleared up and I said, I don’t know what that means! And His quiet voice said, you must surrender this to me. Then I remembered the scripture in 2 Corinthians chapter 12 about Paul asking God 3 times to remove the thorn in his flesh. And God wouldn’t take it way, all he said was, “My gracious favor is all you need. My power works best in your weakness.” The thorn was a symbol of his weakness, to remind him to be dependent on God. And you have to remember, I wasn’t as super spiritual as I am now….I just sat there thinking, OH CRUD—well, that’s just hopeless isn’t it? If I don’t learn how to surrender this weakness to God it’s never going to go away, I’ll have to live with it forever. So a little indigently I said to God – well, if that’s what you want then you’re gonna have to teach me how to surrender, because apparently I don’t know how.
And, even though I didn’t recognize it at the time, just like that the true healing started. Because finally, I said fine God, we’ll do it your way. The beginning of breaking free, the starting point is always surrender. It’s so opposite of what we, in our human minds, believe though. We believe surrender is weakness and capture. But to God, surrender is freedom and strength! Surrender it all to God and if you are like me, and can’t figure out how to surrender, go back a step further and ask God to teach you how to surrender. Only then can His power work. His power in your life is activated by your surrender.
I knew I wanted to stop drinking. God had stirred it up inside of me that drinking was not serving a purpose in my life, that it wasn't good for me, that it was separating me from Him. So I struggled through 2005 with a few periods of sobriety. It was so weird to me that I could go a week(or more) without drinking to fast or a week without drinking when I went on a mission trip in the summer of 2005. But I'd always go back. No matter how much I wanted to stop drinking, I always went back.
********** I felt like such a fraud. Such a hypocrite. Here I was going to church every Sunday, going to life group every week, even going out of the country on a mission trip! And Sunday night, I'd drink. I'd drink when I got home from life group. And I drank when I got back from that mission trip. What a fraud.
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I remember one time of desperation when I finally began to realize that I had a real problem with alcohol. It was late, I'm not even sure where Brian was at this point. Most likely he had already gone to bed. Anyway, it was late and I was drunk. I remember going into the bathroom and stumbling a little. And leaned against the bathroom sink to catch my balance. I looked up into the mirror and at myself. I thought, who are you? Really, who are you? Your whole life is somewhere else right now. Who you were this morning while you praying is not who you are right now, drunk and stumbling in the bathroom. Your husband and child, your family who you love is sleeping and their wife & mother is drunk and stumbling in the bathroom. It was like a slow motion movie.... I backed away from the sink, just looking at myself in the mirror, my back touched the wall behind me and I remember sliding down the wall and sitting on the floor, tears running down my face. Saying out loud, Oh God what am I going to do? I can't stop drinking. Please, God, help me stop drinking. Please, God, take this away from me. Please, take it, take it, take it. It was only a few sentences but I was tired, emotionally and physically. And I sat there. And I remember clearly hearing in my heart..... I can't take this away, you have to give it to me. WHAT? I remember shaking my head, thinking I couldn't have heard that right. God, takes things like this, He's a miracle worker, He heals people. He can make me stop drinking! Again, that still, small voice everyone talks about..... no, Dawn, this you have to give to me. Oh, God, how, how do I do that? Surrender, He said. I'll be honest and tell you that made no sense to me at the time. And really just irritated me. I thought, I don't know how to do that! And then I remembered, with great sadness, the Bible story of the guy with the thorn in his side. And I thought, crud, that's gonna be me. If I can't figure out how to surrender this, then I'm going to be walking around for the rest of my life with this big thorn sticking me in my side, hurting me forever! GREAT! JUST GREAT! I pulled myself together, got up off the floor, wiped my face and went on to bed.
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More short periods of sobriety came, followed by periods of drinking and ignoring my problem. I found out I was pregnant and stopped drinking the entire time. Zachery was born in 2006 and for the 1st six months or so after he was born I didn't drink at all because I was nursing.
