Where to start?

I’ve done it again, let fear stop me from starting.

I don’t know what to write.

I don’t know what my story is.

I have so much to tell, so much to say, so much to share, I just don’t know where to start.

God, help me, please, show me Your way, give me Your words.

I want to tell about staying married, perservering, that God is big enough.  That we as a society, as a culture, have lost the true meaning of marriage, we don’t know how to put another before ourselves, every single day, and that when the going gets tough, it is easier to give up, and hope that next time will be better.  That the alternative to what is hard is actually worse, however bad the relationship may be at the time.  That divorce is never good, even if it seems the better option, that it tears families apart, and the wounds heal into ugly scars.  That at the time, we cannot see the damage that is done, and have no idea how the destruction of marriage shapes the path we start to follow, and that there’s no going back.  That even in the reconciliation, the scars are there, keeping you wary and on guard, and they contract the skin of our selves, not letting us fully be available to the other as we need to be, for ourselves and for our kids.  That the effects of the wounding are felt for years after the event, something we cannot possibly see at the time when we just want out of the pain.

I want to tell that change is hard, and it hurts, and we’re almost allergic to it, because we don’t want to experience more discomfort, more pain, even if we have a glimmer of hope in the joy that is waiting for us.  We first have to pass through the fire, through the pain, and we shy away from that.  Wounds hurt, old and new, and memories are long, our senses are conditioned by the experiences we have, and until we create new memories, new experiences, we remember the original hurts, and let that shape our judgement and expectations.  We don’t want to face the challenge and pain of healing, and growing, because it’s hard work, and it can hurt – a lot.  I want to be an encourager, to come alongside people just facing and starting the journey I’ve been travelling, to speak words of life into them, and to walk with them as they take those hesitant, faltering steps toward the Life that is theirs for the taking.

I want to tell that there is beauty in pain, that there is nothing in this world that is strong enough to kill us if we walk with God through the darkness into the light, relying on Him for strength.  That when the world seems completely unbearable to the touch, when the every-day of life seems insurmountable, when pain is all that our senses can register, God is there, ever-present, holdingus up, no matter how alone we feel.  That from pain comes heightened awareness, a full realisation of who we are, how we hurt, and how we heal.  That pain is a blessing, because it alerts us to the fact that something is not right, in our bodies, in our hearts, in our very selves.  That despite our attempts to cover it up, to hide it, to ignore it, pain won’t go away until we bring it out into the light and see where it’s pointing, start seeking the healing we need.  

I want to tell of the beauty in our world, regardless of what it is the culture we live in tries to tell us, how it tries to deceive us.  That we don’t need the things and ‘stuff’ that our culture tries to convince us that we do.  That we need each other, because we are each a part of the whole, and when one part isn’t ‘working’, the whole feels it.  That if we just showed each other a little bit more understanding, a little bit more kindness and compassion, that if we truly learnt what it means to love one another, we would begin to heal the rifts caused by the deception that shrouds the world we live in, that what we have isn’t enough, and we need more to succeed, to be better.  No.  We need to connect, not to collect, to get, to spend, to be entertained. 

I want to tell of what it is to truly see God as enough, but that I can’t do yet, because I’m not there.  There is still a big part of me that can’t seem to let go of the world to grab on to Him completely, without hesitation, with complete and utter faith, and until I can, I don’t feel qualified to write about what it is to know that He is enough.  And yet I know that I am, because I’m seeking, because I’m travelling that path, searching for that understanding, and this is what we need to do, to share our inadequacies and foibles, the inner parts of us that we try to hide from the world.  We need to stop hiding and to bring it all into the light, so that we can each see that we are as broken and bruised as the person next to us.

Life really isn’t a dress rehearsal, there is no encore.  Whilst the eternity that is waiting for us is far more beautiful than anything we can experience here, we are here with a purpose, for a reason, and we only get one chance to fulfil that, to live as we are truly meant to.  I don’t want to waste my one chance, to drift along in life just hoping for the best.  I want to know where it is I’m supposed to go, what it is I’m supposed to go, what it is I’m supposed to say, who it is I’m supposed to connect with.  I delight in the seeking, in the wondering, in the being open to whatever or whomever comes across my path.  I also fear the unknown, not being able to predict the outcome of my actions, and dread failing yet again.  I don’t want to live like that – there is no fear in love, and perfect love drives out fear.  I want to experience living in that perfect love every day.

