Waking Up Me!

This year hasn't been the best. It's honestly been a bit of a struggle. In January, JM broke up with me and not only broke off our romantic relationship, but dropped off the face of the earth as my friend too. The later hurting me more than the former since I valued him as a friend. In February, Lenny, my stepdad started to lose his faculties and we knew that death was nearer than it had been any time before he'd originally entered hospice in July last year. The two weeks preceding his death were some of the hardest of my life as I watched him struggle to let go of his life on this side of heaven. He passed away March 10. I walked into the room to see him as my mom prepared us a meal. He'd breathed his last from the time that she left the room to let me in and me walking in to see him. It was the first time I'd been with someone who'd died. My cat, Princess, who still lived with my ex died next. My daughter called me sobbing and needing comfort. I told her about...

When the going gets tough, the platitudes and scriptures to pray get thrown at the ones sitting in the valley. I’m as guilty as anyone of responding in this manner. I want to provide Truth and assurance to those I love and care about when they’re struggling and this usually works for me. When I am in a good place, hearing these things correct my path and my focus. But when I am tired and weary of the length of the time in the valley, hearing, “but joy comes in the morning” (Psalm 30:5) may not bring the joy when the sun rises the next morning.   I was having one of those rough nights on Monday evening and my sweet friend who I reached out to in my time of need told me tomorrow is another day and we all fall off the emotional wagon , just get back on, continue to cope…this too shall pass. Uh, yeah. I’ll get right on that. Of course, I was not getting right on that. If I was, I could have told myself that. What I really wanted was to be heard and cared for in that moment...

Continuing with my love theme this week, I want to get to the heart of the matter. I wrote about love being a choice we make each day when we are in a relationship with someone and I stand by that. Love, like our attitude, is all up to us. Regardless of circumstances. Regardless of hurts. Regardless of personal "needs", we choose to either remember why we love this person or to live in anger and resentment toward them. I totally agree with Lysa TerKeurst's comment in  The Moment , " ...great love isn’t two people finding the perfect match in one another. Great love is two people making the choice to be a match. A decision." We have to decide that this person--this love--is worth investing in, pursuing, and making great. Nothing is made great without effort! There are many things we need to take into consideration in our relationships. We need to remember that none of us is perfect. We cannot control the other person or their actions, but we can love them the ...

As I was looking through my documents today, I found this letter I wrote to God last year. So much of it (other than the anxiety) is still true for me. May 26, 2010 Dear God, Today my heart is full to overflowing. Not with the things that bring me joy, but with the things that weigh me down. I need YOU, Lord. I need your hand in my life. I need your arms wrapped around me. I need to know that you are here with me. I need to hear your whisper and know you have not left or forsaken me. I know you are everywhere and in all things, Lord, but what I ask is that you reveal your spirit to me, IN ME, so that I stop feeling alone. I want to feel the fire of your spirit burning within me. My anxieties are welled up within me. I feel the pressure of them in my heart, my head and in my body to the point where I feel like I will implode or explode physically if they are not contained. I try to walk them out, run them out, swim them out, think them out, pray them out; yet, they remain. My ears fee...

All day today--and for so long before this that I can't even tell you when it first began--God has been trying to get me to let go. To trust him. To turn to him. To embrace his Truth. Lysa TerKeurst who is the President and co-founder of Proverbs 31 Ministry as well as the NYT Best Selling author of Made to Crave which is a book I am reading about "satisfying your deepest desire with God and not food", writes things that speak to me. I have read her book "Becoming More Than a Good Bible Study Girl" (which I am ALL about!) and "What Happens When Women Walk in Faith" (okay, I didn't finish this one because it required work my heart wasn't yet ready to do and my mind wasn't ready to wrap around it yet). Lysa speaks with honesty and truth--from the Bible and her real life. She isn't perfect and doesn't pretend to be. I like real because I can relate. It reminds me that I don't have to be perfect to live by God's grace and mer...

Yeah. It's true. I am a rebel...without a cause. Just a stubbornness and "me-do" attitude because why would God be able to handle me better than me?! Just because he created me? Has a plan to prosper and not to harm me? Knitted me in my mother's womb? Knows me better than I know me?! Come on! P-lease! Yeah. That's the attitude that has gotten me here. Where is here? Here is the place where I feel doomed to be once again because I can't  won't really  let go and let God do his thing in my life. I am SO afraid that he won't show up to get me through it and I  can't  won't deal with the disappointment from him that I have had with everyone else I ever trusted before. I  can't  won't allow that vulnerability. I hate saying can't. That's why I replace it with the truth of the matter. It's not that I can't, it's that I won't. Fear keeps me from it.  I am afraid of the letdown. What if I lay it all on the line and t...