New Beginnings – Blessed is She

Live Loved

live+loved

Live Loved……….

I am still trying to wrap my mind around this as I type. I will try to explain. Each year I pray and seek God regarding my “word” for the year. This seems to be a trendy thing to do now days but I can testify to how richly and hugely God has used this in my life in recent years. It’s a powerful thing! I have found it to be so much MORE than just claiming a “word” for the year. It helps to keep my easily distracted brain focused and gives me an anchor to hold onto, especially in the difficult and challenging moments. You see, I don’t just look at it as a word but I also gather scripture references that magnify what God desires for me to embrace in whatever season I may be facing. However, this year I truly struggled with what my “word” should be. I had a list that I brainstormed but none of those words seemed to jump out at me like times past.

On a side note, one of the changes that I had been praying for in 2020 was that I would experience complete freedom from my past. How many of you know that God, in His great mercy, can and at times, does rescue us physically AND relationally. However, we have to prayerfully and intentionally not allow ourselves to remain bound mentally and emotionally? Right? Easier said than done! In my case, I have triggers that rise their ugly heads from my past that I am having to confront. SO many triggers that seem incredibly silly, nevertheless, they are real for me. I can tell you, our past can indiscriminately effect our today and tomorrows if we don’t get a grip. It is altogether ridiculous when you take a step back and see them for what they are. Even though they are real and my experience with them includes automatic panic with a knee-jerk racing heart beat and lump in my throat (PTSD?) …they are dumb! Yes that’s my word for them…ha!! God in His AMAZING GRACE and MERCY rescued me….took me OUT of the pit that I had lived in for years and yet here I am STILL dealing with the aftermath of what was..ugh! Dumb! I believe it’s the enemy’s way to keep us in the yuck that God has freed us from! I have been adamantly praying that in 2020 that I would have wisdom and insight as to how to handle them more victoriously as they come. You see, obviously before I was remarried, these recent triggers lay dormant as I was not in such a relationship. The truth is, some healing can only come as we are forced to face our emotional hangups. Getting remarried has been my force. It’s been abundantly beautiful in some ways and extremely hard in others. I have, most assuredly, had many growth opportunities that I did not even realize I needed, ha! Some progress can seem slow and get downright frustrating. This messy girl is thankful that God has blessed me with a sweet husband who understands grace because he has experienced it in abundance for himself. He is patient and graciously helps me face and walk through these triggers in a safe space. The thing about triggers is they can come at any moment, out of now where, and trip me up. TO say I dislike them is an understatement, but my dislike for them does not make them go away, by no means. However, my obedience to Christ in my messy moments, CAN! Maybe this is resonating somehow with you and if so, please hang with me. We can all have things from our past that distracts and seeks to destroy the very freedom that Christ has already given to us.

Back to my “word” for 2020. My husband and I chose to take a week to pray and fast to start off our new year. I was anticipating that one of the things that God would reveal was that special “word”. A we ended our fast, I still had no clue. Though I was feeling disappointed, I continued to believe it would come. That was on a Friday night…fast forward to Sunday morning. I was waiting to leave for church and it hit me….YES!!! Thank you, Jesus! AND it makes SO much sense though I can’t fully comprehend the magnitude of it at this moment.

Live loved…..

I understand about living loved by God and what it looks like to walk that out. Such a precious and life-giving, life-changing revelation. That Divine knowledge has been my lifeline and saving grace throughout (okay, maybe I haven’t fully comprehended ALL that entails in my human mind as I still get tripped up at times, but I have understood it enough for His amazing love and grace to be a difference maker in my life!) However, it is living loved within marriage, by my spouse, that gets me tripped up and entangled in all kinds of anxiety and insecurities. As I have mentioned before, love to me within marriage meant pain. It meant that my heart was never safe with my spouse. It meant that after a heart-breaking reveal, it would be just a matter of time before my heart was broken again. I was taught by my wounds that things weren’t always as they seemed and that there were always secrets lurking in the darkness. It meant there was no trust. It meant half truths, if any truth at all. Subsequently, I never fully experienced the love that God ordained to be shared between husband and wife. How do I know this? Because of what God has allowed me to experience now! Like wow!! My NEW normal has been a huge beautiful adjustment and my heart, at times, is still trying to catch up and walk in it’s Truths. THAT, my friend is why this is extremely exiting to me!

