Becoming Healed

“Jesus died on the cross for us to be healed from sin. He was blessed and broken, then given to the world to bring sight to all blind men!”

We have all been hurt, and damaged in some way, resulting in a regurgitation of emotions that supersede the original intent of our emotions. There is a difference in the emotions we show when we operate in the source of the spirit versus operating in the source of sin. The fruits of the spirit do not contain anger, frustration, hurt, and irritation. They’re actually the complete opposite. So how do we get back to the original intent and thought process for which God designed us? We all have a story. I’m in the process of sharing mine, and it’s safe to say I had a lot of healing to do. Healing that I didn’t even know I needed to do. Some people were easier to forgive than others, but there was this one person…. I told you guys I would be transparent and wholeheartedly honest so I will continue. If I saw Allan’s name on my phone I could feel the level of disdain form in my stomach. I have never wished death on someone more than I have on Allan. I would get excited if he disappeared for a long-time frame because I would literally say to myself, “Did it finally happen? Is he dead?” I would be so confused like God; he serves no good purpose here on Earth. He literally tortures women and children, why is he still here? Why let him continue to live? That’s how much I truly loathed the man.

‘I have never wished death on someone more than I have on Allan. I would get excited if he disappeared for a long-time frame because I would literally say to myself, “Did it finally happen? Is he dead?”’

Shauni

I gave you glimpses of the reasons I despised him as much as I did in the previous entries. His nature, his spirit… whatever that was in him, I now know has a mission to torture, distract, and haunt me. I literally could feel the demonic spirit watch me over the years and new it was synonymous with Allan. Now, I know it’s easy for people to say, you had a baby with this man and it’s true, I did, but here are two very important lessons:

1. The devil will set you up! The enemy is shrewd. He literally saw me hugging up and cuddling with the spirit of rejection and seeking acceptance. Why? Because of the generational patterns that came before me, so what did he do? Send me a nice shiny toy with a bow on top, that looks as though a man was accepting me! The devil lies! He lied to Eve from the beginning. God told Adam and Eve, if you eat from this tree, you will surely die, and the devil lied and told Eve, “NAH! You will not die!” For those of you saying to yourselves, well they didn’t die when they ate the fruit, they were punished and kicked out. You’re thinking too small. Their purity died and you think that because they didn’t die at that moment, that they didn’t die at all? In Genesis chapter 5, it says in verse 5, “HE DIED!” We will get so caught up on not seeing the consequences immediately that we don’t realize, just because it took days, months, or years, that when we finally see the results, we are very confused, like where did this come from? It took Adam 930 years to die but though God created Adam and Eve, we didn’t evaluate his TRUE intent. I don’t believe it was ever God’s intentions for Adam and Eve to ever experience death. I believe they messed up, and allowed the devil to come in and tarnish his creation. No longer pure nor can enter the kingdom because we werent supposed to know there was good and evil. He threw his hands up and said “You must be kidding me! All you had to do was be obedient!” Adam’s decision, yes Adam’s decision, because God didn’t come down and hand out punishment’s when Eve ate the apple, but he did when Adam did. The consequences of his decision are still in effect. Which generation of people have gotten it right? Not one. Adam and Eve went from disobedience to the first babies of the world bringing in murder and death with Cain and Abel. You see where I’m going with this? You see where simple disobedience can get you? What you find a simple decision could cost you your children!
2. That’s what happens when you are in sin! You do some stupid stuff, with some stupid people, and you are forced to deal with the consequences of for a very long time. It also affects the lives of your children. Though Ezekiel 18:20 shows that God holds us accountable for our own sins, which means, what we do wrong, God does not condemn our children for, however, the impact of our decisions can certainly ripple through generations. Some generational curses are spiritual, and some, was because we just keep passing down the same patterns of behavior in the way our decisions affect our children.

