Landmarks

By Tiffany Brown

Landmarks chronicles a young woman's journey of triumph through divorce, bipolar disorder, abuse, loss, and regret. This raw and honest autobiography, filled with actual journal entries, will draw you to reflect upon your own life's journey-helping you put the pieces of your past together to reveal a glorious purpose.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tiffany Kathleen Ministries
• Release date: Oct 9, 2020
• ISBN: 9781513666686

Tiffany Brown

Tiffany Kathleen Brown is a native of Southwest Missouri where she continues to reside. She is mother to three kids, whom she homeschooled for ten years before beginning a career in the healthcare industry. "Landmarks" is her first book. She says it came to her one day while washing dishes as a home-health caregiver. "God laid it all out for me in minutes and even told me what it would be called." Tiffany's passion for writing began in sixth grade because of a creative writing club started by her then sixth grade teacher, Dale Wiley who is an author, publisher, former lawyer, and executive director of the nonprofit organization "Heroes and Miracles". She began composing a journal as a teen, which developed her affinity for the written word. Many of those journal entries have been included in this book. Tiffany believes that writing is an artform and should paint a picture as beautifully and colorful as Rembrandt or Monet. She is inspired by writers like Charles Spurgeon, Brennan Manning, and Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. She enjoys playing piano and leading worship. Bands like Petra and Keith Green were instrumental in her love for music and her passion for telling the world about Jesus. One of her favorite quotes is from Keith Green who said, "I repent of ever having recorded one single song, and ever having performed one concert, if my music, and more importantly, my life has not provoked you in Godly jealousy to sell out completely to Jesus!" Also a favorite adage, from the sage wisdom of the Nike corporation, is "Just Do It."

Book preview

PROLOGUE

Dead inside. That’s how I felt. Like an empty shell of a person laying there on my forty-dollar thrift store sofa in an empty two-bedroom apartment. The silence spoke volumes. It spoke of extinguished dreams. It spoke of loss, failure, loneliness, and regret. The cold, quiet heaviness gripped me so tightly that nothing could break its hold. Things that once distracted me from my pain—music, TV, reading, writing—had no effect. All I could do was stare, as if my living room wasn’t a living room but a shapeless, endless void. Sometimes I would fall asleep. Other times I’d cry myself to sleep.

Sit, stare, cry, sleep. That was my routine for days or weeks or months, I can’t really even remember. What I do remember is thinking that it would never end.

I’d been building a utopian dreamworld my entire life up until this point. Hoping, planning, laboring.  Striving to be that extraordinary woman that the world would behold and deem worthy of the highest honor. Now at the age of thirty-four, I was wallowing in the stagnant pool of a failed marriage and a shameful divorce, dragging my three children behind me through the muck of their father’s and my failures, soiling their innocence with the painful reality that their family was falling apart.

But you promised you’d never get a divorce! Why did you lie to us?

I didn’t think I was lying once upon a time.

Once upon a time…

Once, we were happy. Once, we were madly in love.  We were a family. We were highly respected members and leaders in our church.  We had what others could only dream of having.

Once, people thought I was something special.  And once upon a time, I had everyone fooled.  That’s what I thought, anyway.

Now, it had all slipped away like sand through my fingers. Love was an insidious joke. Prayers were only vain mumblings that got you nothing and brought you nowhere. Now, there was only dead, dark, cold silence. I gathered up just enough strength to send out one last desperate prayer.

God, where are you?

Instantly, my world of gray filled with vibrant color. Memories replayed in my mind like a movie reel. Every milestone along my journey-the triumphs and failures, the happiness and hard times, the accolades and offenses-were unveiled before my eyes as if God had gathered them into his photo album like a proud daddy. Through every remembrance, one constant remained.

I’ve been here all along.

I could see it now in panoramic glory. He’d been there all along, encouraging me, cheering me on, providing for me and sustaining me. Loving me. Every destination on my pilgrimage was saturated with God’s favor. Even when I wandered off on thorny paths bleeding and tripping over briars and brambles, He was there. And He was bleeding, too.

