5 Ways to LET GO of the Past

 

Whether we had an argument with our family, an ex-partner that keeps popping up in our thoughts, or a co-worker that we need to forgive and keep working with, we all have parts of our past that we need to let go of.

I am betting that there are at least one or two things that pop up each week in our lives that cause exaggerated emotional responses.  As we get older and we do not deal with these incidences, they compile on top of one another and we walk around composting years of bad emotions that been shoved down.  We need to deal with these emotions and process them so that we can let go of the past and move on otherwise we can be ticking time bombs emotionally. Life has new situations that need processed each day and to be able to release the baggage of our past is a key to operating in peace for the future.  Peace in our minds, peace in our souls, and peace in our bodies (which can sometimes be manifested as health), will allow us to keep moving forward in life with a hope that doesn’t have to record every wrong done to or by us.

When we REwind something what happens?  We go back so that we can hit play again.  We go back so we can go forward. When we REpent we are going back so we can change direction and go forward.  Taking time to go back and correct our thought patterns is the only way we can ensure we are moving forward baggage-free and in total peace.

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5 Steps to Letting Go

 

  1. REprocess the emotions so you can find the root

When our emotions seem exaggerated in proportion to the circumstance the first thing we have to do is step back and realize that those emotions are an internal alarm trying to tell us there is a problem.  Even if something has happened many years ago, if we can’t seem to let go of it (an ex-partner, a dream we had, or something we feel was taken from us by someone else like innocence, education, or another traumatic occurrence) we still need to stop and think about how this makes us feel now. What triggers us to spiral into those feelings again? What reminds us of this thing that we are determined to get away from?  Write down those feelings or make a mental list because they will come in handy as they are indicators to you about your thought patterns.

Once you have determined the way a situation makes you feel you can decide whether or not the problem started where you think it did.  For example, if you are feeling very angry and frustrated because there are crumbs on the counter top, chances are the problem didn’t start with someone leaving crumbs on the counter top.  More than likely that emotion of anger is a symptom of something you believe. Do you believe “No one appreciates my hard work of cleaning enough to pick up their crumbs”? Now, you are exploring the root belief of the problem so you can process and move forward.

If the root is not clear when you stop and think about it that is ok.  Taking mental note of how you feel in a situation is extending grace to yourself.  Tuck it in the back of your mind and pray about it. I have never asked God to help me find the root of something and not received an answer eventually.  Give yourself the grace to ask “why does this bother me, when was the very first time I remember feeling this way”? Finding the root of the problem is very helpful.  There have even been times when I thought I had reached the bottom of an issue and years later found an even deeper root or layer of the same issue. That is all completely normal!  Making progress is a process and one that God will guide you through as you are ready for each layer.

 

  1. REcognize the root and your role and responsibility

Now that you have found the root of where this feeling and problem started it’s time to process and think about the way(s) this has impacted your life.  In the root incident that happened there is often a role that we were to appropriately fill and a role that we perceive we should have filled. Review the facts of the situation: the characters, the ages,the timeframe, reasonable doubts, how the decisions were made, etc. One tool that helps me do this is when I step back and imagine a friend is telling me this story about him/herself.  What would I deem my friend’s responsibility in that situation should be? Are there areas where I assumed responsibility that should not have been my responsibility? Are there ways that I maybe was responsible and could have changed the course of things but chose not to? What caused me to feel the way I did? Family systems and upbringings often set up the parameters and looking glass for our thought systems.  It is ok to question thoughts we accepted before. A role we may have assumed as a child may not be the right responsibility or role a child should have. As an adult we can look back and decide what the correct response to a belief we have held is.

In the example of a toxic romantic relationship that you can’t let go of, recognizing the root of why you entered the relationship to begin with is key.  Were you lonely? What do you believe about loneliness that would make you choose toxicity over being single? Do you believe bad company over no company is ok? Why does singleness have to mean loneliness?  As a child did you strive to please one parent or another (or both) and felt unable to appreciate you? If so, perhaps there is a root there in the mind that says “I must make others happy and be loyal no matter how toxic and unsafe they are to me”.  Or perhaps there is a thought system that believes you are unworthy and unlovable so you “take what you can get”. Our responsibility is not to make others happy but to grow and please God. Our responsibility is to keep ourselves safe and set boundaries that others must learn to respect.

Recognizing the root of things bothering us identifying our true role/responsibility is a key.  It helps set us up to form new thoughts and walk through new doors of freedom.

  1. Forgive

This is an important part of letting go of the past.  It is something we oftentimes do not want to take the time to do.  We feel that if our emotions don’t send warm and fuzzy vibes towards someone that we can’t forgive them.  That isn’t true. Forgiveness is a choice. And a choice that, in my experience, seldom lines up with my feelings for a long time.

We must take time to look at the root cause of why we have an issue letting something go and deciding who needs to be forgiven in the situation.  Perhaps the toxic ex-partner needs to be forgiven for abuse, but if the root is people pleasing then perhaps the parents do as well for allowing a child to continue striving without making that child feel adequate.  In the scenario of the “crumbs on the countertop” perhaps the person leaving the crumbs out needs forgiven but so does every other person that has left you feeling like they don’t appreciate your hard work.

Forgiving from the root forward is critical.  Remember, we are REwinding here, going back to go forward.   Start at the root situation and move forward in forgiveness and bring all of those situations to God and say “I forgive X for X.”  

Oftentimes the person that needs forgiveness is you.  Perhaps there was a time when you drove a car intoxicated and potentially placed others in harm’s way.  Now, whenever someone mentions a car accident due to intoxication your emotions go haywire. You feel afraid, anxious, upset, and guilty.  Your mind feels the shame of your own actions and fear of what others must think of you. After processing the emotions you realize that you believe what others think about you defines you.  You find you believe that there can be no forgiveness for someone that makes a wrong choice. You may even believe your sins are too great and you deserve punishment (we all do, but thanks to Christ he has set us free from past shame). You have to forgive yourself too. Receiving forgiveness from Christ can only happen if we also forgive ourselves and admit that self-loathing is also rejecting God’s free gift.  Yes, drunk driving was bad choice, a horrible one, in fact; but you must forgive yourself.  Choose to forgive yourself and trust that God will help your emotions to line up with that.  

  1. RElease (and possibly grieve)

So far we have processed our emotions to find the root of our problem, identified and recognized the falsities that we may believe about ourselves and others, and we chose to forgive all involved from the root of the issue forward.  So we have all this baggage, what do we do with it? Now we need to get rid of it. We need to release and make the choice to let go.

That may look different for each situation.  For the “crumbs” example that may look like a conversation with other household members that lets everyone know that you feel unappreciated when others do not pick up after themselves and ask them to start cleaning up after themselves and not assume you will.  For a toxic relationship it may take removal of the relationship or at the very least some very strict boundaries. An intoxicated driver may look up scripture about forgiveness and condemnation and remind him/herself daily that our sins are removed when we ask for forgiveness, and accept that God indeed will turn all bad things around.  

No matter what we are letting go of there may be a grieving process.  We have held on to certain thought patterns for many years if not a lifetime.  We have allowed ourselves to keep connections that we shouldn’t have. We believed lies that we were responsible for things we weren’t (or should have been responsible for things we chose not to)  and now we see the truth. So we are free to grieve. It is important to grieve. That looks different for everyone but whenever we suffer a loss it is important to grieve. It is sad that someone was raised feeling unappreciated and it is now time to think about the ways that affected their entire lifetime.  How has feeling unappreciated their whole life defined them? What ways has that affected their personality? Are they reluctant to make new friends or do they strive to please everyone they meet? Meanwhile, walking away from a toxic person will cause grief and an acute sense of loss as we lay down the hopes we had for reconciliation.  Losing is tough. Let yourself feel the emotions because you have been affected by believing wrongly. A natural effect of grieving is release. If you do the former, you will experience the latter because you are letting go of any misconception that you are in complete control.

  1. REthink a new thought

 

Having allowed ourselves to feel the loss and fully process the emotions associated with the root of our problems we are in a prime position to receive a new thought.  I love new thoughts! God always has new thoughts for us! It is part of the transformation to glory that we are privileged to experience. We are always moving and changing but with new thoughts we can be moving in the right direction.  God always has a new way of thinking that is an upgrade from our past.

When something bad happens to us the neurons in our brains fuse together in our response.  So if we have a wrong response to something, every time something similar happens in the future our brains are fused to automatically make that wrong response again.  To rewire the grooves in our brain and to fuse new thoughts requires the power of the Holy Spirit to remind and help us consciously choose those new thoughts.

Take the time to write down the lies that you believed in the root of your situation.  Take time to write down the wrong ways you were viewing life, relationships, and your responsibilities.  Then cross them out the bad responses and perspectives and write new thoughts. If you aren’t sure what the new thoughts should be, seek scripture, seek counsel from a friend, or sometimes it is simply the opposite!  I have a lot of these little lists in my journal and many are unspecific in regards to the details of the situation I was in at the time. Looking back over them is always interesting because I can see how my “new thoughts” really did replace my old ones over time.  I may have no idea what situation I couldn’t let go of that made me write the list, but the proof is in the pudding when I think, “did I actually think that? What!”

Think about the new truth/thought and brainstorm ways that you can walk in that truth in the future.  Ask the Holy Spirit to help you so that each time your mind begins to think in an old pattern he will remind you and bring it to your attention.  This may come as a small “aha” moment in your circumstances, or he may use a friend that you are walking with to bring it to your attention.

Thinking new thoughts is where we find  a final step in our freedom. There are times I never get too far in this section.  Sometimes I will pray about it and tell the Lord “Jesus, I have no idea what that new thought will look like in my current life, but I give it to you and ask you to help me think this new thought in my entire life so I can be free from the past.”  Sometimes it will be months later that I will then stumble across a situation and it will just strike me “Oh, I have responded the right way here, way to go!” A few times I’ve had a friend say “hey, you used to do x…but now you don’t!”

