Anniversaries built upon the foundation of trauma

My Painting- Alpine Chateau

Throughout my life I have lived remembering dates, phone numbers and addresses, almost like I was a walking calendar and phone directory. It wasn't until maybe a year or 2 ago that I discovered the reason why my memory was so razor "sharp" when it came to recalling things that it seems nobody should be able to remember. I found that since I was a little girl I have always been able to do that and even recall the most insignificant details like being able to envision what I was wearing or being able to smell the scent that someone else was wearing so many years ago. 

As trauma in my life happened even during my infancy, my memory began developing "markers" that allowed me to remember and recall details as vividly as if they had just happened. I discovered that this was because it was actually a protective mechanism that continued making the equivalent of date/time/ message stamps in my brains memory and storage central processing storage database. Though growing up my ability to recall and remember served me very well especially when it came to things like school and memorizing lengthy scripture passages, it has also been very difficult through my life to "let go" of the invading reminders and triggers responsible for replaying all of the trauma drama as if it were happening again...and again and again.

 So it was really quite amazing to me that when I woke up and went about my day yesterday it was just an ordinary, normal day, void of any triggers, reminders, or traumatic "anniversary" dates! Especially since yesterday marked the 3 year "anniversary" of one of the most terrifying and unexpected experiences of my entire life. It wasn't until I was looking at a calender to make sure of the date that it hit me that it wasn't just the 24th of February. It was a reminder of the most pain filled & insane 3 years of my entire journey. 

Even when I realized that it had been 3 whole years since I was locked out of my house illegally  on February 24th 2011 by a woman I once worked for, I paused for a minute and it wasn't the pain or the trauma that I felt, it was the awe at just how far this past 3 years has brought me and all that has transformed as a result of that day! To me this is the most monumental of all of my experiences because in that moment I realized that for the very first time I am no longer bound by the nightmare that held its grip so tightly around my heart and soul for nearly every day since it happened! 

There is nothing worse than having something happen to you that takes every ounce of your control away and leaves you totally helpless, stranded and alone...literally alone. In a single moment on February 24th in 2011 I was rendered homeless, had not a dime to my name, every single belonging, memento and piece of clothing was stripped from my life. I was left not just out in the cold, but locked out in 8 below zero weather with only the clothes I had on my back, and I didn't have a cell phone, no change to call anyone even if I could have found a payphone which are all virtually obsolete. 

I had no idea how I was even going to make it through the night because I had very little gas and no possible way to get more to keep myself warm in my van once it ran out. Which meant I was going to have to run the heater as long as I could to stay warm enough and then shut the car off until the cold got too unbearable and then do it again. The police couldn't do anything because they couldn't get the woman to open the door and my only recourse was to go downtown to the court and file for an emergency hearing. But "tomorrow" seemed like an eternity away and I still had over 12 hours of 8 below zero and falling to make it through. And I did only by the grace of God and being able to remain in the moment, sing, listen to the radio, and just hang out with the Lord right there in the middle of a different kind of nightmare!

Days later I was able to get to a place where I could charge my laptop and I set up a google voice number so that I could use a phone through my computer. I found an amazing McDonald's that had wifi and I was finally able to reach out to a very dear friend of mine about what happened. He and his wife didn't live in their house in Big Lake and it was empty because they had been separated. I asked him if there was any way he would let me stay there until the emergency hearing which was still days away and he agreed!  I felt like I had been saved and I was! However, I never in a million milennia would ever have imagined just how everything would unfold and the injustices that would follow. For so long I felt bitter and totally resentful of just how everything I did right was met by a vicious attack that the law was letting the people who did these things to me get away with it! 

It was many weeks that I had to wear the same outfit that I was wearing when I was locked out on that February day. At least in Big Lake there was a washer and dryer! And I didn't have to find a gas station to wash myself in, because the house my friend let me stay in had not just one bathroom but two! It was the beginning of the whirlwind that has carried me here to this moment, and it was there that for the first time in my life I began to see that it is not about what I have, how much I can get, what I want to do or any of the things that I had grown so accustomed to having and believing I would die without if I didn't have them. This was the most excruciating experience to that point and I never would have believed that could be possible! 

It was also the beginning of my true surrender to what I have learned is called "Radical Acceptance." I was consumed with revenge and getting these people at any cost for what they did to me. Yet, in that I came face to face with myself. No matter what these people were doing, I loved them. This is where I really began to see that love is not love unless you choose to love no matter what someone else does to you or doesn't do for you! Everything within me wanted them to suffer the way that they had made me suffer. I knew that I was the only one dying inside and that everything I was thinking and planning to do was not love. No matter how badly I wanted to be vindicated, I knew that it was not my place to avenge myself even if it was justified.

This is where I stood at an even bigger fork in the road of my life than ever before.  That blew my mind because after everything I have been through has been so enormous and I never imagined anything could ever come close again. I was wrong. This was the greatest opportunity for me to yield to the Lord I claim to love with every fiber of my being and trust that even though I had no idea how to "let it go" that I would reach for Him and let Him show me His way...not just the way I had been taught about in the Bible, because this one was way to big and no matter how much I tried and strained and pleaded the blood of Jesus over the situation there was no release. In fact, the ruminating and obsessing got stronger. Until...

