Friend in Friend

I have been so wrong!

How could I have missed this? I mean it makes since, when I was a child growing up all I ever wanted from my parents was their love and attention.

Cayla is 3 years old this month, she is changing so much, I am sure it is far more that even I realize. For the past two days God has been teaching my heart about her, and leading me into a beautiful love relationship with both of my children. Wow, is God so incredibly patient with me, He is showing me what Cayla and I’s relationship looks like now and what I have been teaching her through it. It turns out that Cayla has been pursuing a relationship with me all along, even as a baby, but it has been my selfishness that has blinded me to it.

Every night for the past few months Josh and I have been struggling with Cayla, ok well better words to describe it would be barely surviving. She has been refusing to go to bed at night, it has become a process of laying her down and saying our prayers, tucking her in bed, lights out, shut the door and about 30seconds later the light is on and she is opening the door. SO we spank her put her back into bed, tuck her in, turn off the light and shut the door. This processes we end up going through about 8-10 times, sometimes it even goes on to the point that we have had to take all her bedding out until she agrees to go to sleep. I would have to say that we on average spent about 30 minutes to an hour on getting Cayla to go to bed every night, mommy daddy time is out the window. On top of our bed time struggles Cayla has been acting out in many other ways, she has started to tell me what to do, hushing me when I am talking, smacking me, and getting into everything possible and making the hugest mess she can with a smile. Those who know me know that I do not raise spoiled children, I mean I am on her all the time, yet she is acting out as if she runs the place, it has gotten to the point that I spank her more than I tell her that I love her. I have cried, I have prayed, I have pleaded with Cayla to stop (as crazy as that sounds), I have tried it all, or so I had thought…..

Ok so 3 days ago, I am not sure what it was but I think that God decided to take over my heart for the day, because I was feeling refreshed and full of patients. After breakfast I played around with them in their room, for about an hour we were all having a lot of fun just doing goofy silly kid stuff, I found it to be shockingly therapeutic. It brought me back to myself as a child and all the silly thing I loved to do. Later I made lunch, we all ate really good, I noticed that it was a nice day so we, the three of us, all went outside to play in the back yard. For a while I went down the slide thing with them and helped the kids climb up it and go down the slide, and then I went and got a lawn chair and just simply watched them play. Cadence was having a blast finding sticks and tasting each one and then trying to get Cayla with them. Cayla was climbing to the top of the big yellow thing and jumping off saying “I’m a super hero like Journey!” It was so fun just watching them and noticing how different they are and how huge each of their hearts are. After a long while I took them inside to take a nap, and I couldn’t believe it, Cayla wanted to go to bed and in fact she went right to sleep! I remembered thinking to myself, what did I just do, what was the formula, because I need to do that every day, but what God continues to show me is that there is no formula, but relationship. Cayla didn’t want to go right to sleep because I kept her busy and had her play hard , it was something much more, it was because she was whole, our relationship was whole. The whole day I was getting to know her, listening to her , loving on her by spending time with her. That was it!!!!! That is the answer, she has been acting out to get my attention and I in return have offered her a wall, I have been teaching her that our relationship is her acting out, breaking me down, and then after a long hard battle and many spankings there just might be a hug at the end. I have taught her that acting out is the only way to get me, I have made what I want to do more important than her heart. I truly understand the scripture in Matthew 10:39 “Who ever finds his life will loose it, and whoever looses his life for my sake will find it.” I have struggled for so long holding on to my life, refusing to die to self, being selfish really, and because of that choice nothing works out, everything clashes. I am always left feeling disappointed, feeling that I never have enough time for me, ha, as if it is about me. Being a Mom is one of the most important Jobs, we are responsible for the future of this world, how we decide to mother will determine what kind of leaders we have in 30 – 40 years. We are raising parents to raise parents, and so on and so forth. Being a mom means to die to ourselves, our looks, our personal dreams, yet in return we receive peace, and favor and the fruit of a beautiful family and happy children. Not only that but we realize that our tinny dreams that we once had are like a single grain of sand in comparison to what we will do through letting go. The sting of death to self is a painful one for sure, but it is only for a moment.

I am really starting to get it, in the deepest place in my heart of how extremely important parenting is. I have to admit that I have always been more along the lines of a drill sargent type parent, obedience was the bottom line, the most important thing. That is the way I was raised and it is WRONG! There is no relationship in that kind of parenting, God has clearly shown me that. That type of parenting is probably the most un loving way to raise your children, more than anything it is not really about parenting at all but more about the parent on a power trip. When you know better you do better, now I clearly know better!

So yesterday I involved Cayla in the process of making dinner, Spaghetti that is. I broke the noodles in half and gave them to her to put into the boiling water, she tossed them in over and over again, and each time she said thank you for my noodles with a bright glow on her face. Then I put in the hamburger meat and let her chop it up with the spatula and then she added the onions, and again she looked up at me with this huge smile and said thank you for my helping dinners. To be honest it made me want to cry, she has been wanting to do this with me for so long but only she didn’t know how, she only knew what I had taught her. Then Dad came home and she just ran to him and told him all about how she made dinner all her self, she told him about each step, and you know what now that I look back at yesterday I just noticed that she didn’t talk back to me , she didn’t hush me, and she went right to bed with no fight. I died to myself and I received LIFE! It is so crazy how everything in life ends up pointing to love.

“FAITH, HOPE & LOVE, BUT THE GREATEST OF THESE IS LOVE.”

(1Cor 13:13)

Part 3: Heart Recovery                              April 7, 2007

(Final entry on this topic)          

Ok so I have been a bit confused, this whole heart recovery thing started out by God speaking to my heart about my food/ weight issues. The nagging on my heart started when I had found an old wooden box, carved in it was the word letters, inside were all my old letters that I had kept from 5^th grade all the way until some time in High School. The very first letter that I pulled out was an old letter from my sister Leslie, it was an apology letter after a big fight that we had earlier in the week, back when we were in High School. I remember this fight because we didn’t speak for a few days. In the letter she said some shockingly real things about her heart, then she apologized for her part and then asked If I could not OINK at her any more because she really struggles with her weight. I was moved to say the least, it turns out that my sister and I are more alike than I ever thought; we just acted out our pain in completely different ways. The second letter that I picked up, and the last, was a letter I had written myself, it was the most disturbing thing that I had ever read. It was basically me congratulating myself for not eating, for loosing weight, and my game plain to loose more. I could feel the coldness, the death in that letter, my heart was not there, it had been hidden somewhere secret and control had taken over. After reading these letters I decided to dive right in, right in to the topic that no one ever talks about, the topic that most women struggle with but would never admit to it because they secretly love the control and the temporary rush of relief that it offers.

After my first entry I decided to just go with it, what ever God brings up , I would just type it out, I wanted so badly to expose this secret sin in the hope that one woman, or man, would hear God through it , that it might possibly offer them freedom, the freedom that it was offering me. Then surprisingly it went a whole new direction, in my second entry He took me to my past, myself as a little girl, re visiting some major wounds inflicted on my young soul. I thought that God was possibly trying to show me how I got to that dark, cold and lifeless place in the letter that I read out of my old letter box. But I could feel that there was more as He continued to lead me, He painted this beautiful picture of who He is to me, who He has always been to me. He showed me that He has been right by my side, the whole time, most of which He was even carrying me. Even though I didn’t know Him He knew me and love me all the while. God revealed to my heart at the end of the second entry that He has always pursued me, He has always hoped, and He has always dreamed that one day I would find Him, not just accept Him and believe in His existence, but truly find Him and deeply know Him. So as I reread the second entry my breath was knocked right out of my lungs when I got to the end and He said that He listened to me and comforted me, and carried me through it, over and over and over again. To be completely honest I broke down, nothing could stop the tears from pouring, I realized that this was the moment that He was waiting for, for me to truly see Him, to truly know Him in my life all along, for me to begin to understand the unending love that He has for me.

From the time of my last entry on the heart recovery until now He is continually speaking to me about the point, the point of life, the point of Him in our life. So over the past week or so I have slowly began to realize that the whole food issue is so so tinny, it is an extremely small detail of our life, it is us , women choosing to live shallow , choosing to live safe, choosing to live small. So I have been thinking a lot lately, what if I didn’t care any more, what if I really and truly believed that God is who He says He is? I mean what if I really believed everything that He has shown me in the past few weeks, what would that look like? Who would I be? I am the type of person who hates shallowness, and I find it funny that I have lived so incredibly shallow for so long and didn’t even realize it. I don’t want to be shallow, I want my life to mean something, I want to live for something other then myself, something that is completely out side of me, I want to live for something important, I want to Live for a God who can create and entire world with just a word and at the same time patiently walked right by my side through it all and loved me despite me.