This one life is mine to live as only I can choose, and I choose to live.

Easy way out

Yep, that's what I'm doing todya, taking the easy way out - I can't grab thr toughts in my head and string them together in a thoughtful post right at the moment, so I'm rounding up my Instagram efforts from last week, few as they are.  I'm keeping it simple by following Fatmumslim's July photoaday series (when I remember!!).  Sorry for the small pics, for some reason I can't load bigger ones.

 

 Playing along with InstaFriday at liferearranged.com

 

01/07 - self portrait (and new haircut for me!)

 

Self-portrait #2 - as I'm learning to see myself

 03/07 - best part of your day (any part involving sunshine)

 

07/07 - garden  (perfect birthday present, frost in the morning)

 

08/07 - lunch (leftovers from a birthday lunch)

 Short and sweet for now :-)

                                          

The art of letting go

(Artist - Michael Leunig)

Letting go.

I'm good at writing about it.

I'm good at thinking about it.

I'm good at talking about it.

I'm not so good at doing it.

I know I hang on to 'stuff' in my life that I don't need to, that isn't helping me live the best life I can, but it's familiar, and there's comfort in familiarity, and predictability.

Bad habits.

Past hurts and condemnations.

'Stuff' (physical and emotional) that I think I need, but really I don't.

The sense of feeling that I'm not good enough.

The fear of failing.

The picture above comes from a calendar that the awesome Michael Leunig releases through a major Australian newspaper each year.  It sits above my desk where I've started working again, and it's been the catalyst of my journey in letting go.  I haven't fully embraced the journey yet (that whole fear of failing thing), but I'm stepping out in faith, and trusting that God will take my hand and lead the way.

Someone told me once that I could write a book about my life experiences.  Maybe I will........

Coming out of the dark

(image credit http://thypolarlife.wordpress.com/2011/01/19/a-light-in-the-darkness/)

The last few months have been pretty rough for me, I’ve had some major health issues that put the brakes on life in general for a number of weeks, and of course this didn’t affect just me, but the kids and my friends and family around me.

Long story short, at Easter I had a flare up of the arthritis I’ve been dealing with for nearly 3 years, which landed me in the hospital for a night and rendered me unable to walk very well for about 6 weeks.  Because it’s an auto-immune inflammatory disease, the effects are systemic, so the pain wasn’t localised to the main joints that were affected, my whole body was affected – pain, fatigue, swelling, inflammation, nausea.

Sleep was a fantasy, moving without pain a seemingly far-off dream, and the nausea made me all but lose my appetite completely, eating became a chore.  The worst part though, was the sense of utter hopelessness and at times despair I felt.  I have been dealing with this disease for nearly 3 years, and whilst it had flared up and down over that time, it had never been as bad as it was at that point.  The medications I was taking weren’t managing the symptoms, yet I didn’t qualify for the ‘heavy-duty’ medication that was incredibly expensive, yet was most likely to be the most effective.  I had had a doctor tell me that I would very likely get worse before I got better, I had no idea how much worse I had to get.

The blessing of this experience was that my symptoms did qualify me for the miracle medication, and within a few weeks I was injecting myself once a week with what I was hoping was going to kick this awful disease into submission.

You would think that throughout this time, I would have been turning to God and letting myself fall completely into His arms to take care of me, as I had no capacity to take care of myself.

Um.

No.

During this time, I turned within myself and shut the world out as much as I could, aside from the necessary (you know – work, kids, parental responsibilities, minor details like that!), and all but withdrew from God.  Except I couldn’t completely.

The only prayer I could manage consistently was ‘Thank-you, Jesus’.  Exactly what I was thanking Him for, I don’t really know.  In the middle of the night, laying in the dark, my body screaming in pain, ‘Thank-you, Jesus’, was all I could pray.

Even in the state I was in, I knew my healing had been completed on the Cross when He bore my illness and disease, the struggle lay in trying to understand why I wasn’t seeing and experiencing the healing.  Was my faith not strong enough?  Did I not really believe that I had been healed?  Was I not good enough, not worthy?  Is there something I was still not ‘getting’, that was ‘blocking’ me from being relieved of the symptoms?  

Was God really enough? 

Did He really love me?