Sweet friends, God doesn’t miss a thing! This challenge to “live loved” has touched my heart in ways that words can’t express. I do NOT have to live less than loved any longer by my spouse. It’s like God is revealing to me that it’s okay. My heart is now safe. It’s a NEW season, a NEW day and God is doing a NEW thing! No more toxicity. No more betrayal. I am free! I can breathe. I can relax. I can let go of marital fears and doubts, suspicious thinking and ENJOY this life that God has so blessed me with. AND peace, such sweet peace. I can “live loved” as I am abundantly loved by God AND deeply and affectionately loved by my husband. It’s going to take work on my part. New thinking, aggressively taking thoughts captive that are attached to the past, and embracing every sweet and beautiful thing about living in freedom.

My husband, since I met him, has declared over and over that he wants to be beautiful for me. Honestly, when he first shared that with me, I thought it sounded strange and I did not quite understand what he was trying to say. But now, I get it! He has certainly taught me and continues to teach me what it looks like AND feels like too experience love, God’s way! God is so good, ya’ll!

I am striving to embrace this “LIVE LOVED” life as I detach from toxic mindsets. Maybe you need freedom, too? Maybe your story is different from mine but you still have ugly, messy “stuff” from the past that is battling to keep you bound. Can I encourage you today? Don’t give up! Keep pushing through….keep wrestling! A trigger moment does not make you are a failure or any less spiritual. God understands why you are the way you are! However, His love for you will not leave you that way nor abandon you to battle alone. Maybe you need some outside intervention. Maybe you need a mentor to come along side of you. Maybe YOU need a “word”, an anchor of sorts to hold you steady with scriptures to combat your triggers. Maybe YOU need a divine and/or renewed revelation of how very much GOD loves YOU!! Sweet friend, pray and seek God and wait for His answer. He knows what lies ahead of you and He will graciously equip you to rise above all that desires to hold you captive. LIVE LOVED and know that greater is HE that is in YOU than all the yuck, the lies, the deceit, the wounds, the losses, the betrayals and the disappointments of your past! Rise up, sweet sister!! God has amazing plans for YOU!!! You are extravagantly and completely loved! Now go and live like you believe it! By God’s amazing grace and power, we CAN do this!!

1 John 4:16: “And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.”

Psalm 143:8: “Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you. Show me the way I should go, for to you I entrust my life.”

Song of Solomon 4:9: “You have captivated my heart, my sister, my bride; you have captivated my heart with one glance of your eyes, with one jewel of your necklace.”

Proverbs 30:18-19: “There are three things that amaze me—no, four things that I don’t understand: how an eagle glides through the sky, how a snake slithers on a rock, how a ship navigates the ocean, how a man loves a woman.”

You’re Going to Be Okay!

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Are you at a messy place right now and your mind wonders if God really does redeem our stories? Not just when we enter our heavenly home but here and now, this side of eternity? Maybe you have found yourself on a detour that you never saw coming. Maybe you are facing this very moment some ugly, difficult and untended parts of your story that have left you face down on the carpet desperate for God’s intervention.

Friend, can you just pause for a moment from your tears, your questions, your doubts and hang with me for a moment? Our. God. Is. Faithful. Always. I get it….. your circumstances may NOT be okay! However, YOU’RE going to be okay! How can I proclaim this so boldly and confidently? Because I have walked through those kind of chapters and am now reaping the joys that God brings as the pages turn.

The pain in my eyes that I had for literally years is now gone and has been replaced with precious peace and radical relief. God DOES redeem! He takes the worst parts of our stories and redeems and truly creates beauty from the ashes that may surround us.

