Tales From Pandora's Box - Chapter Three

(A Victim's Archives - A Story of Dysfunctional Love, and Restored Hope)

Part Three – the Storm is Abated...The Son  Also  Rises

The girl had now left the realm of the teen years to become a young woman, barely noticing the passing of her childhood since she had only passed through there chronologically anyway. Her childhood had been completely ripped away in infancy and she had only been tolerating the shell of it until her body could catch up with her soul.

She somehow managed to survive the daily onslaught of suicidal hopelessness as she dragged herself from one day to the next. Often walking to her devastatingly disappointing job, and back to her lonely apartment – because her car would break down and she hadn't the means to fix it. She seemed to be losing her grip on God, life, herself – everything – and she had no clue as to how to fix this disconnect. Sometimes she missed work, because the depression kept her glued to her bed. Not eating, trying to will herself away, longing to simply disappear. The pain of the failure which she deemed herself to be was debilitating. 

But then, one day, something happened which changed her course and her destiny forever – she was visited by God – and then by a mutual friend of hers - and God! And due to these visits she became aware of the person and work of the Ruach ha Kodesh (The Holy Spirit) – and spiritually enabled by Him to hope again! She could recount the events leading up to this miraculous change, of course, but she is lost for words to adequately describe how such a thing could be possible to this day!

The only thing it could be attributed to was the answer to a desperate prayer – which was prayed by a thoroughly empty soul – utterly humiliated by failure on every human court. She was convinced that she had a face that even her mother didn't love! It was surely obvious that no one else did! Especially the guys that pretended concern long enough to feed off of her destruction.

That night something was different. She had really come to an end of her own strength, means and motivation. She was all out. She was pretty sure that she had messed things up to the point that even God might not want her – but He was her only hope! So she decided to give it one more try – the thought of spending eternity without Him was more than she could bear!

She had been stubbornly avoiding a certain topic – which was the infilling of the Holy Spirit with evidence of “other tongues” - because it went against all the teaching which she had been taught since childhood. She had been given reason to fear and avoid this “new” idea. All the teaching said it was “not of God” - that it had “died out with the disciples” because it had “fulfilled its purposes”, etc. etc. Plus those whom she who knew believed in that teaching seem just as confused as those who did not believe it! It was a gamble – but – so far – avoiding it had gotten her to this dead-end – so why not give in? What did she have to lose?She had feared losing God – but that seemed to have happened anyway – despite her best efforts at living according to that teaching – which had left her hollow – empty and starving! So she gathered what courage she had left, which wasn't much – and she prayed, “Oh God – whatever You want to do with my life – if You will have me – I don't care – even if You want me to stand on my head in K-mart and pray in tongues out loud!”. And she was utterly sincere, and almost as terrified.

As she prayed, cried and turned the pages of her Bible – it suddenly, mysteriously, almost magically opened to a text that spoke as directly to her as if it was written to her precisely! She had read this book her whole life! And, while she had received much comfort from its words on many occasions, it had never spoken directly to her in that way! The text was Ezekiel 36: 22–27! It nailed down the very difficulty she was having, and the total solution to it! Suddenly peace flooded her heart – a peace that she had not known since the night she received that Sunday School card with the Jewish Carpenter holding children on His lap – when she was three – and suddenly knew that He was real! She couldn't believe His love! She had utterly failed Him! And yet, here He was – answering her desperate cry for help! She slept that night – really slept for the first time in a really long while – feeling safe and loved – and – yes – accepted.

And then, then next day, as a confirmation of this wonderful answer, the visitor, the mutual friend that was mentioned earlier came to her door. He brought help with a financial difficulty that he could not have known about, and an invitation to a meeting that evening. She received both with joy, knowing that God had indeed heard her “plea-bargain”- and had indeed come to deliver her from this wretched state of affairs! She went to the meeting that evening, with the friend of herself and God - and, as was anticipated, God began to deliver what the text had promised! Bringing with it a joy that she had never known before that day, and a peace that had definitely been out of her reach!

From that time healing was steady, constant and ever increasing within her. Slowly brokenness became wholeness, the misused, profane and ungodly – became redeemed, re-purposed and restored. She had indeed been cleansed of all her idols/strongholds – as the text had promised. She was delivered immediately of lust and promiscuity – as she obeyed an urgent command to cease dating. Her multiple personalities became somehow fused into one, somewhat dysfunctional – but somehow functioning – person – they were sort of laid to rest – became latent – however one wants to explain it. The incidences of memory lapse, and the scary times of “coming-to” not knowing what had went on in the preceding hours, came to a sudden and utter halt. The relief was immediate and all encompassing. The hope was life giving, life changing.

God's Spirit invaded her that night, at her invitation and His healing reached to every part of her conscious and subconscious being! Even to her formerly abuse-destroyed womb, filling it with life, freeing it to produce Godly offspring. As one might have guessed by now, this was the real desire of the girl – before she had been reduced to accepting the “consolation prize” of a “career – in which she could support herself – in case no one would ever want her”. Which had become the reality in which she lived.

However, after that night, in which God answered a desperate nobody - instead of a lonely life of making money and being used by whomever came along – this new young lady entered the adventure of marriage to a fellow redeemed one – and they began to fill their quiver with arrows. And healing has continued to both of them, finding and destroying every yoke and stronghold and restoring everything good that had been destroyed or wounded.

Even though much of the religious realm has discounted the couple as somehow “lacking” in the qualities they want in leadership, and have come to doubt their validity as “Christians” – because they have come to be questioners of doctrines (yeah, ya think?!) - still the Blessing and Acceptance of God is evident in their many children – who obviously have His favor on their lives!

Systematically what happened that evening pervaded the girl's whole being - changing everything in its wake! The once barren, burned, stripped, destroyed landscape that had been her life was replaced with living, verdant, thriving fruitfulness – and that process continues to this day.

(Still not the End!)

SCD 4/23/14