I know now that all that was a lie, a deception the enemy used to try to convince me that God had deserted me, that I had to deal with everything on my own, that I wasn’t worthy of being a whole, pain free person.  As I wrote yesterday, the enemy comes to steal, kill and destroy, and he will take every single opportunity He can to do that, he knows our weaknesses and knows how to exploit them.

But he’s no match for the power of God’s love and grace.

The new medication has worked, and for the first time in a very long time, I’m pain free.  More importantly, my heart is being healed, and God has used this experience to show me just how much He truly loves me, something I haven’t fully allowed myself to believe before.  Oh, I’ve never doubted that He loves me, but I haven’t allowed myself to fully embrace His love.  My experience of receiving love has been one that comes with conditions and strings attached (because as human beings that’s what we do, we’re not capable of loving someone unconditionally), and I had never realised that I had put God in that same category, that same box, had the same expectation.  

It took my body and spirit being nearly completely broken for me to allow myself to start to believe that God loves me simply because He loves me, not because of who I am, what I do, how I think, how many good works I do.  He loves me because He loves me, nothing more, nothing less.  He is enough – more than enough – and there is nothing more powerful than His love.

A few days ago a song seemingly randomly popped into my head, ‘Coming Out Of The Dark’ by Gloria Estefan.  As I read the lyrics, I felt like what I've been experiencing had been put into words, and that coming out of the darkness is exactly how I feel now, as if I've been wandering aimlessly with the lights dimmed.

His light is bright and beautiful, and I'm drinking it in.

What do you struggle with?

I was presented with this question today in an e-mail from Jeff Goins, he invited readers to respond to his e-mail with a struggle they're having.  My initial response was 'just one?  I could write a book!!' (yes, pun intended.....)

I knew immediately what it is I grapple with - perfectionism and not feeling worthy.  The two are intertwined, perfectionism is the biggest head of the dragon I need to slay each day (thank-you, Michael Hyatt) because the thought of not being able to make something perfect fills me with fear, and I'm deceived into 'knowing' if I don't do it perfectly, that means I'm not good enough, and I'm not worthy - of anything.


I know all this is a lie, that the enemy would love for me to believe, and I fight it with the Truth everyday - while the enemy has come to steal, kill and destroy, Jesus came that we may have life, and have it to the full.

I was so grateful for Jeff's invitation, because as a society, a community, we don't encourage each other to share our struggles, our challenges, what it is that causes us pain.  We don't like doing it, because there is this perception that to do so would be a display of weakness, that to say 'actually, I'm not coping' would be admitting defeat.  I hear people say so often 'I don't like to ask for help', and I'm the biggest culprit of that.  We don't want to impinge on anyone else's life, to be an added burden, so we continue to float down the river in our boat without a paddle, desperately clinging to the sides and praying that we don't end up dumped into the current, completely powerless to make it to the surface.

And as much as we don't like to admit our own struggles and ask for help, we're also collectively not very good at asking the people around us how they're going, how we can help.  It's not because we don't care, it's because we don't really know how to - how to ask, how to respond, we're fearful of making things worse, of not being able to say 'the right thing'.  So we don't.

This is not how it is meant to be.

We are made for more than this.  I know I'm probably starting to sound like a broken record, but we are made to live as a community, each individual connected as a whole, to bear one another's burdens and to encourage each other through this maze of life.  People want to be heard, to be acknowledged, to feel a part of the whole.  Most people don't want someone to solve their problems for them, they just want someone to listen, to hear their voice, and more often than not, that's enough.

So I'm asking today, what do you struggle with?

..........................................................................................

I have been very blessed by some writers/bloggers/artists in my journey, by their encouragment and how they give so freely of themselves.  I'd really encourage you to go and check out their blogs, and be blessed by what they have to offer.

Emily Freedman at chatting at the sky
Ann Voskamp at A Holy Experience
Tsh Oxenreider at Simple Mom
Stephanie Pearl-McPhee at Yarn Harlot
Jeff Goins at Goins, Writer

I'll be sharing more blogs/sites as I come across them.

Finding my voice

 (image from http://blog.vistage.com/business-leadership/values-statements/)

'He comes alongside us when we go through hard times, and before you know it, he brings us alongside someone else who is going through hard times so that we can be there for that person just as God was there for us.'

(2 Corinthians 1:4)

This is why I write.  

