The Tatoo of Transformation

As I have been working on writing a book about the story of my life there are so many events wrapped into many different seasons that have all been epic and pivotal. I have been writing in many journals throughout these past few years and I am amazed as I read what I have documented and expressed within every step that has taken me forward, back, around, into and through the roads that have led me inward before allowing me to emerge into the world that is all around me.

I cross the full gamut of emotions when I read what I have poured out onto the pages that hold my life's greatest sorrows, joys, and inventions. These have become an ever evolving map. This map of my life reminds me of all that was, is and is filled with the hope of all that is to come as long as I continue to believe and hold fast to the one who made me. For He is the one responsible for this trans-formative metamorphosis, and it is His signature that is tattooed within every fiber of my being.

I am living proof that anything is possible! I have lived a life so utterly despicable and in such depths of darkness for most of my life where there was no light. The only times where even glimpses of possibility flickered were usually in the altered states of emotion induced by drugs or alcohol, and sometimes both. Once the buzz or euphoria faded, so did the hope that appeared like a hologram in the brief thawing of my frozen heart.

This past 5 years has been a whirlwind that has ripped everything I thought I was apart and has stripped away everything that made it nearly impossible for me to find an opening to begin my journey into the center of myself. I'm pretty sure that this is the real journey to the center of the earth! I have written about my days within each season and what it has held for me. It has been terrifying, dangerous, breathtaking, and unfamiliar, but I have been able to capture the true essence of all that I am certain I would never have been able to remember. I have been able to capture the crazy (R)evolution of my life, my process, the crossing of insanity and the journey back.

I read the pages I have written and find myself immersed within the story that is my life. There are moments of great pain and I weep, there are moments of great joy for what I have been able to realize, accept, and that also makes me weep. There are stories I have captured that make me giggle so hard that I almost cry and then there are the pages that hold all of the begging, pleading and whining as I was undergoing many emotional deaths...even more amazing are the pages that follow and illuminate the process of resurrection where I have died to the bondage's and demands of my ego and false self, only to be raised up from those ashes into the experience of true freedom from none other than me!

Then there are the pages that I had written at earlier times so full of clarity, insight and revolutionary wisdom that was absolutely poured into me from the heart of Heaven. In some of my greatest struggles I would grab one of my journals and randomly open it and to my amazement, what I read clearly gave me exactly what I needed to pull myself out of whatever I was going through that was so difficult! But it reminds me that I am never so far along this journey that I am immune to having to practice all I have learned if I want to continue having success and be able to master me.

I have been my own worst enemy in my life and I find that its in the times when I feel like I am so certain that I “don't do that anymore” that I am prone to some sneaky subconscious process and old way of doing things to slip in nearly undetected. It is especially important for me to maintain order and consistency because otherwise the chaos around me will spin me inside and in the moments of overwhelming busyness all that used to be my “default” tries to kick in. It seems that being busy tends to take me out of being present. Not being present is an unconscious existence, and that can be catastrophic depending on how long it takes me to realize that I am “off” and return to where I left myself.

Sometimes what's even more difficult for me is when I come face to face with everything I have done my best to avoid having to do since I was young and realizing that just because I distract or go off in a different direction doesn't mean that it is going to go away and leave me alone. Having to learn how to do things now seems much more overwhelming to me because of all of the thoughts that do their best to invade my process dangling reminders clothed in the form of “should have's and if only.” That has always been a dangerous place for me to go because of the guilt and shame that has always followed close behind.

Being 41 trying to learn how to be healthy seems much more difficult than if I would have just decided to take an interest in myself when I was still in High School or when I moved out to live on my own. However, I was not mentally healthy then. I am certain that until I finally became well in my mental and emotional health that anything I would have done physically also would have suffered. Its almost like now that I have been deconstructed from the inside and remade, now the outside of my house (my body) is finally able to be primed, cleansed, and re-sculpted as if for the very first time.

