It Starts Small

Good Morning Brothers and Sisters in Christ! I wanted to share something a little personal with you this morning. You may or may not have noticed that the “authorship” has changed. If you are a friend on social media you may have also seen my name changed.

August 15, I went to the court and had my name legally changed from Kimberly Davis to Kimberlee Smith.

The change from Kim to Kimberlee is easy to explain. Remember a few weeks ago as we were studying God’s Word we learned that adjectives that ended in “oo” and “ee” always had a verb tense of now or future tense. When you read the Hebrew words that describe God, we can see that they are in the verb tense “now” and “future”, also. I was pondering on that and it came to me that if I dropped the “y” off my name and added “ee”, every time I look at my name I am going to remember I am the me I am now and tomorrow. That old self is gone and crucified.

The last name is a bit more complicated to explain. As I have shared with you, through my blog and social media, I have been on a healing journey. A journey of getting what was broken in me healed so that I could be God’s vessel. The journey started by looking at my perception of events and allowing God to reveal the truth about them. I had to stand, looking in the mirror and stare truth in its face.

That meant I had to quit accepting the lies and confront them. A huge lie I repeated was that I grew up in this amazing home with two awesome parents and my childhood was awesome. IN reality, it was the complete opposite. I grew up in a very dysfunctional home. I know this because as I started to detangle my mind – confronting my perceptions and behaviors – I learned that by the time you are 10 years old your behavior patterns are established.

My behavior patterns were dysfunctional and even my identity was false. I had created a pattern of behavior that was toxic to myself and others around me. I was not violent or an abuser, but as a result of my childhood I was quick to allow those types of people in my life because those people were normal. Chaos was normal. Abuse was normal. Secrets were normal. Lying was normal.

My heart is so sad for my parents. My mother died years ago and I am sad for her. She was a violent and cruel woman. When I see her face in my mind, my heart is so sad for her. God did not create her to be that way, but evil and cruel people hurt her and as a result, she became the battle that raged inside her. Instead of dealing with her own wounds, she projected her battle onto me.

I can narrow things down to one event in my childhood that would for many years hold me in bondage to evil. From a young age I started having nightmares. I did not know what was happening, as a young child I would not have known, but in my nightmare there were these shapes that were human like but pure black. Their eyes were like marbles. When you looked in them, it was as if there were many stars and at the center a galaxy of fire. These demons would do sexually explicit acts to me and I was frozen in place. I could not speak. I could not move. I could not wake up. I did not know as a child what was going on, but as an adult I do. If it was not sexually explicit dreams, they had these snake like things and they would circle around me and these snake things would bite me. They would chant terrible things. Things my own mother would say to me, they would chant.

As a result of these terrible dreams I would wet the bed. I remember when we lived at the farm house in Colorado, I was really young, I woke up and had wet the bed. My mother was furious with me. I tried to tell her about my “bad dream: but she said, “You stupid girl, stop lying.” I had to go out to the garage and my dad spanked me. I did not understand what I had done wrong. I was not lying. As a kid I was not even able to communicate what was going on. From that point on, everything in my mind was shattered and broken. I started to develop behavior to protect myself. I started to teach myself to disassociate from the abuse that continued. My dad – was just never there. I do not know if his head was stuck in the sand or his way of dealing with it was to disassociate like I did.

I just wanted, as a child, to be loved. To be protected. To know that I had worth and value, but over and over again, It was beat into my head that I was not worthy. I was not worth the very air I was breathing. As you can imagine I became very rebellious. That lead me to seeking the gaping holes in my heart. Dysfunction always finds dysfunction. I met a man with gaping holes in his heart and we thought we could fill each other’s heart and that lead to 23 years of an abusive marriage. It was physically, verbally, emotionally, and sexually abusive. The evil that attacked me in my dreams dwelled and influenced my mother and my ex husband.

Can I just say how much my heart hurts for them. When I look at their faces in my mind, I am filled with so much sadness. They are created in the image of their creator, just as I am. None of us were ever created to be who we turned out to be. Their battles had nothing to do with me. Their words and actions had nothing to do with me. They had/have battles raging within themselves that only Jesus can have victory over.

SO what does this have to do with my last name? I came to a cross roads in January. I did not want to keep my ex husband’s last name for the obvious reasons. I did not want to keep ties with evil. I also did not want to return to my maiden name. It was not dishonoring my parents in any way. When I looked at my last name it brought fear to my mind. It brought back memories of the things that kept me bound and chained.

I was discussing this with my sister. What should I do? Then something crazy happen. My sister’s husband, which I’ve known for more than 25 years, pipped up and said, I’ll adopt you. You can be a Smith and my little sister. I looked at my sister and said “really?”. We laughed and joked about changing my last name and googled. Sure enough you can change your last name.

Later that night as I was saying my prayers I got distracted thinking about what my brother said (I hate calling him brother in law). I started crying. For the first time in my life, someone on this earth said, I’ll claim you. I know that sounds weird. When things happen back in Feb ’22, you know not one single person in my ex husband’s family called to find out what was going on or to ask if they could help. It was not like we were only married a few months. 21 years I had spent “apart” of that family. They wanted nothing to do the day they met me and I was not “one of them.” My parents did not want me. No where in the last 43 years of my life have I ever felt either of them would pipe up and say, yep she’s one of ours. My mom was on her death bed and refused to have anything to do with me. My ex husband never once in 23 years acknowledged my exitance unless he got something out of it.

So to hear someone say, you are my sister and that is the final word on it. A few tears turned into one of those ugly cries. Until that day I felt so displaced. No one wanted me. If I dropped off the face of the earth, no one would claim me. My entire life I had felt so absent of human connection or “family.” Now I have this guy, whom I have known forever, who is a good godly man, says, you are my sister and that is that.

Names are not what make us. Names do not define us. Only God does. My name change to me is like when Saul became Paul. Many would still remember the old Saul and many more would meet Paul. Paul was not who he was before he encounter the Lord. Saul was crucified with Jesus and Paul emerged risen with our Savior. Kimberly Davis will be the topic of tea for some, but Kimberlee Smith is the testimony of a Great Almighty God who is faithful to do what He promises to those who repent, turn away from their old ways, and move forward with Him. I am not my past and my past does not define me.

SO no, I did not get married and it is not a surname or pen name. It is part of this journey of healing and wading further into the deep with the Lord. What I can share is once the Judge’s gavel made judgement in my favor, I almost did not make it out of the court room. As I walked away, my legs turned to mush and I found a chair just outside in the corner. I cried. When the judge hit the gavel to the wood, It was as if the last bit of bondage was released from me. I was no longer tied to all that hate and abuse. It no longer could claim me physically or spiritually. This is a “man” made change, but in my heart I know it is Jesus who has freed me. His Truth has set me free.