Give me a Shot of that Hard Stuff, but make it on the Rocks.

When I was young...heck even now, I had a very specific way I would clean my room.  It was never a simple process of playing pick up, it was long and drawn out and required me to tear everything out of everywhere and reorganize every inch of my room.  This process of cleaning took way longer than my older sister and I was usually stuck cleaning my side of the room for a few days, at least.

Hello adult life, not much has changed.  When speaking about cleaning up the messes in our lives my approach seems very similar.  I must deal with it all.  In this season of life, this very trying and challenging season of life, my painful past life experiences have come up as well.  Some may argue they are related in some right, others would see them as separate issues.  I just see them as the hard stuff piled on top of more hard stuff.  A layered cake of rocks.

The other night I wrote out a portion of my journey that I had buried deep inside myself.  I never ever planned on releasing this part of me.  I felt I had come to terms with it, forgiven, and moved on.  I was golden.  That is until I started writing it.  I wrote specifics never shared with anyone.  The details, which entailed all the senses, came flooding back.  Tearfully, I finished writing.  It wouldn't end there.  After I closed my journal I realized that there were key moments throughout my childhood that pointed back to this moment.  I realized things in my own marriage were marred and damaged because of my 5 year old brain.  It has opened me up to more understanding, but that understanding is not without great pain as I  put pieces of myself back  allow God to work to put me back together.

HE brings our messes into the light and it is only through Him that these messes can be cleaned and organized.

"But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed." Isaiah 53:3

"And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose." Romans 8:28

Facing my Own Reality of Facebook

I have expressed my discontentment for Facebook in a prior post, and I still have something to say about it...I know I know "Can you just drop it already?"  Oh believe me I wish I could, but I am far from jumping off the Facebook bandwagon.

I have to ask myself, if Facebook weren't around would I exist?  Duh, of course I would still be living, breathing, walking, and talking.  But would I be me?  Would I be the person you all know and love.

Would I run?  Would I train for crazy races?  How many mountains would I choose to climb?  What would be my joy in life?  Would I be known for something?  Would I care so much what others thought of me?  Have I just been doing all these things for my page "content."  If I gave it up, what then, would be the content of my life?

I found myself getting to a place where my motivation for doing something was to gain a like or reaction from my cyber buddies.  I used Facebook as my very own brag-book.  It was just subtle enough that I could smack a different name tag on it other than what it is...but let's call it what it is.  It fed my ego and fed my pride.  And I am tired of being defined by an edited and simplified version of myself.  Believe me I am so complicated no wall could contain me and my life.  

Now that I am back in the stone ages with my old school flip phone (that barely holds its charge for more than 5 hours)  My goal of decreasing life online is more easily obtained.  I lack the filters and editing tools to bedazzle my life.  Not to mention you can't really log on to social media with a flip phone, no matter how many times you click it open and shut and say "there's no place like Facebook, there's no place like Facebook." So I am on my way to living Facebook free but I still struggle with the scroll/ scroll/ like dance.  Scrolling, always scrolling.  So many little pieces of other's lives that are viewed by me with too much judgement or not enough compassion.  If we were supposed to be exposed to other's lives like that God would have made highways we could drive on to view them...but still, I think I can scroll faster than I can drive.

I desire for people to know me through more than just a photo.  What my heart say about me is more important than what an invisible wall says about me.  Jump over the walls and get to know people, face to face.  Use it as a tool but not a lifestyle...do you think Mark Zuckerberg would install a timer device that limited how long you could be logged on in a  24 hour period?? is there an app for that?

Facing the Reality of Facebook

Facebook has been a part of my life since my junior or maybe senior year of high school.  This year marks ten years that I have been out of high school so that is about twelve years that I have been in a relationship with this Facebook site.  My commitment to it trumps anything else in my life...besides running, and even that has proven to be an "on-again/off-again" relationship.  It has changed over the years but it is still the basic concept, staying in touch with people.  With the invention of the smartphone Facebook has only grown to be more popular and more accessible.  

These are things you already know, I am not having breakthrough intelligence here that towers above anyone else.  But I am realizing things about myself.  

I am a slave.  I have allowed myself to become codependent on a social media site.  I have allowed others to hurt me by using social media.  I do things because I think it will please the audience.  When did I become so weak?

  

 

God in the Box

I think it was a little over two weeks ago that I met with two women.  I was immersed in love and the smell of coffee as we sat.  We were women empowered by God and empowering one another.  Through them, God has revealed much, but on this particular day the best gem I took from our time was about prayer.

For far too long I have had this idea that prayer was a somber time.  There was this checklist; bow my head, close my eyes, fold my hands and remove all distraction.  You should pray for good things, pray for others, pray for yourself, tell God how great he is.  I needed to respect God, I had this idea that if I would anger him, he wouldn't listen to my requests.  My prayers always felt so dead.  This has gone on for years! How am I even still buying into this "prayer life" thing??  No wonder I was always so anxious about praying in front of others.  

As we were meeting one of the women said something (and I am sorry but I don't remember what is was) and all of a sudden...a light bulb came on so bright that it burst and literally blew my mind.  A new concept of prayer.  Stop putting God in a box!  He is too huge and mighty to be stuffed into a box that's size is limited by our own hang up's.  He is limitless.  Pray for the impossible! Pray for miracles!  Pray for yourself to be open to anything and all things that God wants to give you, because you are his child and he loves you and he wants to show you how much he loves you.  Whether it is with blessings or showing you how powerful he actually is, he desires you to know him, to know his love and his heart!  He wants you to spend time with him, above all else.  