I am not just speaking to you; this has been my experience. I was set up. Allan came to me like the perfect shiny toy. He had a job and was in the military. This man showed up the first time we met in his military uniform. This is like 2009 so cut me some slack. I know it’s quite a few women that will swoon over a man in a uniform, so don’t judge me. The man looked as though he had it together and because he seemed like an honest, caring, and genuine gentleman that carried my bags, I didn’t pay attention to the fact that he didn’t have his own home, we were going to a hotel. FLAG on the play. He admitted he was living at his sister’s home for a while until he found a new place. FLAG! I know this may become controversial, but I’ll get to the flags later.

For the first few months everything seemed amazing. He convinced me that he wanted to be around me all the time and liked/loved me so much that he wanted to come visit a lot, but that led to him being in my home all the time. It didn’t occur to me, the man said he was sleeping on his sister’s couch and is now practically living in my apartment. The devil had me thinking it was my idea to let him stay! He had begun doing little things. He fed my oldest daughter bean pie once, she was about 3 or 4 years old, and it made her sick. She ended up having diarrhea in her underwear, he took a picture and without my permission and without me knowing, posted it on Facebook. He apologized and I was so oblivious, I excused it because he told me it was just a joke, he didn’t really see it in that way.

I had begun to unintentionally separate myself from my mother and sister more than I already had. She couldn’t stand him and here I am, my dumb self at 23 years old, “Mama, you don’t even know him. You are so judgmental.” She clearly saw something I didn’t. I wouldn’t dare say that to my mother’s face, but I was consumed thinking it was “love,” but when I got pregnant with our daughter Phoenix, he really showed himself. He knew he had me and he did. That’s when the physical began. Bent wrists, squeezing my nose or my  face, or choking. He stopped working, so here I was pregnant with a four-year-old walking to work at two different jobs. I had to quit school. I was on government assistance and when they found out I was making more money I had to move out, but with no car, I had to walk around the city looking for a place, getting furniture, making sure it was going to be delivered, and making sure everything was done, on my own. Where was he you may ask? In my apartment, in my bed, sleep!

When Allan did get jobs, living in the new house, he would find some way to get fired. Amid not keeping a job, we were months behind on rent when I could no longer work both jobs since I was too far along in my pregnancy. The physical abuse got worse over time. I was thrown out of my house, with my babies one time. He would tie me up and duct tape my mouth. He would choose my clothes, my hair, my shoes. When I was in labor, he wouldn’t allow my mother into the delivery room and when our daughter was born my mother and sister were not allowed to come in the house, I had to take her to the car and sit in the car with them for them to visit her. I don’t know how much my mother believed but I usually tried to make it as if it was equally my decision, as if I supported it, because I knew there would be consequences. If I told them that it wasn’t my decision it was his, what could my mother and sister do? Rescue me? Maybe, but I was afraid. I was also ashamed.  At this point, I wasn’t only at risk, so were my children.

I once saw him sit on his oldest son, who came to visit. His son was 3 years old. He sat on his son’s back, as he lay on the floor face down, and beat him with a kitchen spoon. I was about 8 months pregnant, and I had to beg him to stop. I remember when his son got home to his mother, Allan told her that the bruises were from the beach that my sister and her boyfriend had taken him to.  

It wasn’t just physical abuse; In fact, it wasn’t the physical abuse that bothered me the most at that time, it was the cheating. Allan brought women into my home and in my bed. I felt unloved because of the women. As you recall, I was used to men showing that they loved me in the form of abuse, so I just assumed that that’s how he showed he loved me, until I heard the voicemails of other women telling him they loved him. He came back with hickeys from his trips to “visit his family.” I’m at home being kicked, and my head being slammed into a door. I’m on the verge of being evicted and I’m not even the only woman. Thankfully, we did get evicted. I was able to move back into my mother’s house. It’s amazing how God tries his best to rescue us and put us back in a position to get back with him.

