Deliverance Can Be Volcanic. So Can Becoming a New Thing. Stay the Course.

When the cord (you didn’t know was there) is finally cut. For good.

May 04, 2025

Good Morning! Thank you to everyone who supports my writing. Though today’s post is partially pay-walled for paid subscribers, I really consider those paid subscriptions ongoing support for my writing as a whole. I don’t want anyone to miss out so this article will “unlock” in two weeks.

That said, I have a new button at the bottom for you if you aren’t ready to support monthly. You can buy me a coffee for my next writing session!

If you are a regular reader or one who knows my background a little deeper through reading my stories, it won’t come as a surprise to you when I tell you that my grandmother (a/k/a “Mom” because she raised me) was, let us say, highly… intensely… invested in my life as a Creative. In whatever form. Her greatest dream for me was reigning soprano at La Scala. I’m not sure whether she’d settled on that before or after I’d ditched the “Fort Worth School of Ballet” audition out of fear and terror. My heart was for the stage but more in line with Shakespeare and musicals. I had my fair share of being “en pointe” but I preferred the taps. Tap shoes, that is. Not beer taps.

Whatever I chose, she was committed to it with me (well she was never enthusiastic about jazz classes either).

The point of it all is that as a child, I learned to depend upon her belief in my abilities rather than shoring up a sound and grounded confidence from within.

But what happens when you leave home? You grow (hopefully), you mature (slowly), you begin to make your own decisions, have new experiences where your eyes are opened to fresh ideas, paths that lead you on a journey accompanied by the stark realization that perchance… you’d been snowed.

And suddenly, brick by brick, the walls come tumblin’ down.

Thank God realizations are often like the dawn. Slow and merciful. But not always. They can also round in like a two-by-four from your blind spot.

But based on recent revelations I am the first to advocate for the nice slow dawning.

That said, in the last few years I’ve had an acceleration in awakenings that have led me to double down (nay, triple down, m’Lady!) on a commitment to a spiritual clearing out of the mental junk to which I was never called.

I highly recommend it.

Enter Stage Left, Surprise Deliverance

It happened in the middle of the night. On a zoom call with a friend. We were taking no prisoners. Everything outdated, falsely represented, wounds festering, old haunts old hurts and more must go….

I honestly can’t remember if I’ve written about this, but for about two years I had a prayer partner where we stormed heaven in the night watches. We’d start anywhere from 9pm and ended somewhere between 2 and 5am. We were praying over ourselves, each other and anyone we felt needed it or requested it. It was something neither of us had done before.

But even now, three years later, we are seeing the fruit, sometimes through upheaval, of those nightly spiritual battles.

There’s no way you can commit to that kind of prayer life and not be presented with your rawest self (and its little demons) staring you in the face.

Generational issues came up a lot for us.

On this night I was faced with a severe block, a stronghold that would begin to petrify if something wasn’t done about it. I knew what I had to do. Generally speaking, I’d always known. (I’m being purposely vague here. I’m talking about the overarching super-objective of what direction I wanted to head in life.)

I’m thinking, I know my gifts and talents and the desire God has put on my heart. So what was the problem?

There was something at war that wasn’t about timing or absent “favor” in a spiritual sense. There was a spiritual battle, fighting to keep me in a quandary, stewing forever on decision, even distracting me from decisions I’d already made.

(Ever happen to you?)

I just remember us going and back and forth and back and forth. We were on fire. The spirit alive and searching out our very depths. And by this time in our friendship we were finishing each other’s sentences.

Suddenly a question from my friend shot through the air:

What happened to you when your grandmother died?

The question suspended us both once it had escaped my friend’s lips. What just came out of her mouth? What did we both just hear?

It wasn’t a long pause, but it was a time stopping suspension of movement, of senses. Where will this go? Also, I’m not sure I know that answer to her question. I know something did happen, for here we’ve been led. The question is well placed. Most importantly, it is the right question.

Then with laser discernment and the sharp point of a knife separating bone from marrow, my friend stabbed the lie through its jugular:

You don’t believe you can be successful without your grandmother alive anymore to support and encourage you.

The ball went out of the park.

And a deluge of tears flooded the room. The blood rushing to my red-hot face. (It might also have been a hot flash) but there was a new and undeniable realization (that two-by-four in the blind spot) that I believed my success, confidence, choices, even permission was dependent upon her belief in me. And now that she was no longer here, how could I possibly continue?

Now that I write this, I realize it is a question that so many deal with when loved ones pass on. How can I continue without you here? But, as we are all unique, it germinates differently for everyone.

It is also worth noting that my grandmother/mother wasn’t herself in the last years of her life and whatever communication we had wouldn’t have covered the above topics anyway but that’s not the point.

The point is the belief; what we endow in others and the power we grant them to control our spirit, our choices.

Co-dependency at its devilish worst.

Once the reality hit, so did the spiritual blow-back, the retaliation, the onslaught of orcs and goblins – the seven more demons entering the cleaned attic – the roaches scattering after the light had shone.

It was a lot to unpack. But that’s what we were about out on that watchtower. And unpack we did.

Unpacking The Baggage

What happens when you suddenly wake up to the reality that you’ve been searching for those comfortable, yet destructive, behaviors to bouey you ever since? You wake up, thanks God, seeing with new vision that what you thought was love was masked manipulation. And then you have to unpack to find out where the real love was, hoping they were capable of true love at all. (She was.)

Well. You allow yourself to stay awake. And you begin on your road of deliverance.

Once you see the truth, you cannot unsee it. And that is a grace. It’s also grievous.

But it’s much better to know and to begin the deep work of building that confidence that comes from the Spirit that no one can take from you.

Then you unpack forgiveness. Ah, that word! That volcanic word! But the beautiful part about forgiveness is once you’ve arrive there, you realize you’re finally free. I wonder now, could that be why so many ward against it just when you’re at the edge? Because once you’re free you become a beacon of hope. And now “they” can’t unsee what you’ve accomplished. Freedom (forgiveness) is anathema to those who wish control. They find the light blinding rather than illuminating.

The heart of forgiveness houses freedom.

I can look back and love what Mom did for me and grieve on her behalf what was not done for her. I also have a faith that grants me the grace to know that our relationship still exists. And better than it was. She intercedes for me in that way she could not before. For good. I believe that.

In fact, I believe from the depths of my being that she very recently did just that. I believe she’s doing good work up there. I know it. She knows what true love is now. She’s going to help get me there.

And, in my adult life, I can also have a healthy armor about me now. I know the signs. Well, I’m far better at it. Seeing the signs of control and manipulation covered in sheep’s clothing (i.e. “love”) has come at a cost. I would pay it again. And as I forgive, I am in full control of who gets access moving forward.

You can have a full heart of forgiveness and not grant access. Sometimes that’s necessary. Sometimes it’s not.

And as I delve deeper, I look in the mirror and ask harder self-reflective questions about how I may be perpetuating passed down unwelcome behaviors unwittingly out of habit. Then I think, “No, you’ve come too far for that.” Then I fail. And then I don’t.

Another onion layer is peeled.

When God says he’s making you a new thing, he’s not joking. New means NEW. It is hard, I think, to conceive of what the new thing might be. We can ask but,

I always find that God doesn’t like to ruin surprises.

Deliverance Can Be Volcanic. So Can Becoming a New Thing. Stay the Course.

When the cord (you didn’t know was there) is finally cut. For good.

Enter Stage Left, Surprise Deliverance

Unpacking The Baggage

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