PAINFUL LESSONS....

OMG! REVELATION! THIS ALSO MAY SOUND A LITTLE CRYPTIC, BUT I THINK YOU'LL GET THE DRIFT!

When it (revelation rhema knowledge) comes, it knocks your socks off!!

Do you know that when they say the truth will set you free, they mean the truth about YOU! The truth about yourself will set you free, and usually blow your mind at the same time if you're willing to recieve it.

My own story starts like this....

I noticed all this coming about quite a while back, I knew that something wasn't right, but I wasn't sure what it was. In retrospect, I think that I saw this even as a clinical student at my job and just called it by another name.

I really try to see everything in reference to the Spirit, so I thought that I was just around a whole lot of negative energy, I thought that I was around a lot of gossip in the workplace and that was where it was all coming from. Gossip!

Gossip in the workplace is something that I know about. It's something that I have been a part of and been the victim of. It's terrible and painful, and what we don't realize is how truly destructive it is to everyone and everything involved. It tears down companies, teams, friendships, communication, and the person who actually spreads the net of gossip falls in it themself, it's no good for anybody. I really try hard and want to always learn to step back from that type of behavior, it's not a part of my vision of myself, as a "gossipy" woman. I want more from and for myself.

As time went by instead of stepping back from it, I chose to step into it and try to influence it which didn't work. The person who ended up getting influenced was me.

I noticed that I started feeling "icky" about the constant onslaught of verbal torture that was going on toward some people who were really not acting the way that they should but neither was anyone else who spent any time at all putting them down.

We were all in the wrong.

At first, I started feeling energetic to hear the next thing and I was actually acting as judge giving my personal opinions on everything, knowing that this world really does go round and round without my opinion. (I've learned that we do not have to have an opinion on everything!) Wondering what would be next! So much drama!

Later, I started noticing that I wasn't coming in to work happy anymore and I was the happiest person that I knew. I noticed that I now had to work at being happy and I had to crawl to the well a million times a day for refueling. I was being drained and I didn't know why. I was physically responding to everything going on. I started getting really bad migraines again which is something that I knew I had been healed from. I had two of them in one week which is more than I've had even in my worst times.

My energy and fire for life were draining away. I couldn't even force myself to not to have a critical attitude in situations. Especially in situations that involved people that I worked with. I am thankful that I was still given what I needed to do my job and work with the people without letting what I was going through affect them, but eventually I know that it would have.

I just didn't feel secure concerning my job and I didn't really have faith that anyone could have any security concerning their jobs with the way things have went over the past years at this place. I really didn't know how to have faith for the people in my life either, not remembering that God is THE source and THE provider of every single thing that we have and His gifts are without repentance or sorrow and the people who are in our lives are there for a reason/season.

I beleive that I was becoming super aware of all of this because I remembered the work that God had already done in my life concerning my emotions and balance, things that I had already been through (and tested on) and I knew that I had very stable peace and joy in my spirit but I realized that it was gone and I had to find out why.

Did I mention that I was drained? I could refill myself in my quiet time with Him, but it wasn't long before it was all gone again, I felt like a yo-yo and I desperately wanted to blame it on anything that I could think of. Just to give it a name so that I could fix it!

I was in a hurry to make it stop.

I blamed it on PMS first and foremost and uped my dose of MIDOL! Then I thought that I might be getting some seasonal affect disorder (since I'm not so fond of the waiting time involved in the fall and winter) so I started going to the tanning bed to get some sunshine (it seemed to rain alot recently and we have had some terrible terrible storms as well), but then the sun did come out but nothing changed.

In the middle of all of this, I was getting those headaches and body aches and I was emotionally miserable, but God continued to bless me and lift me and send little wonderful amazing gifts along the way that reminded me that He was still in control and that He's still there and He's still involved, but joy didn't stay long, I just kept falling back into the deepression/sadness/territorial/insecure/judgemental/critical attitude.

