Running with God

I need a miracle. Perhaps that’s the reason I felt compelled to buy the domain “Malibu Miracle” last week as I woke up in my new room I’m renting from a script writer in Woodland Hills California. The Malibu tie-in comes from a moment of inner awakening back on February 23, 2020 when I stepped foot onto the rocks of Point Magu for the first time and felt the knees beneath me buckle. I later learned that I was standing in that magical space at the very moment my granny passed over into Heaven exactly 3 years before. It was also the night I had a strange dream of a tsunami that would threaten the live of me, my mother, her husband and my son. God parted the waters around us in that dream just as the scriptures say he did for Moses and Israelites. But do I believe in such stories? Are they spiritual only in nature today or is this a series of events that speak to the real journey I live and walk inside of today?

Last night on the plane I met a man who sells coffee to raise money for addicts to go into treatment and be saved. He said, “I don’t want to see another 23 year old die.” I felt my inner world shake as I thought about the fact that my son is 23 years old today and also in a dark place where I live each day terrified of a phone call that could shift the already dark space I seem to occupy into a world where I’m not sure I can wake up anymore to face a day without my son on this planet. I pray nonstop and sew in tears for so many years now I feel like I’ve lost count of the weeks and months passing. The only thing I have to hold onto is a vision I received months back while living in Dania Beach Florida. I saw my son grown up with a wife and a child in a backyard that I didn’t recognize. It was a beautiful place and love abounded there. But that dreamlike vision seems planetary alignment apart from the reality I live in today.

There’s another darkness lurking within me that I try outrun without victory; my view of men. I’ve never had a father stay in my life but God gifted me a husband to walk alongside of me through 24 years from the day we met as I was a troubled 15-year old seeking something that I could believe in. We had a rocky beginning but eventually all things worked out as we set out to take on this world as two children trying to raise two children alone. We became a team and even though we made many mistakes and our love for eachoter wasn’t exactly pure and polite at all times we did manage to overcome many obstacles and bring our kids up the best we knew how to.

He had an accident on his 39th birthday that pulled the rug out from under us all. Everything we’d built together came tumbling down and I ask today, all these years later, Why God? What was the purpose of all that I cared for deeply shattering into a heap of broken glass before my eyes? What did I do to deserve such a horrific outcome? When will the winds of change grace me and my children, once and for all opening a door to the “hope and a future” as cited in the scripture Jeremiah 29:11 that my son has tattooed on his arm?

You see, we believed in miracles, purpose in the pain and trouble that turns into triumph. But on the 3 year anniversary of his accident I was served divorce papers and the love that I watched crafted within the walls of a tragedy turned into something beautiful in the making closed in with a vengeance my mind can’t comprehend. My kids lost their family and eventually we all saw our faith dwindle to nothing. I hang onto words I once spoke from an ICU room over my ex-husband’s sick body and speak them today in hopes that God’s word is living and breathing in my circumstances. I tell myself he still has a plan and I just have to hold on and keep waiting for that moment to arrive when he shakes the heavens and the earth and makes all things sad untrue.

In the meantime it’s a daily battle to fight against my own flesh that wants to fall apart and give up. I try to exercise and run. I try to keep myself healthy with good food choices and even train my mind to focus on the good things that make me laugh or offer me a moment of distraction. I try to find love again in the arms of a man but the only one who seems to have any interest in me reminds me weekly that I “hate men.” What does he see in me that I’m not willing to see in myself? Has my past pain jaded me and the heart within my chest that cries to be love, see love, experience love and believe in the miracle of love that wins even in the most unlikely circumstances?

I’m tired of fighting myself. I”m tired of trying to figure it out. I’m tired of exhausting my thoughts with ideas to help my son and pretending that my mind doesn’t haunt me at night. I’m tired of the upset stomach that never leaves me alone and sleepless nights tossing and turning as the acid in my esophagus rises up as a poison revealing the unsettled emotions that twist and turn inside of my being day and night without rest. I’m tired of wearing a fake smile and encouraging others with my stories as if I have it all together and I’m some sort of bright light in a dark world with answers for the woe’s of problems I see in the world when I can’t even figure out how to get through a day of my own struggles without breaking down into tears.

I need a miracle. I need it fast. I need help in the spaces of the unseen wounds that I carry within. I need a new heart that wakes up with childlike wonder trusting love and trusting God’s plan – that he’s still working in my story and has something good for me to look forward to here and now.