Pray with fire, pray with passion, pray as you!  God values an authentic heart.  God did not make me a quiet somber woman.  He made me feisty and fiery.  He can handle anything you throw at him, because he is patient.  He can handle your pain and your burdens because he is kind, and gentle, and faithful, and peaceful, and HE IS GOOD!  I always had a hard time with the praise portion of prayer, but God works when we come to him as ourselves, He shows us how great he is and we become overwhelmed by this greatness.  Praising comes naturally when the good hits you so hard in the heart.
Since this revelation I have had a prayer life that is so alive and thriving, supernatural things are occurring and I am realizing how absolutely breathtaking my God is.  Even in the midst of seeming like my life is in a deep dark hole, he is the light and it surrounds me.  I am craving more of him because he is filling me up, ridding me of voids that I tried to force people to fill.  He is everything I am not, and yet he loves me like the perfect Father that He is, unconditionally.  If this is what he can do with two weeks I can only imagine what is to come.  I have come to love him and believe him when he says that he is in control.  Let's be honest, my life is a mess right now, especially to those who do not truly know God, but through His grace I am filled with his peace.  

1 Peter 4:13 But rejoice insofar as you share Christs sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.

Can I have all your EYES and EARS!!

Amazing things are happening, I cannot wait to share them but my brain and heart is far too overloaded right now.  God is working and he is good.  In time, I will share what my heavenly father is doing in my life. I am asking him for clarity and wisdom to write words that he has given me and are not my own.  I believe this blog can be used as a light for Him and I am waiting for him to inspire me and to create order in my brain to do just that.  Even as I write this small senseless post I feel my heart leaping with joy because of who He is.  I pray that he continues (and I know he will), I pray that others may see (I know he will remove blindfolds), I pray for a revival (I trust this is coming).  

Finding Comfort in my Father on Mother's day

Psalm 46:10

(Breathe in)

"Be Still

(Breathe out)

And know that I am God"

As I breathe in and the air passes by my lips, I take in the words.  They roll over my tongue and it's calming.  Soothing even.  I hold it there on my tongue so I can allow God to surge through the rest of my body, shooting all the way to not just my brain, but my heart's brain.  It is at this point that I am truly still.  I can compare it to jumping on a trampoline.  Jumping all the way as high as you can possibly go and right before the descent, for a second that's almost in slow motion, you float there before falling back down to earth. I can hear what else God has to say.  I begin to release the air I've been holding.  Carbon Dioxide is expelled as His words "And know that I am God" pass through me from the inside out this time. And its like I know it because it was knowledge that was inside first and permeated me from all parts of my insides.  The more I repeat this process, the more real the truth is, it is my reality right now.

It's late, or extremely early, depending on your sleep schedule.  For those of us who tend toward insomnia, it is late.  I am sitting in a 24/7 cafe, thank you Giant for catering to the night owls of PA.  There is a lot of limbo in my life right now, uncertainty of what the future holds, all things that attack the woman's need for security.  The worst part is, it isn't my choosing.  I am forced to sit back and wait.  I hate waiting.  I have felt attacked and alone, and most of all hurt.

Tonight my proverbial hammer hit my "break glass in case of emergency" box.  The glass had only recently been reinstalled.  The walls shoot up around my heart.  Shrill sirens ring and alarms sound out, I can't see clearly with the flashing red warning lights blaring in my eyes.  The defenses continue to rise up, barbed wire uncoils and whips into place.  There is a voice that echos on the intercom, a command to "man your battle stations!"

It's too late.  Damage done...again.

I wish there was resolve in my life, but there isn't, and I don't know when that will be but it is not my job to worry about it.  I continue to wrestle with so many things in my relationship with God.  For tonight at least I feel full, content, and comforted by Him.

"When you're on your knees and answers seem so far away you're not alone, stop holding on and JUST BE HELD! ......Your world's not falling apart, It's falling into place."  -Casting Crowns 

(Breathe in) 

"Be still

(Breathe out)

And know that I am God"

R&R

I sit in the quiet of my mind.

I love being a my parent's house.  I am here now and was enjoying being outside on their deck.  The morning was cool and the sun was playing peek-a-boo with the clouds.  Shadows danced on the wooden deck constantly moving and it reminded me of how quickly my emotions are changing from one extreme to the other to yet another.  Look up and you can see the cloud coming to cover the sun, you see the effect of it...there is less light there is a shadow that attacks the ground with a darker cover.  I can feel a darkness coming in my mind, that I am going to think about something painful and it brings about a range of different feelings.  Mourning, betrayal, sadness, anger, even peace all experienced in a matter of minutes, then the sun shines again and there is light and warmth and I sigh with relief that the shadow storm is over, even if only for a minute.  It is exhausting, but in my moments of serenity I can enjoy what God is giving me right now.  Right now I get to enjoy this beautiful piece of property that is away from people.  Life in the bubble.  It's my safe place.  I am reminded of how blessed I was growing up to have a place so secure.  It's a clearing in the woods, on a hill.  Lay down in the grass anywhere and you can see a fortress of trees looking down on you, offering protection.  Short trails in the woods offered my young self a start to being in love with the outdoors, exploration, and adventure.  There is evidence of history, stone walls that used to separate fields, burnt hollowed out trees from a fire caused by a train that no longer runs.  This was my world growing up.  My imagination ran free here.  The landscape has changed a bit from when I lived here, but it still holds the same aura.  It is here that I can process and not be cluttered with outside noise.  It is here that I have had numerous God given "AHA" moments.  Believe it or not I have done more growing up and maturing here in the last 2 years than I ever did when I actually lived here.  I have grown to understand things about my parents, especially my mom, and I have grown to really enjoy my siblings.  I have come to truly appreciate them for all they have done and all they continue to do.