Journey to Wholeness

My first book, Home Should Be Safe: Hope and Help for Domestic Violence Victims was informational and instructional. It described and defined the various forms of domestic violence, gave historic examples of abuse as well as a biblical foundation for God’s disapproval of it. The book also teaches what type of help victims need to get free and get safe compared with what help is available. It also tells readers how Christians can make a difference in helping victims.

My new book, Journey to Wholeness, expands the discussion of finding wholeness. It doesn’t matter if you are broken due to abuse, or if you are broken because of some other life experience. God doesn’t intend us to go through life hurting. God is Jehovah Rapha, our healer. The Bible tells us many stories of Jesus healing the sick and raising the dead when he was on earth and he is still our healer. Scripture tells us that “by his stripes we were healed.” I Peter 2:24.

As I work on this new book I’ll be posting entries here on my blog and other social media about our journey to wholeness. It is God’s will that we all be whole in Him, not eternally broken. If you are broken, regardless of the cause or source, please post your questions, responses and prayer requests. If you have found wholeness, please post your testimony here to encourage others.

I look forward to interacting with you about God’s healing as I write my new book. I pray it will be a blessing to many.

Thank you

Post Traumatic Mess No More

It’s only been in recent years that post-traumatic stress has been diagnosed for anyone other than those in the military who served in a war zone. But, doctors have realized that any life altering experience can cause the same effects, whether it be an accident or abuse. My divorce papers in 1989 stated the cause of the divorce as extreme cruelty. As I interviewed multiple counselors over the years as I researched my articles and my book, Home Should Be Safe: Hope and Help for Domestic Violence Victims, they told me that the symptoms I experienced would be diagnosed as PTSD today.

A lot of people I knew gave up on me because they didn’t know what to do with me. But, thankfully, my true friends stuck by me and God never gave up on me. In my last post, I shared how God healed me from all of that post-traumatic mess. That healing was the first step on my journey to wholeness. In my book, I share my full testimony and the visions of my healing that God gave me.

It has been 27 years since my divorce and God has blessed my journey in so many ways. We use to sing a song in church choir about God putting the pieces of our puzzle back together. I remember asking God how he could do that if all the pieces weren’t there anymore. God’s response was truly priceless. He said, “Child, I will simply build you a new puzzle.” And that is what he has done. God has built me a brand new life, one that is totally different.

Before I was insecure and had negative self-esteem. I couldn’t seem to move beyond mere survival. But as God’s healing progressed I grew spiritually and gained confidence. Over the years, by the grace and strength of God, I raised my two children and cared for my mother until she passed away. I have completed two college degrees and God is redesigning my career.

My brokenness was from spousal abuse, but God heals from all types of brokenness. It is God’s will for each of us to be whole. God took my brokenness, healed me, delivered me and built me a brand new life. Instead of walking through the rest of my life with a mental, emotional and spiritual limp, I now walk in God’s love and joy, filled with hope for my future in Christ.

If you are still suffering, if you are still broken, I encourage you to reach out to Jesus, right where you are, and ask him to “make the hurting go away”, as I did. Jesus is still the answer, the only answer. God created medicine and one of his disciples was a doctor. But, He wants us to know that you don’t have to settle.

If you need healing, if you need prayer, please respond to this post. If you have questions please ask them and I’ll do my best to answer.

Finding Wholeness

 

Many years ago I made the most difficult decision of my life and divorced my abusive husband of 14 years. For nearly four years after I was a post-traumatic mess. Then, I had an encounter with God that changed my life completely.

I didn’t get better with medicine and counseling, I got better when God healed and delivered me. I did utilize counseling and medicine for the short term while I tried to figure out how to build a new life. Then I attended a ladies retreat with the ladies from my church. It was our annual ladies’ retreat on Mother’s Day weekend and we stayed at a quaint, country inn.

By this time I had prayed every prayer I knew how to pray and claimed every scripture I could find that remotely related to my circumstances. I had come to the end of myself and all I knew. I prayed the only prayer I had left. “Father, please make the hurting go away.”

