Her Stuff, My Stuff

Because her stuff resonates with my stuff, my desire and even ability to struggle to see her real heart is often blocked. Her anger masks the underlying pain and shields it from honest examination. It also triggers my fears and sets my mind in a defensive mode instead of maintaining compassion. The cycle is cross-linked and functional until I can disengage and resolve my stuff and get healing for my fears. We both are afraid our needs will not be met. We both secretly want the other to give us some life. Another god exposure.

Prejudice

Prejudice means making a judgment without looking carefully at the evidence. It usually involves a bias towards what we want to believe or what we have been programmed to believe. Our picture of God is the most vulnerable victim to our prejudice and the most damaging to every other belief. Because it is a maxim that we inevitably transform into the image of the god we believe in, our prejudices about what God must be like translate directly into how we relate to others and even to ourselves.

Cooperation with gods/God

When I focus on and talk about the problems in our lives too long I allow them to become my gods. They are given permission to block me from access to abundant life so they are allowed to become a stronger influence than God in my soul. By working harder to figure out resolutions to these problems and then trying to implement them with some help from God to enforce my solutions, I am really cooperating with my gods and trying to borrow power from God for them to use.

There seems to be two kinds of righteousness in the Bible. One has to do with saving merit and the other has to do with rewards.

The first is like Write/Read format. God has to take the merit of Jesus and write it into us so others can read it. It cannot be mingled in the slightest with our own attempts for merit or it becomes useless.

The second kind is like Read/Write format. When we cooperate with the Holy Spirit to be an influence of life to others by letting them read the face of God in our life, God writes the results in the records of heaven to be rewarded. This is not salvation merit, this is rewardable cooperation.

Inept Heart-operator

I feel empty, confused, hurt, frustrated. I want to love in a way that can be accepted and felt but I seem to be almost totally blocked. I must be incredibly selfish by the subtle messages I see mirrored in those close to me. I am very inept at operating the vehicle called my heart. I either stall out and don't move or careen around crashing into others causing emotional havoc and liability.

I have so much fear of pain and not being understood or accepted that I spend most of my time and emotional energy in image management. But simply knowing about this enormous fear does not disable it. It is much bigger than I am.

The Hardening From Resistance

There is a spiritual principle that I just learned about while reading a book. It makes a great deal of sense and fits very well with all the other principles I have been discovering over the past few years. It is also very frightening for I see its effects far too much in my own life. It has to do with resistance, a concept that has been the key for helping me understand the truth about hell.

But this new principle has opened my mind to another dimension of this issue. It even ties in to a dream I had a couple months ago and gives me new insight on that.

Imagine yourself maybe in a group of people, maybe enjoying yourself in animated conversation, or maybe more like myself you may be a little apart from the group just observing what others are doing and busy with your own thoughts.

Suddenly someone comes along and seizes you by the hand and tries to move you to another group while urging and pleading with you to, say, join a game that is about to start. Now for this illustration to work, you are really not nearly so interested in this new opportunity you are being urged to join as you are in what you are presently doing. There could be any number of reasons for not wanting to leave like fear, lack of interest, intensity of relationships etc. But you are very insistent on not leaving as much as the other person is insistent on trying to drag you to the next room.

Now here is the point of all this scenario as strange as it may sound at first. When someone is physically trying to pull you in a direction you do not want to go, you are required to use a number of various muscles to resist that pulling force on your body. Now we are well aware that when you use muscles they tend to be strengthened. Let's say that the above scenario happens on a very regular basis. Your friend tries to pull you and you are holding back.

After a few days of this insistent activity those muscles used for resisting would begin to get stronger and harder. At the same time the other muscles that you are not using that you could use to to actually go with that person are beginning to weaken from lack of use.

In parallel to this, your emotional muscles just happen to be experiencing the very same affects, but not as physically obvious. As you repeatedly practice resistance you r emotional habits become deeper and deeper ingrained. And all of the unused emotional “muscles” over time begin to atrophy and become enfeebled.

But I noticed something about this situation that easily crosses the boundaries between physical, emotional and spiritual dimensions of our lives. When certain muscles are used very much they become harder and harder. We may become very unbalanced because we focus so much on certain ones and ignore many others completely. This can happen in our spirit and mind just as easily if not more so than with our body. I wonder if the result of this process is the heart of stone that is talked about in Ezekiel 36?