I feel like David screaming out at his own soul, “Why are you so downcast?!?! Believe in God!” I feel like the woman at the well fetching water everyday for survival waiting on the Mesiah to come and tell her all things. I feel like the woman in the sand carrying the blame and guilt of generations before her and all that she’s walked through in her pursuit to feel like her life has purpose brought to an end with an angry mob surrounding her chanting, “Stone her.” But where is the Jesus who comes to her rescue? Where is the author who writes in the sand and rights all of our wrongs? Where is forgiveness, renewal and resurrection of a life that wants to see a page turned and a new chapter revealed?

As I write this from a hotel room in Nashville Tennesee, preparing to go for a run outside with focus on the fitness of my physical body I ask for healing of the parts me unseen to the outside world….. my soul. I don’t want to run alone anymore. So I seek to run with God – begging for a transformation of faith, hope and above all love. I ask for forgiveness to be granted to me and to everyone who’s ever harmed me and for hearts to be convicted into a new season of renewal. I ask for my son to live and to find an open doorway that only God can present in the circumstances he faces now. I ask for laughter, dancing and testimonies of God’s miraculous pen upon my life to be the joy of my lips as I write a new story here and now. His story. I ask for Jesus to be the author and finisher of my faith and to cause the world around me to shift into his divine design of beauty painted from the ashes.

POST SCRIPT:

Running the busy streets downtown Nashville, surrounded by the sounds of country music radiating from bars and restaurants, I heard the phrase, “Sin no more,” spoken from a small voice within me. And I immediately thought back to the image that came across my screen when I resurrected this website last week from an old blog that was created in 2017 to capture the prophetic dreams I’d encountered. It was called “Squad Jesus” back then. Later it became “Good News J” and now it’s transferred to the domain name “Malibu Miracle.” The image I speak of pictured a sandbox I created where I stored my prayers and letters to God. And the imagery etched into the wood features a hand writing in the sand, as that of Jesus when he stood over the woman who was caught in adultery preparing to meet her death as the mob around her screamed “Stone her.” When Jesus placed his hand in the sand he stood up and announced, “To he who has no sin cast the first stone at her.” And then he bent down a second time to touch the sand, as if he was rewriting her story in the earth. And as he did that, the people were all convicted in their own hearts and turned away from her, leaving one-by-one as they saw their own sin and had nothing more to charge against the woman in the sand.

It was in 2018 while living in a rental home and carrying the second mortgage of our family home with a TBI recovery who’d just broken his hip – sending me back into the chains of full-body 24/7 caregiver mode when I woke up one day to the voice commanding me to “build a sandbox.” It made no sense but as I obeyed what I presumed to be direct instruction from God and built a box to host sand the messages increased with understanding. I could see that God was showing me that the author of our faith and our stories doesn’t write in notebooks or on pages but he he writes his script in the sand – and WE are formed from the dust. I saw myself as the woman in the sand carrying the burdens of the world on my little feeble shoulders and having no idea how I’d make it through each day or continue to uphold a family of 4 and two dogs with two mortgages and no light at the end of the dark tunnel directing my steps towards a better day.

Over the years I’ve thought back to the sandboxes I made and even gifted to others and to the bible story too of the woman in the sand – watching my own life turn into deeper weighted judgements and harsh treatment by others who put blame, shame and expectations on me too heavy for me to carry. And I’ve always felt perplexed when I reached the end of this story where he tells that woman, “Now go and sin no more.” Was he telling her to go back to her husband she’d cheated on? Was he telling her to leave the scene completely and find a new path in a new land where no one even knew her name? Or was this meaning a bit deeper hitting her in her core where no one but God and her inner most spirit could understand the command from Christ placed upon her future going forward?

Before I ever made a sandbox I had learned the skill of carpentry in the garage where I spent my free time after first returning from the hospital. I learned about the importance of the foundation in any woodwork and the corner pieces that formed the strength of that foundation. I related this to the “cornerstone” in the bible where the masterbuilders build their houses upon. Later that skill came in handy as I made these sandboxes out of wood but today on my run a new understanding tied these two seasons together where I learned to be a builder of things. I could see that the foundation of my furs marriage was built on lust. It was even confirmed to me by the very lips of my ex-husband the night before he moved out as he told me, “No man could ever love you. The only thing ever good about you was your looks and now you’ve let yourself go.” He wasn’t speaking for others because he doesn’t have the power but he was indeed speaking the truth of his own heart. After 24 years together he confessed that he only loved me with his eyes and his body. He never loved me beyond the foundation of lust at first sight. And that realization that hit me in this run also led me to the man who’s loving me now and has been the only one in my life since my divorce. He too loves me with his eyes and his body. The very thing Jesus rescued me from I’ve fallen into again.

So what do I with this? Well, I think it’s time for me to write a sandbox letter as I plan to do tonight.