Who is Your God?

Who is your God? We all have one. Whether you believe in God the father and his son Jesus Christ whom he sent to die for us, you worship and believe in someone or something. What or who is it for you? Is is money, your job, your kids, your spouse, boyfriend/girlfriend, addictions of any kind such as drugs, alcohol, pornography, sexual addicton, gambling, eating disorders from one extreme of eating your feelings to starving yourself or binging and purging the food from your body to feel that empty and a distorted feeling of control that you think you have because you have no control of anything else in your life? Is it the need for approval from others, cutting or harming yourself, social media, binge watching tv? Do you worship yourself and your appearance? Do your have thoughts that taunt you such as, if I didn’t have these wrinkles or this weight I can’t get rid of? If I looked younger or thinner or if I could alter this part of my body, I know I would be happier with myself.? Do you workout or exercise to the point of exhaustion thinking that it proves your worth and value so you can just be skinny enough or good enough? There are many things in this world to worship, but I can honestly say from experience, if after asking yourself this question, and your answer is not God, you will search your whole life to fill the void in your heart that only the one who made you can fill.

My earliest memory of God is when my Grammy would take all of us grandchildren in the back of her Ford Bronco to vacation Bible school at her church. There were seven of us at that time. Felt Bible character figures on an easle board, and my Grammy getting us those little ice cream Sunday cups with the wooden spoons afterward are what I remember most. In the 5th grade, I was invited to a youth group by a classmate at the church up the hill from my house. I didn’t understand much when we read out of the Bible, but I knew it was good, and it kept me coming back. I began walking up the steep hill from my house most Sundays for youth group and then to church. After my sophomore year in high school, I didn’t attend church as much. My parents believed in God. They weren’t opposed to me going. They just were busy with work and everyday life, and they didn’t go to church. I actually don’t even really remember us talking about God a whole lot. When I was fifteen, one of my best friends died in a car accident. Looking back, I can see how God used that situation to draw me closer to him. I was saved and invited Jesus to live in my heart when I was pregnant with my youngest daughter on July 8th, 2003. I can look back now and see all the beautiful ways God tried over and over again to not just pursue my heart but pursue a personal relationship with me. A friendship and love that never could be replicated. God met me where I was at, walking with me through every moment I unknowingly held onto that, kept him at arms length. You just don’t know, until you know, but I’m thankful for the Lord’s love, mercy and patience with me in trying to rescue my heart and break through the walls that kept him out. Walls from pain and scars that I didn’t even know were there.

I will never forget the day that I really began to give everything I had to Jesus. The day I surrendered my will for His to start the process of really putting the pieces of my heart together in ways I never imagined possible. On this day, God met me in my mess. I had reached the end of myself and while He did not choose the circmstances that moved me and brought me to that place, He used it as an opportunity to begin the process of healing that throughout my life, I never knew I needed.

June 22nd, 2019, my husband of just 6 weeks shy of 20 years sat out on our patio, and he told me he wanted a divorce.  There was a coldness in him that I had picked up on in recent months, but I had made myself too busy to notice or put my finger on until this moment. He was leaving our life together, but he had “left” long before he ever said the words.  I thought surely he was just going through something and would leave for a bit and realize and remember all that God had brought us through and come back and it would be a continued story of redemtion for God to use for his glory.

My world as I knew and understood was ending.  I had been with him since I was 17 years old and we were married when I was 19 and he was 22. We had my stepson and his beautiful little girl, our granddaughter who brought us so much joy. We shared our 4 beautiful daughters together, 3 biological and our foster daughter. I went from a very full house to an empty quiet house full of haunting memories of our life together. We went to church every Sunday. How did we get to this place and not even realize it was happening?

