and breathe

I feel like my life is out of control. Like I am spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning and if I don't just stop for a minute, I'm going to get dizzy and pass out. I feel like I just need to take a brief moment to catch my breath. The last month has been one moment of unbelievable joy after the other, it has been great, it is great but I just need to take a moment to check out of it and into me. Don't get me wrong my life is wonderful, glorious, amazing and I only have good things to say about it. I am so happy, so very very happy. I don't actually remember a time in my life where I have been this happy but the joy of this season comes from something other than the romance of it all, it comes from discovering me.

I just swirled naturally into this new life, this beautiful magical world of romance and joy, the ease of the transition from single to couple surprised me, he surprised me. It was like one day I woke up and there was this amazing man in my space and he just wanted to love me, all I needed to do was say yes. I thought it would be hard, I thought it would mean losing myself in him, in our relationship, I thought he would want something from me that I couldn't give but it wasn't like that at all. I thought I would feel trapped, stifled, bound, like the freedom to be the woman I was created to be would be taken away but it wasn't like that at all. I thought I would need to put on a mask, to play a version of me that suited him, to pretend I was happy but it wasn't like that at all. I thought I would have to compromise who I was and what I believed in, that my relationship with God would suffer, that all of my relationships would suffer but it wasn't like that at all. It's so different, so strange, so far removed from anything I have ever known and I LOVE IT!

I love it. I love this life. I love this man. I love the woman that this relationship allows me to be. I don't pretend here, I don't pretend to be something I am not, I don't pretend that things don't matter to me when they do or do matter to me when they don't. I don't try to create a space for myself to fill in a life that I don't belong in. I just turn up and be me. It's like there is a different space here, a space that belongs to me, space in his world that only I can fill and space in my world that only he can fill. Everyday I am learning something new about myself, about the way I care for people, about the way I love, about the way I think, about the things that are important to me, about the woman I am becoming. Everyday he shows me another part of myself that only he can see, it's amazing. I love it.

It is extraordinary to watch as your dream comes true. To sit inside the middle of the biggest prayer on your heart coming true and to watch it unfold around you. I have almost been afraid to look in case it wasn't real so instead I have been spinning and swirling and twirling but now that I have stopped and can breathe, I am fascinated by what I see. I see a man who is my best friend, a man who cares for me, who cherishes me, a man who at the end of the day just wants to love me, I see a man who is seeking God, a man who loves God, who honours God. I see a man that I am learning and growing with, a man I want to keep learning and growing with. When I look some more I see myself, I am a woman coming alive, letting my heart be free to love, a woman allowing myself for the first time to fall in love with a man who will love me back, giving myself permission to be happy. I see our future and I see me and when I see all of this I am happy and free...

It's amazing what you can see when you stop to catch your breath. We all get lost in the twirling and swirling of life, whether it is good or bad, our lives are so busy that we can get lost in the stuff, we are so busy trying to live that we forget to take time out to breathe, to sit and stop, to be still and look at the dance we are in, to check whether the life we are dancing in is real, to see if we are being ourselves or poor versions of someone else.. I think it's important to stop, to sit and to look, to take time to appreciate this season, to look at the lessons you are learning, to see whether the dance you are dancing is helping you to become the person you were meant to be.

I pray that this week, as Easter approaches we take the time to stop and look at all we have been given by God. Time to look at the dance we have chosen, to see whether we are dancing closer to or further away from the people we were created to be xx

Choosing rest instead of chaos

Right now I am dancing in the chaos after months of change and movement and stepping up, I feel like I am constantly spinning and twirling and whirling around. I am laughing and joking and having lots of fun but at some point I need to stop, at some point my feet will start to hurt, at some point I will need a drink and some fresh air. At some point I will need to walk off the dance floor, out of the chaos and into the cool crisp air. That is where I feel like I am right now. I feel like I am walking off the dance floor, the chaos is still there and people are still dancing in it but for now I have had enough dancing and I am ready for a break.

I allow God to take my hand and lead me off the dance floor, through the door and into the garden. As I walk outside, I feel tired weary, a little like maybe it's time to go home but then the cool air hits my body and suddenly I am alive. The joy of dancing lingers in my body and a smile overtakes my face as I bask in the freedom of dancing the night away. When I was dancing, it was as if I was dancing to my song, a song written just for me, for my life and as I fumbled through the chaos trying to learn the steps I slowly, awkwardly began to roll with it, at some point I started to dance (kinda). It was magical, a dream come true and a part of me can't wait to get back out there but right now I want to be still.

Right now I want to sit on a bench wrapped in God's arms looking up at the stars he created, silent, peaceful enjoying the beauty of the dark blue night. A stalk contrast to the chaos there is no spinning here, no twirling, no dancing around. Here there is peace, purpose, rest. Here there is joy. As close my eyes I lean into him and allow his arms to wrap around me, I rest my head on his chest and I can hear the beating of his heart, as I listen to it the night gets lost, I get lost, I am consume by the tender thumping in his chest I listen to everything it is telling me. I am overwhelmed by his love.

In this moment I feel completely lost and undoubtedly found all at once. For this is the only place where I am truly free to be everything I was destined to be, in this moment I am doing everything I was called to do, in this moment I am his precious, loved daughter and I know without a doubt that I am completely loved, completely safe, completely protected and that nothing I can ever say or do will ever change that. I smile in the security of his love, a deep smile that consumes my entire being. I almost fall asleep but his soft voice gently wakes me. There is more dancing to do, more lives to touch, the night is not finished and they are playing my song again. Would I like to dance some more? He reaches out his hand and I take it.

I rise slowly to my feet and let him lead me onto the dance floor once more. As we approach the dance floor the chaos seems to have disappeared, I see people dancing now, I kinda know the steps, as we get closer he asks me if I will let him lead this time. If instead of trying to work out all of the steps for myself I will just look up into his eyes and trust him to lead us? Will I partner with him, following his lead? Will I look up, will I look at my feet or will I look at the chaos of couples dancing around us? Will I trust his feet? Will I give him control? Will I allow myself to relax into him on the dance floor like I did outside.. will I lose myself in him and allow him to make sense of the chaotic dance floor.. will I look up and dance with him

I pray that as I get up to dance again I will choose to rest in the arms of the one who created the dance, the one who wrote my song. I pray I will gaze up into his eyes and allow him to lead me around the dance floor listening only to the beating of his heart as he spins and twirls me along to my song x

Cluttered space

The space around me seems very cluttered at the moment. In so many areas of my life I feel like there is more in the space than the space can handle. Whether it be time, place, my emotional & mental space there just seems to be whole lot of clutter going on. I find it frustrating, the clutter. Nothing is more frustrating than feeling like there is too much going on in the space whether that be in a physical space or a mental space & I guess right now I feel like there is more going on than can fit in the space. I feel like my life is full to capacity  & that what I need is for God to expand my boundaries, to expand my territories, to add another room or something. That's not true. That's what it feels like but I know that that's not true.

What I need to do is accept that my life has changed and that I with that I need to change to. Don't misunderstand me I don't need to become a different person but the way I do things needs to change. I can't put the same amount in but give 4x more out. I can't squeeze extra stuff in without moving some of the old stuff around & I can't take something big & new & exciting & plop it in the middle of my life & try to move around it. I can't open up new parts of myself & not move some things around in my head space. I'm not sure I'm explaining myself.

So if my life were my bedroom & I suddenly decided that I wanted my desk to be in my room I wouldn't just drag it in & leave it in the middle of my bedroom floor & then move around it when I needed to get from the bed to the door or the mirror to the wardrobe. No if tomorrow I decided that I was going to move my desk into my room I would stop and consider the space. I would sit down and look at the room, look at what was in there and where it was placed. I would look to see where the spaces currently were and if the desk would fit in them. If there was no space big enough to fit the desk in then I would look at how I could move the furniture around so that the desk could fit in. I would shuffle things around so that it could find it's place.

I feel like that is what I need to do right now. I feel like I need to take some time out to clear some of the clutter, to have a good look at everything that is in my space & work out how to make it all fit together. I need to spring clean my life, my time, my energy, my heart, my mind. I really feel like right now I need to stop and clear the clutter so that I can see the space & appreciate everything in it.

I pray that before we go rushing & adding things into our space we will take time out to see what is currently in the space, to move things around & to lovingly place the new things in our space xo

Inspired

"a restoration of the feminine expression within the body of Christ" Bobbie Houston

my heart stopped and joy filled my body when I heard those words. The kind of joy that comes from hearing someone express the desire of your heart, the kind of joy that can only come when your spirit hears the expression of it's purpose articulated clearly for the first time, the kind of joy that captures your life and takes you on a journey with God, the kind of joy that overflows and infects the world around you, the kind of joy that inspires.

It is an inspiration that connects with what is being birthed deep inside, it feeds it, nurtures it until it has no choice but to come out. It is true inspiration, soul inspiration, God inspiration.

I pray that you will allow life to stop you, that when you hear something that speaks to your heart, when you hear something that opens you eyes, in that moment I pray that you will stop, stop and listen to the words. Chew on them, digest them slowly savouring the flavour all the way to your soul xo

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