If you want to see change, you can't fight the process

Stuck. It's a situation all of us find ourselves in at one time or another. If you're like me, you hate the feeling of helplessness. I've been in situations that have completely crippled me. That feeling is one of the worst feelings in the world. I think the only thing that might be worse is feeling like God isn't with me. But that's another topic. Change. It's the solution to being stuck. But unlike being stuck, change is usually a lot harder to accomplish. It's easy to get into a situation, but a whole lot harder to get out of it. Sometimes it takes years to change. And that change is a huge process.

 I love being in control. I know that I can't always be in control. Having a leader in my life is necessary, but it's in my nature to want to control the situation I'm in. When I feel like I'm not in control, I get anxious. It's hard to tell myself that some things are just not in my control. Sometimes I have to sit back and let life take its course, and other times the situation may just be too big for me. Whatever the circumstance, it's not always possible to be in control. Trying to control change just doesn't work. Now, I'm not suggesting that in the midst of change, people should sit back and do nothing. But I am saying that trying to control everything allows God to do nothing. I cannot play God because simply put, I am not God. But I can follow God's will for my life and allow Him to do what he does. What I mean is that sometimes when life goes wrong, it's actually right.

When I was trying to quit drugs I had to remove myself from my hometown completely. I know that seems drastic to some people, but for me it was the only way. The thing was, is that it took a long time for me to realize that it was the only way. I tried everything from removing myself from friends to going cold turkey. I tried going to church and I tried isolating myself completely. Nothing seemed to work. Talking to counselors and pastors didn't even help. Everyone I was talking to told me that I needed to remove myself from my home town for awhile. And I told everyone they were crazy. I was still under the impression that I could do it by myself. I didn't think that they knew what they were talking about when they said that I needed to leave. But something crazy happened when I stopped fighting everyone and agreed to leave. Life change happened. It was a totally God ordained event that I left to go to St. Louis for 6 months. Not only did I drop the drug habit, but I completely changed my life. God moved through my heart and I found Him. Once I started letting God do work in me, other people were able to start helping me. Before I left, people were trying to help me, but my heart was hardened. But I was expecting them to heal me. I learned through this process that people can help me, but God is the only one that can heal me.

If it was up to me, I never would have gone to St. Louis. But something in my heart was telling me I needed to go. Before I left, I knew God but didn't really have a huge relationship with Him. So when I felt the urge to go, in my heart I knew it was God. I knew this because it was an urge that I personally would have never felt. While in St. Louis I felt a whole lot more of that. I learned that those feelings to do something that I normally wouldn't do was actually not a feeling, but the Holy Spirit prompting me. Through obeying those promptings, I learned how to trust people again and ultimately learn how to trust God again. I learned that life isn't meant to be done alone and that I need help. I learned how to humble myself and throw away my pride. I still struggle with all of these things, but I'm getting better. I'm learning to led God be the leader in my life. I'm learning that he places people in my path for a reason. I learned all of this by learning to stop fighting the process of change. All of the things that have happened over this last year and a half  would have never happened if I would have continued to fight the process and do it alone. I'd still be a drug addict and still be hanging around the same people that brought me down. None of this was easy...in fact it was literally one of the hardest things I've ever done. But I can honestly say that it was more than worth it. The life I have now is so much more fulfilling than any bag of drugs I ever bought. I'm surrounded by people who love me for me and have my best interest at heart. I'm surrounded by unconditional love and most importantly I'm at a place in my life that for the first time, I can accept unconditional love. Life has not been the same since I started to let God in and stopped fighting the process. I miss it sometimes, but I would NEVER go back.

Childlike Faith

Whilst pushing my niece on the swing the other day, she randomly said to me, "you know those bad guys that try to steal you at night? Well when them try to take me, hundreds of mosquitoes will bite them and then I won't be scared. Them will probably die cause of all those bites.". This conversation and many others with that sweet little girl remind me of the innocence of children. 

