Shaken Foundations

What a year 2018 has been! 

In February we embarked on a journey as an organisation to unpack in the presence of witnesses the quality of what it is that we do as organisations.  It meant a major audit of all our foundational processes.  This meant digging into boxes I had not looked into since I had packed up my office at the church in 2016.   I had to find evidence of work done, important paper work and…

We met with our internal auditor from Connect Network in June and he kept asking for evidence of work done.  This meant digging.  Digging into archives, into old hard drives and… into old heart baggage.  Yes, that was the shocker of the journey.  I had no idea that this year would be a shaking of my own foundation at such a deep level!

I had no idea what the process would do in my heart.

How could it be that we do so much and yet still feel so small.  We do so much but we do not really value it.  The journey has been hard over the past ten years.  The grounding of our organisations was not easy. Not valuing it or ourselves was actually what made us vulnerable to be part of allowing abuse.  My own dance with enabling narcissism in my life was revealed in a way I did not really welcome at the time.  I am highly sensitive… I see things differently and this has often been misused and squandered by me and made me very vulnerable.  I never really valued the gift I bring, because I did not know that it was a gift.   I was doing a dance with control.  It was not an easy revelation.  I struggled to get help in the church for the way forward in my discovery, so I reached out to a trauma therapist.  The best care I have ever got...

As we were going through this process of finding evidence of our worth around being a quality organisation, I was overwhelmed by all the positive feedback.  The encouragement and the dreams our assessors held for our growth.  This in a season when I was trying to be small and hidden.

At the time I was reading the Jesus Bible Story to my foster babies every night.  We are going through it for the fourth time already this year.  I love this Bible Story book as it shows God’s incredible heart to rescue us and how He had planned it since the creation of the world.  God was doing a deep work in my heart.  He was rescuing the performer, He was going hard after my heart… I wish I could say it was easy.  It has been the hardest process!  It has also not been that clear until recently.

These little ones have been with us almost two years already and what a two years it has been as God used them to rescue me with His love.  Yes, rescue us.  We are seen as saints by a few because of what we have done.  We saw this journey as rescuing kids from a life long journey in the system, but God was using them to help us see our life long journey in another system… a system that was killing us.

  

I had no idea that the impact of having these little ones in our lives would shake our internal foundations too. 

The theme of my year has been a rocking of the foundations…

In work, my family and my self!

We got the evidence together and we passed the external audit of organisation that our foundations are good.  Our celebration will be early next year!  

I find myself in therapy and I will continue with it in the new year as I continue to work on my personal foundations and coming to terms with my own cycles of destruction in the past years that were quite devastating.  Brokenness in me was so hard to see sometimes because the operating system is what I used my whole life to just cope…  to run away from my own broken belief systems.

BUT...

through it all I have got a deep revelation of the love of God, the incredible love for me too and not just those around me!

Christmas is coming… and this year more than ever before I am so grateful that God’s love is sensed in our home and in my heart in deeper and sweeter ways this year than any before.  In my revelation of cracked foundations God has poured His love and slowly my drivers that get me into trouble are changing to be all that God called me to be.

I too am lovable… I am moving toward wholeness with stronger foundations.