RELEASED

Acrylic and Gold Leaf on Canvas, 2020

A few years back, my husband and I each went separately to a weekend spiritual retreat. My experience was nothing short of life-changing. I was reborn.

Except for one thing—fear. I feared lots of things, but specifically the dark, the unseen, and dark spiritual activity, of which I had experienced and knew to be real. I even went through a stage where I liked horror movies because my ability to watch them and still be able to function brought a false sense of empowerment.

After I came back from my epoch weekend full of love, hope and lightness like I’d never experienced, the reality that my husband was going to be leaving me the following weekend began to settle in. With apprehension, I faced it differently than I would have in times past, now having what to me was proof that someone very powerful cared about me. Night came, I walked up the tall staircase of our old house, climbed in my bed, and faced the all too predictable prospect that darkness WAS GOING to take advantage of this situation. Sure enough, and within seconds, I felt a heavy, oppressive presence enter and fill my room and hover over top of me as I lay on my stomach. It felt so powerful that I knew in an instant there was no fighting it. I was caught up in things in much bigger than me. In the moment I felt it descending, I didn’t struggle...I let go. Instinctively I knew that trying anything would be pointless. I relaxed my body and whispered, “Jesus”. He was my only hope.

That Name had barely left my lips when a force like a massive vacuum sucked the evil presence that I had been pinned under up and away without a trace, and simultaneously a sensation I can only describe as a warm blanket of peace landed all around me in its place. That foul spirit was a literal NOTHING compared to the jealous love of Jesus. He was there in an instant and kicked that liar out with a flick.

Ever since that day I have been free.

Some of you need to let go. You live with fear, in at least one of its many forms, and you don’t have to. But you do need to release your very existence into the care of Love. After all, “Perfect love casts out ALL fear.”

And what is perfect love? There is no higher love than sacrificial love.

Can you claim that? Does it originate in you? Alternate consciousness? How about faith in man? Certainly not. I don’t know about you, but I get annoyed when my husband asks for a sandwich. I am certainly not the source of perfect love, so how could I put my trust there? In whom can you place your trust? To what can you relinquish your destiny and fate and that of those around you?

How about someone that let go more than anyone ever has? Someone who without hesitation laid His life down for the sake of others, most of whom couldn’t have cared less? Furthermore, someone who didn’t have any obligation to do so at all? Someone who performed the ultimate act of perfect love.

Seems like a safe place to me. Seems like the only place.

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