When we are drawn and pulled by the beauty and truth about God and we cling to our old familiar beliefs and traditions that we are comfortable with, we have to exercise emotional and spiritual resistance to counteract that drawing power. We may assemble proof texts and compile enormous quantities of quotations to buttress our positions. But in the end we may be appalled to discover we were only turning our hearts into petrified stones that had only the appearance of a functional heart. The greater the revelation of glory, the more resistance is required to maintain our position. We may very sincerely believe we are “standing strong” in defense of “the truth”, but in actuality we are standing in resistance to growing into a deeper knowledge of God. In Jesus' comments about judgment day, God does argue or deny the claims of those who insist they have performed everything correctly. He simply states, “I never knew you”. (Matt. 7:21-23)

Sadly and ironically, it seems that the most effective tool that hardens a heart is religion itself. Religion has caused more havoc on this earth than anything else. Religion is used to justify wars, promote bigotry and prejudice, and repress emotional expression thereby causing untold damage and confusion. I am just beginning to see some of the damage in my own life and my family from years of emotional avoidance and self-deception. Much of it was conditioned by the atmosphere of my childhood but that has continued to deepen and harden throughout most of my life.

I am realizing now that my inability to receive and give love has shaped most of my personality and history. I have very seldom even allowed myself to acknowledge many of my emotions, much less share them with anyone else without fear or blame. But practicing this is one of the essential ingredients for living in reality and I am just now discovering I have hardly ever done it. In fact, I have noticed many times that now when I do try to share my real emotions with someone else that most of the physical muscles in my body will begin to harden, tense up and eventually lock up. The longer it continues I will begin to tremble and if I still continue to share occasionally it even becomes difficult to breath. I am beginning to wonder if this is an outward manifestation of a possible inward heart of stone.

What is frightening about this principle of hardening by resistance is that I see myself practicing it much of the time. It is a major part of my personality and my perceived identity. It is how I shield and protect myself, but it is also what isolates and quarantines me away from connecting with other hearts. In the end it will disqualify me for participation in the body of Christ if I am not freed from this mode of thinking.

The good news is also in Ezekiel 36. God says He will exchange my stone-hardened heart for one of flesh. As I understand it, a flesh heart is movable, soft and flexible. Flesh can experience feelings and a heart can be honest about emotions. A unique feature of real hearts is that they have the ability to literally synchronize themselves to another heart when they come into close proximity. And as I understand it, God has great plans to do just that very thing in ways I've never dreamed of.

Pain, Fear, Heart

Salvation is not about avoiding pain but is about learning to suffer well. I realize I have a great deal to learn about that. But just because my reactions are often inappropriate to fostering openness does not reflect the true intentions of my heart. I am struggling with a lifetime of ineffective and self-defeating behaviors and habits that continue to sabotage most, if not all of my relationships. I really am committed to change, but that is as difficult for me as I suspect it may be for others. I want to fight for the real hearts of those around me. I want to learn how to draw out their true identity that God placed in their hearts as a unique treasure to bless others. God placed them in my life for this very purpose. I realize that one of the most important roles of a good friend is to have real relationships. Salvation from God is primarily focused on restoring all of us to function once again as we were originally designed to be in all our relationships. We are learning what it looks like to live from our true heart instead of being controlled and strangled by our past. Heart to heart relationships are what we crave the deepest. Having our heart listened to and appreciated and cherished is the only real solution to our deep feelings of dissatisfaction. We spend most of our time trying very hard to arrange various areas of our lives like possessions, personal looks, friends etc. to quench this deep hunger. We have all developed our unique habits of avoiding and masking the pain of the emptiness we feel deep inside. We come to believe it is our goal to get rid of the pain, but we have been deceived into “medicating” the symptoms instead of facing the real causes. We understand this sometimes theoretically, but it is very difficult to engage our hearts in the process because we are so influenced by fear. I appreciate the continued desire and attempts of some to connect with me even when they are very frustrated and sometimes it hurts so much. I am beginning to see their true heart and its desires and I feel the same way. I am finding that the things I am most insistent that other people should change are often my own weaknesses. I want to develop a much more open and heart-intimate relationship with people, especially my family. My heart craves this intensely – sometimes screams for it. But when it passes through some of the negative filters I still have, by the time it is heard by others it is often perceived as almost the opposite message as what my true desire is. This is terribly frustrating not only to those closest to me but to me as well. This is the reason that I write so much at this point in my life. I have found that I can bypass many of my self-defeating and distorting filters that scramble the intended messages. Apparently many of those filters are somehow connected to my voice, my tones, my body language etc. Even when I try to read out loud what I have written the filters of fear and shame kick in and my body ruins and sabotages my heart messages once again. Most of the time I feel like I am trapped inside a prison of my own body and expressions. I am just starting to make timid attempts to escape from the prison and begin to experience the “terrifying” world of openness with other hearts. So far I have not been able to connect very deeply, but I do not want to turn back to live in my familiar prison the rest of my life, even though that seems often more comfortable. I have been cheated out of joy for too many years – I am determined to find freedom even though I have to go through pain to get there. I hope you will continue to join me in my escape attempt. Many times I am overwhelmed with fear or shame and run back to the perceived safety of my prison. But then I realize how confining it is here and I want to get out again. This appears very confusing at times and inconsistent to those observing me. They are right. But if they think I can be free just by simply deciding to, I would like them to demonstrate that for me from their own prison and maybe I could learn to follow their example. This may sound like a lot of theory and blather, but I am trying to share some of my deeper feelings and frustrations simply so you can understand me a little better than my inept attempts in the past have done. I know I shouldn’t be, but the real fact still exists that deep inside I am still often motivated by fear of rejection and avoidance of shame. I do all sorts of maneuvering to avoid feeling rejected, but then end up isolating my real heart from being seen and known. Please be patient with my very clumsy attempts at learning how to be real, how to be a friend, how to be a real heart-friend.

