a shock to the heart

I hung out with a friend tonight and ended up sharing a large part of my testimony with him.That is not extraordinary in and of itself because I frequently share parts of my testimony with various people but what is extraordinary is the way that I see one part of my testimony now. I realised tonight that not only have I been given a new heart, I have also been given new eyes. For the first time in a long time as I shared some of my less flattering experiences I allowed myself to honestly remember the joy that I felt during that time & I allowed myself to see God's hand in that space. Tonight I let myself remember the love I felt and surprisingly it didn't hurt because now when I look back and I see that love I see it for what it was, the jolt that I needed to open myself up to true love, to real love..

Before I loved this man I was lost in the whirlwind of my life, I had completely sold out to the lie, to the career, the parties and the people were the games that I played to entertain myself so that I wouldn't notice that I was bored and hadn't myself and my life. I lived in the land of make believe playing dress-ups like a little girl and I was awe struck, too busy looking at the pretty dolls and the shining lights to realise that I was empty. I danced along, sipping on bubbles and posing for pictures, lost in the land I had created.

He was lost in it too, we had both forgotten how to be happy, what that looked like, what it felt like. We had also forgotten what it meant to be honest, to be open. We lived in a land of lies, our days were consumed by fake niceties. We were friends, best friends. We weren't when we first met, I didn't like him, I thought there was no depth to him, he seemed like a boy and not a man but somewhere along the line that changed. I think we were in a car on the way to pick up a woman we both loved when suddenly some honestly slipped out and into our conversation. Once it was there, the honesty it grew, it was addictive. Looking back now it was like shining light of freedom in the darkness of our day and all it was was honesty. Being raw and open with each other. There is great freedom in honesty, when everyone in your world expects you to play your part having one person who lets you be you changes everything.

Looking back now I realise that that was what he did, that was the gift he gave me. He gave me a space to be me, he opened that space, he invited me in and as I walked into that space and allowed him to know me, I began to know myself, I began to shed the costumes I wore. I also allowed myself to love and trust and for that I am thankful. It was right there in the middle of it when I loved him so deeply that it all came to a head, I knew that I had to leave him, the other option was to stay and die in my pain and I had just come from that place and wasn't going back there. It was there in that moment that I opened myself fully and completely to God, I caught hold of that realisation tonight and I find it extraordinary that God would use such an experience to bring me closer to him.

I remember at the time being completely heart-broken yet there was a peace about ending our relationship, I realise now that the peace came from knowing my God, from knowing deep in my bones that he was a good God and that he would replace this love with a great love. I realise now that it was in these moments that I received a revelation of who my God is and what he wanted to give me. It was in those moments that I chose to give my heart and my life to my one true love forever.

There is so much freedom and healing in that realisation. For the longest time I have stopped myself from thinking about the man I loved before I loved God, for the longest time it was painful and shameful and I didn't want to face it or me. Part of me wanted to pretend like it didn't happen and the other part of me was afraid to look at it. I choose to remember it as beautiful but know in my heart that it was wrong and I thought that revisiting it would change it and I didn't want to change it because I needed it to be beautiful. Now I realise that it was beautiful but that the beauty in it was God, I realise that this relationship was the shock I needed to surrender my heart to God. Before I met him I was dead and he shocked me back to life long enough for God to sweep in, pick me up and carry me away to my destiny. He brought me back to life long enough for me to know real love when I found it in God and for that I am so very grateful.

Our God is amazing, he will take the stories that you have lived, the ones that have shaped you and that you have told a million times before and if you let him, if you dare for just a moment to look at that situation with the new eyes he has given you.. well then you may just see the love and the grace of God in that situation, you may just see the way he lovingly swept you off your feet, the way he knocked you "head over feet over heels" in love with him.

I pray that we will have the courage to move past ourselves and our fear so that we can see God's hand tenderly working in every situation, that when God opens a door for us to share our journey we will let him but more than that, I pray that we will be wise enough to realise that he may be having us share for us and not just for the other person! I pray that we be open enough to allow him to show us our old story with new eyes.

May you all be blessed with hearts to receive the love God is waiting to give you xo

For the record this is not something I would generally post here..

When I started this blog I made a commitment to myself & anyone reading it that this is a space where I would be honest & real & raw & share about what I was dealing with & how God was moving me through the space. Today's post makes me wish I had decided something else because I don't want to write this. I don't want to be honest about this & I don't want to share but at the same time I know if I don't write about it, well it will eat me up & I also know that if I don't write about it here I won't write about it properly. You see if I were to write in my journal I would gloss over what I was feeling & sweep it under the rug but I can't do that here because I made a commitment & so it begins..

Over a year ago I made a promise to a man that I had allowed myself to love & a man who loved me back. Actually it was a promise we made to each other. You see life meant that we could not be together, it meant that our love affair had to end so we made a promise that if ever our life circumstance changed then the one who's circumstances changed would find the other & we would be together. I told him I loved him & promised that if he ever came looking then.. I meant it, every single word of the promise we made to each other, the promise of our future together. We both cried as we spoke it. I remember in that moment feeling like someone had torn me apart & no matter how hard I tried I couldn't escape the pain.  

I had accepted the end of our relationship & went about finding myself as a woman of God. We let life happen, I moved away, built a wonderful life & I am happy. My life is amazing & right now there is nothing I would change. I hadn't thought about him for a long time until today.

I was reminded of our promise today & for the first time in a really, really long time I sensed him. I remembered the words, the emotions but most of all the utter conviction with which we spoke & it scared me. It scared me because I realised that on that day 15 or so months ago I gave away a piece of me, a piece of my future & I accepted a piece of him & a piece of his future & what if what we spoke became true? What if he appeared on my doorstep (for the record he doesn't have my address but that is beside the point, we have mutual friends, he could find it & besides he is one of those annoyingly resourceful men who always get what they want)? What if he rocked on up & told me that life had changed, that he still loved me.. What would I do with that? How would I clean that up? I had made a full on heart felt promise, I had actually given him me & he had taken it & stored it away for later & what would I do if later came? Even the thought of it left me paralysed in fear as I sat at my desk trying to read ASIC papers, getting up to get a cup of tea didn't help either. I was shattered to the core with utter fear that the words I had once spoken would come to pass.

This may seem a bit dramatic but I realised today what that promise meant! I realised that I gave him something that I didn't have & something that wasn't mine to give. Firstly I gave him my heart (or so I thought) but if I'm honest I was so messed up & broken & confused that I didn't even know what my heart looked like or how to use it! You see my heart was frozen solid wrapped in ice cold self-hate & even if you could thaw it out, it was hidden behind the walls I had built up to try to stop myself from getting hurt ever again & just to be sure I had placed in front of the walls an ocean of disappointment which I filled with words & emotions from the hideous relationships I had chosen in the past.. My heart was inaccessible yet for some reason I thought I could give it away. It was almost as if I mistook the warmth of his body & the excitement I felt for the beating of my heart. I realise now that I had deprived myself of love for so long, I was so frozen that I would have given my heart away for any kind of heat, anything warm! That's not fair, it makes our relationship sound trivial, it makes it sound like we didn't care for each other & we did but at the same time our relationship was wrong & I did give away something that I didn't even have access to & for me that realisation is huge!

You will be pleased to know that my heart is all thawed out, it works & I use it all the time now but to realise how little I valued it, that hurts. I hurt for the woman I used to be, for her pain, sadness, loneliness. It hurts to know the consequence of hating myself, to see how I would give away so much so willingly just to feel some love & warmth. wow. I kinda feel like I've been punched in the face by myself.

I also realised today that what I gave away wasn't mine to give. My heart & my future those things belong to God. He created me, he gave me my life, he guards my heart & my future is in his hands. My life never has & never will belong to me yet I foolishly gave a piece of both of them away. Ouch. I don't even know what to do with that.. I shake my head at myself & blink a few times but the words of the promise are still there staring back at me in black & white. Yep I really did try to give them away.

Sooo back to the big hideous, scary question.. what would I do if he rocked on over all ready to cash in? Honestly I don't know. I don't love him anymore, I know that. I am a new creation & he doesn't know me at all, I know that. What he accepted from me was not real so he can't cash it in, it would be like taking the money you won at monopoly & trying to buy something from the shops, it doesn't work, the store won't accept it because it's just not real. I guess that answers the question, he can't cash in what he doesn't have..

It is so easy to make a promise, to give ourselves away but promises are bigger than we think, they are important. I guess today I have learnt that a promise will never return void, you must clean-up that which you have promised. I pray that in the future I will value my promises xoxo

Standing still - I'm so not used to this!

Right now I am standing still. I am peaceful, quiet, wanting in anticipation for what is next. I am on the cusp of a completely different life. I am on the very edge, I see where I am going, I see exactly what it looks like but I can't access it yet. It is like I am in a big glass elevator, I have jumped in and pressed the button, the doors have closed; the lift has begun to rise. I can look down and see where I have been, I can look up and catch a glimpse of where I am going, I am on my way, so very, very close but I'm not there yet. So I stand still and wait..