You would think that would be the end of it. Nope! I let Allan back into my life at least 4 or 5 times. Yes, in the natural sense of things you can call me dumb, and I am not ashamed because we all have done it and if you haven’t you don’t understand the short and long-term effects of abuse and every form of the word. You can research that in your own time. Moving on! From 2012 to about 2016 Allan and I periodically revisited the idea of being together. The physical abuse did begin to stop because he learned that I was more than willing to fight back and I had the power to do so in my own way, but the Psychological Abuse was strong. Allan had this way of making me feel like I was the crazy one, that I was wrong, and he was justified in his reactions or the way he treated me. He also knew how to use our daughter against me. I remember he would stalk my houses. He would watch. He’s actually broken into my home in the middle of the night and his reason was, “You lied so I wanted to see if you were telling the truth.”  Nothing changed. He still couldn’t keep a job and would find ways to manipulate and lie for a woman to take care of him. Most times he showed himself present in my life; he would move into my home. He would still cheat and bring women into my home, convincing them it was his home. At one time I believe it was about three of us at the same time. One woman and I actually became friends and compared notes. We had both even been drugged. I had to take her to the hospital because of him drugging her wine. She is currently, now in a place that I was in. She was strong-willed and vocal. A wild horse that he knew needed to be broken. We both were. The persistence of the enemy to break your spirit, your mind, and your body.

When I first met Allan, there were simple flags that should alarm a woman not just that he may not be a good man but that he is not ready. I’m not ready to get into the true intentions of relationships and marriage so for now, keep your opinions of it on hold, but I can say, him not having a home and taking me to hotel, was indeed a flag. He didn’t have male friends. He believed in God, but he idolized Zeus and Batman, comparing himself to either character to reference his strength and power. I took it as a joke back then, but dude, that’s weird.

It’s easy to understand this in the natural. It’s easy for people to read this and judge, while you pretend you have nothing in your own life to compare it to. You can pretend that you as a woman, or even a man, have never been so wrapped up in hoping the person you care for can change and love you in the way you are looking for that you ignore every flashing red sign until it’s too late. Now you’re too embarrassed to face the reality of your mistakes and you must see it through. It’s easy to say I should’ve left when I saw that he was abusive, or once I saw what he was doing to my children, I should have left, and it’s true, I should have, but it’s not easy. You can act like you have or had it all together if you want to, but read Romans 1: 21-32, it very much applies to the world we are in today. However, chapter two says, when you judge another, you condemn yourself, but to the people who do understand and can relate to being caught up in your mess, whatever it may look like, it’s not easy because there’s more to it than the natural. Getting out of sin and living in this world isn’t easy. It’s a conscious decision, but it’s not sunshine and rainbows.

In Becoming Confident, you learn that I’m already battling with the spirits of rejection and perversion from childhood. By the time I met Allan, I was 23 years old with a four-year-old daughter, who’s hurt and angry with God, with family, myself and with the world! I have been raped and molested multiple times at this point, my father has told me he never wanted me, I’ve gotten into physical altercations with my stepfather…so as an adult woman with a child, I was lost! I was damaged. ‘Tow’ up from the flo’ up.” You get what I’m saying.

I look back and can see that I have clearly come a long way and I can say with all the confidence in the world that you cannot truly walk with Christ and not change. If you are saved and you are still the same, then I don’t think you truly know him or you have limited him. God specializes in taking damaged things and fixing them to repurpose them for something greater and to start that process we must heal from the brokenness. Look at Moses! That man was an adopted child, who became a murderer, then a homeless man. You can’t tell me he had some issues but moving on! The first step in the healing process is forgiveness. You can’t heal if you don’t receive or give forgiveness.

• Ask for forgiveness.

(1 John 1:9) Admit what you did! I make this the first step because we can’t change others, we can only change ourselves. It’s hard sometimes in certain situations in our lives to take accountability for the sin we are in, the decisions we have made and the part we played in the disaster we have created. Yes, according to this scripture, God does forgive. God forgive me for what I did and did not know. Confessing our sins brings freedom and that’s the easy part because God already promises that he will forgive. As you ask Christ to come into your life, you have to repent. You need his forgiveness.

