Brave Surrender Read online

  I wrote my heart out and spent the year recording the album. When it was finished, I was so proud of this gift I was giving back to Jesus. My favorite of all my songs I wrote at that time was called “Freedom”:

  I’ve been struggling with my past.

  It just clings to me and holds me back.

  It grips my heart and it won’t let go.

  I can’t find or face my tomorrow

  Full of anger, guilt, and rage.

  How do I let go of every page?

  I can’t move on, and I won’t go back.

  Where do I go to stop this attack?

  Now here I stand in a different place.

  Will I choose to let go and win the race?

  Lord, You call me forward and say, “Look to Me.”

  Slowly I find myself drop to my knees.

  Father, You hold me so close.

  I surrender my past, and You sweep it away.

  I won’t turn around, and there’s no looking back.

  I give my life away and find Your freedom.

  It feels so good to let go,

  So good to be sure and to know

  That Your freedom has come and Your freedom will stay.

  For who You set free is free for always.

  Chapter 5

  NEW EYES

  Not long after giving my life to Jesus, I decided I wanted to attend a Christian college. I applied to Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and I soon learned that I had been accepted and awarded a music scholarship.

  Then one day while praying in my backyard, I heard the still, small voice of God telling me to go to Redding, California. It wasn’t an audible command. It was just the words “Redding, California” popping into my mind and a sense that I needed to obey. I wasn’t sure where Redding was or if there was a school there, but an online search led me to a Christian college called Simpson University. I quickly applied, doubting I would get in since it was so close to the deadline, but they accepted me.

  When I announced to my family the change of plans, they were less than thrilled that I was giving up a scholarship and heading in a completely different direction. But I knew in my heart it was the right decision.

  My confidence was soon tested, however, as my freshman year at Simpson unfolded. My plan to major in music faltered after only a few days of trying to learn to sight-read in my first semester ear-training class. After switching my major to history, I continued to struggle academically despite my best efforts, earning a 1.2 GPA in my first semester. I decided my teachers just didn’t know how to teach a creative genius like myself who didn’t hesitate to push back when I disagreed with their methods. For example, I once challenged the teacher of my writing and literature class on why she had graded me so poorly, arguing that she clearly had marked me down because she didn’t agree with my point of view.

  My willingness to debate with both teachers and students did not win me many likability points. On another memorable occasion in the school cafeteria, I got into an argument with a guy I didn’t know about whether women could be anything more than a wife and mother according to God’s Word. It was obvious he was better versed in Scripture than I was, but I couldn’t resist pushing back against his repugnant ego.

  He argued that the only place for women, according to Scripture, was the home. While a husband and family were things I earnestly desired, it was certainly not the only aspiration of my heart. And I felt sure that Jesus had placed these other desires in my heart, just as He has for many women. In my newness to Scripture, I couldn’t come up with anything to contest him, but I made sure he knew that if he was looking for a wife, he was certainly looking in the wrong place.

  Hoping to make some friends, I decided to audition for the chapel worship team as a background singer. At the audition, they put the whole group of potential background singers onstage and had us sing together for what seemed like only fifteen seconds. I didn’t make the team—not too surprising, given the fact that the audition didn’t really give us the chance to show anything (or maybe they secretly required sight-singing skills and knew I didn’t have any). But it did add to my discouragement and confusion. I couldn’t understand why the Lord had brought me to Simpson.

  The Church on the Hill

  One night a group of students invited me to a worship gathering called Celebration that was led by a guy named Nathan Edwardson. A local church had given him permission to host these nights of worship. I found myself in a dimly lit room full of young adults worshiping and singing. I didn’t recognize the songs, but I did notice that the band was quite good. Between songs the worship leaders talked about things like worshiping in “the secret place” and being “a nameless, faceless generation”—phrases I hadn’t heard before, but which stirred something deep in my heart. The whole evening I just sat in the back and cried, unable to put language to what I was feeling and experiencing.

  I continued to attend Celebration, and each time I experienced something new in worship. One evening the entire band led worship from behind a curtain. The leader, Nathan, explained that it was important for us to have our own connection to the Lord and to worship Him in our own way. The worship wasn’t about the band leading or the songs they were singing, but simply about Jesus. Again I was moved and drawn to what I was hearing and experiencing. What was so different about these people and their connection with God? What exactly was I lacking?

  Sometime toward the end of first semester, the pressure cooker of emotions that had been building through my frustration with Simpson and this strange spiritual hunger in worship finally exploded late one night after I left a Celebration gathering. As I drove through Redding on my way back to campus, I broke down crying and screaming out to God in the darkness. “Why am I here? I’m lonely. My grades are horrible. I don’t like school! Why did You bring me here?”

  In my overwrought state, I made a wrong turn getting back to campus and found myself driving down a road that dead-ended at a building perched on one side of a hill. It was a circular building with a steeple that glowed a soft red. Through wrap-around windows, I glimpsed a few people inside, and out of curiosity I parked my car to watch. I saw one woman dancing off to one side, while another woman stood facing the window with hands lifted, crying, her lips moving as if she was praying or singing. Two men were pacing across the room, waving what appeared to be scarves and, I assumed, praying.