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Bby now realized that I had a REAL problem, so I decided to go to AA. I found a meeting that was just around the corner from me. Gathered up my courage and went. Once inside, I cried and cried and cried. Walking into that 1st AA meeting was the 1st step to admitting to myself that I had a drinking problem. I sat and listened to everyone sharing their struggles....or as they say in AA, their experience, strength and hope. They talked of a Higher Power. Many people told what finally made the difference for them in their drinking problem was when they "came to believe that a power greater than themselves could restore them to sanity". Well, good for me, I thought. I know the *real* Higher Power. You can't really say Jesus in AA....God is okay, Higher Power is better. It's a program of surrender but one that doesn't require you to believe in only one God. Anyway, I sat there thinking... cool, I've got this. If all you need is a Higher Power, then I'm good to go. Because I know the real Higher Power, I'm not like these other people believing in something "out there", I have a personal relationship with Jesus. So, I didn't take any of the suggestions. I didn't get a sponsor, I only went to a few meetings a month. I compared myself to the others, to see how I *wasn't* like them, instead of trying to find the similarities. Never mind that there were people in the room with many, many years of continuous sobriety. I dabbled in and out of AA. In AA, you take chips (looks like a poker chip) to mark you time in sobriety. The white chip is the 1st one, the chip of surrender. I would take white chip after white chip after white chip....until, I didn't take anymore white chips because I was tired of taking a white chip and still drinking again. One nice person who was trying to encourage me and help me, had given me their 30 day chip and said, "give it back to me when you get your own". It took me 6 months but I finally put together 30 days in a row....just so I could give him back his chip.
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It would take me another 3 years to get 30 days in a row of sobriety.
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I eventually stopped going to AA.
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But, I never stopped asking God to teach me how to surrender and to give up alcohol.
I didn't think about my drinking very much for a while after that 1st night I wrote about in the last blog post. I would reason it away and ignore the nagging feeling that I probably drank too much.
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In January of 2005, the church we were a part of announced that, as a church body, we could take part of a 21-day fast. If you aren't familiar with fasting, it is simply a time when a person either limits or eliminates all meals for a certian period of time to consecrate themselves to prayer, meditation and seeking God's direction. My husband and I decided to take part in the fast and also decided that our fast would be from all food, we limited our intake to water, juice and broth soups only. I secretly reasoned to myself that once our fast was over, I'd probably quit drinking altogether. I didn't drink any alcohol during the 21 day fast. And, it wasn't a problem either. I didn't find myself craving wine. In the 1st few days, I probably missed it because it was a habit. But drinking was non-negotiable at that point so my brain didn't argue with itself.
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The 21-days came and went. It was an amazing time of prayer and worship to God. And I came out of that time feeling very close to and very in love with God. Knowing even more confidently that having an intimate relationship with Him was something I desperately wanted and needed. Knowing that I never wanted anything to seperate me from Him, ever.
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I'm not sure, but I'm pretty positive, that it was probably only 1 or 2 days after the fast was over that I drank again. And I really didn't like myself for doing it.
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I gave myself plenty of reasons why I did it....everyone does it, it's only wine so what's the big deal, and heck, with all that I'd been through in my life, I deserved to drink and "relax" whenever I wanted to....and so on and so on. I guess I had started realizing deep down that it was most likely too much. But I didn't know what to do about it. I liked drinking. It was part of my life. It made me comfortable. But it was starting to make me uncomfortable.
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I think sometime several months after the fast, I decided I was going to quit drinking. When I thought about it, drinking didn't serve any purpose in my life. There was no reason for it. So I decided I'd stop. Probably, it was one morning after waking up feeling like crud because I'd finished an entire bottle(the big one) of wine the night before.
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That decision lasted until I was in my car driving home after work that day.
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And that began the cycle of trying to willpower myself out of drinking.
I guess I'll start at the beginning, that's usually the best place to start. Trying to pin point the actual beginning of this story is difficult though. I mean...it's a big story. And even though it's happening to me...I'm not even sure when it *really* started. But all I know is this, I gotta get it out of my head and heart before it fades into oblivion. The story will never fade..but the details they will, some already have I'm sure. I trust God will bring back every single detail that needs to be told.
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I'm broken. In a lot of places. The biggest break was in my heart. It was so big that I'm not sure I could see it...like it spanned outside of my vision it was so big. A cave...no, more like a black hole, because it sucked in everything around it to try to be full.
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The breach in what was comfortable about my brokenness happened few months after I realized my deep need for true love, realized my deep need for redemption and rescue, a few months after I reached up for the hand that was reaching down for me, a few months after I realized my need for a savior and I gave my life over to Jesus Christ.
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I had walked in my brokenness for so long, a lifetime in fact, that I'm not even sure I realized I was wounded anymore. I had gotten pretty comfortable with the hiding, the covering up, putting on my mask everyday. Most of the time, even I believed the lies I portrayed to everyone else. And funny enough, I thought they believed it too. Now, I'm not so sure I ever had anyone fooled.
