Fighting for it

Time has escaped me yet again.  Eight years since the day we made the choice to commit to each other.

Oh where has that time gone?

As I take a look back on the years I am reminded of the beautiful gift of grace.

Grace: (in Christian belief) the free and unmerited favor of God, as manifested in the salvation of sinners and the bestowal of blessings.

Eight years ago we leaped into a journey together that has been filled with great joys, deep sorrows, celebrations, disappointments, and so much more.

My plans for our marriage were big and bold.  I wanted to be the perfect wife.  You see I really convinced myself this could exist and I was determined to figure out how. Growing up in a broken home and continually watching my mom search for love left me thinking that I had to have something better because what I experienced could not be all there was.

I had found my love in Dan and I was not going to allow it to slip away. 

He was perfect in my eyes. 

Everything I never had growing up.

He was functional.

I was dysfunctional.

He was safe when life seemed so unsafe.

As time hurled itself at us we began to experience heartbreaks that were never in our plan.  My mom was battling an intense addiction that was sucking the life out of me and my marriage.  In the midst of this dark time we lost our first baby.  The days grew darker as we tried our best to hold up to this image we both wanted.  As time passed I tried my hardest to still be the perfect wife, all the while I was dying a slow death inside.  Dan did what he could to make me happy.  He tried to take the pain away or avoid it some days, but it wouldn’t go away.  I remember sitting at the dinner table together feeling so empty and anxious wondering if this is what I had amounted to. 

But I did what I thought was best and stuffed the pain and disappointments.  I pressed on with a smile hoping people wouldn’t see the disaster that was beginning to unravel in our marriage behind closed doors.

Days and months continued on as they do.  Our lives growing and intertwining together as we experienced great joys {the births of our daughters, celebrations of life, time together, watching our girls grow, dreaming up dreams of the future} and great sorrows {Infertility, death of loved ones, addictions of loved ones spiraling out of control, dreams that seemed so unachievable, depression, anxiety, and empty promises that left us aching}.

We loved each other.  We really did a good job at trying to fulfill what we thought each other needed.  The best part is we had most of our friends and family fooled into thinking we had it all together.

We began coexisting. 
I felt disconnected and unloved. 
He felt pushed away and disrespected.

We got really good at neglecting our marriage and yet making ourselves believe we were putting our best effort forward.

The breaking point came on a drizzly October day last year.  How did we let it get this far.

Life has a way of catching up to you and reminding you of how broken you are.

Nothing could take the love we had for each other, but we had allowed the hurt and disappointment to wrap tightly into every wound.

Who knew you could love each other so much yet hurt each other so deeply.

I think back to the beginning.  We both brought suitcases upon suitcases of baggage into our marriage.  How can you not.  My home life growing up might have looked more dysfunctional from the outside than Dan’s home life, but we all take away bad habits and learned behaviors in to our marriages.  Dan was not excluded from this but for some reason I set him on a pedestal thinking he was.

We both wanted God to heal our marriage in supernatural ways.  If we pray hard enough, if I read enough Christian self-help books, if I loved him with all the right love languages we could fix our marriage and poof we would be fabulous.  Do I believe God heals in supernatural ways?  Of course I do.  But it didn’t happen the way we wanted it to.  I see so many relationships/marriages that use this excuse not to go get help because they believe God will heal everything with time.  Why can I say this?  That was our outlook in our marriage for years.

On the opposite spectrum we can numb the pain to a point where we don’t even see how disconnected we have become to each other.

Getting help was the hardest decision we decided together.  It was almost as if we had to mourn a loss.  We both have this gene that tells us we can fix it and we can do it all. 

But we couldn’t fix our marriage.

We needed help.

Did we believe God was healing us in the midst of this?  Yes.  But we needed the help of a trained professional.

Some of us want to be right more than we want to be better.  ~Freeway~

We opened old and new wounds, reminisced over the beauty our lives have created, pulled and tugged on painful memories of our childhood.  We learned what communication could look like.  What realistic expectations look like for us individually and our marriage. 

We had to allow ourselves to go find those suitcases of baggage we brought into our marriage but neglected to unpack and begin to sort through them separately and together.  Dan and I had to allow each other into the areas that hurt, the broken areas that we tried so hard to conceal.  We had to stop being each others God and begin to find approval in our Savior.  For me this was huge.  My self-worth was put into all the wrong areas.  My need for approval was at an unhealthy level.