• Forgive Yourself

(2 Corinthians 5:17 & Romans 8: 1-2) I feel like it’s a much harder process in forgiving ourselves. We tend to battle with guilt. Yes, I stayed. I stayed in three abusive situations and should have taken my leave of absence, but I didn’t. I must take accountability for it and forgive myself. I ignored the signs and the warnings that could have saved me from my own demise. I ignored the word of God and chose wrong. It wasn’t as if I didn’t know the word. I learned the truth and how to pray at 16 years old. I didn’t know everything, but I knew enough regardless of how angry I was. My second abusive relationship with baby daddy number three, I most certainly knew better, but now that I am in Christ, I am made new! I forgive myself confidently because I’m not that person anymore and I don’t have to be ever again.

We get so wrapped up in blaming and being the victim that we forget we make mistakes and decisions whether intentionally or unintentionally. When Eve was deceived, I don’t think she truly meant for it to affect them the way that it did. I don’t think she truly understood, but we are not always called to understand, we are called to be obedient. How many of us have been tempted and fallen for the bait? If God told you today you can have everything you need to make you happy and prosperous, just don’t fornicate? Just don’t drink? Just don’t lie? Just don’t steal? Just don’t go to the club? You would fall for it! How can I say that with confidence? Because we have all done it! Majority of us, REPEATEDLY, making the same mistake, with the same thing. It’s ok to take responsibility for it, I can’t hear you at home saying to yourself, yes, that was my fault. It’s hard for most to be able to truly see themselves in the mirror and say, I’m manipulative, I’m a liar, I’m a thief, I sought the attention… whatever yours may be! I hope you don’t think God is going to sugar coat it for you, because he’s not. Expect honesty from him and from yourself because he can’t forgive you in a lie and neither should you.

• Forgive Others

(Ephesians 4:32 & Matthew 6:14-15) Now I’m not saying things don’t happen to us that we didn’t provoke or may have not deserved. Truthfully, none of us deserve anything bad to happen to any of us but I’m working on that because you slap me, and I slap you back, then you earned it. I have so many more examples, but who am I to decide which sin is greater than the next, or who deserves more of a punishment. The same person who is going to hell for unforgiveness and bitterness in their heart, will sit right next to the murdering pedophile. We have to choose to forgive others for us to be forgiven. God does not condemns us for the time needed to deal with the emotions and the anxiety that comes with forgiveness. It’s ok to say God I don’t forgive this person yet, but please take this from me, he will, but if you make a conscious decision to say no I’m just not, because the person that did it had no right to, well hey… You probably didn’t deserve to be forgiven by quite a few people or God himself but here we are, so go right ahead and sit in hell next to the person who did it to you. For all you know, you could be in hell for not forgiving the person, but the person got saved, God dealt with them, maybe even made them apologize, and now they in heaven and you burning in hell just angry complaining about what they did to you.

The biggest thing about forgiving others, it’s not our emotions that do it. We look at forgiveness as always being an emotional fix and it’s not. Our emotions are the result or revelation of the source in which we are operating. Forgiveness is a choice and a miraculous fix by God. Some of us have a gift that helps us do so more easily than others. Some of us have been walking with God long enough that in obedience and having the holy spirit it’s easier to make the decision to forgive. Our emotions are our emotions, they are uncontrollable. We can’t just stop how we feel, we only have control over how we act or respond based on our emotions and the decision to choose where those emotions will come from. When God asks us to forgive it goes beyond that feeling we get because we can’t control that. How can I just turn off hurt? Make the decision and let GOD, the creator of your emotions heal the source of why you feel the way that you feel, whether it’s yourself, or the results of sin. Anger and hurt are not of God or his spirit.  