 

In closing, I want to reassure you that we all have a past.DSCN0611.JPG  We all have had traumatic things happen to us. We all hurt others at one point or another and in turn have been hurt.  We all have believed false things about ourselves, others, God, and the world around us. But why keep carrying around those burdens with us?  The Lord’s yoke is light, His burden is not heavy. But we still walk around praising God, metaphorically “laying down our burdens” with no real victory or fruit to show for it.  This is because as we “lay down our burdens” we are simply cutting off the weeds and not pulling them out by the root. We need to get to the roots of things. It may take time but time spent with God in this way is never time wasted.

I hope this article helps provide some guidelines and skills for you.  I have followed this process as a guideline in my walk towards freedom for over 10 years and have found that God meets me in this every single time.  It has given me skills for living in a world of wounded people, broken relationships, and sin. It has allowed me to truly lay down my burdens in a transforming way.  It has helped me to not be offended in different circumstances that I had every right to be offended in. Through dealing with root issues I no longer am impacted and blown about by every stormy wind but am anchored in peace.

 

Below I have included a link to a worksheet for the above.  Feel free to print this worksheet and use it to help you in the coming months/years of your journey.  

Click here

 

From Victim to Victor

I have been thinking a lot lately about what separates those who succeed and live full/happy lives straight to the end from those that seem stuck in a circle of sabotage and bad luck for the rest of their lives.  This discussion was provoked by my husband’s new FB_IMG_1532721150070-1.jpgjob. In it, he works with many people from all walks of life and it has caused some great sociological conversations in our home ever since. After months of hearing the same stories over and again I started to think beyond stereotypes and subcultures to take a deeper look at a possible common thread applicable to people as human beings.

In short, the main thing that I see is a polarization of perspective regarding victimization.  People that continually seem to self-destruct and surround themselves with chaos typically view themselves as victims of the world.  There is a very sure and even stubborn insistence that “every time I try to get ahead something like this happens to drag me down”. Easily put, “one step forward and two steps backward” is a phrase I have heard from various people stuck on this hamster wheel.

One of the hardest lessons that I learned in my twenties was that most people that claim to want/need help actually do not want help.  Given the resources to build a foundation under themselves, they simply reject every bit of help or even defiantly self-sabotage any opportunities that come their way. Time and again I have helped people that seemed down on their luck only to find out that in the end they viewed me as the “bad person” and the “judgemental” one that just “cannot accept me the way I am”.  This lesson hurt me deeply. I want to help people and give them the resources to live better. In my situation with my disability I have tried very hard not to squander opportunities because everyday life is so difficult, and I cannot understand someone rejecting a clear helping hand. it was a lesson that I have learned time and again even until today. Whether the help I provided was financial, practical, currency of time or verbal, the result always ended up hurting more than helping for those that didn’t actually want help (in spite of their words).

So why wouldn’t someone want help?  I mean, if you don’t have a bed to sleep in and someone takes apart their spare and gives it to you, why would you call them judgemental of you?  Or if someone offers a ride to the gym after you complained relentlessly about needing to lose weight, why would you then accuse them of calling you fat?  Or when someone has helped you time and again, stepping into your chaos and crises why would you keep using them rather than make changes that allows you to be independent?  In the past I would run myself ragged trying to figure out these people and also analyze myself to see if indeed maybe I was being judgemental or hurtful. The truth I have found over many years and with the advice of my husband, however, is that people that view themselves as victims do not want change because that would change requires work and a different way of thinking.  A lot of people do not want to go against the grain when they are comfortably miserable.

Not being a victim of circumstances requires another hard-to-face conundrum:  Responsibility. When you feel that you have some sort of power in your life and in your circumstances (granted by Jesus) then you alone are responsible for the outcome of your own decisions.  That is tough for a lot of people that are comfortable making poor decisions and that do not want to face their own guilt or conscience about their lack of responsibility. It is easier to cry about the change you want than to take responsibility and be the change.

When I became a young adult it was clear to me that i needed to pay my own way, make enough money to support myself in my own apartment, carry health insurance because of my disabled condition, and keep my car in good working order for work transport.  Did bad things still happen to me? Yes. Did obstacles constantly seem to throw hindrance in my path? Absolutely! But in the midst of each thing that happened I made several other choices to help get around it. Some of my obstacles were circumstantial and no consequence of my actions but of course I had some HARD lessons to about my poor decisions to learn as well!  

Spending my meager salary money on eating out at lunchtime with co-workers too often caused me to have no money to pay my cable resulting in me having to cancel that service (before the account debt piled up of course!).  Not shopping for sales in the grocery store meant that I didn’t have extra money set aside for car repairs. My desire to go out and party as a young single female resulted in me not having transportation to 20180805_203159-1.jpgwork for a month.  In each of these situations I was forced to accept responsibility for my choices, recognize why the choice was bad, and redirect my path so I would not make the same mistake again. Packing my lunch and eating out with co-workers only once a week was a start.  Grocery shopping for sales and planning my menu around them allowed me to save and get the new tires I needed, albeit only two at a time. And a friend helped transport me to work and I had to humbly accept her help and recognize it was my own bad choice that put me in the situation of putting HER out.  These new choices and change in perspective on my part set a foundation under me to live a chaos free and happy life as much as possible. We can’t control everything but we can steer the ship wisely.

The three examples discussed here from my personal life are limited to financial decisions but there are many other areas of life in which we are not always victims of our circumstances.  How about relationships that we know are wrong but we blame on “love”? Toxic friendships that we stay in the hamster wheel of? Not putting in quality work on the job and then complaining about no promotions?  Keeping a filthy home or vehicle and not caring for the blessings we do have and then wondering why we aren’t blessed with more? I can go on and on with scenarios that people have come to me with convinced that they had no part in the blame of their own circumstances.  They are strictly victims trying to push through, they believe.

It seems when I encounter people that have a victim mentality they not only never feel they are responsible for the situations that they are in but they are actually hostile to anyone that suggests they do have some responsibility to take.  They flip out in anger to distract from the underlying truth. There is never any occurance to them that maybe their own choices cause them to end up where they are and they surely don’t want that pointed out. This is where it gets nasty, in my experience.  Most people, myself included, are willing to help a friend in need. But it is expected that a lesson will be learned and if indeed there are poor choices being made responsibility will be assumed and they will be corrected. Otherwise, the recurrence of the same drama unfolding again and again become chaotic and ultimately codependent.  No one wants to be caught up in other people’s crisis over and over.

Speaking of codependent, in my experience and observations (which are in no way professional) home environment has a lot of influence on the way in which we will approach and interact with obstacles.  If we are surrounded by people that are constantly reacting to events rather than being proactive that procrastination transcribes in our minds as normal. If the people around us do not take responsibility and control of their lives in a healthy way it is likely that we won’t either.  Then as we grow and make friends…well…birds of a feather, and that. The cycle becomes very hard to break and it becomes comfortable, so much so that any challenge to rise above such limited thinking is greeted with extreme and undeserved hostility.

My mother was good for giving to each of us children what we “needed” and not what we “wanted” or what she gave a sibling.  She and my father to this day are always eager to give each of us a boost in life when we need it. They do not support any of us financially but they do provide home carpentry help, advice, treat us to special meals at their home, etc. Knowing and seeing that their help is appreciated by us and that we are otherwise being responsible in life encourages them to help build a foundation for the next generation.  But not every family is like this. A dear friend of mine, Nancy, said to me once, “Ashly there are two types of parents. The kind that want to see their kids grab the torch and go farther than them, and the kind that do not.” It isn’t a matter of the “haves and have nots” but a lifestyle perspective that is the deciding factor in this. No matter how rich or poor our parents are they still have the option to equip us with an outlook on the world that teaches responsibility and, well, reality.

The truth is, when we see ourselves as victims of every circumstance we are not free to be the people God created us to be.  We are not set up to succeed in stewardship of the things we do have – our families, children, finances, possessions, etc. We are not designed to be robots always doing the “right” thing but were designed with intricate and amazing neuroscience to solve complexities and live FROM a place of victory rather than victimization.

There is something that Graham Cooke said one time that struck me powerfully:  “In Christ we are not fighting towards victory we are fighting from victory. It is over, Jesus has already finished the war you just need to complete this battle!”  Sometimes when bad circumstances happen to us it is so easy to say things like “I will overcome this” when in fact as Christians we have already overcome through Christ and are simply walking out that victory.  At the end of every single one of our problems is Jesus, already standing there and guiding us through them with a smile on his face because He knows that with the Holy Spirit we have everything in us to overcome.  Remember, nothing that we cannot handle would be allowed to come our way to begin with.

One example of this is my disability.  At just four years old there was nothing I did, no choice I made that caused me to get cancer and an amputation.  But it happened. I can sit around and be a victim of this, and frankly I have met many people who did respond that way.  I chose to accept this situation even though I vehemently hate that it happened to me. I do not have control over having one leg but I can control a lot of things. My parents instilled that in me.  Instead of just saying “I can’t” I was taught to see “I can’t do it the way some people do, but I CAN be resourceful and find a different way to do it.”  Because of this outlook I am constantly being asked how I can manage to be happy and successful in spite of everything against me. It is because I am not a victim of cancer I am a woman that is living her life rather than her life ruining her.

By the way, the people that I know that do NOT view their disability as something they could adapt to have not had happy endings.  Many of them refuse to be active because of the extra energy it causes, many refuse to perform daily tasks because it takes at least two times longer than an able-bodied person to finish, they become obese, sit in wheelchairs, and give in to depression, physical ailments, alcohol/drugs.  If my choice is between taking 45 minutes to change the sheets on the bed or sitting all day depressed about what I can’t do “normally”…I will change the sheets every single time! And why wouldn’t I?

