Thank God For Answered Prayer

A series of difficult situations in my life led me to ask God to protect me. That protection was so needed that I had all my church and all of my Christian friends praying for me, but I also accepted prayers in whatever form they were done from people I know from any religion. Things were so bad for a while that people were approaching me and asking if they could pray for me, and I said yes no matter what religion they were from.

God protected me for sure. For a while it made me feel like things got worse, but it was actually the shifts God needed to orchestrate in order to make me safer and happier in the long run. After having had that experience, I would recommend to anyone that they ask God to protect them, because the way things fell out, I believe he does. Not only did he protect me from situations, but he revealed to me who my enemies were and protected me from them as well. That is why I created the picture that is attached to this post.

In a nutshell, let me just say that I was a caregiver for several people in a row in some extremely difficult caregiving situations. Several social workers in a row rated my situation a 15 on a difficulty scale of 1-10. This is because I was being a caregiver for people who had lived their entire lives in poverty, so finding resources was a full-time job. In addition, we were surrounded with addiction and several times I had to protect them from abuse. In addition, the struggle to keep my own property in repair became strenuous as I repeatedly dealt with shady contractors who preyed on the weakened state a family who is caregiving finds themselves in. This led to a member of a neighborhood improvement agency aggressively making his intentions to run me off my property and flip my house for a profit known. By that point, I'd had enough, and I requested and accepted prayers for protection for anyone who was willing to give them no matter what religion they belonged to.

Things got worse for a brief time when those prayers began. The militant house flipper began to make reports that even put us in a situation where we had an insurance issue that almost made us lose our house and face possible homelessness. However, we met the most wonderful insurance representative who was herself a caregiver and knew how difficult it was. She worked with us every step of the way to do any repairs that needed to be done to our house and saved our insurance. I also suspect that she made some reports about this neighborhood improvement agency that had a reputation of being militant with vulnerable people for many years, because they were reeled in and stopped being militant. Vulnerable people who would have never expected to live in peace in this neighborhood now live in peace.

I was attending a church where most of the people were wonderful, but a handful of hateful people had visitors doing a revolving door in and out of the church so fast that the church was really struggling to keep numbers up, especially since some members were leaving, too. I saw what was happening clearly as did everyone else who whispered about it in secret but kept ignoring it. I ignored it until I was in a situation where someone who came unprepared for class publicly chastised me for being unprepared due to a death in the family. I was unprepared, because I was a caregiver for three people at the same time, and one of them had just passed away. I knew I was unprepared when I came, but I assumed being in a church group would fill me with the peace of the Lord and help me get through that difficult time, so I stepped away from my grieving family for a few hours to go. That person leading others in judgment against me for choosing to make a dying loved one a priority was the straw that broke the camels back. That allowed everything I'd pushed down and ignored to rise to the surface, and I never returned to that church again just like so many people before me had done because of that same person. I resigned from all of my positions the next day and did so effective immediately, I could not bear to be in that place one more day. Now I am in a sister church where the pastor is very supportive of me and everyone in the congregation. She has clearly stated and proven she will not tolerate those secrets that everyone keeps like were happening in the other place. She has set down ground rules she's not afraid to lovingly but firmly enforce to keep her congregation healthy. And, I have never once received judgment for something I had to do as a caregiver while I've been involved with her congregation. I have had long absences due to one person I was caring for living out of town, and I have received only understanding and support. I never would have wandered over there and found this excellent Pastor and congregation had the things that led me to leave the other place not happened.

