Context for my posts; My Story
God is speaking to you, may your Spirit override this chaos and allow you listen.
photo posted by Jaime Tanna on Substack
Some have asked for more of my story and how I found my faith. This is my story, but your story is every bit as important and germane. Quickly, I can relate to the childhood trauma proposed by psychologists to explain or to excuse the US march into this chaos and exile. But my trauma was not the abuse described in the Alisa Writes substack post; rather, it was loss of a beloved older brother to a gun accident and the resultant shattering of our family in 1960. No Hospice grief program existed. No therapy was available, or even thought of, in rural Montana. As my therapist said, 30 years later as I turned to face my dragons, “You escaped into the one productive choice you had.” I was abandoned at 9 years old, YIKES! Scared and anxious, I chose to build on the foundation of love I had experienced and use the gift of intellect God gave me. I could control how I did in school: I excelled. I developed an analytical mind and drove myself to Valedictorian, first class of female engineers from the Montana landgrant college, then later a career as a chemical engineer in Corporate America. It exhausts me to remember… My therapist and I did good work to go back and parent myself to adulthood and to learn to cope with the anxiety buried deep in my subconscious that was driving me. I had to change!
It was during one particularly brutal, raw week of therapy that Jesus visited me. I had not slept for several nights realizing how empty and frantic my life had been. How could I abide any choices or decisions I had made? I saw clearly the need to heal well enough to be able to make the hard choices I needed to make to regain my life. I was collapsed inside and at the bottom of one of my children’s closets. Collapsed and with no further self, no further coping games, no further anything to go on… I was crying uncontrollably and screaming “I cannot do this alone.” Somehow out of the depths of my childhood I turned to what little I then knew of belief and asked from the bottom of my empty soul for help. THE BRIGHT YELLOW LIGHT that surrounded me blinded me and I could feel myself being lifted and carried to my bed. I was told later that I slept for two solid days. I awoke with the gift of inner peace, an experience I had never had and will never take for granted. A peace that surpasses understanding does not adequately describe it and is a gross understatement. To this day I cannot adequately describe the JOYful anticipation this peace allows me every morning to face the day. To this very day, I awake with complete and overwhelming awe.
Looking back I realized I dedicated my life to God and to developing a close relationship with Christ. At that time I could not articulate what it meant to be a Christian. Yes, I had grown up in a Protestant rural church community. Sometimes spending every night of the week at the Church, not just Sundays. But I could not comprehend how to be thankful enough, or how to know what I was supposed to be, to do, and to grow in the Lord. I somehow knew I would overwhelm a Pastor or group of Church elders with my deep, probing, seeking of answers. The failure of the Church community to help my family so many years before helped me to turn another way.
Over fifteen years of study and discussion leadership in Bible Study Fellowship gave me familiarity with the Bible and the arc of God’s story. But I found I could not walk away from evolution nor believe the earth is 6000 years old. I also sensed I did not need a group of scholars evaluating the credibility of the choices I was making in my spiritual growth. I realize now that I applied the drive I had used to escape my anxiety to a determined seeking of a close, personal relationship with God, Christ and the Holy Spirit. I wanted nothing in between. Several other Bible studies, studies of other wisdom philosophies, study with a Native American Elder, fellowship with close believing sisters and brothers sharpening me, reading the Bible over and over again, but MOSTLY Christ’s Presence in every trial and struggle of my life brought me to where God wanted me to be about seven years ago.
My Native American Elder had introduced me to so many new concepts, including the writings of Bishop John Shelby Spong. I believe the Native concepts resonated deeply with the trace of Native American heritage in my blood. My overwhelming interest and need to study Monasteries and the people who chose through the centuries to build their relationship with God in quiet contemplation, and several studies of female visionaries in the Church brought me to a realization that God had acted throughout my life preparing me for Him/Her/It to be able to anoint me in the spiritual fight to bring the Kingdom of God to Earth. This was a “just in time” realization as our family began a seven-year journey to support our precious son and brother in his personal crisis, which added the grist mill of letting go and releasing a dear son to the Lord’s care and surrendering my mother’s love to God’s love. It was every bit as brutal as my childhood abandonment.
In the midst of the realization of my powerlessness, God’s mercy introduced me to the prophetic movement, more particularly to what is now called The Global Prophetic Alliance, Glasgow, Scotland. God’s gift was their Training in Holy Spirit Ministry. Yes, I discovered I am a prophet, but also learned everyone has the possibility of hearing the Voice of God. Yes, I learned to enter a room and “find Jesus in the room”, to always be aware of what is going on in the Spirit realm to be able to relate to what I am experiencing in the natural or physical realm. Jesus was with me every minute and in every crisis of our son, often standing next to me with his hand on my shoulder. I often fell asleep at night putting my head in Jesus’ lap. My seeking has brought me to being in the gifts of the Spirit every day in every circumstance. I now know I am maturing into Jesus’ teaching of the Beatitudes, into understanding the five-fold ministries God expects of His/Her/Its Eccelsia, into being the Bride of Christ, into continuing to seek the gifts and anointings God has for me, but especially, into a close, personal relationship with God leading to being in the Spirit realm with Him/Her/It, at least some of the time. It takes developing God’s trust in you and the stubborn determination to retain your focus on the Kingdom of God, and not be distracted by the kingdoms of this world.
There are several, what I believe to be, desperately needed messages swirling in my head every day. I do not know how to begin to put them all to paper, or to my laptop. But, I now often wake in the night to a Voice of patient anticipation saying, “Lynn.” Even though I have not written anything but technical theses in my life, it’s time for me to write. It’s time for me to take paper and pen to hand so I can write as quickly as I can to capture the words the Lord has for you and the world. I know beyond a doubt that there were two changes to my last post that speak to several of you. Why? Because the Lord prevented its posting the first time I tried. Wondering why it was not up on Substack, I went back to the draft to post it. Moved to reread it, God had one change and one addition for you.
May God bless you. Amen.