Five Minute Friday: Together

Around here we write for five minutes flat on Fridays.

We write because we love words and the relief it is to just write them without worrying if they’re just right or not. So we take five minutes on Friday and write like we used to run when we were kids.

On Fridays we write with gusto, unselfconscious and flat out.

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking
2. Link back here and invite others to join in.
3. Please visit the person who linked up before you & encourage them in their comments.

OK, are you ready? Give me your best five minutes on:

::

Together…

Together was not a word that I grew up feeling good connotations about. For the most part, I generally felt pretty alone. Even in a room full of people I felt alone. I felt like I was different. No no one liked me; I did not fit in. In my family together was not a good word. It was an opportunity for someone to abuse me.

The feeling of being alone and different followed me many years into my walk with the Lord. It was different, but still alone. I knew He was always with me. I knew He loved me no matter what.

But I did not feel like His people loved me that way. I did not feel like I had deep friendships. I pretty much kept everyone at a disposable connection level.

About 5 years ago, God began to unearth some really painful really dark secrets that kept me feeling alone. He showed me that I felt alone, not because people did not want to be with me; I felt alone b/c I was hiding. I was afraid people could not love me if they knew some of the struggles I carried and could not get free from.

When God took me to celebrate recovery to deal with my alcoholism, He began to dismantle the walls that I thought protected me. Those walls kept me alone and isolated. As I began to come clean about the things that I thought I could entrust to no one but God, an amazing thing happened. I wasn't alone anymore. I was truly together. As I dealt with the fact that years of sexual abuse and child pornography had distorted my sexuality and let others come into my pain and distortion and pray for me, walk with me through it all, I wasn't carrying it alone anymore. The secrets no longer had to power to keep me from experiencing together. I told and people loved me anyway.

Then an amazing thing happened; people began to have courage to tell their secrets and the chains that held them began to fall off.

Stop....... times up

But I can't leave this hanging. Today, I help women walk through the process of recovery. Today I get to help others come out of alone and shadows to walk in together and light. So many years I spent alone in a crowd trying to manage my sin and beg God to take it out of me. His way is together, not alone. He only set me free as I opened up the basement and allowed people to come and shine light and love on the little girl hiding in the darkness. He set me free as I allowed people to love me and hold me and remind me that I am not defined or limited by the past. I will always bear scars, but today the scars are beautiful; they are an opportunity to tell His story of redemption in my life. Today I am not hiding and ashamed. I can tell about my pain b/c my pain helps others find the way to open the door so we can go into the dark basement and hug the broken scared little people and bring them into the light to find freedom and grace, hope and peace, redemption and restoration.

Five Minute Friday: Loud

Around here we write for five minutes flat on Fridays.

We finger paint with words. We try to remember what it was like to just write without worrying if it’s just right or not.

Want to play Five Minute Friday? It’s easy peasy! (<–-Tweet this!)

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking 2. Link back here and invite others to join in. 3. Meet & encourage someone who linked up before you.

OK, are you ready? Give us your best five minutes on:

::

::

Loud…

Sometimes the voice of the critic inside of me is so loud. Sometimes it is so loud that it drowns out my ability to create. It taunts me and mocks me; it undermines my belief that I am an artist. Sometimes the beauty of the Lord fills me with such awe and such a stirring to allow Him to create, express something beautiful through me. Then the taunting voice of the critic drowns out the beauty that is stirring in me. I stand in my studio and lose the faith to create. I avoid trying and allow the voice of the critic to drown out the voice of beauty and grace.

Slowly but surely though, some days I am able to ignore the voice of the critic and show up in the studio to meet the Lord anyway. I meet Him and refuse the let the critic taunt me into turning away. I stay and wait and the Lord is so faithful. He meets me there. He create beauty and worship through me and I am amazed and so grateful.

I am noticing the more I go into the space and wait refusing to leave. The louder the voice of the Lord encouraging me and stirring me becomes and the less power the critic has in me to taunt and stifle.

Five Minute Friday: Real

I am linking this post to Gypsy Mama's five minute Fridays.

Here are the rules:

round here we write for five minutes flat on Fridays.

We write because we want to, not because we have to. We write for fun, for joy, for discovery.

We just write without worrying if it’s just write or not.

Won’t you join us?

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking.
2. Link back here and invite others to join in.
3. Please visit the person who linked up before you & encourage them.

OK, are you ready? Give me your best five minutes on:

Real

Start:

Real. I am beginning to realize some real things about my mother. We have not always been close. There were, in fact, times in my life that I just wanted to get as far away from her as I could. I wanted to nothing to do with her. I just wanted to start over in a place where she couldn't get to me. She was not the perfect mother. As a matter of fact she made a lot of mistakes and allowed some really horrible things to happen to us.

I am so glad, though, that God didn't allow me to run away and start over without her. He has healed so dramatically and restored so beautifully. We have forgiven and loved and seen the most unbelievable and miraculous healing and change in our relationship. My mother lives with me. She has for about 6 years now. It has not always been easy. Sometimes it has been downright hard. But it has been beautiful and healing and great. I am so grateful that she lives with us now. I love her with all of my heart. I am so grateful that she lives right down the hall from me. I am so grateful that her grandchildren get to see her every day. I am so grateful for God's amazing and healing grace.

I would not trade the time I have had her in my house for anything. It is a treasure to me.

I am realizing now, though, that she is frail and fragile. The woman that I have sometimes been angry at and sometimes found exhausting and frustratingly childlike. The woman that I started to raise and parent from an early age. She has been strength in my life. She is where the intense strength that those who know me say I posses comes from. She has been a rock in my life. She has carried so much and she is a survivor. She has survived more than I have time to tell. Some of what she has survived is unspeakable. I am a survivor because she is a survivor.

She is getting old, though. As she recovers from a simple knee surgery that became much more complex, I realize that the strength is fading. She is not as strong as she once was. She will not always be here. She is fragile and frail. She will lean on me soon and I will be her strength. I will help carry the one who once carried me. As I realized yesterday she was becoming less strong, I selfishly asked God to keep her strong. "I am not ready for her strength to fade, Lord. I still want her to be the strong one. Please don't let her get weaker, yet. I never realized how much I took her strength for granted."

She is real. She is not superman. She is human and human strength fades. As the flower fades....

I cheated. It was more than 5 minutes. Please forgive me. I was not done and I needed to say it all.

The Scent of water

I was meditating on Ephesians 2:10 a couple of mornings ago.

For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

I was pondering that fact that we are God's workmanship and what that means. Just as an artist creates a piece of art and it is an expression of His heart, so God created each of us as an expression of His heart. He created us as His handiwork exactly how he intended. He wove us together in the womb and placed us in the exact family and environment that would bring about exactly what He intends for each of us. He has sent, sends, and is sending that which we need when we need it to lead us to where He wants us to go. The path is just as important as the destination.

He created me as an artist from the beginning. He also allowed the intense creativity and artistic nature in me to be crushed. So destroyed was the artist in me that I would never have dreamed saying I was creative 10 years ago, much less call myself an artist. It was so crushed anyone looking would have called it dead, but slowly over the last 5 to 7 years God has been busy resurrecting that which seemed impossibly desolate and demolished.

I have had the desire to draw for my whole life. I don't mean wow it would be pretty cool to be able to draw. I mean a passionate burning desire to be able to visually express what I see in my head. It has been such a unfulfilled, yet desperate desire in my heart. I have struggled and struggled trying to learn to draw. Then when the time was right...

I found a class online. Actually, several from a web site called willowing.org.
I am actually learning how to draw. I have drawn faces. I have NEVER been able to draw faces. They might not look like a particular person, yet, but I can draw a face that looks like a face. I have had enough success that I am thinking about a drawing class in school. This has been such a huge desire and I really thought it was impossible. If you have an inkling toward wanting to paint and draw, but find it a bit challenging go check out Tam at Willowing.

