Kitty Crenshaw's Blog

Letters From Betty

Dear Ones,

There is within us all this strong desire for the freedom to live and be whole, but it takes enormous courage and discipline to make the choice to trust God and do the difficult work this requires. Taking those initial steps toward change can be so frightening and painful that we often quit before we have a chance to experience any healing. The old voices in our heads tell us it won’t work, things will only get worse, and we’re wasting our time. The new voice in our hearts tells us that if we don’t change, we won’t grow. So dare to let go, trust God, and make the choice to change, regardless of how hard it is.

Change and growth are synonymous. We have a choice, and our choice is critical because it is either life-giving or life-draining. Failure to dare to change keeps us trapped in old behavior patterns that obviously haven’t worked, so why not take a chance on trust? Old behavior patterns are so hard to break because they are deeply rooted in our childhood wounds. The more we develop new behavior patterns, though, the easier the work becomes, and we slowly begin to see our lives bear fruit. We feel better physically, so we begin to feel better emotionally. When we feel better emotionally, our self-esteem and self-confidence begin to spark within us a new desire for life.

In my own work of moving against depression, it took me a while, but I slowly realized that the very thing I didn’t want to do in my recovery work was usually the very thing I needed to do. I deeply believed that God would help me get well, but I began to see that to be well and whole I had to accept the struggle of change. I had to truly trust Jesus as the savior of my broken self.

The suffering way of Jesus is willingness, acceptance, and trust. As Jesus lived, so are we to live; trusting that new life flows out of the choices we make and all that we let go of. It takes a great willingness to choose to surrender all of our sorrows, all of our needs, and all of our fears and trust the intimate love of a very present God. But if we will choose this descending way of humility, we will find our way to freedom. I know this is so because I have experienced it.

May the Source of Love fill, inspire, and bless you as you make the choice for life. ~Betty

(Excerpted from The Hidden Life Awakened pp 91-92.)

October 27

When the work of our preparation, process, and perseverance begin to merge, we gradually become aware of the breathtaking reality of the Holy One in the depths of our soul and in all creation. ~Betty

The Hidden Life Awakened p147.

The Two Inescapable Tomb Times

Edvard Munch. Melancholy. Art Museum of Bergen.

I am alone, waiting in the tomb. There is nothing else I can do. I try to believe the darkness and stillness here will allow something new to be resurrected on the other side of my melancholy, but I can’t feel it now. My wounds are still visible, and I will carry the scars. Nevertheless, I set my heart on the reality of heaven and trust the whole story, not just the page I am living.

From The Hidden Life Awakened:
“Our Lord endured the darkness of the tomb, and we, too, must go through our times in the tomb in some way and at some point in our lives. During our younger years, we may be entombed by debilitating depression, painful circumstances, or compulsive running to avoid pain. Often we are moving so fast that we are not even aware we are in the tomb until we suddenly wake up in the darkness. We become completely depleted during this time because we burn so much negative energy fighting the fear of what we are experiencing.

We need to shift our focus and accept that this season of darkness is truly a time of preparation, a stilling. Acceptance of this ‘not-knowing’ brings forth a complete transformation of self if we will trust it. Its purpose is purification and purgation and leads ultimately to freedom—freedom to finally be who God created us to be, to love and live in God, and to be filled with God. If we will trust the darkness and the silence, God will allow the seeds of our false self to die enough for Him to send up a little sprout of new life. It takes a long time for a tree to grow to its fullness, but as it emerges from the darkness, it offers shelter and beauty to the world.

The way of trust lies through Gethsemane and Holy Saturday. We move from Good Friday to Easter Sunday, omitting Holy Saturday—the tomb. Every phase of our Lord’s life and every aspect of His death speaks to us if we will open to it. Divine obedience was lived out at the Last Supper, accepted at Gethsemane, accomplished on the cross, and perfected alone in the darkness of the tomb. Our assent to time in the darkness is so often the missing link in our lives. The wilderness of our suffering is not just a place of darkness and temptation. It is the place of our transformation through which the false self must move. It is the place of conversion where the emotional pain of a lifetime, stored in the unconscious, is revealed and gradually let go of. This is not a time of separateness, although it may feel that way; it is a time that links us to the Eternal. It is in walking through the darkness that we learn to discern the voice of the Beloved and receive the grace of interior resurrection and the capacity for divine union. All things grow in darkness and silence. There are hidden depths that only the Spirit can reach. It is a hidden life.