We each have areas that we may not be perceiving ourselves as victors in.  I gave a few of those examples from my life earlier. Reframing those situations was key.  Finding the areas that I could have some control in changing and being willing to change. Accepting the situation for what it is and responding in a good way.  And, sometimes, saying NO even when it upsets others or disappointing myself. Boundaries are a very practical way to move from being a victim to victor. Breaking codependent relationships, making a commitment to step out of chaos and not enter into it, not allowing what is said about you define you, admitting when you are wrong and taking steps to redirect in the future, etc. are all practical ways to align oneself far away from victimization.  Having a sense of control and responsibility in life is true freedom. It isn’t easy though, and sadly many will not choose that path. It breaks my heart whenever I encounter someone that has chosen chaos and victimization. As they get older it becomes even more detrimental to them as a lifetime of victimization snowballs with poor choices that have very real consequences. Oftentimes these people become more and more isolated as they age, after all, they are a victim of everyone judging them!

In my own life I have had to learn to honor the wishes of someone that does not want help.  If I am speaking with someone who is struggling and everything I suggest they seem to have a complaining answer or excuse not to try – then I see that now as a sign.  Again, to be victors we must look above our problem and see Jesus standing behind it. Anything else is a very limited approach similar to a carriage horse being driven with blinders, being steered about by others and their own chaos/harnesses.  I do not have the power to change someone’s mind or help them see the way out of a problem if they are not willing to see it for themselves. Backing off is best.  (This is the number one reason why I chose not to become a counselor!  I could not stand to listen to whining when the answer is in all but black and white!  But am I a victim when I can’t help people? Nope…that is when prayer comes in. I can’t change people but I surely can pray for them and not enable them.)

At the end of the day, later in life, the consequences of perceptions do catch up with us.  It is sad to see that happen to people we love but it is inevitable when someone chooses the path of lifelong victimization. Loving from a distance, shooting an arrow into the tornado of their chaos but not entering it is really the only healthy choice for a relationship with a victim. Recognizing the pattern of victimization also helps to free you not only of codependency in relationships, but it also helps you break off any victimization in your own life.  There are still times that I catch myself and realize that I am on the hamster wheel of victimization in a certain area of life. But you know what? I have the power to GET OFF…and you do too.

It is my desire to end my life surrounded with family and friends, having gracefully poured love and wisdom into the next generation, and meet Jesus with a clear conscience that confesses when I am wrong, knowing that I still rose up to every challenge and did not shy away from adversity being a victim.  What kind of ending are you on track to have?

Awkward Amputee Problems (Part 1)

Knowing and loving the sense of humor in the disabled community I think you may appreciate some of these.  While my list is by no means a collective and finalized list of amputee problems; either you will relate to them, understand them, or add your own in the comments below.  There is a part two and will be part three (for prosthetic users!) added to this series.  I want to include my prosthetic-wearing amputee audience in the fun as well!

AWKWARD AMPUTEE PROBLEMS (Part 1)…by Ashly Ash

THROWING AWAY YOUR OPPOSITE SHOE

Yes, I really do this.  I keep seeking an amputee that has her RIGHT foot and is an 8.5 -9 shoe size (hint, hint) but I keep finding girls that are a 7.  So often I either send them anyway in hopes they don’t mind the extra toe space, or I trash them!  I hear that NIKE has a great program for amputees, but get real, who the heck wears sneakers all the time?  Someone please start a Matching Site for us!

PIZZA BOXES

The most awkward things in history!  You are single, you order a pizza, you go to pick up said pizza and then realize you cannot carry it!  “No Problem!” they say, they carry it to your car.  But then you get home and need to get in the house. Pizza boxes don’t fit in any known bag that I have seen, and I’ve tried to tie strings around it to no avail.  Yes, I have had driveway picnics in the past.

TOE’IN THE TOILET

Oftentimes I will tuck my pant leg in my back pocket.  I don’t like to cut it off in case my prosthesis is fixed.  It never fails that I dress up and look great, use the restroom, and as I pull my pants up that little tail of mine slips out and falls into the toilet!  Not the best way to end up with a wet tail.

FREE TAILIN’

While we are on the subject of tails, my pant leg gets stuck in the door ALL.THE.TIME.  And as you can guess…it pulls my pants down!  A few times I have even shut it in the car door and ended up all muddy and dirty as I drove down the road with my tail hanging out the door.  Free Tailin’ would be a great Tom Petty alternative.

WHEN CHATTY CATHY CALLS

Everyone does some things when they are the phone.  They walk and talk, put dishes away and talk, gather things to leave the house while they talk, etc.  When you are on crutches and you use your hand to answer the phone…you are stuck.  You cannot obviously use your hand at your ear AND use your crutches at the same time.  (Bluetooth doesn’t work for me with my hearing devices.)  I’ve been caught in some pretty interesting places picking up the phone and being unable to get off!  Now I usually just don’t answer my phone.  It makes a lot of people angry but I have a hurt feelings report they can fill out if they need it…just get in line!

EVERYONE REMEMBERS YOUR NAME

I have met so many people that remember my name and then become offended when I can’t remember theirs!  It is called word association, people!  One leg girl = Ashly.  If I forget your name then be glad I don’t have the same advantage that you have.

ONLINE DATING DILEMMA

So you sign up for the newest dating website and think maybe you may find someone interesting and a good match.  You start chatting people up and then you realize a few hours in that THEY don’t know YOU have one leg!  So begins the dilemma.  Tell them?  Wait until you meet?  How to tell them?  Can you phrase it in a way that doesn’t get you blocked?  What if they don’t like you when they find out, can you handle that rejection?  Ugh!  So many problems, Patty!

CANNOT USE AN UMBRELLA

28 years I have been an amputee.  This year at Christmastime my sweet grandma gave me a gift.  I couldn’t wait to see what it was.  You probably guessed by now…an umbrella.  My filter left in that moment as I said, “Nan, why in the hell would you get a one legged person on crutches an umbrella?”  I obviously cannot use crutches and hold an umbrella which leads to countless bad hair days and runny makeup.  I would like the say it is the thought that counts except there really must have been no thought put into that one!  I had to apologize for cussing in front of Nan.

THERE IS NO HIDING FROM HARRY

We all have a Harry, you know, that person that you see in public and just are not in the mood to talk to.  Having one leg there is simply no hiding from Harry!  The whole “it must have been someone else” when I was a teenager (someplace I shouldn’t have been) just didn’t fly with my parents.  When I swim and someone sees my crutches in front of my lane there is no getting around a chat with Harry. And there really doesn’t seem to be a polite way to say, “Take a hike, harry!”

ALL I DO IS DREAM

Often I dream that I have two legs.  In my head, after all, I am a whole person like anyone else.  There are times when I wake up in the middle of the night to use the restroom and forget about that fallible body of mine…as I fall…

PANTS UP!

Without a nice thigh in place pants do not have the proper motivation to stay up.  I have inadvertently mooned people when I was at Wawa, children’s church, in my front yard.  It happens, people!

PUT A ‘CAP ON IT

Handicapped parking is always a little awkward.  I don’t LOOK disabled but I DO look young and healthy from the waist up.  There is always that awkward moment between when I pull into the space and get a bunch of disapproving looks, glares, and dismayed shaking of heads to when I get out of the car and suddenly turn into a cocky rooster parading my disability around.  “That’s right…I am more disabled then you, witch!”

There is never a dull moment to being disabled.  It is full of fun and funny moments that you can either laugh or cry about.  I hope you enjoyed this read…OH, and I was perfectly serious about the shoe size by the way.  If you are a female 8.5-9 you should email me your address, and then send me your lefties to keep the party going!  Keep the fun going and click HERE for Part 2!

Ashly Ash

Fostering T: The Aftermath

I looked down at the horse crap on my empty pant leg.  “More crap, just what I need,” I thought.  Being an amputee with an empty pant leg, I had closed my car door while unknowingly shutting my pant leg in the door of the car and then traveled all the way to Quarryville, PA that way.  I can imagine the chuckling cars behind me seeing my pant leg flapping in the wind.  If you are familiar with our area you will know the horse crap on my pantleg means I had driven over the remnants of horse droppings from an Amish horse and buggy.  As I looked down at my pant leg splattered in brown and smelling even worse I felt I had taken just about all I could handle.  Now I was to grocery shop and spend the rest of my afternoon smelling like the crap I felt like.  Great.

Just a week or so before this our foster child T was moved from our home into a hospital setting for both self-harm and assault.  I had spent 4 days with him living in the Emergency Room while the mental health team sought a therapeutic and behavioral hospital that could receive T with his particular set of circumstances and requirements.  The closest and first available that they found (6 days after our initial showing up at the Emergency Room) was in Missouri.  As I sat in his bedroom packing his bags and belongings, my heart was breaking.  I was so sad and so full of grief.  Tears poured like a river down my dry cheeks and if you know me at all you know crying is not exactly my forte.  I can handle A LOT, but this was just too much.

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I remembered how I had told so many people over the time of our fostering, “SOMEONE has to love these kids.  If God is big enough to bring these kids to us and take them away; He will be big enough to heal our hearts when they break.”  The words came so easy; walking them out was a different animal altogether.  How did we go from discussing the possibility of adoption to having him hospitalized and removed from our home in one short month? The events leading us to this place were so traumatic that it all seemed a blur.  Honestly, it still does.

