No Spirit of Fear

God Did NOT Give Me the Spirit of Fear.

I am sick and TIRED of trying to make things work out in my head.

God led me to where I am today.

Today I live in His fullness.

Permission

I am seeing a pattern in my every day dealings with life that causes me concern. I can see the reasons why I feel so passionately about some things, and, then, on the other hand, life feels so chaotic.

So.

I give myself permission to take my cares to the Lord. I give myself permission to seek rest in my Savior’s arms. I give myself permission for me to breathe in His love and breathe out the ugliness inside of me. I give myself permission to let go of past hurts.

I choose Jesus. I choose His love. I choose the cross He suffered and died upon for you and me. I choose Him alone. I choose His way for my life. I choose to give God the glory.

Blossoming

Shaken faith.

I am not ready to face God, especially with all the anger in my heart. A few nights ago I woke up screaming “F-off” to my Dad in my dream. I was full of hate and spite. If words were filled with venom and deadly the words I uttered to my Dad in my dream could have killed him.

My greatest fear in life is to finally take my last breath and stand before God. I imagine my mind would be filled with utter shame and disgust at the remembrance of the life I have lived, and feel like there is no way God will even want to look at my eyes. His eyes. God’s loving eyes are what I dream about seeing.

I think of Mary as she anointed Jesus’ feet with oils and tears she had cried, and then wiped His feet with her hair to dry them. I curiously think about what Jesus’ eyes must have looked like at the moment their eyes met. Were they filled with tender love and kindness? Did she know He had loved her by the way He looked into her eyes when she glanced up to listen to Jesus speak with her? Was she filled with His love and all her iniquities fleeting? What was His eyes like as she looked into His? I cannot even imagine.

Will my Savior eyes be turned away knowing the sin in my life without me having to utter a word from my mouth? Will I frantically shout out to God and tell Him the things I have done to show my love for Him? Or will I beg for His mercy one very last time?

All these questions plague my head.

There is so much sin in my life. I feel so completely undeserving of a Savior who loves me enough to want me, buy me with His blood, and continually intercedes on my behalf because He loves me. I just do not get it. I wish He could beat me senseless because then maybe I would feel worthy of His love. Yet, God loves me. Right where I am at.

I have to trust His love for me. There is nothing I can do. There is nothing I shall fear, except fear the Creator whom created me.

 

I Am Me

 

 

Making sense of the world around us is sometimes pretty scary. We can tend to look at the world disjointed and find there are parts of it that we wish we can erase. Learning to use our story as we begin to own our lives we can find ways to gain strength and wisdom so we can share our stories to tell others they will be okay–they might not feel it at this moment, but if they persist through the darkest of times they find more than enough light. It is in that moment we find ourselves.

I have a few quotes that I would like to share today. The first goes, “Everything you need you have.You are complete right now. You are a whole total person. You are not an inexperienced person on the way to someplace else. Your completeness must be understood by you and experienced in your thoughts as your own reality.” I was given this quote maybe two years ago. When I got it, I was like, “they are full of shit.” I hated me. I didn’t think I had what I needed to be who I became. I always thought someone else had to rescue me because somehow I was inherently damaged. I thought I was damaged goods. When I reread the quote, I ponder each statement. Everything I need I have. I am complete right now. I am a whole total person. I am not an inexperienced person on the way to someplace else. Everything that happened in my life thus far has provided me a perspective of life only I could have lived through and come to understand as nothing else but my own. My completeness is understood by me and experienced in my thoughts as my own reality. I am completely and I experience completeness in living my life today. I am not afraid of my personal power. I am learning to own my personal power and wield it in a way that can inspire others’ lives.

The second quote is, “We don’t have to give up our personal power to anyone: strangers, friends, spouses, children, authority figures or those over whom we’re in authority. People may have things to teach us. They may have more information than we have, and may appear more confident or forceful than we feel. But we are equals. Our magic is not in them. Our magic, our light, is in us. And it is as bright as theirs. We are not second-class citizens. By owning our power, we don’t have to become aggressive or controlling. We don’t have to discount others. But we don’t discount ourselves either.” I remember reading this quote to a group of people who live with mental illness. I struggled to believe this quote to be my own reality, truth or what have you. I cried through reading it. I kept pausing and verbally struggled to get each word out, so that they could hear and understand that no one else is better than you. We all have something to offer in life. We come to this world gifted with the realities of whatever we had to live through in spite of whatever we did to try and survive. I am learning that I don’t have to be controlling or aggressive to another to get my point across. I can own my own personal power and speak up and out about my story in such a way that it can move others…to know how Christ is enough.