It has been such a journey. There has been so much struggle and frustration and so many tears. There has been doubt and spiritual war over this art thing. I have such harsh critics and an old mean operating system that runs in the background of my mind all the time.

Every part of this journey has been so important. It was important for the artist to be crushed. He created the artist and He allowed the destruction of the artist. When the time was right He resurrected the artist. Every part of this journey has been intentional, hand written by my creator; it was important for what He has for me to do that the artist be crushed seemingly beyond repair. As He resurrects it, and there is no doubt He is resurrecting her, the beauty of the struggle brings Him so much more glory than if I had just been born an artist and walked in it my whole life. The end is far greater than the beginning. What He has resurrected out of the ashes of devastation is so much more beautiful and so much grander. I have no doubt that He has great plans for the resurrected artist. I just need to continue to seek Him and grow. I need to be diligent to learn and allow myself to explore. I have to learn not focus on the end result of the art, but delight and rejoice in the creative process. He is setting me freer and freer every day and giving me more and more confidence to create art.

He has sent me so many resources and so much inspiration. He is allowing me to take so many different expressions of creativity and combine them into even more creative types of art. I am drawing, painting, collaging, Art Journaling, quilting, doing fabric and texture art. There are so many beautiful expression that He has brought into my life to combine and work with.

I am an artist. I am no longer afraid to call myself an artist. I am no longer to intimidated to make art. The enemy does not like it and the critic in my head tries to hold me back, but I have gotten free enough to silence the critic most of the time. I recognize the voice is not the voice of my Father and turn to my Father to hear what He has to say. His affirming voice is becoming louder than the critic and the enemy. Art is such a huge part of my life now and I am well aware of the tremendous healing power it has. I have a sneaking suspicion the reason He allowed so much brokenness and struggle was so I could take that struggle, make something beautiful out of it and use it as rocket fuel to power the work He wants me to do bringing healing and art to other broken people.

I read a beautiful book on suffering called The Scent of Water and the author pointed out a scripture I have never seen before, but it speaks so loudly to me especially in the area of art.

Job 14:7-9 "For there is hope for a tree, if it is cut down, that it will sprout again, and that its tender shoots will not cease. Though its root may grow old in the earth, and its stump may die in the ground, yet at the scent of water it will bud and bring forth branches like a plant."

That is such a beautiful picture of what I just wrote about. Though the tree was cut down and seemed dead beyond resurrection, at the scent of His water, the shoot began to grow. That is how it has been over the last 7 years. Sometimes the art development seriously seemed to be standing still. I doubted the resurrection of the artist was possible at times. I told myself this whole thing was ridiculous at times. But the shoots have been steady growing sometimes slower sometimes faster. Now as I look at the stump it is no longer a stump. It is tree. It has a trunk and branches and leaves. It can weather the storms that enemy sends and the criticism that comes. I can even handle making art that I don't like. It doesn't send me into a fit of self doubt and fear. I can look at it and say, "Well that experiment didn't go well. Guess I will try it another way." I used to be paralyzed by fear of failing or making something ugly. I would get stuck and not even try because I didn't want to "waste supplies". Now I just play and create. I can always get more supplies. Usually even if I don't like what I have created I can change directions and end up with something different that I do like.

The smell of His water woke me up and the constant shower of His grace has grown the dead stump into a pretty stout tree which is getting stronger by the day. Hopefully, I can be shade to other broken people so they can have a safe place to smell His water and be resurrected into trees as well.

Processing through the trip

I am just going to say that the next few weeks or months may be the busiest this blog has been in quite a long time. For some reason I just could not express what was going on inside of me via email. I did update, but is was pretty much just dry recounting of the activities of the days. Now that I am home, I see that there is a lot to process and talk about. I just couldn't get myself in the place to do that until I got home. Sitting here now at my desk, on my computer, with my music in my ears and the time to write I can see there is a lot to say. I am not going to be chronological about what I write or even try to totally make sense of it all. There may be a lot sometimes and very little other times. I plan to write about what bubbles to the surface as it churns up. There was so much going on the the secret place of my heart while I was in Ethiopia; I will try to share what I find along the way. Hopefully it will be a blessing to a few who may choose to read. I know it will be a blessing to me to let the words come out of my soul.

So here is what is bubbling this morning. The last couple days in Ethiopia I came across a book called Made to Crave: Satisfying Your Deepest Desire For God, not Food by Lysa Turkherst. It was on my mom's nook and I had already read the two books I put on the Nook for my trip. I began to read it and God began to really unearth some stuff in me. I have known that I have food issues for a long time, but I have not really been able to get the the true root of the problem. Nor have I ever been able to feel like I have been given the weapons and tools I needed to be able to find victory, by His grace, in the food battle.

I really need to back up a few steps and say that I think that the timing for beginning to read this book could not have been more perfect. I had just finished read the book Forever by Paul David Tripp ( I cannot even go into that book; it will have to be another post). I also read The Scent of Water by Naomi Zacharias (another one that maybe will bubble to the surface as I write about this trip). I had also finished reading The Invisible Hand by RC Sproul right before the trip. These three books all seemed to prepare me for the message God had for me about food through Lysa.

The trip did not end being exactly what we had all planned. One of the main organizations I had gone to serve with in Ethiopia was still hung up in the licensing stage when I arrived. None of us dreamed that things would still be hung up when we planned this trip 4 months ago. Because I had read the Invisible Hand before I left and had spent a lot of time meditating on the providence of God and how He is in, among and behind everything that goes on in our lives, I was not really concerned or disrupted by anything that was going on. I knew that God had arranged every detail of this trip from the suitcases that did not arrive with me, the disrupted water in the house, and the slow license process. I was able to really, for the most part, rest in His hand and take what He had in mind for the trip. I had a lot of time to read and pray and rest. The first couple days were very relaxed and slow. Since I tend to run 90 to nothing all the time, I felt pretty sure that God wanted me to have some slow days. My mind even goes while I sleep. I think that is why I am such a light sleeper, because I am constantly taking in and interpreting the details around me even while I sleep. The rest and time to read and slow down was really good for me. I knew that since God was totally in control of the my life and the universe that some time was exactly what He thought I needed. I really thought that I was going to Ethiopia to serve people and love on children. I have come to realize that I went to Ethiopia to be changed. This trip was more about what God wanted to do in me than what He wanted me to do for Him. I had no idea that God was taking me around to world to do a quiet, gentle, steady reworking of my heart. Each day He would wake me up, place me on His potters wheel and gently form me, remove junk in preparation to return me to my family, community and church a vessel prepared to love in a way completely different than I had ever been able to love. He asked me to go and I said yes, I just had no idea that He was sending me across the globe to do some really deep healing in me. He took me away from my responsibilities, my distractions, the things that keep me wound so tight so that He could unwind the tightness in me.

I am a morning person to the tee. It can be obnoxious how early my body decides to wake up with no alarm just naturally roll over and have no more sleep in my eyes. This gave me many hours to be still, pray, read, and journal while I waited for the normal people to wake up. I really do not mind that at all; it is, in fact, my very favorite time of the day. If I wake up later, I usually feel pretty disappointed about missing out on my quiet dark morning. I don't think I really had any idea while I was in Ethiopia the depth of what God was doing in the secret places inside of me.

I still don't know if I can totally define the changes inside of me. I felt God speaking, untangling, and removing stuff. I had bought a pretty thick journal to take on trip so I would have something kind of special to keep track of the trip. I pretty much filled up like 3/4 of it in two weeks; that is crazy. As I journaled and prayed I felt a recurring desire and prayer come out of me that I would go back distinctly changed by my trip and that I would carry back the beauty and gentleness I felt God stirring in me.