When I finished praying I felt an anvil lift from my chest, and my spirit felt free for the first time in years. Over the next few months God’s healing process continued and I began the journey to find my wholeness.

My Mission Statement and Declaration of Faith

I am a Christian. Because I am a Christian I seek to honor and glorify God in all that I do, whether it is volunteer work or a paying job, and whether it is my regular day job or my freelance work. God gifted me with my writing talent. For that reason, my mission with my writing is to use what I speak and what I write to point people to Christ. I will do that first, by being the best writer I can be and constantly striving to improve my craft. Talent is what God gave me; craft is how I use it.

I do two types of writing. The first is writing for hire, meaning I write articles and speeches assigned to me by clients. As a freelancer, I have the freedom to accept or decline these jobs. For these, I stay on task and write what my clients’ request, but I also am careful to only accept jobs that do not contradict God’s word or my conscience. I make this choice on a case by case basis.

The second type of writing I do is creative writing of my choosing, mostly non-fiction and soon some fiction. This writing is done on subjects of my choosing, from a point of view of my choosing, and submitted to publishers I have researched carefully before submission. My goal is to build up this type of writing so that it eventually it becomes the greater portion. But, as a freelance writer, I know I have to balance my work so that I can earn a living. This is obviously a work in progress of its own.

Everyone has a conscience and that conscience must come from a foundation of belief. My foundation, as a Christian, is the Word of God. I am a member of The Summit Church in Springfield, OH, which is part of the Church of God International, headquartered in Cleveland, TN.

Here is my declaration of faith:

• I believe the Bible is the inspired Word of God.
• I believe in a triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
• I believe that Jesus Christ is the only begotten Son of God, conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary.
• I believe Jesus came to ministry at age 30, was crucified, buried, and raised from the dead at age 33. (Wow! Look what one man accomplished in only three years)
• I believe that Jesus ascended to Heaven and sits at the right hand of God as our Intercessor. (That means when the devil tries to tell God about our sins, if we have repented and accepted him as our savior, Jesus says, “Their sins are under my blood and forgiven.”)
• I believe that according to the Word of God, “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” That means each and every one of us needs to repent and ask God’s forgiveness.
• I believe that according to the Word of God, “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” That means each and every one of us needs to repent and ask God’s forgiveness of our sins.
• I believe that we are justified and sanctified, and we become born again by faith in the blood of Jesus Christ, through the Word of God and the power of the Holy Ghost.
• I believe that we are to strive to live a Holy life as directed in the Word of God.
• I believe in the Baptism by the Holy Ghost, subsequent to a clean heart, and in speaking with other tongues as the Holy Spirit gives utterance, which is the initial evidence of the Baptism of the Holy Ghost.
• I believe that all who repent should receive water baptism in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
• I believe in Divine healing, provided for all of us through the atonement of Jesus Christ.
• I believe in the Lord’s Supper and the washing of Saint’s feet.
• I believe in the Premillennial Second Coming of Jesus Christ. First to the resurrection of the righteous dead and the catching away of the living Saints to meet Jesus in the air. Second for us to reign with Jesus on Earth for a thousand years.
• I believe in bodily resurrection with eternal life for the righteous, and eternal punishment for the wicked.
• I also believe we are in the last days, based upon all the wickedness that is increasing in our world every day.
• God has been my rock, my fortress, my provider and my protector since I was a seven-year-old child. He raised me from childhood to adulthood. He has cared for me, comforted me, and loved me every day through all the good and the bad.

If you don’t know Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, please seek him out. Read his Word, seek out a good church, ask Christians around you to tell you their testimony. And please feel free to ask me questions. I do my best to live by these principles and I freely tell anyone who will listen about my Savior, my Best Friend, and my Big Brother.

 

Daughters of the King

Daughters of the King By Mina R Raulston 7/11/2016

I first came to know Jesus as a little girl going to church with my parents. When my mother’s mental illness caused my parents to leave church and God when I was eight years old, I refused to leave. Through the years God has always provided me a means to attend church and continue to grow in my relationship with him. My childhood was very unhappy due to my mother’s mental illness and affected how she treated me for the rest of my life. That drove me to seek out God even more and I began studying his word as soon as I was able to read his word even though it took many years for me to understand much of it.