  What a bunch of weirdos! I thought.

  I drove a little closer to investigate the larger building and saw that it was a church. The name on the sign read “Bethel Church.” Intrigued, I decided I would check it out that coming weekend.

  On Sunday morning, I walked into the main sanctuary and found it full of excited, happy people. As worship started, I was surprised to see individuals around the room waving flags, dancers on the stage, and a huge band with more instruments than I had ever seen in church. Everyone around me was singing and worshiping with passion, and I soon felt the same hunger I had felt at Celebration stirring inside me.

  At the same time, however, I experienced a powerful surge of fear. Was it fear of the unknown? Fear of rejection? Whatever it was, it was unbearable, and I jumped up and ran out of the room. Tears stung my eyes as I drove away from the church, struggling to understand the turmoil inside me. Overwhelmed, I decided to stuff my feelings down, lock them up, and tell myself that those people were all just too weird and happy for me.

  I continued to visit different churches each Sunday, trying to find a place that felt right. I also kept going to Celebration, searching for answers to the questions inside me. But as the weeks passed, I couldn’t stop thinking about Bethel Church. Finally I decided to give it another try.

  This time an usher greeted me at the door. Upon hearing that I was a student at Simpson, he said, “You should meet Angelina,” and he led me over to a girl I recognized as a member of the dance team. It turned out that Angelina and I lived only a couple of dorms apart on campus. Within weeks we became fast friends—a friendship t
hat immediately made my life in Redding a hundred times more bearable. Though I continued to struggle in school, I no longer felt so alone. She also answered my questions about Bethel, and when she didn’t know an answer, she helped me look for it in the Bible. Eventually she invited me to help out with the youth group on Wednesdays, assuring me that they always needed more help and that I would be welcome. She introduced me to the youth pastor, Banning Liebscher. It felt good to find a place not only to belong but to be of service. I loved it so much that I stuck around.

  When my year at Simpson ended, I returned home to Oregon for the summer and started praying about what I should do next. There was an internship program in Seattle, Washington, connected with my parents’ church that my family really wanted me to attend. But I knew I needed to figure out why God had sent me to Redding and what my time there had been about.

  In the end, I decided to go with my gut and return to Redding—this time to attend the ministry school at Bethel. My mom was in tears, full of worry. She didn’t know much about the church or the school, and she was nervous about what I was going to do with my life. I didn’t want to admit it, but I was nervous too! What was I going to do with my life? I had no idea. All I knew was that something was pulling me strongly in this direction, and I was desperate to discover what might satisfy the hunger inside me.

  In the Silence

  Within the first couple of weeks of ministry school, an announcement came that worship team auditions would be taking place. Just as I was about to sign up, however, I felt a conviction and heard the Lord’s familiar voice speaking gently to me: “I don’t want you to sing. I don’t want you to tell anyone you sing. I will bring this back in My time. Right now, in this season, I want you to learn to hear My voice.” It wasn’t an audible voice. It was a comforting voice inside me that is as familiar as the wind on my skin or the sun shining in my eyes.

  Obediently, I didn’t sign up for the auditions. At first this decision felt fine to me, but within days, I realized that God’s words had set me on a journey. All the questions inside me, the things I couldn’t seem to put words to, were about to come to the surface and find some answers.

  Worship was part of each day at ministry school. Again and again during these first months, I opened my mouth to sing along with my classmates, and nothing would come out. It was as though I had lost my voice or forgotten how to sing. Then I would hear the still small voice say, “Listen,” and I would fall to the floor in class in a pile of sobs. I was so overcome with emotion that I couldn’t even stop to consider what my peers were thinking. Were they staring at me? Did they think I was crazy? I didn’t even care. I knew that God was doing something profound in my heart.

  I couldn’t have predicted I would feel this way, but having my singing voice taken away made me feel like I was standing empty-handed with nothing to call my own. Singing was something I had done my whole life, and despite the debacle with my high school choir teacher, it was the one thing I knew I could do well. My whole family was musical, and I had been put on a stage since I was three years old. I had always been involved in musicals, and singing was just something that felt natural and easy. I wasn’t a great athlete. I didn’t make good grades. After seeing me try to thicken spaghetti sauce with breadcrumbs, my mom begged me to stay out of the kitchen. I wasn’t particularly crafty or artistic. But I could sing. What was more, I saw it as the main way to express myself before God. And in asking me not to sing but to listen, God was exposing the truth that much of my identity was wrapped up in this one thing. I realized that I had no idea who I was or what I was created for.

  Yet there in the confusion and emptiness, I also recognized the tender love of Jesus. Very gently and with so much kindness, He was beginning to show me who I am. He wanted me to see that I am simply His daughter and that He wanted everything in my life to be anchored to that truth. Each day it felt as though more of the pain and lies I had believed my whole life were fading away and Jesus was there, assuring me of His love for me and the fact that I belong to Him. Yet as amazing as this was, I sensed that we were only just beginning the heart odyssey on which He was leading me.