So this morning I was so struck by some distinct differences I see more clearly now that I am back in my normal environment. First, as I did Pilate's this morning, I realized for the first time in my life I did not feel hatred for my body. I struggled with body image and a very distinct hatred for the shape my body takes. I never remember a time in my life when I felt content about my weight or shape. I have felt fat my whole life. Even at times in my life when I have been a good weight and been in shape, I was never happy. I have always felt completely disgusted in my body. There was a chapter in the Made to Crave book that talked about beauty and finding beauty in beauty God gave us. It really began to sink in and remove some really strong lies I have believed for as long as I remember. It started to remove some unrealistic expectations in me. I realize the utter arrogance that it takes to call what God creates flawed. I have spent my whole life telling God that He should have done better when he made me. I have bought into the idea that I did not measure up to some impossible standard. Then one day riding in the van I realized that if God wanted us all to be the same shape, size and build, He would have made us that way. The beauty is in the amazing diversity He placed in all of us. We are beautiful b/c we are different. We are beautiful because some of us are tall and thin, some of us are short and stocky; we are all different sizes and shapes because He thinks that is beautiful. Who am I to tall my creator that what He made is not good enough? He is the artist? He chooses what is beautiful. So I started asking Him to help me see the beauty in how He uniquely and individually made me. Knowing that I cannot change my heart, only He can, I began to ask Him to change my heart and to help me see myself the way He saw me.

Then there were several things in the book that really stood out to me. Lysa said that the number on the scale tells me how much my body weighs, but it does not tell me my value. In another part of the book she talks about a friend of hers and how God helped her see that she could not measure success in a week by the number on the scale. The measure of success is a few questions: did I overeat this week, did I exercise more this week, did I eat in secret or out of anger or frustration, did I at any time choose food over God, before I hopped on the scale did I feel like it was a successful week? Questions like that look at the heart which is really the most important factor. These two passages really took that food out of the physical realm and into the heart realm for the first time for me.

Is my body at it most optimum weight, right now? Probably not. I could be in better shape definitely. Now, though, my focus doesn't feel so much about a number on the scale or a clothing size. My focus can be on seeking God and measuring where I am at by my heart. The weight is a symptom of a sinful relationship with food. Going on some crazy restrictive diet and exercise program will never be the answer. I have done that over and over. I have been a yo-yo. I have lost and gained that way without ever dealing with the heart of the matter. I realize in Ethiopia that food is the oldest addiction I have. It goes back farther than I can remember. It by far supersedes the drugs or alcohol. Sugar was the first drug I indulged in. I have often talked about how my alcoholism can definitely continues in the way I eat sugar. The thought had never occurred to me that the alcohol is a continuation of the sugar addiction from very early childhood. Talk about having things reversed. Sugar was the earliest comfort I can remember. I remember being very very young and binging on candy and cookies.

Having been shown so many things and dealing with the roots of the tree as well as being given tools to deal with this problem led me to this huge breakthrough this morning. I am not where I would like to be, but I know what I need to do to get there. I can measure progress not by numbers on a scale, but by where my heart has been for the day or week.

As I did my Pilate's this morning, I realized that I did not hate my body. I was content. My value for the first time in my life was not tied to how I looked. I could see the beauty in the way God made me. I was able to delight in the amazing way that my muscles move and respond to the exercises I was doing. When I got out of the shower across from the floor to ceiling mirrored closet doors, I did not look at my hips with absolute disgust and disdain. I looked and it was okay. I was beautiful exactly how I was. I am not perfect, but the imperfection is the beauty. I cannot ever remember looking in the mirror and being happy with what I saw. I cannot even put into words how huge this is for me. Only God could unravel that huge mess that has been wrapped around me for my entire life.

I feel like I have come home from Ethiopia more whole and free. I feel this contentment and rest in my soul that I have never felt. It's like God removed the knob inside of me that kept everything wound so tight. I feel loose, at peace; the intensity tightness is gone. I don't feel like there is such a tightness in my chest. There is an ease about the way I feel, walk, think, and react. I feel so at peace and rest.

I guess that is all there is to bubble for now.

My Lenten Journey

This year is the first year I have observed Lent. I have not really been in a church that observed it, nor have I even been taught anything about it. This year our church began following the Liturgical Calendar and observing the rhythms and days of the calendar. I have been so amazed at the focus and direction it has given my walk to think in terms of the seasons of remembrance in our faith as a opposed to just passing the days and months of the year. When we started this journey, our pastor, Mark taught a class on the Liturgical calendar, the meaning of the days, and what is significant about walking this calendar. I loved the idea of walking through the seasons of the life of Christ and how that can and will shape us into His image if we will allow. I love the idea that each year we can revisit remembering and re-walk the path, and as we revisit each year we will be changed and have a deeper understanding of who He is and how He walked. We will, in turn, have a deeper understanding of who we are in Him and be daily formed by Him into His likeness. I have been so excited to walk this path and have been so amazed at what He is doing in me as I seek to be in tune with the seasons and what He wants to teach me in all of them. The other part of this new journey I really enjoy is reading each day from the Book of Common Prayer. It really amazes me to think on the idea that brothers and sisters all over the world are reading the same verses and listening to what our Father has to say about them each day. There is something big, and grand and beautiful to me about the church of Christ unified in readings that cross ethnic, denominational, economic, and national boundaries. I have been so blessed to be able to discuss with my husband and other members in our church what we are reading and what He is teaching each of us as we read. It has been such a surprise how much I have enjoyed implementing these two practices into my life.

So onto Lent. As we were following the Church calendar and preparing , I had prayed for weeks about what the Lord wanted Lent to look like in my life this year. Observing Lent was a new idea and our pastor was so good to post links to sites we could read and research to understand what this journey of Lent is about and how people historically have observed it and people who are accustomed to observing Lent are doing so now. I began to seek the Lord and ask Him what He wanted me to do or give up. What I felt impressed to do was surprising and seemed pretty unorthodox. But, as I continued to press and seek Him, I continued to feel the same impression. What I felt I was to do was really press into finding the creative artist He created me to be. I felt Him tell me to bath it in prayer and be faithful to take time each day to express creativity or write something. I felt like He said we were going to walk through the darkness and shadows the have buried "the artist" in me, and deal with that fear, the insecurity, the doubt, the paralysis that sometimes keeps me from even feeling like I can try. I began to work through a book by Janice Elsheimer called The Creative Call. I am also taking an online creative Indie business class. I felt like He told me if I would work on these and seek Him everyday, we would walk through the shadows and doubt resulting in Him resurrecting "the artist" at the end of the journey on Easter. So I have undertaken His call to really push into who He made me to be and all that stands in the way of that. There have been times when I just felt like giving up in the last week. I hear the old familiar voice in my head telling me that "this is stupid", "who am I to think I am an artist", "I am not really an artist". Then I would hear Him whisper to me "don't give up, press in, how are you going to inspire the people I want you to inspire if you give up and don't find your freedom?" So I press on. I am supposed to write every day for my assignments in The Creative Call and I have failed many days to make time to do that, but I can and will keep pressing and seek to do better. I spent hours yesterday writing in my journal as I sat on the back porch in the sun. It was amazing. It was so amazing that it may be easier for me to consistently make and guard that space to write. I read His word and just wrote my heart out. It was liberating and beautiful. I also made a piece of art that He inspired me to make; I trusted Him and worked on it and finished it yesterday. And, I actually like it. The picture above is what I created yesterday. It was such a great day. I feel so free and inspired and motivated to keep pressing on. I see the progress and growth He is doing in me and I am so excited to keep going and see who I am in a few weeks after completing my commitment to undertake this journey and be disciplined about making space to do what I actually have such a deep desire to do anyway.

