Blessed. Encouraged.

Sometimes it's the right timing by the right people that make the world so much brighter and give you the strength to take the next step, or to even keep standing.

Life comes with beautiful moments like these that were given to me by beautiful people in my life to remind me that the stuff I am going through, the stuff I have been through... all of it is molding me into what I am becoming in the future and helping me be prepared to be oh so thankful for the things to come.

I'm blessed and encouraged. Thank you.....

... I really feel that you are more than capable to do anything that is placed in front of you. I just know that you are so talented and sometimes that talent can’t come thru due to depression or frustration. I am confident that God’s plan for my darling daughter Darby is more awesome than I or she could fathom. You go girl……Love you more than you’ll ever know and so thankful God blessed me with you---I’m proud of you for who you are ---so go and be what God wants you to be…I love you and can’t wait to see where the journey goes from here...

"One day you are going to make a beautiful wonderful wife and mother and will never be lonely again because you deserve that and the world."

Isaiah 30:21

"If you wander off the road to the right or the left, you will hear His voice behind you saying, 'Here is the road. Follow it." --Isaiah 30:21

The Past:

So Friday I spent most of my day trying to understand why this year had been so crappy.
I was crying on the shoulder of one of my friends telling them how horrible this year had been, how they didn't understand, how my frustrations were valid, how they were insulting me when saying "everyone runs into walls sometimes"... I had run into a freaking dam, not a wall.
I cried and cried, as I have done plenty of times, about how much this year has been an epic failure and how everything I had believed in for the past two years was all for not; how I couldn't shake this rut that I am in because I keep thinking about all the things I want and love are gone.
I will be honest, I am struggling. I have been for a while. There are things in my life that I do not understand. I do not understand at all why I lost the job that I was more passionate about than anything in this world, I do not understand how I could have loved one person so much and them betray me in the worst of ways, I do not understand how I could have lost any more friends than I did last year but I did, I do not understand how I cannot force myself to be happy in the job I have because it simply isn't my old job. I do not understand how when I finally put myself out there again on the line for a chance at something more than a friendship I get shot down and find out there is another person (story of my life). I do not understand how my family can blame me for everything and make me the person responsible for the loss of a relationship with my beloved brother whom I've needed so badly lately. I do not understand how people say they try to encourage me when they tell me how horrible of a person I have been. I do not understand why all of this has happened at once and how I do not have the strength to overcome it anymore.

I was telling my friend that I just want to go away and start new somewhere where no one knows me, no one knows my story, and where I can start fresh. They said "you can't just run away from everything".... well why the hell not? And I wouldn't consider it running away, I would consider it starting new. Everything in this town has a way of finding a weak spot and having a little sting of pain. This town was my dream, was all I wanted, it had everything to offer my life: love, Aggies, cows and tractors, my job and all the people I hosted, a new house, friendships... everything.

All of this to say, a week ago today, I called one of my sisters and confessed to her my burning agony, my burning guilt, my burning frustrations that were burning my soul to ashes. I told her the way I have reacted to these struggles absolutely aggravate me and that I feel like a horrible daughter of the King because I have constantly sought out temporary fixes and shelter from the storm in my heart. And I have. I have ran away from the Lord so much lately because of my sheer frustration of not understanding why the things had happened the way they have. It still frustrates me. (as you can tell) But I told her that I needed help with accountbaliity to not stay 'strong' but to stay faithful to the fact that my God has it under control. My mind knows these things when I am struggling due to the fact I was raised in an amazing Christian home that taught me from the day I was born about our God's strength, power, and infinite love. It's just hard for my heart to understand that when I feel so darn yucky.

What I am trying to say is that I am still struggling with my purpose right now. I am praying constantly about what HE wants from me now that He has stripped me raw. I'm not saying the Lord maliciously did these things to me nor likes that my heart is so broken, I am saying my God has a reason in everything that happens in my life and there is something He wants me to know from all of this and a road he is making straight for me, I just have to follow Him to find it.

From this moment on:
So yes, those of you that love me, the past couple of months has been a broken reflection of what was going on in my heart. I may have disappointed you, but for goodness sake, understand how much I disappoint myself and that I know I disappoint all of you around me when I am broken so hearing it just stabs my heart that much more. All my life my family has struggled when I say that I don't want to hear how much they don't like who I am, not saying I do not want to hear their feelings, but that I already feel that and know how much I have hurt them, how much I have let them down and how much they don't like who I am... I know that by a simple look, much less hearing it from their mouth and it killing me more.

