All it Takes...

is a side glance and a whisper from a group of guys for my insecurity to go from a mouse to a monster. My mind starts going, wondering what flaw they are picking out and laughing about. Is it my personality? Is it something about my appearance? Did I say something really stupid and not know it? Are they making fun of my laugh?

I go from being confident in the task I am doing to completely insecure in a second. Something I am doing, or how I look, is causing side glances and whispers and quiet snickers. It's tormenting. I no longer feel comfortable in my body or actions. The worthlessness creeps in fast. I don't know how to stop it...the feeling of not belonging, the confusion of trying to figure out what must be wrong with me.

The voices inside take the opportunity to plague me. How do you stop the damage from happening when it only takes a second for it to be over? When you can't even see it coming? There's no warning...the arrow just pierces. 

Wanting

When is my heart going to stop hurting every time I go to a wedding shower, wedding, baby shower, etc.? The older I get and stay single, the more left out I feel in life. I love going to showers and weddings; they make my heart excited for what's to come for the unions being celebrated or the blessings coming. Then everyone leaves, daily life returns, and the lack shows up more than before. It only lasts for a couple days afterward...a lot less than it used to...but it still hurts. Sometimes I wonder if the women who can't have children feel the same hurt all the time. Sometimes I wonder if I'm alone in feeling this way. This weekend there was a wedding and a baby shower...a double whammy. More friends are in relationships or having kids. There were at least 5 babies at the shower today!

I am not content being in this stage of life. I have several friends who would be perfectly happy being celibate their entire lives. I don't understand that, and I'm sure they don't understand my perspective. A lot of people use the word content with single. "You have to be content being single before God will give you a spouse" is the most heard phrase. For so long I have said I am content, content in waiting, content in being single. But I'm not. I have finally found the word that fits how I feel.

Tolerant.

I try my best to enjoy life as it is now, to live it to the fullest. I try not to dwell on how most of the people I know are living life with a spouse and kids and I'm not. I try to be joyful about where God has me. It must be for a reason...I just don't know it. I try to be content about being single, but I come up always being tolerant. And ya know what? I'm not sure that's a bad thing.

Uncomfortable is Good, But...

The thought of moving to an unknown place where I will know absolutely no one is terrifying. Teaching jobs are nearly impossible to find these days. If I do find one, I have the sinking feeling it won't be here...the place where all my friends are...the place where I have my church family...the place that is home. Am I really willing to move my entire life to a new place and start over again? Honestly, no...I don't know...maybe...yes...no not really. What if the Lord told you to move? He would have to be supremely clear, and even then I think I would question it.

Maybe I should change my career field. Am I qualified enough? Would I actually be able to succeed? Will I even succeed in teaching? What if...

I hate change, everything about it. I hate how you don't have any control. I hate how it's unknown. It's uncomfortable...and I'm wondering if that's what I need. Complacency breeds contempt. Complacency is comfortable. I am comfortable in how life is, even though I am completely frustrated with where it is, it is comfortable. It is known. It's safe because it's predictable.

I don't want to be complacent! I don't want to be frustrated anymore! I want to be able to take a risk. Change something. Grow more and allow God to have the control.

But I'm terrified...

Tug of War

Recently someone said to me that they feel as though they are in a tug of war where they are the rope. This tug of war is a result of a decision she needs to make regarding her walk with God. Last night, on my way home, I was thinking about her and this tug of war she's in and talking with God about the situation and how to respond to her. This girl has said she's made a decision, but still feels like she's stuck in this pulling game. I was asking the Lord what wisdom I could give her about this tug of war and how to end it when He very gently told me "It won't stop til you truly let go of one side". And just like that I felt like I had gotten the most gracious slap in the face. It just hit me, the intense meaning of that statement.

So many times we have a choice to make between ourselves (i.e. our flesh) and God. Each time we linger on making a decision about our walk with God we enter ourselves into a game of tug of war. God pulls on one side desiring us to come fully to Him and whatever we are struggling with, or desires we have, or sin we're contemplating entering into, or anything that involves sacrificing our flesh pulls on the other side. Sometimes the tug of war doesn't last long, and other times it is so intense it's as if you can physically feel it.