Sometimes I need to remind myself to go back to the simplicity of having childlike faith. When I was younger and watched movies, things like talking animals or objects was just accepted. I never questions how those things or animals talked...they just did. Now when I watch movies like "Cars" with my nephew I wonder why their eyebrows don't show enough emotion. I get lost in contemplating the small things, instead of just accepting the big picture. While my nephew is enjoying himself, I end up missing the entire movie because I can't wrap my head around how those cars reproduce and if they did mange to, what kind of car would result? Would car brands have to merge?

As Children we don't think about how pure we are. Everything in life is so simple, and accepting things is easy. The choices we have to make aren't that difficult and if it happens to be difficult, taking the advice of a parent or guardian is easy. There are questions about why things are, or how we got here, but those questions have simple answers when we are young. As we start to grow older and form our own opinions about life, things become more difficult. We become aware of the bad in the world and start to wonder if we are safe.When we doubt the goodness of the world, there is always God to rely on. But as adults that's not always easy to remember. Little kids don't think to doubt things like that if we just tell them that God is good and his goodness overrides any bad. I wish that I had more childlike faith when life got hard. I need to start going back to the basics again and tackle life with a new perspective daily.

A Glass Half Full Kind of Love

Have you ever thought to yourself that your "love tank" was running a little low, even though you were being surrounded by a whole lot of love? Or have you ever went looking for love and found yourself falling short and getting hurt because it wasn't what you wanted? I've personally been in situations where I've wanted to experience a "certain kind of love" from someone and discovered that what I was looking for in that person didn't fulfill the hole in my heart. Love isn't something that that can be forced and love isn't something that you can alter. You can't experience the same love from every person you come into contact with. A parents love is different from the love of a best friend. The love you find at church is different than the love you find on a mission trip to another country. We are all wired to experience love from one another, but sometimes someone else's love doesn't measure up to our own standards of how we think we should be receiving that love. I believe that the reason a lot of us come up short when it comes to feeling loved by others around us is because we are looking for love in the wrong way. God's love is the only love that can make us feel whole. It's the only love that completes who we are. We were made as a result of His love for us. We were made by Love, out of Love and to love and be loved.

I think that it's fully possible to sustain a happy life living off of the love we receive from one another. But I believe that the love we receive from one another, as well as give out to others isn't love to its fullest potential. It's a glass half full kind of love. This is where it may get a little tricky. I personally believe that when I love someone, I'm loving them with everything I am. But the person who is receiving that love may not feel like I'm loving them will all I am. I know I've felt that someone should love me "better". But to me, the love I give is the best I've got. And to you, the love you give is the best you've got. This is why I call it a glass half full kind of love. In my own life, I've fought very hard for the love of my earthly father. Sometimes I walk away and I don't think he loved me"enough". But to him, he was showing love to me the best he knew how. I walked away feeling kind of empty. None of that is his fault. To him, he was giving me love to his fullest potential, but I felt empty because I know in my heart what love to it's fullest potential feels like. I know what God's love feels like. And nothing...I mean NOTHING compares to the love of God! My dad loves me very much, even if I don't always feel like it. But God loves me more than I can even comprehend.

The love we receive from God is the only love that is love to it's fullest potential. His love overflows our glasses. God is Love! How can we personally love anyone more than God loves us? We can't. We can give our best, but it's still nothing compared to the love of our creator. He is the definition of love. None of this should be discouraging though. If anything, it should be ridiculously encouraging. In those moments when you feel like your coming up short and that your love tank is half full, you should turn to God. God can make your heart whole, and God can make you feel more loved than any human being on this earth is capable of. God's love saves people. All we as humans have to do is accept that love. It's ours for the taking. We don't ever have to feel like we've come up short when it comes to love. God has all the love we will ever need!

Root Systems

Growing up with a father as a landscaper, I've always been interested in the outdoors. I'm not the most amazing gardener ever, but I always loved helping my grandma in her year when I was younger. One of the first things I learned about gardening is that weeds will destroy anything you're trying to grow. In order to kill them, you have to pull them out by the roots. If you just take the tops off, they will grow right back the next time rain comes. Effectively taking the roots out will allow a healthy garden to grow and prolong the life of your plants.

