PT2: Finding the Light in a Dark House
[[If you have not read Part I, Click here.]]
When I was a little girl, I remember connecting with God, Jesus and Holy Spirit. I would lay outside in the grass, look up at the endless sky, and I felt like I was in the clouds with Jesus, inside of God. I felt Holy Spirit all around me. The breeze would gently brush against my face and it felt like he had gently kissed my cheek. That was the Jesus I wanted to find again. The one who was my best friend when I was a little girl. But as I got a little older, the contrast of the darkness I had encountered over the years caused me to live from a whole different narrative. My power had seemingly been stolen from me at a young age, and left me with no lights in the house of my soul. After enough years in the dark, I began to believe the lies I was hearing in the dark rooms. I started to conclude that the loving God we sang about in church actually didn’t really care about me, it seemed as though that God was judging me, that he punished me for all the things I did wrong, that he was always disappointed in me. The loving God was actually a dictator that demanded things from me I couldn’t even begin to give and that no matter how hard I tried, I was always a failure. Over time I wanted nothing to do with God anymore, I was angry, I felt abandoned and far away. I lived in these false perceptions of God, this was my reality, and on the inside, to protect myself, I began boarding up the windows in my house and one by one, I shut Jesus out of every room. All that was left was a tiny shimmer of light the size of a speck of glitter, peaking between the boards over one of my windows. I was not only a victim to what had been done to me in my life, but I was a victim to my own judgments I had developed against God. After years of sitting in the dark, now in my 20’s, I began circling back around to this Jesus I once knew as a child, curious to rediscover him just in case I had been wrong as a little 13 year old. That is when I met him again, sitting on the floor of my closet, empty, alone, and broken.
The Encounter…
In Part I, we left off right at the beginning of an encounter I was having with the Lord in my closet where he said, “You have too many doors open that must be closed in order for me to open the doors you want open in your life.” He had taken me down a hallway and revealed to me how I was blinded to 3 doors of opportunities he had for my future and I could see a name above each door but he would not yet unlock them. It wasn’t until months later that he opened them one by one and showed me over a years time what was on the other side of them. I unknowingly started on a long deep, inner healing journey with him and had no idea that he was untangling my soul and healing deep wounds I had been carrying my entire life. He began revealing to me literally and metaphorically trauma I had survived as a child that I had suppressed and forgotten. I had no idea during this encounter what he was communicating to me, but when I awakened from the encounter I wrote everything down and over time it all made sense. This part of the encounter was a metaphorical preface to what he revealed to me months and years later about my past.
We began walking down a different hallway. I heard his keys on his key ring but I couldn’t see him. This hallway was carpet and I had the sense we were on the bottom level. I saw huge glass windows and outside were beautiful, lush green trees and a stream below. I said, “Jesus, where are you?” He said “My Spirit is right behind you.” The hallway was long and the walls turned into an ugly old cream color. We rounded the corner and were now standing in the dark. I said, “Lord, I can’t see.” He said, “That’s because you’re standing in the dark.” All of the sudden, a small square door on the floor opened up like a trap door and I fell down into the basement, which was a dark sewer. There was waste and water I was standing in. I said “Lord, why are we down here?” There were small windows at the top of the walls. I imagined if I could smell in the moment, it would have been unbearable. The Lord said, “You don’t belong down here and neither do I.” Then I saw his Spirit in the shape of his figure, go up a metal ladder towards the door I fell from. I began to follow him but then stepped back down into the basement. I said, “Wait, why did you take me down here?” I saw him step back down and pick me up. For a moment I could see him holding me and I realized I was now a child. I looked like I was age 3 and I was wearing a white dress. He took me back up to the dark room we were in. I was facing the hallway we came from and there was light in the hallway, enough that I could now see him in front of me.
Jesus knelt down on one knee looking into my eyes. He said, gently but firmly, “You don’t belong down there, so don’t go down there anymore.” He stood back up and we walked back up the hallway. I could see he was wearing a white robe with a red sash over it and he was holding my hand. I was still a small child. Then we both disappeared through a wall and were suddenly climbing a huge rope net to the top of a tall gray cliff. When we got to the top of the cliff landing, we jumped down, way far down. We were mid-air and he grabbed me and held me close as we hit the water. I was clinging to him, we both went under and came up above the water. I remember looking at his wet hair as he was holding me. And for a split second, I had a flash back of my dad holding me in our pool when I was a little girl. And I felt so loved.
We both got out and climbed onto the rock ledge of a huge bolder rock and he said, “This is where you belong.” I looked around, there was this beautiful waterfall and huge trees canopying above us. We were far deep into the woods somewhere. The weather was perfect and I just remember it being so quiet. I looked at us and noticed our clothes were dry again and I was now an adult again. I laid my head on his lap. My body was laying on the large rock we were on and my knees were up. I was looking up at Jesus but his face was a perception. I could not yet see him in detail.