I am not who you may want me to be. I may not have chosen the things you wanted me to. I may not like the right things you want me to like. I may be a free spirit deviating from the family traditions. My faith may be a little different than yours formed in the pews of the church. But I am who I am. I am still and will always be a child of God. My faith is rooted out of the mistakes I have made and the raw-ness of all of the lessons learned. I still love my family, I still want my family to embrace me, I still love my Jesus and know that He holds me- even though sometimes I forget it, run from it, or don't understand it...


These struggles over this year will mold me and teach me things. I celebrate the days that go by without a tear shed. It's the small things in life!

So, on a positive tone, this holiday season, although it will come with its struggles, I want to make the best of it. I want to learn to find something to be thankful for each day so that I can hold on to it and thank my Jesus for the blessings I have NOW. I want to get through it and have a great foundation to build all the greatness of 2012 on. I am determined to not let the negative things of this year bring my future down because the future is what I have! The present moment is a gift and I want to use it to explore the way God wants me to go and experience the opportunities I can so that I can be on the right track.

No more asking why all that crap happened, I am only going to allow myself to think of those things and pray for peace within the circumstances. It's done with. All the crap of 2011 is over, there is not a thing you or I can do about them. I can't get my job back, I can't change Mr. Ely into the person I thought he was, I can't bring back friendships that walked away, I cannot undo the memories... It is all done.
So here's to looking forward and knowing GOD IS IN CONTROL, that He wouldn't have given me anything I couldn't handle, and that the feeling I felt when I was working my dream job, the love I felt before... all of that was just a taste of what the real thing He is sending my way one day.

So. There. I may be in a slump a little longer, I may have hard days come and go, but it won't define me anymore.
(or atleast I'd like to ask you to pray for me that it won't have that power over me anymore)

Remember it gets better

The burning end of a midnight cigarette....
The time when you know you are at the end of your rope....
The feeling you get when you're out of water and the waiter is no where to be found...
The time when your gas light comes on when you are on empty in your bank account...
The last drop in the bottle of your favorite wine....
The last page in the book that has entranced you heart and soul...
The time when you are late for work and you still look like your clothing came out of a thrift store...
The 'see ya later' to a friend moving 10 hours away....
The call that keeps ringing when you desperately have something to tell that person...
The unanswered and avoided question that took you months to ask...
The longing to travel like a millionaire on a minimum wage paycheck....
The conversation you can't have because the friendship is no longer existent...
The long road home when you just want to blink and see your family...
The stocked fridge of items you don't want to eat....

... The yucky feeling that knots in your core when these things happen... That's temporary.
The wine is replenished on your next trip to the store.
Your water gets filled by the waiter next to you.
Your call gets answered the next time you phone.
You get to travel when you least expect it.
You see your friend again when you need it most.
... These things exceed the negative knot you experience when in the model of needs that aren't met. It's just hard to remember that when the knot ties up in your heart and mind.

The real kind

I have been:
... Lied to
... Cheated on
... Disrespected
... A secret
... Belittled
... Embarrassed
... Disregarded
... Undermined
... Convenient
... Made a fool
... Tricked
... and Taken advantage of
all for the name of love.

But in these trials, I realize love in true form has nothing to do with anything I have gone through for the sake of it all. Love, does not do these actions, rather it does most exactly opposite of these things. And in the process of understanding these things, I have come to understand that I have cheated myself from many beauties in life. I have almost inadvertently done these things to myself by believing it was love that took me through those things.
So as I look at a promise etched in silver, i understand it is my choice to take the words "i love you" and understand their true meaning... And the only true origin is in the shadow of His wings. He may not be flesh and bone, nor is Jesus Christ my future other half... Yet, He should always be my All.
I drifted from this truth in my life wanting to believe that the true love He has promised me was what I had. I couldn't have been more distant from the truth, its almost humorous to think looking back.
All I know is that the love I believe in to be true is not the love I had to believe in to be true.... It already exists, it's there. I do not have to make excuses for it, I don't have to prove myself for it, I don't have to hide my feelings from it, I don't have to hope for it.... It's there.

And whenever it is that I will be blessed to share that love with someone who knows that kind of love, I will fully embrace it and know how much of a blessing it is because I have experienced the opposite and know its snarls. One day, I will still laugh at the thought that I believed it was okay to feel that way in "love" because someone one day will show me the opposite of all of that and let me experience love, the real kind.

What I now see in this gift from the not love, love :
"I love you, the Real kind" - God

And by the way, never assume that when you tell someone you love them, it means only love. For love itself encompasses so many actions, love is more of a plurality than a single action. So if you love someone, love them with all of the things that go into love, not just with the word love.

Maybe one day

Source: pete.com via Kadi on Pinterest