I was standing in the kitchen cleaning and ranting and raving to God about how everything was gone. I was furious! I had no idea why in the world He knew exactly what they were doing and how the courts were refusing my evidence and even overlooking the way the woman had perjured herself over and over in her testimony and I had the proof in my hand and the judge refused to accept it or even acknowledge it! When I finally exhausted myself and I was probably dehydrated from how many floods of tears that poured out, something occurred to me in such a profound way that it stopped me in my tracks!

In that moment, it was like all of the suffering and agony was gripping me the way it was because I was again trying to control a circumstance that I had absolutely no control or influence in. It felt like the more I was doing everything "right" the more they got away with all of the wrong that was making my life nothing short of a living hell. In that moment I realized that none of what was happening would ever have taken place if I wouldn't have gone there in the first place. Even more, I saw the truth about myself and how that sneaky spirit of entitlement had set up office from the inside of my heart and I never even knew it. Once I went to work there and was so close to the woman, I was looking for ways to do a hostile takeover because of things that I learned that were being done, that were illegal and would cause her to get shut down if anyone discovered what was really going on behind the scenes.

In that process, I began undermining her authority and I felt justified because I basically lived at the restaurant that she hired me to manage. Plus I lived in the 3rd floor apartment of her enormous home and so I never imagined that she would ever lock me out. But she did. For the first time right in the midst of my emotional tantrum to God I saw the truth which was undeniable. It didn't matter what she did or what anyone else had done, it only mattered what I was doing. For the first time I saw the cause and effect in my life and how no amount of whining, crying and emotional suffering was going to change anything. The moment I saw that none of what was happening could have ever taken place without my participation, it felt like I had been shot through my heart and I felt all of the emotion and feeling die. I was broken, I was ashamed, and I realized for the first time that I had gone through my life doing things on a smaller scale to others along the way that she was doing to me. That was one of the most humbling moments of my life. 

The moment I felt myself accept responsibility for my part, like a flood, thankfulness washed through my heart and body because I saw just how incredible it was that even though I was left totally destitute and everything I owned had been stolen from me, I saw that I had been given a wonderful home to live in and I had food and everything I needed. People were helping me with gas for my van and I wanted for nothing.

It was like someone flipped a switch and my suffering and anguish drained out and dissolved. I wasn't numb or empty. I wasn't angry or bitter.  It was like I died and the next thing I knew was that I was filled and overflowing with awe that the inescapable suffering that was just there the second before was totally gone. In the place where I felt vengeful and malicious, now was a love unlike I have ever known for the people who had hurt me. I realized in that moment that they may have gotten all of my belongings and paintings and everything that was special to me, but since I created the paintings I could do them again. I understood right there that just like my Heavenly Father, I too am a creator, and that was a beginning in my life unlike ever before!

I decided that I could choose to hold on to what had been done to me and even if I would have gotten justice and the court made it possible for me to get everything back, in the end that would be all I would have. But instead, I saw the greatest opportunity of my life. I chose to see my life from the perspective of farming. Through the changes in my life I had learned that I am really a farmer in my life. I have been cultivating the soil of my life, and planting seeds all along the way that I believe will come up in the perfect time...when it is harvest time. 

I have also been learning how to differentiate between pulling the weeds in my life's garden and the seedlings that will grow to become my harvest. All too often I have pulled out the harvest seed thinking it was a weed, because  in the beginning its hard to tell one from the other. Then I spent my life frustrated because I never knew that all of the weeds in my life were there because I had been pulling my harvest seed and never even knew it!

So I chose to see the magnitude of the disaster that I was going through and living as one of the greatest seeds I could sow into the garden of my heart because I knew that doing that produces the harvest again and again, season after season and more than that, it is eternally reaching. Right there it was like I was resurrected inside and I felt the flame of hope and promise ignite in the deepest places of my heart, my mind, and my feelings and emotions! From that moment to now I have never been the same! That experience and my understanding and acceptance has become the blueprint that continues to pave the way throughout my heart when I come face to face with disappointment, delay, and all that has blindsided me because I never saw whatever it was coming! 

To my awe, I found that in trying to "let go" only makes the roots grow deeper because it is in resistance where the strength of the very thing I am desperate to get rid of is actually developed and the greatest growth deeply roots it in place! Instead, I have only found true freedom comes as I am willing to face myself and choose the allowing of myself to die to everything I believed about anyone else except me. Is it easy? Anything becomes easier the more you do it. I probably would have had a much harder time if I had not felt the experience physically, the release, the peace that came as I let myself die to the stories I refused to stop telling myself and others about all that other people have "done to me." 

I can say that once I learned the truth about myself and all of the beliefs that I had and would have gone to the grave for, ultimately did lead me to an emotional grave. But that wasn't the end! That was just the beginning and in each moment there was a gift of opportunity to choose. I was finally discovering that my feelings about something will hold me away from or bring me closer to everything and everyone I desire in my life. My bottom line has become simple. Knowing that we have been given the power to change our feelings and emotions at will through choosing and doing that consciously is a game changer and the gateway into worlds that we have always dreamed of! I used to be addicted to so many things...I was delivered and set free from every kind of addiction in my life, by the only one that I have ever needed. I am addicted to and consumed with the one who made me and continually pours His life into and through me! Nothing else compares and there is nothing worth a single moment of worry or negative emotion now that I know it is possible to live in Heaven smack dab in the middle of hell! It is within.

This 3 year season has brought me through being totally destitute, homeless and living in my vehicle, totally isolated from everyone and every kind of technology, unemployed because of a work injury when I was working for the woman I was speaking about, and in the process I have created and invented and reinvented unlike I ever knew was truly possible. I have learned all of the things that I thought I couldn't live without were just getting in the way of being able to see the real me. For the second time in all of my life, I really like myself and even greater than that, I really love myself and all that I am including every flaw, every scar and imperfection. Because it is this journey that has taught me where my heart is, how to tear the walls down that I had built into an impenetrable fortress, and that as long as I live from within the depths of my heart, there is nowhere else that true freedom, passion, life, and love exists. Life only exists within our hearts, it is not outside of us or in the things that we believe identify who we are and all that we have or have achieved.

In Big Lake in 2011 the miracles that were birthed from the most devastating places, have been the treasures that have saved my life and gave me the strength, the heart and the will to die to everything and anything that I am faced with. During the greatest hell that I have ever known (up to that point), it was realizing the true magnitude and price that Jesus paid when he yielded in obedience to his Father, and took my place upon that cross where he was crucified!

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believes in Him, shall not perish but have everlasting life. I look at my life and the monumental things that have rocked me to my core and led me to each crossroad that it is my choices because of Love that have changed my life each and every time I have found myself there.

With every opportunity found within the point of crisis and the unimaginable horror of pain or fear so great that it feels like I am going to die, there comes a moment where I must choose. Choose to live or choose to die. And until I finally came to the place where I was finally willing to choose, I knew I would find myself always back at the very crossroad I did everything to avoid.

So many times, I was certain that a particular road I was going to choose was the right one…only to find myself soon after choosing the direction I would travel to be too difficult and I would quickly turn around and go back to the path that I had just come from.

I can kind of understand how the Israelites wandered in the desert for 40 years going around in a circle and going back and forth between the road I just left for the “right” road that is uncharted territory and has no distinct marking of where it will take you, or how you will know when you get there. So all of my life I so desperately wanted to “Become” brave and willing to not turn back, only to find myself more comfortable to turn around and go back to what was all too familiar.

All of my life I have journeyed the “hard way.” I wanted to do it all on my own. I wanted to be able to rise above the ashes and fly. Yet I was never willing to reach out or trust, or obey because I was terrified to trust.

Lately I have been reflecting on my life and how I have made a lifetime worth of self destructive choices that have impacted so many people along the way.

I have been married 3 times and within each marriage, it wasn’t until I saw myself as the common denominator that I began to truly see. See me. It is impossible to take 3 totally different individuals and turn them into the near identical person I was with in the marriage before! I was a power hungry egomaniac and with each relationship I stepped into came my long laundry list of baggage. I knew how to exit when things got difficult, but I had no idea how to take responsibility for anything that I had done, let alone fix it.

It wasn’t until I was well into and at the end of my 3^rd marriage before my entire life would manifest the long time coming events that I was powerless to control before I finally made a real “Decision” to begin. I never imagined that everything I had ever done, said, believed, forgotten, and avoided, lied about, and chased was so interwoven throughout every failure. For the first time in my life I had gotten myself into such a mess that I knew if I didn’t do something real that I would never be able to live with the consequences.

It wasn’t until the state came and removed my children from me that I knew this was it. I either loved them and was willing to do anything necessary so that I could finally heal and become healthy, and they could heal or I would choose to be a victim and end up emotionally losing them from my life forever.

What started out as me being the victim when I transferred custody to their fathers would ultimately be the road that would teach me what love really is, and how to live it…no matter what!

The Remembering Race

As I am writing about the things that have happened in my life, I find that in recounting the memories step by step, it continues to produce a strong physiological effect. As the intensity of content increases, so does my heart rate. I can feel my heart beginning to beat faster and then I can feel it in my neck thumping like a bunny running a race.

Well I am running a race, but I have learned and continue to have nearly infinite opportunities to recognize that this race I am running is not like any other kind of race. For this race has already been won long before I arrived. This race is not a sprint, but a race of endurance and skill. It is a race filled with alternate paths that have never been traveled. Running this race is not about winning a medal as you do in the Olympics, though the prize is far greater for those who finish.

I am realizing that with every step I take, I finish for I continue to keep my eyes and my heart upon the love of my life who is with me, my Lord. In taking every step I take, He feels the burn and the ache of exhaustion at the very same time I do, and when I win, He wins! Each moment is a moment of completion. A step that has been made and now lies behind us. Yet, as long as we are training for this race of life, we may tread upon the very places again and again that we have once upon a time in what is called and labeled “Past.”

Every step that I have felt moving me backward as I give all I am to advance through everything that comes is simply another grand and precious opportunity for me to see and discover something new that I missed when I traveled this road before. Though things appear to be redundant and the same old same old been there, done that experience, nothing is the same because I recognize that I have never been the person that I am within this moment before!

Which brings me to what I intended to share when I started writing this. As I am detailing things about my life when I was 11 years old living in South Carolina with my dad and my aunt, I can see the words I write as they play like the scene upon a big movie screen.

Though these moments are labeled memories and past, as I replay them to capture the greatest and most accurate detail as I possibly can, I am experiencing the physical feelings as if I were right there in that very situation all over again like it is was the very first time.

I am finding myself holding my breath and having to remind myself to breathe because I don’t even realize as I am writing that my body is somewhat on autopilot. The internal pain and reminders of the severity of traumas as well as the amazing joyful moments continue to send physical chemical releases into my body in this moment of time which makes the past actually become the present.

For it is in this moment of time where I am somewhere else in thought, but present physically sitting on my bed with my back leaning against the wall; thus I am in 2 places at the same time that I am consciously aware of right now.

I find myself so amazed at how easy it is to be 11 years old all over again as I remember-even though in my physical body I am 40 years old. I am in awe at the power of thought and memory. I am in awe at how without even realizing it, the moment I bring a thought from the past into the place where I am right now, that without even realizing it, my body is responding to everything I am thinking. I first noticed that my heart beat began to pump harder and with that, my shoulders began tightening and pushing upward to stiffen my neck.

I could feel myself getting so hot to the point that I can feel myself sweating and radiating heat like I am out in the sun, when I am not. My fingers began stiffening and it is taking a very conscious effort to stay typing even though I am beginning to feel drained emotionally. Instead of my fingers gliding over the keyboard in a very rhythmic effortless way, suddenly everything is choppy and I find I am making many spelling mistakes that I stop the flow in order to go back and correct.

The more I can feel my heart beating faster, the faster my fingers begin to try to type, and that wouldn’t normally present a problem, but in this circumstance, my fingers are speeding up trying to keep up with my thoughts that have begun to move faster as I write about events from my childhood. 

In the middle of writing something very intense for me about my aunt spanking me when I was 11, my mom called and I found myself irritable and moody, wishing to myself that I didn’t have to talk to her right now because I am all emotional and processing everything that I have just been writing.

As I redirected my thoughts to be totally present to my mom’s every word in our short conversation, I began to physically feel everything beginning to fade. I purposely sat on the sofa and propped my feet up. Maybe that helped with the intensity of my heart rate. As I talked to her, I focused on speaking to her in a tone of voice that was not rude or moody even though I still felt both of those things.

As I stayed present and my intention was to simply focus on my mom and picturing in my mind what she was talking about, without any effort, the “movie” my mom was helping me to play effortlessly took the place of the one that had become a traumatic replay of something that happened 29 years ago and just like a train switches tracks along its route, the feelings I was having in my body began to relax and I found feelings of peace begin to flow through my body as if someone were holding a pitcher of peace and joy and bliss above my head and slowly pouring it from the top of my head until it flowed down throughout every part of my body inside and outside.

My breathing has become deeper, and I am feeling my shoulders and arms relaxing. Thinking about the conversation with my mom has turned from one that made me feel crabby to being able to choose to hold the most recent conversation with her at the forefront of my thoughts. It feels much better to think about the things that just occurred in both scenarios because I am able to see as I consciously choose what I will think of in a moment where I am feeling emotional and don’t even realize it, I have discovered that I do not have to feel crummy!

In the time it took for me to move from a thought that was making me physically uncomfortable, I was able to feel the immediate transition that brought me from crabby to experiencing peace faster than any medicine. 

I continue to be amazed and intrigued to the point of fascination about the actual power we hold within ourselves. I never would have believed in a million years that I could go from something that made me feel like screaming at the nearest person to me to a state of peaceful bliss where I am smiling again and filled with hopefulness and excitement! It didn’t just happen though. And I didn’t expect that it was someone elses job or duty to make me feel better or lighten my mood.

I have just witnessed for myself how intense painful experiences can change from broken hopelessness to thankfulness and inspiration at the will of thought. I continue to discover that no matter what I feel and no matter how uncomfortable it is to revisit things from my past, to go there and allow myself to feel and experience whatever comes up for me is necessary in order to diffuse the hold of the painful reminder of something that is easy to believe is over and done with and nothing can ever be done to change it.

Three days ago while I was talking with my therapist she told me that this process actually has a name! It is called Exposure Therapy.

Which means in order to get beyond a memory or situation that hurts you so badly or infuriates you to the point that you want to hurt them the way that they hurt you, you will need to revisit it. The more you focus your thoughts onto something painful, the more you are shining the light of your heart onto it. The more you go there to replay it for yourself, the more it begins to lose its intensity and hold on you. It is like desensitization except I continue to learn that by doing this enough, it doesn’t just lessen the traumatic feelings and leave you numb.

Something magical happens! When I have chosen to go into the darkened places within my heart that I was certain I would never be able to get over, once I go there, it becomes easier and easier to continue going back. It is like being a treasure hunter and you have the opportunity to return to the place in time that people say is no longer possible to go, and by playing the movie scene of a memory, it opens the screen and that moment for you to find something that you missed before. 

Initially I was flooded with confusion to discover that the story I told myself about the memory I had held onto so tightly all of my life didn’t exactly happen the way I remembered it. Most of the time what I saw or was able to unlock within the memory of what happened was very slight, but my heart knew I was there to find the truth. I was there to get answers so that I could let it let go of me. So the light of love within my heart showed me what I couldn’t see before because I didn’t want to.

The more I returned, the more I felt the pain and could barely take the agony of fear, anger and betrayal, or abandonment and rejection. But each time I have been able to learn that I will see what I want to see. As long as I was trying to be right or prove that whatever the memory was is true, the more freedom eluded me. Once I came to the place where I wanted to see where I was in the memory to know what my part is/was within such a painful event, that is when I began to see that there were many more pieces of the puzzle that I never even knew were there.

By going into those places within my heart, I am the one leading the journey. I am the one in control. I can choose to leap or go back to where I feel safe. I can choose what I want to see and I can know that I am safe right now and trust that the answers are waiting for me to come to where they are.

I continue to find that as I replay and return to a memory it is like taking it apart piece by piece. The puzzle that I see labeled a memory is already put together. By taking one piece at a time and looking at what lies before me and within my hand, I can begin to see that each piece that was used to finish that particular puzzle, can be reconstructed and put together again. Except as you take the puzzle apart piece by piece, each piece that caused so much pain and bitterness deep in the unreachable places of your heart, has just been unplugged. It only has power if you decide to put it back in the exact place where you found it.

Once you see each piece for what it is, the distorted pieces of the puzzle disappear. We have been given the amazing ability to create just as our amazing Creator, for when he made us, He made us in His image and likeness. When we don’t know that we have the ability to heal from our pain we continue to hold onto the very toxicity that has continued to shape life for us from the moment we were hurt.  

 

Pt. 2 The Recipe of Love!

My painting - Chez Colette

Thought is creative energy, a burst of pure energy that triggers expansion. We were always created to be eternally expansive, to grow, to be fruitful and multiply…not just in childbirth, but in all that we set our minds and hands to! This is our ultimate purpose. Fashioned by the heart of God Himself! 

What we spend our time thinking about produces manifestation within our everyday lives. We call this reality. Based upon what we see all around us, and the type of experiences we have along the way, we develop our “beliefs” and then call it truth. These beliefs become so deeply rooted and it is easy to think that everything we “see” is real. The truth is that no matter how much we don’t like something and regardless of how badly we want others to change, we can only change ourselves through the things that we think, and then choose. 

How are we supposed to change and become something different?  By purposing to look only at ourselves and what we do.  I used to think that my problems were because of all of the other people in my life who had hurt me, failed me, and abandoned me.

I had no idea how to change and to be honest it seemed like the harder I tried and the more focus I gave to all of the things I didn't want to do or wasn't "supposed" to do, the deeper their grip was in my life. Nothing changed me, and the things that seemed to make a difference ultimately never stuck. Then a few years ago I discovered something truly magnificent in quantum physics. I discovered that it was my resistance of pushing the thoughts out of my mind and giving everything I had with all the will power I could muster (and ego) that was actually causing things to show up more than they ever had before! 

I learned that resistance is like a gate that opens to flood you with more of what you don't want! I was like you can't be serious! So how in the world was I ever going to change? That is when I realized that all of the temptations and bombarding opportunities to do the very thing I had been working so hard to "not do" wasn't such a personal attack at all. It was more about physics than it was about being the target of the enemy! Don't get me wrong, I know that there are things that the enemy throws at us attempting to derail us, but I never imagined something like physics and the laws that govern life to be something that I could actually use to sculpt my life. 

I found that there are governing laws that never change (just like God says He doesn't change!). No matter what I do or don't do, these laws are a constant. I can either understand their dynamic(s) and benefit from them, or I could continue to go against the nature of these laws and end up living a life of self created life of chaos and hell, and then blame it on the devil. Whether you believe in God or not, these laws truly don't discriminate. Maybe this is why the Bible talks about how God causes the rain to fall upon the just and the unjust. As long as the principles of the laws He established are not violated, they work 100% of the time in your favor and to your advantage.

I was 38 years old before I truly discovered "cause and effect" and that has changed my entire life. It is amazing to me still that even if there were nothing like religion to "teach" all of the Godly principles that are supposed to lead us to Jesus, that a universal formula designed by God Himself was set into order when He created everything. I can't tell you how amazing this is and how ecstatic I am because I spent most of my life thinking so little of myself and never even imagining that inside of my heart is immeasurable power. It is up to me to be conscious of how I am choosing and what I am believing because I hold the creative power that worlds are born out of as well as the power that destroys them. So do you! 

We all do...it's just most of our lives we have been told how hard we have to work and how long it takes to achieve anything that I think we've bought into the thinking that God is slow and stingy. Nothing could be further from the truth! But I know I personally got tired of waiting and so I decided to play being my own god without ever realizing it until it was too late, and too late again and again. When I was finally too exhausted to think and everything and everyone I love was gone from my life, only then did I finally come to the place where I was willing to see that my way wasn't working. I was finally willing to do something I had never done before and that was one of the most terrifying places of my life. It was also my beginning, and my life has never been the same!

