So, a Recent Confession. A Recent Re-Structuring of a Story in my Life.

Sigh. Where have I been? Sit back and grab a coffee - this is a long one.

June 23rd 2022

I want to begin keeping track of important thoughts, Bible readings, and certainly lessons. And yesterday afternoon in the pool with Teresa, the lightning strike, that literal lightning bolt to my heart seems like a very good place to start.

The storyline is.... as we were in the pool just chatting about You God, there were two young gay men. So clearly lost. So clearly being “out” and living their “civil rights”.

I recognized myself in so many sub stories and backstories: “we're not hurting anybody”, “why do you care who I love”, “I am such a good person, such a good citizen of the planet why would this bother you!”, "love is love". These boys, with their female top, and multi colored hair were not made of the things I was made of.... But I could recognize so much of my own story there.

So, I was speaking with Teresa and telling her that in my life, at that age, I said no one ever ever ever spoke to me about Jesus. No one ever spoke to me about God.

My heart blew open with a new awareness.

I was startled, and so ashamed with the new vision of this old story. A story I've shared 1000 times. I was so grateful that my trusted and dear friend Teresa was a witness and could hold me in this moment. Hold the energy. Hold up, witness, honor the cracking of my very foundation and the very unraveling of what I had considered my reality for so long. Here is the story.

Coming off the success of Community Solutions I had nearly $1,000,000 in the bank. I was thin and healthy and looked good. I was young. And I had made this money at home, in other words in North Carolina in front of my family. By most standards all of those are big wins. And then as I tell the story (which in and of itself is in indeed a fun story to tell)...it is different...because now I see it all as God's grace running through my hands and feet in my creativity, and not just me. Not just Lisa. Not just ego - anyway so I had big success creating my company - Community Solutions/ Entergy energy group.

This story I'm trying to tell right now.... God had blessed me with 360 degree success. The kind of thing I spent years praying for, meditating on, writing journals and vision boards, doing shamanic drumming and any kind of brain wave release so I could be successful and stop worrying, stop needing money.

(I have to do a timeline in my life to realize when this was but it must have been after I was back from Europe, yes it was.... I came back to my brother Brian and his family's house broke but on the other side of memories. That's right. Even in Europe I have a story of my manufacturer trying to steal my Mexican food business. It's never ending. No I shouldn't say it's never ending, it's ended now: but these stories of the past again and again I say I break the curse over me. I break any family curse and wrongdoing my family might have done that is inside my storyline.

And I break the curse of deep fear a failure, or poverty or just whatever it may be inside me. I claimed the Kingdom of Jesus. I claim all riches are mine because I have the Kingdom of Heaven. I am so changed on this now. Even as Teresa and I begin opening our hearts and our prayers towards a business idea.... Anyway I break all chains in the power of the name of Jesus Christ. Simply trying to tell a story is like the unraveling of God trying to reach me my whole life.)

OK! So, I had been successful. I had money. And I wanted to sustain it.... I wanted it to turn it into something that would cause me to never be without money again. And I knew I was creative, so I hired a team of people around me to help turn this creativity into something. My next business or idea or expansion of Community Solutions. I knew I was gifted I just didn't know how to channel it and I didn't really want to be alone with it.

So, I hired Bill and his team. I cannot for the life of me remember Bill's last name. But I was so struck by his grace, his internal power, kindness, and just everything about him. He was probably 10 years older than me, but generationally seemed much older. So, this team was hired to meet with me once a week and let me just spit out ideas and talk about things, connect dots and be excited and then they were to help me mold it into a “real business”. Really a dream for me. It's exactly what I would love to do. Even today.

I was struck by Bill. And I asked him... privately one day just quietly: “what is it about you that I see? You are man of such a different kind of quality here.... what is it I see in you?” Literally it was some sort of direct question like that because his answer was simple: “Jesus Christ.”. And I said take me to church. Take me to Jesus - I'm interested to have what you have. What a dream for all Christians....to have someone come and say I see it in you and I want it for me. (I have heard this two times this year, Praise God. May I be worthy of a close-up view from them both.)

So that Sunday, all dressed in my colorful flowing clothes and turquoise jewelry... I met him up at his church in Raleigh NC. I could not have stood out more. Mostly white church, the women literally had beehive hairdos and very drab muted colored clothing, high necked and long skirts. I guess it was some sort of Pentecostal church although the men and women sat together because I sat with Bill.