This analogy may not be mind blowing, but when it comes to dealing with problems in life, I think we need to go about solving said problems in a similar way that I was taught to garden. Attacking problems in life at surface level is like sticking a band-aid in a cut that needs stitches. It may heal the wound for a moment, but it will leave a lasting scar. But finding the root of the problem will allow you to really deal with the issue at hand. And just like weeds, if you don't take care of something fully the first time, the minute a storm in life hits you, the problem grows even bigger because you never handled it all to begin with. This results in making it difficult to get through something that comes up. Sometimes trees and plants grow so close to each other that their root systems start to grow together. In the same way, sometimes one problem that you have may have began as the result of a previous problem. This is another reason why it's important to take problems out by the root. Otherwise, you may not even know where to look when you're trying to solve a problem. And when that storm hits, instead of only needing to pull one root system out, you don't even know where to begin.

A lot of us carry baggage with us from our childhood. I know I do. Things happened when I was a child that scarred me for a very long time. When I was younger, I never dealt with those problems. As I grew up and started to use drugs, the thought never occurred to me that I may have been using so heavily because I was masking out the pain I never dealt with. So when I tried to quit on my own, I never ended up succeeding. I always figured that in order to quit I had to just remove myself from the drug and try to steer clear of temptation. Where that was partially helpful, it wasn't effective because every time I began to feel down about life, I'd forget about trying to resist temptation and go right back to using. It was the only way I knew how to cope. Finally the time came that I knew I needed a better way to deal with life other than drugs. But because I had just been putting band-aids on my wounds for so long, I had no clue where to start. While I was in treatment for 6 months dealing with my depression and drug abuse, I started to learn about root systems. I was told that I needed to face the problems from my past and really deal with them. I had no clue that a lot of my trust issues and depression stemmed off of events of my past. I had just figured that I was young and this is normal. But as I began to dig deep and discover some things, I started to learn a lot about the root systems that had grown over the years within me. And when I started to pull the roots out, one by one the heavy burden I'd been carrying for so long started to be lifted off of me. It was crazy how dealing with one huge root made it easier to cut off smaller ones. And it was interesting to see that a lot of the struggles I was facing weren't that big of a deal once I started to deal with the real underlying issues.

Today, when struggles happen I try to think back to what I learned while being away for 6 months. I try to remember that just coping with a problem isn't going to help me in the long run, even if it appears to take care of the issue at first. It has slowly become easier to cope with life knowing that I've gained the tools I need. Life wasn't intended to be easy, but it wasn't intended to be hard all the time either. I've had times where I've made it more difficult than it needed to be because I wasn't able to deal with it the way I needed to and humble myself to ask for help. So as life continues to happen, I'm going to continue to go back to my gardening guidelines and remember that the first step to a healthy garden, and healthy life, is to pull up the weeds that begin to take over by the roots!

"The Sharp Knife of a Short Life"

Years after my friends death, I haven't fully recovered. The impact that losing someone you love leaves on you is insane. I still have those days that I miss him so much. I wonder what life would be like if he was still here. He was such a sweet guy and had so much going for him. I don't understand why he left us so early in life. It hurts my heart that he isn't here anymore. I just miss him. Sometimes, when I hear about the loss of other people, I think back to my friend. I struggle to comfort those that have lost loved ones, because I too, have lost someone close. I know that there isn't a lot you can say to someone that is hurting. The best you can do is be there as they try to work though what happened. Going though this kind of pain is unimaginable. When it's unexpected, it's a whole new story. You just don't expect life to end for people the way it does. It makes you question everything and it makes you appreciate things so much more.

I've been hurting for my brother in law these past few days. He has lost a friend and I can see that he is hurting. I don't know what to say to him. I pray for him constantly. And I am reminded of my own losses in life and how hard they were. I've given him his space and done random acts of kindness for him to ease his load after he gets off work. In times like this, words just don't seem to help. Nothing does. Time eventually heals wounds like this...but it never seems like time moves quick enough. It seems like life starts to move in slow motion and you are doing everything you can to just make it through another day.