Everything we do in Christ begins with a decision and God uproots what has been placed itself in you that was never meant to be there. Decide that you want to get over the hurt. Decide you want to let go of the anger. Decide you want to operate in love, and then it is our faith in God, faith in salvation that gives him the opportunity to heal the damage and the root cause. As a result, your emotions will begin to reflect it. I still get anxious when I see Allans name. I allowed that man to torture me for years, even after I knew how bad he was and when you talk to him, he will literally play the victim and say it was me, and in truth, some things I did do but let me be clear, it is manipulation to attempt to take accountability for your own actions by justifying it with a victim mentality. For example, I did that to them, but I did it because they slapped me first. I did do that to them but after they did such and such to me. When Peter cut off the guard’s ear for coming to take Jesus, some of us with a fighter spirit may say, you dang skippy because he was trying to protect Jesus.  They were bad and they earned it. I get it, but Jesus didn’t correct the guards coming to take him to die, he corrected Peter and basically told Peter he was wrong. You are now operating in anger, hurt, vindictiveness, or frustration and that is wrong.

Healing is also not something that you or I can control. It’s something I must trust God to do. (Go read Becoming a Woman of Faith). Once I decide I want to forgive and be forgiven, God does the rest. God gave us free will to make that decision to be obedient. Allowing him to come in our lives and trust him with our wellbeing, gives him the ability to change what we cannot.

My Breaking

Two days ago, March 26^th, 2024 to be exact, God told me to write down his message to me after my prayer. I had been praying to get closer to God, to learn who he is, remove what is in me that’s not like him, and about my purpose. I have been crying about the world and all the people I could possibly leave behind because I didn’t do all that God needed me to do. One day I cried because I felt so guilty that it took me so long to dedicate my life to Christ, because how many could I have helped or guided in the years I had wasted adding traumatic experiences, hurt and all the other results of sin into my own life. As you can see in these entries, it has been a journey.

I had my own version of anointing oil that I had prayed over back in January, God instructed me to pour the oil onto my hands because he would be anointing my hands. He gave me a blessing and told me when the blessing would come but made it very clear that if I idolized the blessing, he would remove it from me. He gave me instructions on being obedient and faithful and that if I continued to be, he would continue to bless me.  The next day God gave me the next five chapters that needed to be written, this one included but I was discouraged. I wasn’t sure I was going in the right direction.

This morning, March 28^th, I woke up with the song “Blessed Broken and Given” by CeCe Winans. (I’ve never met her, but in my spirit, I just know I love her). Anyways, I kept singing it repeatedly singing Lord bless me. When I sang Lord break me, my voice would crack. I didn’t sing it with as much confidence. God told me to keep singing it until I did, until I eventually just couldn’t stop crying. I kept hearing that I’m breaking. I called my mother, with tears streaming down my face, sobbing, and asked her to explain the song to me. Not that I didn’t know what I felt in my spirit, I just didn’t have the words or the scripture to explain what I was feeling. She explained it to me but of course told me to read it and study it for myself.

The story is about two blind men who were walking to a city named Emmaus, after the resurrection of Jesus. These two blind men were debating about Jesus’ resurrection and what was going on. Unbeknownst to them, because they were blind, they didn’t know it was Jesus himself, who begun to not just walk beside them, but he got in on the debate. I know he just had to be tickled to hear these two blind men in a heated debate about him, and not know that they were talking to him.

What amazed me was, when they got to their village, Jesus initially told them he was going to continue to walk on, but it was the blind men, who invited him to stay. Not just invited, the bible says, urged him to stay. Once inside, he took their bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it to them. Jesus does this with the disciples at the last supper before his crucifixion, when he took the bread, blessed it and broke it, then gave it to them. His words were, “take it, this is my body.” The bread a representation of God blessing Jesus, breaking him and then giving him to the world to save us from sin and to give us sight. God instructs the disciples to eat the bread and drink the wine in remembrance of himself, but what if communion Sunday wasn’t the only way for us to do that?