I think that for most of my life I thought that God and the angels were standing over me every moment looking at me through His microscope making notes of every single thing I was doing wrong. That terrified me and I can tell you that having that fear only paralyzed me and kept me from opening my heart to Him at all. Fear filled "obedience" isn't obedience at all. That's nothing different than what dictators do. They demand. God doesn't do that because if He did He would be violating the very laws that He established before time ever began. 

He created the game we call life, and set the stage. He created every prop, material and ingredient we could ever possibly need to create and invent. Then He gave us the ability to choose. 

Fearing the consequences and trying to live doing and being everything that a "saved" and "born again" person is supposed to be only imprisoned me throughout my life. Even though I love Jesus with every fiber of my being, most everything I did in my life was because I was afraid of losing Him and going to hell if I wasn't a "perfect Christian."  

I don't even know what a "perfect Christian" looks like if there were such a thing, but I know that the God I serve, who is the love of my entire existence, my daddy and everything in-between, never asked us to be "perfect." He asked us to do one thing which is has 2 parts. He asked us (not demanded) to love Him with all of our heart, soul, mind and body and then to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. 

He above all knows our heart and he knows exactly how difficult this world is. This is also why He gave us the greatest gifts we know as feelings and emotions. I can tell you that these 2 are the very part of our hearts that have been desensitized and "overcome" to death. Literally!

Feelings are a physiological response to give us information about our environment around us as well as the (in)sight into the things that we can't see with our natural eyes. We call this intuition. However, when I was growing up and all throughout every church I have been to across the board they taught that we are supposed to overcome our feelings and do things no matter how we feel because if something feels off it's nothing more than "the enemy" or the one called the devil. 

It wasn't until 2009 that I began actually listening to what my feelings were telling me. When I first started to do that everything within me that had been so ingrained by dogma reared up to give me one of the greatest spiritual guilt trips I had ever been on. Sometimes when you have been led to believe that something is right even if it's not, trying to do what you know is right for you can feel so wrong! 

Everything was screaming at me inside that if anyone at church knew that I was doing xyz or not doing xyz, that everyone would know that I was nothing more than a phony and not even a Christian at all.  

For nearly all of my life I had been told what to do, what to believe, how to behave, what was Godly, what was sinning and never once did I ever question any of it. Why would I? Daring to do something like that was "sinful." 

But along this journey I have found so many things that I witness with my own eyeballs that rock my world because it shows me that so much of what I was taught to believe about God is not really who He is at all. He is my best friend and my greatest cheerleader! He holds me at night when I am going to sleep and He is excited for me and He continues to show me that the things that often look like delays are what end up leading me in a different direction to get me to the places where He knew my dreams were waiting for me!

He has shown me the intimacy of relationship with Him and how we are still together in every moment of every day no matter if I go to church every time the doors are open or not. He continues showing me how to be true to myself and not overlook or dismiss my feelings because within me, within the things I feel is the map that shows me whether I am moving further from or closer to the places that I was created to be. Other emotions that tried to torment me were riddled with the fear(s) that came with learning to trust myself rather than looking out and just doing something because I was "supposed to."

I never in a million years would have imagined that there truly is an infinitely deep creative, innovative, and revolutionary well within my heart that is filled with ideas and hopes and solutions and overflowing with passion and vision into things that exist and have yet to be created! I was never willing to step out of my religious comfort zone to see for myself because I was taught that was tempting God. Nothing is further from the truth! I started discovering just how incredibly powerful and accurate listening to my feelings can be. Especially when it comes to navigating through the uncharted territories in my life. 

It seems that society teaches that feelings and emotions are synonymous. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth! What we don't know and what we think we know is killing us and sapping the very life that God breathed into us when we were created. Yet, we are so sold out to everything we have been taught without really seeing those things happen in our own lives, and we have been told that is called faith. As if we have to prove to God that we are worth it or special enough before He will do the things we ask for in our lives. 

We were made worthy by the blood of His son Jesus before time ever began, and it is a lie that we have found hope in that when we all get to Heaven what a glorious day that will be. He never intended for us to wait to experience the awe and ecstasy that was prepared for us right here. It's just that we don't believe that we can have it in the here and now because of the mass programming that tells us that everything we do here is to get "there." 

While I believe that this realm is the training ground where we discover who we are through the guidance of the one who created us, we impose limitations on ourselves and others because of what we see, what we're told, and our experiences along the way. I spent my life trying to change my behaviors and become the person I believe I am created to be. What I didn't understand is doing that only creates rigidity and legalism because it is impossible to change yourself and become free from all of the glittery dangling carrots that hang in front of our faces every moment of every day. God takes us just as we are, and then He is the one who begins the "thawing" process which defrosts our frozen heart, rock like heart. He is the one who made us, and He certainly knows just how to take all we are and lead us into all of the very best of His idea of what life is. But He leads us through our feelings and connects with us intimately within our emotions. It is the most amazing and indescribable love affair! It is the breathtaking dance of Love!

I will continue with Pt. 3 of The Recipe of Love and I hope that you will continue the journey with me! God Bless you in all you do and know that you are loved!