As I began to take that pressure off myself and Dan I started to see clearer and experience love at a deeper level.  I allowed myself to see our marriage in the present rather than continually dreaming of what I felt it should be. 

We have been in marriage counseling together for almost nine months now and we are still learning and growing and allowing God to stretch our marriage.  It has been hard and it has been absolutely amazing.

We never thought we would be that couple that needed outside help.  Those people are weak minded and don’t trust God…..I almost looked down on them.  Well we became one of those couples and it is changing our marriage.

Eight years.

I have learned that pain in inevitable.  I know now that I can allow it in my marriage instead of continually running away from it. 

I have learned that my husband will never be able to rescue me from all the pain.  Only my Savior can do that. 

We are in this together, pressing forward with the same goal in mind.

We can learn how to walk together with ALL our brokenness and find our silver lining.
Day by day we learn to become real with each other in the moments of chaos and disappointment.  Rejoice together in the joys and achievements.  Yearning for the day we will become fully known.

The truth is:  If we are allowing ourselves to be vulnerable to each other we are going to get hurt.  But we can’t allow this to be an excuse to disconnect from one another and continue on as if nothing is going on inside.  It is SO worth it to be IN love and not just say you love.

I am so thankful for eight years.  I am more in love with my husband today than ever before.  I see our marriage more clearly now.  Learning to live in the moment- when it feels like it completely sucks and it feels the best ever.  We are teaching our girls what a healthy marriage can look like. We are allowing vulnerability, grace and humility to ebb and flow through every wound, joy and moment we walk through.

It has been a beautiful eight years and I am so blessed to walk this life with my husband, my love.

Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self.  Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut, Doesn’t have a swelled head, Doesn’t force itself on others, Isn’t always “me first,” Doesn’t fly off the handle, Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others, Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, Puts up with anything, Trusts God always, Always looks for the best, Never looks back, But keeps going to the end.  

                                                    ~ 1 Corinthians 1, The Message~

    

Becoming fully known: A post on relationships

I recently had the chance to share some thoughts on friendship during our Wednesday night service.

It got me thinking about relationships in general.

What do some of your closest relationships look like?

When’s the last time you shared what is going on in your heart with someone close to you?  Told them about your deepest fears, your battle with doubt and how you’re trying to trust God but you are really struggling. 

I think about some of my relationships today and it breaks my heart because I would love to know the real person underneath the smile and small talk.  With these relationships I feel image drives my heart or their heart.  But then I have a few relationships in my life where I am able to drop the act and they can too.  We risk being known even if it hurts a bit.  And the risk is worth it.  It allows us to be fully known as much as we are capable of here on earth.

“A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.”

       ― Elbert Hubbard

From the beginning we were created for connection.  God didn’t just leave Adam in the garden by himself; He gave him Eve and all the beauty that surrounded them.  He indented us to be in relation to one another.  We can’t thrive in isolation.  When we allow ourselves to become isolated from the people close to us it is easy to become discouraged and listen to the voice of Satan.  But when we surround ourselves with relationships and trusted communities we have people to lean into when we need encouragement and need to be reminded of truth.  We need healthy relationships to help us walk through the dark days, to strengthen and encourage us when the pain runs deep and the bumps and bruises of life feel all consuming. 

It isn’t always easy to be a friend.  Relationships get messy.  Feelings get hurt.

Let’s be honest our hearts are selfish and it is easy to get caught up in our own needs instead of the needs of others.

Before I get too far into this relationship topic I want to make sure of a few things.  First, our most important relationship is meant to be shared with Christ.  This is our most vulnerable relationship we have.  He knows those areas we don’t even want to know.  Next to that is our relationship with our spouse.  It trickles down from there with our friends, parents, children, and so forth.

Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him              

             -Genesis 2:18

If we were designed for connection then you would think this relationship stuff would be a breeze and all of our hearts would be filled with all these gooey feelings of joy and love and laughter and so on.

Some days my heart feels that way.

Other days it feels hurt and discouraged because someone I care about hurt me.

This relationship thing is messier than I thought.

Time gets in the way.  Many of us today rush from one thing to the next and are left with little time to connect one on one or in a group setting. We live in a world that forces us apart rather than bringing us together and it often takes a lot of energy to step back and remove ourselves from the business of everyday life and make space for our relationships to grow deeper.  It seems a whole lot easier to just push it away and say I will get to that later.

