Making a Beautiful Life

This heart felt poem was on a card I received from my mother a year ago on my 45th birthday. May you all learn how to make a beautiful life.

Love yourself.
Make peace with who you are
and where you are at this moment in time.

Listen to your heart.
If you can't hear what it's saying in this noisy world,
make time for yourself.
Enjoy your own company.
Let your mind wander among the stars.

Try.
Take chances.
Make mistakes.
Life can be messy and confusing at times,
but it's also full of surprises.
The next rock in your path might be a stepping-stone.

Be happy.
When you don't have what you want,
want what you have.
Make do.
That's a well-kept secret of contentment.

There aren't any shortcuts to tomorrow.
You have to make your own way.
To know where you're going is only part of it.
You need to know where you've been, too.
And if you ever get lost, don't worry,
the people who love you will find you.
Count on it.

Life isn't days and years,
it's what you do with time,
and with all the goodness and grace
that's inside you.
Make a Beautiful Life...
the kind of life you deserve.


May we all learn how to make a beautiful life, even in the midst of sorrow, heartache, discontent and all the hardships that life will throw our way.
Of course, the only true way to living a beautiful life is through the One that came to die for us so that we may live...Jesus Christ.

Let us all walk today with Him and let Him show us the beauty all around us and within us.

Blessings,

Amy

Letting Go...

It has taken me so long to finally put into words what is happening in my life. Finding the words and figuring out how to arrange them just so can be very difficult. The words are there all jumbled in my head, but to put them out there for others to see, to read, to ponder...well, it's not always easy to arrange them into a comprehensible manner.

The last year or so has a been a time of loss, grief and healing. It has also brought with it, mingled in between the hardships, joy and love.
It has been a time of letting go and moving forward. Grieving for a time and then allowing healing to take place.

Letting go is never easy. It forever changes us when we let go of something in our lives that has kept us captive in one way or another.

For me, I had to learn to let go of who I had been and of what had defined my life for so many years. This past year especially has brought me to my knees more than any other time in my life and forced me to look at myself with different eyes...the eyes of God.

Looking in the mirror, I have needed to work hard at seeing who I really am in His eyes and get past the blurry image of who someone else had led me to believe I was.
I am learning to no longer be held captive by what others think or choose to believe about me, but to be captive only to God and who He says I am.

Last month I took the final step to putting the past behind me and moving forward into a new season. It took me almost two years of waiting on the Lord and seeking the Truth in my life to know for certain what direction I needed to take.

Standing at the crossroads for so long with the words of others swirling through my head, made it hard to take that step of faith. While others questioned, judged, condemned and turned away, I sat quietly and waited for the one Truth, the only Truth, that would not lead me astray. And God spoke to me and showed me the way to go.

Divorce is never easy, no matter the circumstances. Sometimes it is necessary to end something that will never change and will always be unhealthy. Sometimes it just happens. Yet God still works in and through it, and never leaves us behind.

At almost 46 years of age I would never have expected to be traveling down this particular road in my life, but I am learning that where we end up in life usually is not where we would have placed ourselves.
Yet, when we let go and let life happen, and keep our focus on God, He will work all things for His good.

Learning to let go and embrace my life has not been easy. After all who wants to embrace a life full of heartache, struggles, illnesses, divorce, abuse and a host of other hardships, but in doing so, in embracing those things in my life along with the good, I see what a new person I have become.

I am learning day by day, how to be happy and content in this life. Easy? No way!
My devotional this morning talks of how some of us have to learn these things, especially when we have been deprived of support and nurturing for so long.

"Many of us have learned to block or stop ourselves from getting what we want and need...we may have to let go of our fears enough to experience the intimacy that will occur when we allow someone to love and support us...we may even have to learn, one day at a time, how to be happy and content...learning to let others be there for us."
~excerpt from The Language of Letting Go by Melody Beattie

As I move forward this day and every day, traveling down the road laid out for me, I pray that I can truly come to that place of contentment and happiness. A place where I can embrace the hardships and struggles, as much as I can rise up again with joy and love.

May everyone's journey find them following the only real direction in life, that of Jesus Christ our Savior.

Blessings,
Amy

Moving forward...

It has been months since I last was able to share my deepest thoughts and my heart longings and hurts. Every time I came here to put it down, the words wouldn't flow or the time was too short. Perhaps it just wasn't the time.

Through the months I have been absent from my blog, my life has been a rocky path that seemed impassable at times, and became almost unbearable. There were times where I stopped moving, because it seemed easier to stand still and let life pass around me. Perhaps if I didn't move, it couldn't get worse, even if it never got better. Sometimes staying where we are at seems safe and comfortable, yet I have come to see that it is a false sense of security and gets us nowhere. We stay in a state of limbo, neither moving forward or even backward.
Life swirls on around us, while we stand still, not living at all.


