Letting Go to Let Him In

I have written quite a few posts following Matt's passing. I've used it as a way to cope and as a way to heal. I've used it as a way to vent and voice frustrations so that I didn't hold them inside of me as a cancer to slowly take away the life that I still have.

In Ecclesiastes 3, the chapter opens with the poem on the seasons of life. Most of us know this in some way shape or form: "There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace." Matt's time to die came (Hebrews 9:27 And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment) but I have been reborn. I have wept. I have mourned.  I have scattered the stones of his remembrance. These seasons are literal but also metaphorical.

As I have processed and walked this past month and some odd days day, I get messages asking me how I am doing. Am I ok? For the one's on the outside looking in, they don't comprehend how I am functioning.  They expect me to crack and break under the pressure. They want to see me curled up in bed all day, everyday unable to function. They want to see me fail for whatever reason. If I were relying on my own strength right now, that is exactly where I would be. What you see is not me but my Lord, Jesus Christ as He is guiding my steps.

You want honesty? Well, let me give it to you. Most people do not know my past. If they know me from high school, I was just "one of those Turner twins" that got good grades, was in the band and was a goody-two shoes because I went to church and loved Jesus.  I wasn't in Truth then, went to a Baptist church and did everything right, or so they thought. I pushed boundaries to do the most that I could without getting caught. Please don't take that as I was doing super bad stuff. I wasn't smoking, drinking or doing drugs (yet). What I was doing was in the quiet of the night when I began watching things that I had no business watching and thinking about things that I shouldn't.  Pornography isn't just something that men struggle with and it is not a taboo subject.  All other sins are committed outside the body but sexual sin is within.

My addiction only grew in intensity when there were no boundaries set. There was no abstinence taught but "use protection". When the time came that I submitted to my addiction fully, I found myself in a position that I never thought I would. How could this happen to me? I was the good girl! God, where were you to let this happen to me? Oh, yeah. I had already been "saved" and baptized in the church but here I was as an unwed pregnant woman. I guess you can imagine where this ended up at, a clinic surrounded by a group of protesters as I covered my face in shame as my friend pulled the car to the back of the building.

Following this "procedure" as they called it, I went into a deep depression. Holding true to my addictive tendencies, I began drinking heavily, followed by smoking cigarettes. The sexual addiction did not stop either. Promiscuity was rampant as I was looking for any type of "love" I could get. As the cycle of guys continued, the addiction was not satisfied any longer and I began to search for the next thing: homosexual relations.

I am not sharing any of this to be boastful or prideful at all. As the title says, I'm letting go to let Him in.  Going to the clubs in Huntsville and Birmingham became my church. I went everytime I could and these people became my "family". To this day, I recall 11 people from this time in my life, 2 of which have passed on now. There were hundreds more that I partied with. And when I say partied, it was just drinking, but there was a lot of that.  

My drinking got a whole lot worse during this time. I hated who I was so I drowned my misery with alcohol. I wouldn't party locally so I went to Birmingham.  I would arrive at the club around 6 or 7 when the doors opened and I would leave when they closed the doors. I stopped drinking about an hour before that so I would be clear enough in my head to drive home. 

Then it all changed. I went to a revival service at a local church to hear a preacher I knew from my youth.  I prepared myself for anything that night except what happened.  God was calling to me even in my most messed up state.  I walked away from two of my addictions that night of alcohol and the homsexuality but I left the core intact.

I get into that church and I begin to serve almost immediately. Mind you, I haven't been in church in years at this point but they are willing to put me in a nursery class with infants and allow me to teach Sunday School to 4 year olds. Sounds about right to me, not. Then I leave this church for another because my soul was longing for more.

At this new church, I was just a face in the crowd.  No one knew who I was or anything about my past or my addictions. That is until they began to rear up again. I had started to date this guy and I thought he was the one for me. But we pushed every boundary we could and because of pressure from those around me, I called it quits. Well, this ignited that old familiar spirit within me for pornography and other things so I opened the door once again. This time, the alcohol returned and brought along adultery, another "procedure " due to an ectopic pregnancy, more alcohol, more compromise, followed by an introduction to drugs. It was also in this time that I met Matt. 

I thought that maybe if I got away from where everything was familiar that I would have a chance at a fresh start. I was both wrong and right in that.  After only a few months of dating, Matt proposed. But that didn't stop the alcohol and drugs. It actually opened the door to more drugs. What started with just weed, followed with Xanax bars and footballs and eneded with doing a line of coke.  I am not proud of this time in my life.  December of 2007, we had an early New Years party because we couldn't get off the actual night. That was the last time I put a drug into my body. Matt smoked a joint the night before our wedding on February 1, 2008, and after that he never touched anything else unless it was prescribed to him.

The alcohol was always a constant in our lives though. We would go to dinner and have a drink, or go to the store to buy something for the house. The one day, it was gone. There was not a desire to have a drink any longer. In 2021, we joined our current church and everything I had been searching for opened up to me.

For years now, there hadn't been a desire for alcohol, for drugs, for anything that remotely resembles anything from my past.  Then within the past two weeks, I've had this little nagging voice in my head saying "You're a free woman now. You have wants and needs that need to be satisfied. No one will know if you turn on that show. No one will know if you look at that picture. "  I hadn't told that to anyone, just sitting on it in my mind.  Last Sunday, pastor preached a message about "You've got to do better". I heard the message loud and clear in what he was saying and I left church to come home to "do better". But there it was again, that voice screaming at me.This time it went further and started getting personal in details, things that I knew and the desires within me. Sunday I fought. Monday I fought. Tuesday I was weak and I listened to the voice in my head telling me to turn that show on, no one would know. Within 5 minutes, everything that had been buried for so long came rushing back in like it had never left. I turned off the tv and cried out to God for forgiveness, asking Him to cleanse me, not because I had been "caught" doing anything but because I was truly repentant for having done it. 

Then we had our service Wednesday evening. While I had repented of my sin, I still felt the sting of it pulling at me. I didn't want to worship, honestly I barely wanted to be there because I had messed up. But I had to go, I wasn't going to let the enemy gain victory again.  

While we've had this in-house revival this week, I had to work Saturday evening and was not able to make it to service. I listened though. As pastor taught on the voice of the bully, I knew he was speaking in the Holy Ghost.  I've had that bully talking loudly for two weeks.  I've let the bully be louder that God in my life and I have to change that. When pastor talked about how the bully could only be on the outside of us unless given permission or invited in, then we would have to ask the Holy Ghost to come back in to clear out what we allowed to enter, I got what he was saying.

I know this was really long and not at all like what I usually write.  But tonight I am letting go. I am letting go of everything there is of my past that had not been fully submitted to the power and authority of Jesus Christ. I am letting go of the fear, the doubt that I will never be enough or that I will never be who God intends me to be. I am accepting the fact that I will always be a nobody because it is not me that will accomplish anything but only the power of God at work through me.  Tonight I am letting go and letting Him into my life, fully and completely.  I don't want to be bullied any more. Holy Ghost take control of my life. I give you permission to do all that You have to do to make me who You want me to be.