Replies to '01/05 "Am I Cursed?"'

 I'm really surprised to all of the feed back I am receiving and so quickly.  This thread is so ambushed with so many people's thoughts and emotions, I never imagined my post would be noted and touch some people enough to reply.  Thank you.

I am a born again Christian.  I'm sure more than just yourself is wondering about that.  I have a very sincere relationship with the Lord and am not ashamed of it.  I do know how to pray and am extremely aware of spiritual warfare and the false seduction of it.

I grew up in an overly religious home that borderlined cultish activities.  The church that we were attending as a family when I was young and was raped, was a church that was full of manipulations of scripture and a church that had leaders who wanted to press on any accountability.  Very disturbing. 

I have been to many churches since, but never on a regular basis since.  Your senses on me were right about it being a challenge for me to be vulnerable to another body of christ.  I spend most of my faith by keeping it fairly personal.  My own studies, songs of praise and worship, and private prayer.  I have not forsaken my Father throughout my let downs.  I am fully aware that people come with flaws (sin) and in no way was it God's wish for any of those things to take place in his church.

Churches were hard to stick with my whole life.  My mother (errr.... mother spirit of Jezebel) has had her hand in every church and our family moved from one to the next.  My mom always got in cahoots with the pastor and his family, then the elders, then got herself onto the board or on some prestigeous level in her head, then she would tear them down from the inside.  The churches would suffer by what my mother would stir up and what curruption she would reveal to the congragation and move onto the next church.  Interesting way to find Jesus, but I did.  I just don't know how to trust other people in my beliefs.  I feel very secure when it is just God and I.

I will keep a heads up for Dr. Laura's book.  She's a funny cookie, I like!  Thank you for your input.

As for moving onward into the future, I think this is where some of the readers are misunderstanding out of normal ignorance.  Narcissim is very hard to escape.  Think of it like a person who is a conartist, lier, stalker that follows your life, will even bring in the court system to get what they want (like grandparent rights to my children), etc, etc.   It is an ongoing battle to move forward.  Forward usually means, just another day battling the influences of Jezebel.  It is way too hard to explain in a single post.

