Voice of the Moon Flower
Escape to Freedom: Diary of a Battered Preacher's Wife: Part 1
By: Susan McKenzie A.K.A. Tender Lily
The scorching desert was anything but barren, and it became my classroom for the year 2011. From living in the corner of a hayfield to camping alongside the Big Horn River, it's where I learned to survive… and through trust, to thrive. The desert was better than college and better than ministry school. It's the place where I unlearned most of my life's beliefs and began to build a solid foundation for my life, based on trust in the Creator of the whole universe.
Have you ever felt scorched, barren, and dry? A desert doesn't have to be a literal place, as it was for me!
David, before he was entrusted by God to be Israel's king, was relentlessly persecuted by the murderous King Saul. Chased into the desert where he lived in caves, David practiced his leadership skills with a ragtag army of losers. Moses, who had received a princely education in the courts of Egypt, before he was entrusted with the leadership of a brand new nation, fled for his life to the desert, after killing a man. Paul, before he was entrusted to be an apostle who wrote most of the New Testament, spent solitary years in the desert. Even Jesus, before his public ministry began, spent 40-days in the desert, without food or water.
All of these men grew a backbone in the harsh desert. And I believe that's what God is doing with many of us today.
It makes me wonder how leaders are chosen these days. Most of it is politics, you probably know. Votes. Popularity. Charisma. I graduated from a Christian college and spent almost my whole life in church. I've been a youth pastor, children's pastor, Sunday School superintendent, inner healing and deliverance minister, and a regional coordinator covering 10 Midwestern states. I invested my whole life in ministry, until my life was threatened and I had to flee.
Some people might think I'm writing for its therapeutic value. Some people believe I'm writing out of bitterness, or even revenge. That might have been so, if it hadn't been for the year of the desert.
One day I heard the voice of the Moon Flower.
The Moon Flower taught me a lesson, as I pondered the pain of abandonment.
A Moon Flower thrives in the harshest of climates. It's lush, hardy green leaves never need much watering. It's one of those plants that grows and reproduces anywhere and everywhere, even in gravel. It's one tough flower. Although it requires little care it produces some of the most tender, fragile, and beautiful flowers! The trick is, Moon Flowers only open their tender blossoms after the sun sets. If it weren't for the darkness you would never get to see the shimmering white glow of a Moon Flower!
I asked, "Does God no longer see me? Does He not care?"
As I absently twisted the wedding band on my ring finger, a mental movie replayed in my mind of my evangelist husband slamming his pickup door and yelling his final word, "I have to obey God, and that means leaving you. You love a strange God, different than mine. I won't be coming back."
Word upon word sliced through to the core of my identity, dragging me into an undertow of confusion and pain. With most of our ministry partners fully backing him, it felt like an abandonment of multiplied proportions.
Yet God continued to show up with signs, wonders, and miracles. So the show went on, but I had been pushed off the wagon.
No one knew our full history or what was really happening behind closed doors. We showed up at a healing conference back in 2006, desperate for a miracle, and through the combined prayers of about a thousand people, a severe spinal cord injury in my husband's back was healed.
In less than a month, a film crew made its way from Alberta, Canada to our tiny little town in the mountains of Northwestern Montana. Four months later the film debuted in Toronto and was distributed worldwide. One-year later we were in full-time ministry covering 10-states, at the height of our busiest schedule.
There's so much pressure to perform and to conform, in ministry networks. Even in places where love, grace and mercy are the main ingredients of every speech the abuse continued unabated, back home. I ponder this method of releasing leaders to public ministry versus desert training. Is it true "grace"?
You see, I was threatened to remain silent.
If someone silences you and you comply, it puts that person in control of your life. You are imprisoned. It's "Predator 101" to isolate your victim, to silence her, so that no one hears her cries.
To get free, you have to do the opposite, so I wrote "Breaking the Silence," which was my first step in escaping to freedom. Little by little, I began to glow, opening my heart, even though it was still very, very dark.
People always tell me I'm "strong". Like the Moon Flower, I can thrive in the hard places, but it's what happens in the darkness that causes people like us to shine, shimmer, and glow.
It's about shining in the darkness.
Until we can learn to sing and dance in the dark desert night of life, in the companionship of other survivors, we haven't yet begun to live.
The stars are singing, scientists confirm. Even the rocks have a song. I cannot be silent. I must sing my own song.
David must have written Psalm 19 during his days in the wilderness:
1 The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
2 Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
3 They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.
4 Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.
The Moon Flower taught me that it's okay to open my heart, even in the dark. Even when I don't understand my circumstances, it's okay to risk love again. It's intimacy with God that opens our eyes and ears to hear what is really happening in the world.
There's a desert in our churches today. God's people are perishing for lack of pure water and nourishment…. I believe God is raising up a new army of leaders today, and they are coming out of the desert, leaning on their Beloved, even now!
Song of Solomon 8:5
Who is this young woman coming from the wilderness with her arm around her beloved?
Even though you may be in the desert today, or if you know someone who is facing a time of wilderness, you're not alone, even if you walk a solitary path.
Susan McKenzie knows how it feels to lose everything: marriage and family, church and reputation, finances and businesses, and so much more. In a series of letters spanning more than two decades, God gave Susan "Love from Papa,' through her personal daily journals to help her in exiting organized religion where she had served in duties ranging from pastor, inner healing and deliverance minister, and Midwest regional coordinator for a large international ministry. In the past decade Susan has been applying the truths she learned and is now publishing her journals for the first time.
If you've ever felt you lost your soul in the midst of a "successful" Christian lifestyle, "Love from Papa" is for you! It's a practical guide via stories, poems, dreams and visions all in the context of Susan's real life story and the Bible. You can register to receive the newsletter, "Love from Papa" by entering your name and email below.
Copyright 2012, Susan McKenzie, http://TeamFamilyOnline.com. Permission is granted to copy, forward, or distribute this article for non-commercial use only, as long as this copyright byline and bio, in totality, is maintained in all duplications, copies, and link references. For reprint permission for any commercial use, in any form of media, please contact Susan McKenzie.
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Wouldn't it be wonderful if all the wounded warrior women you know and all the ones I know got together in a huge room! First we would weep, then we would smile, then we would laugh, then we would cheer and then there would be a roar on earth and heaven like no other!
>>>>For 249 survivor: this is the vision I rec'd:
From the movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind'… Richard Dreyfus, near the end, is the chosen one. The aliens (light beings) surround him and hug him and love him. I see that for this women as she writes/testifies: beings of light (angels, the cloud of witnesses, fellow/kindred spirits like us) surround her, accept her, hug her, love her.
Wow, Linda… your vision is huge, powerful… so RIGHT ON! Let’s doing it… seriously!
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