The POINT IS: God is ONLY after our hearts, He wants to be #1 in our life always and forever, and He doesn’t want us to just think it or say it but with out even a single word at all He just wants us to live it. What would that look like? I don’t know, but I do know that to find out we have to leave our shallow way of living, I have started take that step, and let me tell you all that it is so scary because we have to be real with people.

When I started this Heart Recovery thing I shared it with my best friend first, she has been very supportive as always, but she said something to me a few days after posting, and my response really made me think. She said I wonder what kind of responses you are going to get to that, with out thinking I just said, I would be surprised if I even had one. To this day I have not yet had one response, there are several people many people even who I know read my online Journal regularly, yet there is silence. Why do I think that is, you are probably wondering. Because just maybe what I have said it a bold truth, it is a heart raw and exposed, it is an invitation to freedom and a new way of living that only Christ can offer, and lets face it change is scary. Living what we know, what the world we walk in daily offers even if it is death, seems easer than risking it all on this so called freedom. The truth is, I think that no one has responded because they are afraid to admit that what I have shared about myself, my shallowness, my sin is what they to struggle with. Because if we admit it, especially in public, then we have to do something about it.

I hope that God has stirred something in someone’s heart out there.

Love you guys!

~C

My beautiful little sister Jennifer is here!!!

~C

Part two:  A Heart Recovery                                  March 23 2007

It was a perfect spring day, the smell of life was moving in the air, stirred up by a distant approaching storm. The sun was popping in and out from behind the ever changing clowds. For a moment I let my mind wonder off in to the beautiful secret place of my heart, the place where Hope lived. It was a place where the princess was free to sing her heart out to the whole world; it was a place where the prince was the greatest strength in all the land, and where the evil blood thirsty dragon had been slain, never alive again to kill the heart of hope. This place was freedom, and a place where for a moment I could pretend that things were different, that things were still deep down good.

“Thump, thump……..Thump, thump………Thump, thump.”

His strong heart beat pounded against my ear as I lay on his side. He was a warm and gentle strength, soft with beautiful golden locks that flowed down his back. He was always so quiet, and would listen to all of my silly dreams; he longed to be with me every moment of the day. He loved me deeply and would gladly give his life for me if it was needed to be given. His name was Barney; he was thirteen years old, my dearest and most trusted friend, also the loyal family pet, a beautiful golden retriever.

“Barney, do you ever just wish that you could fly?” I asked, not really expecting an answer. “Wouldn’t that be so cool if we could be birds instead, you and I, I bet we would have so much fun? Sometimes I just wish that I could just fly away some where, you know like the mountains or something, just be Free.”

It was so beautiful and peaceful just laying there, trying to make out what the clouds were saying with their shapes. It was quiet times like this that seemed to make the deep ache of my heart go away, for just a moment. It was in that silent stillness that life made since and everything felt just right.

The wind was beginning to pick up now, the clouds had just consumed the last little bit of the open sky. The wild birds began to scatter in the air, flying about aimlessly; the trees were swaying back and fourth as if rocking their huge bodies to a beautiful song. Looking into the endless grey of this storm, I could feel a presence of some kind, something that was incredibly powerful, something that was far greater that me and even this mysterious storm that was about to hit. I could feel eyes watching my every thought, searching my soul for who I was and why I was here. It almost felt as if we, this presence and I, began to share our hearts with deep breaths, and gusts of wind, each taking in what the other was offering. I soon began to feel comforted, like I was in the very arms of Love. I didn’t understand what was happening or what this presence was, but I wanted it and I needed it, so I laid there for a while longer soaking up all that I could, telling my heart to never forget.

Now I was only about ten or eleven on that beautiful spring day, a dear memory that I hold tight to, I didn’t realize at the time but that presence that I felt in the midst of that mysterious storm was the very presence of God. He was making Himself known to my soul; He was beginning to romance my heart to His freedom. Ever since that I now find myself pausing, being taken back by the detailed beauty of His creation. I don’t know, there is just something about it that comforts me and gives me rest, momentarily restoring what the world has stolen. In those moments of true peace and rest, the entire world seems to stop and melt away. My heart doesn’t hurt any more; evil things no longer exist to torment my young soul. It is just me and this beautiful Loving God that sees something in me that the world can not.