So this morning as I sat quietly before the Father resting and waiting to hear what He wanted to say to me, He showed me a beautiful and heartbreaking picture. I began to weep. He showed me that I buried my true self; the beautiful artist, the truest part of who I am. I buried her a long, long time ago b/c I wanted her to be safe. I put her away in a box buried in corner in the basement of my soul. She is the most beautiful, purest part of me. She has been buried and covered over with so many layers so that none of the pain, abuse and tragedy could get to her. I needed to protect her b/c it was not safe for her when I was growing up. Now, though, it is her hour; it is time for the me He intended when he thought me up to come forth. My Father is digging her up out of the dirt and introducing me to the beautiful artist that I have kept safely tucked away for so many years.

I am so glad that my Father challenged me to take this journey for Lent and that He gave me the courage to accept the challenge. What a beautiful dimension and sense of adventure I feel as I learn to let the Creator teach me to develop and cultivate the creator He has created, called and equipped me to be.

Rest for the Soul

As I talked about on my last post, I took a class that recently ended called "Renovation of the Heart." It has a tremendous impact on me and is continuing to have an impact on my as I attempt to continue walking in the spiritual disciplines that I developed through the class. The last couple weeks of the class ended up being very, very busy for me, so I have taken the couple weeks since it ended to slowly go through the last 3 chapters. One of the exercises that I went back and did from chapter 11 in the book had really impacted me the last couple weeks. I didn't really think it impacted me so much at the time I did it; I undertook the exercise b/c I wanted to be faithful to finish the class strong and not skimp out on the end of it. I have realized over the last couple weeks that it did impact my thinking.

I was to have Psalm 23 read out loud to me once through, then read again slowly pausing between each verse. ( I read it to myself). The I was to ask the Lord these two questions: 1)What needed to happen for my soul to be restored? 2) What is the first thing I need to do to find rest in you? I sat for quite a while asking and trying to be quiet and listen for the answers. Quite honestly, I was also dozing off a bit b/c I was really tired that day. I felt very impressed that the area of my life that I did not have rest in my soul was my children. I feel pretty much at peace, trusting and restful in most other areas of my life. I was not at rest in regard to my children. My lack of rest is a little different than one might think.

I trust the Lord with my children, or so I think. I do not trust myself, though, with my children. I feel like I have made so many mistakes raising them. I feel like I will realize later that I have continued to make mistakes with them. I try to do right by them. I try to make wise decision in regard to them, but, if I am being brutally honest, I feel like a failure in the area of parenting so much of the time. I didn't have much a role model growing up, and my role models when I started having children were extremely imbalanced. I am old enough to have seen the kids of the church I attended when I first met the Lord and had Ally grow to adults. There was a lot of hurt and mess they all had to work through due to the disciplinary measures and environments they grew up in. So I have tried to strike a balance between the uber discipline of that system and the lack of discipline I grew up in. I sure don't have it figured out and I am so grateful for God's grace and mercy. I have tried to be honest with my children about my weaknesses and struggles. I have tried to keep open communication and not be so dogmatic about what I thought that they wouldn't feel like they could talk to me. I try to apologize when I am wrong and take responsibility. I try to see things from their perspective and not see "different" as "wrong". I never wanted to be one of those moms who put down the kids music and acted like the music from my childhood was so much better. I try to remember how frustrating it was when my parents hated my music, so I listen to their music with them and find that I actually end up like a lot of it. I try not to get overly wrapped up in how they dress, what they do to their hair, etc; I try to encourage the dreams or interests they have and not force my expectations or dreams for their lives on them. I have tried to do the best I can...

But I know that I am not always easy to deal with. I can be irritable. I put way too much pressure on poor Alexandra when she was younger. I have drug them from church to church and only in the last year have put down roots. I have not raised them in an environment to really learn what the Word of God says or how to walk with Jesus. We don't eat dinner as a family and never have. We don't pray together like we should or read the bible as a family. They watched me struggle and lose the battle with alcohol for quite a while. They have grown up in an environment where we have struggled with money their whole lives. Things could definitely be worse, but they haven't gotten to travel or go on vacations. They don't get a lot of extra stuff. They have had to wear worn out clothes or what ever we were given. All this material stuff may sound silly to most, but I just always wanted them to be able to do more than I was able to do. I wanted them to see other parts of the world. I wanted them to be able to do sports, or art, or dance, or whatever. We just have not really been able to do that very much. I was always so busy when they were babies. I didn't learn how to play as a child, so I wasn't very good at just sitting down to play games with them or pretend. I didn't do crafts and fun stuff. Sometimes I wish that I could have them as children now b/c I didn't really appreciate the time I had with them. I wasn't good at being silly with them.

Anyway, enough of that. The point is... I am very aware of the mistakes that I have made. I know that no one is perfect, but I don't really feel like I did as good of a job as I could have. Not that it is all over. I still have years to invest, love and impact them. I just feel like some of the more formative years could have been better. So, I have really struggled with fear that I have messed up my children. I have been afraid that I have damaged them and that they will have a harder life b/c of me or maybe even not serve God b/c of me. Like I said, I trust God, but I have not trusted myself. I have felt like maybe someone else could have done better or maybe I could have done a better job if I had started later in life. What God showed me is that the root of not trusting myself really boils down to not trusting Him.

He gently, over the weeks after asking Him to show me what needed to happen for me to find "soul rest" in Him in regard to my children, started to peel back layers and give me a realistic picture of the truth. I have peace in my life over every thing that happened to me growing up and all the pain. I am at peace with that fact that His grace has carried me throughout my entire life. He knew everything that would happen and how I would react to it and the outcome of it all. He knew when I would walk into that church where I accepted Him as my Creator and Savior. He prepared my heart so that the words of David Fees would penetrate my heart and bring me to my knees. He opened my heart and eyes to set me on the path of the Kingdom. He even chose my parents to be who they are knowing how broken and incapable they were.....

Now, if that is the case for me. If He loves me and His grace carried me and brought me to exactly the place to have my whole world turned upside down and put me on the path of serving Him. Then the same is the case for each of my children. He loves them more than I will ever be able to comprehend. He chose me as their mother. He chose the timing that each of them would be conceived and born. He chose Ally's genetic father. He chose Larry as Stephens father and chose the timing that he would be conceived. He chose Larry to be Ally's father and ordained that they would love each other beyond any genetic differences. God chose me to be mother to each of the three, Ally, Stephen, and Chloe knowing every struggle I have, knowing every mistake I would make raising them, and knowing the outcome of it all. Nothing I have done has been a surprise to Him or thrown a kink into His plan for them. A friend wisely said to me, "Do you think you are powerful enough to mess up God's plan?" Even after that I still struggled with really resting in God's grace for me and my children. But, when God broke it down so intricately, I finally got it. He chose me, knowing how hard it would be for me to raise them and how many mistakes I would make and He actually wove into the fabric of each of their lives and His plan for them all of those variables. It all comes together for good. It all works out. Just as my temperament and environment would shape me into exactly what would balance my husband and how his temperament and environment would shape him to bring about one beautiful union and person out of two.

I have found soul rest. I pray for my children every day and ask God to be merciful and call them to himself. I ask him to set into motion those things that need to be to bring them to where he wants them to be and to do whatever it takes to bring about the most eternal significance and the most authentic and sincere relationship possible. I trust Him to bring that to pass. Salvation belongs to the Lord. I cannot save my children; I cannot make them serve God. I cannot control or protect them enough to guarantee they will have not pain or turn their hearts to God. We all need God's grace and mercy to come to know Him and all we can call upon in regard to our children is His grace and mercy. They will only serve Him if He opens their hearts to serve Him. We can plant seeds, put the kindling around their hearts and model the kingdom, but only God can light the fire. I will continue to seek to be faithful to my children, pray for my children and love them, but I won't fret and worry anymore, b/c He knows all and took all into account.

Below is a really neat scene from a movie I saw a while back that I think illustrates so beautifully how God can set into motion a chain of events that will place us where we need to be when we need to be there.

