Brave Surrender Page 9

  This is it, I thought. George has shown his true colors.

  I burst through the door and saw the two of them standing there. George had his hands on my mom’s shoulders, and she was crying.

  “Don’t touch her!” I screamed, lunging at George.

  George started to come toward me, but my mom jumped between us and shoved me out of the room, yelling, “Kim, stop! It’s okay—everything is okay!”

  I didn’t believe her for one second. I ran back to my room to grab the baseball bat I kept underneath my bed for this very reason. As I turned to rush back with it, George stormed past me down the hall and out toward the front door. He was clearly angry, but he also seemed embarrassed. I had such a rush of emotions that I was not seeing clearly or taking the time to find out what was going on. My fear had instantly triggered me back into the little girl again who felt she needed to protect her family. I followed him, yelling, “You better not come back!” until I heard the door slam. I returned to my mom, who was sobbing.

  “Kim, you don’t understand,” she repeated through tears, pleading with me. “Everything was okay. It wasn’t what it looked like.”

  I refused to listen. What I had witnessed seemed very clear to me. I stayed up the rest of the night clutching my bat in case George came back, my mind racing with memories of past experiences.

  The next morning, my mom had to force me to go to school. I didn’t want to leave her. I kept telling her over and over, “See? I was right! He is just like the rest!” But she didn’t respond.

  When I got home from school that day, I found my mom, George, and the pastors of our church sitting in the living room.

  “Will you sit down, Kim?” my mom asked.

  As soon as I complied, all the thoughts in my head—all my fury at George and fear for my mom—began bursting out of my mouth.

  “I knew you would hurt us! What you did to my mom is not okay!” I shouted at him. “I am not going to allow it. I will fight back! You are just like all the rest!”

  I reveled in being right about him. I thought we were finally going to get rid of him, and I wouldn’t have to deal with any stepdads ever again.

  George sat listening and weeping through my tirade. And then he did the unthinkable, something I never saw coming.

  “Kim, you are right,” he said, his voice broken. “I hurt your mom and I hurt you, and it is not okay. I never should have done that.” He looked directly into my eyes, grief clearly written on his face. “I am so, so sorry. Will you forgive me?”

  He went on to explain that he had been reacting to his own wounds and had taken it out on us. He was horrified that he had scared us and hurt our feelings. I found out some time later that a minister had come to town and singled George out. He was praying for George and shared with him what he felt like God was saying. Whatever it was that this minister said, it connected to a deep wound in George’s past. God was wanting to bring healing to George, and just like me, he was having a hard time facing it. On the night of his outburst, he and my mom had been discussing it all, and something had triggered George and sent him spinning.

  “I promise you—and you have my full commitment forever—that I will never do anything like this again,” he continued. “I will never hurt your mom or you kids again or cause you to become afraid of me. And if you will let me, I want to earn your trust again.”

  I was stunned. No man had ever done this. Neither of the stepdads had ever taken responsibility for what they did and apologized. Neither had ever vowed never to hurt me in that way again.

  I didn’t know what to say—it was as if my brain was short-circuiting. Unable to come up with a meaningful response, I just quietly said, “Okay. I forgive you.”

  George responded with humility and gratitude. He reached out his hand to touch me, but I know he could feel my walls and see that I wasn’t quite ready for an embrace.

  I walked away still feeling angry, but also disarmed. Instead of getting rid of George, I had let him come just a tiny bit closer.

  Unwavering and Unrelenting

  As I looked back at the memory of George’s apology from a healed place, I couldn’t help but cry. Becoming more whole allowed me to feel love for George and see his good intentions toward me. Clearly that night’s incident was not a good representation of who he was. Honestly, I didn’t even know what to think about it, and I wanted to put it behind me forever. But Jesus wanted me to see something else in this memory—that in apologizing and repenting, George had done something no other man had ever done in my life. Jesus wanted me to see that George was a man of humility and integrity, and that he never stopped pursuing my heart. His request for forgiveness had formed a crack in the dysfunctional foundations built through my past, and over time, that crack had spread, giving me hope that his heart toward me—and the Father’s heart too—were good.

  Once again I saw God in my story. He had sent George to us. I am convinced that I am a Christian today because of George and the way he brought God and church into our lives. Because of him, church went—from my perspective—from being a ritual to being a pillar of our family culture. If George had not come into our lives, changing the course we were on, I don’t know for certain that I would be who I am today and have the relationship with Jesus that I have.

  God not only brought a man to love my mom the way she had always desired to be loved, but He brought a father to show us the unrelenting love of Jesus. Even though I rejected him from the beginning, George never wavered in his love for me. It didn’t seem to matter how many hurtful things I said or did. When I pushed him away, he still moved toward me. Even when I didn’t respond, he still told me how special I was and that he loved me as if I were his own. I didn’t believe I was special or beautiful or worthy of love, but George told me I was anyway.