It was summertime, and their pastor was gone on some trip, some mission, some vacation somewhere. I don't know... but there mostly was just worship music and then some sort of altar call - which I did not know at the time that's what it was and I felt called up front. I was eager to come up front and just started praying and I ended up speaking in tongues! I had peoples' hands on me. I was surrounded by everyone. I see that in churches now that I attend. I was the new one, I was the one all of this God energy was channeled into! And I loved it. I just loved it. I hugged Bill and his wife, and I just said thank you thank you. And left to go back to my brother's to share the news. Of course, that was a mistake. But that's an entire other story.

So, when I saw Bill at “work” the following Wednesday I pulled him aside from his team - there were two other people - and anyway I just told him it had stayed with me and I couldn't wait to go next Sunday if that would be alright. So we did.

Next Sunday there I am again, all colorful and excited and animated like I am. And the women were coming up this time and talking to me much more and letting me know about "proper" ways to dress in God's house, they were very kind but very specific. I was not appropriate for God's house.

I can hear a collective in-take of breath - but somehow, somehow this did not bother me. I just said: "Well, this is how I dress and this is me and I think God loves me a lot" - something like that. I mean I wasn't disrespectful towards them, and at the same time this did not level me or engage me into a fight. It didn't turn me away from the church. It was as though I looked over their heads to what I felt was coming for me next, at the service... I mean I could not wait!

I just turned away from the legalism I guess, of their church. I mean I just dismissed it as a problem of any sort. Again, kind of innocent, and totally unaware, I wasn't seeing how this might have repercussions on Bill... who was someone who was of import at the church but much more importantly was somebody who brought this person into the church. Yet, I was a mystery to them as well because I was so overcome and so infilled by the Holy Spirit. I didn't know that at the time. I didn't know that's what was happening with me but clearly God had entered me right in front of them - even when my clothes weren't right and I had on too much jewelry, and I seemed so reckless and uninformed to them all. Yet clearly I was touched by the Holy Spirit.

I will never forget that feeling of God in me like that.

So, we have another great week of work in my life, and I am wondering about this God thing period this church thing. This Holy Spirit thing. This Pentecostal thing. Only I'm wondering all by myself.... not comfortable, not self-empowered enough at all to talk to my family and that's all I had there. That's why I was in North Carolina, trying to be around family.

So, the third Sunday I met Bill eagerly at his church. And this time, the pastor was back. This time, there was unsettlement in peoples' seats and energy in the church that was not there before. When I look back I think perhaps... the core group of women who were trying to tell me something, who I had listened to, but just said OK but that's not me, that they felt dismissed. Or disrespected. Certainly, certainly beyond any doubt they had spoken of me to their pastor before this service.

I also remember now that Bill's wife was not sitting with us that day. Perhaps she was avoiding the oncoming Tempest. Perhaps as his wife, she was to be of the women who were to advise me and had failed to in the eyes of others. Gosh I wish I could step into that day with this open heart I have now and speak to all of them, respectfully and with kindness and awareness. I wonder today what THEIR story is of this day.

So, within seconds the pastor was looking directly at me in the middle of the row halfway back on the right hand side. He was talking about the world being under so much strife because of abortion, and gay rights, and the women's lib movement, and most especially homosexuality. Now I did not look like a gay woman. I mean I did not comport myself or dress myself in a way that signaled that, perhaps unless you were gay. My point being I was “dressed up for church”.

Anyway,  he never broke his eye contact with me as he was spitting out his venom of what felt like hatred. It was very unfriendly and try to imagine a pastor speaking loudly and gesticulating as a Pentecostal pastor would do, but never breaking eye contact with one single person in the church audience. That was me... and I remember cocking my head to one side, and just feeling “challenged”. And I leaned over to Bill instead and said -  I'm so sorry I have to go, and just simply got up and had to excuse myself here and there for five or six people to get out to the aisle and leave. It was very public. It was a big deal.... All as the pastor was still speaking behind me now about the state of the world and the demonic spirits inside people and how we better get right with God - each piece of that was directed at me.

So, I have always shared this story from the standpoint of Lisa, (ego) being open and aware and drawn to the goodness in someone else. When he said what you see is Jesus Christ that I did not skip a beat and said take me, show me, share with me. That's a good story. And it's not untrue.