As God showed me the meaning I almost lost it as the reality of it sank in. Not only had He given me incite concerning this girl's situation, but it was incite into so many decisions every person makes, including myself. Neither side can make you go one way or the other without you letting go because we have free will. Sometimes we say we've made a decision and have  let go of one side, but still feel like we're in the game. It's because we haven't truly let go. We're still holding on with one finger. I realized we either have to let go of God or of ourselves. You choose His way or yours. This knowledge I have known in my head since I was a kid, but within a second it turned into heart knowledge. I don't know how to put into words the emotion that I felt at that moment of realization. I also know I'm not describing the meaning behind His statement the best that it needs to be because I don't know how to. He's gonna have to show you what it means to you.

Online Dating?

So I have a confession...it isn't really anything huge, but it kind of is. Quite a few posts on this blog are about my frustrations with singleness and how much of a struggle it is for me. For many many years I always said I wouldn't do online dating. Something about it rubbed me wrong. I don't know why. I didn't care if others did it, but somehow I thought it would mean I wasn't trusting God to work His will. Well in a moment of spontaneity near the first of the year I signed up for an online dating site. Not only that, but I paid for six months of membership. I know right? This is craziness!

A couple friends have been saying I should do this for months, but I always shrugged it off. I'm a traditionalist when it comes to how a guy and girl should come together. I've loved the stories where they meet in the grocery store or the bank or some weird generic place. A place where he initiates the conversation with a possibly lame pick up line to start the conversation. Sappy and romantic right? And totally not equal with reality. Yes that happens to some people, but for the majority of the population I feel like it doesn't. I could be wrong about this though seeing as how I haven't been privy to every situation where a girl meets a guy.

See the only thing I've thought to base my perfect love story off of is movies and TV shows, and we all know that those are never based on reality. Instead I should base it off of God's Word. Last week my pastor had a great sermon about being single and how to prepare yourself for marriage. He used the story of Issac and Rebekkah as an example. It was nice, and a little painful, to be reminded of some things that I forget about in moments of frustration.

Maybe it was a moment of clarity from God instead of spontaneity that caused me to do it, I don't know. I could be totally off my rocker with that theory. Whatever the reason, I know I never would have done it otherwise. Sometimes I get really scared and think I should just forget it and never look at the site again. What if no one wants to get to know me? I'm not really the kind of girl that's going to contact a whole bunch of guys seeking someone out. I still want a guy to initiate the relationship. Well, I guess only time will tell what this will bring.

Nicholas Summersell

For some reason this morning his name came to mind. I'm not sure why, but it did.

I haven't seen this kid in 17 years. He was a boy in third grade who had a major crush on me. We never hung out outside of school, but for some reason he was infatuated with me for the half of third grade when I was still attending public school and a good part of second grade (which I found out during third grade). He gave me this heart necklace that year. Cute but quite inappropriate if you think about it. Later on (not sure of the timeline), with all the love a third grader can muster, he asked me to marry him right before we went sledding down the hill at gym. Even at 7 there were multiple things I understood that right now surprise me. I remember thinking about how I needed to answer carefully because I didn't want him to feel rejected. Sure I liked to kid, but not apparently the same way he liked me. I understood what rejection was at 7. Craziness. I also remember thinking that there was no way I could marry him because he didn't love Jesus. No I didn't have a personal relationship with God at that point in time, but I did believe in God and  I was a product of someone whose parents went to church. My understanding was that it was bad to marry someone who didn't love God if you believed in Him...under no circumstances. So I took the easy way out at told Nick that he needed to ask me when we got older knowing full well I wasn't going to see him again after Christmas. However, deep down I wanted to say yes.

Unsure how to handle the situation further I did what any kid would, I went to an adult for help. Unfortunately the only one available was my male gym teacher who thought it would be funny to tell the whole class about what went down. *Sigh. That was kind of embarrassing.

Anyway, all of this remembering at how I processed things surprised me. I was only 7 for cryin out loud and yet I knew about, and remember clearly understanding, rejection as well as standards for marriage. Come one now, I knew I didn't want to marry anyone who didn't love God at 7. This seems so weird to me. What kind of 7 yr old thinks about this stuff? Me apparently

Decisions = Division

A couple weeks ago I listened to a message about youth leadership. At one point the speaker said something that was intriguing. It was one of those things that you go 'hmmm' at, and then ponder it for a while. He said, "when you decide, you always divide...when you make decisions you will always divide people...you can't please everyone". When I first heard that I thought 'yeah that's good', but it wasn't until this past week that I truly understood what that meant and how much it applies to life in general and not just in leadership.