I laid there with my head on his lap, trying to focus on his face. He leaned his head down toward me and I heard him say, “Can you see me?” I said, “Kind of.” I could see his hair, but when I tried to see his face, it was blurry. I said, “I can’t focus on your face. Jesus, let me see your face.”
As I laid there, I still couldn’t see his face clearly but I said, “Jesus, thank you so much for hanging out with me and talking to me here in such a beautiful place.” It was so refreshing to be there with him, it was so quiet, I felt so calm and peaceful. Again I tried to focus on his face as I was laying on him. I said, “Jesus, let me see your face. Let me see your eyes.” But in this moment, I couldn’t.
I then asked him, “Lord, what about this house? Can I get it this week?” [Pause… During this time of my life, I had been house hunting, but when the Lord responded in this moment, he replied not speaking of the house I was searching for in the physical realm, but about the house of my soul. I had been searching for something on that outside that he was trying to give me on the inside. A home, a safe place to rest my soul. In this moment, I was unaware of this.] “Can you help me find one this week?” I asked him. Suddenly, different pieces of houses I had looked at over the past weeks flashed before me in an instant and he said, “You have looked at all different kinds of houses, but I have one for you.”
Suddenly we were sitting on a wooden porch swing. He said, “Can you see yourself at your house?” I tried to look but I couldn’t see myself. I said, “No.” He said, “Can you see me?” I looked over and I saw part of him. I said, “I can see your right arm.” He said, “You must be able to see yourself and me at your house before you can own it.” Then he said, “Where am I now?” Then I saw Jesus walk through the front door of a house and into the living room. I said, “I see you in the living room.” I began to follow him and said what I saw, “I see you in the kitchen. I see you in my bed bedroom. I see you in my bathroom. I see you in Skye’s room. I see you in Skye’s bathroom. I see you in the guest room. I see you in the guest bathroom.” Then he walked back up the hallway into the kitchen where the table was and out the sliding glass door onto the deck. He stood in the back yard and his arms were wide open, to either side of him. He walked towards the hammock and laid in it, but I still could not see him very well. Then he walked back toward the back porch step where I was sitting. He sat next to me and put his arm around me. He said, “Now, you have received the house. And I am in every room.” The encounter went on for at least an hour as he revealed to me things that I don’t want to talk about right now. When it was finished, the last place I was faded away, and I began to awaken into reality. I opened my eyes, and immediately wrote down everything I had just experienced.
There is a verse in the bible that talks about how we are temples of God. As I have gone deeper into understanding God and how he speaks in encounters, visions, and dreams, I have gotten a better grasp on interpreting what he was revealing to me. To give a little understanding to the context of the last portion of the encounter I shared, the rooms in a house represents different places of the soul. For example, kitchen is the heart, the living room is like your personality others see, a bathroom is a place of cleansing, release, repentance, the back yard can represent the past, the bedroom is a place of intimacy with God, the hammock can represent resting in the Lord. In the encounter I had a hard time seeing Jesus clearly as he laid in the hammock, he was indicating where I was at that time in my life, restless, anxious and unable to relax in the peace and enjoyment of being with God.
This part of the encounter was a snapshot of where I was going with the Lord, this wasn’t something that just all happened at once for me, in my reality, it’s a journey that took years to let him back into every place of my life. He helped me go back into my past and stand up to my greatest terrors and fears and confront them with boldness, so I could freely move forward in my life.
After this encounter, my life completely changed. My priorities completely shifted and I went through a season of my life where, everyday for 3 years, I would lay Skye down for a nap, and I would spend 3 hours during Skye’s nap sitting in my closet in the Lord’s presence. After a few weeks into this, I quit my home business so I could spend another 3-4 hours with the Lord after Skye went to bed at night. Day after day, year after year, I recorded thousands of pages of encounters with him. And over time, one by one, we removed the nails out of the boards of judgment I had nailed over the windows of my house. We began exploring all the different rooms in my heart, turning on lights as we would go through the dark nights and I let him back into every room.
Jesus worked to earn back my trust that had been broken over the years because of things that had happened to me. Never once was he mad that I didn’t trust him, every time he met me with understanding and gentleness until I knew for myself his real nature. I could tangibly feel his presence in my closet waiting for me day after day as I would walk in and close the door. I thought, this is such a delicacy, had I known this was available to me this whole time, my life would have been so different. I felt God longing to be with me. It took all the courage I had to dig into the most vulnerable, dangerous, raw, wounded places within me and allow him to honestly confront them with his healing light. He grieved with me and comforted me as we would revisit deep, gaping wounds that no one else knew about. When I was terrified to confront what had tormented me for years, he was the voice that kept whispering,“you can do it, I believe in you; you’re so brave.”
I am finally coming to the end of a 3 year radical adventure with him, as we are stepping into a brand new adventure– one where I get to live in a house full of power, and full of light.