The third quote is from Virginia Satir…”I am Me. In all the world, there is no one else exactly like me. Everything that comes out of me is authentically mine, because I alone chose it — I own everything about me: my body, my feelings, my mouth, my voice, all my actions, whether they be to others or myself. I own my fantasies, my dreams, my hopes, my fears. I own my triumphs and successes, all my failures and mistakes. Because I own all of me, I can become intimately acquainted with me. By so doing, I can love me and be friendly with all my parts. I know there are aspects about myself that puzzle me, and other aspects that I do not know — but as long as I am friendly and loving to myself, I can courageously and hopefully look for solutions to the puzzles and ways to find out more about me. However I look and sound, whatever I say and do, and whatever I think and feel at a given moment in time is authentically me. If later some parts of how I looked, sounded, thought, and felt turn out to be unfitting, I can discard that which is unfitting, keep the rest, and invent something new for that which I discarded. I can see, hear, feel, think, say, and do. I have the tools to survive, to be close to others, to be productive, and to make sense and order out of the world of people and things outside of me. I own me, and therefore, I can engineer me. I am me, and I am Okay.”

Once that breath, that word I spoke or that thought leaves the safety of my mind I own the resulted experience. All of the things I hated to own…what I did to survive the horrible trauma in my life I own today. I do not own the forced actions…but I own the need to live through what happened. I own the hurt I did to myself as I experienced my own self-disgust. All those parts of me I find so hard to understand I own them too. I can use my personal power and own what I can do today. I can grieve for those parts of me who hold the hurt of yesterday and give them the voice to tell their story.

The very last quote comes from Dan Millman. He said, “Pain is a relatively objective, physical phenomenon; suffering is our psychological resistance to what happens. Events may create physical pain, but they do not in themselves create suffering. Resistance creates suffering. Stress happens when your mind resists what is…The only problem in your life is your mind’s resistance to life as it unfolds.” That was beyond profound. Suffering and pain were explained in ways I could understand. When I reread the quote I still find comprehending it a hard task. I can hear Gloria, my old DBT therapist, tell me, “suffering is emotional resistance.” I have been playing MercyMe’s song “The Hurt and The Healer.”

As a believer in Jesus, I have come to understand that what happened to me was not what I chose for my life. I do not know why things happened. I do know that God has used it for good in my life. In my life, He has given me a platform of telling others of His love, where suffering meets the Healer, and show others that the “something more out of life” that kept you going is in that place of healing.

Positive Affirmations

 

My therapist Amy told me to fill out a lovely sheet of affirmations. Here I go…

• I like myself because I know how to love me.
• I do writing very well.
• I feel good about where I am in my life today.
• My friends would tell you I have a great disposition.
• My favorite place is my apartment.
• Tien loves me.
• People say I am a good listener.
• I have been told I have pretty eyes.
• I consider myself a good writer.
• I like the way I feel about myself when I dress in bright colors.
• What I really enjoy most is having quiet time alone.
• The person I look up to the most is God.
• The one person that always makes me feel good about myself is Tien.
• I look good when I shower up and get dressed and take time to dry my hair and put makeup on.
• The color turquoise looks good on me.
• I have a natural talent for being compassionate.
• I am most happy when I catch myself having been happy.
• My goals for the future are being the hands and feet of Jesus.
• One of the most positive traits I have is my ability to connect with others who have experienced hurt in their lifetime.
• People often compliment me about teaching them what living with hope means to me and how they can make it too in their lives.
• I have a good sense of who I am.
• The two things I do best are know how to care for Tien and to nurture the parts of me who are child-like.
• I know that I will be successful in life because I will let go of what I want and give up my will for God’s.

 

 

 

To Never Repeat

 

I have learned to fly. I do not want to taste the bitterness of falling. So, I keep my eyes focused. There is a Hope I seek. Something far greater than I can ever imagine. At times–midflight–I lose sight. Things get blurry. My eyes begin to shed endless amounts of tears.

Some Times I Get Hurt

Tonight a friend for over a year sent me a text, “for whatever it works, Merry Christmas.” I know I need to clue you in, so I am going to try and tell some background information. Maybe knowing it will make you understand how two people crossed paths and I learned how to let them go. My hope is that I will convey why I feel bittersweet about it.

I met her at the safe house back in October 2011. She had a son. I do too. We were both coming from a really bad place, and what we had was two people who became friends. We shopped together. Our families ate together. We cried over our hurts. We laughed at the joy we shared. Life was something enjoyable. I never really had a friend that just let me cut loose and be who I am. Life changed when she got a boyfriend. Her sex drive is insatiable. Mine was and is still dormant. As I grew into who I am today, I saw lots of things that made me think less of her–her disrespecting my new home, her trying to have sexual relations in my home, and her telling her boyfriend nasty things about me. I just got disgusted. There were even times when my son would ask me not to have her and her son over. Something inside me knew things were not right between us, but I still choose to be her friend because I didn’t want to give up.

I tried to ignore the bad things, but I kept trying to make things alright. I failed to realize that I do not have to give her an oath to our friendship as to how I will abide. What I do know is that I owe myself the freedom of following my own heart.