...the little girl inside you will not go away because she wants to be free. She wants to be untangled. She wants to be rescued.

How true this is for everyone. My childhood was not as traumatic as other people's, so I always thought it would be silly for me to need healing from my past.

However, as an adult, I couldn't figure out why I still felt stuck at age 12 mentally (even though outwardly I acted wise and serene).

When I got too tired to keep up being strong and mature, all that I had been pretending to be fell away, and I became that 12 year old girl again. She really never went away.

When I crashed, Jesus parted the heavens and came down just like in the psalms you quoted. I lost all sense of self-sufficiency, and finally allowed Jesus to walk with me to the places in my heart where I was still a real girl, waiting, hurting, and needing my Daddy to rescue me.

Since being "untangled" from the weeds strangling my heart, I feel like I'm finally starting grow up.

I've felt like Paul this last year and a half. I've been sidelined for a severe reformation. My butt and a certain spot on my couch are significantly flatter from day-long counseling and teaching sessions with Jesus. Occasionally, When my face wasn't too tear streaked, I ventured out. People kept saying to me, "Where have you gone?" I sometimes actually told them, and they gave me the, "that's nice dear" look and walked away.

Lately, Jesus has been slowly calling me into places outside my comfort zone. I realized last week that I am still afraid of people who would hold their religious "authority" over me, or people who have already judged me worthy of hell fire, reading what I write and discrediting me. Sad, but true. It's like being afraid that someone who's never tasted my delicious cheesecake will offer an expert critique of it. How could I let that fear stop me from listening to the One who truly loves me and will love me forever? Anyone who would listen to an in-genuine critic wouldn't like me anyway.

Thanks for the encouragement today. Even Paul needed Barnabas (son of encouragement) to come alongside him for a time.

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear.” – Ambrose Redmoon
My recent post What if something bad happens?

Unbelievable. You are eerily echoing what I've been saying to my husband today. I'm glad you ran out of journal pages.

I have a picture on my just-beginning blog of a mirror-image taken from inside a cave. I wrote a little about this alternate real world you're talking about, but what you said about the shadows reminds me of something else. I attended a mass baptism where a lot of small children were being baptized. The whole thing was sad to me, and I asked the Lord, "Why does this seem so strange and horrible to me? It's seems like they're talking about a completely different God, than who I know You to be." I heard as clear as day, "They worship an image of Me."

Until last year, I was still one of those kids, thinking I had my subscription to heaven submitted, and that was my eternal life. I was working on my appearance (image) of righteousness until I got to go to heaven. I am so thankful Jesus shook up my world, showed me He was alive and real, and that eternal life starts for us the moment we truly trust Him with ourselves. A living God sounds impossible to those still focused on an image.
My recent post What if nothing is as it seems to be, and you haven’t even yet begun to breathe?

Tears are pouring down my face as I watched this and then watched his (Jeff Bethke's) How He Loves-David Crowder (w/ Matt Chandler & John Piper) video and his Sexual Healing poem. He speaks my language, the language of the redeemed. I find myself blinking in the light of an upside down existence where passionate, irrational Love reigns and people run free. I never thought this could be real, I thought I had the best you could expect in this life, and I was, in my tastefully decorated and perfume drenched coffin, literally dead wrong.

Thank you, Serena, for posting this. I can't hear enough truth tellers in a day.

This reminded me of a line about brushing teeth from Jon Foreman's song, Somebody's Baby:

She dreams about heaven
Remembering Hell
As the place that she visits
And knows all to well
Every now and again
When she's hopeful
She brushes her teeth

I've been there, and revisit more often than I'd like, but now I know I am Somebody's baby and He does mourn with me through my pain. He is writing my story and He will finish it. He will always be victorious in the stories He writes...that's just the truth.

Here is a link to a beautiful version of the song, if you're interested (or if you just need a good cry):
http://youtu.be/h0r4I28y5mc