Praying that I can get comfortable waiting xo

Reflections: letting go of the golden child

"Dear Father, I am sad so very, very sad. I feel sad & alone & uncertain if my future. I feel like my dreams have been shattered into a million little pieces. Like my future is no longer mine. The dreams I once had seem so very far away like they belong to another. I feel lost Lord. So, so lost. So far away from my own happiness, so far away from understanding my joy.. once more I feel broken, hurting & afraid. Perhaps I am this sad or perhaps I am just afraid. Afraid to let go of the dream, the wonder, the title. Am I afraid to take off these ill-fitting clothes, this armour of sorts? Well yes I guess I am. I don't Like being the golden child but it sure is easier than not knowing. It's easier to be who I'm expected to be, to push myself around, to fit. At least I know these rules. I understand this game. Love Min 6.47pm, 11 October 2009, Sydney"

These words seem so far away, they are so removed from my current space that I almost can't believe I wrote them but I did, that was me and my life. That was the cage I lived in. I was the golden child, one of the chosen few, stamped with the future senior associate stamp by the powers that be. I wore the crown of my career proudly on my head, I let it define me, I let them define me. I built & shaped my life around my work. I became trapped in my own success & that success had a high price. I sacrificed everything on the alter for my career. I laid down the things that made me me, friendships, writing, dancing, relationships, I even sacrificed myself. All for my career. I became a workaholic superwoman, I ate in the places you were supposed to eat, with the type of men you were supposed to marry, I went to "THE" places to be, I was living the dream and I was miserable. I was empty. I was lost.

It is hard to read those words, hard to accept that I had chosen to walk that path, hard too look at the person I was, to hear the voice of fear that trapped me. It breaks my heart but then I turn the page in my journal and read the cry that sprung forth from that sadness:

"Dear Lord, I pray for your guidance & love. I pray that you will open my eyes to your wisdom. Unlock the fear that blinds me. Open the doors & lead me down the path you have laid for me. Give me the courage to press on & the wisdom to make the right decisions, Amen."

Such a simple prayer. Short & simple but from the deepest part of my poor lost soul. I wanted so badly for my life to be different but I knew that I couldn't make that happen, I didn't have anything left to give & even if I did I didn't have anywhere to pour into anymore, my career was nothing, my life meaningless, my relationship was over, I was worthless. I was stood in a valley when I looked behind I saw a wall of failure & pain, when I looked ahead I saw a wall of hopelessness, a life without love, purpose or direction, I couldn't see me anymore, I was lost & sad & paralysed by my choices.

I am amazed that in the depths of sadness, trapped in my own darkness, I could pray. It was such a simple prayer but it was all I could pray. And man did I pray it, during those days I prayed that prayer & a million like it, I didn't know what else to do. My soul cried out for guidance, for love, for wisdom. I didn't even know if he would hear me & if he did I wasn't sure that he would listen. I wouldn't have. I knew what I had done, I knew who I had been & I felt a deep sense of hatred for myself. It felt like the misery & pain was exactly what I deserved. But he did hear, he did more than hear, he walked right into my darkness & met me there.

He walked into my fear & pain & anguish, he scooped me up into his arms & he carried me home to my family. He gave me guidance & love. He opened my eyes to wisdom. He removed the fear from my eyes & showed me how to see with eyes of faith. He opened the doors, took my hand & led me down the path to this life of purpose & meaning & love.

It has not been an easy journey & the journey is not over, everyday I am faced with something else, a mindset, a wrong belief, everyday I am uncovering pieces of me that if left alone could have the power to trap & destroy me so everyday I make a decision to hand it over & live in his grace. Everyday I make the decision to accept his love. It's not easy to accept his love, especially when I am used to working so hard for everything, when I am used to hating myself. Right now he is challenging me to love myself. I love him, I love my life, I love the people he has put into my world, I like myself now, I am nice to myself & sometimes (if I am honest rarely) I love myself but I don't love myself like he does. I don't value myself like he does. I don't look in the mirror & see a woman who is worth far more than rubies..

Boxed up emotions

Do you have no access spaces? You know those areas inside that you know about but pretend you don't? Like the relative no-one sees at Christmas, you kinda pretend they don't exist until one year they show up drunk and you remember why you pretended they didn't exist but have no choice but to deal with them.. That sounds horrible but you get the point. Back to the no access areas, do you have them? If so what are they for you?