"We spend our days waiting for the ideal path to appear in front of
us..but we forget that paths are made by walking...not by waiting."
~author unknown

I read this quote the other day at Everyday Beauty and it really spoke to me.

Waiting for the right path to appear before us, so we know for certain we are moving in the right direction, rarely happens.

We wait on God to create this perfect path for our lives and while He does have a perfect plan for each of us, only we can step out and begin moving forward. Only we can allow life to begin happening again within us.
And an amazing thing happens...while walking on a path, any path, just moving forward, the Lord steps out alongside of us to direct our paths. He will not leave us once we decide to step out in faith, but He will actually walk with us showing us the way to go.

Nineteen months ago, my marriage, what was left of it, finally crumbled to the ground.
The abuse ended. The healing started. God set me free.

In that time, there has been no divorce, for I am the one that will have to file if that is ever to happen. The lies, deceit and fear have all kept me captive where I have stayed in limbo, neither moving forward or going back.

The time has finally come to live, to move forward. I know it is time.
Life will continue to swirl all around me, going on without me, unless I decide to step into it and live.

"If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there."
~George Harrison

Not many words today...

so instead I am posting a link to a blog about abusive relationships.
Her post today is a glimpse into my life for the past 20 years.

http://abusesanctuary.blogspot.com/2007/01/when-your-perfect-partner-goes.html

Walking on eggshells...oh how well I know that.



It is tiring and begins to destroy the person you really are, as you try to be the person that you are made to believe you should be.

Was I the perfect wife? No.
Did I deserve to treated with callousness and disrespect because of it? No.
Was it my fault? No.

"In my anquish I cried to the Lord, and he answered by setting me free."
~Psalm 118:5

Thank you Lord for you faithfulness and for listening to your child's cries, and setting her free.

What has God done in your life to show His love towards you?

Blessings!

Amy

It is all about me...

It was all about me.

If only I had been smarter.
If only I had been more social.
If only I had been prettier.
If only I had been more competent.
If only I had prayed more.
If only I had respected him more.
If only I had kept quiet.
If only I had submitted more.
If only I had been more like my friend.
If only I had balanced the checkbook better.
If only...

It was all about me. If I could have just been better, if I could have just been different, if I could have just been someone else, maybe it would have helped.

"If we have gotten hooked into believing that somehow we will be the one who will make the difference in someone's life, if we are trying to prove how good we can be for someone, we may be in trouble."
~excerpt from The Language of Letting Go, Melody Beattie

I truly believed that it was all about me and if only I could have changed all the things that were wrong with me I would finally be loved unconditionally. I truly did hate myself and all my faults, and I had so many.
I couldn't understand why I just couldn't be better with money, why I just couldn't make myself be beautiful, why I couldn't be a better cook, why I was such a bungling idiot that couldn't even vacuum right or take the garbage out like normal people did, why I couldn't stop doing stupid things like locking my keys in the car, why I couldn't just be someone else.


"This is a game. A deception. It won't work. It'll make us crazy. We can trust that. We're not seeing things clearly. Something's going on with us."

It took years before I would truly see what was happening and be able to name it. Being able to say I wasn't crazy felt so good and it made me finally realize that it was not all about me. And actually, most of it was not about me at all.

"It's a game move, a game we don't have to play. We don't have to prove we're the one. If we're out to show people we're the best thing that ever happened to them, it may be time to see if they're the best thing that ever happened to us."

It was never all about me.
I was smart enough.
I was pretty enough.
I was...enough.

May you know that you are enough. That God loves you right where you are at and in Him, you are enough.

Blessings!

Amy

Waiting (im)patiently today

A valuable lesson that I always tell people I learned a year ago, when my life turned upside down, was how to wait patiently on the Lord.

Now waiting has never been a strong suit of mine. I want it now and I want it when I want it. And being patient, well, perhaps not another strong suit of my mine either.

Yet, I ended up in a situation where it brought me to my knees and forced me to wait, and to wait patiently. There was nothing else to do.
God made it clear to me that He was directing this season of my life and I could either sit back and allow Him to lead, or I could make myself sick and stressed over grabbing onto the steering wheel so I could get there NOW, not later.

So, I decided that I would really see what it meant to wait patiently for the Lord. I read Psalm 40:1-3 over and over, and I prayed that He would help me to wait patiently and trust Him completely with my life.

Did it take the stress away? Not if I still tried to hold on, but when I let go and just really laid everything at His feet, yes, my load was definitely lighter and the stress was not so intense.