Ultimately, even children have responsibility in choosing their actions.  T’s mom signed off her rights to parent him and within that next month he lost his mental capacity to deal with life.  We ran him to four or more appointments every single week, sat through tens of hours of counseling with him, and nothing seemed to help.  I understood some of his anger may have been directed at me as misplaced anger towards his mom, and we talked about that.  I explained that he could cuss at me, scream at me, punch a pillow when he was mad, anything…except attack me or himself physically, try to stab me, or sexually assault me.  He didn’t stop.  Counselor after counselor tried to make it clear that we could work through all of the abuse he suffered, the sexual behavior displayed, the anger…but he had to know he could NOT put his hands on me or commit self-harm or he would be moved to a higher level of care.  Still, T made the wrong choice.  And you know, while he did have some responsibility in this, he was only 8.  This could be any one of us or our children if raised in the particular environment and under the extreme abuse he suffered.  This could be any of us suffering malnutrition to the point that our brains stop developing correctly and we have mental illness.  Yet at the end of the day, this 8 year old was up to my chin already and going to get bigger and being an amputee I knew I could not fight him off much longer.  Besides, what if he pushed me down the steps or took me by surprise?  When we started locking our bedroom door to prevent stabbings at night I felt like I had become a prisoner in my own home and could no longer be the sole care for this child.

Being in the midst of dealing with my pain and grief was one thing, but then realizing that other people had opinions about our situation really put the icing on the cake. “When one kid is removed from their home…maybe that is the kid.  But when two kids are removed, well, is it the kids or is it them?” Well THAT I was not expecting.  THAT hurt almost as much as having this child we loved and adored and planned to adopt removed from us.  And you know what hurt even more was that it was said by a Christian, in our very own family of believers!  Ouch!  As if we didn’t already feel guilty about what happened, as if we weren’t discussing on a daily basis for hours at a time if there was anything we could have done differently.  As if we are so fickle as to simply walk away from a living and breathing child that needs a home and set of parents more than any other we have personally encountered in our entire lives?  Again, OUCH!

We felt that we had not only brought the mission field to our doorstep, but we invited it into our very own home.  We eliminated all privacy to ourselves, all chance of recharging mentally/physically and any respite, all chance of “taking a break” from the missionary work we were doing.  No chance of just showing up on a trip and leaving again. We really thought that the church and body of Christ would understand the dynamics of having the mission field in your very home more than anyone.  Clearly, we were wrong to assume.  Eight months of literal 24/7 care had brought me to a place of sheer and absolute exhaustion.  I would say that it had brought me to my knees…but on top of everything else I only have one knee!  Parenting is one thing, foster parenting extremely abused and neglected children is a different beast that combines all of the normal parenting problems and adds the manipulation, conniving, outbursts, violence, and lying that the child masterfully learned to simply stay alive in their environment prior to coming to you.  I should have been on steroids to prepare myself for this!

DSCN0146So while people began talking about our situation, I knew that legally I was not even able to say anything in my own defense.  Worse than being gossiped about, I found, was having no control to defend yourself or present the truth.  Wanting to protect the children’s privacy and honor our contract with the government I found my hands very tied for one of the first times in my life.  Back when we got married less than a month after being engaged many people gossiped about me, assuming that the rush was because I was pregnant.  It didn’t bother me  because I knew in my heart that within the standard nine months people would see we had no children and any gossip would be proven untrue.  This time, however, I really could not see justice playing out in my favor in any immediate or forthcoming capacity.

This is where a huge internal struggle came into play for me.  I removed myself from the church setting and decided my heart needed to heal.  There were three people in my life I decided that were safe to share details of the past eight months with, and seeing the entire picture those three people were able to extend grace and reassurance to my weak and fleshly soul that we had made the right choice in getting more help for T than we could provide.  I know I am well equipped in trauma education and processing trauma.  What I was not equipped in were genetically driven behavioral traits, mental illness, and, well, Kung Fu.  Fighting off physical assaults from a 12 and 8 year old really was not a good position for an amputee on crutches to be in.  Realizing my own limitation here was really a challenge for me to accept, remembering that I was not responsible for the well-being of others…God was.  Did I trust Him? Another Ouch!

The part that was pretty tough I think in this situation was knowing that it wasn’t all bad with these kids.  We had some pretty great moments, especially with T, who was with us longer.  We went on vacation with him to the Rockies and the Beach, we introduced him to eating out, he got to bowl and golf, get his first pair of cowboy boots, his first set of brand new clothes, and the little things like swimming lessons and summer camp that caused him so much joy.  He learned to climb a tree, cook a meal, play with neighbor kids, and explore nature.  Being raised neglected, we taught him how to use utensils (rather than put your face in your plate), how to use the toilet, how to bathe, how to have your hair cut the way you want it, and how to express yourself using words.  There were so many great moments with T and it was seemingly unbearable to imagine those as being “all for nothing” and “over with forever”.  We simply wanted to believe that we were more important than just a temporary provider for T.

We are still processing some of these emotions and thoughts about T.  As of the date of this writing he is still in the hospital in Missouri.  He is not doing very well, he has made some false allegations about his time with us (which were investigated and closed as untrue), he had cockroaches in his hospital room and has been moved a few times, has not had a haircut since the beginning of November, and has been making a lot of bad behavior choices.  Is this the help that we wanted for him?  No, but that is the system he is a part of.  We cannot even advocate for him any longer because we are, as I was told, “no longer a party to this case”.  Just last week we were discussing whether to get the training needed to try to get him back here in a higher level of care, yet we realized again that it is not what we are meant to do.  All that we can do is maintain contact at the extent the county (who retains custody of all four siblings) allows, support and encourage him to live the life we tried to show him, and pray for him.

dscn0098.jpgSo was it all for nothing?  Sometimes it has felt like that.  We poured heart and soul into a child and never will see the fruit of that.  Picking up the phone to hear his little voice cursing like the moon was blue, hearing his stories of fights and altercations, hearing the false allegations he has made, it feels so dark.  It feels like he has regressed back towards the environment he was removed from.  But in our hearts we have to remember that eight months to a child is a lifetime.  He had eight months of our love, our influence, our caring.  He learned what it was like to be treated like a human being for the first time in his life.  He learned what it meant for a man to go to work and for a home to have a freezer full of food, and how to grow that food in a garden.  These are not lessons he will easily forget, at least that is what I choose to believe.  However small, we stepped into the life of this child when no one else would.  We kept him for the season that God wanted us to, and we will continue to support and pray for him in the way God allows us to.  We are not as important as we think we are, unfortunately, but God has this in control.

So what about all those judgments and gossips, the ones that I can’t refute?  Even with T gone, they will think what they want to think and speak as they choose.   I need to remember that for each of these there were ten or more people in support and acting in kindness. I was vacuuming and feeling sorry for myself with this situation the other day.  I was saying, “Lord, you will get to show people that make a mockery of you one day that you are Lord of Lords, but when will these people see the truth about me?”  And it hit me, like a ton of bricks, “He remained silent” (1 Pet 2:23).  Jesus himself, the most innocent man that ever walked the earth was on trial being wrongly accused and said not one word in self defense.

Job, who suffered unbelievable hardship and strife and grief, hammered God with questions and God did not defend himself.  He simply reminded Job (paraphrased in my own interpretation) that he is the great I AM.  I remind myself of this a lot lately.  I am sad because not only have I not been able to have my own children, but now I have lost the children that I tried to parent.  But again, God is the I AM, not me.  He will work this all together for the good of those that love Him.  I believe I love him.  I believe the children we had love him too.

So, I may not have been wrong in how I navigated the system and this situation of foster care but I know one thing for sure, I am not a blameless person.  I am not perfect nor innocent.  I am not all-knowing and I did not create and knit people from the womb.  So therefore, as I stand, I will move forward resting in the truth of knowing that I am no greater than the one I follow, and do not need to defend myself.  It is a true place of peace and freedom and one that I am on foreign ground navigating.   I cannot hold my brother’s and sister’s in Christ to a standard of not judging me when I myself cannot cast the first stone.  The Lord is Just.  As long as I can stand clear before him then I must allow myself to be humbled on earth and not exalt my reputation in pride.

Ultimately, this entire experience has changed me immeasurably.  My heart used to be DSCN9599worn on my sleeve and no longer is that true.  I am no longer quick to speak, quick to agree with others, or happy to simply nod and smile even when I disagree with something.  This has made me slow to judge and quick to understand that most people can only operate in a certain capacity, and I must accept that.  It has shown me that there are people living like this, right here in Pennsylvania, and that the mission field does not have to be afar.  Petty drama and whining seem to be a new “zero tolerance” thing for me seeing how these children lived and suffered with no one interfering for 11 years.  And I now hate Evil.  Up until this point I had never truly had a hatred for evil, but now I do.  And I avoid it at all costs, wanting no part in seeing the outcome and degradation that comes from such a lifestyle.  This has been a case of watching first hand the sins of the fathers passed to the children.  It isn’t as many preach it to be (that God himself punishes children for the sins of their fathers) but rather the fathers and mothers themselves inflict the evil of their own sins on their children.  And it is the children that suffer.

So just as I was able to shop with horse crap splattered on my pant leg, smelling crappy, feeling worse,and defending it to no one;  I most assuredly can carry on and receive the next child meant to come to our home whether for a month or year or longer without defending or explaining. And I hope T never feels the need to defend or explain all of his background either, as long as he does the best he can.

T will be moving soon into a group home that is therapeutically equipped to handle his situation.  I will pray day and night for him and believe with all of my heart that the Lord will intervene in the life of this child.  Being removed from mother and left by father, may he not continue to see the consequence of their sins in his life but instead learn to experience the blessing of love.  Yet, he will have a choice, and I know one thing for sure, I do not judge him or speak ill of him no matter how he turns out.  Between the system, genetics, his upbringing, and mental capacity, I have a new respect for the term “perfect storm”.  May God be with Him.

