Losing My Mind, Finding My Soul

Into The Garden I Go

What you are looking at is the old doorway to the original garage built on my property that was demolished a couple of years ago. I couldn’t part with the door so now it stands in my garden between two of my neighbor’s trees protecting an imaginary gateway between what appears to be death and life. I say that because as you look at this photo, one tree is dead and one is alive.

This depicts perfectly where I have existed for about 2 years with the worst of it being in the last year.

Let me share with you what has happened.

I’m here now, as The Kindling Stars At Dusk and no, you are not losing your mind, this Substack used to be called An Enemy Of The Lie however I have made some massive changes and one of the things that went out the door were my YouTube channel (also called An Enemy Of The Lie) and the name of this Substack.

I needed to make some changes.

I needed to leave some things in my past and move forward.

The result of that was the deleting of 4 years of videography and photography on my YouTube channel that I worked hard to create and nearly killed myself trying to maintain. For 4 years I was An Enemy Of The Lie and while I am still wholly against liars and deceivers, I am no longer, as of a few weeks ago, the self-appointed destroyer of them.

It’s funny the lessons you learn in your faith walk. Oh I could spout proudly how I had given is all over to God to handle yet day after day I took up arms against the people in my past and found new and different ways to fight in a knock down, drag out, eye for an eye battle.

Now, while it looks like I lost that battle because I left behind what amounted to my life’s work, the truth is, and I feel it to my core, I actually won that battle (really, it was many battles but the last was the worst) though I have serious wounds that I am licking and I’ve been in my cave recuperating from some stupid moves on the battlefield. I say “stupid” not to insult myself rather I say it in honor of the last of my blinding need to call out the liars and deceivers. To honor this part of myself who was trained and programmed to fight to the death, I label the final moves “stupid” in order to make clear that what I was doing was sometimes thoughtless and often careless and didn’t end in victory and most importantly was a tool of the enemy—the very enemy I thought I would win against.

I write with such a flourish because this battle wasn’t casual rather it was spiritual and serious and included all of the usual players in spiritual battles. While I know I had God on my side, I can tell you that He knew the bigger battle plan and it didn’t include me reigning victorious over Satan.

That’s not my job.

That job belongs to Jesus

and it’s playing out on a battlefield far bigger than the one I stepped onto 4 years ago on my channel.

At the time I was admittedly angry and admittedly certain that somehow it was going to be Me (me me me) that took out the pedophiles and controllers that had run my life for most of my life. I was certain I somehow had it within me to stand toe to toe with the devil and win and I found out, because I currently bear the wounds, that God has plans for me that do not include drawing a sword against the devil. God’s plan currently includes a new phase of deeper healing and a humbling I knew inside I needed but was to self-involved to fully accept.

So, as the sign on my door in my garden says:

And I enter into my garden, into this new healing process, a changed and humbled woman and I leave behind a battlefield strewn with all that I have lost while I took on what I shouldn’t have, but needed to, in order to grow in my faith and become stronger in my life.

I formally welcome you now to:

The Kindling Stars At Dusk.

I chose this name out of a book that is over 100 years old and it was written to help struggling writers come up with ideas to write about. I’d read books like it before but never one over a hundred years old and I can tell you that what that book suggests for someone like me, a wounded writer who is finding herself, are things we don’t even think about anymore because we have evolved into people who are unnoticing of the little things, sometimes self-centered and often rushed.

The Kindling Stars At Dusk are those first stars in the night sky (much like the first sparks that ignite your campfire in a darkened night in the mountains) that remind you that even though you are about to enter into the night and it will be dark, that God has provided light for your path and He is always there if only you will just look up.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash