Life Goals

It is the first week of May as I write this. Which means it's been just a few weeks since Easter. Feels like more time has gone by than what has actually gone by. On Good Friday this year I attended an event that changed my whole outlook on my life. Pastor Miles McPhearson from the Rock Church in San Diego was a guest speaker at this event and he encouraged us all to start physically standing for Jesus through obedience. The interesting thing was that even before this challenge from him, I had been dabbling with the idea of being more obedient to Christ....I know, what a revelation, right? And I feel like this was God's way of saying, "Yes, that's a good choice and here's how you get started."

After the Good Friday challenge I went to the front and waited in line to talk to Pastor McPhearson. I wanted to thank him for his message of encouragement and I gave him a very brief background/update on my own life and where I was at in life. I felt like the woman with Jesus who said, "Go, and sin no more" as Pastor McPhearson prayed with me that day and then told me, "Just go, and be obedient to the Lord." It suddenly seemed like such a simple task.

Now, some of you may read my blog regularly or know the intimate details of my life well enough to know some of the major struggles in my past. And let me tell you, my divorce isn't really one of them. Being a single mom, so so hard as it is, isn't really my biggest struggle. Being a single mom comes with a lot of feelings of loneliness, which greatly impacts my greatest struggle; but it isn't actually my greatest struggle. My greatest life-struggle that has been the sole purpose of all my life choices to date is that of seeking the feeling of being loved and feeling unloveable.

Now, don't get me wrong. There was a lot of love in my family. My parents loved us and I know this because of how hard they worked physically, mentally and emotionally to see all their children succeed in every aspect of life. I think it was inevitable for me to feel unloveable the older I got just because of other things like Hollywood movies. "Love" in Hollywood is so far from reality, yet, woman of ALL ages get caught up in what Hollywood portrays to us as love.

And during all this Easter challenging in my life, my amazing and beautiful sister-in-law sent me a book to read called Sex and the Soul of a Woman. It's a book for healing for woman like me who came to see "love" with a man as giving a part of yourself a way through sex. As I opened the pages of this book, the very first sentence, the first paragraph, was me. How empty and hard and bitter I had become as time after time of giving myself to a man to try to gain or keep his affection turned against me every time. What amazed me is how hopeless the personal testimonies shared by other woman were in the book. Each one seemed to say, "I gave away a part of my soul because I thought it's what I had to do to keep his love; but he's gone now anyway and what does it matter? That part of my soul is gone and I'll never get it back." It's so true. You do get to a point after so many attempts at finding love in this way, that you start to say, "Well, I'm ruined now so I might as well enjoy the game, the high. I know this won't last but for now I can feel loved and what does it matter? I've already lost myself." And THAT is so true! I've completely lost who I am as a person. Who was I before I started trying to gain acceptance in this way? It happens at such a young age, that it's almost impossible for me to remember who I was. What were my ambitions? What did I value about myself before I thought my value came from a man or sex?

The third thing that God did this past Easter was He brought to my attention the movie Courageous, that had been sitting on my counter in a Netflix envelope for weeks. One afternoon I was cleaning the house (being productive, for once) and it was like the Holy Spirit stopped me in my tracks. I just suddenly felt an urge to watch this movie. And as I did so, I realized I had gone into a whole different world. The house could have been burning down around me and I wouldn't have noticed I was so fixated on the show. I hardly noticed that the actors weren't the best. I cried throughout the movie and felt fear and anxiety as I watched as if I didn't know the ending or the outcome. (I had seen it before) The story came to life for me and when it was finished I jumped up and I said, "Girls, get ready to go, we have to go to the mall."

We all went to the mall and I was on cloud nine with ideas of things I wanted to do to turn my life around. I bought a notebook to write some vows in and keep a journal of my journey as I attempted to keep them. And then I also bought myself a promise ring. I didn't get a cheap one either. I went to a jeweler and I was there a really long time contemplating my budget and my goals and what I wanted this ring to represent. I left the store with a beautiful rose gold ring with three opal stones to represent myself and my girls. I have a payment plan that will have the ring paid off in a year. I liked this plan for a few reasons. One, every time the money comes out towards the ring I am reminded of my goals and my vows. And two, I decided to use this year to pay off my ring as a way to gauge where I'm at with my vows. I put the ring on my left, wedding finger and I told myself (and my girls) that I was going to be married to God for the next year. Dating Jesus, as I'll sometimes refer to it. During my year of dating Jesus I will learn how to love God and how to be obedient to Him. I will make real efforts to changing my life style, the way I value and think of myself and my relationship with my kids. I vowed in this year of dating Jesus that I will not date anyone else. I will not go to online dating sites, I will not accept offers or pass out my number. I will simply focus on being married to God. When the year is over and my ring is paid off I will have (ideally) learned how to love God and make Him the first and most important part of my life. I will have (hopefully) healed my body and my heart, my mind and my soul of my past attempts at love. I will then switch my ring over to my right hand indicating to God that I'm now ready for anyone he might have in store for me. This doesn't mean I'll go back to online dating or seeking someone. It just means that I'll be willing to date again if God wants that for my life. But, I will also be willing to go on being single if that is His will because that's what this year is all about. Submitting to His will.

