Living as a forgiven

Ending of the week. I feel content, at ease...most of the time. Not that things are getting any easier, but the way i deal with them and see them is. I don't feel so restless inside, I am more patient with myself. I stopped living as a perfectionist and letting go of my convinced control. Overall i feel pretty happy. The healthier i get the more i see coming at me, but i can't lose focus of where I am at and what I am doing. I am becoming my own person, owning my choices, owning things that happened to me and then I am the one who deals with the good or bad result.

Journey

I'm a bit add so my thoughts are everywhere

I started a new job this week and school. I intentionally took this job at bristol's. I know the environment and what it will be like. How will i know if I have changed and can withstand saying no to those things i was tied to before? I trust myself enough to know if I feel i do not need to be there any longer i will leave. I prayed about it and really thought it over. I know it may seem excessive for just a job, but for me its not about making money. It is showing myself that I can go in that environment and not fall into that lifestyle again. I know this time of no work and school was a season, being able to hang out with good people everyday, have a schedule i followed, read as much as I want and stay in a place that was safe for me to heal. I know that things are just being thrown at me to lose focus of the path that I am on. I got 2 tickets last night, I locked myself out of my room and had to knock down the door to get in, i didn't get enough money for school loans so i can't even afford books. It could go on and on if I want it to. Through it all I still feel really hopeful, I know God has a plan for me and for these things. I feel like my patience and trust is being tested big time. I don't trust anyone. But that is something I am working on.I have such a fear of going back to that place I was once in. But I know with God you can't go back, only forward. And I am so thankful for that.

I read this today and loved it!!

"Although I experience many ups and downs in my emotions and often feel great shifts and changes in my inner life, you remain the same. Your sameness is not the sameness of a rock, but the sameness of a faithful lover. Out of your love I came to life; by your love I am sustained; and to your love I am always called back. There are days of sadness and days of joy; there are feelings of guilt and feelings of gratitude; there are moments of failure and moments of success; but all of them are embraced by your unwavering love.

My only real temptation is to doubt in your love, to think of myself as beyond the reach of your love, to remove myself from the healing radiance of your love. To do these things is to move into the darkness of despair. O' Lord, let me not fear too much the storms and winds of my daily life, and let me know that there is ebb and flow but that the sea remains the sea."

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I have never been so content in my life. I feel like I have just started living, in a meaningful and intentional way. I have never wanted to make such healthy changes and be in a healthy community of people who challenge me. I feel so free to not feel the need to be a people pleaser, to convince myself that i could help people. The truth is, I wasn't helping anyone, I am not a healer, counselor or reconciler. Only God can do that, and He can use me through that. I truly had myself convinced that I could help these people and by doing so I used them to numb myself. Looking back I don't really remember much....just certain memories or things that happened along the way and how i felt about people. I was reading tonight about how God gave us memory, how He gave it to us to know what truly satisfies us and how we can return back to that in the future. Something so simple i never thought about. Therefore, I know God has really spared me in the fact that I have to sit and think hard on a lot of things that have happened to me if I want to remember them. I can feel again. I feel emotions, I can sympathize with someone hurting and not automatically go into "fix it" mode. I can just listen and be there with them. It is not something that will go away, I have to be constantly aware of it. I have to stop and question my own intentions of why i would say this or what my motives would be.

This has changed everything for me. I am now for the first time ever living as a forgiven person. I stopped holding onto what people had done to me in the past and choices I had made. I didn't believe that God couldn't forgive me, I just believed they gave me some sort of identity. Until i realized, I wasn't living, my hands were clinched onto those dark dark things of my past and when i set them free, I felt God's love for me, felt worthy of God loving me and others. There are still times when I will start to slip into telling myself I am not fun anymore because I don't go and get wasted and find my worthiness in any guy who shows it, or not the life of the party. Because those days were some of the darkest days of my life. I wasn't living, i was numb, using anything and anyone to numb. I have found such contentment and joy in my life now. Looking at life and the things that happen to me as things God is using to test me and to teach me new things and some bad things just happen because that is life. but i am no more just going along through life living day to day 'wondering what will happen today' but with intention. Loving God and myself and others. Okay. Done typing! Now i can breathe again!

A whole month later.

It has been a whole month since i posted anything. Life has been exhausting. My adopted sister is taking the energy from my family, its been hard. My family has never experienced anything like this. But the good, very good thing from this is that I have never been closer to my sister carrie. I am so thankful to have her. I am exhausted thinking about it as i type so Im done on this topic.

On leaving chattanooga. I feel angry at myself that i stayed as long as i did. I was so stupid to not see the danger I was in, to really truly believe i was ok? Living in survivor mode does that i guess. I have not one regret about leaving. I feel like it was more a bad bad dream and that it never happened, and i am so thankful for that. I am slowly working on being ok again, i still don't work a job, I have a schedule i follow everyday and i read most of the time. I have an amazing mentor, I don't know how to describe her,there is no way to describe her, 78 yrs old, and the wisest person I have ever met. I know I will get to that place where I feel content and at ease inside, but right now it still feels chaotic.

Thoughts from Henri Nouwen...

In the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32), there are two sons: the younger son, who runs away from home to an alien country, and the older son, who stays home to do his duty. The younger son dissipates himself with alcohol and sex; the older son alienates himself by working hard and dutifully fulfilling all his obligations. Both are lost. Their father grieves over both, because with neither of them does he experience the intimacy he desires.

Both lust and cold obedience can prevent us from being true children of God. Whether we are like the younger son or the older son, we have to come home to the place where we can rest in the embrace of God's unconditional love.