Stop the Flow

Reversing Roles

And again, it has been a bit since I had anything to say. I have been in the process of de-cluttering my life. Getting the clutter out will allow time to write and to create. I am finally reaching a place in my life that I really get it that doing more doesn't make me important. Being busy doesn't necessarily mean we are productive and being productive is not the point in this life. It is not productive to have a long lingering dinner with friends enjoying food and fellowship, but it is more the point than running ourselves crazy building a kingdom for ourselves that will be burning up in the end and amount to nothing. I am learning to stop and take time to take in the moments, enjoy friends, laugh with my family, taste the flavor of the food God provides for me, sit in His presence and enjoy just being there with no agenda but to enjoy my Creator. How much we could learn if we would stop and take life in like a child. Children are content to just sit with us (sometimes) with no agenda or need to be productive. They just want to be where we are. They enjoy the silly simple pleasures of life like running barefoot through the grass, or playing in the rain; they enjoy the flavor of food and don't worry about how many calories or fat is has. If we could just simplify our life and be more intentional about not letting the world squeeze into a mold, give us an identity or tell us what to value. I am hoping as I continue to make space in my life that I will write and create more. I want to use the gifts God gave me and not waste them b/c my life is too busy to develop them.

The bike ride was one of the things that needed to go. There was a such a process in getting me to the place that I could give it up. I am such a driven person and really wired to finish what I start. It is very hard for me to walk away from a task until it is finished. So giving up the ride was kind of a wrestling match for me. I was pretty consumed with riding for a few months. I spent a great deal of time on my bike and a another good chunk of energy focused on planning how to get my miles in. I didn't really realize who much pressure was on me until it was removed. I don't necessarily thing that the cycling was a bad thing innately; I don't even think it was an idol. It just took too much of the little bit of time I have and didn't allow me to focus enough on the things that should be my priority right now. I am reading a Oswald Chambers book on the Sermon on the Mount. One of the things it said was that giving up sin is one thing, but the challenge comes when we are asked to give up good things for Him. Cycling is not a bad thing, but, when asked to give it up then I reach a cross road. If I choose not to give it up, then it becomes bad b/c it is an idol b/c I choose it over obedience.

Over the last few weeks, my husband and I have been listening to a lot more sermons on our Ipods. We were listening to a series by Matt Chandler of the Village Church called The Path. We were both challenged in many different ways. It was a tremendous series which caused us to evaluate things and see the need for some changes. One of the main changes that we really as a couple agreed on was a reversal of roles. As most anyone can see, in our marriage, I pretty much run the shop. I do what I want to do and he backs me up. He doesn't really challenge me much and he doesn't really lead or make many decisions. We both see and take our responsibility in this situation. (This situation seems to be pretty common place in our society, but God will have to deal with everyone else; it's not my place.) As I have shared this story with my different circles of friends, the sentiment has been almost unanimous, "Us too." I take responsibility for taking charge and he takes responsibility for being passive and not leading or challenging me. We are moving toward reversing things, but it will probably be a journey for both of us. We may fall back into the pattern at times as it is the norm and comfortable for us, but God will be faithful to challenge us when we are falling back into comfort. Soon after this discussion my husband and I had, we got to put feet to our words. He told me that he did not think I should do the ride. Right at that moment, I had a choice to makes; I believe that it was a defining moment for me. Would we move toward the new order of things or would I be willful and push us back into the old way of functioning. I made the right choice. This choice was not too hard for me, but I am sure the tests and choices will get more challenging. I feel so much peace in my decision. I don't feel the need to analyze and second guess my choice. I didn't make the decision to drop the ride. I made the decision to defer to the wisdom of my husband and obey him. I believe in God's order of things, I will never be wrong for choosing to submit to my husband. God will always honor that choice and the gentle heart of obedience. I also feel more peaceful because I don't feel the pressure to make all the decisions and make everything work out. While my husband and I are partners in this life and equal, ultimately the responsibility falls on his shoulders. That is a wonderful relief to me. I guess it's b/c I have been shouldering responsibility that is not mine to shoulder. I I used to it liberated me to take charge b/c I can be in charge and make my own decisions, but that is not true liberation. It is bondage to pressure that God did not create me to carry. True liberation is being able to trust my husband to lead and have our families best interest at heart and being able to trust that God is able to speak to my husband and guide him and redeem any mistakes. The opposite of faith and trust is control and manipulation. Faith and trust lead to life and peace; control and manipulation lead to stress, fear and contentions. The word says that perfect love casts out all fear. That can be applied to receiving and believing in God's love for me and in my husbands love for me. Neither of them would want to harm me. When I am tempted to doubt my husband and be afraid he won't make the right decision, I need to remind myself to trust God in my husband; I need to trust that as God can speak to me and redirect me, He can do the same for me husband. In that is peace. To be honest, though, much of my controlling the house has less to do with not trusting Larry to make the right decision and more to do with me just wanting to have my way. I have been a pretty willful person my whole life and so that will not die easily, but one day at a time I will choose to commit my will to God and ask Him to give me that ability to be gentle, trusting and submissive. I was watching a documentary about the widows in Afghanistan one day and one of the women made a profound statement that I have never forgotten and have meditated upon every since. She said they had a saying in Afghanistan which says, "A husband is shade." She said, "He is a covering to keep out the sun and protect." I think that is something that we, in our society have missed. Our husbands are our protectors, and shade to us, if we will let them be. Without shade we are subject to the elements and predators. I want to lean upon my husband and let him be my shade.

We have always had a really great marriage. He is absolutely my favorite person on the face of this planet. He is my best friend and there is literally no one I would rather spend time with. There is commitment, passion, and stability between us. I have a feeling, though, that this leg of the journey we are embarking on is going to give us depth like we never thought possible. I think that things are just going to be even better. It is a great thing to be on the same page about life, where we are going and how we intend to get there.

I know... I have been so bad about writing

I really have so much to say and I want to say it so badly. It just took longer than I thought it would to settle into a rhythm of life after starting my job. I moved; then I started my job and I started training for my 100 mile ride. It just took me the last 3 months to develop a rhythm to this new schedule. I wanted it to happen faster, but it really took this long. I guess in retrospect, 3 months is not so long to settle after having a couple of major life changes. I have had so many things rattling around in me, but I just haven't been able to find time to let them out. I not only need the time, I also need the right environment with which to release it. I can't really get in the writing mind set of there is chaos around me. I am going to try to set some time at least once a week to write during the summer. I hope that once the children go back to school in the fall I can devote more time to writing during their school day. I also hope to be able to spend more time creating things.

That being said, I am also hoping to slow my pace of life. I find myself always in a hurry, always over committed, never able to just slow down and enjoy the moment. I have always been that way. My brain is always going ninety to nothing; I am onto the next task before I am even done with the task I am currently tending to. I see life as a never ending task list. Even those things that I should enjoy are just tasks to be checked off. Busy, busy, busy!! I have known this is a problem for a long time and have attempted at times to slow down, but never with success. I know part of it is our culture; if you free up time it immediately creates a time vacuum and something else takes its place. That is not an excuse, though. We are supposed to go against the current of society. Jesus calls us to a different kind of life. He was never in a hurry! Fortunately, those things He calls us to, he also helps us to do. I am praying over it and reading and meditating about scriptures that encourage me to slow down, be at peace, and rest.

"What has prompted this new found desire to slow down?" you may ask. Our pastor preached this weekend on this very thing and I felt like he was preaching directly at me. I am so tired; I am so rushed. I felt a sigh within my soul listening to the sermon. It's like inside I was saying, "yes, this is what I need." Almost like I needed permission to realize that I needed to slow down. I don't even take time to enjoy the days and the moments that I am given. I almost think the only way to do that would be to take my family totally out of the race, move to some other country and be missionaries. No, I am not planning to move off right now, but I am seeking God's hand, wisdom and the ability to slow down and not cave under the pressure to continue pushing so hard. Mark said that we all live daily in the fight or flight state of being. This is so true for me and I have made tremendous progress. I am in fight or flight now, so I don't know what you would call where I used to be. I was in a constant state of panicked motion. It was as if a bull dozier was behind me going 90 miles an hour and if I slowed down it would run me over. At one point during the sermon I said to my brother, "I never sit still b/c when I sit still I fall asleep." To which he replied, "Maybe if you sat still a little more often, you would get to the point that you did not fall asleep." Meaning if I could slow down over all, I wouldn't be so exhausted that sitting still induced sleep. I think for the first time in my life I am in the place where I can agree with him about that. He has tried many times to get me to see this point and I have never been in the place to be able to say, "you know, I think you may be right."