I knew this wasn't me, what was happening!!!!

I took a little time off from work thinking I wasn't taking care of my self enough, thinking that I had emotionally and physically overextended myself recently and I just wasn't bouncing back yet, but no,no, no, that's not what the problem was.

Today, this morning, I heard clearly the answer to the problem..............Offense.

My eyes were opened! This is it! THE answer that I've been looking for.
Come to think of it every person that I can think of off the top of my head is in offense right now! It's like a plague or a disease that has spread and has covered everyone and everything and the whole world is being affected!

This has got to stop!

When I look at the people in my workplace I can see people who are so offended that they are just wounded and unable to give emotionally at all. It's our job to be able to give, thats what we do, that's why most of us even began this type of work.

I think about the unforgiveness and offense over just the couple of years or so that I've been there and it is big. There are people who have quit or been fired during my time who felt like it was unjust and they are just reeling with offense and unforgiveness, there are people who are still there who are offended with administration or other collegues or even their friends who are holding deep unrepented offense and unforgiveness and sometimes even sharing the same space on a daily basis. How miserable this is.

When I look back there's such a long line of the spirit of offense in this place even before I knew or even before I was there it's the whole past of this place, but it's been growing and growing and every one has been affected even people with fresh spirits have come in and been contaminated by it.

What is the answer? People have been offended for them selves or, along the way someone else they know has been affected or offended and they have taken on this attitude/mindset/behavior as a natural way of being.

They have been in it (offense) so long that they don't even realize that this is what's going on and maybe why they are so unhappy. I may have been one of those people if I haven't been praying desperately for deliverance from it from those terrible emotions and a critical attitude that had crept in on me.

I just couldn't live like this anymore it was killing me literally. I was looking for anything to give me some peace from the stress! I tried to smoke a cigarette again knowing that I gave those up! I've even been looking on websites for other jobs, thinking about running away and knowing that I've not been released by God to leave this place yet.

I think now about the consequences of what all of this could mean to stress related disorders and diseases and mental disorders as well. WOW! the thought of it!

The answer is to forgive. Easy as that ( I say easy). But it has to be done...

Be gentle and forbearing with one another and, if one has a difference (a grievance or complaint) against another, readily pardoning each other; even as the Lord has [freely] forgiven you, so must you also [forgive]. collossians 3:13

Above all things have intense and unfailing love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins [forgives and disregards the offenses of others].1 Peter 4:8

And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him and let it drop (leave it, let it go), in order that your Father Who is in heaven may also forgive you your [own] failings and shortcomings and let them drop.Mark 11:25

But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your failings and shortcomings.Mark 11:26

Even the over and over again offenses. We have to. Eventually, it'll get better. We're all walking around so offended and handling it only as well as we know how by whatever means and begging for Friday instead of looking forward to our jobs on Monday.

I heard a preacher put it one time that offense is erased by the wiping clean of forgiveness. Like a teflon pan, stick free pan, you cook in it, the food sticks a little but with just a gentle wiping of a paper towel of forgiveness, it's free, cleans very easily no matter how many times you cook in it.

The answer for my own distress is forgiveness of imagined offenses, offenses to people that I care about and repentance for my own attitude and unforgiveness. I'll pray over the rest of us too, that we'll all be released from this spirit of offense and that our place of work will be that place that I've been led to pray for since the first day that I stepped in the building, a place of peace and a place that is blessed of the Lord, for the employees and the clients a place that the crooked places be made straight and that no wickedness or evil dwell and that it just be a great place to work where people are being cared for and treated right a place that even peoplow who drive by it or even hear of it say,
"that is a good place to go, it's a place to find help" and they can actually see it as a place that is blessed of the Lord, a place that they see the employees are happy and treated well and able to care for those who are in need instead of the way it is right now mostly the employees need the care.

We're not where we should be or could be, but in time we will be. That's my prayer.

FORGIVE, AND LET THE HEALING COME!