How playing Farmville changed my life!

I was thinking the other day about how much has actually taken place in my life from the inside out over the past 6 months...and even more epic over these past 64 months since my children were taken away from me and went to live with their dad's. I was trying to remember if there was a single event that marked the pivotal beginning of the changes that have led me through this metamorphosis. I mean, I know there are seasons and many events that have been instrumental in making all of this possible, but I was looking to see what exactly set all of this in motion.

As I thought back over these past 5 years, I found myself reflecting about what life was like through the days after my children were taken away from me. I'm pretty sure that I spent the first 3 months fighting against accepting that the reason my children were not with me was not anyone else's fault but my own. I was determined that I was going to prove that my children were taken away from me illegally. I was doing everything to make sure that I didn't leave any stone unturned because I wanted the court to see just how much I was doing. So I made sure that I had a long paper trail of all of the “proactive” appointments and classes that I was willing to take and diligently attend.

I wanted my children back and was willing to do anything it would take for the court to be able to see that I not only complied with the courts laundry list of demands, but I proactively enrolled in parenting classes and many other therapeutic activities that I was sure would show how intent I was on being healthy and equipped to help my children once the court let them come home. Looking back, I see now that what I was doing was nothing more than my “I'll show them” reactionary “choosing.” I was on a mission to convince the court that my children would be safe when they came back home.

I was dying without them and not having any control over anything was a moment by moment death unlike I ever imagined would be possible to endure. The bottom line is that everything I was facing at 36 years old was something that could have been healed and avoided if I had only cared enough about myself to make the time to get the help I desperately needed before I ever began having children.

I spent my entire life being careless, terrified of being alone, and desperate to be anything other than what I was. I made the “fake it til you make it” concept my entire life. The only thing is that I spent my life faking it and never really making it. Well, I made “it” and a lot of “it” but to be honest, “it” never turned out to be anything but chaos, dysfunction, misery drowned in the darkness of addiction and co-dependency.

I never planned to live my adult life as I have, and yet I see now that I never planned not to. I really believed that if I could just meet the “right” person who had a heart filled with love for me, somehow that would heal me, make me better, take away all of the endless pain and trauma and give me all of the things that nobody else was ever willing to give me. I never understood that remaining in the condition I was in mentally and emotionally would only bring others into my life who would be the fuel to the flames of dysfunction in an already unquenchable inferno raging within me.

By the time I was 18 I had spent the greater part of my life and nearly all of my adolescence in and out of therapists offices, and nothing ever reached my pain or helped me move beyond all of the tormenting memories. After the countless hours and visits week after week and year after year, there was not a single therapist who did anything to impact my life or show me the way to get beyond myself. I was talked out. 

I was sick and tired of rehashing my past and every single moment of inescapable memories that owned me. I was sick and tired of having to deal with the nightmare that I was living. I wanted to move on and live my life. I was certain that I knew what would be good for me. I knew what I was never going to do because of how it wrecked my life when other people who were supposed to love me and take care of me abused me, abandoned me, and left me as a little girl to fend for myself while they went on about their business as if I never even existed.

I was determined to not only become the greatest mother I could when I had children, but I knew that I was going to do everything different for my children than what people who were supposed to love and protect me did in my life. I never wanted my children to ever know the kind of pain and horror that I have, and I was willing to do whatever it took to make sure that I could give them all of the things I never had. I was going to be the mommy whose life revolved around her children and I knew that I was never going to shelter my children or keep them from experiencing life to the fullest. All of my life growing up my mom worked and I spent my life missing her. I was going to do whatever it took for me to be able to spend as much time with my children as possible because I never wanted them to miss me or hurt because I was always working like my mom did in order to support the both of us.

I can see now that my hopes and intentions were not enough. Regardless of how much I wanted to create that kind of life for my children, I had no idea how to make that a reality. I thought that it was enough to know what you don't want and then do the things that are opposite of that and everything would just fall into place. I was wrong.

My entire life of pain, trauma, loss, and fear was housed within me within every thought, every choice, every response, and every plan. I was a terrified control freak who didn't trust anyone because everyone I had ever put my trust in not only hurt me, but always left my life no matter how much they promised they would never hurt me like they knew I had already been hurt throughout my life.

Eventually, my life became about doing everything to keep people from leaving my life. In that process when I couldn't make people stop hurting me and leaving my life, I became the one who did the leaving before someone else had a chance to leave me. As a result, I have spent my life playing games and sabotaging my own life which has caused only God knows how much damage in my life, the lives of my children and anyone else who happened to find themselves caught in the web of my existence.

I am not proud of any of this, and even writing about it dangles the baiting reminders of guilt, shame, and the embarrassment that has always been the glue that holds and weaves them all together. However, I also know the truth which continues to set me free. The truth is that my life has been the furthest extreme of an inconceivable nightmare and there is nobody who is worse than what I was. I am certain that nothing was ever going to reach me and be able to break me without breaking my spirit. I was a broken mess with an ego and a chip on both shoulders which made me a force to be reckoned with. I never wanted to be like that, but I didn't know how to stop. Nor was I willing to listen to anyone try to tell me how to live my life or what I had to or couldn't do.

Somehow through every hopeless circumstance that has happened in my life, hope has always burned within me. Not because I am so hopeful or have the strength to keep my head up, be positive, or believe that things can change to become everything and more than I have spent my life dreaming about. When I had no idea what love was, hope still found a way to rise up within me and pull me from underneath the wreckage and smoldering rubble each and every time my life has come crashing down. I wish that I could say it is because I am so strong and resilient, but that wouldn't be true.

True strength I have learned has very little to do with getting back up again. Ego is very good at pushing you to get up and do it again. Ego propels response and action when there is fear of how you will look if you don't get up again. Ego even has a way of convincing you of just how strong you are... how taking the bull by the horns will only make you stronger and cheers you on to use every ounce of strength to show just what you can do so that you never have to go through whatever it is again. True strength most oftentimes looks more like weakness than being strong. I continue to discover that strength is found within the heart we have been given because this is where I've learned love lives and calls home. However, I have discovered that love has many companions and where love is, hope is always close by.

It has been my many rendezvous with hope that actually prepared me for love, and it is only because of Love that I am here today. Love shows me how to pour out everything I am without holding back or trying to sugar coat things to minimize the things that I have done. A moment with Love changed my entire world and everything in it. Love has always been right here, waiting for me, waiting for you. I was never willing to follow Love because it was all about me and I didn't know how to trust people I could see, much-less someone and something that I couldn't see.