  As I looked back at all the ways George had loved me, fought for me, protected me, provided for me, and cared for me, I saw Jesus and His relentless pursuit of me. George was an incredible example of the way Jesus will stop at nothing to show us His love. Jesus was there from the very beginning. He was there in the moments of pain and heartache, anger and questioning. When I put my heart on lockdown, Jesus did not step back or grow tired in fighting to set it free. Throughout my journey of being integrated and healed, parts of me would hide my heart away and in anger not allow Jesus to come near. But every time I came back to my next meeting with the counselor, there He would be again. It seemed that no matter how many times I was angry with Him or rejected Him, He always responded when we prayed and turned our attention to Him. When I pushed Him away and rejected His kindness, He kept showering me with all His goodness anyway. It is truly amazing the way Jesus has loved me.

  It was also profound to realize that God is not obligated to love me the way I think He should. He loves me in the way I need it most, which is sometimes in a way I don’t see. As a parent, I do not take pleasure in disciplining my children, but I do it because I love them so much and want them to be healthy, happy, safe, and respectful humans who love and contribute to society.

  God may withhold things from my life, but it is not to punish me or hurt me. It is because He loves me and wants to protect me. I truly believe that even the most broken person, if they are willing, can look back at their life and find a moment in which God was loving them. We just don’t always see it when we are in the thick of it. I didn’t think it was loving of God to send George into our lives—I didn’t even believe God had done that at all. But it was exactly what I needed. George was essential to my life and all I was created to do.

  As I look back now at all the special and fun memories with George, I realize that God was restoring some of my childhood. I hadn’t seen it at the time. I was so wrapped up in what I had been robbed of. I told my mom I couldn’t move on and had no idea how to be a kid and just enjoy life, but that is exactly what was happening. The fun trips, the shopping, the sporting events, the dancing, the water fights—all of it gave me back part of my childhood. George brought a joy an
d security that allowed me to live carefree. When children feel safe, they are their happiest. They let down their walls and live it up without any shame or fear. I was feeling safe for the first time in my life, and I couldn’t even acknowledge it.

  When I realized I had missed this, shame and guilt tried to rush in, but Jesus addressed it and shut it down instantly. “You didn’t see it with your eyes and your mind back then, but your heart and your spirit caught it and felt it,” He told me. “I’m showing you this now not to make you feel bad, but to show you that even then I was working on your behalf and moving you toward freedom.”

  The Bible says we love God because He first loved us. It is very simple. If you don’t love Him, if you aren’t passionate about pursuing Him, it is because you don’t know yet how much He loves you. When you feel and hear and see the love of God, you cannot help but respond with love.

  That is the true beauty of this part of the story. George kept pouring out love, and I finally learned to love him. The safety and joy he brought enabled me to recover some of my childlike ability to love and trust again. Meanwhile, Jesus never stopped pursuing my heart and loving me through it all until I surrendered my heart and love to Him.

  The last thing Jesus pointed out in my healing journey as we went through these memories together was the way George worshiped Him. Witnessing George faithfully getting up so early every morning to read his Bible, pray, and sing to Jesus was my first exposure to worship outside church. It was my first revelation that you could have a relationship with Jesus and that our connection to God does not exist solely inside the walls of the church. It was the first time I had seen what it looked like to pursue God in our home. My mom loved to play the piano and sing (those are special memories to me), but there was something different and powerful about seeing a man—the leader in our family—being so vulnerable and establishing an environment of peace in our home.

  I had never seen so much passion and worship poured out in a moment at home and not in a church service. I realized I had grown up with a belief that God was little more than a story and that any evidence of His presence and reality resided within a church. I hadn’t realized that He desires a relationship with me, that I should desire a relationship with Him, or that a real relationship was even attainable.

  George’s faithfulness to this was seared in my mind, and when I finally surrendered my life to Jesus in high school, I knew what to do. I did it without even thinking about it. I began to pull away alone, read my Bible, pray, and sing to Jesus. When I left home to go to college and ministry school, I naturally continued to do these things. George instilled in me an image of what passionate worship looked and sounded like—a person completely lost in adoration and surrender to Jesus, unashamed of tears and unconcerned about what anyone thought.

  It’s fascinating that these things would go on to be some of the characteristics that have marked my life and who I am as a worship leader. Even as a teen when I was sorting through who I thought God was and my connection to Him, George was planting seeds deep inside of me. Even more than the hero, more than the man sent to us by God, more than someone who helped bring restoration, George was one of my first teachers of true worship.

  Chapter 7

  ABIDING TRUST

  When Jesus asked me not to audition for the worship team at ministry school and not to tell people I sang, He told me He would bring singing back into my life, but in His way and in His time. He wanted me to spend that first year in school focused on inner healing, and my job was simply to keep my heart yielded to Him as He did a deep work inside me.

  Meanwhile, I continued to volunteer as a leader in the youth group, helping Banning Liebscher, who was the youth pastor. I was really thankful to have a place to go every week where I felt safe, had friends, and could have a reprieve from dealing with all the rewiring happening inside me.