First a little back story. At my workplace, several employees have been in the process of trying to start a union for over a month. The last three weeks have been filled with mandatory meetings about why we should vote no and the supposed atrocities of collective bargaining. The emotional stress level of everyone has been pretty high. My co-worker has been one of the ring leaders in getting this thing going. I was in agreement with her about it for almost the entire time. The vote for whether we should have a union or not was yesterday. For the last three weeks at work, there has been such division amongst the employees. Relationships were being tested and people were picking sides. I hadn't really made a decision about which way I was going to vote until ten minutes before I did it, however I had been mainly on the side in favor of a union.

Two days before the election I got an incredible sinking feeling that going through with a union may not be the best choice for our center right now. The first thing I thought was 'how am I gonna tell ___ that I have changed my mind?". She was probably gonna be mad and/or disappointed. How would that effect our relationship? She has told me before how she is slow to trusting people who screw her over. I had given my word that I would vote yes. Not making a decision tortured me for days. I knew I didn't have to tell her, but I felt like that was being dishonest and an ungodly thing to do. And lying was out of the question, although contemplated.

I finally got up the courage before going and voting to talk it over with her. It was petrifying and the hardest thing to do. I hate disappointing people, and this was someone I work with 5 days a week for at least 6 hours every day. Would our working relationship be ruined? What kind of division would it bring? And that's when I got it. I understood how the principle being talked about in the message applies to everyday life.

Every decision we make creates a division because not everyone is going to agree with you. Decisions that I delayed making in my past started coming to mind and the divisions that they caused once decided. And the longer I waited to make those decisions, the greater the division was. Sometimes it was a division within myself. Letting go of a past thought process or stereotype or judgement. Let that sink in. Division can happen within you where you let go of something old. Wow...that is powerful. An added revelation, praise Jesus.

I could go into the healing that takes place when division occurs, but we'll save that for another time. Division isn't always bad, in fact a lot of times it's good. When I decided to tell my co-worker what I was honestly thinking it brought division because of a difference of opinion, but we are still able to have a relationship even though we disagreed on something. And there was a division inside me between the fear of stepping out and standing up and doing what's right.

It's the Worst at Night

Over the past several weeks (or maybe it's been a couple months, I don't remember when it started) life has been quite a roller coaster ride of ups and downs emotionally. I'm not exactly sure why one particular thing has been such a focal point issue lately. There are a couple days in a row where I'll be perfectly fine. The overwhelming emotions subside and I am content with where I am and confident in what I can do. Then other days its a back and forth fight where I can be alright and then without warning a great sadness will come over me. I fight as much as I can in the down times, but sometimes I get so tired and I give in to the emotions for a little while. I tend to give in towards the end of the day when I'm physically tired and emotionally strained from fighting off the sadness.

I have gone through loneliness this intense only one other time. It wasn't a happy time. I was plagued with depression and felt alone in everything; spiritually and physically. The depression had got so bad that I began thinking up ways to end it all. Thankfully I was too afraid to do anything. There have been other points in life since that season six years ago where the loneliness has come, but only for a glimpse.

This time around, the loneliness is different. It is definitely intense and overwhelming at times, however it's only been in a physical sense. I haven't felt separated from God, which is a great blessing. (In fact I can sense His presence almost all the time.) Sometimes I can be hanging out with friends having a good time and then out of nowhere I can feel so physically alone in a crowd. Maybe it's being brought on from the marriages/engagements/relationships of people that I know around me. (Not that there has been a significant amount, but still.) Maybe it's because the hope of a husband coming around soon is almost non-existent. I absolutely believe that God can do something and change situations within a second; He is all powerful after all. I don't know the exact reason for this loneliness, I just know it's here and has been for a little while.

The worst is at night, when I'm trying to go sleep and the obviousness of the empty half of the bed is right there. It makes me anxious and worried that maybe God is gonna make me wait for years. I may have many years ahead of me, but when you've been waiting for Mr. Right since you were 15 or younger a couple more years is a little daunting. All the doubts come forth in the dark when you try so hard to shut your brain off and not think about how utterly single you are and the possibility of being that way for a while more.

Being single has it's advantages. I have more freedom right now than I will when I am married. I can do whatever I want and go wherever I want and manage my own money without consulting with someone else.The free time I have is pretty great. My room is my space that I don't have to share with anyone. And yet my heart aches to have someone to share life with. Being married doesn't fix the problems of my life or bring incessant happiness, I know this. I just want the loneliness to stop.