I know all of this seems like random rambling, but it's all I've got to say right now. Life isn't always easy. We know that it's going to end eventually, but when it ends unexpectedly we don't always know how to respond. It's tough. I'm praying for my brother in law, and praying for the family effected by this tragedy. Over the years, I've experienced a lot of death and I know how much it hurts. It hurts to watch those I love go through what I've gone through. So I pray that those effected are able to move forward and appreciate what' s in front of them more. I pray that they are able to get through this time. Dealing with life isn't always easy. We aren't given the answers we always want when it comes to asking questions. We just have to keep on living and make the most of what we've got. So, I urge those of you that are reading this to look at things in a new light. I urge you to begin to truly appreciate what you have, because you don't know when you're going to lose it. This isn't some game we are playing. We are here to love one another and help each other out. Don't be afraid to ask for help and acknowledge that you are hurting. Life isn't worth wasting because you don't feel like living. The actions you make effect more people than you know. So I encourage you to seek help if you're feeling down. I know this post is a bunch of rambling, but I know from experience that things really get tough sometimes. Don't let the hard times define you. Let them help you grow into a better person so that you can help others that don't quite know what to do when life gets hard. 

Jumping Off a Bridge

When it comes to learning to be your own person, we've all heard the question, "If your friend told you to jump off a bridge, would you?". Depending on who you're asking, the answer is a quick "no". Then there are the ones who try to be smart and say, "it depends on how high the bridge is." I was always the one with the second answer. In a way, I think that both answers elude to what kind of person you are. The one with the quick "no" is probably more likely to make better life choices, and the one with the smart aleck remark is probably more likely to follow the crowd. In either case, the person answering is learning a little more about who they are, and what kind of person they want to be. Peer pressure is usually a problem that is said to be dealt with when you're in school. But I believe that it's something we battle with our entire lives. Whether it's making the choice to say no to drugs, or buying the latest sports car, all of us are influenced by our peers. And some of us are more influenced by those around us than we might like to admit. Well, I'll be the first to admit that I'm definitely influenced by the people closest to me on a daily basis.

Personally, I struggle with people pleasing. It's always been a problem of mine, but I just feel the need to be accepted. It's human nature to want to be accepted, but sometimes that need is taken too far. For a long time, the majority of the drug use in my past was based on the acceptance of other people. I wanted to fit in and feel loved by others. The people that meant the most to me were using drugs, so I figured the only way to get close to them was to be like them and join them...even when I was ready to quit. The need to be accepted lead to a massive delay in quitting the drug use. Even today, drug free, I struggle with being accepted and with people pleasing. I struggle the most when it comes to pleasing my father, as well as father figures in my life. I just don't ever feel like I meet their expectations of me.

When it comes to pleasing my father and father figures, I'm just at a loss. I have the knowledge that acceptance isn't necessary with humans because my father in heaven accepts me no matter what. But in the moment, I don't always think about that and I become frustrated that I can never feel "good enough". I try so hard to measure up to the standards of the men in my life and I always seem to come short. I know a lot of it has to do with he fact that I am hard on myself and place standards in front of me that were never even established. But there are those moments when they expect something out of me and I fail. It's in these moments when I find it hard to accept the fact that I'm human and not perfect. Instead, I beat myself up and get angry at the other person. My pride gets in the way and I start to argue with them about something that's really not that big of a deal in the first place. Once I start to argue they get mad at me. But because I'm not thinking straight, I read into this wrong. Instead of realizing that they aren't mad at me for failing, but frustrated that I'm arguing with them, I take it as they are mad at me for not doing a good enough job. Once that happens I find myself making excuses as to why I didn't do what I was supposed to and end up getting myself in a mess.