It's interesting how all this happens. It's so very clear that God was in on these Easter changes for me. After I wrote my vows I was excited to tell my family and prayer warrior group, my Pastor and even my old friends who needed to know that I had made a change. I saved my Sunday School teacher for last. I wanted to tell her face to face about the vows I was making because she had played an important role in my life, being a friend and encouragement to me in the last several months. I didn't get to church early enough that next time we all met for Sunday school for me to tell her before class what had happened. And so it was fascinating to me to see how God works as she explained her next series of lessons for us. She said she was feeling heavily burdened by the Holy Spirit to start a series on how woman in the Bible can be obedient towards God. I was so giddy with excitement that I couldn't wait to tell her how amazing God was and how neat it was that he would work like this and align things just so.

Well, all that was just introduction to my actual thoughts this morning, ha ha. You know we get these revelations in life sometimes and we get that Spiritual high in the moment. But, if you've ever been to a summer camp or retreat you know that the feeling goes away. What I appreciated about God working this Easter is that he didn't fill me with ecstatic feelings that would fade. Because I am an emotional person and I often base things off of how I'm feeling. What I liked about this moment in my life was that there wasn't any extra ordinary emotions. These various things would happen and the next day I would still wake feeling anxious and depressed as always. My life went on as always. I didn't have any major turn of feelings or any immediate healing. What I did notice though is that God would bless me with a good attitude and good days. I wasn't so grumpy all the time, which immediately helped my relationship with my girls. And I began to have more productive days. My feelings of anxiety and depression in the mornings were easily swept away after I would do a few things to connect with God. And the thing was, I didn't start reading my Bible every day. I didn't start a daily prayer routine. I didn't do a whole lot of things differently. So, these weeks would go by and I would get discouraged sometimes that I wasn't really doing much towards my new vows and I would wonder what it had all been about. But, God would send me an opportunity that day to be obedient. And I would recognize it and I would obey. I would get to go home and write in my journal how I had the opportunity to obey and I would get encouraged. Then the next day would be the same: wake up with depression and anxiety wondering what it was all about, start my day, earn a victory, go to bed happy.

Through out all this I would keep opening my heart to God's will and looking for a direction he was taking me. I didn't know where to find His will; but I was sure to keep looking in the right places. I listen to a lot of sermons, KLove, Christian comedy and God started to show me His will little by little. I've honestly gotten more out of the announcements from my Miles McPhearson sermons I'm listening to than his actual messages, ha ha. He will give an announcement about an app or something that his church is using and I'll download the app and it turns out to be the part that God was leading me towards. I found out that the Rock Church will send you a daily Bible passage to your email. Now, every morning as I go through my phone and get rid of all the red notification markers, I come to my email. Every morning I see I have a new email and it's that Bible passage. I take a moment to read it and learn from it and journal about what I learned and share with others if I feel led.

God doesn't lead me every day like I thought maybe He would. But once a week or so He gives me something to work on. First it is the Bible passages coming to my email. Then it is a sermon about giving God the firsts of all that you have. I wasn't touched by the sermon when I first listened to it. But, days later when I was reflecting about my vows and trying to find God's Will in it all, the sermon came back to me with a goal and something I can work on towards obedience to God.

So, all in all, even though I still feel depressed at times, I see that God is watching me and guiding me. This is exciting for me to see God work in His timing. It's important for me to learn that I have to keep Godly things in my life. If God isn't working as fast as I want Him to I might get distracted by Hollywood or personal desires. It's important for me that no matter how badly I want to just watch a regular movie, I have to watch my sermon videos or Christian comedians instead. No matter how badly I want to listen to an old song that I loved, I force myself to stick with KLove. And it's usually only a matter of seconds that go by before I realize the Godly choices are better. I get much more encouragement from the sermons or Christian music than I do the worldly stuff.

The greatest part about all of this is that my past life disgusts me. I do feel broken and bruised from the choices I made before, the men who hurt me and the parts of my soul that I gave away. Every once in a while an old contact will reach out to me and it angers me that I had even let this person affect me before. It angers me that I allowed myself to let that person dictate my value. Praise Jesus for even that victory alone!