Sorry for being kind of depressing.

The Paralytic

As I was out picking thimble berries this morning behind my Grandma's house, I was trying to think of some profound way that picking berries relates to God. There's a lot of different symbolism that could be used. However, there was no heavenly inspiration or thoughts. Eventually I stopped trying to come up with something and forcing the Holy Spirit to work His magic and give some revelation. So I just kept working my way through the berries...and then a thought came to me - 'look at how far you've come, there's no way you would have been out here comfortably picking berries last year'.

I started thinking about that and remembering where I used to be in life. A couple weeks back telling others your testimony was talked about in church, how we should be able to condense who we were before and after Jesus in a couple sentences. For example - Before I knew Jesus I...After Jesus I... . We practiced at the end of the sermon condensing our stories. Mine was "Before I knew Jesus I was paralyzed by fear, unable to move anywhere. After Jesus I found my strength in Him and moved forward despite the fear".

When I was a kid, going into the woods alone terrified me. I was scared to the point that any little noise from anything would induce the flight instinct in me and fear would grip my body. I never went anywhere outside the confines of our yard alone. The woods (or nature in general) and I did NOT get along. The possibility of a wild animal coming after me and eating me alive was always present. Even the thought of stumbling upon a snake in the woods petrified me. Funny enough (though not really) I lived in the middle of nowhere surrounded by woods for nine years of my life. And once nightfall hit, the woods went from being scary to being horrifying. Being left to take care of my siblings at night when my parents went to go pick my sister up from dance was torture. I would lock myself in my room and listen intently to every sound wondering if it was a serial killer or wild animal trying to get into the house.

Fear literally paralyzed me from being able to do anything. I couldn't call anyone on the phone for fear of getting the wrong number or running out of things to say. For a long time I wouldn't even talk with someone on the phone even if they called me. I wasn't ok with leaving my mom's side in the grocery store to get an item from the next isle over because I was afraid she'd forget me and leave me there. There were so many things I couldn't do because of fear. (But the important one here is the whole issue with being in the woods alone.)

Thinking about how I had chosen the word 'paralyzed' got me thinking about the story of the paralytic in Luke 5. The summary of this story is there was a man who was paralyzed. His friends climbed on the roof and lowered him down, and Jesus healed him. Verse twenty is quite interesting - "When He saw their faith, He said to him, "Man, your sins are forgiven you" - then later on Jesus heals him. Jesus didn't heal this man because he believed it could happen. Jesus healed him because his friends had great faith in what He could do. They brought him to Jesus and they had faith when the man had none. His friends saw he needed help and gladly came to his assistance. 

I was like that man. I wanted to be free from the paralyzing fear, but I didn't believe it could happen. At one point I remember thinking with dread that I was going to be fearful in everything for my entire life and that was scary. But I didn't know what to do. I didn't have any faith that it could get better. For many years I tried to not be so afraid by myself, and things got a tiny bit less fearful but it was still there. It wasn't until I really got involved with a church and had people who came after me to help me, even when I pushed them away, that things started to get better. And yet I still didn't believe that fear wouldn't rule over me anymore. 

Then I went to college and got my butt kicked by God, a well deserved and much needed butt whooping. People who cared about me stood in the gap and prayed for me and had faith when I had none and could only see that fear was still there, even when it was getting better. I started becoming aware of when fear would come around and how to fight it off. 

From the time I was 18, God has been strengthening me with His strength and bringing His confidence into my life. Every year it increases...Praise the Lord! He kept bringing it in even though I couldn't see the progress and was very negative about things changing. I wholeheartedly believe that it was because of the faith others had for me that the changed really took place. And although my healing wasn't instantaneous as the paralytic, it has come. Fear is not completely gone, but it is very minimally there and even when it comes I am able to act regardless of it. Fear only has as much hold as I allow it to have.

So going back to the picking berries. This whole thought process occurred as I was standing out in the woods, by myself, tangled up in thorns bushes open to any attack if a wild animal or estranged human came around, and I was ok. I was listening to music for a little while because I love being in the presence of God and not to drown out the sounds of nature around me as I did last year when picking berries. I wasn't rushing to avoid the possibility of spooking an animal and only sticking to the path in case I got stuck in the bushes and couldn't get out. After a while I turned the music off and just walked around enjoying where I was and what I was doing. I climbed through everything and there was no fear of being overtaken by an animal even though I know there have been bear sightings. It was peaceful.  