  I was also really excited about the youth conference coming up in the summer. Banning had started “Jesus Culture” conferences in the summer of 1999 (the first one I attended was in 2001), and I was especially looking forward to the part of the conference where we took the kids out to the streets to do block parties. The plan was to take over a cul-de-sac in a low-income neighborhood; throw a big party complete with food, a bounce house, candy, and music; and share Jesus with the people who came. I couldn’t wait!

  Getting to Know “Holy Spirit”

  Before that summer after my first year of ministry school, however, God asked me to do something that took me way out of my comfort zone. March was “missions month” at school, and every student was expected to go on a missions trip. There was an option to stay in Redding and do street ministry, which would have been my preference, but when I prayed about it, I felt that God was telling me to join the team going to Mozambique, Africa.

  This was terrifying to me. In the two years I had lived in Redding, I had become a bit of a recluse. Perhaps it was the constant moving and change through my childhood, or maybe it was all the inner healing I was going through, that left me feeling very vulnerable, but in that season of my life, I was overwhelmed with fear at the idea of traveling. I wasn’t interested in venturing out anywhere beyond my small world of ministry school, work, and church.

  My good friend Jodi, who knew I preferred staying in hermit mode, once invited me to drive to the coast for a day with her. We both agreed it would be good for me to face my fears and get out of town. But soon after we began the drive into the mountains west of Redding, we had to pull over because I was so overcome by fear that I started hyperventilating! We decided to turn around and go back home.

  So, the idea of going to Africa seemed about as crazy as traveling to the moon! Yet I could not shake that still small voice inside me encouraging me to go to Mozambique. I finally took a deep breath and signed up to go, thinking, I might regret this.

  Miraculously God provided all the money I needed for my trip. Jodi, who had traveled extensively, helped me pack, and I was on my way. After more than twenty-four hours of travel, I arrived in Africa. Unfortunately my bag did not, which, in my mind, was possibly the worst thing that could happen to me. I was not like the other gung-ho ministry students on the trip, who acted like they were built for contingencies such as landing in a developing nation without their belongings. For three days we drove from the orphanage and missions base where we were staying to the airport to see if my bag had come in. The whole time, I couldn’t help but wonder, Am I being punished? But on the third day, it finally arrived.

  I had a very difficult time adjusting to Mozambique. My team was eager to go out to the bush and the dump to tell people about Jesus, bring medical aid, and pray for people. I didn’t want to go anywhere. I wanted to stay within the confines of the base. I didn’t even want to go into the orphanage where all the children were. My team became frustrated and even angry with me, wondering why I had even bothered to come if all I was going to do was sit inside the base. I wondered the very same thing. Why am I here? Why did God ask me to come? I couldn’t do what everyone else was doing because it just didn’t feel like me.

  Then one day, my team leader asked if I could teach a group of ten-year-olds at the orphanage how to hear Jesus and pray for others. She explained that the whole team was leaving me behind to go on an overnight trip to the bush, so I was the only one available to visit the orphanage. Feeling like I didn’t have much of a choice, I agreed.

  The next morning I prepared my lesson and nervously followed a woman into the classroom where I was to teach. To my complete surprise, the kids eagerly absorbed everything I said. At the end of the lesson, I told them I wanted us to practice what we had just learned. They paired up and began to pray for each other. They took the time to ask God what He wanted to say to the friend they were praying for and then courageously spoke it out.

  As I looked around the room, I saw many children with tears streaming down their cheeks, clearly having an encounter with Jesus as truth was being spoken over them. Afterward, the schoolteacher who was t
here with me asked me to come the next day and teach again to a new group of students.

  I ended up teaching twice more. Then all the teachers and leaders of the school got together and asked me to come teach them how to do what I had done. They wanted to keep teaching the kids how to communicate with God and grow in their relationship with Him. The way I had done it was so effective, they said, that they wanted to know how to do it themselves. My team continued to go out and do the things they loved, while I stayed back and taught the kids, helped take care of babies in the nursery, and prepared hot meals for the team to enjoy when they returned.

  One day while I was praying, I felt the Lord showing me that this whole trip to Mozambique was about me getting familiar with Holy Spirit and learning to listen and to follow His guidance in my life. The opportunity to teach people in a foreign country what I had learned helped me see and own how much He had been teaching me about how to hear and trust Him! This trip is where a true friendship with Him began in my life. From that point on, I have referred to Him as “Holy Spirit,” rather than “the Holy Spirit.” It feels so formal to put “the” in front of my Friend’s name.

  The trip to Africa stretched me in ways I couldn’t have anticipated. It woke me up to the inner healing work God was doing inside me. When the Jesus Culture conference rolled around, I had even more confidence and boldness in helping to lead the youth in following Holy Spirit as they went out and did street ministry. Even while He had me under construction, I was becoming more and more on fire for others to know and encounter Him.

  Unlocking Worship

  When my second year of ministry school began, I felt God tell me He was going to bring singing back into my life but reminding me to wait for Him and His perfect timing.