I can sum this up in one sentence of only seven words of how we arrived at what seemed like a very sudden and harsh reality of pending divorce. This is perhaps the most important part of my story.  “We took our eyes off of Jesus.” I am certainly no expert in marriage, but I can tell you the things that can lead you to divorce. I can tell you how the enemy of your soul “Satan” looks only for a crack to find his way in to slowly pull your eyes and heart away from Jesus and you don’t even realize it’s happening until it’s too late. I can tell you how we had a beautiful home that we couldn’t afford because of the housing crash of 2007, but God in his grace and mercy made a way for us to keep it until we could afford it. A home that towards the end, we had completely remodeled from top to bottom doing everything we had always wanted to do to it. I can tell you that all the money we made in the jobs we prayed for and the late nights I worked building up my clientele in my hair salon doesn’t make one bit of difference now. I can tell you that going to church every Sunday with our daughters when I wasn’t appreciating my children as the gifts God gave and entrusted to me only hurt them because I didn’t practice what I preached.  I can tell you how even though we did not do things the way God wanted for us that because we did turn our hearts to him, he began to lead us into a place of healing from infidelity, addiction, and for me, years of silent pain of an eating disorder that began at the age of 18 and ended when God delivered me from that stronghold in Febuary 2016. A stronghold that the enemy put on me when I was a child long before, I ever had the chance to know how to defend myself. God began the process of redemption in and through us. He gave us everything we prayed for and “We Forgot.” How could we forget what God had done for us and what he brought us through?

The God we started to unknowingly worship was not God himself. We began to worship the things the world offered. I worshiped money, my job, things, my home, and how it looked. I began to worship an image of having the perfect life. I accepted Jesus in my heart, but I never actually let him into it. I only spent time with God fitting him in when I had time, which was rare and only for an hour on Sundays. When things felt hectic and all over the place, I would ask for God’s help in desperation only to return to my own devices and need to try and take control after. I never spent time in my Bible, nor took the time to read or understand it. We did go to Bible studies weekly and here and there, but that was the only time I read my Bible. The faith we did have was separate. We never prayed together as husband and wife.  After a divorce, it’s very easy to remember the negative things that brought you to that point. There were great moments in our marriage, but those were the times when our eyes were on God, and we worshiped him, and he was first in our lives.

The day he left and said he wanted a divorce, I feel like I heard God’s voice clearer than I ever had before. He said, ” Let him go.” I begged him to stay. God again said to me in the voice I was trying to ignore. “Let him go. He can’t hear me with you there. I know things that you don’t, and he is going in a different direction than you. Let him go.” I knew it was God’s voice, and I didn’t want to do what God was asking, and honestly, at that point, it didn’t matter. He was leaving whether I let him go or not. I had no control. The life I knew for so long was leaving, and I felt like the bottom had been pulled out from under me.

This, the day I will never forget, was when I completely gave God all the pieces of my heart. I cried myself to sleep every night lying in a bed I had shared with him for 20 years. The other side of it was empty now. Would the ghost of his presence and the smell of him beside me always haunt me? How would I ever be able to sleep through a night alone? The only way I could fall asleep was to take 2 Tylenol or Advil Pm. I kept my tv on for the noise. It was too quiet all alone now. I kept it on the Hillsong station, so when I woke up crying, I would hear praise and worship music and cry myself back to sleep, praising Jesus in my pain. I woke up in the morning remembering the reality of my life and that it wasn’t a dream. The day after he told me he wanted a divorce, we had to drop our youngest daughter then getting ready to enter her sophomore year of high school off at her dorm for a summer school program to help her prepare for college. I remember swallowing the lump I felt in my throat and holding back my tears, promising myself that I could cry at home by myself later. I wasn’t going to ruin this day for her more than it already had been. We were leaving her as her family was quickly unraveling. About 7 weeks after he left, we dropped our oldest daughter off at her dorm over 2 hours away from home for her sophomore year at college. She had attended her first year in our hometown. This was a day I had envisioned sharing with him our daughter’s whole life and now I had to share it with him swallowing every tear knowing every time his phone went off, it was his girlfriend encouraging him because it would be emotional to drop his/our daughter off and leave her. A day I envisioned many times, but never once saw me having to share this very important and emotional moment with her. That was supposed to be me. She took my life and my family, and he went willingly. You can’t really take someone willing to go. Every day, I opened my Bible app on my phone and read 5-6 devotionals one after another. I started reading the scripture verses in each devotional and eventually began reading the whole chapter. The more I read God’s word, the more I began to understand it and crave it. The more I sought God and prayed and talked to Him, the more I got to know Him and understood His word and His love for me. He brought me through moments of fasting in prayer breaking off strongholds in my life, such as the need for control, my attitude, how I talked, bitterness, and unforgiveness in my heart from things from our marriage and things from childhood that had nothing to do with him. It would not be fair to say that I didn’t contribute to the demise of our marriage. There were times I could be extremely critical and unloving and hurtful with my words. There are two people in a marriage, and to say that it was all him would only hurt myself and keep me stuck in the same place, unable to heal and grow. God can’t heal what we don’t acknowledge.