As our relationships get deeper it increases our vulnerability to one another. Many of us have been hurt a time or two and our hearts have become hardened because of those hurts. It is very easy to let this happen because we want to protect ourselves.  Our natural incline is to protect our heart. 

It can seem a lot easier to slap on that smile and pretend everything is beautiful and you got life figured out.  But vulnerability is a must in a trusted relationship it allows us to see a glimpse into each other’s heart. 

Since the beginning we all have been in hiding.  We hide from God and we hide from each other.  There are parts of ourselves we don’t want people to see.  We can wonder if they will still be there as a friend if they find out about that time we said that or we did this. Fear keeps us from becoming fully known in our most intimate relationships.

Technology advances has made connecting with one another easier. The downside is a lot of that connecting is not face to face and it makes it hard to see emotion.  It can often lead to false assumptions that can trickle into bitterness.

No wonder why relationships can get messy.

I am so thankful that Jesus models what a perfect relationship looks like.

He gives us his time, energy, grace, love and truth. 

He sacrificed His life for you and me.

He created appropriate boundaries in our relationship with Him to help us succeed in our relationships here on earth.  Jesus fills our hearts and He gives us one another to bring out the best in each other.

Jesus extends His grace and love out to us even though we are not worthy of it!  He reminds us of His truth when we fall, because left on our own our hearts are self-seeking. We need Jesus to guide us and encourage us to press forward in our relationships because when things get dicey and our hearts get hurt we want to run, not to each other, but far away. 

Just as Adam and Eve hid from God, we do the same thing in our relationship with Him and our relationships with each other.  Face it; it just seems easier to hide certain things doesn’t it?  They don’t care anyways and they probably have too much on their plate already.

When I start thinking this way I have to remind myself that God has placed these relationships in my life for a purpose and I was not meant to walk this life alone. 

I think I shared a while back that my husband and I started to see a counselor back in January.  This whole marriage counseling has brought us closer together than we have ever been. 

We have broken down walls and connected in ways I never thought was possible.

One day I sat next to him in our counselor’s office saying how sad it makes me to see so many relationships so disconnected {I was talking about marriages at the time}.  So many people passing by each other barely saying two words to one another and they are ok with it!!  I struggled to understand how people get so comfortable with each other they just lose the drive to continue to grow and stay connected.  Instead they grow apart and barley know what is going on in each others hearts….. Ugh it just frustrates me.  She then informed me of a sad statistic and I can’t remember the exact percent but it was something like 70-80% of couples wait till they already are considering divorce before they will seek help……seriously disgusting I know!  What happened to trying in our relationships!  It doesn’t just apply to our marriages but our friendships too.  Trying just becomes too hard so we move on to the next.

If Christ models a perfect relationship for us and we are created for connection then we should be able to figure this relationship thing out right? 

It’s hard. No really it is hard.  We get hurt.  We hide.  We become jealous.  We feel unloved.

Left on our own we will revert to what we know best: selfishness.

But when we allow ourselves to surrender and know we can’t be successful in our relationships without Christ’s love and grace poured out over us.  We then can see what a sacrificial relationship looks like.

For our relationships to continue to grow and continue in a healthy matter we need to allow some things:

We need truth.  

The godly give good advice to their friends; the wicked lead them astray.

                -Proverbs 12:26

We seek after truth in our relationships because we care about the growth of each other. We don’t say something truthful to hurt the other, which would be self seeking and wouldn’t help the other to grow.

God gives us His truth and we seek after it for our lives daily and He desires our relationships to be built on truth. 

I think back to a time when a very good friend of mine cared enough to say some hard words.  I was really struggling with a lot of anxiety and trying to work through some painful areas in my life by myself.  I was getting nowhere and my anxiety was starting to affect my daily life.  I was out to dinner with her and I couldn’t hold in my pain any longer.  I shared with her some fears and doubts that I had been experiencing.  I was really embarrassed about these feeling and I would have preferred my life not to look like this in that moment.  Once I shared these feelings and doubts with her it was sort of a relief.  She normalized a lot of it and said she had been there and she understood.  It was so nice because she validated my feelings.  But she not only did that, she also did something that may have been hard for her but she knew that it would be in my best interest and it was out of love.  She told me I should get help.  She said she thought it would be a good idea if I talked to a counselor.  It was really hard to hear that because at first it made me feel like I failed because I couldn’t solve it on my own.  But I knew she had my best interest in mind because she cared about me.  Sometimes it is a lot easier to make people feel good rather than providing them with true wisdom.  But with the story I just shared sometimes a friend can provide truth and it may be the very thing that God uses to catapult us into a deeper relationship with him and our friends.