I have recently been trying to think about life from this perspective, "If I found out I had cancer, (something that I seem to be seeing a lot around me right now), what would I cut out? What would I want to spend my time doing?"

I put more pressure on myself than I would ever put on anyone else. I feel like I have to make the most of every moment that I have. Part of that is that I wasted so many years being destructive and doing drugs. I have so many things I want to experience. I feel bad if I take a whole day and do nothing, but watch movies and nap. I hate to feel like I have wasted a whole day. That is why I resent having to sleep. I feel like it is such a huge waste of time. There are so many other things I would rather be doing. That time could be used to accomplish so much more. That might be exactly the place I need to look at first. What is the root of the belief that sleeping is a waste of time? God says that rest is good; that we should rest in peace. I need to reprogram myself to believe that rest and sleep are good. I think that we are probably so much more productive when we don't cram every moment with tasks and activities. When we can disengage and relax there is probably better focus and passion to the things we do. I am only guessing b/c I don't disengage very well. I hope that I can learn to disengage and then be able to confirm that theory is in fact true.

It just seems the older I get that faster my life goes by. I don't stop to savor any of it. I don't savor meals, time with friends, time with my family, opportunities to play games. I don't really stop to think about the moments with my children that are passing me by. I only get to live this day one time. I only get to see them in this moment from this perspective one time. Do I stop and take time to breath in the moment? NO!! Ally will only be in our house a few more years, then she will move out and start her own family. Experience tells me that it is at that point we learn to slow down and enjoy the moments. Why do we have to get grand children to be able to embrace the moments children give us? We miss those moments with our children and grand children get the best of us. Stephen is a young man and quickly growing into man hood. When these moments are over, I will long for the day that he leans over and licks my face or punches my arm. Why do I find it so infuriating right now. He loves me and wants to show me affection in his way. Chloe is quickly approaching the awkward teenage years. If I don't learn to love her, speak softly to her and experience her on her terms, then I won't even be able to help her through the awkward years b/c she will have shut me out by then. Chloe is my baby. I don't have another one after her. As she grows up, I am experiencing some of these things for the last time. I pray that this time, I can take this wake up call to slow down serious enough that I can actually reorient my life and apply some breaks.

It seems like life is going by really so slow at some point then without you realizing it life begins to fly by at a dizzying warp speed. Years pass and they seem like days.

In the beginning part 5

Ok, we are coming up on the best part of the whole story. Every one's eager anticipating of the great meeting has me motivated to try and plow through the last of the story.

So, I guess we stopped at moving in the guy. But wait, first. I just have to say, I love writing this blog and I love sharing my story. Sometimes, though, I feel so exposed. Sometimes it hits me that all my darkest secrets are on the World Wide Web for anyone to read. People that I see everyday and people I have never met know all my secrets. I mean, I love telling my story, sometimes, though, I just think, you are telling people things that any normal person would keep secret locked away in a vault. They say that you are only as sick as your secrets and that the power of a secret is in the fact that it is a secret. So, once they secrets are exposed to the light, it has no power any more. Don't make too much of this little rant. I don't regret sharing. I want to tell the whole world my story b/c it is such an amazing story of God's grace and redemption. I just sometimes have a moment where I think what an odd thing it is the my blackest deepest moments are in print for all the world to read.

I moved in with this guy. It was kind of an awkward situation b/c I was married to this Squid character (he wasn't dead yet); I was pregnant with Crab's baby, and I was living with this other guy. At the time, we were really into inhalants. We would frequently mix them with LSD. There was a lot of LSD floating around that place. I had just gotten back from Cali and the LSD was not very strong. I cannot really remember how long I have been staying there. I don't think it had been very long. We took like 6 hits of LSD (for Cali standard at the time, that wasn't much, normally that is quite a bit). It just so happened this was a point in time when there was really, really strong acid going around. So we took quite a roller coaster ride, all of us. The whole night was pretty insane. I was pretty out of touch. It wasn't the type of out of touch that I can't see what was really going on now, but at the time things were pretty weird. I can say, I am not sure why I took so much LSD when I was doing drugs b/c I have very few good trips. Most of the time, I was miserable. It caused me mind to be so paranoid and weird. Everyone used to think I was so cute when I was tripping b/c I would keep one hand in my mouth with a big smile on my face. I was really actually scared out of my mind most of the time. I usually thought that Satan was after me or that someone was trying to kill me. Now tell me, why would someone want to repeatedly put themselves in the position to be that scared, but I did it hundreds of times over my drug career. I couldn't tell you how many times I did it. So it was a pretty strange night. At one point, I kept hearing this strange noise in the living room; we were in the bedroom hanging out. I thought that my boyfriends room mate was cooking the cat in the microwave (what I really heard was the hippy beads hanging between the living room and dining room every time some one passed through them- of course I did not realize that until we had come down). At another point, I became convinced that my best friend and boyfriend thought I had stolen something from them, so I cleaned out my pockets and told them to take anything that belonged to them (of course they looked at me like I had two heads). Then while laughing I caught sight of one of the boyfriends knives laying beside the bed and was convinced that they were plotting to kill me. That really freaked me out. Of course, in my paranoid state I did not share what I was thinking b/c I didn't want them to know I knew what was going on.

I must share the religious views represented in the house that night to give you a framework of what was about to happen. I was a proclaimed Atheist (my mom had met Jesus a couple years before and I thought she was crazy). My best friend was an agnostic. The boyfriend and his roommate were proclaimed Satanists who like stealing tombstones from the graveyard (they were all over the house). The boyfriend had been raised a Christian in a Charismatic church and turned away. I have a sense that he wasn't shown a very authentic Christianity. Then there was this one guys who claimed to be a Christian.

We were trying to just chill and the Christian (who was tripping too, was our LSD dealer and was huffing carburetor cleaner) kept coming in bringing up God. He is the one who started us on the religious talk. We all ended up in the living room tripping and huffing every kind of huffable chemical you can imagine. At one point me and Star were on the porch huffing Glade and watching the "sun rise" only to be told it was 10 pm so whatever we were looking at was not possibly the sun rise. There was starting fluid we huffed a bit. Then the Freon came out. Now, lest you forget, I am about 5 months pregnant with Ally at this point. Thank God, for His grace and mercy, b/c she is perfectly normal, super smart and a tremendous blessing in my life.

We were all huffing stuff and arguing over religion. I was calling all of them idiots for believing in anything. I said, "You guys are stupid, there is no God, no Satan, no heaven, no hell. You are all going to rot in the ground and feel stupid for believing in all this non sense." Then I took a huge gulp of Freon. Now, this part of the story must be told in two different perspectives. The first perspective is mine. I heard a deep guttural voice come from out of the floor that said, "Go get her boys." Imagine the voice a movie would give a demon or Satan; that is the voice. Immediately, I fell through the floor and fell for a couple minutes. When my feel landed I was in Hell. I will do my best to describe what I saw, but I have trouble putting it into even verbal words. There were flames all around me, but they were sort of transparent. I felt this horrible feeling inside of me that I came to realize after I met Jesus was total separation from God. Then I realized that there were demons all around me pointing and laughing at me. I knew that they were mocking me as if to say, "ha!! we tricked you, we got you to not believe in us or God and now you are here and there is nothing you can do about it." I truly believe that every person that ends up in hell will experience this mockery as the hoards laugh in victory. Then came what I have called "the dooky monsters". I know that you probably LOL ed over that, but when I came out of the hallucination that is the only thing I could come up with to describe them. They looked like sleestaks from the old school Land of the Lost, only they had glowing grids on them like the old Tron game. The walked kind of like sleestaks too. As they got closer to me, they jumped at me and then I was inside of them. It was like I was inside thick gelatin. Then I sort of flashed from scene to scene in hell. I was retarded for a minute, then some other places I don't really remember. The next think I knew I was back in the trailer, one of the guys had a hold of my arms and the door to the trailer was knocked off the hinges.

