For most of my life I have been just trying to survive. It’s like hanging on to the back of a speedboat that is cruising through the lake at 50 mph. Surviving is something that takes place of true living. You hunker down and wait for the storm to pass, except that it never really does. So you just keep hanging on as tight as you can, and hope that you make it through to the end. At some point in time I got tired of surviving. I didn’t want to just survive life anymore. I wanted to be more than…
Forgiveness has been something that I have struggled with all of my life. From the time I was born, I was being physically and sexually abused by my family and at the Mormon Church. I grew up feeling worthless and abandoned; constantly lied to and betrayed. I was beaten down for having gifts from God to see and talk to Him, and was taught that I was generally stupid and altogether evil. All these things shaped the core of who I was. Instead of growing into a tender young girl who loved the Lord, and wanted to help and serve…
When I was 13, my sister had her first child. I was so very excited, and was eager to babysit. My sister and I were not close, but she was newly married and living in a nice home with a new baby, so I was hoping to get closer to her by babysitting. Unfortunately, her husband had the same idea, about getting close to me. He slowly began to build a relationship of trust and kindness with me, in order to get close to me. Next thing I knew, he was grabbing my butt one day, as I was holding…
I have been going through hell lately. It’s been over half of a year now since I began a journey into discovering why I have had a life filled with intense pain. I had gotten to the point where I felt much better than I ever had, because Jesus unconditional love and saving grace had brought me transformation. Yet I discovered that as time went on, I wasn’t doing as well as I thought I was. After the initial transformation (which was huge) I started to decline. Don’t get me wrong – all the changes the Holy Spirit inspired me…