So I sat on the sidelines of my life waiting for love to find me, and when it didn't, I took my ideas of what I wanted love to be and set out to find it and make it happen for myself. This was the story of my life. Compromise, deceit, settling, impulsiveness, and everything to try to make everything happen “right now.” I refused to understand that without the process and the order that creates a solid foundation to build upon, it is only a matter of time before whatever goes up will come crashing down. 3 marriages, divorces and 23 years later, here I am. I finally see that “quick fixes” are nothing more than band-aids. They cover things for a bit, but never stick for too long. I spent my life doing everything possible to band-aid everything and instead of getting better or being able to heal, the years of band-aids that covered me had turned me into a mummy.

Every part of my life was not just broken, it was shattered! Sometimes when a broken bone doesn't heal properly the only way to fix it is to re-break it. It's going to be painful and there is no guarantee that everything will be as good as new, but you will never know unless you trust that the doctor is able and knows what to do. I have had to be deconstructed to remove all of the pieces and shards of the toxic me, reconstructed and put back together again piece by piece. This has taken so much longer than I ever would have imagined, and I know that this is something that never would have been able to happen in this way if my children would have still been living with me. And though I have died everyday that they have not physically been with me, I know that the mommy they have now and who I am for the rest of forever is someone who is well equipped to handle anything that comes with skill, heart, love, fortitude, courage, surrender, wisdom and understanding from navigating the uncharted waters and unmapped terrain of life!

Who I am today is who I was always created to be, and for the very first time in all of my life I love the person I am and am in awe at all that I continue emerging at the hands and heart of the Master Creator, the Lord Almighty! The road has been long, but He has walked every step of the way and carried me when I was too weak or terrified to take another step. Every tear I have cried he has wiped away, and He has cried with me because He has shown me that what hurts me makes Him sad too.

He is faithfully working all of this out as He continues taking what was meant to destroy me and using the intense fire to transform the carbon like darkness of who I was into a diamond vessel that His love and light brilliantly shines through...not because I am great for I am nothing without all that He is within me. It is only because He is most awesome and as long as I am willing, He is faithful and will complete this work in me that He started when He thought me into being.

The clearing in my life has been unfathomable and for many seasons over these past 5 years it looked like nothing good would ever be able to emerge because everything was continuously being ripped out of my life. I would just barely get beyond one loss and another came in like a flood with even greater force than the one before! I didn't know why He wasn't rescuing me from the insanity that took everything except my physical life and left me totally and completely destitute.

Everything that I had attachment to in material form, everything that held my identity was stripped away. It was like the band-aids I had spent my life covering every owie became a part of me and as it was peeled away, it felt like pieces of me were being torn apart. They had been on me for so long that to me it looked and felt like me. I resisted and sobbed, I prayed and cried, I begged and pleaded for God to make it stop and to take away the pain and make the people responsible for all I was going through, to stop destroying my life.

Then just as I felt myself able to breathe for a moment and the rays of hope just began to peek through and shine into the dust and debris of the most recent whirlwind, I was nailed with something more devastating than the last. I didn’t realize it then, but I was praying for God to save me from the very process that He was using to shape me, cleanse me and save me from all of the idols and gods that I was certain I could never live without!

If He would have rescued me as I begged Him to do, none of what has happened and who I am today would be possible! I would still be totally consumed by my past, all of the guilt and shame that comes with being abused and being an abuser. I would never know what it is to be free from all that was impossible to overcome and I would never have reached for Him as I did, do, and learned that no matter what I am going through I really am never alone for He is always right here with me. He knows the best way because He created the way. Together the things that we are doing are monumental in my life, family and our legacy is eternally reaching. This is forever!

Today I am thankful for every second of pain both physical and emotional. I am thankful for every abrupt loss and unanswered question because it is that pain that keeps my heart connected to thankfulness.

I am thankful for all of the moments that I have witnessed miracles of epic proportion even when I am the only one who sees things the way I do. As insane as the pain and loss have been, the inexhaustible joy on the other side of it has shown me how to see. I have learned to gauge that as deep as the darkness swallows me, I know that if I hold on and not try to avert the pain but instead let myself move through it, the heights that I am being prepared to soar into are equally as high as the depths were deep!

I've learned about something called radical acceptance which is fully accepting any given situation. Knowing that “it is what it is” doesn't mean that I have to like whatever it is I am going through or in the middle of. It just frees me to be able to adjust myself and gain the power over how I choose to respond in the midst of an undesirable or “unfair” situation. I have learned that no matter how awful something is, that it won't always be that way. The  unimaginable event becomes an opportunity for me to remember all that I have learned along the way, and to use those skills to help me as I face myself and the circumstance. 

I think that I was so focused on getting to a certain place in life or beyond that I never bothered to stop and see that all I have is right now. In this moment of now, I can either cultivate something within myself, reach to see what else is buried like treasure within me, push the envelope and experience life in the magical moment by moment unfolding. Or I can be so consumed with “getting somewhere” that I end up missing the only moment I have (now) and never uncover anything more than I already have.

It has taken me my entire lifetime to really begin to believe that what I do and choose and think in this moment is the energy creating the next moment and all that follows. I am still learning just how powerful we have been created to be, but the truth is that we are powerful beyond measure because we are created in the image and likeness of God Almighty, creator of all! How can we say we love Him and are waiting on Him to fill our lives with everything we hope for, pray for and dream of, and then sit back doing the same things we have always done and wonder why nothing is turning out quite the way we hoped it would?

Something happened to me a few years ago and it ended up being instrumental in changing my life. I was kind of addicted to playing Farmville on Face Book. I had spent my time creating an amazing farm and designing it just the way I would if it were a real farm. I even went through the different crops you could plant and harvest to find what would cost me the least amount of money to plant the most of and also would grow at the fastest rate and yield the highest return. I found that grapes grew the quickest, cost me the least amount of money and yielded the highest profit.

So I spent oodles of Farmville money buying more land, planting more grapes, and expanding like crazy. It was kind of ridiculous because I actually scheduled my life around the time I knew that my grapes were going to be ready to harvest. I bought bigger equipment to ensure it took me less time to collect all of the grapes and I had an amazing time because it felt like I was really farming and making a lot of money even though it was just play money.

Then my life took a turn in a direction that I wasn't planning to go. I decided that I was going to go back to school. I was accepted to a design school and since they didn't have a campus here my only option was to take my classes online. I decided to get my Bachelor's degree in Video Game Production and Design and I had absolutely no idea just how intensive the courses were going to be. It felt like right out of the gate from the moment I started school all I had time for was school, sleep and homework. I suppose I never factored my Farmville addiction into the equation when I went back to school. Sadly, back then, I may never have started school at all if I would have thought it could interfere in harvesting my virtual crops!