And I have always mocked this church, the women, and this pastor because after all here was a eager soul - who cares how I dressed! - an eager soul wanting to know Jesus intimately. And clearly, I had had communion with the Holy Spirit in front of everybody two Sundays in a row. And somehow in my storytelling I was sharing how I, Lisa (ego) had just been so “open” that I could just let the Holy Spirit in me! I could just speak tongues and didn't even know what it was. And I have always closed this story by telling how Bill and I went to lunch on Monday the next day, at Red Lobster. I'll never forget Red Lobster. Isn't that odd? How that is so in my brain when I can't remember Bills last name.

We had chatted Sunday afternoon, on our land lines because there were no cell phones yet - and shared that it was an uncomfortable moment, and said let's get together immediately and address it. I love that about him and I love that about me. So, lunch tomorrow.

And in mid bite, as he dipped a piece of his lobster tail in that fake drawn butter... as he asked me why I felt I needed to leave I was looking at him and simply said “well Bill, I'm gay.”

Now I've always told this story, I have always closed this story about this luncheon... about how Bill said to me, shocked, “you have given me things to consider.” something like that. I pray today that I never gave him a second to doubt his faith. But I think that's what happened in that moment because he loved me so much, respected me so much, I shook his paradigm of what gay people are so much that he was in a tailspin. I've always told the story how Lisa (ego) shocked this great man of God into reconsidering homosexuality.

So now let me come back to June 22nd 2022 in the pool with Teresa. Yesterday.

God pierced my heart with a lightning bolt. The new lens. The God lens I pray to see everything through. 

So, my story now is that unaware of God in my life, unable to hear a man from the pulpit calling me out to change my life..... but able to hear a man who is soothing my ego invite me to some goodness, some good thing I did indeed see in him.....now my story is that Satan used me. He used me to embarrass Bill by leaving church that day. He used me too, that I would cause him, Bill, concern and perhaps even confusion. My mind draws a blank to any follow up conversations or how our business was.... (I don't know what happens to my memory.)

But I know we did not work together much after that if at all. But I know it was friendly. But I know I had caused deep concern in his heart. I will have to be silent for a while and see if I remember him speaking to me further about homosexuality because what I remember is me changing him. What I remember is me stunning him with all he did not know. Not at all receiving.... what I did not know.

I wept last night. I prayed forgiveness right there in the pool with Teresa yesterday and I meant it. Then I knew this morning the first thing I wanted to do was to begin writing down my stories, and writing down how God is affecting my life. Writing down where I have sinned and fallen so short of the mark and how God loves me anyway. In writing down where God has been with me in my life every step of the way even when I so crassly, and boldly make a stupid statement like “no one ever talked to me about Jesus”. 

The devil is a liar. He is still a liar.

Holy Father, my Father, I'm so grateful for Your son. I am so grateful that You love me beyond anything I can ever do that is so wrong and so allied with sin, and aligned with Satan. I cry and I beg forgiveness even as I know it is already granted. I never want to take that so lightly that I don't own it and feel it and make critical note in my own life story so that I may change at my root. At the iniquity of my life. At the root of stories and failings, disguised as successes especially, that have served me even to this day to “Miss You”. I know You are in my life, guiding my life, and I know You have always been here. This is evidenced by a story of my life from over 20 years ago. And I know that in every story You are laced through it in ways that I've never given credit and I promise to reevaluate everything every time.

God I'm so sorry. I'm just so sorry I have fallen so short so many times. I pray that as I venture into new business, and a new time in my life that I only listen to You and I'm guided by You. I pray that You support and guide me to the things I should be working on and that I am humbled by Your greatness and Your grace and Your patience with me. I'm humbled by everything You have given me.

I repent,  openly and deeply and publicly, of this ego that Satan has given me that has blinded me. And I have all the stories in my life to say why I have become this woman I've become, all these great excuses etc:  I just dropped my story God, I drop it right at Your precious feet.

I already know You forgive me. I am already working on forgiving myself. I want the fruit of this awareness to yield a new time in my life as Teresa and I begin this ideation of a business. For the Kingdom. Everything for the Kingdom. I want the fruit of this awareness to yield a new gentleness and deference in my business with my partners in Houston and Andy. With everything You invite me to take on I promise to pray, I promise to come to You first, I promise to ask for guidance. I promise to ask for humility. In Jesus holy name, I sit here grateful today with a further evaluation, and the retelling, and the recentering of this story. You have been with me always and I have been prideful, and I have not seen You. I am grateful... AMEN.