 

Crash Course at the Ash House

I had every intention of starting to share some of the hilarious moments that we have had as a family since my last post.  But life had another idea.  Trauma reared its ugly head within our home in a way that has broken all of our hearts in an immense way.  We found there was not just physical abuse between the boys here but also verbal, emotional and sexual.  The county was gracious to allow us to keep the younger of the two boys, Little T, while the older had to be moved to a different home.

And I was relieved.  Doesn’t that sound so harsh?  If I had heard a foster mom say that before experiencing what we went through here I would have cringed.  I would have likely judged her in my naivety and I would have likely thought less of her.  Of course that is not the appropriate “Christian” response but I am being vulnerable here.  Life in our house between April and June became a horror story for me.  Mental illness was not something that I had been prepared for.  Training prepped me in trauma care, de-escalating situations effectively and quickly, understanding the youth brain as it developed under abuse and neglect.  But it did not prepare me for a true chemical imbalance (likely as genetic as situational) or for the way the state would refuse to cooperate or provide what the child needed (medication, therapy, psycho-evaluations, etc).  Physical attacks, feces on the walls, anger and hatred towards us and his brother, crisis intervention calls with me pleading for him to be admitted for all of our safety and peace, threats, sleeping with my bedroom door locked, and having Little T sleep on the couch to keep him free from abuse.  We had to move every single thing from the bedroom of this child except for the bed and his clothing for fear of him harming himself, property, or us.  It was awful to say the least.  So while I was so sad and so hurt and felt like an enormous failure when this child was transferred out my home, I was also relieved.  Finally, I could leave my bedroom unlocked when I slept.  Finally, I could wake up and make breakfast without an hour long fiasco of defiance and screaming.  Rick could work night shift and sleep past 6am without being woken to the screaming child and sounds of banging and violence in our home.  And most importantly, Little T could be safe.  He could be himself and start to experience joy, an emotion he never truly experienced before in his 7 young years.  He could sleep without unwanted touches and he could experiment and fail without mocking voices.

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Rick and Little T overlooking the Great Smokey Mts

Of course the child removed from here was conditioned to behave the way he behaved.  Of course genetics and mental illness caused me to lose the nature vs. nurture battle with him. Of course we all are so sad that he has gone.  Yet in the midst of this God has shown himself faithful.  He has allowed Little T to express himself and share some of the horror stories he had experienced.  A month or so ago we had a campfire with the neighbor kids out back.  As all kids do, they started to make up and go around the fire telling scary stories.  Little T listened for awhile to these scary stories and everyone’s responses to them.  After thirty minutes or so he decided it was his turn. Except that he told true stories.  He interpreted “scary story time” as things that happen to people that are scary or horrible.  He told the audience story after story of abuse, hardship, poverty, neglect, injury, fear, and traumatic events.  We were stunned silent.  Since then, he has started to open up to counselors and detectives alike and is choosing to use his voice to not be a victim.  I couldn’t be more proud of him as a “mom”.  Yet I wonder, what will happen to this little guy?  Will his life experiences overpower the good that we can pour into him?  If we become eligible to adopt him will he maintain the strength and willpower to swim upstream the long and arduous battle he will have before him to live a “normal” life unlike all of those in his genetic line?  Will he keep the faith and finish the race with God each step of the way?

I do not know the answer to these things.  I do know that in only four months of dealing with what every caseworker, supervisor, and counselor advises as one of the “worst cases they have ever seen” I feel like a veteran of war.  Please do not misunderstand me to minimize what war is truly like or what first respondents must deal with on a daily basis.  I simply am expressing that the level of second hand trauma I have been exposed to, on top of my own, has made a tremendous impact on me.   The way I see life now is so

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Little T and Brother watching Demo Derby at Buck

different from before being a foster parent.  The lines under my eyes and the bags from sleepless nights are visible evidence to the pain I feel in my heart.  God is good, yet we live in a fallen world.  It is much more “fallen” than I ever realized.  As one that always seeks to find justification or good in every person I encounter and give chance after chance for them to redeem themselves after a fail, I am shocked at the inexplicable evil and torture humans can subject one another to.  Not just to one another, to a child, a helpless child with no voice or self defense or way of escape.  To abuse a little child and still force them to need you to feed them, provide shelter for them, and attach to you because of those needs is unfathomable.

So while my intention was to share some of the funny things going on here…I just am not at a place to do that yet.  Right now things are just too real.  Yet, Little T is thriving here with us at this time.  He has transferred schools and is enjoying his summer break.  We are working to catch-up on some schoolwork each day and reading skills, and we are slowly introducing the idea of a good God.  (His view of God so far has consisted of him begging his mom to stop the abuse of her associate, and his mom telling him to blame “God” for bringing said abuser into her life when she was lonely.)  We planned a family road trip around Little T and exposed him to many different things in our small section of the world which he immensely enjoyed.

Parenting has been all-consuming for me as we start at zero in teaching a child everything.  How to brush your teeth, how to use a fork or spoon (no, we don’t put our whole face in our cereal bowl we have spoons), this is how to use your imagination, this is how to put your clothes on right side out, this is how you put your shoes on the right foot, here is how you wipe in the bathroom, how to not drown in a pool of water, respond in a conversation, pour a glass of milk, personal space, eat a meal with family, etc. My girlfriend told me prior to being a parent to “think of the neglected children as aliens, foreign to earth” and she was right!  The neglect and abuse has disabled these kids in every way, they know none of the basic things that we all grew up taking for granted in knowing.  It is exhausting and I have had to pull away from most of society as I invest in this child and my own self care (still being disabled) and marriage.  Beyond that there is no energy right now.  Cramming 7 years of childhood into four months was hard but not as hard as it has been for Little T.  He has grown and changed so much these four months!  Each day he has a new achievement we get to celebrate here together!

19224944_1299473296835520_2352707896941492393_nGood or bad, right or wrong, this is what life is right now for the Ash family.  We have taken the mission field and brought it not only to our front door, but invited it in as a permanent guest.  The encouragement received from those dear to us has truly, truly, kept us afloat. So if you have sent a card or something to us and I have not responded please do forgive me.  This valley is only a temporary one and we are beginning to see the crest of it alas!  I wonder if this is how God feels with us sometimes?  If He is all-consumed with pushing us towards our destiny and his purposes, no wonder he takes a sabbath rest!

 

 

It’s a…Two Boys!

It’s a girl! two BOYS!

In the past month our lives have been turned upside down.  Yes, my last post was about our journey and hopes in becoming a foster family.  That has happened.  More accurately, that bomb exploded (haha).  Instead of receiving one child under the age of five as anticipated we received a heartbreaking call and situation to take in two children seven and twelve leaving a severe setting.  Knowing we had an empty room, without hesitation, we prayed and said yes.  The boys were supposed to be coming a week out from the call but an emergency caused them to come within three days with only the clothes on their backs.

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My heart has broken and healed, torn and mended, been both helpless and helpful every single day since they have arrived here.  I have wondered if maybe in praying I did not clearly hear God, and I have fiercely advocated for these children so they can have a chance in life that they would not otherwise have.  Thinking that this would be a few hours a week of paperwork I have found no less than 4 hours on average a day of appointments, phone calls, paperwork, and advocating for them.  It has been so much more than anticipated but I am used to hard work.  I am disabled and an amputee.  Life has not been easy for me.  The difference here is that this work produces the fruit of knowing you are investing in a child’s future. It seems like a lot of my own personal life journey through trauma, disability, and education of those things has prepared me for “such a time as this”.

The first night that they arrived as they stepped out of the car into my driveway I knelt down to their level, extended my hand and said, “Hello, my name is Ashly but you can call me TT if you like.” They shoved my hand out of the way and jumped into my arms saying, “No, you will be MOM to us.” And that started my life as a parent.  No hospital, no pregnancy, no baby pictures or even knowledge of who the parents are.  No joy or smiles all around; just pain and separation, heartache and wounds both visible and invisible. I became a mother in my driveway at 8pm on a school night when two little boys that hadn’t been fed dinner and had heads full of lice jumped in my arms.

Since then life has progressed here as the world turns.  I am starting to think foster parenting would make a much better soap opera than any “World Turns” episodes. Not that I am a soap opera fan by any stretch of imagination.  I am learning that most people do NOT understand the effects of trauma, abuse, and dysregulation, but that is a topic for another time.  For now I will just say that there are a lot of frequent and extreme mood changes in (and out of) our home and lots of exaggerated emotions.  We have meltdowns when we can’t peel a banana and we curse at truck drivers that won’t honk their horn when we play with sidewalk chalk.  We are taking two completely different lifestyle environments and merging them into one that contains stability and love and boundaries and it is a beautiful thing…but not always pretty.

DSCN9590.JPGWe do not know the future of these boys or for sure how long they will remain with us but while they are with us they are our family and we are blessed to have them.  Our community has stepped up in unexpected ways through all of this.  We have had meals delivered, gift cards to help us supply these boys with clothes and educational tools/games to promote a normal life, prayers and cards and messages from far and near, and friends that have listened to me vent and cry when I needed it.  I can honestly say that no matter what the future holds for these boys they will be forever touched and changed by the normalcy of our simple life and loving people.

A lot of people ask me over and over if I am attached to them and tell me how much I will hurt when/if they leave here.  Sure, it will be hard to have them move on when the time comes. But what will happen to them if I don’t attach?  What will their future be like if they are never shown healthy attachments and love?  I trust that as hard as it will be that God will see me through my own grief and heal my heart as well as theirs when the time comes.

As I type this I am waiting for them to come home from a hard visit with their mom. A scary visit, one they were forced to. And as I see these difficult words in black and white I remind myself how blessed I am to be a part of their journey here.  How precious their hearts are and how big of a responsibility God has placed in my hands to care for the ones that are rejected.  There have been times when I haven’t felt like I had the capacity for another hard conversation, another meltdown, another episode of defiance but it isn’t about me now is it?  I sit in my own home, having been raised to appreciate rules and boundaries, raised to trust that my parents would be there and come through, leaving school each day knowing there would be food on the table and a home to go to.  I am ashamed to realize how easy it is to think that I am inconvenienced when their entire lives have been turned over and inside out.  (Of course this does not mean self-care isn’t important and it doesn’t mean that we are the right people to be with them forever.  We just know that God has them here, now, for a reason.)