From the moment my ex-husband left, every feeling or emotion I had, I brought to Jesus. I didn’t want to hate or be angry at him or his girlfriend. I didn’t want our girls to have to hear me say anything negative said about their father. I didn’t want them to be in the middle of our stuff that they didn’t ask to be a part of. There were times when they witnessed me sobbing uncontrollably. They picked me up off the floor, comforting me. A job that surely wasn’t theirs, but there were times I couldn’t hide the tears and pain I was feeling from them. They could hear me. It was a big house, but in those moments, it wasn’t big enough to drown out the noise of painful memories that seemed to follow in every room. The weekend after he left, we had long before scheduled new windows to be put in two of our downstairs bedrooms. I remember him being outside talking to the contractors, thinking of how, from their point of view, we looked like a happily married couple just getting windows put in. He had known us for years. In reality, they were unknowingly witnessing a marriage ending before their very eyes. As he stood outside and went over the plans to continue installing the windows as planned, I thought about how normal it felt. It was as if he could just walk inside, and we could just go back to the way things always were and the world as we knew it wasn’t really ending. We could just pretend it wasn’t happening. It was all just a bad dream that we could pinch ourselves and wake up from. It was like mourning the death of someone still here. Not just a death of them, but of a dream. The dreams you made together and that you thought would be forever. I may not have known what it would really take to live out my marriage vows, but when I said them, I did know that it was until death do us part. I didn’t know to do this, that Jesus had to be first for us both. That we separately needed to be submitted to Him so we could to each other. I didn’t understand how to honor my vows to him and to God. The vows we say before God and our family and loved ones on our wedding day are not an “if those times come.” They are a when. Throughout our marriage, God gave us the promise through our vows that there would be times of sickness and health, and there would be richer and poorer times. We made promises to love honor and cherish one another. We made the promise that before those times happened, we would stand beside each other and walk through those seasons together. I didn’t know that without even realizing it, we had left God out of our marriage. We would never be able to honor the vows we said all those years ago without the God who created us and marriage. He created us in His image, and we need Him to accomplish His will for our lives. All those years in church and we missed that.

I would be lying if I said that I never had a bad thought about my ex-husband or his girlfriend for the ways they hurt me. Even though I was seeking God from the moment my eyes opened before my feet hit the floor until I laid down to try and sleep at night, there were moments of bitterness and anger. I’m human, and those feelings are to be expected, but every angry and bitter thought the enemy tried to throw at me, I took it to Jesus. I had those moments, but I didn’t stay there to live and let the roots of bitterness start to grow. There were moments I begged God in tears kneeling or curled up on the floor to just please make it stop hurting. Would it always feel like this? Would it always hurt this much? Would I ever be able to let go of him from my heart and let someone else in? Would I ever love anyone else, and would anyone ever love me? The person who had promised to for the rest of my life left and didn’t want me or to share a life with me anymore.  If I let someone else in, they could do the same thing, and I didn’t want to ever feel this pain again. 