When we avoid truth in our friendships our relating becomes artificial.  Marriages become desolate and dry.  Communities are left feeling cold and dark. 

We need to offer Grace:

People with good sense restrain their anger; they earn esteem by overlooking wrongs.

                -Proverbs 19:11

We can’t do grace without Jesus.  He graciously loves us despite our wrong doings.  He allows us to give this freely to one another.  This doesn’t mean taking advantage of one another, but being there during difficult situations, grieving with one another, encouraging each other, forgiving each other even when it hurts and it seems too hard to forgive.

For any relationship to move beyond the surface level we need to know it is going to be ok.  Ok to express issues we are facing, temptations, addictions, etc.

We need to be open to experience Vulnerability:  Share with a trusted friend a part of your heart you have been hiding.

There is nothing more powerful than a friend being honest and transparent.

The more vulnerable we become we are at a higher risk of becoming hurt.  This can make it hard for many of us.  Even Jesus friends betrayed Him, but He didn’t pull away and guard His heart.  He remained available to them. 

Know what serving each other looks like:  Find a way to meet a need.  We all have God inspired gifts that were given to us and our relationships are great ways to utilize these gifts!

Assume the best of one another:  Assumption is a dangerous thing.  It can lead the heart astray and bitterness will begin to brew when we make assumptions that are not built on truth.  Always assume the best of one another.  When in doubt don’t be afraid to ask and share your feelings.

Connection:  As I said before, we are created for connection.  If you struggle in this area it might be a good idea to take 15 min out of your day to connect with someone close to your heart.  With the fast pace lives we live it is never a bad idea to be proactive in this area.  Set aside time on the calendar,    that way when the dark days roll in you already have that time set aside.  Also be brave and join a small group or find a way to become connected in your community.

Create space and make time for relationship to grow and flourish.
But Jesus would withdraw to desolate places and pray.

                -Luke 5:16

Even Jesus took time to step away from His responsibilities to be spend time and be connected to God.

This may be one of the most difficult areas for most of us.  Many of us sprint from one thing to the next leaving little room to breathe.  Making space for God is most important, our time spent with Him is what strengthens us and encourages us to become available in our relationships – whether it be in our marriages, one on one time with friends or in a community setting.  If we constantly use the excuse that we are too busy and don’t have the time nothing will change, we will always be too busy.  We need to be proactive in this area.  Setting aside time for our relationships is so important.  Be intentional.

Relationships get messy.  Our feelings are messy.  Life is messy.  Don’t do it alone.  Find some trusted people so your messy can hang out with their messy.

Maybe it is your relationship with your spouse that has become so disconnected you don’t even know where to begin to start rebuilding.  What about that friend you have been thinking about but you can’t seem to find the time to pick up the phone and schedule a time to get together? Or your child that sits silently all alone waiting to hear from you.  The broken relationship with your parent that you know needs mending but it would require forgiveness and you are not ready to give that.

Relationships take work.  They require time.  We get hurt.  We feel pain.  We want to give up. 

But in our most vulnerable of moments is when we grow.  We sacrifice our needs for another and we are able to see and feel a way to love and be loved.  We become fully known.

To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial.  To be known and not loved is our greatest fear:  But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God.  It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us. 
             -Timothy Keller

Part 2: Jesus Culture Conference ~ Becoming undone

Hosea 6:1-3

Come on, let’s go back to God.
    He hurt us, but he’ll heal us.
He hit us hard,
    but he’ll put us right again.
In a couple of days we’ll feel better.
    By the third day he’ll have made us brand-new,
Alive and on our feet,
    fit to face him.
We’re ready to study God,
    eager for God-knowledge.
As sure as dawn breaks,
    so sure is his daily arrival.
He comes as rain comes,
    as spring rain refreshing the ground.”

Heart pounding.  Air thick with fear.  All consuming and piercing.

I couldn’t understand why this was consuming me.

Fear

Night after night I laid awake asking God why.  Why He wouldn’t take this thorn away.

I remember the way I felt waking each morning hoping the feeling would be gone.  But it wasn’t.  It remained and I wondered how I could face the day feeling this way.  Day after day I tried to suppress emotions that were beginning to seep out.  The harder I tried the worse it became.

Panic attacks were beginning to be a part of my daily life.

Horrible thoughts consumed my mind daily. 