An intense desire to share with the world about my testimony of no longer being paralyzed came over me. So here I am sharing with any who will read. There is freedom from fear. I did something today I wouldn't have ever dreamed I would be able to do. Jesus holds the keys to freedom, and it might take years to be completely free as it has taken me. Or you could be freed right now. Don't give up. God won't look over you because you are lacking in faith. He didn't overlook the paralytic or see him as unworthy. There are people around you who will have faith for you even when you don't. 

I keep hearing God say to me, "Look at how far you have come".

I am no longer a paralytic!!!! 

Perseverance in Healing

I recently was involved in a major car accident...the first ever. (Although I have been in several fender benders, but nothing causing injury.) I was asleep in the backseat, laying down with the passenger seat belt behind the driver securing me in. Not the smartest choice in where to buckle myself in, but at least I was buckled in. The seat belt was wrapped around my ribcage, so when the driver inadvertently fell asleep and crashed head first into a ditch I was folded in half at my ribcage upon impact. The Lord was definitely protecting us though. Thankfully I don't remember anything, what I know is based off of what my bruises tell me and the story of others who saw what happened. The driver only received a scrapped knee that didn't need stitches and a brush burn from the seat belt with some bruising. I got a lot of bruising around my ribcage and chest area and some on my legs. There were no broken bones for punctured organs. Praise Jesus! The pain was pretty intense on my part. I couldn't sit up because it felt like my chest was exploding and my muscles wouldn't hold me. Everything was tingling, not in a good way, and it took sheer will power and a lot of slow moving to do anything in the ER. At one point I wondered if what I was feeling was equivalent to childbirth, just in a different area. If so, then I got that down for later. Haha! I also realized my pain tolerance was pretty good, and that I am capable of handling a lot of pain without medication. And since the paramedics wanted tests to go more quickly they didn't give me any pain killers til right before I was leaving, which was good cause I didn't want to be there any longer than they wanted me there. So in the heat of the moment I can handle the pain and work through it...

That's not really the case with the healing process. It has been difficult to wake up every morning and hurt. It has been frustrating that I can't lay down to sleep, I have to sit up. I haven't been able to go to work or drive. Being dependent on people is hard for me, and it's something I've had to do. I just want to be comfortable. The healing has been faster than what the doctors said it would be due to a lot of prayers from family and friends going before the Lord about it. But it's still taking time, as all healing does. I was hoping that I could go back to work on Mon; I had it all planned out. I was gonna push through the discomfort, not make a huge deal about how I was feeling, act like I can do more than I actually can, and be alright to work. My plan didn't really go as I wanted. The doctors want to make sure I am really ok and that I won't injure myself again by going back to work.

All of this got me thinking. This is similar to what happens when I am spiritually wounded. I can take the pain. I play it like things don't hurt as much as they do and I push through it to do what I need to do. Relying on my own will power to get through something is my go-to strategy. But when it comes time for the healing part I have very little patience, and I become frustrated with the process and time it takes. I want it to be quick and easy so that I can move on and continue life. But it's never easy and even though it may move faster some times than others, it's never fast enough. I have to rely fully on God in healing because I can't heal myself; the wound limits what I can do so I have to rely on someone else to do things for me. It is hard to rely on God. It's hard to wait for the healing to be complete so that the wound doesn't get reopened by my rushing. I know I'm not the only person that reacts this way to healing. Healing isn't easy for anyone. And if you say it is, then I'm calling you out on lying. If it's easy, then it's not true healing. It takes perseverance to go through the healing process.

In the New King James version, perseverance is used 8 times. The verse that is most associated with this word is Rom 5:3-5
              "And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that
               tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character;
               and character, hope".
This is one of those verses that sometimes makes me want to throw the Bible and say "screw that". But that's beside the point. Seven out of the eight verses use one Greek word for perseverance, and the other verse a separate one. The first, which is used in the Romans verses just stated, comes from the word hupomone (hoop-om-on-ay') and means to have cheerful (or hopeful) endurance, constancy: enduring, patience, patient continuance (waiting). The second is proskarteresis (pros-kar-ter'-ay-sis) and means persistancy: perseverance.

Hmmm...it's interesting how God uses physical situations to teach me about spiritual things.