I decided it was time to discuss this with my husband and I will admit my first thought was to quit some things, just take some plates completely off my platter. But he encouraged me not to do that, but rather to just rearrange the plates and not carry them all at once.

He helped me to reschedule my day to allot for more time at home, which is what I wanted. Amy Bayliss spoke at the HOTM Conference on Wednesday and her message of inspiration and worth really dug deep into my heart. Just at a time when I was thinking I was NOT the person for a specific job, God spoke to me through her and my husband echoed that to me.

Words just cannot describe how encouraging Amy was to me yesterday. I have been in awe ever since. The only way I could describe what her message did for me is to say that her words were anointed with Oil. I have experienced physical healing before and felt that experience, but never had I ever experienced this kind of emotional healing in my heart. I felt like the Oil of the Holy Spirit coated my soul on the inside and I cried for a long time.

When my husband took me to dinner I testified to him the message I got from our Lord through Amy and I began to cry again right there in the restaurant. I had experienced some emotional abuse from a leader over a period of time and not realized what I was going through at the time. It left me feeling rejected and unworthy to serve our Lord. I wasn’t good enough for this leader. No matter how much I served and how faithful I was, when I felt God was speaking to me about serving in any specific area I was told no. I was ‘counseled’ by this leader that he didn’t think it was the area for me.

I can’t tell you how many times I would go home and cry to or Lord about ‘why wasn’t I good enough for these areas of ministry?’ Why did I feel as though He wanted me to do these things only to be told no by the leader? It left me in a quandry about my relationship with our Lord. I even got to the point where I stopped praying, because I felt as though I must not know how to communicate with God. Maybe I was asking amiss. Maybe I realy wasn’t good enough. Maybe my education level wasn’t good enough to serve God.

When I began homeschooling my mind began transforming and my soul was hungry again. I restarted my alone time with our Great God, digging deep into my devotions and I began to grow again. God led me to reach out to other women on the internet and gifted me with writing. I know that this gift is from God, because I did NOT do well in English in high school. I know my grammar isn’t the best, but when God gives me something to write it just flows.

I began getting amazing comments on my blog AGMinistries.org about the things I was writing and God showed me that he would use me there. After departing from the leadership that was over our lives, my heart began to come through some major strongholds of man’s doctrine. Coming out of that ministry was a stronghold in itself that took fasting and prayer, but through it our family received a revival from our Lord.

The leadership there and or ‘friends’ didn’t believe that a revival would involve leaving that fellowship, but that’s exactly what God was doing. Our walk with our Lord has never been as good as it is right now. Fast forward to Amy’s message where she shared her testimony of her gift from God and I suddenly felt the love of God telling me I AM worthy to serve Him. That He had in fact been speaking to me all those years and that I was right to respond to God even though the leadership disagreed.

Suffering from spiritual abuse from a leader you trust is an awful experience. It is incredibly hurtful and inflicts damage to our minds and emotions. It has been a hard turn for me, but healing has begun and Amy was used by God to help bring an emotional healing to my relationship with our Lord Jesus in the area of my worth in His eyes.

Finding balance doesn’t always mean taking something off our plates, sometimes it just takes rearranging, but I recommend speaking to your husband before making a decision on your own. I am thankful for my husband supporting me and encouraging me. So from thinking I was a pile of broken china, not able to be used, I realized that I am a vessel of worth to God.