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The breach, the crack that started the shifting in my foundation of lies, happened on a normal weekday night at the end of day that was not out of the ordinary in any way. Normal day, get up, get dressed, go to work, come home, start dinner, blah blah blah. But God had something much more planned. He was about to begin the process of bringing me out of my normal and into His extraordinary.
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Even though I talked a good game of having my life under control, inside I was a mess. Deep down I guess I always believed that the emptiness that existed in my heart and soul would be filled by something outside of myself. I was always on a search for what made me feel satisfied, worthy, useful, better. When I was young, school aged, I just knew that if I had the right clothes, the perfect hair, the best grades then I'd be okay. That's where I found my value. As I grew older, those things didn't fill the void any longer. I searched everywhere. What I can put into to words now that I couldn't then, was that I really believed that if I found the husband who loved me enough, the job that fulfilled me enough, the children I was raising well enough, friends that were loyal enough then that is when I would be complete. The emptiness would disappear and I'd finally be content.
In all the searching and in the trying to fit in and in the trying to cover up all the empty feelings, I started drinking. At first, it was an occasional social drink to calm my nervousness of always feeling like I never fit in anywhere. Drinking made me feel more at ease, more able to crack a joke and clown around like everyone else. It also made me stop worrying about every.single.thing. I did and said. I was always so worried about what people thought about me. I wanted everyone to like me, so I constantly replayed everything I did and said over and over in my head and then I'd berate myself for not being perfect. The drinking made that go away. I'd stop worrying and then if I did do something really stupid, I had the drink to blame. It was perfect!
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I met the husband who loved me enough(and he still does!), I had the job I really loved, I had the children I was raising well enough, I had many amazing friends who were not only loyal, I mean, they really liked me! Inside, though, I was still a mess. What a really lonely, disturbing, awful day that was when I woke up to the fact that I had all that I had always thought I needed to finally be full and content and happy. And yet, when I looked in the mirror at myself, I still saw yuck! I still felt empty, void, useless, worthless.
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So I drank. It made me forget. For a little while. And like I said before, I got really good at walking in my brokenness.
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So, back to the night the things began to change. I came home from work that night, poured a glass of wine, and got dinner started. I decided I'd read while I waited for the darling husband to come home and the dinner to cook. I got my Bible, sat down at the kitchen table, put my glass of wine right next to me and opened up to Proverbs. Seemed completely normal to me at the time. I mean, hey, I always enjoyed reading a good book with a glass of wine. As I read though, this nagging feeling came over me. At first I didn't really understand it, I felt odd, out of place. I remember, I stopped reading and kind of looked up and around and thought, what is going on? And then, I looked over at the glass of wine and I heard in my heart...because it wasn't an audible voice, just a knowing in my heart....Dawn, you can't read my word with that stuff. I thought...WHAT? Again..a little voice in my heart...Dawn, you know you can't read my word with that wine here. I sat still for a minute and didn't think or say anything. And, like any good sinner....after a couple of minutes I started reading again. But the feeling wouldn't go away. And after a few more minutes, I started to get indignant and mad. Thinking in my head....really, just who does He think He is? I *always* read with wine. Seriously, who does He think He is telling me that I can't have it? (Can you see me? Just shaking my head, getting all high and mighty thinking no one, not even God, has the right to tell me I can't have a glass of wine.)
So, I turn off those thoughts in my head and put my eyes back to where I was reading. And read.... "My child don't ignore it when the Lord disciplines you, and don't be discouraged when he corrects you. For the Lord corrects those he loves, just as a father corrects a child in who he delights." (Proverbs 3:11-12). Seriously, my eyes just about popped out my head! What? What, did I just read? So I read it again and you know, it just connected with me, the Lord was speaking to me through His Word, right then. I had heard people say that the Word is alive, that it is living and breathing. I never understood what they meant until right then. It spoke to me....I promise you it was like a person was standing in the room with me and spoke it out loud. I didn't hear it with my ears...but hearing something with your heart is much more audible!
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I immediately picked up that glass of wine and took it to the kitchen.....
...........and put it in the fridge to save for later.
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Remember, this is just the beginning. That was 5 years ago. And that was the first crack in the foundation of false security I had built for myself over so many years. I didn't know it then, but it was going to take some serious demolition to tear down the walls I had built around myself. Heck, my walls were so big and shielded me from so much that I didn't even know I had them...that's how in the dark I was!
