Crazy ninja

This is another one of my "processing my life" posts. Hey, I didn't even know that my family was abusive until I was in my mid 30s. So, I've kinda had a lot of baggage to work through.

"When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take care of me." (Psalm 27:10)

Earlier today, I heard a neighbor yelling and cussing at her kids outside. I believe she was telling them to watch their mouths. Hmm. I wonder where they get it from. But I hope and pray that those kids won't need as much therapy as I did.

Sometimes when I think about my past, I get hit with a strong sense of "Wow, that was so wrong." Lately as I've been thinking about stuff, I've realized that my birth mother was crazy. Seriously, in a bad way. All my life, I thought my birth father was the basketcase and my birth mother was the cool one. But I think they were both just crazy, especially Mom.

Dad was extremely socially awkward. He essentially grew up without a father, and he was often left to himself. His idea of fun as a kid was memorizing the glossary in the back of his Spanish textbook over the summer. As an adult, even into his senior years, he was incredibly immature. He was always nervous and anxious, he was excessively critical, he had a hair-trigger temper, he would talk badly about well-meaning people as a recreational activity, and once or twice I even saw/heard him yell at retail employees from across the store in Hebrew so that they wouldn't know what he was saying. I think he could function in society only because 1) he was a pastor who everybody looked up to and 2) we all enabled him. And although to my knowledge he has never been diagnosed by a mental health professional, I'm sure he has at least one mental health issue that probably requires medication.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with having some mental health issues (as long as you don't ignore them) or being incredibly quirky and nerdy (OK, so I take after him). But Dad was a Pharisee and a major spiritual abuser. He was very patronizing, he would force his beliefs on you, and His obsessive personality wouldn't rest until you would agree with him. His mouth would speak until it would run out of words, and he cared more about his ideals than he did about actual people.

After I went off to college and God was finally able to get through to me (away from the din of my house), I was baptized in the Holy Spirit and was never the same. My relationship with God grew very dramatically. But going home during holidays and summers was torture. Cessationist Dad would corner me and try to deprogram me as if I had joined a cult. After he would leave the room, he would come back and verbally lay into me again for about 20 minutes. How could I have fought back? I'm not a debater.

In retrospect, even though my father was a monster, my mother -- the cool one -- was much worse... because she was attracted to him and his issues.

She told me that early in their dating relationship, Dad took her through a "Four Spiritual Laws" tract. (OK, if you feel the need to witness to somebody while you're dating them, you don't need to be dating them.) In retrospect, I really don't think she was ever saved.

The way Mom raised me was kind of backwards. Nowadays I see everybody's first-day-of-school photos on Facebook. Some parents even take some time off from work so that they can help their kids transition into the new school year. And that's the way it's supposed to be -- I get it now. Because that's not how it was with me.

I never remember my parents taking pictures of me on the first day of school. I never even remember them walking me to the door or to my classroom. For kindergarten, Mom insisted on keeping me at home. (From what I understand, the law back then didn't coerce parents to send their kids to kindergarten.) Apparently, I missed all kinds of important kindergarten life lessons, because when I got to the first grade, I didn't even know what a "line" was.

You want to hear what I remember about my first day of school -- ever? I didn't know what to do when it was time for lunch, so when all the other kids went through the lunch line, I ended up eating the snack that Mom had packed for me that day instead. (From what I can remember, it was a bologna sandwich and an oatmeal cream pie. That is comfort food for me to this day.) Then when it was time to get in line to go home, I didn't realize that school was dismissing for the day, so I left my book satchel inside my classroom, and then I had to bug somebody to let me back into the classroom so that I could get it. Then I got on the wrong bus, and I had to bug the bus driver to drive me home.

Thanks, Mom and Dad. Way to make sure I got where I needed to be.

Later that year, I came home from school one day, but nobody was home. I was left outside alone with no key and no one to comfort me but my dog, who was on the other side of the fence. After several minutes of that, Mom, sister, and grandpa waltzed into the front yard from a shopping expedition, and Mom cheerfully didn't think my temporary abandonment was a big deal at all.

But my soul thought it was a big deal. God thought it was a big deal, too, because He kept bringing it up years later during Freedom-ministry-type stuff. Come on. You can't treat a first-grader like that.

I wouldn't be surprised if Mom had some sort of Aztec child-sacrifice stuff going on in her family history somewhere... because it manifested itself in various ways, at least with me. For instance, when I got sexually harassed/non-rape-raped/abused/whatever you want to call it at church by two separate men, she did nothing to stop it. (She told me to keep quiet because Dad had a big mouth.) When Dad would spiritually abuse me, she not only did nothing to stop it, but she also supported it and contributed to it. (And she forced me to stop donating my own money to Compassion International.) When I tried to get saved when I was 8 years old and Dad neglected to help me with the salvation prayer, Mom didn't even try to make sure I was saved. (But she and Dad didn't have a problem pressuring me to get baptized a couple of years later.)

Yes, I grew up in an abusive home. There were even a couple of times when each of my parents, on separate occasions, touched me inappropriately -- nothing that would have gotten them arrested, but enough for me to wonder WHAT THE HECK while I was processing through all this crazy stuff years later. Oh, my gosh. I was raised by wolves.