I have always had this painful ache deep in the very center of my heart, a giant hole that one by one my hopes, dreams, and joys would slip into. I had always believed that this painful ache was created by life’s circumstances, it was because I wasn’t loved by the ones I so desperately wanted and needed it from, or it was because I was beaten often and for no good reason, or maybe it was because men had stolen my innocence growing up as a young child, and as a young girl, and even as a young woman. I thought, very recently, that if I stopped running from my past and just go back to these wounds and confront them head on one by one as they come, then surly the hole would begin to heal and close up.  I just wanted so badly for this ache to go away, and for my heart to be free from this torment so that I might have some kind of peace.

So with my dear sweet friend Amber at my side , supporting me , walking out this painful journey into the darkness of my past, I went back to where I believed the ache   began……

I was very young, all of four years old, an innocent little girl, and I loved getting into trouble with my partner in crime, my three year old little sister Leslie. I loved exploring the endless wonders of the magical place called the Kitchen. It was crazy, there were fun and tasty treasures behind each door, but I couldn’t do it alone because it was often guarded by a dangerous dragon, this dragon was a giant and something to be greatly feared, this dragon’s name was MOM! I needed a look out person, and my sister was the best in town, and she just so happened to live in the same room with me, so it was a perfect fit, we were meant to be.  We would wait until the dangerous beast would slip off into it’s dungeon to sleep, then and only then would we set out for our hunt. Like quiet little mice we would sneak in, search behind the doors, eat a little and save a little to take bask to our room for later, leaving a messy little trail , evidence of our presence behind. Every night was dangerous, yet an exciting adventure that we eagerly a waited. How ever there was one night that changed everything, it changed my sweet little innocent heart and how I saw the world, and everyone in it. My Mother (not really a dragon) took us with her to visit some friends, I don’t remember who these people were and what we did that day, but I remember what happened that dark night. It was getting late and my Mom decided to stay the night, so we all snuggled into one queen size bed together and quickly drifted off into a sweet slumber. At some point in the middle of the night a man snuck into our room, he managed to pull my sister and I out of the bed with out even waking my mother from her sleep.  Now I won’t go into the details because it really isn’t important, but what did happen that night changed me and I am sure my sister as well.

So I went back to that painful and fearful memory searching for something, looking for that part of me that was taken by evil, but I couldn’t find it. I looked so hard, spending many days and nights crying, but nothing, the hole is still there. So then I started to think that I just needed to go deeper, I needed to go back to each wound and once I had them all in my face screaming back at me, braking me down , that there is where I will find my answer to this hole and deep ache. So I went back to my Uncle who molested me at age 7-9, this wound was especially painful because he still to this day denies that it ever happened and most on that side of the family believe him. Then there was my parents friend, our daycare ladies husband, also a solid Godly man of our church at the time, this was a one time thing that just confirmed that I was worthless and only good for one thing, as well beating it into my heart that men will always hurt me. There were a few more wounds inflicted in the same way, but I won’t mention them because they hit very close to home.  So there it is, they are all now screaming at me, shouting lies that the enemy had hoped would kill me altogether. I was broken down to my knees, then to my face on the ground, but the hole is still there, the ache is still painful, and I couldn’t find what was lost.

 All of this, the Journey to my past, happened starting last year at about this same time, and going until about October. It was something that I put a great deal of time into, putting my poor husband through a whole big mess of drama and emotion, and the sweet man that he is supportively stuck right by my side, thankfully. Also during this Journey I began to seek God out early in the morning, allowing Him to guide me through this jungle of woundedness.  I began this with a hope to find myself, the lost part of me that in its absence has left a huge hole in my heart, a void. But in the end I did not find what I had so hoped desperately to,  I feared that this was all for nothing,  All I did was just drag my heart through the mud all over again. But something did happen, something that could not be seen, and something that was far more important than finding what was lost.  I found God! Through each pain He listened to me and comforted me, and carried me through it, He led me to the next place and then again he listened, comforted and carried me.  My eyes were so fixed on me that I completely missed everything, I was being courted and romanced again by the Loving God that spoke to my heart that beautiful spring day when I was only ten years old. The God that saw my heart and approved it, And He is that same God that just held me in his Love as the storm rolled in.