Problems with the Unholy Trinity

In past history the concept of kingship has been taken to its extreme and shown to be very undesirable – people in extreme power use and abuse other people destructively. The solution offered to counter the problems produced by kingship was the supremacy of law. The Magna Carta demanded obedience from kings as well as others. We are now beginning to see the faultiness of the supreme system of law in the use and abuses perpetrated today. Relationships are meaningless compared to a legalistic observance of law. Arbitrary application of selections of millions of laws is used to subject others to the advantage of those in power. It is the abuses of kingship all over again except the power is diversified into many lawmakers and enforcers instead of a single person. This is even more effective to subvert any resistance for there is almost no one that can be held accountable. The system complexes itself to avoid accountability and has the appearance of virtue. It is so effective and attractive that it permeates both secular and religious thinking.

The reason the pope still resists this type of thinking is because he still craves the absolute power of kingship centered in himself and works to wrest control from lawmakers back into his religious dictatorship.

The third part of this unholy trinity, economy, is the lubricant and motivation for both of the other systems. All of todays laws in our legal system when examined carefully and understood correctly are based solely on economics and greed. Law and economics have developed a symbiotic relationship. We have deified the rule of law and politicians as well as religious people praise it publicly as their god. We scorn and attack cultures and countries that are so “backward” as to adhere to the old kingship model, either by corrupt dictators or religious dictators. We are fighting a war in Iraq to supposedly impose the supremacy of law above the rule of religion and corrupt politicians because we insist that our system (god) is superior to their system (god).

Judgment used to take place in the court of kings, either directly or vicariously. The will of the king or his representatives were the law. This became too subjective and unpredictable so laws came more and more into power. Finally law itself was elevated above kings and the world believed it had found the final solution to problems (sin). Democracy is the great experiment of the worship of law and for many years appeared to be highly successful. But as the evilness of men migrated more and more into the system, lawmaking has become more and more a tool of suppression and division. Morality has declined and religious people still cling to the notion that the solution lies in the system of law. They believe that every evil can be solved by just more rules and they believe that God operates by the same method. It is a strong addiction to an illusion that is fatally flawed at its roots.

All of these systems of the unholy trinity of economics, kingship and law are the counterfeit of God's true system rooted in the family model based on relationships and operated in love and the imparting of life. The counterfeits are based on fear, force and various applications of death. They are ultimately based on Satan's unholy trinity of motives – to steal, kill and destroy, though often masked in robes of righteousness. Jesus came to reestablish the model of heaven – to give life and to increase the imparting of life. He came to destroy the works of the Devil and fee the captives and reinstitute the operation of the relational family system.