Now, the perspective of the observers. I took my big hit if Freon, then suddenly I was screaming bloody murder, stomping on the guy that was laying on the ground beside where I was standing while I tried to get something off of my arms. The guys said that they had never heard anyone scream like I screamed before. It was blood curdling as they said. The guys had to grab me to keep me from stomping the other ones face in. And I was still going so crazy I knocked him into the door and knocked it off of its hinges.

As I came too, everyone was staring at me wide eyed like, "what the hell, just happened?" I was like, "wow, what the hell was that?" Then I said, "I don't know what just happened. I don't know where I just was, but I don't think I am an atheist anymore. I don't know what I believe, but I feel like if I ever end up in that place again, I will not be able to leave it. and...I don't want to go back." I was pretty flipped out the rest of the night. To this day, the group of friends that I hung out with at the time says that I had a bad trip and went religious.

So, the next day, I called my mom. I knew she would be able to help me understand what had happened b/c she was into this religious thing.

Now stop for a minute and really think about what you have read in the previous parts so you can really see the miracle here and really see the power of God. Forgive me for becoming an evangelist for a minute. This is the girl who used to kick in peoples wind shields. This is the gutter punk who stole and conned, manipulated and attacked people. This is the drug addict who just wanted to die in a numb overdose. Hopeless, angry, bitter, broken, and done with life. Who do you know, that is a hopeless case? Who have you just given up on? Who is the person that you have spoken over and over to only to have them reject or even laugh in your face? What is the situation that you despair has an end, an answer, a hope? Think about in a minute.

Don't cheat!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Stop!!!!!!!!!!! Think!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Find it in your mind!!!!


Now, you can read on. That girl who wasn't even looking for God, that angry girl who would have stolen your wedding ring right off of you finger, and spit in your face while she did it, God reached from eternity and grabbed her by the shoulders, shook her, and said "here is what you are choosing for eternity, wouldn't you like to have something better?" There is NO HOPELESS SITUATION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! God is the God of Hope. He is the God of redemption! He is the only one who can change us. He is hope for the hopeless, healing for the bleeding, salve for the wounded, peace for the tormented, joy for the sorrowful. He loves, forgives, and restores.

Now back to my story. I called mom and I said,"mom, I know you don't approve of me doing drugs while I am pregnant, but something happened last night and I need to talk to you about it." I told her the story and asked her what I should do about it. I said, "I am not sure I believe in God, but I am afraid to take the chance on going back to that place. I don't want to spend eternity there." Her response was the wisdom if our loving Father in Heaven. I believe that He told her exactly what to say. She said, "This is what I would tell you to do. Pray and say, 'God if you are real show yourself to me.' If He is real, He will show you. If He is not, you haven't lost anything and no one ever even has to know that you prayed that prayer." So I started praying that day. I prayed it every night for a couple months. I broke up with the boy and the adoption agency I was talking to about having my baby adopted helped me get an apartment. I was working the night shift at Whataburger.

Then one night when I was about 7 months pregnant, I called me mom and said I want to go to church with you tonight. It was a Friday night (the church she went to had Friday night services). She was a little shocked, but said she would pick me up. I walked into that church that night 7 months pregnant (huge belly), in a tiny little mini dress, Doc Martins, leather jacket, bright red mohawk (standing straight up). They started doing Praise and Worship and as I looked around everyone seemed so happy and they seemed to be really into the God thing. Tears kept streaming out of my eyes. I kept wiping them away and I was so annoyed that they wouldn't stop. (I never cried, ever!!) I think the tears were b/c I could feel the presence of God around me. I have no idea what was preached that night. At the end of the service a man named David Fees stood me up and began to "prophesy" as they called it. He spoke right to my heart. It was like he cut through every layer of denial, hurt and fear I had and got right into my true heart. He said to me, "The Lord wants you to know that He loves you and that He has seen your tears." I still get tears in my eyes and chills every time I say or write that. I began to weep uncontrollably. No one had ever loved me. My mother and father didn't even love me. She does now and she really did when I was a child as well. She just didn't know how to love b/c she was so broken and devastated herself. I had never felt loved by anyone. I had never felt like anyone valued me at all. But then David spoke to me and told me that someone did love me and that someone loved me enough to die on a cross for me. Well, really he died on the cross for all of humanity, but that is a whole theological discussion for another day. David asked if I wanted to ask Jesus into my heart to be my savior and I did pray and I was never the same.

My transformation was immediate. It was like night and day. There was nothing gradual about any part of it. I did a 180 and hit the ground running. I even went to hang out with some of my old friends that night and began to tell them about this Jesus who loved me. I didn't really know anything at all about Him or the Bible or anything, but I knew that He loved me and I loved him. I knew that I prayed and I felt His presence. I had prayed and asked , "if you are real, show yourself to me" and He showed up and He showed himself to me. I knew I would never be the same. It didn't matter who believed me or who mocked me. No one could change my mind Jesus loved me and no one else really mattered to me anymore. I have never done drugs since that night. It was actually a few weeks before that night, but I count my drug sobriety date as that night b/c that is when I knew I never wanted drugs again. Jesus was so much better!!! That was July 17, 1992. At that point, I was intending to give the baby up for adoption and they had no idea about the drugs.

I am going to stop for now and pick up more on that later. But for all of you who have been eagerly awaiting this part of the story, there you go. Thanks for reading. I love to tell this story, it is so good, He is so good.

Really silly short post

It has been so long since I posted. I really hope that as we get settled here, in our new home, I can get into a rhythm of posting several times a week. I still have many parts of my story to tell and lots of great lessons to share.

So as we downsized, moving from 2022 sq ft to 1107 sq ft, we meticulously went through boxes. Some of these boxes have been packed for years. Some of them have been moved to at least 2 different houses still in boxes never gone through. We decided to crack these boxes and see what they contained and if it was even important to keep a lot of them.

Seriously!!!!

Some of it was ridiculous.

One of the most asinine things was several boxes/bags containing hangers. Funny thing is I remember when I became obsessed with hangers. Yes, I did just say obsessed with hangers. It is so funny the things we become obsessed with hording. Anyone who has any thing that they hoard can look closely and find the root if they want to. I have two things that I have, in the past, had a tendency to hoard. One of them, I truthfully still struggle a little with hoarding. Hangers and plastic ware are the things that I used to buy compulsively. For some reason growing up we never had enough of either. Even when Ally was younger, before I was married, I lived with mom and we didn't seem to have enough of either. We were extremely broke so we didn't really buy those two things. Now, I have to interject here that we spent a lot on fast food.

I don't really spend much of anything on fast food now (maybe once every 3 months we might go out to eat- there are really two reasons for that 1) my system is so sensitive that there are very few restaurants my body will tolerate; Chewy's veggie bean burrito is always a winner. 2) I am a little tight fisted with money; when I compare the cost of going out to eat next to the food budget- one meal equals 10 to 20% of two weeks worth of groceries, that rubs me the wrong way.)

What I was saying was that we were "broke", but we would spend money on eating fast food. Interesting. My theory on finances is (sorry if this steps on any toes), we can afford what is important to us (what we want to afford).