The diminishment of the aging process takes us back into the tomb—only now, the tomb is our decaying physical body. If we have not done our work of dying to our ego in the first tomb time, the aging process will humiliate it to death in this very difficult season. The beautiful reality, though, is that if we have done our work, we find that we can enter the second tomb in complete freedom and abide there with the One we have been searching for all our life. Now, at last, we are at rest, free of everything that kept us so fragmented and distracted in our younger years, and we become totally absorbed by Him, with Him, and in Him. As Paul says, ‘Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.’ 1

The icing on the cake is that all we have offered to others during our years between the tombs is given back a hundred-fold. It is impossible to feel lonely in this second tomb time because our communion with God is so deep now. The sweet thing is that all of those we have ministered to and offered our love to go with us into the tomb in spirit and love and are a part of us forever. Now it is their time for ministry—to call others home to the heart of the Father—and our prayers sustain them in their trials and encourage them to persevere. All this rich, warm, intimate love goes with us into the tomb of aging and on into eternity, where we are always in communion with God. We are connected through Christ to one another forever. This is the joy and richness of the communion of saints. This is ministry that blooms into eternity.

Our spiritual journey is a love affair. It is a leaning into God, listening longingly for His heartbeat. Our breathing becomes synonymous with the Breath of Life and brings harmony with the divine flow of life. It is a transcendent resting in, being with, and living in the Presence all the time. It is all about acceptance. Are we willing to face the darkness of the tomb? If we are, God finally grants us the wonderful opportunity to look back at our lives—and retrospect is such a beautiful view—and say, ‘Aha! So this is what that was about!’”
The Hidden Life Awakened pp210-213.

October 13

We cannot come to the altar in conflict.~Betty

The Hidden Life Awakened p159

Will You Absorb The Angry Arrows For Love?

Pierruse. Henri de Touluse-Lautrec.

You are crushed. You didn’t see it coming. It is unfair and unforgivable. You are hurt and confused. You deserve an apology. You beg God for justice, but the reply comes—Forgive. But there is no way to forgive when there is no apology, and the injustice is so painful.

Jesus says, “I am the way.” The wholly Innocent One, falsely accused and brutally condemned, stood before His corrupt accusers, not in resentment or cowardice, but the noble silence of compassion.1 Then, in unspeakable anguish, as He hung filthy, brutalized, and bleeding on the cross, He used His last excruciating breath to ask the Father to forgive those who had nailed Him there.2This is the witness of the cross and history’s most intense love picture.

Love calls us to lay down our lives and take the initiative to reach back in forgiveness to the one who has wounded us. We waste so much energy in the trap of resentment and self-pity. Love freely offers forgiveness. It flows from a heart that is free. Empowered by the Spirit, we try not to react in anger. We do not defend ourselves, define the other person, or deny our guilt, remembering that our opinions and biases are not the whole picture. We try to keep our mouths closed and hearts open, seeing their brokenness rather than their failure to give us what we need, absorbing any painful arrows of negativity as Jesus did.

The only way we can ever become free enough to forgive is to consciously release the other to God. This release grows from a sorrowful and compassionate awareness of the frailties and failings of every human heart. We can’t change or fix anyone, but we can choose to stand in our circumstances, living out our high calling to forgive and offer love in the midst of it all. We take our broken heart, as well as the one who has broken it, to prayer every day for as long as it takes to forgive. In this quiet space, we release them into God’s care, slowly but surely moving from the lower place of human conflict to the higher peace of the divine realm, fanning the flame of hope for their re-creation and ours.

God engineers our circumstances—how we respond to them will help bring our world together or allow the decay to continue. Jesus places no limits on His forgiving love but takes the mud and silt of our common humanity and transforms it by grace, resting all on the foundation stone of forgiveness. It has been said that forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that crushed it. Our courageous movement towards such compassion reflects in a finite way both the way God forgives us and the costliness of this infinitely precious gift.

Oh, Good Jesus,
in this holy place of crucifixion,
broaden the boundaries of my heart.
Soften the hard places that
defend, define and deny.
Teach my heart to love.
Make it a refuge for others
who, too, are caught
between the nails.

BWS3

September 22

Fear and anxiety disconnect us from the Source and subtly become a way of trying to control the future as well as a way of setting us up for disappointment and despair. ~Betty

The Hidden Life Awakened p117

Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled

Henri Matisse. The Dance. Hermitage Museum

Nothing is as debilitating to our spiritual life as fear. We have been taught to think that fear is a natural emotion we can’t control. How often have we said, “I have so much anxiety” or “I’m just a worrier.”? How often are we overwhelmed with concerns about money, a child’s situation, a serious diagnosis, or a struggling marriage? We do not have to keep living like this.