If He had been there with me through every season of my past, surely He was with me even now. It was all significant to Him because it was all a part of my story and He was the Author. Every valley, mountain, river, and desert were chapters inscribed by His divine hand and they all had a name. They were my landmarks…

CHAPTER 1

THE MERCY SEAT

But even before I was born, God chose me and called me by his marvelous grace. Then it pleased him to reveal his Son to me so that I would proclaim the Good News about Jesus…—Galatians 1:15-16 NLT

The young man gently placed his hand on his wife’s growing belly. Even with his baby girl snugly hidden deep inside the womb, he saw her with spiritual eyes. Then with his words, he spoke his God-given vision into existence.

This baby is going to be our Holy Ghost girl.

That first-time father with a divinely inspired imagination was my dad, and he had no doubt that I would be God’s special girl. His faith-filled words, mingled with my mother’s tear-filled prayers of love shaped my destiny. The signs were evident from the very beginning.

As early as the age of three, I can remember having an innate hunger for God. Everything around me seemed saturated with His presence and caring nature. Just like the psalmist who wrote, As the deer panteth for the water, so my soul longeth after thee, I experienced these same depths of spiritual wonder before I could even read or write.

One particular evening, as my parents recall, we were driving home from a visit with my grandparents who lived in a little riverside village. I was always in awe of nature’s beauty on those winding roads canopied with lush green trees. Emerging from the tunnel of foliage that night, I became enamored with the vast expanse of starry hosts that I could see from the backseat window. Tears filled my eyes and I began to sob uncontrollably. With deep concern, my parents asked me what was wrong. In between wails of grateful awe, I replied, I see Jesus.

Thirteen. To the superstitious, it is a symbol of impending doom.  To the biblical numerologist, it might bring to mind the thirteenth lap around the walls of Jericho that sent the magnificent fortification crumbling to the ground.

To me, thirteen is a symbol of glorious groundbreaking. My thirteenth birthday was the genesis of a milestone year that redirected the course of my life, knocked me on my face, set me ablaze, and taught me to fight. Thirteen marked my full initiation into the war between good and evil.  That year also revealed with realistic clarity the adversary that sought to steal, kill, and destroy all that God had favorably and graciously bestowed upon me.

Thirteen came in December of my seventh-grade year. Those initial days were best described as awkward and uncomfortable. The world around me began to change, though it was quite possibly my perception of it that took on the real transformation.  The compulsion to compare myself to others killed my spirit and replaced my individuality. Popularity became a personal goal I felt I could never attain. I wanted so badly to be like the other girls—the pretty ones with the perfect hair, expensive clothes, blossoming bosoms, and the attention and admiration of all the boys. Still, I found myself perpetually trapped inside my frizzy-haired, thrift-shop-attired, flat-chested, boyless existence. It made me jealous and angry. Not to mention the fact that I had begun to experience the aches and pains and emotional ups and downs that accompanied puberty. The wiring in my brain went cablooey every month around the same time, signaling the end of the world as I knew it. My mom told me it was called PMS. Whatever it was, I hated it and I made sure my whole family hated it, too.

Summertime soon arrived in all its glory and I was able to let my guard down some, except when I went to the city pool. Once again I was reminded by the girls in little bikinis being chased by cute boys that I was the invisible one wearing a T-shirt over my one-piece. I wanted attention, too. I wanted the boys to think I was pretty, but I didn’t even believe it myself.

Then came church camp. Immediately upon arrival, I began to size myself up to the girls I thought were prettier and more well off. That same jealousy and anger rose up in me. I wanted so badly to be one of them and knew that I never would be. I hated them for it.

My camp counselor, Krista, was a cute, blonde-haired, blue-eyed young woman with perfect teeth and a petite frame. She was sweetness incarnate. Everything about her was what I wanted to be. So I was ashamed when that familiar feeling of envy crept into my heart regarding her. I knew that those feelings were completely invalid. She had given me no reason to dislike her. I couldn’t understand why I was experiencing this animosity toward a person who was completely undeserving of it. I hated how it made me feel. I wanted to be rid of it, but I didn’t know how. I prayed that God would take it away, but it was still there, weighing me down, creating hostility and unrest. It was a real problem that I couldn’t fix on my own. More than anything, I wanted my heart to feel clean again.

