There is this person with whom I struggle a LOT! AND when I was really struggling and burnt out totally exhausted they gave me just the gift of space and time and place that I needed.

My struggle is valid.

This person with whom I REALLY struggle I also REALLY love.

AND God spoke that person’s words to me fully clearly as instructions for healing and growing in relationship with others.

In a room all by myself with not one other person present I HEARD God say to me: “Let yourself be known”, not audibly, and VERY clearly.

AND I did. I 100% began to let myself be known from that moment on. Then some time later I found out that those words had been a core, and often shared idea, from this person’s heart. I didn’t know that. I had never heard it before. But God shared it with me.

It’s unlikely that I would have accepted the idea without that supernatural component.

AND I still struggle with that person, AND my struggle is valid.

We are human. We are amazing AND our struggle with each other is valid.

When we can see each other with those truths aligned we will experience compassion, and we will begin to be open to seeing the near enemies of our desires.

This is not the only person with whom I struggle and whom I also love. There are tons of people with whom I have this intense an experience. In fact it’s the experience that I have with all people. I feel intensely. This is who I am.

There are a few whom I love so deeply that the struggle is epic and will never separate us, even when we seem to be separated. The struggle with them is a struggle for not a struggle against. I don’t understand this yet. I just know it to be true

I encourage, validate, and support, AND I say in love what I see that creates a struggle. I have been learning to say in love. This did not come naturally it required supernatural intervention.

AND through this journey with God, I have come to the place where it deeply matters to me that all people’s name is safe in my mouth.

AND so God has been helping me to understand the struggle AND helping me to understand the rejection and conflict thus associated.

On my 45th birthday I remember that I asked everyone who could hear me to please call Donald Trump by his name instead of calling him 45.

He has a name. He is a person affected by the experiences of his life, just like every single other human being who has ever lived. And he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, because it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle Jesus said, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.

Jesus wasn’t saying that wealthy people can’t enter the kingdom of God. Jesus was teaching us to be compassionate, because money often creates huge blindspots of false sufficiency, and attracts crowds who seek influence instead of honest reflective relationships.

In a dream, on the sofa in our Princess Court house in Abbotsford, in my 42nd year of life, God told me that my 45th year would be a significant one. I kept looking for the significance in that year, and JUST NOW as I write this I realized that THIS which has become the message of my heart is what made my 45th year so significant.

FUCK! Yes. I get to share another eureka moment with you, dear reader. This is one of my favourite things.

Four years after my 45th year I understand.

I’m a slow processor, and I’m so grateful for how slowly I process what I hear and experience because I feel everything SO intensely that there’s no way I could handle seeing it more quickly.

Being a slow processor is not a deficit. It is a reality of my being. It is how I thrive as myself, learning to love in this world. Being overwhelmed by the input of the world would mortally wound me. It wounds all of us.

This is why we use various means of survival which we shamefully call addictions. They help us to feel “normal” for a while, so we chase them HARD, and we find and create communities that fit our normal of that season.

I am learning as I walk with God that God slowly and surely transforms our addictions, our survival mechanisms, to healthy ways of being, if we allow Them (God) to help us transform. And the beginning of that journey of deep healing is to banish shame. The banishment may take years or seconds. It’s different for all of us, and in this realm we may never understand why.

That is why it is SO important that shame is banished among us. We don’t know what we don’t know. And as we become open to that truth in love we can have deep compassion for each other. We CAN do life with boundaries which remain stable.

Boundaries mean that we know what we will do, and we allow others the freedom to do what they will do.

Grief helps us to have beautiful boundaries. We grieve so that we need never reject anyone. We need never malign anyone. We need never gather together against anyone.

We can just keep learning to be the truth of ourselves. We keep allowing others to be the truth of themselves, and so we become open to receiving the light from each of the shards of the bigger shattered light that we all hold.

AND what an AMAZING day it will be when we all hold up our shards together with perfect love, without shame. It is said that on that day angels will fold their wings in awe.

I can barely wait.