“He took their bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it…”

After his resurrection, Jesus shows up to two blind men who struggled with believing who Jesus was. Jesus just died and was resurrected, and he takes the time to show up for two blind men struggling with unbelief. How could you not believe he would show up for you? Jesus had to be invited in. We have to invite Jesus in. Urge him to come into our lives and to take our bread, our bodies, just as God took the body of Christ, to bless it and break it, to then give it to the world to save others and bring sight to those that are blinded by sin. We do this in remembrance of Jesus. I know it seems that I’m going off script being that I’m talking about healing but bear with me.

These past few months I have been praying and fasting, building my relationship with God, and inviting him in to my home. Jesus came but he needed to see my obedience and faithfulness. He needed to see the urgency of my invitation. On March 26^th, I received my blessing. I received my first task. Today, March 28^th, was my breaking. The urgency and confirmation that I genuinely wanted God to come in and change me, build me, and mold me. Jesus had to say not my will father, but yours be done. This is when the breaking happens.  Not just healing from the past, it’s when we give God permission to break our will for his. True healing is where you make the decision to allow God to take our the unforgiveness and any lingering hurt, pain, and anger.

After the breaking, after the healing, God can then use you to give sight and to save those blinded by sin. These blind men walked with Jesus all the way home and he did not heal them until they urged him in. They were initially struggling with unbelief. They said, “we were hoping that he was the one to redeem Israel,” but once they ate the broken bread, and they were healed of their blindness, they said Jesus was made known to them in the breaking of the bread. We have to invite God in, allow him to break us. It is in the breaking that God is truly made known to us. The emotions reflect what we trusted and had faith to believe he could do when we first asked him for forgiveness and to come into our lives.

Think of most of the miracles Jesus performed in the bible. A woman who was sick, crawled on the grown through a crowd of people. That was her urging Jesus for her healing. She didn’t just invite him, she said I will crawl through these people. There were men who dropped a sick man through the roof to get to Jesus. If that isn’t urgent, I don’t know what is! People urged Jesus to heal the deaf and mute man. Give God permission, and persistence. It gives God the opportunity.

This is a continuous process. The song says, bless me and break me again and again. The blind men were healed and looking at Jesus, were so amazed and still doubted.  Jesus still had to prove to them, again, who he was. We will constantly need to be blessed and broken. Today God break my unbelief so that my faith may grow, tomorrow break my insecurities. Today break my anger, tomorrow break the hurt of what my mother or father did. Today break what I did to myself, tomorrow break the lies. Today break my source of fear, tomorrow break my spirit of rejection. Today break the miscommunication, dishonesty, and adultery in my marriage so that it can be healed. Healing goes beyond the physical although he heals that too! Sometimes we limit our own healing because our faith in God is limited. Some of us have a hard time believing that the same miracle working God that we saw in Jesus, we can’t do. Don’t worry, I didn’t either, but I had faith God could! Trust him, and he will heal you, inside and out, heal your family, heal your relationships. It doesn’t matter.

I was broken. I had to be healed from childhood experiences, adult experiences, things people said and did to me, healed from feeling rejected, healed from fear and anxiety. I can literally say that now on more than one occasion, I have truly and in love and empathy prayed for Allan and Calvin (my other children’s father). How could I not? Though they made their own decisions, they themselves need healing. Whether it was an abusive father (Allan), or a neglectful father (Calvin), they have their own hurt and sin to conquer. It is not my job to judge or condemn, it’s my job to love and pray in the spirit because that’s the battle I signed up for when I was enlisted by Jesus in the Kingdom. Make YOUR decision. Jesus died on the cross for us to be healed from sin. He was blessed and broken, then given to the world to bring sight to all blind men!

Oh, somebody do me a favor and send this to CeCe Winans so on some magical day I can give her a hug! Her gift just makes my spirit glad and has been since I was a child, listening to my grandmother clean and sing her album “Alone In His Presence.”