Science has now been able to document that fear is nothing more than neuronal pathways created by our brain’s conditioned response to what our culture and experience have told us is frightening and that habitual refocusing on the positive will physically rewire our brains. The simple command: Do not be afraid appears in the Scriptures three hundred and sixty-five times with the assumed power of choice.

“Be strong, do not fear.” 1
“Do not be anxious about anything.” 2
“Fear not, for I am with you.” 3
“Let not your hearts be troubled.” 4
“I will not be afraid.” 5
“Do not fear for the Lord your God goes with you.” 6
“For God did not give us a spirit of fear but of power.” 7

These gloriously hopeful commands sit in our brains as articles of genuine faith but have no reality in our day-to-day lives. Fear continues to imprison us, paralyzing our potential to receive the love God so longs to give us. The truth is we have a promise—Perfect love drives out fear, and we have an invitation—Don’t be afraid. Our work is to believe the promise and choose the invitation to trust that Love knows us and our potential infinitely better than we do. Fearless acceptance of whatever God brings will open space in our souls to hold more and more of the peace that passes our understanding.

“We were created with the capacity to move against the negative energy of fear. We all have places of fear, but we have other places—deeper places of strength and trust and love. As we wake up and dare to step into those places, trusting that God will meet us, our fear becomes a gift that slowly leads us from its negativity to a new place of freedom and deeper trust in the awesome power of God to heal us.

Every energy that we have can be redeemed by God’s transforming love. He purifies them by gazing His purity into us. Our part is to stop, wait, and open ourselves to receive His loving gaze. Nothing that is a part of us ever goes to waste. Even negative fear can be redeemed by love. He changes our natural fear from one that paralyzes to one that liberates and becomes an ally for life and living. Reverent fear humbly recognizes and acknowledges God’s goodness within and all around. This reverent fear then becomes sweet awe for the transcendent loving kindness of God who longingly waits for us to return His loving gaze. This unspeakable Love leads us to trust and obedience and from there, to joy and the peace that passes understanding.”

The Hidden Life Awakened pp 62-63.

God has always been with us in our trials and will be with us as we face each new heartache. Life is suffering, but it is also a joyful dance. We must have the courage and the hunger to step into the dance. God is the dancer. Are we going to let Him dance us any way He wants? We learn by taking one step into the flow of trust, then we take another and another. If we continue to take the next step, one day, we start dancing and never stop.

Prayerfully, might we allow ourselves to be drawn into the sweetness of Love’s sacred flow, fearful of only one thing, that we might miss God’s unspeakable goodness.

Don’t be afraid.

September 8

Will you let go of your finite view of yourself and open to a far greater vision of who you truly are? ~Betty

Letters From Betty

Dear One,

Your growth and your gift of hospitality were exhibited beautifully during my stay with you. Every detail was attended to, then given freely, in abundance and love, to all who came in and out of your home that entire week.

What a precious friend you have always been. My memory takes me back to your high school years. You were so young and fragile yet always seeking, searching, and longing to find God. Now here you are in midlife, at the crossroads of your time, still struggling, still fragile, and still longing, yet through grace, slowly being transformed.

I feel quite blessed to have come to a place of knowing that letting go and suffering pain leads to a deepening of one’s inner life and a deepening of the intimacy with the Source of all life. All pain brings us to deeper places of trust and faith. Thank you for your sufferings with me. I am in a deep place of resting now, a place of unspeakable value in this unrelenting aging process.

Far exceeding all of this, however, is the depth of love we have shared for one another over many years. I am unspeakably grateful for such a precious gift. My prayer for you is that you will, in your own way and in your own time, continue to persevere in your seeking and your searching for God and that amid this longing, you will indeed come to know Whose and who you are.

If I may take as my own the words of the Apostle Paul to his young friend, Timothy, “As for me, my life is already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time for my departure is near. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, and I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me but also to all who have longed for his appearing.1 Might your life, too, affirm these truths.

I love you, my precious friend, and encourage you to do your inner work so that you, too, might have the experiential knowledge of resting in God and be given the gift to meet people as they are, where they are, in love.

 Gazing at the Starlight,
Betty

August 25

Love freely offers genuine forgiveness. It flows from a heart that is free. ~Betty

The Hidden Life Awakened p154.