So this Saturday will be a baseball game with a Foster Parent Association and we are all looking forward to the public space and networking that can happen there.  We are excited to be in a place where everyone “gets it” and there is no judgment or expectations for normalcy.  I have spent most of my life advocating and fighting for 2 Feb 2015 025 picnic.jpgmyself and the things I need as a disabled person.  While that doesn’t change, advocating and investing in the lives of the helpless is a whole new focus.  To me, that is a cause far more worthy than any other.  I am not perfect and I fail each day.  I have had to apologize more the past month than the previous seven years of marriage (maybe Rick just lets me off the hook more)! And still, in the midst of each tornado and in the middle of the innocent laughter I hear, our house is a refuge and a safe place for all of us.  We never needed to go abroad for mission work…it was brought right to our doorstep.

So that is my introduction to life as a parent so far…but there are SO many funny moments that I have been saving to share with my readers here after painting the accurate picture of what life looks like for us!  I am in the process of compiling them right now to post next time.  Having been raised with four sisters I am in a bit of a culture shock having two boys and a husband running around the house!  Tune in for some of those hilarious observations soon!

Pro-Parenting: Amputee Style

09-september-0001Well, it is official: we are licensed professional parents!  After several grueling months of paperwork, home studies, inspections, writing ten page autobiographies, trainings, and a water test (yes, really!), we received our license in the mail that we are approved Foster/Resource parents and are on the list to receive our first placement child.

For some reason, in spite of the many hours and trainings invested, it feels as if we are not one bit qualified to handle the life of a miniature human being.  While we are probably more prepared than most moms have been during nine months of pregnancy, the reality of what we are about to face truly shines light on our inadequacies.

I am sharing all of this with you because I realize this next part of my journey may change the shift of my blog a little bit.  Of course my journey with God will not change and my revelations and articles sharing those treasures will be here as well, but there may be a bit of a newer element.  There is not a single child in the foster care system that has not undergone trauma (whether in the womb or outside of the womb) and this journey will likely include skills and tactics towards healing that I stumble upon and want to share with others.  Throughout the history of my blog I have shared a lot about trauma because I am a 11-november-pam-party-053trauma survivor, and I expect that those life experiences will be ashes turned to beauty as they help a child conquer the same things.  I also expect to find a new and fresh take on amputee humor as I “mother” these children, and tap into unexplored resources and innovations to “git-r-done” with one leg around the house!  It will be a fun journey and I am excited to be able to share this with each of you as well!  (Remind me to refrain from any whining and vague poetry during those sleep-deprived hallucinatory nights!)

Our ultimate goal is to be able to give a child a forever home here with us.  Through fostering we cannot be sure if that will be the first, tenth, or twelfth child that is placed with us.  Whichever child does not end up with the luxury of returning home to their family, we do hope to adopt.  A lot of people ask me how I will deal with the grief of losing these children when they do return home and I cannot honestly say that I know how I will handle it.  It will be hard, I will cry, I will likely grieve the loss even, but I trust God.  I trust that God is bigger than my pain, and any holes that enter my heart I trust that he will heal.  I believe with all of my heart that each child that comes to this place will be a life impacted with the love and care that Christ has demonstrated to me, and will be forever touched.  Hopefully, even their first moms and dads will be too.

For many years I have had the dream of having one child of my own and fostering/adopting a second child.  After 6 years of infertility struggles and treatments we decided to move 10-oct-2016-107forward and meet God right where he has placed us.  This may mean we never have our own children, and while that hurts, I accept that. Many things in my life have been turned to ashes over the years by my own choices and things that have happened to me, but I know the word of God is true, and he promises to make beauty from ashes.  I’m turning my ashes over during this time and allowing the God of our universe to use my burning rubble and pain to bring hope and a future to the children he brings.

What a welcome start for a new year in the Ash Household!

 

 

 

Got Peace?

In our hectic lives today peace is often labeled as something that comes to us or that is granted to us.  Like a fragile glass ornament that we have to condition our lives and atmosphere around in order to see manifested.  But is that biblical?  Is that true?  Peace is manifested to us through the Holy Spirit just as the other fruits of the Spirit are:  love, joy, 03-march-2016-129piknikpatience, kindness, goodness, self-discipline.  Still, even though these are fruits of the Spirit and result from living in the Spirit, they are things that we have to work at and work out.  Peace isn’t the absence of turmoil.  Peace is rest in mind and body regardless of circumstance.  We have to work at walking in love, in joy, in self-discipline.  Why do we seem to think it should be any different with peace?

My Graham Cooke interactive journal told me to pick an attribute of God and allow my entire life to line up with that aspect.  This wasn’t to simply be an exercise it was to become a lifestyle journey.  It was a meditative and reflective journey that could take months or years to complete; one that perhaps I would finish when God penetrated every area of my life with that aspect of himself.  (If I can hold still long enough for Him to work!)  I could pick any aspect of God that I wanted to for this journey: Majesty, Creator, Beautiful One, King, Lover, Provider, Awesomeness, you name it.  If it is part of God’s character then I was given the freedom to align my life with that attribute.  I couldn’t wait to jump into this exercise and sat down to pray.  I just KNEW I was going to feel led to pick one of the truly “cool” attributes like Creator and then pump out a million crafty creations or something.  But no, I got peace.  “Are you SURE this is what you want me to look at?” I asked whined during prayer.  “Peace is so, so…so boring!”

That was a few months ago and while I’m not yet at the place of believing that Peace is the most exciting attribute of God’s character, I do believe that He is the most peaceful person I have ever met!  (If you are a follower of Graham Cooke “God is the Kindest Person I’ve Ever Met” you will get that!)  As a matter of fact, I didn’t realize just how much peace was lacking in my life until I started to consciously align each part of my life, mind, and personality with Peace.  Peace has become one of the most transforming things in my mind, dealing with past baggage, relationships, and my walk with God.

Circumstances come crashing in like waves on a stormy sea sometimes and to find peace in that moment is something that requires practice.  There is an art to being at peace.  Remember when Jesus was asleep in the boat during the storm and the disciples thought that he was out of his mind?  They thought he was a loon that didn’t care one iota for his or their lives.  But Jesus was simply at peace.  That sounds so simple but would you be the calm one in a dinghy during a storm?  Are you the calm one when life “happens” to you?  09-september-2016-054piknikWouldn’t you like to be the calm one when the waves are crashing about?  It reminds me of countless movies where the hero is always a leader centered in conscience awareness of what is going on around him.  Calculating, discerning, but never caught up in the jumble of drama.  When a hero acts, it is the right action.  A hero moves with pure and unadulterated confidence that he is doing the right thing.  A hero takes that moment of crisis to observe what is happening and contemplate; Heroes do so from a place of peace.  This can be the difference in whether a climactic battle is won or there is a disheartening defeat.

We are in a battle every day.  It doesn’t take a super-religious person to figure that one out.  Even those that do not believe in Jesus will agree they are constantly battling to keep their peace in life.  But we, as Christians, have the key to help that along.  We have the Holy Spirit and we are told by Jesus that he brings us peace.  Not a wordly peace, dependent on the absence of turmoil, but an inner calm that always operates from a place of wisdom (not towards it).  Sure, I am easily at peace when I’m on the beach under a palm tree with fresh lemon water and a good book.  But am I at peace when I am late to work, haven’t eaten breakfast, spilled coffee down my shirt, and realized my cell phone bill is paid late?  Am I at peace when there is a relational conflict?  Not always!

I’ve found the number one rule to operating in peace is pulling within.  When I feel myself begin to be rocked by the circumstances around me, whatever they may be, I pull inward first.  Circumstances happen.  Someone will say something offensive.  Someone else will try to bombard my day with gossip and drama.  There may be a phone call that wasn’t expected.  Perhaps my doctor did not have good news for me.  Maybe an unexpected car repair cost more than I budgeted for.  There can be a million and one different circumstances that will rock my world, and when that happens, I pull inside now.  I stop.  It seems so simple but it can be so hard.  Just taking a moment to surrender those circumstances to Jesus is key.  Like any recovery group will preach:  Recognizing there is a problem is the first step.  As soon as I feel in my emotions that something is not quite right I know I need to stop and surrender that to Jesus.  I may be in the middle of running out the door and simply decide if I am 30 seconds behind that is ok with me.  I close my eyes, I breathe deep, and I pull in.

What next?  Just like in Acts 2 I ask “What does this mean and what do I do?”  I’ve stopped believing that bad things that happen are blatant attacks from the “enemy” Satan.  I started to realize that there is NOTHING that can come to me that has not been filtered through my heavenly Father.  So the wrong question to ask is “why am I being attacked?”, and the right question to ask is “what is God doing in this/how will God use this?”  What negativity is happening?  I can pray for the opposite because that is moving in the opposite spirit.  What is my role in this?  This may not come to me quickly.  Often after taking my brief moment to “pull inside” and center around God and peace I have to move on with my day.  But since I did pull in and ask God for peace I can think about this in the back of my mind throughout my day.  As I am going along I think about what rocked my world and listen for answers about how to partner with God.  Having asked God what the provision is in the circumstances and praying for that to be manifested; now I can seek His heart in my own actions.  Perhaps prayer is the only thing required of me.  Perhaps there is more.  Perhaps praying for money to cover bills will not be all that is required, maybe I will need to find work.  Maybe I will need to give a gift to someone as a way to “sow” into the future.  What to do?  Ask God.  He will not be shy about putting things in your heart and mind when you ask him!  He loves us and if a circumstance has come to us that rocks our internal world then that means we need to stop and look at it.  What can we learn during this time about God?