“The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives, and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion – to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor.” Is. 61:1-3

If you need hope this very moment please read the above scripture again. Pay attention to every word. Do you see it? Heavy words like brokenhearted, captive, darkness, prisoner, the grieving and all who mourn are the ones being addressed in this passage. Friend, if any of those words describe who you are or where you find yourself on this journey, your heart can be FULL of hope! You’re going to be okay!! Why? Because Jesus came for YOU! He has already made a way for you. Your ashes are no match for His abundant grace.

February 2, 2019 represents so much more than my wedding day…but a rescue of sorts. A day when God boldly declared to my heart as well as others that He is well able to redeem and take what the enemy meant to destroy me and my family and make it so beautiful. It represents the answer to countless prayers prayed by many that I did not even know were praying for me and my family. You see, it’s not just our victory in Jesus but other’s victory and testimony, too! Those who loved us, supported us, believed in us and more importantly those who believed that God had good plans for us in spite of how it looked then. My heart is so thankful. My prayer is that in sharing this it will give YOU a shot of hope because at numerous times, I was wondering and struggling, too! Broken, wounded, stressed to the hilt, and ever so desperate. It wasn’t just one hard thing but many that left me with eye twitches and stress rashes…..but God! No, things did not happened as I had prayed but God took me on a path that has been paved with amazing grace and beauty for ashes. If you are wondering if this could ever happen for you my answer to you is a resounding and confident YES!!! It is so hard to believe when your heart is filled with pain and you can’t see clearly for the fog that surrounds you. I get it. I really do. I promise you, our God is faithful. He sees you. He invites you to trust Him as He is working out the future that He has for you and those you love.

So my friend, whatever chapter you are in know this; it’s only for a season. Many times we have no control how long our painful seasons may last but you can be assured that God’s timing is perfect and purposeful. You, my friend, are on the pathway to greater joy and intimacy with Christ than you have ever known. Stay on the carpet, ugly cry and let your knees burn. Don’t ever stop wrestling. Stubbornly hold on to your faith as you hold on to your God. Follow hard after him…stay obedient no matter what your feelings tell you. Expect God to move! He will sweet sister, He will!! Your waiting time is not wasted time…He is creating room in you for the beauty that is yet to come! One day, you will see clearly that He not one time left you in your darkest moments. He was cutting away the lies from the past to make room for a NEW season, a NEW beginning that could not compare to anything you have experience before.

Psalm 27:14

Wait and hope for and expect the Lord; be brave and of good courage and let your heart be stout and enduring. Yes, wait for and hope for and expect the lord.

Like Mother, Like Daughter

Mindy&Chris-2019(194of292)

Over the past few years we have experienced the death of two marriages in our family. To say that our family dynamics have dramatically changed is an understatement. To see where we are today is nothing short of a miracle. Not the instantaneous kind but the kind that comes from wrestling and determinedly walking out your days with God’s gutsy braveness and strength not because you are super spiritual but because there is no other option. The odds were certainly against us. The chances of us coming through such huge changes with relationships still in tact were not at all in our favor.