Jesus pointed us forward to the final day of resolution when all of the counterfeit systems will be exposed and abolished (1 Cor. 15:24). Men will assume that they can defend themselves and retain life by appealing to the observance of law (Matt. 7:21-23). They assume they can justify themselves by argument of performance like we have always been taught to do in our false systems. However, they discover they are not really in a court of law as they are accustomed to thinking, or even a court of a king who can be manipulated as they have previously been. They are in the presence of a Father who is the essence of reality itself which they have used all their false systems to avoid since the beginning of sin. Arguments, falsehood and all the force of the false trinity are seen in the light of perfect reality to be just a sham, an alternative reality that was simply a fiction all along. Externalism had attempted to replace internal integrity, force had tried to replace joyful submission, economics had tried to replace love, kingship had tried to replace family relationships, and law had tried to imitate the indwelling presence of God Himself in all His creatures.

In that final day of revelation it will be seen that the cross of Jesus was not an achievement, it was a revelation of what God is on the inside.

The Umbilical Cord

When I was in my mother's body I used her blood and nervous system which conditioned and trained me how to think, react and perceive reality. Her emotions became my emotions, her feelings my feelings, her fears and joys mine.

To be born again I need an umbilical cord to God to use His blood and nervous system. I need to have a vital connection with Him/Her so intimate that God's feelings, passions and impulses are reflected and expressed in me.

You are because I AM

When God called Moses in the bush, Moses basically said, “I don't know who I am.” His whole identity and value was now very much in doubt. He used to be very confident and sure of himself, but his value was derived from his position and accomplishments. He was adopted into the royal family of Egypt. He was heir to the throne by law. He was a champion leader who had many military victories to his name. He was capable, efficient, savy, good-looking and proud of himself. He also realized his unique calling to deliver his biological relatives from bondage and likely spent time arranging all the various pieces and advantages of his life into various scenarios as to how this would happen. (We do the same thing with our end-time novels.)

Moses was sure he knew who he was and had some terrific and glorious plans for accomplishing great things for God and for his own people. He was excited and eager to take on the challenge and just knew he was the man blessed with all the right talents and resources. He knew he was called of God and what his destiny was. But he may have been baffled that God didn't seem to be initiating anything as things got worse and worse for the slaves, his own relatives. He may have felt that the opportune time was about to pass unused. His own power and advantages were starting to wane and be threatened by intrigue and politics. Jealous power struggles threatened to soon expose his real identity and jeopardize his assumed identity that had been carefully manicured for decades. If he was exposed as being adopted and his roots linked to the slave people his own life as well as the life of his princess mother might be at stake. The pressure was mounting and the stress was becoming enormous.

Then the very nightmare he feared most happened and even worse, because he inadvertently precipitated it himself. In trying to be the hero he was taught to be and combine it with concern for God's chosen people, his whole carefully constructed and well-groomed identity and all his plans collapsed in shame and disgrace. He was forced to run for his life like an escaping slave instead of a brave warrior.

His real fears and insecurity and immaturity burst out into the open and reality hit him unexpectedly changing his life forever. He stumbled into the wilderness confused, angry, ashamed, fearful and very seriously doubting God's intentions to use him and maybe even God's abilities. He was swallowed in darkness and hopeless despair. Sadness for his family, both biological and adopted, wrapped him like a soggy blanket. Pangs of fear for their safety and regrets for his fault in putting them in danger repeatedly shot through him as his mind raced to make sense out of all this chaos. He became deeply disgusted with himself, with the politically corrupt power system that crushed people's lives without any concern and had now ruined his forever. Where was God in all this? Why didn't He intervene if He was so loving and powerful?

Jethro and his family quietly and patiently molded and trained him into the ways of true reality. They could see him with the eyes of heaven past his cultured and damaged exterior. They cooperated with God in teaching him and training both his mind and his heart to value what is really important and become free from the artificialness of the world's system and its measurements of value.

When God appeared to call Moses to start work forty years later he had completely given up all plans of his own. He had fully embraced a humble shepherd's life and assumed he had permanently sabotaged any plans God may have previously had for him. He now no longer had any of the necessary advantages and leverage of power that he felt was needed to accomplish deliverance. He believed God would move to plan B and find someone else better positioned to bring about His plans.

So when God surprised him by instructing him to move ahead with delivering his people, Moses immediately reminded God of all the above. “you must have dialed the wrong number. I'm no longer the man equipped and positioned strategically for the job. I don't even know who I am anymore.”