I would go back to the first verse I ever learned in the bible after becoming a believer: Matthew 11:28 - "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."

This was the verse that actually led me into a relationship with the Lord over twelve years ago. Someone had spoke about this verse the day before at church and the next day in my despair, I picked up my dusty bible, and as my mind tried desperately to remember the verse, I opened my bible right to it. I prayed that day to God, on my knees, that if He were truly there, I wanted Him to give me rest. I was so heavily burdened and weary beyond belief at trying to understand, let alone make a marriage work, that would take me over a decade later to realize, was beyond my power.

So last night, I found myself lying prostrate before Him before crawling wearily between the covers, and I sobbingly cried to Him, telling Him of how I'm a failure, how scared I am and how tired, so very tired. I didn't have anymore words, so left it at that as I surprisingly, fell into a sound sleep.

Today as I forced myself up, only wanting to sleep, the weariness and burdens seemed to still be there, weighing heavily on my shoulders. The tears have threatened to come at any moment all morning long, and the fear, oh the fear, clouds my thinking and ability to move.

But I decided that I needed to take time for God, which I do not do as often these days. Oh, I talk to Him everyday, but I honestly do not give him my full attention. So after the coffee was poured, I sat down to read my devotional and my bible, and the devotion was on Trusting God. Hmmm. As I read through the devotion it became so obvious that God was speaking directly to me, especially as I read the final paragraphs:

"Sometimes, we experience times of frustration in our life. We believe we're on track, trusting God and ourselves, yet things don't work out. We have false starts and stops. The door refuses to swing wide open.
We may wonder if God has abandoned us, or doesn't care. We may not understand where we're going, or what our direction is.
Then one day we see: the reason we didn't get what we wanted was because God had something much better planned for us."
~excerpt from The Language of Letting Go, Melody Beattie

I then opened to Psalm 40:1-3 and read:
"I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry.
He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.
He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord."

And immediately afterward, came a barely audible knock at my front door. A woman in a soft yellow dress, speaking in a small, quiet voice, handed me a piece of paper about a free seminar on Drawing Closer to God. As I took the paper from her and she quickly explained about it, I smiled and thanked her before she turned to leave. Yes, she was a Jehovah Witness, which could be a whole 'nother post, but I know that God was using her to speak to me in a voice I could hear.

I have walked too far away from God. I have let the busyness and stress of life close in around me, blocking my way to Him, and in doing so, it is myself I realize that pulls on the garment of weariness and burdens, only to wear them throughout the day, as they become increasingly heavier and harder to bear. They were not still on my shoulders this morning as I staggered out of bed, I chose to pick them up and put them on, and in doing so, I create the day that will lie ahead of me, full of unhappiness, stress and worry.

Are you wearing your burdens and worries like a cloak? If so, perhaps it is time you and I slip them from our shoulders and hand the heavy, burdensome cloak to God. After all, He said He would carry them for us, because we are His children and He loves us so much that He would do anything for us.

May this weekend bring a lightness to your load and a joy into your heart as you allow God to carry the worries, hurts, sadness, burdens and any other baggage you have brought along.

Blessings!

Amy

BTW, the devotion I read was for June 4th, which I thought was today. After I read it, I looked at the calendar and realized I had the wrong day! If I had known that it was really the 5th of June today, I would never had seen this devotion. ;)

Being rescued

A favorite movie of mine is Pretty Woman. A Cinderalla story, and of course if has Richard Gere, which always makes watching a movie worthwhile.

The movie's main character, Vivian, played by Julia Roberts, shares a dream she has had since a little girl about being locked in a tower and being rescued by a knight in shining armor. She wants to be loved and she wants someone who is willing to go to great lengths to love her. At the end, Richard Gere's character overcomes he fear of heights and climbs up a fire escape to show his sacrificial love for Vivian.



No one has ever climbed a fire escape to "rescue" me and the person I had thought would lay his life down for me to love me completely and unconditionally, chose not to. I suppose I've always had that dream like Vivian, of someone loving me so much that they would do anything to show that love, but I have come to think that it is just a dream and that kind of love only exist in the movies.

I may never know that kind of life here on earth, but I do hold tight to the fact that there is someone that loves me unconditionally, forgives my faults immediately and was willing to lay His life down for me. He is the only constant in my life, the only love that does not let me down.

"He brought me out into a spacious place; He rescued me because He delighted in me."
~Psalm 18:19

I love walking with Him every day in all that I do. I thank Him for the love that keeps me strong and going each and every day, and I'm thankful for Him laying His life down for me.

How are you walking with Him?