There have been times where I was in a chaotic place and felt my own boat rock.  Not knowing how to find time to pull inside and understand my own emotions, I excused myself to the restroom.  There I was able to clearly take a moment to review the circumstances, surrender them to God, and ask “What does this mean and what do I do?”  In one situation the Lord was clear “I’m working in their lives, you are done here, go home.”  Whatever the reason I was there, the Lord was clear that day he didn’t need me any longer and I was to remove myself from the chaos.  This was a great exercise in stepping inside of the Spirit and bringing peace (on earth as it is in heaven) into manifestation as I left.

Through lining my life up with peace I have also stumbled across some very simple things that have happened and left my emotions tattered and battered about.  This has required me to take the same actions.  Recognizing this and surrendering to God.  Pulling in, and asking “what does this mean and what do I do?”  A few times I was led to process something from the past.  A hospital smell that triggered my emotions to go awry needed to be processed and prayed about.  A fear of sharing a swimming lane had me feeling a bit wonkly until I stopped and asked God about it, to which I realized I was afraid of being kicked in my stump (yes it has happened before).  Sometimes being and operating in peace is as simple as recognizing (with God) why we feel a certain way.

We can’t control what happens around us all of the time.  We can very rarely make demands for peace in our daily lives.  Kids scream, spouses have attitudes, people can be selfish.  But we can choose peace.  “He who dwells in the safety of the Most High will be sheltered” (Ps 91).  Notice, one must choose to dwell in that place of the Spirit in order for the benefits to flow.  Fern from Discovering MErcy once told me, “Ashly, boundaries are not to keep others out they are to keep you in.  Otherwise you will run all over the place like liquefied jello.”  This wisdom is a great visual of choosing to operate in peace.  We must set boundaries within ourselves so that we retreat to the Spirit of God and to our inner sanctuary regardless of what is happening on the outside.  We must, in wisdom, allow God’s view of a situation become our own so that we know what lines must be drawn so that we do not lose our own peace.

Peace is given as a gift from Jesus.  But like all beautifully wrapped gifts, we must choose to unwrap it in order to receive it.  This takes practice.  You do not have to teach a child to be greedy; he already knows that, you have to teach a child to share. Not being swept up in the chaos around us and the drama comes most naturally as our emotions charge ahead and our hearts struggle through the mire and mess; but operating from a place of peace must be practiced and taught.

When God promotes growth in one area, Graham Cooke teaches, we need to upgrade other areas of our lives.  Nothing can stay the same when you are growing in the Lord.  In aligning my life with peace I quickly came to realize that there were areas of my life that needed to 10 Oct 2016 020.jpgchange in order for me to continue in that peace.  I needed to pray and seek God in each area of my life that I lost peace.  It was a long process but it was one that I found had ripple effects!  God placed his finger in my life on Peace, but as I have worked on choosing peace I have increased joy, kindness, patience, self-discipline, and more!

Limiting time with chaotic people was one change needed and painfully implemented. I find chaotic people entertaining sometimes and in a way soothing because I can get lost in their own drama and not think about my own problems.  That had to stop.  Not freaking out over every bit of yard work and housework that wasn’t done was a must.  (In being in an anxious place about my house and yard work I created a restless environment for my husband and he would spend all his spare time working here instead of getting much needed rest and connection time in our marriage.)  Mastering some of my food cravings became a critical part of me living in peace.  I could not run to the store or a restaurant when I had a craving for a meal (no matter how busy or tired I was) because that was robbing my peace.  I had to choose healthy intake of food which would allow my joints and pain to cease so I could feel more at peace.  In making the choice to do without and operate self-discipline over my body (while at first I struggled largely), I ultimately gained peace and felt better physically (with healthy choices) which also generated an even deeper level of peace.  A financial budget was implemented in our home so that I would not be robbed of peace each month when paying the bills.  I suddenly knew what we had, where it went, and where it needed to go.  This returned the fruit of peace!

God is the most Peaceful person I have ever met.  He has all the answers!  All of the small things that I never thought were affecting my quality of life, when brought in prayer, were taken care of.  God didn’t “fix” everything for me; rather He showed me one thing at a time and gave me solutions for those things.  The above paragraph seems like small and logical changes that I implemented immediately.  Truthfully, each one of those things took days and weeks of working out on my end.  I would recognize the lack of peace, write about it, pray about it, think about it, pray about it more, then implement what God laid on my heart to do.  Each thing has been an intense journey with God.  But all of the “problems” that I mentioned here ultimately taught me so much about God!  I no longer hesitate to ask Him to help me with simple problems.  I know how incredibly intelligent He is and I want His friendship all the time.  He is always chuckling and smiling when I am about to split the ends of my own hair with anxiety!  Peace I give to you, he says.

Peace is the attribute that God has his finger on in my life right now.  He is in process of upgrading other areas of my life even as I write this.  It isn’t over, and I am glad that I haven’t arrived because I am having the time of my life. Sleeping at night comes so easily when you are at peace and know that God has every single thing under control (so you don’t have to).  Embracing this process for me has been an upgrade in my life as well.  Sometimes I just want to get things over with so badly that I forget that it isn’t about the destination with God, it’s about the journey.  We all know the ending.  In a blink of an eye we will be changed.  But we don’t know the twists and turns we will pass on the way.  We don’t know which little houses we will pass, which rolling hills we will drive over, which pastures will contain scenery we will want to ingrain in our minds forever.

While God has my life lining up with Peace, what does He have his finger on in your life?  Take a moment and ask Him.  Ask God what attribute of His personality He wants to teach you about.  What area does he want to cultivate relationship with you in right now?  And be ready for the answer…because it will rock your world!

Snowy Wonder

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There is no feeling quite as this

Of cozy and warmth, feelings of bliss

The snow that tumbles in each snowflake

As in my kitchen I long to bake

The earth is quiet in expectation

As snow blankets this part of the nation

I stand face up and full of worship

As praise pours forth in small clips

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The pine trees laden with the weight

As I go forth through the frozen gate

To walk in the snow and hear the crunch

Lift up my mittens, grab flakes by the bunch

The silence that is echoed by purity

Reminds me of grace and being set free

To be captive by nature and standing still

To realize the depth of freezing chill

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Many who cannot appreciate seasons

Even if they have several reasons

Cannot deny the beauty that falls

Or resent the rest brought on by stalls

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Tracking the prints of deer in our woods

To stop and stand where the buck stood

His perspective through my eyes

I listen as the squirrels play and cry

The excitement shown in snow adventures

Simply cannot be easily measured

by Ashly Ash

Just being me…leads to breakthrough?

You haven’t heard as much from me on my blog lately.  I have been on a personal journey.  I’m growing in a new way and it is so exciting!  You see, throughout my blogging history I always maintain a few filters before posting an article.  There are goals and ways I wish to convey myself to you.  I will share them briefly here with emphasis on the last one, which is where my journey is going right now. 09-september-2016-245piknik

All creation leaps with Joy!

First of all I want you, my reader, to receive a message that resonates within your heart.  I want to relate to each of you in a way that is real and genuine.  It really irritates me when people spiritualize everything in life.  I went through a period where every struggle I went through was accompanied by the phrase “God is good all the time, though!”  Sure, that statement may be true but that doesn’t deal with the reality that life can be hard and difficult to work through.  I feel it kind of trivializes reality and betrays our right to have heart feelings.  It even sets an undertone of bitterness and disappointment (if God cared  he would do more).   In my writing I want to be real and tell you when life sucks.  I want you to hear and connect with your own heart when you hear mine.  This is a journey we are on together and it is not my job to boss you around or tell you that what you are going through is or isn’t devastating.  It’s not my job to tell you how to be a better Christian, if there is such a thing.  My job is to walk alongside you.  Christians ARE the church.  We don’t “act like the church” any more than I can try to “act like an Ashly”.  I simply AM Ashly.  Likewise, we ARE the church and I seek that through relationship and development in my love for Christ and each of you.

Secondly, I seek to educate and inform, as well as provide tools and framework for real life scenarios that you may be facing.  A lot of what I use will contain examples from my own life.  (I don’t think my loved ones would appreciate me posting their dirt here so that resigns me to using my own.) There have been a number of folks that have mistaken my writing as a way for me to work through my own problems.  That is not true. I write only about things that I have worked out and thought about, written in my journal, and then compiled into an article.  The articles I write sit on my desk for sometimes months at a time before being published.  It isn’t fair for me to want to bring you closer to God in ways that I haven’t walked yet myself.  Dealing with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder has pushed me to continue educating myself in tools for dealing with life.  This includes counseling, reading, following bible based scholars, and lots of trial/error in my own life.  The things I learn and implement, I pass along to you so you may draw in closer to your first love, Jesus.

Lastly, I have found in my own journey that shame and guilt and directives do NOT accomplish or reflect God’s heart.  Having had absolutely NO success with those things being pushed on me I work diligently to be sure my writing does not reflect shame or guilt or directives.  Do I write appeals to the heart, pleading for growth?  Yes, sometimes I do.  Do I bring reassurance and God’s word into my articles?  Yes, I do.  But I do not ever want to use shame or guilt as a motivator or as an undertone.  I want you to see the unconditional and unending love that Jesus has for each of us.  I want to help show you what receiving that love looks like on a day to day basis and the breakthrough/heart changes that will undoubtedly and unreservedly result from it.