Mine generally relate to past relationships, they are possibly my biggest no go to zones. My theory is they ended for a reason put them away and move on but unfortunately it's not that simple. Unfortunately the drug addict, the affair, the friend, the high school sweetheart each of them left an imprint, each in their own way whether good or bad or both, they shape who you are and how you interact with members of the opposite sex. I would rather forget about them, look for the lesson in them, be thankful for the lessons and then move forward but lately I've been realising that you can't move forward while you are still tripping over your past and that until you will keep tripping over the same emotions until you let them heal.

You see I am one of those annoying life goes on people, the pick yourself up, dust yourself off and keep moving kind. I am generally so busy moving forward that I neglect to feel the full emotion of all that has happened and end up putting it in a box and labelling it "junk - do not open". Lately, I find myself in situations where these emotions or the relationships that they stemmed from are re-surfacing and after years of locking them away I am looking at them with fresh eyes. Eyes of love and not of hate. Eyes of healing not of hurt. I am amazed at what I am seeing... besides seeing how one little decision made in a moment of heart-ache can result in years of poor relationship choices I have seen the power that fear gives a situation.

You see when you are afraid of feeling the hurt of a break-up and you quickly put those emotions in a box and lock them away, you give the emotions a strange power over you. Something happens when you don't even look at them, when you just go "wow this hurts" and lock them away, it's like you are so busy being afraid of getting hurt that you don't take time to see how big the hurt really is. Now I find myself opening up the boxes after all these years and the main thing I am discovering is that the hurt I was afraid of isn't even that big. For years I have been locking away these emotions, too afraid to see them because the hurt would be too much to bare but all this time it was a lie. The hurt wasn't what was big, the fear was.

All this time and it was the fear because the emotions themselves, the relationships that ended, when I look at it instead of hiding it, when I stop being afraid and I lay it all out in front of me.. well it all seems so much smaller. So I've decided to keep taking the lids of the boxes, I am reaching in and taking out the relationships and the emotion and I am looking at them and letting them be healed.  

We all have no go areas, spaces inside that we don't access, each of us have these little storage compartments deep inside where we store all the stuff that we don't want to think about but the longer we store them there the bigger they get and the more afraid of them we become. So my prayer is that this week we will have the courage to take the lid of at least one box, that we carefully and lovingly lay it's contents on the floor and then we look at the contents with eyes of love and allow God to heal the pain that only he can heal. Be blessed and let your emotions free xo

How much can life change?

How much can life change in a week? In a month? How quickly can we be catapulted from one season to the next? How quickly can we awake from our holidays into the harsh reality of life? How quickly can the world as you know it change?

I wasn't going to post about the floods. I specifically recall thinking earlier today how I was going to make some time to get here tonight but that I wasn't going to talk about the floods.. yet now I am here and I don't know how not to talk about them so I will break the deal I have with myself and talk about them, maybe less them and more how I feel about right now but nevertheless the floods will get a mention.

Today was our first day back at work. After almost a week of being shut down Brisbane city resumed operation as the commercial hub of our State. It was extraordinary and surreal. I don't quite know how to explain it but something is different, our city has grown up a little, a shift has happened and you can feel it in the air. Maybe it's like the water washed the crap off.. the pretty, perfect, polished facade that was fast growing up over this beautiful, big country town we call home has been washed away and what is left is magnificent. There is this earthly beauty to our city, a unity, we have resurfaced stronger, together. Wait! I can't quite capture this and I kind of don't want to.

I'm not sure why I find this difficult to write about.. maybe it's too soon, maybe it's because if I write about it then it becomes very real, maybe because writing about it makes it sound like it is over and it's not. It's almost like writing about it makes it yesterdays story but in reality it is very much our today and will be for many days to come. I guess I feel uncomfortable about going back to work. It seems kinda wrong to be going along with my life while so much of our city is in ruin. I feel like it's insulting to be resuming our normal lives while thousands of peoples homes remain unlivable and their lives are so insane.

I guess the biggest issue for me today was that there was no meaning in my work, I looked around my office and at the day ahead of me and it was empty and unfortunately this feeling was a little too familiar. After spending 2 days at church actually making a difference sitting in my office was more difficult than I imagined. Deep inside me burns a desire to use the skills God has given me to help the people who are suffering. It just seems like a waste to use my brain and hands in the office when they could be used to help, I could have been helping to mobilise and support our volunteers or even better I could have been out in the field but I wasn't. I was at work and for me that was hard. It was coming home from Cambodia all over again and suddenly the emotions of that time in my life came flooding back...