I got a big set of plastic ware for a wedding gift and loved it. I was so thrilled that I bought more and bought more and bought more. I don't really buy it any more, but I have trouble letting go of what I have, which is way, way too much. I have so many plastic dishes that they fill and whole cabinet and I cannot find what I want b/c the cabinet is so full. Maybe I need to get rid of some, huh?

Now, back to the hangers. I had boxes of hangers. These were not hanging in a closet where they could even be used. They were in a box in the garage. Just in case I might need them, I guess. Do you think I was, at this point, even aware they were there or could have found them if I had needed them? NO!! Ridiculous!!!

Pretty funny!! They say Lucille Ball hoarded pencils. They kept disappearing; they found a whole closet full of pencils in her office. She owned them all, but she still felt the need to hoard them away, just in case. She had been so poor growing up that she couldn't have pencils. She had more money than she needed, but was afraid she wouldn't have a pencil.

So when we are wounded and carry it around, it effects us. Many times we are not even aware of the baggage we are carrying around with us. We may do the strangest things and have no idea why. I would like to challenge my readers. What are you carrying around that you are not even aware of. What behaviors are you exhibiting that you need to let God reveal the roots of to you. What He reveals, He heals. Let Him have it. What do you hoard or hang onto so tightly that it turns your fingers white? Why? Let Him show you; let Him heal you. Liberty is so amazing. Freedom is so much better than the pain. It is worth the price. It is worth the discomfort. It's like having a baby. It does not feel good, but when you have the child in your hands, your realize it is so worth it. Give it to Him. We are only as strong as the weakest point of our armor. Jesus walks with us and protects us, but what we will not give to Him, He cannot heal and therefore has to let the weakness remain. The enemy points His arrows precisely at those places in our armor. He knows us well and tailors the attacks specifically to hit those places where we are weak. We don't have to heal ourselves. We just have to be willing to let Jesus have them. Once we give it over to Him, He transforms and heals. Remember His yoke is easy and His burden is light. If we are trying to carry it or fix it, it is really hard. He can fix is with one touch of His garment. It isn't hard when we let Him do the work. All He asks from us is to give it to Him. As one who has seen Him take some pretty devastated parts of me and totally transform them, I say it is worth it. He is so able to do exceedingly, abundantly more than we could ask or think. There were wounds in my heart that I was sure He could never fix. There are parts of me that I have despaired over for all of my life and especially the last 17 years since meeting Him, that He has healed in the last 3 months. It is the most amazing feeling to be free from something that has been with you for as long as you can remember. I cannot even begin to describe. Sometimes things are with you for so long that they are woven into the fiber of your being and seem to be a part of you. Only the Lord can remove those things that grow in like that. If you have ever seen a tree that has barbed wire growing through it b/c it was there and it became a part of the tree, it is interesting to look at. You cannot remove it without destroying the tree. Some of us are like that, those things have grown into us and cannot be removed without destroying us, with one exception. Jesus can remove them without destroying and for that I am so grateful. To be free from something you despaired ever being free from is more beautiful than words can describe. Even saying thank you seems like such a small offering compared to the grace of healing.

In the Beginning part 3

I am trying to keep all the details in the right order, but there are some points where things start to be blurry and a little confused.

After I left Parkland, I was in a hospital in Denton. I cannot really remember what it was called. I don't think I was there very long, though. I was one of the first young patients, my psychiatrist was starting a new adolescent program. The first couple weeks I was actually on the geriatric ward of the hospital. I do remember that the wing that the adolescent unit was on was undergoing some construction. I had to go to another wing to shower and it was creepy to me. I had just read IT by Steven King and I was really scared to be over in the empty hospital wing.

When I got out of the hospital I started hanging out with some of the people that had gone to Straight and dropped out as well. I remember there was some kind of law suit going on that we were participating in. They took pictures of my arms; I don't think anything ever came of that law suit. As I said, I was hanging out with ex-straight kids and things went okay for a bit, but eventually fell apart as they always did. We started drinking and doing drugs again. We were living in Irving still and I ran away. At that point my mom couldn't make me come back b/c I was 17. I stole a bunch of stuff from the house and sold it. I had dropped out of school after finishing 9th grade at about 16 (I think?). We were spending a lot of time in Deep Ellum hanging with a bunch of punks. I ended up hanging out with a guy named Phillip who led me down a very very dark path. He was into a lot of really strange things. I let him pierce my nipple with a safety pin (what was I thinking?) I cleaned it for weeks by pouring liquor on it (brilliant, huh?) Needless to say it got infected and did not go well for me. One night riding back to the house we were going to stay at with strangers who were drunk, we got into a very serious car wreck. I have a scar on my temple still from it. We were crammed into a tiny hatch back car 9 of us. One girl cut an artery being propelled from the hatch window and coming back in (blood was spraying out of her arm), another girl never walked again, the driver and passenger got out and ran away leaving us there. I cut my head and everyone else was okay. Shortly after Phillip and I hitch hiked to New Orleans. I learned a lot of extremely disturbing behavior from Phillip. We made it to the French quarter and set out to meeting people. I drank a lot and did a lot of drugs there. It is somewhat foggy. I was there a few months and ended up engaged to a guy named Smurf. Then I went to Covenant House (a run away shelter). They helped me get back to Dallas. I wasn't back long before I decided I wanted to go back. I saved money and took a bus back. I stayed for a while and have no idea how I got back to Dallas the second time.

Around this time, my mom ended up finding a therapist who specialized in Multiple Personality Disorder. This is where things started to come together for us. They admitted me, my mother and my brother into the Bedford Meadows hospital on three separate MPD units. It is at this hospital that someone figured out that the key to the whole family was my mother. If they could get her okay, eventually we would be okay too. My brother was transferred to a hospital in Lubbock and I was discharged and went to Tennessee to stay with my childhood best friend. My mother still worked for AT&T so she had good insurance and was on long term disability so she sent money to me to live on while I stayed there. She met Jesus at that hospital and did a lot of work on her issues. I, on the other hand, had still quite a ways to go before things would change. Tennessee was pretty strange for me. I was a death rocker (what people call Goth now) and Tennessee is very, very country. I drank with all the hicks, but eventually left. Mom paid for a bus ticket back to Dallas and helped me find a room to rent. She was still in the hospital. I went to AA meetings and tried to stay sober and function. After a few months she finally got out of the hospital and we moved to Richardson. My brother got out of Lubbock too.

Oh, I forgot something important in Irving (after Straight, but before Bedford Meadows). Somehow my brother got acquainted with racist skinheads. We hung out with them for a little while. They ended up finding out that I had had physical relations with an African American person (or dozens actually), and that did not go well for me. They were going to beat me to death, not sure how I got out of that one.

In Richardson, I attended a lot of AA meetings and stayed clean for a while (maybe 6 months). Eventually I met a guy named Matthew through AA. We started having a relationship. He was a recovering heroin addict who introduced me to the speed ball (cocaine and heroin). This was my first experience with intravenous drug use, but I was always down for a new experience. I slowly got into the circle if shooters that he was acquainted with. I shot up a lot of drugs with a lot of people all using the same needles (see, I am truly blessed b/c I should have HIV, TB and hepatitis). I got tested once a year for about 7 years after I got saved before I felt safe that I was clean. Fortunately for me, I met up with some pretty hard core punks at this point also and they were very anti-needle so I migrated toward them and spent less time with the junkies. It was here I met my first husband, Squid.

Squid and I were married about 2 weeks after we met b/c we thought it would me fun. The Justice of the peace we went to was less than thrilled with us. We had a bunch of punks with us and we were all obnoxious. We all lived in a squat (an empty building). It was some abandoned apartments off of Spring Valley (they aren't there any more,:it is a self storage place now). We broke up within about a month. I actually never divorced him; I was working on the paperwork when I had been walking with Jesus about a year, but he was stabbed to death by his girlfriend in California; mutual friends told me about it. It is through this group of friends that I became a gutter punk. More on gutter punk and what follows later.