As time went on, there began to be moments where, at the end of the day, I realized “hey I didn’t cry today.” Slowly, it began to not hurt as much. In desperation, I prayed for him to turn his heart back to Jesus and for our marriage to be restored. I held onto this and believed it would happen. God would surely come through, and in my mind, it was going to be a beautiful story of hope and healing for God to use. Maybe God allowed me to believe this for the time I needed to. God always listens to and answers our prayers, but sometimes the answer is no. We can pray for our spouse and for their heart to turn to God, but God cannot take away someone elses free will to answer our prayers. I began to let go of the dream and hope for the restoration of our marriage and filed for divorce in May of 2020. It wasn’t final until August 4th, 2021. It was a stipuated divorce, meaning we agreed on everything between the two of us, and we didn’t fight over assets. God told me not to. Again, I don’t want to pretend that I didn’t struggle at moments to “fight for what was half mine” especially since I didn’t ask for the divorce or the new life of singleness that was forced upon me. God quickly and kindly reminded me that anything we had, belonged to him (God) and to fight for things or money would just keep me stuck in bitterness and unable to let go and move forward in my life. The more I let go, the less it hurt. The more I handed over to God, the more He healed me. He showed me how to pray for my ex-husband and his girlfriend. I remember the morning I woke up and realized for the first time that it didn’t hurt anymore. It was June 18th, 2020. I remember it because it was the day of our middle daughter’s high school graduation party. I had just spent time in prayer, read my morning devotionals, and was listening to the song “The Truth I’m Standing On” by Leanna Crawford. It was the first time I’d ever heard the song, and it was just amazing how God had given me the exact words I needed in that moment in song. He brought me through a journey of healing and forgiveness that wasn’t just a one and done thing. True healing and forgiveness is a daily surrender to God as soon as you open your eyes. Not even just that. Sometimes, it’s handing it over several times a day. It’s a daily battle of fighting with what your flesh wants to do versus what God wants you to do. “Your flesh” is you wanting to do things your way (Satan’s) way for vindication to satisfy yourself in what you feel you deserve” Satan is very clever at putting thoughts in our mind, that if we aren’t spending time in and studying God’s word, we would never know the difference between what God says verses what Satan says. What God wants us to do is always the right thing in direct opposition of what Satan is saying to you. If you don’t know God’s word, you won’t know the difference. The enemy’s greatest tool is trying to win over our minds. God’s word, knowing, reading, and meditating on it daily, is the only way to fight this.

God strategically placed friends in my life who pointed me to him. People who helped me grow and learn. He used them to show me things and speak life into me and for me to do the same for them. Over time, he began to show me the gifts and talents he has uniquely given me and no one else. He’s taught me how to really fight for others through intercessory in prayer. He has shown me how to love and see others how he does. I learned this by spending time with him. I spent time with him by reading his word, worshiping and thanking him and talking to him. I began to see Jesus as my best friend who wanted my heart and a personal relationship with me. He showed me how to walk through forgiveness and healing from things that I didn’t even know affected me from childhood. He showed me how to trust Him and that I have an opportunity every day to choose Him instead of my fears. Trusting Him is a daily choice. I’m still learning that. I believe choosing to trust God every day with our lives gets easier as we grow in our relationship with Him, but it is a choice we have to make every day. A decision to put our faith in Him and not ourselves and our own abilities to run our lives.

