Taking the Yuck

Can I ask you to pray for me? 

Today, I started writing about the hardest part of my life, the part that makes me the most disappointed in of myself.  The part that makes me really dislike myself and it’s a battle to keep looking forward to know that I am doing this for a reason. Matt sent me this Jon Acuff quote back when I started this journey: Sometimes, God redeems your story by surrounding you with people who need to hear about your past so it doesn’t become their future. I think Jon Acuff is super talented and today this quote is keeping me going. This quote and the video I am linking below (on repeat with tears flowing). 

Please pray for my mental strength as I get all of these stories out of my head and onto paper. Please pray that I remember that I am not my mistakes while writing this, that I remember that I have been redeemed. Please pray that I remember that I am not the girl I was seven years ago and even though I am having to live in these memories for a short time my life will not go back there again. 

Thank you, that means the world to me. 

Now, I want to share with you something a wrote on Thursday after a long evening with new friends (where I learned I am way too old to stay up past 10 pm). 

I feel as is God is bringing friendships into my life today where I am able to show them hope at the end of life’s trials. It’s rewarding and confirming to be a help to other women. He has also given my story an opportunity for people to learn. I have friends that can now say they understand a little more about women who go through divorce and who have had abortions, even if they do not agree with those choices in my life. 

I believe God is also using my really raw areas to challenge me. He is standing back seeing if I am going show compassion or put up a wall. If I can handle the truth that not everyone is the same and that someone maybe sitting in circumstances similar to mine, but their outcome will not be the same as mine. Their story will have a happier ending then mine did. He is testing if I will run or if I will stand trusting God and being able to show Jesus’ love to others. 

I am making sure to breathe and ask questions. I do everything I can to respond with my heart open and not let the hurt of my past distort my feeling towards anyone. It takes intention and I even sometimes find myself being very honest and saying, “I am working to change my feelings in that area.” When I am honest I do not believe I offend (please tell me if I do), I believe that it makes people see that I am just a human as they are. As humans we know that life is messy and somedays the realities of life really, really sucks, but we are all doing our bests to navigate through it all. 

The process of changing hurts and fear isn’t always easy. Forgiving others and yourself isn’t something that always just clicks - at list not for me. I really hope as I take this journey that you will see the power of honesty with yourself and with others. I pray that I am pointing you to a place of hope and helping you see we are all broken. Even the girl who sits on the front row at church is broken, because I am. 

Please know that even though society may be screaming that broken is bad, God loves you in your brokenness and he making beautiful things from your yuck. Just hang in there and hang on to Him. 

And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself RESTORE you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. 

1 Peter 5:10