I spent many years being made fun of and ridiculed for a variety of reasons from my physical appearance to my intelligence to my personality. My mother taught me to fear men and distrust everyone. As hard as I tried to ignore her teaching, some of her lessons managed to embed themselves in my being and I reached adulthood with very low self-esteem, strong insecurity, and few social skills. By the time I was 19 all my friends were either married, in college and or in the military, and I was stuck at home in a part-time job. Despite my attempts to overcome the loneliness, I was not successful.

As a little girl, one of my earliest prayers to God were for a godly husband and a godly home since my family had turned from God.  When I met my husband in church and married a few months later I thought that my prayer had been answered. Over the next 14 years, I learned just how wrong I was. I finally had to face the fact my marriage was abusive and my husband had deceived me from the very beginning. I divorced and tried to begin building a new life for me and my children.

For the next four years I was a post-traumatic mess, suffering from panic attacks, hypervigilance, terror, confusion, loneliness, and isolation. At the end of that time, I was finally able to receive God’s healing and deliverance. I began writing, first about domestic violence and over time about a variety of subjects until I self-published my first book, Home Should Be Safe: Hope and Help for Domestic Violence Victims. This book explained the facts about domestic violence and how to help those trapped in it. In addition, I speak to interested groups on the subject of domestic violence.

Currently, I am writing a companion book, Roadmap to Healing. In this book, I explain chapter by chapter how survivors can move beyond initial escape and survival to find total healing and deliverance through Jesus Christ. Only then can they truly build a brand new life founded on the salvation, healing and deliverance of Jesus and built with the guidance of the Word of God. Too many survivors repeat the cycle of violence, or if they remain free they live as one who remains broken. God doesn’t intend his children to remain broken when he offers healing and deliverance.

Healing and deliverance are a process, not an event. While I am writing and promoting this second book I will be posting blog entries related to the process of healing.

The first important lesson is for each survivor to know who they are in Christ. Check out the next blog entry for that lesson.

Silence in the Dark book review

Silence in the Dark, by Patricia Bradley, Book Review by Mina R Raulston

Bailey Adams is good at running away from her problems. She’s done it before. Two years ago she ran from home to Mexico but now she is running from Mexico back home. She’s not happy about it, but her safety demands it. Since she’s going in the right direction she agrees to take a friend’s niece to her grandparents’ as well. Then she runs into her the man she loved, followed soon after by being chased at gunpoint by desperate men. Literally running for her life and the life of the child with her, Bailey has to depend on him to get them all safely home.

Stick close to Bailey and Danny as they run, hide, and run some more as they struggle to find their way home. Who can they trust? Who is behind this attack against them and why? The pace in this novel is hard pounding and fast moving. It will keep you on your toes and hold you in place so you don’t miss a beat of their flight from danger. This 4^th book in the Logan series will not disappoint readers. Patricia Bradley knows how to hold her readers’ attention from page 1 to the last page.

Anchor in the Storm Book Review

Anchor in the Storm by Sarah Sundin – Book Review by Mina R Raulston

Lillian Avery, Ensign Jim Avery’s sister, goes to New York City to prove herself as a woman pharmacist, one with a physical disability. Ensign Arch Vandenberg, Jim’s best friend, much prefers time with his “average” friends than his wealthy family, especially after his recent sea battle that has his nerves rattled. In the midst of increasing danger as WWII escalates, follow Lillian and Arch as they search God’s will for their lives and for their future.

Anchor in the Storm, wonderfully written and historically accurate, Sarah Sundin once again tells a story of wartime dangers mixed with wartime romance. Her attention to detail woven within a fictional tale keeps readers captive until the very last word. Follow them on their journey while they sort through their fears and doubts and navigate the rough waters of relationships with family, friends and loved ones. Exciting story from beginning to end. I couldn’t put it down. Sarah Sundin is a master story teller and an expert on WWII.