Like Dad, Mom was definitely a Pharisee. She was a compulsive liar and deceiver who only cared about looking good in front of other people. The thing that she would get the most excited about -- the thing that would really get her fired up -- was talking badly about people behind their backs. The only time I would see her praying was during meal times and at church. The only time I would see her reading her Bible was on Saturday nights while she was preparing to teach a Sunday School lesson. Even when she sat with me one time at a college church service, she complained about feeling sick, and I offered to pray for her; she laughed at the idea.

Years later when I was praying for her, God gave me the impression that He didn't even know who she was.

But before that, I learned that one of the desires of her heart was to be a surrogate mother for her grandchildren. When she had a hysterectomy, what bothered her the most wasn't the instant menopause; it was the fact that she would never be able to bear her own grandchildren. Words cannot even do justice to describe how much that grosses me out.

So... in addition to having a soul-squeezing grip on her own children... and marrying an overgrown child... her identity was so wrapped up in being a mother that she even wanted to be the birth mother for her own grandchildren. I'm sorry, but that's crazy. That's just plain sick, in a bad way.

The spirit of Jezebel had such a strong hold on my family -- and God knew it -- that the only way for me to escape it was to leave the family. God knew that that ninja-like spirit had infiltrated my soul, hooked onto it, and had been spewing its death inside me all my life. (And that crap took a very long time to uproot and clean out.) He knew it, and He tried to tell me to leave in my early 20s, but I didn't do it. And I regretted it.

But even after I finally obeyed God in my mid 30s and left the family -- who didn't even acknowledge that there had been any abuse -- some of the people around me supported my decision... but others acted like leaving my family was a bad thing. One friend even suggested that my parents could have helped me through my depression. Um, HELLO! They were kind of a huge reason why I had been depressed in the first place. Seriously -- ME leaving MY family was a bad thing? How would you know? You weren't there. You didn't live through what I went through. You can't just throw a Bible verse in my face about honoring your father and mother. Have you even read the entire Bible?

"As snow in summer and rain in harvest, so honor is not fitting for a fool." (Proverbs 26:1)

"A scoffer seeks wisdom and does not find it, but knowledge is easy to him who understands. Go from the presence of a foolish man, when you do not perceive in him the lips of knowledge." (Proverbs 14:6-7)

"Serpents, brood of vipers! How can you escape the condemnation of hell? Therefore, indeed, I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes: some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city..." (Matthew 23:33-34)

See? It says other things, too.

This holiday weekend marks the fifth anniversary of me officially disowning and disinheriting myself from my birth parents. That was the hardest thing I've ever done... and yet it's been one of the most freeing things I've ever done. I definitely couldn't have done it without God's help, and I also don't think He would have entrusted me with so much responsibility in His Kingdom now if I had allowed such bad influences to remain in my life (and possibly influence my current decisions).

As always, my God is in the business of redemption. Perhaps in the way that the devil intended for "crazy" to infiltrate my life and ruin it forever, God has been redeeming my "crazy" and using it for His purposes.

In addition, several people in recent years have called me a "ninja." I kinda show up out of nowhere and either take care of business, punch the devil in the face, or just avoid danger altogether. (Yes, I'm short in stature. Have you ever seen a tall ninja?) In terms of ninja-like reflexes, I hope I've learned from the Best.

"Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel." (Isaiah 7:14)

"So all those in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath, and rose up and thrust Him out of the city; and they led Him to the brow of the hill on which their city was built, that they might throw Him down over the cliff. Then passing through the midst of them, He went His way." (Luke 4:28-30)

"Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. Therefore be wise as serpents and harmless as doves." (Matthew 10:16)

Jesus is the ultimate Ninja. He skillfully maneuvered through life on earth in a completely sinless fashion that now enables me to live life on earth in the way that His Father intended for me all along. He infiltrated this world as the Savior of all humankind by being born of a virgin. He stealthily slipped through a crowd that once tried to prematurely kill Him. And when He sent out His disciples to preach the gospel, He instructed them to be little ninjas, too.

God still leads me through this life in a ninja-like way. My birth parents didn't have anything to do with me getting saved; God made sure that I got saved all by myself, just me doing business with Him, without any help from them. When I permanently separated myself from my family, I followed God's very specific instructions that involved me not seeing them in person and not having any chance to change my mind. Today, I tithe every time I get paid, and I give whenever God leads me to, and He keeps the Malachi-3 devourer the heck away from me. And I honestly have no idea how I made it to 40 without getting married or pregnant, but here I am -- single and totally independent from man, totally dependent on God.

I think wherever the devil intended for my "crazy" to lead me down a road of death and mental anguish, God has been using my "crazy" for His purposes. I think wherever the devil intended for me to live a life of ninja-like lies and deception, God has been turning those plans against his dark kingdom. (Yes, God has taught me to adapt through all kinds of circumstances. Have you ever tried to hit a moving target?)

I mean, in order to be a pastor, you kind of have to be a crazy ninja.

You have to be a little crazy to want to shepherd and help people who don't respect you. You have to be a little crazy to want to grab a microphone, stand in front of a camera, and lead church music in front of thousands of people. You have to be a little crazy to follow a God who you can't see and just go wherever He goes.

It helps to have ninja-like reflexes to engage in spiritual warfare against principalities and powers whose sole purpose is to steal, kill, and/or destroy you. It helps to have ninja-like reflexes to live a life of holiness in this world that is hell-bent on distracting you and yanking you off your chosen path. It helps to have ninja-like reflexes to dodge terrible advice from well-meaning church people while you're trying to seek and find God for yourself.

And I'm still learning how to do all of that. But it's been five years since the air has been clear enough for me to finally try.