Right now as I am writing this I am blown away because I think this is one of those moments that you are writing something as if you have always known it , but in fact you have never heard it at all. I think that I am just hearing this for the first time and it is literally taking my breath away.

I will have to write more another time, I think that I just need to sit with this a while.

~C

PART ONE-  A Heart Recovery                                 March 17, 2007

When I was about 10 years old, I was quite the ugly duckling, and awkward looking child. I was living in Idaho at the time , so my since of style was several years behind, I was sporting the late 80’s early 90’s big hair wave, it was all about getting it as high as you could. I was covered in dark freckles and had a great pair of shiny buck teeth which seemed to swallow my entire face. I was also an extremely shy child, I remember always wanting to say something but always felt like I had nothing important or cool to say, so for the most part I didn’t really speak much.

I was the oldest of 4 children, so I was considered lucky to get even the scraps of my  Mom and step Dad’s love and attention. It didn’t help any that my younger sister Leslie, only 13 months younger, was what I saw then as the family prize. She was the very opposite of me, she was a petite spunky young beauty, sunshine seemed to flow out of the pours of her skin, everything seemed to work out for her. It didn’t matter what her circumstances were, people were drawn to her, approving her every thought, idea, and her every dream, including my parents.

I believe that the greatest human pain, is the crushing pain of loneliness, and loneliness was me then. It was the only thing that desired to hear me, my thoughts, ideas, dreams, and my troubled heart. Loneliness was my best friend, not by choice, but by the lack there of. The enemy, the king of lies was lurking (1Pet 5:8), he was circling me, waiting and searching for that perfect moment, waiting for the kill. The enemies aim was for my heart, he had to wait for the right moment, the moment of vulnerability, when my heart would fearlessly wonder out into the open meadow to eat and drink. Like a hunter , he was stalking me, bow and poisonous arrow in hand.

“Time for dinner!” my Mother called out. I am sure it was something amazing, back then my Mom was still at home and always cooking up great home cooked meals. As we all sat up at the dinner table my step Dad blessed the meal, and the food began to dance around the table, painting our plates with warm colors. This for me, was a place of comfort and safety, I could just rest in the sweet flavors of food. I am sure I filled my plate to the edges, by dinner time I was always so hungry, “hungry enough to eat a cow”, I used to say.

FLASH BACK:

When I was about 4 or 5 years old my Mom had just married my step Dad, he had gotten a job offer in Washington so we all moved out there from Texas. I guess the Job wasn’t going as well as he had hoped because we never had enough money. I still to this day can remember nights of being so hungry that I would just fall asleep waiting ,and  hoping for something to eat, I still remember the hunger pains, the way they would twist in my stomach like knots. One Christmas my Memommy and Grandaddy sent our family one of those cheese and meat holiday boxes as a gift, which was all we ate for several days. As a young child I learned that you had better eat good when there is food around because you never know what tomorrow will bring.

So I quickly finished my plate of food, and with out a second thought I went in for seconds. So there I was, with my guard down like a deer peacefully grazing in the quiet meadow. The hunter had my heart in perfect line of sight, he pulled back his arrow and released. The arrow wisteled towards me in complete silence, just as the arrow was about to pearce me, it’s message was read aloud unknowingly by my family.

“Wow Chanda, your going to have more?” said my step dad with a chuckle. Then as if harmonizing in song, someone else, probably my sister Leslie, added “OINK, OINK!”

I remember feeling ashamed, like I had done something so wrong, so I slid back in to my seat with my tail tucked between my legs. My heart was wounded in what had always been a safe place, a warm place, eating food has now become a shameful thing.

I was never an over weight child, in fact I had always been as skinny as a string bean. So being made fun of for eating, and hearing some one refer to me as a pig was confusing and it really hurt me in a deep place. After that day my heart saw eating as socially unacceptable, something that is to be shamed, the dinner table was now a place of judgment and woundedness. The piousness arrow of the enemy that was now lodged in the depths of my heart became infected; it birthed something very ugly and dark a lie that was to feared to be questioned. This is when my unhealthy relationship with food began, food was no longer a source of nourishment to sustain me, it had become an evil temptress that I needed, to live, but it seemed to  live to torture and control me.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

I have no idea where God will take me with this, but I do feel that God wants me to share my Journey, food addictions of any kind, whether eating to much or not eating enough, is something that many young girls and women of all ages struggle with. God created us to desire to be beautiful in heart and soul, however the world has deceived us to think that that beauty is only to be found in our flesh, in the end, food becoming the scapegoat in our heads, so that our hearts deep ache will never be heard. God wants our heart, all of our heart and the beauty that it offers, so how can we give that to Him if we ourselves have never seen it? As long as we believe what this world tells us as truth, we will always be missing our Love, Our Beautiful Lord, and the deep ache will never go away. Again I don’t know what God will do, but I am willing, and I will GO!