check out the sight I gave to bible guy.... forget his handle, lol.
Char

This message is in response to Charlie's lifetime struggles with her mother and also to all those people on Dr. Phil's show who are struggling with the devil and his evil angels.  Quite coincidentally my childhood parallels Charlie's in inexplicable ways in terms of many of the details and feelings.  When I read the post I thought that someone was actually writing my story using a pseudonym.    Last year I found the courage for the first time in my life to sit down and write my mother a letter addressing all the hurts and pain she had caused me.  The letter took me over two weeks to write and in the process of writing it I felt I was having a nervous breakdown.  I wept profusely as I described each painful situation and at times the pain I was reliving was so intense and horrific that I had to stop writing for a period.  After I wrote the letter it sat on my coffee table in a sealed envelope for four weeks.  I just did not have the courage to mail it.   I prefaced my letter to my mother by telling her that I was writing to let her know that I forgive her for not being the mother I wanted her to be and that in turn I wanted her to forgive me for not being the daughter she wanted me to be.  The letter had been precipitated by a major blowout we had weeks earlier which left us not speaking to each other and which had been so emotionally destructive to me that I felt I would never again see or have anything to do with her.  In the process of forgiveness it was necessary for me to let my mother know ALL of my feelings about the things she had done to me and permitted to happen to me-  not from the place of recrimination or condemnation of her -  but to set the record straight in her lifetime so that in the event I had imagined these things to be so she could refute them or correct my misconceptions.  I realized that I had to take this step even though it was excruciatingly painful.  If I was never going to associate with her again then I needed to let her know what was in my heart and at the same time to forgive her.  I never expected her to reply to the letter.  Then many weeks later a call came close to midnight.  It was my mother on the other end.  As I heard her voice I felt a wall of defensiveness come up inside me.  I started to anticipate the usual pattern of domineering, controlling, manipulative & bullying behaviour I was used to but to my surprise she greeted me in a soft tender voice and told me that she had received my letter.  I remained silent as she spoke and then she told me that she had read the letter several times and agreed with everything I wrote.  Her question then to me was: "What can I do now?  What can I do now, it's so late, so late."   I wanted to hear my mother say to me: I'm sorry.   I had to resist with everything in me the urge to say to her that this is what she should say to me.  Instead I found the strength to say to her: Thank you for reading the letter and for understanding my pain.  I forgive you and I love you and I want us to begin again.   I had prayed to God for weeks before I wrote the letter because my mother is a Christian and so am I.  Yet we found ourselves caught in a bitter web of negativity that had existed from the day I was born.  One day the Holy Spirit directed me to write to her and to be totally honest with her about everything that had transpired in my life.  This was part of a larger work God has been doing in my life to help me understand WHO I am  and WHY my life has had so many ups and downs that I previously identified as "curses".  I too thought that I was living with a generational curse but I understand now that there are family traumas that get translated over generations as "curses".  There is a formula we need to keep in mind: trauma feeds trauma - my parents were traumatized in their lifetimes so severely that in turn they traumatized their chlldren not because they were bad parents but because they were acting from a place of trauma.  Their lives were wrecked due to no fault of theirs from early childhood - both of them suffered the loss of their own parents at early ages and had to be raised by relatives who abused them and took away their dignity.   I also understand that there is an enemy of our souls - Satan and that he uses his intelligence to kill, hurt and destroy families.  I know now that most of the problems in my life have occurred because I am a co-dependent.  Today, I am a recovering co-dependent and the Holy Spirit has helped me to understand how my co-dependency developed and the dangerous roads it has caused me to travel.  Yes, there is great evil in the world.  There are curses which come on us because of a life of sin.  In Deuteronomy, Chapter 28 God tells us all the blessings that will come on us if we serve Him (verses 1 to 14) and live in obedience to His laws.  Then He describes all the curses that will come on us if we rebel against Him and follow our own understanding rather than lean on His understanding (verses 15 to 68).  The curses are so numerous they quadruple the blessings.  There are also demons - the fallen angels who along with Satan control this planet as we are told in Revelation, Chapter 12, verses 7 to 12.  We are told that Satan and the fallen angels have come down to earth with great wrath and that they will cause interminable woe to the inhabitants.  The good news however is that there is for the born again Christian the protection of the Son of God, Jesus Christ The Messiah because we can overcome attacks from Satan and his demons by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of our testimony (Revelation Chaptter 28, verse 11).  All human beings are subject to the terror and wrath of the demonic realm and this is clearly outlined in many parts of the Holy Bible.  For example, the angel told Daniel that from the time he prayed to God for help his prayer was heard but that he was delayed in coming into the earthly realm to help Daniel for 21 days because Satan was fighting him.  This angel had to be assisted in the fight against Satan by the angel Michael and told Daniel that he would again have to fight Satan and his demons on his way back to the heavenly realm. (See: Daniel Chapter 10, verses 12 to 21).  In the Book of Jude we see that even the Archangel Michael had to rebuke Satan in the name of Jesus (Jude, Chapter 1 verse 9).  In Ephesians Chapter 6, verse 12, Paul tells us that "we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places".  Paul then gives us the formula for fighting against Satan and his demons in verses 10 to 18 of this chapter.  He tells us in verses 10 and 11 that we must be "strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might" and that we must "put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil".  It is sad for those who do not believe that Satan is real or that the fallen angels are real.  The Bible tells us in Isaiah, Chapter 14, verses 12 to 21 that  Lucifer, Satan's original name has "fallen from heaven" and that he "weakens the nations" of earth.  In Ezekiel, Chapter 28, verses 13 to 19 God's creation of Lucifer aka Satan is described as well as Satan's rebellion against God.  These verses describe Satan as "a terror"  and God tells us that he has destroyed the earth by the "multitude of thine iniquities, by the iniquity of thy traffic".  Jesus bore witness in the gospels that He saw Satan fall as lightning from heaven and Jesus himself had to contend with Satan's temptations.  Always Jesus used the word of God to overcome Satan - See Matthew Chapter 4, verses 1 to 11.  We must use God's word, the name of Jesus and the Blood of Jesus to fight Satan and his demons.  We must cover ourselves and our loved ones with the Blood of Jesus.  We must also know God's word and the protection it offers us from generational curses.  In Jeremiah Chapter 31, verses 29 to 34 God promises that if we renounce sin and live righteous lives that He will not pass on the sins of our parents to us - but that each individual will account for his or her sins and that he will pardon all our transgressions and remember our sins no more.  This is the confidence we have in getting back on the right track with God after we have suffered the ravages of sin.  Paul said that he did many things out of ignorance of God's laws.  We do not need to live with gullt, self-condemnation, despair and a sense of wasted lives.  We simply have to turn to God and ask Him to forgive us for our "ignorance" of His laws just as the great apostle Paul did, to renounce Satan and sin and to pledge our allegiance to God and He will make our lives brand new.  This is part of my testimony and I sincerely hope it helps someone.  God has taken me out of the miry clay, redeemed me from sin and given me the great opportunity to be a witness for Him by being a disciple of His Son, Jesus Christ.  I have had a long journey - through many religions including mysticism - but praise be to His name I am now a devout follower of my Lord and Master Jesus Christ.  It is not easy and daily I must contend with the forces of evil but I resist and gain strength by prayer, reading my bible and creating links with the people of God through attending Church and utilizing every opportunity I can to glorify God. 

  

May the peace, blessings and love of God be with each and every one of you and may you all come to know that Jesus is Lord and ask for his divine protection and the covering of  His blood.  Nadira Jordan