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How Can You Tell the Story of His Grace?
I love people with stories. I enjoy hearing the journey of how a person gets from point A to point B. I love overcomers and underdogs, and I'm a perpetual sucker for stories that start in the valley and end on a mountaintop.
Happy New Year!
I've always been a sucker for the new year and the fresh feeling it brings. For me, early January typically comes with a sigh of relief as the hustle and bustle of the holidays fade away, and a fresh new hope is on the horizon as we prepare for another trip around the sun. As my Christmas décor comes down and I sweep glitter and pine needle debris into my dustpan, I'm often fooled into thinking I'll do something similar with all the yucky parts of my life in the coming new year as well.
Following or Followers?
It’s been six months since I’ve posted to my Instagram account for my sobriety blog, www.thisthorn.com. And it’s been almost three years since I’ve added a new article to the site. I’ve been writing all this time, but not uploading any new content.
When I started my blog in the fall of 2015, I wrote endlessly about all my new feelings and experiences in sobriety. I’d never considered myself a writer before. I never journaled. But those first months of recovery, my emotions were raw. I was present for events and situations I’d previously been too numb to experience. I didn’t know what to do with all those feelings. So, I wrote to write. I wrote to expose, to process, to purge and to thank God.
Then the mind games started.
How Do We Live a Life of Significance?
Saying yes led to us dedicating a water well in Africa in June 2016. The world might call it a deed of significance. God called it obedience. God called it loved. God showed me loving Him will look like loving others.
What’s stopping you from living a Life of Significance?
At fourteen, I did not know how to hold my thoughts and feelings up to the Word of God. I did not know how to take every thought captive. Because of that, I was easy prey for the devil. He deceived me. I believed my feelings. I believed my thoughts. I believed my friends Dread and Fear when they told me I would be all alone in Africa, with no family or friends, living in a mud hut, with no food, starving children, mosquitos, HIV, and malaria. Dread and Fear told me God was not good, and he was holding out on me. I believed they were right. There was nothing good to be found by following Jesus to Africa.
Can I Find Purpose Through My Pain?
From the time I was a young girl, I was a hopeless romantic. I could spin it to you by saying I was just plain boy-crazy, or by telling you that I possibly watched one too many Disney fairy tales along the way - but the truth of the matter is that I desperately wanted to be loved. As human beings, but women especially, we are designed to want to give and receive unconditional love. We want to be known intimately by someone who will cherish and value us for our wonderful qualities, and someone who will continue loving us right through our bad ones. As I got older, this aching desire I had to feel loved ended up making of fool of me more times than I care to recall. I made some incredibly unfortunate decisions that I'm not proud of today in an attempt to feel love. After a while, I found those attempts at "love" to be incredibly fleeting and in the long-run I was left feeling quite the opposite of what I had hoped for.
Then I had kids . . .
What is a Life of Significance?
God has a way of proving Himself true and He’s eager to share His secrets with anyone in search of His truths. He uses our prayers uttered in frustration as invitations. That’s what He did for me as I wrestled free from the Allure of More’s clasps. God had graciously provided many of my heart’s desires and yet my soul longed for more. Only by His grace, did I realize, the answer was not a bigger house, better job, or more exotic vacation. Gently, He whispered to my soul, I am the more you crave. After 20 plus years as His daughter, I craved the cadence of His voice, His subtle prompts directing my paths.