Another caregiving situation emerged in the family. I opened up a lot to a person I thought I could trust. This person's mother repeatedly told me if she wasn't there that I should talk to her daughters, so I did. During one conversation, I encouraged that person to take an action that would offset some of the travel expenses they were incurring. That advice was later taken. In that moment, she seemed offended that I shared some of the wisdom I had gained during my many years as a caregiver and said in a snotty way that I should do the same. When I informed her I had done the same when I was physically able to do so but I was no longer physically able to do that due to what caregiving had done to my joints, she made some horrible remark about not realizing how sick I was and got off the phone. I wrote in my journal that it looked like she finally heard how bad my physical limitations were and the friendship was over because of that. An hour later that proved to be true when she unfriended me on Facebook. The only thing that hurt me about any of it was being rejected because someone finally recognized my physical limitations. You wouldn't believe how often that happens when you have a chronic illness, so the memories and pain of all the times that happened came up. I started to cry. My husband saw me crying and when I told him what happened he mentioned it to someone and before I knew it several people knew the story. That bothers me still as that should have been between me and that person and I still struggle to find a way to correct that. On the other hand, it opened the door to a blessing. Some people from that person's family contacted me to give me some perspective on how that person was seen by most of them. One person informed me that even though the person who unfriended me was telling everyone she was just randomly cleaning up her friend list that she had said privately that she did it to protect herself from me. Why? Because she had been talking bad about me behind my back for months and when she learned in that phone conversation that people were praying protections around me she got scared it would come back on her. That is why she got snotty about my recommendation that she later took, because I had just told her about the protection prayers and she was reacting to that. The person who made me aware of that is still to this day someone I consider a blessing in my life and someone I would feel safe and comfortable going to with any problem. I think and hope this one is starting to blow over as I believe the root of it was grief, but God removed the situation from my life before more harm could be done and replaced it with a loving supportive person who helped me get through it. That may have saved the future state of the relationship, and I thank God for having the wisdom to separate and bring people together in a way that would eliminate damage so future healing would happen more easily. I like this person even though I've been told she spoke badly about me behind my back and got very short with me on the night this happened, so I'm glad God separated people and brought them together in a way that would prevent any further damage and allow future healing and reconciliation to be easier.

Shortly after that happened, my doctor recommended that I put myself on medical limitations to give me a chance to rest from all I'd been through. When I communicated this to people I had been helping and let them know I was still willing to help but I'd have to do so on a more limited and more scheduled basis, one of them got so mad they went on a rumor spree that showed me overall who my true friends were. At that same time, my dearest and truest friend of many years, Linde Grace, began to introduce me to some friends of hers, all of whom proved to be of the same quality of person that Linde Grace was when she was still with us. Those friends have proven to be just what I needed. I've told many people that I felt like Linde Grace knew on some spiritual level she wouldn't be with us much longer, so she set me up with all I would need to thrive without her before she left this world.

Soon after that, someone who was supposed to be working in a healing capacity in my life triggered on me in a horrible way in a public place. This led to some who had witnessed it coming to my aid to begin to teach me how not to accept the familiar and how to set stronger boundaries. One who was a counselor gave me a free years worth of counseling to help me see things through the eyes of those who had witnessed it instead of through my eyes that had been trained in private by people with similar personalities from my past to bow down to it. That proved to be a blessing that improved my life and my boundaries in many ways. I will always worry for the other people this person might hurt since this occurred from a position of leadership, but it proved to be a huge blessing to me.

It wasn't long until I was almost miraculously introduced to two groups that help people recover from religious abuse. I have been with those two groups for two years and they continually prove themselves to not only be wonderful but also healthy. In addition, a cultic studies group I have been involved with for twenty plus years just announced they are going to start working in the area of helping people recover from religious abuse. That group is run by academics and scientists who base their programs on solid research, so I trust their program will be effective and healthy.

Shortly after that I met someone in such a strange way that it could only have been supernatural or spiritual. It was like we were meant to meet. We began very good friends and writing partners and that friendship still continues to be strong.

God shifted my book around that time for reasons I'm not yet clear about, because the person I worked closest with on the book prior to that is someone I still respect. I hurt for him, because I know how people around him treat him behind his back (maybe that is what God was protecting me from), but I respect him as a person and imagine from what I know of him now that I always will. The way the book shifted was beyond his or my control, because we still wanted to work together. This makes me realize this was another answer to those prayers. This new friend along with one of the friends Linde Grace introduced me to become part of a writing team where we support each other in our writing. So, the shift was seamless and I found myself surrounded by a great deal of healthy support.

With their support, I was able to remove someone from my previous writing team that Linde Grace had been asking me to remove for a long time - someone who forced everyone to walk on eggshells around her. I had accepted that to the point that managing her emotions had become a part time job. No one on my new writing team was willing to walk on eggshells and helped me switch directions on that situation and create something that returned freedom, joy, and power to my book advertising.

Once all that was behind me, I looked around and realized God had answered those many protection prayers. He had protected me from people and situations that were not good for me by revealing them, moving me away from them, and replacing them with something exponentially better in all of those cases. I asked people to start praying those prayers a little over two years ago, and my whole world has shifted for the better during those two years. I am much safer than I was two years ago, and I praise God for that.

I will continue to pray for protection, because I realize there are people in the world who prey on the vulnerable. I realize I am still vulnerable, especially since some caregiving is still needed in our family at a time when we still need years to recover from past caregiving situations. At the same time, I now also realize there are many people who are waiting to support vulnerable people in any way they can. I will continue to pray for protection, so the former can be replaced with the latter any time it is necessary. I thank God for every time he has done this.

Thank God for answered prayers.