I am in way over my head and though I can swim, I am struggling. I’m usually able to see clearly and yet I wonder if that's true then how in the world can everything feel so dark and hazy. What I am experiencing right now is more than just emotional. It is nearly inescapable within my body physically. It is also as emotional as it is physical. The resistance within is throwing everything off and my body is crying out in ways that it hasn’t in what seems like forever. I have come to the place where I am face to face with the me I am, the me that I used to be and the me I hope to become. The me I used to be grew up rooted in the fear of punishment and withholding based upon what I did or did not do.

That “me” was shaped and formed by the church doctrines that I am still finding myself struggling to be free from because they operate on what seems to be the subconscious ingraining which is so automatic and habitual because it was “wired” within me from the time I was 10 months old all the way through my life.

I just want to be totally real about where I am in my journey and how I am navigating this thing we call life. It seems that just as the oceans have tides and currents, so it is with life. I am finding that no matter how much I have learned and overcome or stopped doing along the way because I learned how to choose differently instead of trying to not do something anymore that life happens in waves and seasons of tides that are coming in and drawing back out again. 

When the tides of my life are coming in sometimes it happens so gradually that it is almost unnoticeable until I am almost in over my head and being pulled backwards by the force underneath when I am giving all I’ve got to keep moving forward. I resist the very periods of being pulled backward and out of what looks like balance and consistency. I forget more than I remember it seems just how important all phases of the tides and waves in life are. They are the breath of life that cause expansion and then create room through the release that so many times feels and looks more like loss than anything healthy or productive. 

I am not here to write pretty words that make me feel good or anyone else feel all warm and fuzzy. That used to be my agenda. But all of that has changed. Don’t get me wrong, I love lifting people up and living the hope that burns within everything I am. 

 

I have come to believe so strongly that Love is the only choice that makes the impossible possible that I have chosen to let everything go that is not love…even when the letting go feels anything other than loving. This has been the most excruciating journey. Though I know with all of my heart there will be a point of completion, the truth is that I am in the heart of the greatest nightmare and miracle that is beyond my wildest imaginations. The truth is that I never would have imagined this road twisting and dropping off as it has along the way, and I was so certain that by now I was going to be in a place that looks nothing like what any of my life looks like at this moment.

I cling to the hope that no matter how it looks and feels right now, it won’t always be this way. And then I stop myself like now and ask, “What if everything did stay just as it is, then what?” I think even asking that question I can feel my resistance because I have been living my life for the grand design of my Heavenly Father who is my everything and surely He has amazing plans for my life…for all of our lives. 

 

What I have experienced over these past 5 ½ years has not only rocked my world because of everything I have gone through and endured along the way, it has rocked my world because I have been witness to and experienced life fully immersed within the incredible nature of God and a savior that have more often than not been so much cooler and candid than anything I was ever taught about them when I was growing up and even as an adult. 

So much of my life right now feels like I have again become entangled within the web of religious rules and traditions that I have experienced the freedom from in a way that changed my entire life. Its been a very long time since I have become so wrapped up in the heavy, nearly indescribable fear that is somehow lurking deep within me. It doesn’t matter how much I’ve learned. It is not a discipline thing. It strikes me physically and I am gripped by the hands of hyper vigilance. To me, it doesn’t matter what label it has, fear, anxiety, hyper vigilance, trauma…I am beginning to see that it seems to be rooted in my expectations which I thought I really moved beyond. 

Even more than that, when I stop choosing without realizing that I have, I begin reacting to everything going on all around me, and the tormenting grips of indecision and questioning what I am supposed to do end up taking over.

I have committed to being real, honest, and totally authentic with myself and everyone else. This is who I have learned to be. The problem I am facing though is one that I am certain finds form in what is called ego or my false self. My false self is all about image and having to “have it all together” and “have learned so much” that before I even realize what is happening I am withdrawing from within myself and that slowly trickles into everything. 

What’s even worse is I end up feeling like others are judging me and looking at me funny when the truth is that I am actually judging myself and looking at myself funny. It only looks like it is everyone else. They are only reflecting back to me what I am unwilling to see going on inside of me. This totally sucks because it feels crappy and I would rather not feel sad and scared. Then the dangling reminders of how I was taught all of my life that if I am afraid it means that I don’t have faith ends up causing me to judge myself even more harshly because “I know better.” 