I have been through a lot of challenges in my short time on this earth, in nearly every facet of life we have to deal with -  growing up, my marriage, having kids and raising them, my health, career, financially, spiritually and creatively.  I cannot say that any area of my life has ever been without pain and loss, and failure - I have often joked that I'm the friend that people like to have because having me around makes them feel better about their own lives!!

In all seriousness, I have a very blessed, wonderful life, it's just one that has been fraught with obstacles and challenges, many of my own doing, some out of my control.  But you know what?

I wouldn't change a thing.

Not. One. Single. Thing.

Every single experience I've had, every challenge I've faced, every triumph I've rejoiced over has shaped who I am now, has moulded me into being the person I'm just now really getting to know (and actually like). 

Even before I came to truly know God and His purpose in and for my life, I've always believed that going through whatever we do can serve to help other people, that our experiences are never wasted, without purpose.  When I first started getting to know His word, I came across the scripture above, and it was like a light went on, discovering that what I had always thought and believed was His truth.  It was such confirmation of how the truth of God and His word is placed within us, intrinsic to our very being even if we don't know him, aren't actively seeking Him.

I've tried to think of that passage when I've wondered what the purpose is in my pain and loss, when there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to an experience, I can't say that it's always brought me peace and comfort, but I'm always reassured that my experience will serve a purpose bigger than me at some point in my journey, and someone else's.

In trying to discover my voice, to work out what the purpose of writing in my life is, I'm realising that I have a story to tell - not just to myself, but to share with the world.  Every single fibre of my being wants to apologise for that, to add a caveat of 'even though no-one's interested, who am I to think people will want to hear what I have to say?', and I fight against that every time I sit down to write. 

We all have a story.  We all have a voice that needs to be heard.  We don't know the power of the words we share, what impact they can have on those who read them, but we have an obligation to reach out and offer up our lives to each other, to form connections and relationships.  John Donne said it so eloquently - 

No Man Is An Island

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

It is as I posted yesterday, we are created to be part of one body, and for a body to function well, all parts need to connect and communicate.  We know that when a part of us is injured or unwell, our whole body is affected.  The same goes for us as a community - when one of us is sick or not functioning well, we all feel it, whether we realise it or not.

I don't know where this journey will take me, who'll travel it with me, what I'll learn along the way.  I know I just need to start, to take a deep breath and step out in faith.

So here goes.

 

The Voice

No, this post isn't about reality TV, just to clarify.  I'll bet that was the first thing that came to mind for some of you, which interestingly enough ties into what I'm writing about today.

How many voices do we have in each of our lives?  If we stop to think about it, to count what it is we're hearing around us, all the time, I think we'd be quite surprised.

The voices in our heads

The voices of the world around us

The voices of those we love

The voices in our hearts

The Voice that speaks to us, constantly, whether we hear it or not

All that we hear, everything that we absorb consciously and unconsciously has influence on our thoughts, our decisions, what we do, how we live, we are shaped by the voices around us and within us.  And yet we often forget the most influential voice in our lives - our own.

Our own voice holds much power in the words we think and speak, more than we realise or appreciate.  Power to speak life or death, power to lift up or tear down, power to encourage or ridicule, power to soothe or maim.  We aren't careful with our words, our voices, what we say to ourselves and those around us, Proverbs tells us that 'The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit' (Prov 18:21), meaning that as we think (and speak), so we are (Prov 23:7) That old adage of 'you are what you eat' applies to our voices as well - if we think negative, self-destructive, posionous thoughts, that is what we speak, live and feel.  We have the power to think and speak life into every area of our lives and the lives of those we love and live with, yet this is not what the world encourages us to do.  We're not 'allowed' to think that we're good enough, that we're worthy, we're conditioned to be critical and cynical of our environment, to look for the 'catch' in any situation, which makes us almost incapable of accepting love and grace without hesitation.


God created the world with His voice, He spoke the world into being with His words.  If that's not a display of the power of a voice, the power of words, I don't know what is.  We each have a responsibility to mute the negative, life-draining voices that threaten to overwhelm us, to bring the power of life-giving words and thoughts into the light, into our world.  

We each have a unique story, a tale of the journey we've travelled so far, and the world needs to hear these.  We need to find our voices and speak the message that God has planted within each one of us, even if we think that we're not worthy, that no-one would listen, because this is what builds community, what connects us to each other, and we are created to live as one body.  


Raise your voice, share your story - the beauty, the ugly and the pain -  bring the words of your life out of the dark and into the light.  The world is waiting.