I never really dated because I had been with my ex-husband since I was 17. That was a learning process. In case you didn’t know, it’s not pretty out there in the dating world. I could write another whole story about online dating. It was like being on a constant job interview. I was horrible about even keeping up with messages and went on some dates. I met a few nice people, but I realized pretty quick that it wasn’t for me. The important thing was that I had to go through that time to learn valuable lessons. He brought me through times with the wrong ones to show me what I didn’t want and, more importantly, what he didn’t want for me. He showed me possible relationships that would bring me into situations that would hurt me if I continued. Men that could never love me because they didn’t know Jesus. They could never know how unless they did. God showed me what wasn’t for me. I let another man into my heart that was the wrong one. I can honestly say now that I only let him into my heart because I became intimate with him. There is a reason that God designed sex to only be between a husband and wife. He doesn’t do this to make you miserable and hurt you and make unrealistic rules for you. He does this to protect you. In the book “Single Dating Engaged Married” written by (Ben Stuart) (I highly recommend this book!!) I read a part where it was asked if you would have a fire in the middle of your living room. Most anyone would obviously say no, but you would have a fire if it was contained in a protected environment of a fireplace. It’s the same for sex outside of the confinds and protection of marriage. God created sex as a beautiful and enjoyable way for a husband and wife to be bonded as one. If you have sex with someone who you are not married to, you are giving a part of yourself you can’t ever get back. That is a bond only for your spouse, not for several different people. I can honestly say that had I not been intimate with this man, I would have been able to see sooner or better right away that although he was not a bad man, he was not who God wanted me to be with. He didn’t know God. Before this, I had allowed myself to spend time being intimate with a man from my past that I lost my virginity to. He was the only other person I had been with. At the time, I was hurting and wanted to be comforted. I didn’t have feelings for him, but he was someone I knew, felt safe, and could be myself with because we had known each other so long. I still knew it wasn’t right, but at the time, I didn’t even know so many things about myself. God used every mistake as an opportunity for a lesson or for him to point out areas I needed healing in. Many women, including myself in the past think we can change or fix a man. God will never put us in a position to bring someone to him through a dating relationship. If they don’t already know Jesus, it will be a trainwreck of heartbreak and hurt, leading you to chase something that other people will never have the ability to give you. They won’t know how. The first man I was able to open my heart to after my ex-husband was the wrong one. Of coarse God didn’t want me to be intimate with him, but he knew my heart and it was after him and the Lord was able to bring me to a place of not doing those things with him that would only continue to hurt me mentally and spiritually. God still used this experience to teach me. There’s always an opportunity to learn through our wrong turns and mistakes. God asked me to intercede in prayer for him and people close to him. For a season, God used me to pray and speak encouragement into his life as a friend for him and others close to him. I don’t regret the lessons I learned through this time. During this time, the Lord put another man in my life. A mutual friend of ours who was basically like a sister to him had him on speaker phone, and I could hear Jesus in and through him. The next day, I felt that God asked me to pray for him through the night and tell him. I didn’t even know him and argured with God insisting that what I felt He was asking of me was absolutely crazy, but my heart was to please God and I had no peace until, I obeyed the promting that wouldn’t leave. Through that, one act of obedience began us communicating through text once in a while. I would text him and ask for prayer, or I would ask if he needed prayer. I would send daily devotionals and Bible scripture to him like I did with my daughters and some of my other friends. There is a lot to this part of my story, but God used this man for healing for him and for me. He took two belivers who lived basically from one end of the earth to the other to speak life and encouragement and pray for one another. One of the things God asked me to pray for him was for his wife. In the ways we were communicating for a time, I did believe that was me. He said to me one time “of coarse I wonder if you and I are what God has for eachother, but what if God is using eachother to prepare us for the spouse he does have for us?” At times, this was confusing as to what his purpose was in my life. God asked me one time through our conversations to ask him the question why it was me of all people that he chose to intercede and pray for him. I didn’t have an answer to this question until not even that long ago. While God used us both for healing that he needed to do in each of us, he showed me a Godly standard to look at. I began without even realizing it, to hold a higher standard of men than I had been communicating with prior to his presence in my life. I saw and heard Jesus in him and began to have no interest in talking to anyone who didn’t hold those values as well. God had shown me the examples of what I didn’t want and then He showed me the qualities in a Godly man that I would be able to see in someone else when it was the time for that. God taught me first through this man how to intercede and fight for someone in prayer. He was the first of many people God has asked me to pray for since. He showed me obedience. I had experienced rejection from my ex-husband and one other person and now from this man, but in a healthy way. I needed to feel that rejection to turn to God and let him use it to help me grow closer in my relationship with Him. The answer to the question of why God used me (for me anyway) was to show me a Godly standard. To take the rejection and feelings of confusion directly to the Lord where he reminded me that Jesus felt and experienced the ultimate rejection where he died a horrible torturous death on the cross to pay for our sins. That God loved me so much, He sent his own son as a living sacrifice for my sins. For your sins. Jesus didn’t have to do this, but he did, because he loves me and he loves you. I stopped dating when I started communicating with this man. God showed me through him that the only man I needed to talk to with was Jesus. He is really the standard God has for me. Of course, the husband he has for me is not and can not be perfect. Only God is, but he will be running hard after Jesus. I have no idea how to pick a man that God wants for me, but I would know better what it would look like when God points him out to me. God is the man who holds my heart because he is the one who made it. He will give it to the man he sees fit for me, and I know I will know who that is when it’s time for him to show me. God asked me to pray for this man that God used in part of my story. One of those prayers was for his wife. He got married to a beautiful woman that God pointed out to him. A woman God had me pray for. A woman that he saw Jesus in. She is both beautiful inside and out, and he saw that in her because God showed him. To see in pictures what the Lord brought together in prayer in the most beautiful in creative way just leaves me in awe of the amazing ways he uses his children to show his goodness and glory.