 

Or do I? 

 

For the first time in my life a couple of Saturday's ago I said something out loud to a friend of mine that I never would have even dared to speak out loud to another human being at any other time in my life. 

 

I told her that it occurred to me that it’s quite possible that everything I think I know is wrong! That is one of the most terrifying places I’ve ever been because it brings me right up against everything I was taught for pretty much my whole life. To be honest, everything I was taught growing up was all founded in fear anyway. Fear is the thread that has been within every part of my life and when I wasn’t afraid of the dark anymore, all it did was change form and become something else.

My conflict is that I have learned that life is so much more than what I am being right now, and sadly it’s like I can’t even access any of the things that have effectively made it possible for me to get here. About 2 weekends ago I went to a church retreat about discernment and I went in believing that I was on top of things when it came to discerning in my life. 

 

Three days later the conference ended and I was overwhelmed by the mess I felt like suddenly enveloped in a mass wave of fear that ushered in unexpected panic. I thought I was going the “right” direction and suddenly I was hit with feeling like everything I believed was totally off and I had no idea! 

So I chose not to run from the pain I was feeling emotionally and I was not going to try to distract from it either. I chose to be with myself in the condition I was in which is pretty exhausting because I have experienced what it is to have every day be beyond words amazing and full of joy and awe. I have found that I don’t have to feel like crap and that shifting my attention to all that Love is and recalling things that brought me happiness can change everything I feel, see, and do, faster than most cars go 0-60! 

So I was miserable and choosing to be in the fullness of all that is because I know that it was happening for a reason and that it is teaching me more about myself. It is revealing things that are still very alive inside of me and as ugly as it feels, being able to be real and raw in my life and experience continues to be a gateway that leads to places beyond my wildest imaginations. It is in this darkness that I have been able to hold fast to the light that is inside of me…even when it looks like it has gone out.

I guess if I am willing to be totally naked in my life and let it all hang out, I see that I have gotten a little too used to the darkness inside this cocoon. Sometimes not being able to see what is really in front of me can be a form of ignorant bliss because in the dark it’s much easier to hold onto my own ideas and visions that have been the color and hope within my world than to try and see beyond the mountainous obstacles that interfere with my hopes and dreams only to litter my reality. 

I am coming face to face with the me I was never willing to grow up and become and the one that I have always dreamed I would be one day. Though it seems like these 2 are two totally different people, they are not. They are both making each other possible because they are me. One is the me I have been and am, and the other is what is possible if I will only set aside my own grandiose ideas and dig into my own life to face all of the things I have spent my life avoiding.

Then something incredible happened today while I was driving to Lifetime Fitness and in a moment, the ordinary became extraordinary! There was a large construction sign on the left side of 42^nd street in Crystal and it said, “Thank you for your patience” …at that moment it was like God letting me know that no matter what it looks like or feels like, that He is proud of how I am patiently navigating through this process with Him. I barely finished my thought when the most radiant orange Monarch butterfly flew at the middle of my windshield from the right side of the road! It made me nearly unzip my skin and go all alien because I could barely contain the joy of just how He is always with me in every step; and just because I may feel I’m not doing enough or unsure if anything I’m doing is making Him happy with me, I am reminded that He has never seen things the way we do. That is so incredible that words don’t even begin to do it justice!

I have been in the darkness of my cocoon for some time, but I understand now that this pressure and intensity is only preparation for when I am ready to emerge with wings of my own that will allow me to soar as I never could before. Not long ago I learned that when caterpillars go into their cocoon in the process of metamorphosis they become totally liquefied…crazy huh?! 

 

But just as with the Butterfly, we will never know just what we have been created to become without the season inside the cocoon that completely and irreversibly changes all we once were. Even more difficult to understand sometimes is the process of emergence. Wings have to dry before its possible to fly...and if anyone helps the butterfly out of the cocoon, it will die for it is the strength developed in the process of exiting the cocoon that gives the butterfly the wherewithal to fly! So it is with us if we are willing to “go it alone” even though we're never alone! Thank you for sharing my journey and taking your time to read my blog! I love you and God loves you more than anything!

 

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!