Hey Joe,

You have my understanding.. and my ear a lot of the times. I have never read anything of yours that offended me, and I do say, that it took a lot of courage to be honest like you have.

I struggle with the same sort of thing that you do among many other things. I will write just a small snippet of my own story to explain. I grew up in an extremely abusive situation. Physical abuse was not constant, but mental, emotional abuse/neglect and an awful lot of sexual abuse were constant. All of which, the baptist church that my second mother took me too knew, but did nothing about. I'm sure the people here have seen the messes that have come out of those situations.

As a result, in my life, I wound up searching religion, found the Charismatics.. or rather they found me LOL. Of course, I fell away from all that, only to have a son, raise him for four years and place him for adoption. That was so painful. I never had any relationships with men, I just slept with them. After my son was gone, and the few Christian men I knew wanted to "help me along in my grief" in the same manner as any red blooded heathen would.. I decided to go for women. Which i did for a little while. I had my nose peirced twice, and several tattooes etc etc.

Then I met my husband. You can imagine, I was very harsh, and very hard hearted. Swore like a trucker.. the whole shebang. I think the bible calls that a "clamorous woman."

Then, four years ago.... the Lord drew me to repentance. I did a full 180. My husband was pretty suprised! LOL. He doesn't like it very much either.

My point is that I still have a real problem with the area of being too strong in my communication. That was usuallyl to cover up extreme sensitivity. That seems to be balancing out now.. but I want nothing more than for God to culitivate in me a gentle and quiet spirit.. yet it alludes me! Another one is one that I wrote in the other thread. I smoke, but God knows I have tried. I finally stopped trying to quit because it was driving me into the ground! I think God has shown me that my reason for smoking has more to do with other things rather than addiction necessarily. But I would rather smoke and not be angry, or so "fist on the table to make a point" kind of person. I am not so much like that now, it is definately getting better.. but I still hate it.

This is probably not what you (Joe) are talking about, but it still comes out the same way eh? LOL.

Anyway.. I feel like it's a big risk to write this, but it's not like I'm telling my neighbor lol. No one in my life knows this stuff for the most part. I think it's a shame that it's not easier to talk about these things in real life. After starting to learn about calvinism/reformed theology, I felt that God directed me to the right thing, and now I am totally interested in how it relates to real life day to day situations.. but it's hard to get there when you can't share. So I guess I am saying I appreciate that you started this thread.

Thanks,
Michele

P.S. I forgot to answer the questions you asked LOL. I have not really sought out proper counsel on these matters since being born again. Whenever anyone hears even just a small part of what has gone on in my life, they are usually too shocked and too overwhelmed to even know where to start. There is SO much more to it than I have revealed here. So I deal with it on my own, and I guess I am failing. But I don't know where to go with it. And I most certainly, and definately absolutely never never ever want to tell anyone that I know that i used to date women! That would get me nice and shunned from any "respectable" social circle! LOL I am deathly afraid of being ignored. That's what would happen.. or I would be patronized. Not goin' there!

Last edited by MHeath; Sun Jan 18, 2004 6:37 PM.