Fear can be absolutely crippling. 

As days turned to months I couldn’t understand what was happening to me.  There would be days were I would find myself facedown begging God for help.  I wanted this feeling to be gone.  I was getting to a point where I was really struggling to hold it together.

Lamentations 3:16-18

He ground my face into the gravel.
    He pounded me into the mud.
I gave up on life altogether.
    I’ve forgotten what the good life is like.
I said to myself, “This is it. I’m finished.
    God is a lost cause.”

I came to a point in my life where I couldn’t hold it together on my own any longer.

I was starting to unravel and I had a choice to make, continue to try to do it on my own or surrender and begin to trust God in a new way. 

At this point my relationship with God consisted of performing for Him.  I create an image for myself that that was built on lies and insecurities.  If I said all the right things, kept the pain tucked away, looked functional and put together then people would think I turned out normal. Even better I could fool them into thinking I had the faith of a giant and I was great at trusting God. 

I had found comfort with God with all my surface emotions, but I kept a lot of pain locked away deep in my heart and I had swallowed the key years back.

I was doing the right thing.

God couldn’t use that stuff anyways.

I disconnected from the pain and tried my hardest not to look back.

Up to this point in my life I had a distorted image of what control over my life looked like.  I really believed if I was a good girl and tried hard enough I would become stronger and I would be able to press through life escaping the hard stuff. 

Looking back this was a pivotal point in my faith walk.

God was slowly unraveling this image I had created for myself.  I didn’t know who Nicole was anymore.  I only knew what I wanted myself to look like and I knew how to please people with my behavior.  So that is what I did.  I set an unachievable image for myself and I anxiously raced after the finish line, constantly disappointing myself.

Fast forward a few years.

After the birth of my second daughter I found myself struggling yet again.

The panic attacks had returned and they were back with vengeance.

December was a terrible month that year.  Most days I spent on the couch paralyzed by fear. 

Christmas, a time for family to gather and enjoy each others company and praise our Savior became a dreadful time.

Smile and laughter filled the air, but for me the air was filled with a thick fog.  I felt disconnected from reality.

Life was happening all around me and I wanted nothing more to connect to it, but I couldn’t.

Everyone seemed so happy and I just felt lost. 

I found myself wondering how come the pain had returned and why I couldn’t get a grip on it.

This was different though.   

Something had broke inside me and I couldn’t do it any longer.

At this point instead of asking God to remove it,  I began asking Him to work through it and show me the purpose of it. 

It wasn’t easy. 

There were days I felt like I was losing it.  I would make two steps forward and one step back.  It was extremely difficult at times.

I decided once again to seek counseling.

I began a journey of healing.

Healing years of pain and loss, joys and sorrow and learning to find God in the midst of it.

I remember sitting in her office and allowing myself to finally unravel enough to feel the pain of years of loss I kept locked away.  She passed along a few words of advice.  Words that I will carry with me as long as I am on this side of heaven --- “make room for the pain” and “Just because it feels good doesn’t mean it is and just because it feels bad doesn’t mean it is”.

Wait you want me to make room for pain!!!! IMPOSSIBLE

Pain could only mean weakness and I was a pro at making myself feel good and not being weak. 

After months of therapy and reliving areas of my life that were tied to immense bondage I began to make room for the pain and allow myself to grieve the losses.

God was working in the midst of deep wounds, healing years of insecurities, strongholds, and addictive behavior.  I wish I could say it was easy to trust Him and not doubt Him.  But I doubted constantly wondering how this process could heal.  But by the grace of God He gave me the strength to hold on.

He placed people in my life to remind me of truth.

I pressed into Him day after day handing over years of hurt and disappointments.

It didn’t just get better like I wanted it to.  It felt worse.  Everything I grabbed onto for security was being pulled from under me.  Was it all a lie?  Who was I?  Can God love me?  What are people going to think of me?

I wondered if it was worth it. 

I was reassured that it often gets a lot darker before you break through to light.

After months of counseling and breaking chains upon chains of bondage I was beginning to find that there really was freedom on the other side.  He began mending my heart.

Allowing God into those areas of my life was hard.

He knew where I ached and He ached with me. 

He knew I kept those things locked away out of shame. 

But His blood covered that shame.

I wanted Him to go in and take it as far away as He could.  Instead He continually pursued my heart until I was ready to find Him in the midst of it and bring it to Him.

When we allow God to take capture of ALL of our heart His promises will exceed our expectations.