The statement heard by many “Time heals all wounds” isn’t true. Time doesn’t heal. It takes time to heal, but only God can. You can go through a lifetime carrying the scars and hurt that someone caused you. You can miss and prolong many blessings that God has for you in holding on to the pain it has caused you. Healing and forgiveness does take time, but it’s letting God inside of you to live and dwell in the most delicate and broken pieces of your heart so he can put those pieces back together in ways you never imagined possible. He’s the only one who can. There isn’t a man or woman that can or will ever complete you. It’s not two people coming together and making a whole person. It’s two whole healed idividuals knowing their identity in Christ, putting him first and each other second. It’s understanding that no person can be your everything. Only God can. It was not in God’s original plan for my ex-husband and I to get a divorce, but I, without a doubt, know that He brought me in a journey of healing for a purpose. The pain and heartache I felt was not in vain. I know God took me through every moment of confusion and feelings of loneliness, abandonment, rejection, and a heartache that, at times, I had given up hope of never feeling happiness and joy in my heart again. If even one person reads this and is changed and draws closer to God to find healing and hope, that’s enough for me. Even if that one person is me. I won’t promise if you take this journey that it won’t be hard. I won’t promise that you won’t feel a loneliness and longing for human connection that you have never felt. I want to encourage you that these very moments that God brings you through will cause you to absolutely fall in love with Jesus and not settle for anything less than the amazing gift he has for you. The spouse God has for you will be ready when you are and not one moment before. “She is far more precious than rubies; nothing you desire can compare with her” -Proverbs 3:15. In this verse, it refers to wisdom being more precious than rubies, and nothing can compare. God will give you wisdom and decerment to walk with him in the path he has set for you. Trust him and know that “The word is a lamp for your feet and a light onto your path.” God knows the path to bring you on to the blessings he has for you. He does not promise a perfect path with no valleys of hurt and sadness, but he promises to walk with you wherever he takes you. “He heals the broken hearted and binds up their wounds. He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name.” -Psalm 147:3-4 “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, and I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would out number the grains of sand. When I awake, I am still with you.”-Psalm 39: 13-18. “The rightous cry out, and the Lord hears them; he delivers them from all their troubles. The Lord is close to the broken- hearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. The rightous person may have many troubles, but the Lord delivers them from them all. He protects all their bones, and not one of them will be broken. Evil will slay the wicked; the foes of the rightous will be condemned. The Lord will rescue his servants; no one who takes refuge in him will be condemned. Psalm 34:17-22