Happy! ...Valentine's Day

I couldn't resist sharing this video and hoping that you are having a fabulous and Happy Valentine's Day. Give yourself the greatest gift ever...Love yourself today and everyday...make everyday Valentine's Day :)

Love, 
Elizabeth

The recipe of Love Pt. 1

My Painting- Tunnels Beach Kauai

I have been working a lot lately on a book I am writing about the story of my life and the journey that has taken me to hell and back more times than I can even count. Sometimes I have even joked  about knowing that road so well that I give guided tours. I know what it is to be in the prison of hell totally stuck within the suffocating confines within the darkness of pain, suffering, rejection, abandonment, perversion, ego and the heaviness of the all encompassing shame. I also know what it took for me to walk the road that was leading me to true freedom. What I never would have imagined is that freedom has absolutely nothing to do with security or anything that exists outside of me. 
 

When I was growing up I was taught that thinking of yourself and looking within before you reach out to help or make a difference in someone else's life is selfish. The truth is that you can't give what you don't have. I grew up hearing very little about the love that Jesus is and instead the focus was the 10 commandments, the rules, and the punishments that followed if you didn't live them. As a result I grew up drained on the inside because I never knew that in order to give love to someone else, it is necessary to receive that love first from the one who is love.

I am pretty sure that the word “Love” is the most overused and misunderstood word that exists. It is spoken about so much to the point that it has become as common as using a word like “the.” Words are containers for the powerful feelings and emotions that are supposed to be filled first from the depths of our heart. Without our heart which is where love lives there is no power. Only empty words that end up becoming the weapons of broken vows and promises.

I grew up in a very religious home with my mom, and I spent my life growing up going to church Sunday morning, Sunday evening and every Wednesday night. The dogmatic principles I was taught at church and in Sunday school became so ingrained within me starting from before I was even a year old. When I wasn't at church, I went to school at a private Christian academy which was an extension of the church we went to. So every day of my life was immersed within the doctrine and teaching of the Bible.

As far as I knew, “our way” was the only way. Why would I think anything else? That was all I knew. Which set me up at a very early age to judge anyone who didn't beleive the way we did, or even worse to tell them that they were going to hell. There was no way that I ever would have thought of exploring anything else. Because anything other than what I was taught to believe was a terrible sin and I was terrified of missing the mark and going to spend eternity in hell!

I was taught not to question anything that I was taught because to do so was to question authority. As a child it was nothing more than being disrespectful and would get me spanked for sure. I grew up in the children are to be seen and not heard era. I also grew up where the punishment of choice was backed by the scripture in Proverbs that says spare the rod, spoil the child.

Growing up I was an only child and my exposure to much outside of church was extremely limited. When everyone you know is either a part of your school or church there really arn't a lot of outside influences or distractions from people who were not “saved.” So I grew up believing that everything I was told was truth and fact. Why would I have dared to question it? I grew up being demanded to do as I was told or face the punishment that came with disobedience. Asking questions wasn't even part of the equation because whatever adults and the pastor said was just what it was. There was no discussion. So I grew up ruled by fear and pretty severe punishment at the hands of the people who were supposed to be “Christians.”

I also grew up highly conflicted and tormented by all of the “rules” and demands that religion placed on your life. I was never like “other” children and being an only child I was more like an adult than a child ever since I can remember. I was always around adults except when I was at school. Everything in our home was centered around God and I am certain that where it says in the Bible to train up a child in the way they will go and when they are old they won't depart from it, is totally true. No matter how far I have drifted, run or fallen I have always found a way to run into the arms of the one who made me.

However, I'm not going to lie, most of the roads I have traveled have been riddled with nightmares of epic proportion because of the dogmatic demands associated with being “Saved” and “Born Again” as well as everything that people have done to me all in the name of the Lord. However, as horrific as the things that I have faced are, it was all preparation and training because it has led me here, and I would go through it all over again because I have discovered that it is possible to experience and live heaven smack dab in the middle of hell.

When I was 36 years old I asked myself a question that has helped me stay true to myself and my Lord who made me. I asked myself, “If I never said the name God or Jesus to anyone how would they see Jesus within me and notice something different and want what was burning brightly in my life?” I had been saying for years that I was “saved and born again” but to be totally honest, my life was laying shattered beneath the mounds of smoldering rubble. I thought, “Who in the world would ever want anything like what was going on in my life?” Saying the words and knowing all of the religious catch phrases, terminology and lingo is only surface deep. Anyone can do that and sound “Christian.” I was sick and tired of sounding like I was saved when nothing in my life reflected any part of the Kingdom of Love.

Then I thought some more about it and said to myself that it's no wonder that so many have such a bad taste in their mouths about this God we claim is Creator of all.

Why would anyone ever be excited to serve the Lord when “Christians” seem to have a never ending overflow of devastation, constant struggle and lack? I can't say that I would have been drawn to “Christianity” if I hadn't grown up in a home where it was a requirement to be a “Christian.” I thought about how many people who aren't what we label “saved” and they seem to live a good life, they have solid morals, they like who they are and what they do, their life seems filled with less adversity, they are prosperous and even have sound relationships with friends and family.

As a Christian it was widely inferred that if you aren't going through hell and facing nonstop hits on the battle field of life than you probably aren't saved. The rationale for this belief has been that the devil doesn't need to harass those who already belong to him so “they” wouldn't undergo the kind of fire that a Christian does.