Needless to say, the first few days of class I totally forgot to check my crops and harvest time came and went, my crops were totally dead. I was actually pretty upset because not only was I going to have to pay to harvest dead crops and making zero profit, but I was going to have to plant new crops with my Farmville reserves! I did that for a short while until I lost track of everything on Farmville and finally just stopped visiting Face book altogether. I knew that I had a choice to make and I was paying real money to go to college and that trumped Farmville, and that was that.

Until...

I began to notice things about the way I was living and the way I went about making choices in my life. It was interesting for me because it’s like when I stopped playing Farmville, the principles I learned and was using to strategically design and manage as well as prepare to make my farm a success, seamlessly became a part of my everyday life. I joked with my mom and told her that I was going to write a book called, “How playing Farmville changed my life” and she thought that was hilarious. I was totally serious. I thought it was amazing how something so simple could have such a profound impact in my life and not even realize it.

That's when I discovered that life is more like farming than we probably ever bother to think about. I mean, unless you're a farmer, why would you ever compare or connect the two? Since then, life has become like farming for me. I see things so much differently now and somehow, because I learned the virtual process through Farmville in my own life I can see things through the eyes of faith and hope because I have the mental connection to the cause and effect of when I used to play Farmville. 

In the most horrific time in my life, Farmville became the platform that helped me to distract from the agony of not being able to be with my children. For a moment I was able to get lost in the moment where for a little bit I didn't feel like I was going to die. As I found my niche in the game and found the best way to make the most money in the least amount of time, I found myself looking forward to the process as my crops sprouted and ripened to harvest. I was developing hope and I didn't even know it.

It seems silly to think of my faith somehow becoming rooted because of a silly game on Face Book. I would rather give all that credit to God...and I do! But I believe that He is willing to use whatever is going to reach us individually. I had never been consistent with anything in my life and so I suppose it makes sense why many processes were never able to take hold within me.

I played the game pretty much every day and in my real life because of what I was doing every day, day after day my brain was changing in ways I never had before. This is how our brains thrive…through consistency and repetition. I was creating new neural pathways and processes and didn't even know it. So naturally, it didn’t matter if I didn’t play the game anymore because the processes were established and the neural pathways in my brain became well worn and smooth. That carried over into my “real” life with the same thinking and the same method of choosing that taught me cause and effect in Farmville.

I learned how costly it is to miss your window of harvest opportunity and even learned how to adjust my crops and choose to plant a crop that would grow a little bit slower and maybe not pay out as much, but would allow me the time I needed to do my school work and still be able to play the game and at least not lose any more money.

Beyond Farm-ville, my life became my farm. I was able to see just how much work needed to be done in the game to get to a place where I had the ability to plant a crop. I had to buy the land, till up the land, cultivate the soil and then water it and make sure I had what I needed for my crops to grow. Once I'd plant my seeds it seemed like forever before they finally began to pop up through the ground so I could see the “fruit” of my labor. So it is with life. Most of the time I never even gave any thought to cultivate the soil of my life. I'd get an idea, run with it, and if it took too long, I'd get distracted and then fade out and onto something else. This was the dominant process that ruled my life for most of it.

I can't even imagine just how many crops I have planted in the soil of my life that I walked away from just before the shoots were about to pop up out of the ground and begin to sprout. What I do know is that all of the choices and mistakes I have spent my life making were all part of the intensive preparation for me to get here! And what I know for sure is that every ounce of drama, pain, loss, catastrophe and wrong is not in vain because I am living proof that with all I have done wrong and all of the messes I have made that are far beyond anything I know how to fix, everything has been useful in shaping me, remaking me, and reminding me of all that I am and all I have been shown how to overcome! More than anything, I know with all I am that the best is yet to come and we are the miracles of the Master’s Plan! I love you and God Bless you in everything! 

Living Letters...Writing life well

When I was a little girl I always wanted to write the way my mom did. She had the most beautiful writing and when she wrote or signed her name it was nothing short of a work of art. From the time I began learning to write in cursive I can't even tell you how many countless hours I spent trying to learn my mom's writing. I always wanted to be just like her and I felt like if I could just master my writing so that it could be just as beautiful as hers, I would be that much closer to being just like my mommy.

What I didn't know until I was about 37 years old is that your handwriting actually shapes your personality. By working so hard to copy my mom's writing, I was becoming more like her than I ever would have thought possible. I always believed that my writing had to be perfect. Writing for me was a very slow process because each letter had to be the “right” way. Which meant that if I was in the middle of the page and made a mistake I would start all over again. In the beginning, I would write in pencil first and then go over it with pen to make sure that everything was what I considered to be perfect.

Over the years, my writing style remained the same. Slow and methodical. That was about the only thing that was ever slow and methodical for me. Inside, my world was constantly spinning at what felt like warp speed and trying to slow everything down when I wrote made it even more difficult to have a steady hand.

When I was 37  living in the midst of my greatest nightmare something began to change and I didn't even realize at the time what was happening. My writing began to change. I didn't purposely set out to alter my penmanship, but I was able to see the connection between the way I was writing and the impact it was having on my attitude, coping, processing, and choices. I never would have believed that something like handwriting could ultimately rewire your physiological processing and responses, but I am living this proof.

In July 2009 I was beginning to tap into my heart in a way that I had never been able to do before. In the process of facing myself and learning how to take responsibility for the things that I had spent my life thinking, being, doing, planning, giving and taking, I began to experience the power of creating space. By owning the things I had done throughout my life acknowledging to myself and then others was nothing short of shining a light powered by the sun into the darkest rooms within my heart that had been shut so long that cobwebs covered the doors and the hinges had rusted the doors shut.

The light of truth and love greater than the sun burned up all of the old without destroying the structure within. What was left was an emptied room that was clean and had lots of space. As space was created, I began to experience liberation from the things that once owned me. Addictions began to dissolve, insatiable habits began to fade out and I began learning to dance the dance of love. Depression and despair began transforming into joy and laughter. It has been nothing short of extraordinary!

In the process, I began to realize things were changing my life at the speed of thought. I began to write as fast as I could in order to keep up with how fast all of the information was pouring into every place that had been so dark and stagnate for pretty much all of my life. It became a flood of ecstasy and awe unlike I have ever known. I was the one writing, but I know that the things that were pouring out of me were so amazing and life changing that I can still read things I have written to this day and become completely swept away at what the containers called words are filled with!

It wasn't until mid 2010 that I ran into a course that I was going to purchase called, "Change your handwriting, change your life." I never bought it, but it hit me in the moment that I read the title that changing your handwriting really could change your life. I thought over the times when my life had really began changing in very monumental ways when I began writing differently. 

The speed with which I was writing didn't allow me to write slow and methodically anymore. In order to get out the things that were more revelation than just realization, I had to write so fast that sometimes when it came time for me to transcribe them and type my notes onto the computer, it was really difficult to read what I had written. That was frustrating for me because I had always held a great deal of pride in how beautiful I felt my handwriting had become, and now it appears that writing with my heart rather than my mind has actually been instrumental in writing my insecurity and need for validation away!

After while, I was more concerned with being able to express everything that I was finally learning to understand than I was with how pretty my writing looked. I was growing and changing but it wasn't until I realized that I wasn't doing certain things anymore that I saw for the first time that there is a tipping point for change. 

Change never feels like change while in the process of changing. In fact, during times of greatest change and transformation it feels like anything but! It has even felt like I was going backwards and was never going to "get it" during periods of the greatest growth. It wasn't until I looked back and realized that I don't do "xyz" anymore that I finally saw I really had changed. What amazed me even more is that as my handwriting changed, I was becoming less and less like all of the dysfunction that had ruled my life since as far back as I can remember. Who knew that something that seems so insignificant has the power to change your personality, your thoughts, your ability to think and even alter the course of what we call destiny!

I'm not saying that it is only because of my handwriting that I have become who I am today, but what I am saying is that as my handwriting changed, so did I. I began to see things differently and had an edge to choose things in a way I never had at any other time in my life. It was almost like both hemispheres of my brain were in sync with each other and because of the speed with which I was pouring out what was in my heart filled emotions through ideas and thoughts, my brain didn't have any time to think and therefore all that was happening in my life was the equivalent of Lightning and Thunder. 

Lightning in the form of thought, idea, and seeking, rode upon every neural fiber and internal network with the precision of a laser as I emotionally engaged to pour out what I was experiencing. Inside I was lighting up like the Christmas tree in Times Square and I have never been so alive!

As I opened my emotions I realized that this is where all creativity is born before it is delivered into the body; which goes on to write, construct, sculpt, sing, voice, paint and express in whatever the inspired medium of choice is. Creating through the emotional conduit and power of Love has become my drug of choice! The more I create, the more I am given to create with. The more I am willing to push every envelope, the more envelopes I am given to push!

I am certain that we are powerful beyond any measure that we have ever known or been allowed to believe because God said that we have all been made in His image and His likeness...we have the strength, courage, tenacity, and strategy of a man AND the tenderness, nurture, gentleness and powerful design to create and develop something out of nothing as woman. We are only imbalanced when we war against the duality that we are. We have been created both male and female, and it is only when we stop believing that we are one or the other just because of the body we live in that we become unified within ourselves which then restores us and makes us whole.

In this process I went from being an overly dominant, “I am woman hear me roar” to understanding that as a woman my greatest strength is not in proving that I am as capable as any man. My greatest strength is my heart which is where the Lord of my life has made his home. I always joke about how I am a recovering dude, now that I have discovered what it is to be a woman who holds the greatest power that we have been given from the beginning of creation. I have been given the strength of a man and the strength of a woman. We all have. Though both strengths are powerful, they are different and a complete compliment to each other. Its amazing to me that the greatest things in my life have been realized because I was willing to be open to the possibility that things greater than we can dream, fathom, hope for, and are far beyond our wildest imaginations are possible in this life right now.

I also knew that everything I had spent my life doing and fighting against was only going to keep me from ever knowing what is possible because my way was not working. I knew that I needed to choose another way. Not just any way, but the way of the only one who made me and knows everything I dream of and desire because He is the one who made my heart and gave me the ability to dream and hope. For hope is not only an attribute of all that His Love is, it is the greatest expression of Love in action!

I am certain that the only true life that exists is not found in anything we can obtain or experience from the outside...it is from being able to dive deeply into the infinite spring inside of our heart that we pour out into our own lives and allow the overflow to pour into everything else that we do until we color the world around us with the original signature of our heart!

Imagine that if something like handwriting holds such power, imagine what else you can do if you are willing to open your heart. Let yourself feel again and remember the time when you believed anything was possible before you bought into everyone else's ideas of what (im)possible looks like. The way we feel is so powerful because it forms our beliefs and shapes all that we think that life is supposed to be about. Be open to believing again. You know, like you did when you were a child~Give yourself permission to close your eyes and remember the feelings that were once larger than life!

Along the way I have been called insane, told to come down into “reality” and how I am supposed to live life if I ever want to “be something.” Well the truth is, that I already am something because I am the daughter of the Most High God and He loves me just as I am! It is His love that continues to guide me, heal me, shape me, and inspire me to create as I never have before. I will never stop dreaming and believing. I know I am not like anyone else and I don't ever expect anyone else to be like me or do what I do because “my way is the right way.” 

I have learned lifetimes worth of lessons in my 41 years of life and the road has been paved the hard way, but it has brought me here. And here is the greatest gift I have ever been given so I live every moment excellently and to the fullest giving all I can along the way and making the differences I can make as we build this legacy together!

Truthfully, I am insane because I am living out of my mind...instead, I choose to live from my heart and along the way I found that every moment is magical...even in the pain for I am here, I am me and I wouldn't ever want it any other way! So I am not trying to become anything anymore and I am not out to compete to prove I am better than anyone else. However, I am here living with all of my heart, giving everything I am to be excellent in all I do and think, and I am walking every step of my life with everyone whether I have met them yet or not. 

I am here to uplift and let my life be the living letter of what is possible if you only believe. One of my favorite movies is One Night With the King and it is about the story of Queen Esther. In the movie she is going to go before the King without being invited, which was a death sentence. One of her servants begged her not to do it and she told him about King David and how before he was King that he did not win because he fought well, but because he believed well.

This life has become all about achieving, and from the time we are little we are made to believe that we have to grow up and become something. Instead, I challenge you to see that you are acceptable and have nothing to prove...only cultivate. Instead of trying to become something or get more so you can do whatever it is that you desire to do more than anything, I encourage you to look at what is already within you and begin to pour yourself out so that you can make space for all of the things you would like to do and experience to fill you up from inside so you can share your unique, precious and priceless treasures with the world in only the way you can do it for you are the only one like you in all of creation! I believe in you and I know that the best is yet to come!

48 hours and counting

These past 48 hours have been nearly unbearable and I am using everything I've got to remain connected within myself instead of disconnecting because of the intensity of blindsiding emotional pain that I am feeling right now. I find myself struggling with so many emotions and feelings that are doing their best to hurl me from one end of my life to the other. I have learned many skills that are imperative for me to use right now...for this is where it counts. And no matter how much I have learned, it is in the heart pounding, blood rushing, earth shaking flood of the unknown that I find it absolutely exhausting to just ward off the agony of whats happening.

These are the moments where I am able to see just how flawed I feel and to choose that no matter how bad I feel right now I know that this too shall pass. I know that this is just another opportunity to surrender to the refining process that is leading me into higher places within my own life. But just because I am aware of this doesn't mean it doesn't suck in the most painful ways. Pain for me whether physical, emotional or both has always been a really dangerous place for me to be. Pain usually triggers all kinds of reminders of the past and how what I am going through in any given moment relates to all of the other things I have experienced throughout my life.

Right now, inside I am feeling so sad and what's even worse than the sadness is knowing that regardless of how I feel the only thing I have any power to control is me. I have learned after a lifetime of instability and chaos that my responses, thoughts, and choices are the only thing that I ever have the ability to control. No matter how much I want someone else to do something or stop something, trying to force or withhold or micromanage is absolutely counterproductive, and only causes incredibly unnecessary delays that somehow wind up bringing their own sets of challenges in addition to all of the crap that is already almost too much to bear.

Love has led me here to this place in my life. I continue learning how to choose to live this love in the moments where it would be so much easier to pull back, retaliate, demand understanding, and sink into the negativity screaming at me from deep within. Nothing is worth that! I know that road all too well and I know exactly where it ends up every time! No thank you!

I can feel the battle inside raging between who I once was (former behaviors, reactions and habitual self defeating impulses) and who I am today. Yet, I know that love is the only power strong enough to extinguish the flaming emotions that start from a single spark and all too quickly can become a raging inferno.

I know for certain that I have not gotten here to where I am by accident. I have chosen to choose instead of react and then make choices that are fueled because of my responses. I am co-creating within my life one conscious choice at a time. As a result, my entire world continues expanding through the love that is deeply rooted inside every fiber of my being.

So for the past 48 hours I have been hit with emotions that I am working to allow rather than fight or shut them down. They are showing me things about myself that under normal circumstances would be undetectable. I am faced once again with choosing to live through the reactions of trauma and fear or to acknowledge the fear and re-frame what I am experiencing right now through the eyes and heart of all that love has demonstrated is possible. Either way, a choice is being made and it is up to me how this turns out.

I'm amazed at how strongly I can feel the resistance inside doing everything possible to darken the light that always burns so hot and shines so brightly inside of me. The magnitude of joy that resides inside of me feels the overwhelming heaviness of this feeling of sadness that I am having right now. But I know that it is possible to experience heaven in the middle of hell and I have been through things that are so much worse than this. It is only because of the grace and awesome inexhaustible love of GOD that I have risen from their ashes. I keep remembering how Jesus said that in this world we are going to experience pain, the unexpected and tribulation, but He said to take heart, because He has overcome the world!

It is in times like this that I am so thankful for all of the other times in my life where I have gone through a living hell being traumatized beyond belief and I have the visible evidence from every experience to remind me of all that is possible because I believe. No matter how many times I have been knocked down I choose to reach for the arms of my Heavenly Father and get back up again because I know that I can do all things through Jesus who gives me His strength!

Having said that, the pain of loss is excruciating. The self inflicted torment of rumination is totally destructive and you'd think knowing that would be enough in itself to shift my thoughts because every thought releases the chemicals that create physiological responses.

Honestly, I am tripped up over this right now. I am struggling to stop replaying everything. I'm trying to make sense of something that I never saw coming. I have no way of knowing why this happened and I have no idea if I ever will. But I guess that this is where I cling to remember that there is no such thing as trust without unanswered questions. If I knew everything there would be no need for faith right?!

The reason I am tripped up right now is that I know for a fact that I have the power to change my mood and the way I physically feel. Usually the emotional turnaround time from sad and heaviness to peace and joy happens at the speed of thought. Just as quickly as I can plummet into the dizzying spiral of fear's dark abyss, I can be released from the grips of loss, end, negativity and am restored through the peace that can be found within perspective. It is like a tug of war inside of me and honestly it feels crummy.

At this moment I am working through emotions that I thought were gone from things that happened way back in my life over 20 years ago. I have had extreme abandonment issues because of how I grew up. My parents vanished when I was 14 after I told that my dad was sexually abusing me and I became an orphan. I went from foster home to foster home and the only thing I could think about was finding my mom.

Then when I got married to my first husband we had such a dysfunctional relationship that there were times we seemed to be getting along just fine and he would bring me to go tanning and drop me off and never come back to get me. Usually because there was some other woman involved. Then when I finally did get to go home I would find that he had packed his stuff and was gone. Devastation after devastation fueled my taking the bull by the horns to make sure that I had all the control in my life so that I could make sure that nobody would ever be able to hurt me like that again. I was always on guard and hyper-vigilant to assess people, environment and cues that would give me the heads up detecting if my life was about to be shattered again.

It has been a nearly full time job through this journey to learn how to slow down and not read into things. I refuse to live with a guard up trying to protect myself from getting hurt because that would also keep me from being able to experience life with others in a truly meaningful, connected and authentic way. So my heart is wide open first and completely to the Lord who made me because without the direct umbilical cord of His love and His heart there is no way that I would ever know how to love others the way He loves me. Living open and with all of my heart is the adventure of eternal lifetimes and it is the most magical way of life that I have ever known. This is who I am.

However, this is the first time ever in my life that I have lived to love in the fullness and the unconditional nature of all that love is. Its amazing to me because when love fills your heart its like all of the things that are normally so hard or take conscious effort to do flood your will and the desire to give becomes your nature. Things don't rock me the way they used to and I have been able to develop oodles of skills through this journey that have taught me how to cope and how to plan ahead to prepare how I am going to handle things if I find myself in a situation where I am triggered by past events or with people who are negative, totally dysfunctional and in unhealthy environments.

Love has shown me how to trust with all of my heart even when someone has hurt me. This has shown me how to be able to see them through the eyes of my heart filled with love and not hold myself back from them because I am afraid that they will do something again that will hurt me. Forgiveness has been the greatest gift I have ever been given and I know that only love holds the power of forgiveness. So just as I have been forgiven I live to see beyond the wrongs that have been done to me and remain connected in the intensity of the pain, knowing that it will pass and that it doesn't matter what someone else does or doesn't do, it only matters what I choose and the attitude I choose to do it with.

This has become my life. Letting everyone else off of the hook and only holding myself accountable to myself and my Lord has changed everything! At first it felt like “letting someone off the hook” was like giving them a pass like everything they did was ok. In my own life the things that I have done would be considered by people to be totally unforgivable and yet, because of all that Jesus gave in my place I am forgiven and made brand new.

How in the world am I supposed to withhold forgiveness from anyone else when no matter what they have ever done to me could never even come close to being as heinous as things that I have done? So being forgiven and to have another opportunity to live life free from all that I once was in the light of understanding, wisdom, compassion and empathy is the greatest gift I have ever known. Sharing all that God does and has done within me, all I am and everything that has been entrusted to me is why I have been created. It is the greatest honor and for this I am so thankful!

So I guess that this is called mastery. It doesn't make any of this easier especially when everything happening feels so much like so many other things that I have gone through and wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. But I do know that I have already been hit with my worst nightmare a little more than 5 years ago and I can honestly say that once that happens, no matter how big or how devastating anything else is that comes, nothing can ever touch the magnitude of that life shattering nightmare. I may wobble when I get hit with something abrupt and completely unexpected, but I know that the Lord I serve is faithful and He is working all of this out for my good and working out cracks and weak spot. Thank you Lord for all things that enter and exit my life. I thank you for all that is breathtakingly amazing AND the devastating things that take my breath away! I love you with all that I am and I know that you are right here with me, doing this with me and I praise you that in my weakness you are glorified! 

The first 40 years of my life and the awe of now!

I turned 41 this past May on the 19^th. The first 40 years of my life was a book until itself. From the beginning all the way through the end of the “me I used to be,” epic extremes have led me from one end of the spectrum all the way through to the other, and I have lived to tell my story. So here I am, pouring myself out in a new way. I myself have become an open book for I can honestly say that for the first time in my life I have nothing that I am hiding or trying to evade, run from and hope that nobody ever finds out. All of my secrets and skeletons have all been cleaned out and there are windows in the closets where the walls used to be. The light has exposed everything that once was covered in darkness and love has cleansed all that I once was.

I am free. I am whole. I am a miracle, and I am living proof of just how magnificent the Lord who made me is. For it is only because of His love and mercy that I am here. For this, I am eternally grateful! I am the proof of His passion and just how inexhaustible His vision and plan is for the most wretched kind of misfit. I am living proof that all that is said to be pathological and unchangeable in behavior and nature can be deconstructed, reshaped, and sculpted into someone that is transformed from an impossible mess into the Master’s Message, His one of a kind Masterpiece. I don’t say this because I am so great or I have learned so much. I say this because that is what I was, and because of all that His Love is, this is who I am. I am His and no matter what, I will never stop shouting from the rooftops that He is my everything!

I have done some of the most unimaginable things to myself physically and emotionally because of the inescapable agony that permeated every part of my life and body. All I ever hoped for was just a moment of relief so that I could know what it was to see just a glimpse of what life looks like through eyes that are not jaded and a heart that is not broken. I spent the greater part of my adult life self-medicating just to be able to try and live beyond the tormenting reminders of my past and all of the abuses that used to define my life.

I was an introverted rage-o-haulic. I was desperate to be loved and yet terrified to let anyone close because the second I did, they always ended up going away. I was clingy and smothered anyone who dared to want to be close to me. For the first 40 years of my life I was never able to have a single healthy relationship because I was not well. It is impossible to give anything that you are not.

I was dysfunctional and sick therefore all I knew how to continue creating was variant levels of dysfunction and sickness. Don’t get me wrong, I desired more than anything to be able to have a stable life filled with reason and rationale. I had never been willing to do anything to face myself and learn a new way of living. To be honest, I really didn’t believe I needed to. To do things that way would mean that I didn’t know how to manage my life or that I was incapable of making my life work without having someone else step in and try to micromanage and dictate to me what they deemed to be the “right” way. My ego had grown far too big to ever admit I needed help. I had spent my life growing up having everyone else telling me what I could and couldn’t do and there was no way in hell that as an adult I was going to let anyone tell me what to do.

Needless to say, advice was never something I heeded and if it got into one ear, it most certainly went right out the other. I was stubborn and totally unwilling to budge once I made up my mind. As an adult, I threw my temper tantrums until I got my way and then wondered why nobody really wanted to stay with me. I had become someone who was totally scary to be around because I was moody, I was unpredictable and if something didn’t go my way I was a force to be reckoned with. I was a power hungry ego maniac with a chip on both shoulders and a heart so ready and willing to give all that I was until someone did something I didn’t like or agree with. Then my open heart turned into a rock hard frozen mass that made it impossible for anything to get in or anything good to come out.

I was the girl who wanted everything now and had no patience whatsoever. Time, due diligence, and cultivation was nothing but a waste of time as far as I was concerned. If I wanted something and I couldn’t get it done, I would just go find someone who could and do my best to get it that way. I was a con artist and could come up with a story that would make nearly anything possible. Sadly, this is not what I grew up hoping to become. I don’t think anyone does. I’m pretty sure that there were things I learned along the way that incorporated survival and skills into what became my personality.

However, what I have learned is that none of what I have done or how I have lived was really me at all. Yes, I have done the things I have done but the person I was created to be was really buried underneath all of the behaviors and habits that I acquired along the way.

Instead of being the broken mess that I believed I had become, I found that as all of the things I learned along the way were peeled away layer by layer, I was underneath it all, but instead of being totally crushed and broken, I had really been protected from it all!

The real me has always been right here inside, protected as if I have been securely sealed in the amniotic sac of love. No matter how much I have been affected by everything, nothing was ever strong enough to get inside of the real me. I am the innocence that I thought was gone because of the things that have happened to me and all of the things that I have done wrong. It was never taken from me at all because there is no power in this world that is strong enough to overcome Love, and love is what we were all created by.

I am in awe at how life looks and feels to me now. I think often about how in the Bible Jesus speaks about having to be like little children in order to see the Kingdom of Heaven. I started thinking about what life was like for me when I was a little girl. Life was all about trust, and dreaming and believing. I could hear the most outrageous story and believe it was true. I didn’t need proof. I didn’t need someone to show me how. I trusted that what I was being told was real, and that was good enough for me. Why? Because of my connection to being able to visualize and feel what I was being told. 

Children perceive and they feel. They have strong intuition and communicate nonverbally because they sense, feel and then take action. They do. They play, they invent, they imagine, they explore, they are daring and willing to try things knowing there is no guarantee. Even when they get hurt, they are eager to get back up and do it again.

They believe in themselves and have physical experiences to validate why. Children desire to fix and heal and comfort. Children live to express themselves bigger and better than they did the time before and the time before that. Children love to love and have access to an unceasing flow of boundless enthusiasm. Children believe they can only until they are told over and over again that they can’t. Children love to take the boxes they crawl into and make grand forts out of them, but they always find new ways to invent and reinvent ways to design and arrange the boxes to make their imagined adventure different and more exciting each and every time. 

Children push the envelope, they ask questions and are interested in why things work the way they do. Children love to use every sense they have been given to immerse themselves in each moment and once they taste, touch, feel, smell and experience something, they are unlikely to forget it.

Children love to be around others and know that they feel better when they are playing with other children. To isolate a child is to take away the very spark within their spirit that gives them life. Children by nature are collaborative. Competition is the exception and not the rule because competition is a form of separation, isolating them from the community under the label called “better than” or not good enough.

If a child sees another child has fallen down or is hurting, they will go to them and try to figure out a way to help. It is only when children are pushed away and caused emotional suffering that they begin to put their walls up and distance themselves from the one who is hurting or rejecting them.

Yet as adults, we believe that we know everything and that the children need to learn from us. We are so busy trying to be “grown ups” that we have lost our ability to play, create, and connect to others. Children are the purest examples of what true life looks like. In the lives of children there is joy and kindness, and there are so many things that as adults we have lost sight of that are essential to character and quality of life. The kingdom is not found in how many scriptures we can recite, how many times a week we go to a church service or in how many rules we have been able to follow. The Kingdom is expressed in every moment of awe, in laughter, in reaching out your arms to help someone who has fallen so low that they don’t know how they can make it another moment. We are the Kingdom. We are so busy looking for a place that we are trying to get to that we end up missing all of the incredible moments right here and right now of all that Heaven is here on this earth.

I had something happen in my life that rocked my world and shattered everything I had spent my life believing life was supposed to be. I found myself caught up and entangled in the webs of my own lies, deceptions, and perversions that I was desperate for Jesus to come back and take me to this place I was taught is called Heaven because in Heaven there is no suffering and there are streets of Gold, there is abundance of everything good that you can imagine and people who have died that I love will be there waiting for me as long as they loved Jesus and were “saved.”

In Heaven I get to have a huge mansion and this incredible life where every day for forever is wrapped in the blanket of God’s love and His goodness made in His perfection and beauty so why in the world wouldn’t I want to hurry up and be able to get there?  Here’s the thing though; as long as I was looking for Heaven somewhere else I was missing everything right now. Everything for me was almost like just to pass the time to try and be good enough to please God enough so that I could be allowed into the big white pearly gates.

I went through life going the motions doing things and performing according to what I was taught is pleasing to God and constantly fell on my face because no matter how good I tried to be I always tripped along the way.

I realized that I was living my life trying to please God because I wanted all of the stuff He could provide and give me. I wanted the enormous mansion and everything that I could imagine forever and ever. I didn’t want to hurt anymore and I certainly didn’t want to burn in an everlasting hell where I would be tormented day and night forever separated from Heaven and God! I spent my entire life terrified to live and terrified to die. The fear of the unknown has always done me in. I have never in my life been so sick and tired of all of the rules of what you can do and can’t do in order to please God or be accepted into His Kingdom. 

Then the fear of being kicked out of the Kingdom if I go and screw up as I usually did, and the constant terror of rejection that hadn’t even happened yet was enough to keep me running like I was on a hamster wheel. All I wanted was to be loved and the God I had been taught about who made me and loved me was inconceivable to me, yet I knew I wanted Him more than anything.

It was really impossible for me to see God any different than what I experienced growing up. Our parents are so important because they are the first experience we ever have. They are our gateway to God. How can we ever imagine a God who will be unconditional and love us and forgive us when our own family refuses us, judges us, and punishes us over and over again sometimes unmercifully as we are reminded for ages of what we did wrong or how our choices have impacted them? Why would we ever believe deep inside of our hearts that we could be accepted unconditionally when most of us have never even seen what that looks like?

We all have our own ideas of what Love looks like or how we will know if someone really loves us, but I can honestly say that I never in a million years would have ever believed that what love really is was possible even though I always hoped that it was. I had no idea that Love really has nothing to do with how you feel or what someone else give you. Love is an action word. It is a constant that is ever moving, and ever present. It is always accessible and is the only true cure for all that we label depression, anxiety and mental illness. Love is the only thing I know that when you give it, it fills you inside with equal force that you gave to another. It is the only case where I know for a fact that the more you give the more that you get immediately within. Living love has become my drug of choice!

I spent most of my adult years as a mom and as a woman totally addicted to anything that would give me even a second of pleasure or escape from all of the misery locked for a lifetime deep inside of my heart. I spent nearly 2 decades going in and out of emergency rooms and hospitals creating conditions and inducing episodes of pain that would almost always guarantee I would get at least 30 Vicodin at a time. I suppose I should have become an actress because I was so good at faking illnesses and playing the part when it came to needing medicine. I don’t say this with any kind of pride or to pat myself on the back for being able to con dr’s into supplying me the weapons that singlehandedly controlled and altered my life for many years.

Then something happened to me in 2010/2011. I was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis and I had ongoing back pain that was horribly excruciating because of a bulging disc in my sacral area of my low back. At one point I was going to the dr. every 10 days and they would refill my Percocet. I did that until I was sent to a pain clinic in November 2010. At the pain clinic they rationed me out 185 of the 7.5/325 strength Percocet a month. I remained on that amount of pain medicine all the way through the beginning of June 2012 when I came to a place where I decided that I had enough and so I stopped taking the medicine altogether. The medicine never totally took the pain away but it masked it enough mentally where I could push past the threshold of what was physically doable for me and keep going in my life without being incapacitated because of the pain.

I never realized just how much of an addict I was throughout my life until I didn’t take narcotics any more. I spent my life in denial about so many things resisting the acceptance that I really was a huge mess that would never be any different unless something drastically changed without the change being traumatically drastic. I truly believe that it was the mind numbing properties that gave me the edge I needed to feel hopeful while I was going through the greatest hell I had ever known. The way I was able to feel close to the Lord in the midst of the pain taught me how to reach for Him in a way I never did before. In that process I began developing new ways of thinking and living, of being and doing that began to dramatically affect the way I was navigating life. 

Do I love God? Absolutely with all that I am. Did I get here today just because I fell head over heels in love with Him on my own. Yes and no…I chose to obey and do the things that I have never done at any other time in my life because I knew that the way I had always done things in my life was not working and if I continued to do anything the same as before I would surely lose and so would my children. I knew I couldn’t live with that. 

The difference was that even when the pain and emotion was so intense for me, somehow the medication I was taking gave me the ability to reason enough with myself and choose to do the thing that was so hard to do. The fact that I had a constant supply of narcotics that I had always had to fight to get before actually diffused my fear of what life would look and feel like for me if I didn’t have them. After spending years and time in and out of medical facilities going through hours and hours of tests and observation just hoping that a doctor would write me a prescription was exhausting, but in order to get the meds I didn’t know of any other way.

So when I developed a real medical issue and had a green light which gave me access to whatever I needed to manage the pain for the first time in my life I felt relief. Not relief from the pain so much, relief from everything I have had to do and put myself and other people through in order to get pain meds through the years. Now all I had to do was go to my pain clinic once a month and they would write the prescriptions and off I’d go. I think it must be a psychological thing about fearing the lack of something that makes you need it and crave it almost obsessively because once I knew I could get more medicine month after month, I noticed that I wasn’t taking them the same. It was almost like knowing I had as much as I needed was changing my addiction to them. I was gaining the control over it and it was losing its hold on me. I have become convinced through this journey that emotional pain causes a plethora of physical pain that is very real and at the same time un-diagnosable.

Addressing the center of all of the emotional and mental realms and trauma’s of my life has made it possible for me to go from being nearly physically incapacitated from the pain to now actually having some days where I forget I have pain at all!  Of course it hasn’t happened overnight, but I have been able to see myself and all of my patterns and habits along the way change, transform, heal and become consistent. This has altered my quality of life in every way, but it has taken my full commitment and cooperation in order for me to get here. I finally realize that I am worth it and that if I ever hoped to know what it is like to live life limitlessly, that I needed to start with a single step. And here I am!

This month it has been 2 full years since I have been on any pain medicine. I don't have any desire for it, I don't think about it and in fact, even when I am in the most excruciating pain, I would rather bear the intense pain and actually feel and experience life as I am, than to put anything into my body that will cloud or desensitize me from being able to feel the fullness of the joy and the pain and I am living life doing ALL things through Jesus who gives me strength! 

Igniting the Flames of Passion

How would you like to wake up every morning with the drive, passion, and determination to conquer everything that stood between you and ultimate success? Can you see yourself defeating every problem, completing every test, resolving every conflict that comes your way within any given moment? Have you forgotten how to dream? What if you knew this passion would give you everything you needed to achieve every dream and goal in this life? How would you go about your life then?

Passion is given to all! It is not reserved for some and not given to others! Passion does not discriminate! The absolute truth is that passion is for everyone, but only some will take the necessary steps to ignite that passion and cause it to soar within their hearts!

Where is the passion that we crave, that burning, unquenchable desire that drives us so completely that we know deep within ourselves that we could conquer the world with it?

Our true passion has always lived within us and far too often as we grow up, it becomes buried deeply underneath all of the things that we are desperately trying to figure out how to become. Rather than drawing from the immeasurable and inexhaustible expanse of our imaginations and the feelings that are inspired within the realm of our forgotten self, we go on doing everything to be successful without ever knowing anything about ourselves. We forget how to play and instead trade in the dreams we once had for piles of baggage, obligations, and things that only drive us further and further away from the true power that we were created with even before our conception. Our true passion is conjoined with something called faith, and without faith, we become devoid of the very passion that we seek! Faith always believes, regardless of what it sees in the circumstances presented to us!

Passion is a boundless enthusiasm, and is a force we can only tap into by believing in something with all that we are. Yet, it is so easy to say we are believing in things and external circumstances all while never really being able to believe in ourselves in the way we hope others will believe in us. I know this personally after a lifetime spent seeking validation from everyone else and yet never really being willing to believe what I was told could possibly be true. As I have cultivated my curiosity I have found myself. There is nothing more amazing than the awe of discovery, and the more I discover myself the more in awe I am at all of the things I never imagined I could do and have found that who I am has nothing to do with what I can do...though the more I know what I can do, the more powerful the affect and impact in my life and the inspiration that envelopes me and so many others within my life. As a reward of having such faith and belief, your passion becomes sparked and then ignites into a raging inferno!

Passion is absolutely vital to our existence for it is out of passion that we were created! But, how many times do we feel overwhelmed in our lives and find ourselves at the brink of giving up only to realize that if we give up now, we may miss the very miracle that we so desperately need in our lives? That miracle is passion!

Whether it is passion for your relationship, family, career, dreams, goals, teaching, building, traveling, art, sports, or any of the other vast array of subjects we could be passionate over, you need to make a decision that you will believe in something that is important to you. Then no matter what comes, make all of your dreams come true through the power of that passion within you. Live fearless, and face fear with the presence of your audacious faith! Release the passion from within you!

Passion is contingent upon how willing you are to believe and have faith in who you are, what you do, how you live, and how you see others. Passion will sometimes feel like it left just as quickly as it came because it is a fire that burns bright within each of us. If you don't work to keep the flame lit by feeding the fire within your heart and soul, then it will diminish or go out entirely! Apart from passion, we fade, become depressed, and our faith becomes atrophied, withering away to the depths of despair and hopelessness.

There are a few key steps for igniting passion into our lives, and if you don't do them "On Purpose" every day, your fire won't continue to rage on. Once you've had a taste of passion in your life, you'll recognize almost immediately if the fire is beginning to diminish or is at risk of going out! Then wake yourself up and do whatever it takes to fan the flame and keep the fire burning brightly!

Step 1: BELIEVE in whatever you do with your whole heart, and VISUALIZE yourself doing it in your mind! This will help you to persevere when things get tough. If you can see yourself doing something with your mind, it won't be awkward or uncomfortable when you get where you are going! If you can see it, you can BE it!

Step 2: Have a clearly articulated vision! Remind yourself and others what you are working toward. You may have started working at an entry level position, but you see yourself as president of the company! Write down what you want in your life and what it is going to take for you to get there! Have a clear plan. Remember that vision attracts vision and dream attracts dream...know what you want so that others can help you to get there!

Step 3: Change the way you think and speak! Keep your thoughts and words positive and don't let the negative thoughts in NO MATTER WHAT other people will say about your efforts or your vision. It is a battle to keep your mind clear of all of the negative things that present themselves to your mind, so train yourself to reject the negative and only embrace the positive. Catch the negative things that you are thinking before they get to your lips and you speak them out! Words are containers filled with power. Say something long enough and you will believe that and those things that you believe will come to pass in your life! Then watch your life begin to transform right before your very eyes!

Step 4: Have Audacious Goals! Your level of ability will only grow to the size of your dreams! Dream bigger than yourself and don't let what you see with your eyes affect your faith and how you believe in what it is that you are going after! Audacious goals will take Audacious faith and Audacious action! Always remind yourself that you can do it, and then get ready, get set, and go...never to look back!

Above all, live in this moment at this time of your life with all that passion is! Ignite that fire within you, and make it your mantra that you will live today and every new day that you are blessed with passionately! Passion leads the way to destiny, and destiny is where our life's purpose and meaning are completely fulfilled.

Each moment of our life is filled with steps that we have taken in the direction toward our destiny, or the steps that have led us away from it instead. Now is the time to change your shoes, and make certain that you are ready to lead the way in this journey through life!

You're journey will lead you to the ultimate destination, but first you will need to know who you are and allow your passion to ignite, as you fan the flame within your heart and soul. I encourage you to be confident, follow the simple steps above, stand firm in your faith, and walk forward with passion into your destiny. Your destiny has been patiently waiting for you, so ask yourself now...What are you waiting for?