The Bible verses in Mark 5:25-30 it talks of a woman who had been bleeding for 12 years and had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and spent all she had, yet instead of getting better, she grew worse. When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in a huge crowd of people and touched his cloak. (His garment, his clothes) because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” Immediately, her bleeding stopped, and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering At once, Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?”You see the people crowding against you,” his disciples answered. “And yet you can ask, who touched me?” But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.” This was me. I didn’t know how or the ways it would happen, but after my ex-husband left, I knew that Jesus was the only one who could heal me from a life of hemorrhaging pain. I had been bleeding on others who didn’t even cut me. I clung to him and knew if I could get close enough to him and just touch him, that he would heal my broken and shattered heart. This woman tried everything and had been to many doctors for help, and no one could heal her. No one but the God that created her. God put in me and in you a place in our hearts that can only be filled by the God who made it. God won’t force us to come to him, but there is a longing in us that craves only what God can give us. It’s in our darkest moments where we completely surrender to him. When we just can’t take it anymore. God is waiting for you to reach out and touch his garment. There are so many (in the crowd) in the world that are reaching out to him, but he knows when one of his children needs him and the healing that only he can provide. He knows when you’re reaching out and he will come to you. He will leave the 99 sheep to go after the one lost sheep because he is our shepherd, and no one can snatch his children from his hands. He can heal your heart. Just reach out for him and let him in. To any woman or man that has been left and abandoned by someone who promised to love you or that you thought loved you. For every person reading this who has felt or is feeling the pain, I felt I want you to know this “You have a God who loves you. He promises never to leave you or forsake you. He knit you together in your mothers womb, and you are fearfully and wonderfully made. You may have had an earthly father or mother who didn’t have the tools to to love you or show you the love you needed because it wasn’t shown to them, but you have a Heavenly father who does. He knows everything about you, and he has put gifts inside of you that he hasn’t given anyone else. He has created you in his image, and anything that falls short of that will leave you feeling empty, but because of his grace love and mercy, he sent his son to die for you and for me. So we can have a relationship with our Lord Jesus Christ and dwell with him in eternity. This life is only preperation for what he has for us in Heaven. To the woman or man that has been the “other one.” The one who had an affair with a married man or woman, I want you to know, God loves you too. He really does. He doesn’t love what you did, but he loves you, and he knows that hurting people hurt people. He won’t promise that there aren’t cosequences that may follow for the mistakes and choices that were made, but he promises if you turn away from the sin that hurts you he will walk with you in healing your hurt heart that brought you to that sin in the first place. He knows you don’t really want to be this person who hurts yourself in this way and hurts others. God loves you, and he sees you. To the man or woman who has cheated on their spouse, God loves you too and knows the shame and lies from the enemy that haunt you and keep you stuck in the same place. The lies telling you that you can never come back to God for the things you have done. Those are lies from the pit of hell. God doesn’t love your sin, but he loves you. Walk away from the things that you have allowed to take hold of you and hurt you and walk towards the voice calling you by your name, not by your sin. To the person struggling with addiction, with pornography, sexual addictions, with an eating disorder, depression, anxiety, cutting or harming yourself, thoughts of suicide. To anyone who has been abused or violated as a child, as an adult. What happened to you was not fair, and God’s heart breaks for the hurt that someone else caused you. There are hurting people in this world who don’t know him, and because of that, they do unspeakable things to hurt others. To anyone reading this who doesn’t know that they have a God in heaven who loves them, read this and hear it. God loves you. He can heal you and make you brand new. People may have left you and abused you and not loved you in the ways you deserved. Forgive them. It doesn’t make what they did to you okay. It doesn’t give them permission to continue to mistreat you. You can ask God to help you create healthy boundaries for anyone who tries to continue to hurt you on purpose. Forgive them and set yourself free from the prison of unforgiveness that keeps you stuck in the same place the person who hurt you left you. You deserve to be free. Pray for the people who hurt you. Trust me. It will cause you to see them through God’s eyes. Invite Jesus into your heart, and he will make you a brand new person that you don’t even recognize. I’m living proof of the redemption and healing of a heart that God made completely new. He did this, so I could help you. He has assignments for you. Don’t waste another miniute of the life God gave you missing out on the blessings and has for you in your future. All his promises are “yes and Amen.” He always answers our prayers, but it’s not always in the ways we think or will often agree with, but he sees and knows things we don’t. He knows what’s best for us because he made us. If he is asking you to let go of something or someone. Do it. He has a reason. I promise you. He promises you. He knows what he is doing. Invite him to live and work in your heart. He will change your heart and help you to see others through his eyes. He will show you how to love his children who do know him. He will give you a heart of compassion to love people where they are and draw them to Jesus because they see him inside of you. He will give you the heart to serve and love people in ways you never have before. He will show you how to be more like him because you are created in the image of him. Take the first step on the path of a journey that only Jesus can take you on because he went on it first. Invite him into your heart. Let him in. “This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curses, Now choose life so you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” Deuteronomy -30:19-20 .

Who is your God? Who do you worship and serve? I hope after reading part of my story, that if you haven’t already, your answer to this question is the God who made you. I’ve worshiped other God’s that the world has to offer and I don’t ever want to serve or worship or put anything above God again in my life.”Choose life. Choose blessings not curses that will only lead to death. Choosing life will break generational curses and strongholds the enemy tries to steal from you and your family. Choose life. Choose the God you will serve. God gives us a choice. He doesn’t force us to believe in and follow him. Who is the God you serve? Make the choice that will make you whole. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” Johsua- 24:15

I wouldn’t change one thing I went through. What’s in the past can stay there, but I can learn from it, and I have. It brought me to the woman I am today right now in this moment living in my new home of now 5 months in Louisiana where I moved from Vermont where I was born and lived all my life. I never could have ever imagined that I would move far away from everyone and everything I know and love, but when God used the Book of Ruth in the bible and told me if I ask you to take up your cross, leave and sell everything would you follow me?” The only answer I could give was yes, but that’s a story for another time.

Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:12‭-‬14

Take Jesus’s hand. He’s been holding it out to you your whole life. Let him in your heart to live, heal and breath in you to bring you back to life. Choose Life. A life that will never be the same. I love you friend and God loves you more. Who’s the God you want to serve?