I can still feel them now as they simmer under the surface, they come from a pure place, from a desire for more, a desire that my life have meaning, a desire to live a life of purpose, from a heart that is breaking for the things that God's heart breaks for but I know the destructive power of these thoughts and emotions. I know how if left in the wrong hands they turn from healthy desires to a seed a bitterness.. I know how quickly I can go from enjoying my life to seeing it as empty, how quickly I can despise the choices I have made to date. How quickly thoughts like I chose an empty career, I chose to pour myself into the lie, I am a waste of air can grow, the list of them goes on and on and I can get so lost in them that I begin to hate my life and myself until I self-destruct.. Somewhere deep inside the pure thoughts were still alive but last time I got so lost in them, the truly consumed me, it was like they were twisted and manipulated until I drowned in the swirling pain of a life with no meaning. It sounds dramatic but at the time it was.

How much and how quickly my life has changed. A little over 12 months has passed and in the wake of the greatest tragedy to face my country during my lifetime the same thoughts and emotions have surfaced. The desire for more, the desire for a life with meaning, the desire to live for a purpose.. all of these desires burn brightly inside but this time the swirling pain has been calmed and the deep throbbing to do more simply fans the flame. This time I see the choices I have made that have made a difference, I see how God used my poor choices to shape me, how the things that made me feel empty now inspire me to keep walking on this path.  It's amazing how the same thoughts and emotions will result in a completely different life when they are placed in the hands of God. My heart is still broken but this time I have hope.

So today I am thankful. I am thankful that the fact that life appears to be returning to normal disturbs me. I am thankful that my heart is broken but my spirit is alive. I am thankful that I have enough faith to know that my returning to work will ultimately help our economy which in turn will help those who are suffering the most. I am also thankful that the desire to live a life of purpose and meaning gets stronger everyday but most importantly I am thankful that this time my thoughts and desires are in the hands of my God and I am thankful for this journey xo

faith bigger than fear

I am a woman of faith. I believe in God. My God is merciful and kind, loving and generous, my God is a God of life and not of death. I have been afraid before, afraid of giving up my career, afraid of the unknown, afraid of the future, I've even been afraid of myself but no matter what my faith has always been bigger than my fear. In the last few years my faith has been tested, I feel like I have indeed walked in dark places only to find God there willing me to come home, to believe in him but right now it is facing it's greatest test yet. My father is sick, not just the mental issues that he was having earlier in the year (which were devastating) but he is now physically sick, not the chronic pain or side-effects of medication sick that the doctors talk about but emergency room, fast track tests sick.

My father has been sick like this before years ago so we have walked this path as a family. Last time he came away better than the doctors expected - not himself, not whole but better than expected. I guess perhaps on some level this should bring comfort, we've done this before we can do it again.. except it doesn't because this time we know what the words "we've found something in your blood and want to do an MRI" mean, after annual MRI's for almost 14 years we know how hard it is to get an MRI, these concepts that were once foreign are now familiar. I know the look of fear in my father's eyes, the need to have us close, the frailty in his shoulders, the colour of his skin, I've seen these things before.. From experience I know that everything before my eyes points towards a tumor. Then there is the fact that he is not walking into this as a healthy man in his early 30's with a young family to fight for, he is walking into this as a man in his mid 40's who has survived on a cocktail of prescription drugs, chronic pain and virtually no sleep for the last 14 years, a man who feels like he's aged 10 years in 2 days (more words which are familiar). The fear inside me is big, I feel it bubble to the surface as the tears begin to stream down my face.

Is it too soon to cry? Too soon to let the fear stain my cheeks with lines of black mascara? Too soon to sniffle as I write? Am I giving into fear when there is still hope? And there is hope.

I feel like a little girl again, 13 and afraid. I feel uncertain, unsure, powerless and sad. Maybe even a little bit alone or at least scared of being alone. I love my father more than I love myself, he is an amazing man, a kind and loving father with a gentle spirit and a fight in him like I have never seen. An overcomer as the scriptures call it, one not content to listen to the word of the world he walks when they said he wouldn't, he is determined to live a normal life rarely limited by the pain. He is a gift and inspiration. Just the thought of him makes me smile.

I guess that's why this hurts so much and why the fear is so great but the question now is, is my fear greater than my faith? I hope not. I hope my faith is bigger. Is my fear bigger than my God? I know it is not. Can I look beyond my fear to the hope promised in the scriptures? Can I see the light of my God in the darkness? Are the promises of my God enough to get me through? In this dark hour can I say "I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the Land of the living (Psalm 27:13)"? Can I say that I will "wait for the Lord: be strong take heart and wait for the Lord (Psalm 27:14)"? Can I allow my faith to be bigger than my fear?

My prayer is that I will be able to look beyond my fear in the coming weeks to see my God. May my faith be bigger than the fear xo