Throughout this journey I am continually amazed that I discover God is truly nothing at all that I was taught to believe He is. He is so cool and even cooler than anything I ever imagined! He doesn't see us at all the way we see ourselves and then we end up judging others through the lens of the standard we have been taught is His. I'm pretty sure that if we sat down face to face with God to ask Him about what He really thinks about all of what is taught to be truth's that His responses would floor us! They might even sound like what we call blasphemy!

Somehow I'm pretty sure that those who are “Religious” would quickly be overcome with emotional attachment and defense to the doctrine they have come to believe and believe they are willing to die for. It might even be easy to deny that the one sitting before you is even the Lord God, creator of all. Instead it would be easy to make a judgment based on the words they had been taught and believe that it was not God sitting there with them, but the “devil” himself!

I realized that the power in life does not come by classifying ourselves with some label or group to identify who we are. The whole entire tone of what Jesus came to give us has nothing to do with religion or how much you go to a building called a church. He said we are the church and so we can't take some things He says as “word of God” and not others! His mission has never changed. It has always been unification. Bringing together, not tearing apart. I am certain that God is a God of One. The God of Unity which is only found through the power and heart of Love. Ready for what probably sounds like more blasphemy? God is not religious. Man has created that term and movement which has become “The” weapon of mass destruction from generation to generation.

I was so sick and tired of claiming to be a “Christian” and having nothing in my life that ever really changed my life. Nothing ever stuck. My behaviors may have changed and I may have even stopped doing certain things, but sadly none of that means I had changed at all in the inner places within my heart.

I was tired of listening to others profess their undying love and devotion to God and refuse to do anything to help anyone else in their time of need because they knew it was going to cost them some of their time, money or both. But I heard the phrase “I'll pray for you” so much that it began to feel like it was nothing more than a cliche. That really isn't any different than what Jesus said in the Bible about how if someone comes to you hungry or in need that you don't turn around and say be warm and then send them away. Yet this is what I have watched throughout my life.

I thought a lot about all of the things that Jesus said when it came to what makes someone a “Christian.” I was going through the most unimaginable seasons of my life and I was going to church. The services were always really good. The music rocked and it felt amazing. The only thing is that I was living my worst nightmare and from moment to moment it felt like I was a fish out of the water doing some kind of survival croppie flop on the inside. I had been told all of my life that God is the God of miracles and abundance. He is a God who heals and turns everything that the devil meant to destroy me with into the very message that He uses for His glory and life giving testimony. While all of this is true I had never been so destitute emotionally at any other time in my life than I was in 2009, and I had never needed a miracle like I needed one then!

I was on my 3^rd marriage, married to a man I had no idea how to love and no desire to even if I would have known how. I think I was subconsciously addicted to being mistreated and abused even though I loathed being hurt I didn't seem to know how to walk away and stay away. This ended up costing me everything including my children. I had spent my life being a strong willed woman who was a control fanatic and egomaniac. I didn't trust anyone because everyone who ever promised to protect me while I was growing up and even in my marriages always lied and bailed when I needed them most. I had been thrown from pillar to post throughout my life because I was abused for a long time by my dad who I didn't meet until I was 11.

After I told what he did, my parents abandoned me. They left. They totally disappeared. It was like they totally vanished into thin air, and my mom never came back for me. Once they were gone I grew up in foster care. I spent most of my adolescence years going from foster home to foster home trying to find a family who wanted me or wouldn't think I was a problem child just because I was always unsettled and restless. I was living in an inescapable state of grief. I didn't know whether my mom was dead or alive. I thought that my dad had forced her to go with him and that she was being held like a hostage even at gunpoint. He did things like that while I was with them.

As a result I was needy, clingy and terrified of people leaving me, and I grew up and became an emotional nightmare; a force to be reckoned with if you ever hurt me, but desperate to know what it is to be really loved. I had no idea then and I never would have believed that love is something that can only fill you up from the inside.

It wasn't until I experienced this for myself over and over and over again that I realized that when you are filled with love only then can the overflow of that love pour out into everything and everyone around you. Love is too constant and too great to be contained, but in order to overflow you, the container of love, first I had to allow myself to be filled. I had to create space inside and clean out the closets of my heart so that I would have room for the love to come in. This is the first time that I finally saw that the love I so desperately needed was not going to come from another person, thing, experience, or what looked like outer security.

I continued learning this the hard way until I finally followed the recipe of love. It is a 2 part recipe. The first step is love the Lord God with all of you Heart, mind, soul, and being. Part 2 is to love your neighbor as you love yourself. It is a magical formula because it provides the clear order and order of operations to activate the formula of Love. Trying to love your neighbor as you love yourself is only possible if you first know how to love yourself. Anything else is not really love at all. Because remember, it is impossible to give what you don't have.

So starting at the beginning, in order for me to love the Lord with all of my heart, mind, soul and being, I was going to have to allow Him to love me. I had to be willing to receive His love and then through the example of how He is loving me, I was able to turn around and live that very example for others who are all our neighbors! 

I will be continuing with Pt. 2 next week. Have a fabulous weekend and know you are loved more than anything!