We were designed to connect fully to Him. 

Connecting with Him requires us to become extremely vulnerable.

Allowing this can feel very unsafe and painful at first, especially if you have built high walls around your wounded heart. 

It might get messy. 

It will be ok. 

Allow Him to break those walls down piece by piece knowing that in His time He will show Himself.

You will unravel.  Break down and fall apart. 

But He will pick up the pieces and mend you back together and the result will be more beautiful than you can imagine.

I’ve tasted and seen of the sweetest of loves where my heart becomes free and my shame is undone.

~Lyrics to Holy Spirit, Bryan and Katie Torwalt

Years have passed since this time in my life.

Do I have fears?  Of course

Do they have a grip over my life like before?  No longer

There is no perfect on this side of heaven.

Do I see purpose in the pain now?  Yes

I no longer fear the dark days.  They have purpose.  He uses them.

The question is:  Are we going to allow Him to use it?

As I said in the previous post months leading up to the Jesus Culture conference I felt God silencing me and asking me to sit quietly and listen to Him.

Around the same time I began the journey of healing years back I was introduced to Jesus Culture music.  Whenever I listened to their music I was overtaken by the presence of the Spirit.  It was such an impressionable time for my spirit to heal.  I felt alive when I worshiped to there music.

As I sat listening to Kim Walker Smith {a worship singer for Jesus Culture} speak at the conference I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.  It was almost surreal.

She spoke of a time in her life where God was calling her to heal past wounds from her childhood.

I thought to myself are you serious this is CRAZY.

She continued on talking about how God uses everything we go through to prepare us.

As she spoke I saw the past 6 years of my life flash before my eyes and it all came together.

God knows.

He can see our pain

He doesn’t abandon us

Even when it feels like He has

He is preparing us for something more

Something bigger.

I share all this with you so you can be reminded that He is alive and He is working in the hearts of so many.  Breaking chains and setting people free.

Why?  Our life is not our own.  He breathed life into us to bring Himself glory.

Every pain.  Every joy.  Nothing is wasted.

It is all about Him.  He gives us the choice to partner with Him or do it without Him.

He will never stop pursuing every area of our lives until He is woven into every fiber of it.

I don’t know where I would be if He wouldn’t have begun the process of unraveling this good girls heart six years ago.  But I know I wouldn’t be living free.

Six years ago He called my name. 

He asked me to trust Him.

He asked me to stop living in the shallow waters of safety.

He called me to follow Him into the deep.

He didn’t say it was going to be easy.

He only said He would do it with me.

I think back to those dark days and I am reminded how they were some of the rawest moments I had with Him.  Pouring all I had into wanting to experience just a taste of His love over my life.

I press forward knowing He is using this heart of mine.  He gave us His Spirit allowing it to pour through us and experience tastes of His presence.

The Spirit revealed so much to me at the Jesus Culture Conference.  Overall God reminded me of who I am.  Not who I want to be or who I feared becoming, but who He created me to be.  He only made one me and it would be an absolute shame if I continued to hold back pieces of my heart that seemed unusable or different.   He desires our whole heart.  He wants to mend our brokenness back together in beautiful ways.

I’ve spent way too much time trying to chase after pleasing human approval. 

Today I just want to be in His presence.

If that means looking different I am ok with that.

His Spirit was unleashed over us that weekend.

There are not words to describe the encounter that poured out over that auditorium that weekend.

He has been preparing my heart for some time now to experience His presence in a whole new way, a way this heart would have never allowed if I wouldn’t have allowed Him into those areas that I thought were wasted.

Six years ago God began preparing my heart.  He ignited a flame that slowly began burning.  Today it burns wildly for Him and it can’t be contained.

I can no longer hold back.

He pursues us continually asking us to give Him our all.
And He will continue to pursue us until we meet Him face to face.

Six years ago I answered to fear.  It had an intense grip on my heart. 

The only way I could break free was to step out and trust that He was holding me.

God allowed me to experience some of my darkest days before He allowed light to permeate the darkest valleys.

Today I stand surrendered and in awe of His grace and love for this recovering good girl..

Embracing today and looking forward to what is ahead.

Maybe He is stirring something in your heart but fear holds you back from tasting the freedom you were created for.  Grab onto Him and trust Him. Give Him your all.  As long as you are pressing into Him it is worth it.  There is purpose in ALL the joy and sorrows.

Galatians 5:1

Christ has set us free to live a free life. So take your stand! Never again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you.