The other problem that comes with me wanting to please people all the time, is that I don't stand up for myself. I find myself compromising on my values and beliefs. When people question what I'm doing or question my motives, I don't always know how to respond. Sometimes I just do what I know I shouldn't do just so they won't think I'm lame. Other times I get in on the conversation and act like I'm down with what they're into so they don't think I'm lame. Later I walk away regretting that I said I was into something I'm not, but then find myself in a hole that just keeps getting deeper because my pride won't allow me to admit to them that I lied about being down with what they were down with. When someone questions my motives, I get angry and think that they aren't accepting what I'm doing instead of taking into account that they may have just been asking a question. I become critical of not only myself, but of others around me. I make it hard for people to get to know the real me because I'm so concerned with making sure they see the "me" I think they should see.

Lately, I've found that not a lot of people know who I really am, and what I'm really about. I got into a conversation today with a co-worker about what I wanted to do with my future, and when I told her I'm really interested in ministry, she looked crazy shocked. She couldn't even believe that I was a Christian. It made me take a  really hard look at myself. What have I been saying that made her think I wasn't? What actions were being displayed to where she had to question my beliefs? This really bothered me. I go to church every Sunday and love Jesus with everything I am, but I've apparently turned into the "Sunday Christian" instead of the "everyday Christian". Some people know without a doubt my love for Jesus, but I've realized that the people who I am meeting on the job and running into on a daily basis may not be seeing that person. So I have to question myself. I have to ask myself who I really am, and what I really believe. If I really am who Christ says I am, then why aren't others seeing that? I've realized that I need to work on people pleasing and the need to be accepted by others. All of this has created a facade that I didn't even realize I was creating. That conversation with my co-worker was a reality check for sure. It was also an opportunity to learn something about myself and begin to explore what I need to change. I am God's child and shouldn't be concerned with fitting in. I should be concerned with living my life in a way that glorifies Him. So from this point forward, I want to be the person that answers "no" when someone asks me, "If your friend jumped off a bridge, would you?"

Waiting for Mr. Right

In an instant gratification culture, waiting is something that's hard to come by. We live in a fast progressing culture that is fueled by how quickly we can accomplish things. This may not always be a bad thing, and in some instances it's incredibly helpful. But when it comes to our personal relationships, instant gratification can be detrimental. If we carry over our desire to hurry things along, then we may miss out on meeting the person God has planned for us to marry. Let me expand this thought.

I recently read a facebook status that talked about waiting for the right person to marry. It said that settling for the "good" guy instead of waiting for a great guy is a mistake. Rushing into a relationship can lead to problems, and may lead to a bad ending. Waiting for the right person instead of settling is essential for a healthy relationship. As I read this status I got to thinking how important it was for me to personally hear. Being single isn't easy when most of my friends are dating, engaged, or already married. I feel like I'm behind the game. I've been waiting for the right guy for a long time. About a year ago, I was ready to marry my best friend, but doing that would have been settling. He was a great guy and we were compatible on so many levels. But he didn't have the values I was looking for in a husband. The marriage wouldn't have been terrible, and we probably could have made it work...but I knew in my heart that he wasn't the one. As difficult as it was, I ended the relationship. We still hung out, but keeping the friendship on a just friends level became too difficult and about 3 months ago I had to part ways with my best friend. This was one of the most difficult decisions I've ever had to make. I knew it was for the best, but it still hurt me really bad. I walked away feeling so alone and completely defeated. As time went on I became more isolated. The pain I've experienced due to the loss of this friendship has been unbearable at times. But as I read this status I was reminded that the pain I'm feeling now wouldn't be anything to the pain I would have felt years down the road had I decided to rush into something I wasn't completely ready for, or someone I wasn't completely happy with. I've been learning more about the kind of person I am, and the kind of person I'm interested in being married to. I've also learned that I'm not willing to settle for any man. I don't want to marry someone who I'm simply compatible with, but someone who is willing to challenge me. I want someone who loves Jesus before he loves me. I want a leader and someone who can support me. I don't want to sit around all day and wait for life to happen, but I want to do life with the love of my life and grow with that person. The list can go on and on, but I have standards that I'm no longer willing to set aside or compromise on because I'm tired of being single. Waiting is really hard, but I'm prepared to wait if it means that I'll have a happy and healthy marriage in the future. Until then, I'm praying for my future husband and praying that God will bring the right person into my life at just the right time in my life.