So having had these filters and parameters set in my writing for the past few years, I have found myself on the peculiar journey I am now.  I felt the Lord nudging me at the beginning of the year to look at the amount of shame and guilt that was in my own life.  Shame and guilt are everywhere and our culture sure isn’t shy about shaming us into bigger homes, more education, higher incomes,  and better bodies.  But so do many church institutions use religious shaming.  A lot of our relationships result in tension and shame, so do our commitments.  Brene Brown wrote a book called “Daring Greatly” about being free from shame, but still I didn’t seem to find what I was looking for.  Shame still resonated in my life, I still was anxious a lot, tense over relationships, guilty over commitments, ashamed when I wasn’t at church.  09-september-2016-103piknikWhile I strove and attempted to keep shame and guilt out of my own life I read a book that completely turned my current thinking upside down on the matter.  The book is called, “So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore” by Wayne Jacobson.  It is a short and simple book that was written in simple conversation format and was handed to me by my sister.  My expectations were zero to nil as I sneered at the title.  But this book flipped me upside down as I found it was not about church at all and rather about shame and condemnation being motivators.

See, in my journey of ridding shame and condemnation from my life I set a few standards for myself.  I wanted to take this seriously since I felt God put it on my heart.  So I started to do all the right things.  I had an “accountability partner” and a checklist.  Each day at the end of the day I would check off and make notes about whether or not I fell into shameful thinking that day and how I should have prevented it.  Did I eat something then feel bad about it?  No check-off today!  Did someone say something that made me feel overly obligated to them rather than God?  Shameful thinking!  Little did I know, the creation of this “law/standard” in my life to help me be rid of shame, coupled with a task-oriented  system actually set me up stronger under the very system of shame I was trying to break free of! I was writing each night about how I fell into shame and guilt during that day and all the while I am making these notes I am feeling…you got it….SHAME and GUILT!  Can you say counterproductive?

I felt the Lord release me from this checklist and this standard I set.  Gently I felt lead to read back through my journal for the year and right in January I wrote to myself about receiving grace and deleting shame “find freedom from the law by just being ME with Jesus this year”.  (Like in Romans 8, the “law” is sin and death, clouded in shame and condemnation which we are set free from because of the cross.)  And there my journey truly began with me laying down my agenda for ridding my life of shame-based thinking and embarking on a new path.  I found that path impacted every area of my life.

We have these ideas of how “church” should be operated.  We have these ideas of how other people need to live to be healthy and free.  We think it is our job to tell people how to live.  We know church is a building and that requires commitment.  We have these ideas of how leadership should lead and how often we need to have meetings.  We believe if we just stop sinning our lives will be great.   All of these ideas breed disappointment, expectations, shame, guilt, and condemnation.  It is wrong.  Suddenly in order to be loved and accepted by one another and by God we believe have to be x, y, z.  This is simply not true.

In my last article I wrote about God setting me free from over spiritualizing things that are out of control.  The example in the article that I gave was the freeing realization that having a disability and not having insurance coverage for a fake leg to walk on does not mean that God loves me less.   I discussed how so many people (including myself) express that if I were in a better place spiritually, prayed more, had more faith, that God would bless me with a fake leg.  Since I now don’t have one because insurance doesn’t cover what I need there must be something wrong with my faith and me; or to state this more bluntly:  God loves me conditionally.

No, friends.  God loves us unconditionally.  He loves us right where we are.   Sin isn’t the issue with God.  Sin is dealt with on the cross.  Once and for all!  God is not obsessed with our shortcomings (or perceived faults) like we are.  God is not obsessed with giving us what we think we need in order for us to love him.  He gives us enough for today, every day.  He gives us the perfect amount and we need to trust him to know best.  God is also not obsessed with the shortcomings we see in others!  I will go so far as to venture and say when we are trying to fix or change the shortcomings of others we are simply trying to avoid the emptiness we feel in our own hearts.

We have to be comfortable and trust God enough to let him work his process in others.  We don’t need to step in and give directives and tell someone else how to change.  I know this to be true because I have a very personal experience with this from long ago.  When I was self-medicating PTSD symptoms  with drugs and alcohol I went to see a counselor that operated in the true love of Christ.  She said,“I am not here to give you directives.  I am not here to tell you to don’t do drugs and steer clear of alcohol.  If you want that, there are meetings for that.  Keep doing whatever you are doing.  My job is to help you recognize the system of drugs for what it is, destructive self medicating,and to know your own heart and God’s love to find why you turn to them in the first place. You will be free from drugs and alcohol, of that I have no doubt.”  Within a few months I was free from my addictions without a single rehabilitation effort or extreme withdrawal symptom.  I simply slowly stopped turning to drugs and alcohol because I did not need them.  I wasn’t shamed into quitting.  I wasn’t condemned for using.  Fern from Discovering MErcy helped me to recognize the drugs and alcohol for what they were: destruction.  Then she helped me find self-worth in God’s love to want to choose what is best for me.  That was true freedom for me.  Being in a place where I was journeying alongside of someone that showed me God’s love and never once did she (or God) keep tabs on my shortcomings.

Fern taught me to take the moral load off of things.  I never understood what she was doing until the past few months.  She was removing the shame and condemnation.  By not focusing on the fog of sin and the moral weight of my behavior I was free to get in touch with my own heart and turn to Jesus.  I could see there were underlying reasons for my choices.  But she ignored my behavior and went for my heart.  Like Bryan Post says, “Ignore the lie not the child” (when a child lies, he explains, it is fear-based and to ignore the behavior to get to the heart of the child and figure out the fear will help the child regulate. He advises to completely ignore the behavior of the lie.  Fix WHY they lie not the lie itself.)  Jesus was given the authority to fill the holes and heal my heart; once the shame and condemnation fog was lifted I could receive that healing and I didn’t do a single thing to make it happen!  I was just being me!  Without the weight of the shame and self condemnation  .

Here are some excerpts from the book “So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore” by Wayne Jacobsen to give you a nice screen-shot capture of what my journey of “just being me” is looking like right now:

“…respect the process God uses to bring people into truth.  I’m not talking about different things being true for different people, but about people discovering that truth in different time frames.  If we hold people accountable, they will never learn to live in love.  We’ll reward those who are better at putting on a front and miss those who are in the real struggle of learning to live in Jesus.

 …when are you going to get past the mistaken notion that Christianity is about ethics?

 …walking toward him is walking away from sin.  The better you know him the freer from it you will be.  But you can’t walk away from sin, Jake.  Not in your own strength!  Everything he wants to do in you will get done as you learn to live in his love.  Every act of sin results from your mistrust of his love intentions for you.  We sin to fill up broken places, to try to fight for what we think is best for us, or by reacting to our guilt and shame.  Once you discover how much he loves you, all that changes.  As you grow in trusting him, you will find yourself increasingly free from sin.

…When we hold one another accountable we are really usurping God’s place.  It’s why we end up hurting one another so deeply.  When we make commitments that we can live up to only for a brief period, our guilt multiplies when we fail.  Upset that God doesn’t do more to help us, we usually end up medicating our guilt with something like drugs, alcohol, food, shopping, or anything else that dulls the pain, or it creeps out of us through anger or lust.

 …Paul recognized there are three roads in this life, when most of us only recognize two.  We tend to think of our lives as a choice between doing bad and doing good.  Paul saw two different ways we could try to do good—one makes us work hard to submit to God’s rules.  That one fails every time.  Even when he described himself as following all of God’s rules externally he also called himself the worst sinner alive because of the hate and anger in his heart.  Sure he could conform his outward behavior to fit the rules but it only pushed his problems deeper.  He was, you remember, out killing God’s people in God’s name.”

In this journey I am reveling in God’s love and learning how to trust God with every single thing in my life.  He is teaching me to stop making commitments that my heart is not into and that will drag me into shame and guilt when I can’t keep them.  He is showing me how 09-september-2016-1001to not beat myself up over my own shortcomings, reflecting and mulling over how to change them.  Rather than wasting my time in a vicious cycle of obligations I haven’t been called to I am simply reading about His promises and His love for me.  My shortcomings will be ironed out as God’s love expands in my heart.  And you know what else I noticed?  I don’t see other people’s shortcomings as much either.  Why?  I am focused on Jesus and how he is moving in my life and others’ lives. In love there is no such place for analyzing others, there is only walking with others without controlling them but pointing them to God’s love for them.

Moving out of shame and guilt also allows for vulnerability in a way that I have not yet experienced in life.  I am free to be myself.  More accurately, as I move into God’s love and assurance (and stop caring about what image I project and what others think) I am getting to know my own heart!  Rather than conforming to what is the “right way” I can simply be me.  Now that is something God can work with.  He can’t work with illusions and with “right actions” because they are just that…illusions and fronts.  They aren’t real.  God can work with a broken soul and someone that doesn’t always make the right choices.

Am I there yet?  Haha…nope.  I’m not sure I shall ever arrive until Jesus returns.  But during this time I am writing a little less on my blog as I allow some of these things to be ironed out within me.  There must be less of my agenda and more of Him in each article and each moment of my life.  My writing must come alongside each of you and bless you in your journey without stipulations.

In Revelations 2:2-4 Jesus says to the people of Ephesus:

“I know how many good things you are doing. I have watched your hard work and your patience; I know you don’t tolerate sin among your members, and you have carefully examined the claims of those who say they are apostles but aren’t. You have found out how they lie. You have patiently suffered for me without quitting.  ‘Yet there is one thing wrong; you don’t love me as at first!’”

I want to love Jesus with a fire that blazes and  a spark that ignites others the same way.  I don’t care if my actions are not perfect or if I fail as long as I am being true to my heart and receiving his love and in love with him.  My joy must be contagious to every one that I encounter because that is a fruit of the spirit.  My trust must run so deep that I never encourage others with saying the right things that are empty like “we live by faith not by sight” when they are struggling.  I desire to exhort and encourage from a place that aligns others with the majesty and love of God for them.  Yes, this journey is still in process but it will be worth all the treasure earth can yield.