~C

I have been reading a book called “The Sacred Romance,” By: Brent Curtis & John Eldredge, It paints a beautiful Idea of what the romantic relationship that we were created to have with our creator looks like. It also talks a great deal of the enemy and the way he is out to destroy that Sacred Romance that we are to have with our creator.  It also goes into our past wounds called “Arrows”, arrows being the wounds inflicted on us by the enemy as an attempt to take us out of the Larger story , God’s story, leading us to create these smaller stories that only allow us to live half way, never letting us play the role we were created to play.

 Looking at life through this scope really puts a since of adventure in what was once a boring dry world in my eyes. It is really hard to see adventure and danger in the life of comfort that we live in the USA, it is so exciting when you allow yourself to look beyond what is seen through your eyes and begin to listen to the whispers of God on your heart. Soon you begin to hear walls being built up or torn down in the middle of a conversation with close friends, or lies from the enemy being spoken through fear. There was something that I read yesterday in the car on the way to church that clearly painted a picture of what is really going on beyond what is seen through the eye.

Pg. 118 (The Sacred Romance)

Satan uses the Arrows that strike all of us this side of the fall and weaves them into a story line to convince us that we cannot live with out the disguise of our false self, the role we are playing out in our smaller story. Our smaller stories are constructed along the plot lines of control and gratification. Once we begin to live this false self, Satan and his minions sabotage the story to make sure that we are exposed. Then he mocks us for our foolishness and hypocrisy for hiding behind such a façade in the first place. Other times, he simply leaves us to die in costume.

The thing that comes to mind by reading these books with such a romantic and adventurous idea of what is really going on takes me back to the Matrix. I feel like Neo being re-birthed in to the reality of the real world, a dangerous world full of adventure. It is like this unpredictable love story that we get to play a significant role in, orcastrated by our grand Creator, with Christ as the lead role, the hero, the brave knight.

Who knows what is really going on , or what the spiritual world really looks like, I don’t know ALL of God, He is far to Great for my small mind to grasp. What I do know of Him is what He shares with me through His written word, and the gentile whisper He puts on my heart, the sweet melody sang through the wonder of His creation, and the depths of His beauty seen in the lives of dear friends. God is Mighty and Strong, yet gentle and nurturing, He is quietly Wise, and convincingly Loud. He is soft and beautiful as the delicate peddles of a rose, and at the same time rugged as the un touched forest and more wild then anything in creation. There is just no end to Him, The Great I AM! So who am I to say who He fully is or is not? He is ever changing, moving like the wind, coming and going with no boundary. I imagine that He is far more different than we have ever created Him in our heart to be. To put Him in a box would be a dangerous thing.

I have been reading like crazy, questioning, processing, applying, changing everything….. Trying to absorb as much as I can in the moment, the moment being the trial that has some how turned into a retreat. We have been living in the basement of our friend’s home, sharing a room with our children, for just about 5 months. During this time we have felt that God has really stripped nearly all comforts away, and because of that very reason we have seen God so clearly, He has been able to show us many things about ourselves, our friends, our church, our family, and most importantly He has revealed His heart to us in the most beautiful ways. As I now count down the days of our time here at the Barnhart home, I find my self deeply saddened, yes it will be sad to not have shared laughter over a good hot cooked meal, prepared by an ever growing friendship, or the sweet 2 year old dance parties lasting into the wee hours of the night. But my deep sadness will be with the fear of losing all that I have gained, I have found true peace in the midst of discomfort, I have found my God every morning here. I have found Him in the pursuit, quiet tiptoes in to the kitchen, first juice for Cayla & milk for Cadence, then their yogurt, then my coffee, finding a first row seat to the most spectacular production; it is secretly put together every morning through the wildness of God’s creativity, displayed on the sky. In that pursuit I have found my true freedom, it is the moment that I am the closest to my Hero, my Love, my Lord. 