God came back with what is most important. “I AM. Your identity is received by connection to I AM which is all of your value. You are the one called and empowered and valued by the One who is the source of all value and identity. You are because I AM.”

Assumed Identity

In childhood we learn to treat ourselves the way other people treat us. Our assumed identity is created by the people in charge of our lives. The rest of our life, especially in adulthood, we present an atmosphere that induces people to treat us the way we treat ourselves.

Control

The body of Christ will only function normally when all of its parts release all control to the head and its communication network. That is how the glory will be displayed. Each individual will be “out of control” so that they can be under the full influence of the control of the Holy Spirit.

To the extent that we insist on maintaining control over ourselves we unfit ourselves for synchronization in the body and usefulness for His glory. When we keep control of our lives and destiny we become indirectly controlled via the sarx by demonic influence to a greater or lesser extent. Or we may think we surrender control to another authority. Any authority other than the real Creator will eventually end us up back under the original source and head of that entity which will trace back to Satan.

To entice people to surrender control to Christ, one must first become enamored and captivated by the beauty, attractiveness and fulfillment that is experienced in realizing and participating in our original design. To have the proper motivation, the attraction must overwhelm the objections. This will free us to operate from love rather than selfish fear which still tries to maintain some level of control. True love allows us to abandon ourselves recklessly into trust in God's absolute care for us regardless of the appearance of our circumstances.

This is the filter that transforms all the “perfection” statements from legalistic demands to urgent appeals to not procrastinate releasing control so we won't miss out on sharing His glory when He is revealed.

When I don't forgive someone I make them in my life to be a god who can control me. So when Jesus said to leave your gift at the altar and go be reconciled with someone who has something against you, He is saying I must do everything I can to remove myself as a god in their heart and soul.

Acknowledging Feelings

It looks like I will be on the road again for awhile. I plan to work on my daughter's house and a friend's house that have been on hold for about 3 years. After that my sister is still anxious for me to finish the job I started on her house the beginning of summer. All this will involve a lot of traveling. This is not necessarily good for increasing my communication abilities but I will work on it whether at home or abroad. Yesterday I experienced an intense emotional experience that revealed some very unpleasant (to put it mildly) traits within me that I was taught to repress most of my life. Since I am adopting new strategies for experiencing reality I chose to recognize the emotions and identify them though if I had acted them out -- well, I will leave it at that. Most people would advise me to simply not feel that way or try to shame me into changing. A lot of good that has done for the last 40+ years. This time I decided to report them, first to myself and then to my wife. Unfortunately it wasn't until this morning that we had time to talk about it, but I do feel much better and that some kind of healing is in the works. Choosing to acknowledge the reality of my own feelings is a first step in that process. Since I am not in charge of the process I don't know what God has in mind for the next step. But learning to be more real is crucial to becoming fully human and fully alive as God created us to be. It is new and foreign territory for me in some ways but also feels more fulfilling and hopeful. The more honest I am about what's inside creates an environment that God can work with much more effectively than trying to look good and managing my image with everyone.

Wells or Springs

Our mind is like a cistern. Our heart is like a well with capacity to be a spring.

Living from our left brain is like drawing water from a cistern. You have to keep putting water into the cistern at least as much or more than you draw out or you will rub dry. That's why we often develop such an obsession for learning facts and formulas and programs etc. Since we largely live from our mind instead of our heart we have to keep a constant supply of new things to stimulate new possibilities and live in constant fear of failure since we were not really designed to live primarily from our mind. This is our condition from the Fall.

Our hearts are more like wells. While it may be much more difficult to draw up the water it does not require pumping water into it – except maybe for priming purposes. This is why it is so effective to open another person's heart by being open yourself. It is very much like priming a well and it is extremely effective most of the time.

Beyond this, God has much greater designs for our hearts. He wants us to become not just wells, which still have the potential of running dry, but He wants to make us into springs of life that nurture and splash joy on everyone around us. The obvious difference between a well and a spring is the amount of work to receive life from them. Both are deep holes in the ground. But a spring is spontaneous and energetic in exuding life and is nearly impossible to restrain. God's plans involve a whole community of life-givers that swell together into an unstoppable river of Life that originates from Him and sweeps others along into the current as it returns to Him in joy and praise and worship.

