Who is Priscilla?

I am one of God's peculiar people (see verse above right).

My full name is Bonni Elizabeth Hall, although this is not the name I was given at birth. I changed my name for lots of personal reasons, not the least of which is the fact that I believe God gave me the name, "Elizabeth". Elizabeth is from the Hebrew Elisheba and means "God's oath" or "God's promise".

Bonni, a variation of Bonnie (my maternal grandmother's name), comes from the Latin bonus, meaning, basically, "good".

I should also note that the woman who existed before was a very hurt, angry, and sad little girl, and a very dysfunctional, enraged, emotionally unstable adult. After all I've been through, I am no longer that hurt child or dysfunctional adult (although I am still a scarred adult). I'm a new creation (in progress), and my name change reflects that. Abram became Abraham, Jacob became Israel, Sarai became Sarah, Simon became Peter, Saul became Paul.

I became Bonni Elizabeth, God's good promise.

I am, for various reasons, a very diverse and multi-faceted person, and the name and person of Priscilla is one of those facets. It's not an act any more than my other roles and pseudonyms are, and it's not something I made up but rather feel called to be.

The Biblical Priscilla was a mentor and counselor (Priscilla is the pet form of Prisca). A partner and companion of Paul, there are accounts of Prisca or Priscilla in Acts, Romans, 1 Corinthians, and 2 Timothy. The verse which most clearly describes how I see Priscilla is when she and her husband Aquila encountered the zealous but somewhat misguided Apollos (who went on to become a strong minister of Christ):

He began to speak boldly in the synagogue; but when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him aside and explained the Way of God to him more accurately. Acts 18:26 (NRSV)

I don't pretend to know all the Way of God. I believe that God is an infinite God and therefore beyond the ability of a finite mind to conceptualize. I do, however, know a lot about growing in faith and about healing and struggling to know God. My life has been a whole long series of "been there, done that" experiences, and from each of them I learned something more about myself and about God (although sometimes I didn't realize it for years after the fact). What I do now is to take my experiences and understanding, and offer them for others struggling with their faith, stuggling with their identity, struggling to grow, struggling to really know God. If others gain insight or learn something, wonderful. If not, that's okay, too. I'm just sowing seeds and readers can take my thoughts and ideas for what they're worth to them.

I also happen to have an Aquila, my friend, partner, and husband;, Andrew Bromage, a lay minister and computer geek who preaches, reads Koine Greek (the language of the New Testament), has a gift for teaching, and is in most ways a pretty wonderful bloke. Eventually, I will persuade him to put some of his sermons and essays on Shoshanna.

I may as well say right now that the reason I feel strongly about recovery (particularly from abuse) is because that's one of the things that I have been there and done, and, in fact, am still doing, although at a much more comfortable and less painful pace. A good deal of my inspirational writing and understanding of trials, of pain, and of God's deep, abiding mercy stem from my own suffering and subsequent (ongoing) healing and recovery.

In any event, my life has been painful and difficult. I have not always been particularly Godly; far, far from it. As an answer to my suffering, I adopted attitudes, habits, and styles of coping that were every bit as wrong as the things which were done to me. In order to reach me, in order to heal me, God has had to go to extreme lengths, and I want to tell you, it wasn't always pleasant for me. Having a badly set bone re-broken and set again isn't pleasant, either, nor is having an infected wound opened up and cleaned out, and neither is having one's wounded, bruised, bleeding soul healed. I don't blame God for this pain; the sins perpetrated against me were not God's fault. Neither were my own sins God's fault, and I did as much damage to myself as others did to me, I think.

My relationship with God is intense. It is fiercely intimate, sometimes angry, sometimes blissful, sometimes calm, and always real. I do not put on a "church face" for my Lord. He sees me in the shower, hears me laugh over silly television programs, watches me as I sing and dance, as I eat and work, and in every other thing I do, private and public; adopting some sort of false mask of piety or composure when I talk to God would be absurd at best. He knows who I am, even more than I do. In the tradition of the prophets (most notably Jeremiah, who cursed the day he was born and accused God of "deceiving" him) and the psalmists, I cry out my anguish and anger and love and everything else to God. I have long thought God would prefer my naked honesty to falseness, no matter how messy or rude my honesty is.

I also decided long ago that there is no point in trying to please all my human brothers and sisters in Christ. Some of them are woefully immature in their faith, still making decisions based on external appearances and on rules, regulations, and other things which may look Godly, but have nothing to do with God at all. If I find fellowship and compassion and pleasure in the others of the Body of Christ, I am pleased. If I do not, I don't worry too much about it. My relationship with God is what matters to me now, and I'm not going to be bothered with trying to please people who are more concerned about how things look than with how they are.

Lest you fear that I dislike or avoid all other Christians, let me assure you that isn't the case. I am personally bound to a small circle of fellow Christians to whom I hold myself accountable. I have also been known to be active in the greater body of Christ and world at large, doing what I can to share my experience in God and the things I've learned from living a life such as mine and having to struggle and fight for my faith and recovery.

Going on to other matters, I'll tell you that I'm not really much of a theologian. I'm not one to set forth or argue about points of doctrine (although I can do so if I feel the inclination; I find that most such arguments are unfruitful and pointless). What I am is a living, breathing, growing Christian who has some talent for writing and (I hope) some ability for giving counsel, even if it only amounts to "Yeah, I know just what you mean."

Among the many things which interest me are history, music, art, scripture (I particularly enjoy studying the words and language of the NT and I'm pretty handy with a Bible and a concordance/lexicon, and having a partner who reads Greek is very useful, indeed), and psychology (although the secularity of a lot of it irritates me, it's still an interesting study). And, perhaps not surprisingly, all of these interests have led me to have a deeper understanding of God and our relationship to Him.

I take all of these things: experience, education, personal understanding, scripture, and more, and try to bring them together in a coherent form which, I hope, will bless and perhaps encourage others. If you like, you can check out the statement of faith which represents Shoshanna ministries; not only did I write it, it applies to me and I believe it.

In the words of John Wesley:  What I learn, thus I teach.

If you're really curious to know more about me, you can visit my personal domain and see more of who I am and what I'm about. Be aware, though, that my homepage is full of all kinds of strange and quirky things, including a lot of tongue-in-cheek humor and my peculiar sarcastic wit, and showing some of the many odd facets of my personality.

I also maintain a fairly secular site on abuse recovery, The Trinity Pages (Trinity being one of my pseudonyms for personal reasons which don't have that much to do with the orthodox Christian teaching of God as a triune being). That site is something of a companion site to this one, but it is much darker, and much more secular; it also has a much more detailed account of my own abuse history and thoughts on recovery and other things like poetry and information on psychological ills such as Dissociation Disorders and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Regardless of who others think I am or think I should be, I know who I am, or at least, I know who I am in Christ, and who I am to God.

But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them -- though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. 1 Cor 15:10 (NRSV)

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well. Psa 139:14 (NRSV)

For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life. Eph 2:10 (NRSV)