This was all for a season, one of the most important moment of my entire life, and I just want to take it all in. I want so badly to take it all with me, but our Journey is all about change, change inspiring growth, so I will leave it behind and begin a NEW pursuit and learn to seek my Love in the midst of a warm home of our very own. I know that he will be there waiting for me, waiting for the busyness and chatter to hush in my heart. Even though there is a soft sadness, there is an ever growing excitement blooming, it is in the mystery of the unknown, in the newness, in the change. Man, Life is so exciting, I finally feel like I am living, really living!

~C

“It’s not about doing the right things to be a good person,

It’s about being a good person so you do the right things.”

How often do we just get things backwards?  I have noticed how the culture of the good O’ll United States Of America is the worst with getting it backwards. Once upon a time long long ago we got it, what it meant to be real and good, honest and true and we taught it to our children and them to theirs. Once upon a time Heart mattered more than the appearance of having it all together. Our American Culture has changed from wholesome to hardened, it has turned into one big Broadway, It is all about who is the best act,. We are teaching our children to play dress up with their lives, teaching them that who they really are is not good enough, so you have got to pretend, and you have got to be good at it.

Instead of dealing with our junk and working on our heart, dealing with who we really are, we would all rather pretend that we are something less than true instead of working to become what we hope like good parents, loving wives, trust worthy friends, and diehard Followers of Christ. The crazy thing is that playing this dress up version of life

is a lot harder in the long run and with way more risk. You have got to remember what costume goes with what group of people, for what time of the day, and for how long. Then what if someone asks you about your past, well then you have got to quickly change costume mid act so that you can perform some sort of false reality of who you were then. You have got to portray your past perfectly because your past is a direct reflection of who you really are.

Gosh, what if you accidentally put on the wrong shoes, your entire cover could be blown. Everything that you have worked so hard to create for so long could crumble, you could be found out, revealed as the fraud that you are, and then what? You either face it, realize that playing dress up was not all that you had hoped it would be, you stop faking it , seeing that being exposed is the closest to freedom that you have ever been. Or you do what most of us do, you continue to run, leaving behind you a trail of burned bridges, meaningless relationships, and broken hearts. Your past continues to breathe down your neck just waiting for the chance to expose you again. You will never really enjoy life because you will never really live, because your to-do list never ends, and the many costumes that you carry  need to be constantly cleaned and freshened up. You’ll never have enough time to get it all done, you will always disappoint the very ones you aim to please, and the ones who so desperately long for you will never get you.

We have got to stop running and deal, or we will one day die alone and full of regret.

So what is God’s will for the Brown Family? That is something i have sought for a long while. It is so hard not knowing, what is even more hard is being a burden to great friends. We have been waiting to close on a house for over 4 months, the seller is not motivated to get things done, so the closing date has been moved 4-5 times. Originally we were suppose to move in October 15th, only staying at our friends home for 3 weeks, they have been more patient then any one I have ever known. I am at a loss on what to do or where to go, all I know is that we can no longer impose, I have no idea what God’s will is for our family but i have found that sometimes when you just step out in faith, fully trusting that God will catch your next step, His will is revealed and He provides. So Friday Josh and I put our foot down with the seller, we sent him a message that if we are not in the house by our current closing date of Feb28th then we are OUT, no more negotiation PERIOD! As well, we have decided that as of the first of March no matter what happens with the house we are moving out of our friends home, if we live in the car, hotel, dumpy apartment, then that is what we will do. We trust that somewhere through this stand that we have made God’s will shall be found. This is such a hard time for our family, we have been hit with a lot over the past 4 months, but we have grown more closer to the Lord then in all our years of knowing Him. We are so grateful for His goodness, and we know that he has a plan for us, a great plan that will bring us more Joy then we have ever known. I am just going to try my very hardest to focus on that hope today, for today has been a really hard day for me.

~C

As the storm rages all around me, I see your eyes, your eyes are of great comfort, they pearce through the waves of the enemy. In your eyes I find my freedom, the freedom to rest in who I am, I get it , I really get it! Even thought the waves may choke me for a moment ,your breath of life fills my soul. I can never go back, I am out to sea, and O how the sea is where I long to be. And the storm rages on…..Happily ever after