A little over 15 years ago, I went through an intense spiritual conversion in daily life. It didn’t take place at a retreat, nor was it facilitated by anyone. Over a period of 7 incredibly spiritually intense days that began with a sacrament of reconciliation and an unburdening of unforgiveness (of myself) of over 9 years, I experienced a new depth of God’s unconditional love, mercy and the grace to begin my relationship with Him again.
On the morning of the 7th day, I heard God say to me in my heart, “In seven (metaphorical) days I created the world and in seven (literal) days I have created a new you.” Just 30 mins before this I had realised that by grace I had been able to forgive my father whom I had held deep anger and resentment against for most of my young life. I had prayed for the grace to forgive for many years, and all of a sudden, when I did not expect it, this grace was given. On the morning of the 7th day of my conversion experience, I felt as if I was floating on clouds. New life and energy coursed through my veins and I suddenly felt like I was capable of ANYTHING because God loves me.
On the morning of the 7th day of my conversion experience, I felt as if I was floating on clouds. New life and energy coursed through my veins and I suddenly felt like I was capable of ANYTHING because God loves me.
While in this state of being, I was making breakfast for my husband (because life goes on and we have to eat even in the midst of a soul-shattering conversion experience). Still very much feeling the spiritual high, I took out a sachet of instant milk tea and as I was stirring it with hot water, I heard very clearly in my heart, “Ann, I am not the God of instant tea.” I didn’t have to wait long to know what God meant. This is what I was given to understand – I still vividly remember stirring that instant tea while receiving these sobering and rather “disappointing” words.
This was what I heard God say to me in my heart:
“Ann, I know you feel incredible right now. The healing you have experienced this week is deep, and it is real. But I just want you to know that even though you feel like a different person today, you are still in fact the same person, with all the same weaknesses and flaws. This powerful conversion experience I have given you does not instantly make you stronger, or totally whole. You are not suddenly holier. You will still struggle. The process of transformation and healing will be slow, because – as I said – I am not the God of instant tea.
If I wanted to, I could heal you completely in an instant. But that is not the way I work. I will work slowly in your life, so that this slow work can bear witness to my love and patience, and so that others will be able to see Me in your journey and come to know how I love.”
I just want you to know that even though you feel like a different person today, you are still in fact the same person, with all the same weaknesses and flaws. This powerful conversion experience I have given you does not instantly make you stronger, or totally whole. You are not suddenly holier.
I remember feeling rather deflated when I received this message at the time. I suppose no-one, in moments of transfiguration on a mountain top, wishes to be reminded that passion, suffering, and death must come before the resurrection. And the truth is that even with this reminder from God, I could not truly understand what he meant until I lived it.
I’ve learned in the 15 years since that conversion experience and message from God that the interior journey (once you really get going interiorly) is:
- 5% mountain top transfiguration moments. These are the moments when I would be filled with awe and praise for what God has done for me, when I am given a taste of the fruit of my interior work and the felt sense of God’s glory.
- 15% valley of the shadow of death experiences where I am pressed to the ground and gasping for breath and praying for relief and salvation. These are the hardest times that usually precede the next significant breakthrough in the journey. Often it precedes a new stage of interior development.
- 20% plateau or plain moments where things are relatively peaceful and stable and I try to live out my healing without too much disturbance. These are the times I wish there was more of, but are often taken away just as I get comfortable.
- 60% of the time making the treacherous ascent and descent up and down the mountain with the Lord. This is when the Lord keeps revealing new wounds or layers of wounds to me and I have to wrestle mightily with myself and with Him to let myself be able to be loved by him into wholeness. This is also when God “ups the ante” just when I begin to feel that things are getting easy, and I have to exercise what I have learned in more intense or challenging situations and revisit old lessons at increasingly deeper depths.
I am writing all this down as a form of record for myself too, because I can now tell that most of 2023 was God turning up the pressure and heat in my life until I could barely breathe at certain points. Then it all reached a point just as 2024 arrived, and the first 2 months of this year saw another new page turned in my interior life. (That will have to be another story for another day!) For now, I can breathe again. And I am – for the moment – back in the 20% time of being on a plateau of trying to live out the fruits of this last intense stretch of interior transformation.
I have been on this journey long enough to know that transformation never ceases, and that what lies on the other side of each major milestone can be so different as to be unrecognisable.
Perhaps in 10 years’ time I may re-read this blog entry and be amused at my inexperience and naïveté. Perhaps how I would write about the interior journey in 10 years’ time would be completely different from what I am writing down now. In fact, I rather hope that would be the case! Because if God is not the God of instant tea, then what he brews will surely deepen and become richer with each passing year. I have been on this journey long enough to know that transformation never ceases, and that what lies on the other side of each major milestone can be so different as to be unrecognisable.
In the meantime, I’m taking stock and giving thanks for yet another difficult season weathered with the Lord in this interior journey. And I ask for the grace to keep walking without expectations so that I can travel ever more lightly as I let God be God and become more ME in Christ.
Journey of the Heart 