  Healing Begins

  I made a friend at the school of ministry named Jodi. She helped me understand many of the things Jesus was teaching me in that season, and I found it easy to trust and confide in her. Jodi was training with a counselor at the church and knew a lot about inner healing. She was also very discerning and quickly saw what I didn’t fully see for myself—that I was very wounded and carrying a lot of pain from my past. The effects of my childhood showed up in my triggered responses to things like stress, new environments, and confrontation. But like so many people who grow up with abuse, trauma, and dysfunction, I didn’t really recognize how much baggage I was carrying around, because I didn’t know any better. While I suspected that some of my reactions to things weren’t quite right, I thought, Isn’t this how life is for everybody?

  It wasn’t until Jodi gently explained that my behavior bore clear signs of childhood trauma and encouraged me to see a counselor that I began to understand I was pretty messed up inside. She recommended I meet with Teresa, a counselor with whom she had been training, and offered to accompany me to a session. I can’t say I fully understood what inner healing was, but I was curious and knew well enough that I needed help to be set free from my past, so I agreed to a trial session.

  When we feel sick and not quite right, we go to a doctor. We surrender to the doctor’s examination, diagnosis, and prescribed treatment. We may not know what’s wrong, but we can recognize that we need some help. I didn’t know what was broken inside me, but I knew I needed Jesus. If there was anyone who could step into the dark, pain-filled rooms of my heart, shine light on the broken places, and bring healing and freedom, it was Him.

  Teresa began our session by praying and inviting Jesus to fill the room, lead us, and do whatever He wanted to do. She asked me simple questions: “Can you sense or see Jesus? How do you feel about Him?” And then she asked me a strange question: “Would anybody else like to speak?”

  What kind of crazy question is that? I thought. What does it even mean? But to my surprise, I answered her. In fact, I shouted.

  “I am so angry at Jesus!”

  The voice was my own, and at the same time it wasn’t me. It felt as though I was outside of my body for a moment and someone else was responding. I didn’t say much after that.

  When the session ended, I felt bewildered and a little embarrassed. However, Teresa assured me I was definitely okay and not losing my mind. She said that when children go through traumatic experiences, it is normal for their brain to dissociate and create another “person” to handle the pain and trauma. It’s a coping mechanism that can be important for the child to use in order to survive whatever trauma they are facing. She referred to these other parts of me as “fractures” and said that Jesus wanted to bring total healing to my heart, soul, and personality by integrating these fractured pieces into a whole.

  Wholeness sounded pretty good.

  All of this made sense, and I could feel the truth of it deep inside me. I sat quietly as I considered everything Teresa was saying. I suddenly remembered an early memory of when I was a little girl about five years old. I woke up one night to the sound of my sister crying, and I realized we weren’t in our beds. We were somewhere else—in fact, we were in a different house. I was so scared, but something in me was determined that I needed to be brave in that moment and take care of my sister.

  I wrapped my arms around her and tried my best to soothe and assure her. In that moment, I felt like someone else inside me stepped up to protect us, while the Kim who was scared and wanted to cry, just like my sister was doing, went into hiding. I comforted her by putting my arm around her and telling her that everything was going to be okay. I told her I would find our mom and make sure nothing happened to her. This was the first memory where I recognized the fracturing Teresa was referring to.

  I continued to
meet regularly with Teresa to pursue this integration process of healing. As the months progressed, I had some very good days and some very hard days. I became more aware of these other fractured pieces of myself and began to visualize them in my mind like a room full of people. Teresa helped me use this visualization to allow the fractures to speak to her and to Jesus.

  For example, one day I visualized one of these fractures talking to Teresa and explaining that she was young and very scared and really just wanted someone to take care of her. Teresa introduced her to Jesus and asked her if she would like to go to Him as He stood there with outstretched arms. She wasn’t sure she could trust Him and felt like she needed to consult the other parts. She wanted an assurance from Jesus that He would take care of her and protect her.

  At one point, while Jesus was assuring her He would take good care of her, He told her that she was a smart girl. For whatever reason, this was a very important statement to this part of me. I was believing the lie that I am not smart. The moment Jesus said that, I began to cry. As the power of this lie was broken, I watched as that fractured part of me walked to Jesus, embraced Him, and disappeared into Him.

  It was a good day whenever one of these “parts” went running into the arms of Jesus and disappeared—becoming integrated—as He brought healing. I once asked Teresa why parts would disappear when they went to Jesus and I became integrated in that moment.

  She asked me, “Does Jesus live inside you?’

  “Yes,” I responded.

  “Because Jesus lives inside you, when they disappear inside Him, they are also disappearing inside you,” she explained. “This is the integration. The pieces of your heart are being put back together. Christ is in you, and you are in Christ.”

  However, I also had bad days when I refused to talk and didn’t want any healing. Fear and anger were always on the surface on those days. One day Teresa and I started our time together, as we always did, by inviting Jesus to come and do what He wanted to do. The moment I visualized Jesus coming into the room, it was as if that fractured group inside my mind began to throw rocks at Him in anger. I sat there silently, feeling rage surge inside me but not daring to speak about what I was seeing in my mind.