Feel free to send in your ideas to add to these if you would like to develop them even more. I would like to add your insights to swell this little trickle of a spring (or well).

Growth

We have started reading a book by John Powell that is clarifying the process of liberation that we are experiencing. I have ordered a number of his books from Amazon.com to help us learn how to connect to each other and learn better how to live from our hearts. The book I am reading right now is called Why Am I Afraid To Tell You Who I Am?

This book has already helped me understand a great deal some of the thinking patterns, the turmoil and the blocks I have been struggling with for years. It also lays out very practical steps for overcoming these blocks. A previous book which I just received but have not read yet is called Why Am I Afraid To Love? I am eager to get into it as soon as I am done with this one.

Yesterday I experienced another opportunity to act like myself under stress, which I did not handle too well once again. I had come up about 1 inch short of enough laminate flooring to finish my hallway and when I purchased another box of the same brand I discovered that it is completely different and won't interlock with what I have. Furthermore, the material that I need is no longer available. My stress reaction was not a whole lot different than it has been in the past and my anger was pressing hard to unload on someone. I was aware of what I was feeling but knowing how to “act like myself” while in the emotions was still very difficult.

My normal reaction to this problem is to do everything possible to fix it with the least expense possible. This is not wrong, but can easily play into influence from the spirit of Mammon among other spirits. As I searched various stores for possible brands of flooring that might fit what I had with no success I analyzed my feelings and responses as I prayed for guidance as to not only what to do but how to feel. I am reminded that my peace of spirit is far more important to God than resolving this particular problem. In fact, it is not at all unlikely that God allowed this problem to give me yet another opportunity to practice this lesson. Intellectually I know God has a solution of some kind for this and I will see it work out. But faith is resting in peace, acting and feeling confidence in His resolution while having no knowledge of what it looks like.

Another part of this growth is sharing not only the problem with my spouse but sharing my ongoing feelings with her as they happen without judgment. We are actually making progress in this area too. It is very different than what either of us are used to doing, but it is very necessary to move into the future that God has for us together. So we discussed it this morning and decided that if we have to replace the whole floor with new flooring then maybe we should attempt to match the flooring from the adjoining room so there will not be 3 different colors all converging in one corner. I will look into that today. But I feel much better about the whole situation than yesterday now that we are sharing the process of resolving this problem and acknowledging that it is not about my value or identity as I might be secretly feeling.

I am also picking up my daughter today coming home from Norway. This will open up a whole new chapter on this growing process that will be good to see what God has planned. At the same time another lady is coming in to stay with us for a week or two that has very serious challenges to living in reality and getting along with people. We will need a lot of grace and our open communication will be even more important to keep process what we are just beginning to learn and experience.

I am Afraid Because...

Maybe I am afraid to say very much in this group...

Afraid I will be prodded so much I will lock into depressive resistance.

Afraid that some who thought I have wise counsel will change their mind and all the things I have been learning and sharing will be discredited.

Afraid that I will not get to the root lies and find true release – once again.

Afraid that what I say will be used against me either here or outside the group.

Afraid that, as usual, my mind will disconnect and shut down my deepest emotions and pain and block out access to my deeper pain and issues.

Afraid that others will try to oversimplify my problems in an attempt for a quick solution.

Afraid I will not be understood.

Afraid I will create resentment in someone's mind for being so self-focused.

Afraid I will feel guilty for telling things that I later regret.

Afraid no one will care about me deeply and openly.

Afraid someone will show me affection even though I often crave it.

Afraid that most men cannot understand some things about me as well as some women can.

Afraid I will be censured and condemned for feeling that way.

Afraid there won't be enough time to finish processing and healing.

Afraid God won't show up as dramatically as I wish He would.

Afraid of showing too much emotion in public.

Afraid of losing control of my environment and composure.

Afraid that no one will have the maturity, wisdom and compassion to take me all the way to the real source of these fears so I can face them squarely and come away freed.

Afraid that after this session that those who are here for me now will be too busy or distracted or annoyed to continue this open, honest bonding.

Afraid that after I make myself vulnerable that others will refuse to be vulnerable equally and then I will feel exposed with much shame and regret.

Afraid that I will still be stuck and paralyzed in attempts at deepening my marriage.

Afraid that I will never be able to be close and open at the heart level with my biological children and they with me.