After one of the busy, hot, playful days—common to the church camp experience—we returned to our dorm to shower and get gussied up for the evening church service. This followed dinnertime in the crowded, noisy cafeteria where the line was an hour long. I always thought the food was decent, for camp food.

The evening chapel time was always especially exhilarating and entertaining. The songs were high-energy, the puppets were zany and comical, and the object lessons kept us fully attentive and expectant. But every night, as the atmosphere began to transition into a sweet calm, we’d hear the word of God in a way that caused a longing deep within our spirits.

I can still remember what the round-bellied preacher with a Cajun drawl spoke about that night. Forgiveness. As he preached, I felt an ache that only intensified as the sermon reached its end. Tears welled and it was as if all the magnetic forces of the earth were pulling me toward the altar. When the invitation to pray was given, I was like the pent-up waters of a lake when the floodgates open. Moving at a walk-run pace, I was the first one at the altar, and there, I entered the very throneroom of God. The Holy of Holies. Weeping was the means in which God began a cleansing of my heart and my spirit.

I surrendered completely to what God was doing inside of me that night. There were no words, only groans which the Holy Spirit alone could interpret.

Then, in the realm of the spirit, I saw their faces—the girls from my school toward whom I had felt so bitterly envious. The disdain I had harbored for so long melted away in the presence of Almighty God and was replaced with love. He showed me their pain. I could feel it. For the first time I saw them through His eyes—eyes of compassion for girls who were lost and seeking the same attention and approval that I had so desperately longed for.  Then He commissioned me with these words, I have called you to be an example to your classmates. I have placed you in their path so you can show them my love. From now on, you will no longer desire the earthly things they possess. They will desire what I am placing inside of you, and I will give to them freely because I love them.

Every facet of my heart was laid bare before God that night.  My tears were the means in which I was cleansed. Then the work was accomplished. The heaviness I had become so accustomed to disappeared. Thankfulness was now the anthem overflowing through my lips.

All the while, I had felt a gentle hand upon my shoulder. Out of curiosity I turned to see who it was that had been there tarrying with me, pleading my case before the Father. It was my counselor, Krista. Love for her washed over me.

I can say in all sincerity that I rose from that altar a completely different person. It was a miraculous change—one that I never could have brought about on my own. The bitterness was gone. The jealousy was gone. The feeling of inadequacy was gone. I had come to Him, weary and heavy laden, and He had given me rest. He filled me with love, joy, and peace. He gave me purpose and an anointing to be a light to the world. He appointed me to carry His love to my classmates and teachers and gave me the boldness and compassion to accomplish the task.

Every day, I discovered new ways that God had completely transformed me. Now, I wanted to be different and fully embraced my uniqueness. The things I had disliked about myself before became beauty marks from the hand of my Creator. I rocked my curly hair. I went crazy expressing my style through all the fun vintage clothing I shopped for in second hand stores. I carried godly confidence in place of the need to be noticed by boys. And wouldn’t you know it, I became popular, but in a totally different way than I had wanted to before. People began to notice my unique sense of style. I also made a point to be a friend to everyone I could, no matter their social status. I walked down the hallway with a smile on my face and a song in my heart. People knew they could come to me when they needed prayer or comfort or answers to their questions about God.

On my own, I was bitter. I blended in. I desired worldly things. Then God in His great mercy took a heart that was headed for disaster, washed it clean, and placed His very own spirit inside.

A desire for the things of God consumed me. I absorbed everything I could learn about the Savior I now loved so passionately. My Bible became worn, highlighted, and dog-eared because it was my manual for living. And most of all, I prayed that my classmates would come to know Jesus.

April 9, 1997

Nothing is better than being in your presence, Lord. For it flows through my entire body where only the soul can go. Please make my whole life so full of your presence that no evil will come near or pass through your strong shield. Deliver me from all evil, Lord. I love you, because you first loved me. Amen.

Satan knew from the start that God had given me the tremendous capacity to do great things in the name of Jesus. He saw my weaknesses, but he also knew I had a heart that followed hard after God. So at thirteen, he pulled out the big guns.

I started experiencing manifestations of demonic oppression. That