To be perfectly honest, when my oldest daughter came to me and told me she was getting a divorce…I selfishly fought against it. See, I was in the midst of my own messy, crazy and hard divorce from her father. I held it together for the moment and then as soon as I could get away, I hit the carpet in disbelief. Really, Lord? Why now? This is absurd! I can’t carry her brokenness and my own at the same time let alone my other kid’s brokenness!! This was just too much….for her, for me, and for our family. “Like mother, like daughter” was not a phrase that felt good in the midst of our unwanted circumstances though it would seem fitting, Ugh! Having five children experience the terrible aftermath of the destruction of their own family unit is one thing. However, to have one of those five children also experience the same kind of loss……in the same season, was inviting chaos of the worst kind to reek havoc in the hearts and minds of ALL my children. Oh my word!! I knew I had to get a grip. As I ugly cried into the carpet that day in prayer pleading with God to intervene and wallowing in my own pity party, I was reminded that He knows all things. This was absolutely no surprise to Him. His grace would be sufficient. What seemed like such horrible timing and so messy would be worked for good no matter how things felt or looked from my limited perspective. I had no choice and I knew it. I had to embrace what I knew to be true of God and not let my emotions get the best of me. I had to be strong for all of us. I eventually stood up with a stubborn resolve but it was only a short time after that the guilt bombs and accusations attacked my mind from different directions. Subsequently, this only gave way to even more stinkin’ thinking. I went from “please, God” to “oh, no…did I cause this? Were my children reaping the consequences of my decisions? Was my own divorce giving my precious daughter permission to give up on HER marriage? After-all, God hates divorce.” Reality is, I hate divorce and yet here I was on the cusp of the “D” word being a part of my story and now doubly so for my daughter. We all know as a mom, it’s one thing for life to happen to us but when it hits our kids it’s a whole different kind of brokenness. They had already lost enough. The possibility of it being a part of my daughter’s story, too…broke me. “How dare I claim to be a christian and put my family through this. Have I opened the door of destruction for those that I hold most dear to my heart?” This thinking and more attacked every aspect of who I have ever claimed or wanted to be. I hated the helplessness I felt but I knew I had no control over outcomes. This was not something I could fix nor wish away. In the midst of this overwhelming sorrow, I repented. I begged for God’s mercy to cover and heal any brokenness in my children that I may have caused. I was so sorry for my part in all of this messiness. Then I rehearsed in my mind the road that led me to the decisions that I had made and I had a renewed resolve. Now was not the time to question what I had already previously settled in my heart and mind through much prayer and counsel. I knew what I knew. I needed to be extremely careful of whose voice I was giving power to. Did what I was hearing line up with what I knew to be true, if not…then I had to choose to let it go!! Not to say that I didn’t struggle anymore, because I did. I just did not allow those tormenting thoughts to be the boss of me……..I surrendered them to Jesus over and over again and slowly but surely they lost their power over me. Thank you, Jesus!

From his abundance we have all received one gracious blessing after another. John 1:16

Now, several years later we are living out our stories redemption style. The losses we went through do not compare to the new joys we are now experiencing. What was meant to destroy us has only made us stronger and has given us a story that shouts of God’s amazing grace and faithfulness. Only my children know the depths of the chaos and craziness that we have walked through but with that they have also known and witnessed the greatness of our God as He has came to our rescue time and time again!

Just recently, as I had a few precious moments with my daughter before she said “I do”, I was given the opportunity to pray with her. As the words begin to flow, so did my tears. God so sweetly reminded me of how He had given us each other to share not only in the pain that had been a part of our stories, but also in these specific joy-filled beauty-for-ashes moments. I don’t know of any mom who would ever plan nor want to go through a divorce at the same time as her daughter BUT not every mom gets the blessing of sharing the season of being engaged and married with her own daughter either. How precious and how special. I could not see in the get go, as I poured out my heart beside my bed that day, that God would so graciously weave our stories so closely together and create a beautiful ever after from the ashes we both carried. I could not see then that God would take the ugliness of divorce and bring a strength and closeness among my children that wasn’t there before. I couldn’t see then that I would get to meet and marry a special man and have the privilege of being a bonus mom to two incredible kids and a mother-in-law to a man that would love my daughter and her siblings like no other!

Our God is truly the God of abundant mercy and grace and He is no respecter of persons. In the midst of the unwanted parts of our stories, God redeems. He covers our shame with His love and creates within our story HIS story of amazing grace. His grace is even more beautiful to me now than ever before. I have been ever so desperate for it and I have experienced the extravagance of it. His grace has anchored my messiness to His marvelous perfection and created something so beautifully new. His grace has truly been sufficient for me and my children and I can assure you that His grace is truly sufficient for you. Believe it, my friend!

I would have despaired had I not believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for and confidently expect the Lord; Be strong and let your heart take courage; Yes, wait for and confidently expect the Lord. Psalm 27-13-14

I have set the Lord continually before me; Because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Psalm 16:8

…May grace (spiritual blessing) and peace be given you in increasing abundance [that spiritual peace to be realized in and through Christ, freedom from fears, agitating passions, and moral conflicts]. 1 Peter 1:2