Over the past several days I struggled with sharing the words below.  I wrote most of this last week and then wavered on posting it.  I debated….is this a little to raw?  Is this a little to transparent?  Will people think I am crazy or stuck or will they get what I am trying to say?  I knew their was a tug on my heart to share it, just like their has been every time I have posted something, however this one was tough.  It was an event that happened now….like last week.  So, I worried.  Then, I began to pray over it.  Prayed over my intent, prayed over my words, over everything.  I so badly want to do everything to honor the Lord now.  To glorify Him and Him alone.  I want so badly to be pure in my motives with everything.  As I began to pray throughout a few days, the Lord slowly confirmed.  First, it was direction from the Holy Spirit.  I needed to take “I” out of the equation.  “I” worried.  “I” was scared.  “I” might be to transparent.  Instead, redirect my thinking:  He gave me the words.  He is speaking through me.  Second, yesterday at church, I had the most incredible experience.  Three different women that I don’t know all that well yet highly respect came up to me unsolicited and shared how my blog had touched their hearts, how they were encouraged by it and two of them specifically asked me to keep blogging.  They told me to please not stop, that my story shares such hope.  One even shared the hope of being in a bible study under my teaching again one day.  Umm, can you say ENCOURAGEMENT and DIVINE words?  I LOVE LOVE LOVE when the Lord uses others to speak to us.  {SIDE NOTE – the FIRST thing I reminded myself after this encouragement is:  Dawn, they are seeing the Lord through you….it is NOT about YOU!  I want to be so careful to NOT make it about ME EVER EVER again…} So, all that being said I came to a conclusion this morning after praying:  I will share the words below.  I said in my first blog that I wanted to share my heart through this journey.  Well, sharing my heart and this journey with you means sharing the good, the bad and the ugly.  I want to remain authentic.  So, if I only share happy moments that’s not right and not fair.  The purpose of this blog would be completely missed if I disguised it with just “the happy.”  I trust that these words were given to me through the Holy Spirit and because of that I trust that they will be understood in that respect.  So, here I go!

I had “one of those days.”   One of those days where I found myself sitting on the bathroom floor weeping, angry and overwhelmed.  Sitting there, completely wrecked by what I had done: the friendship I destroyed, the pain I caused my husband and so on.  Questions flowed in like a fire hose – “why did you do it?”  “How could you let your heart become woven with someone other than your husband?”  “Someone who was your best friends husband at that?”  “How could you lie to people?”  “How could you deceive so many?”  Agh….  And then those little lies creep in:  “you can never be a good wife” “you can never be a good friend”  “people don’t like you”  “People will never trust you”  and on and on and on.  I cried in the quietness of that moment where I was the only one home.  I had done my morning wifely duties and got my boys off to school, my husband off to work and now what?  Sometimes the silence of these moments is deafening.   So often when these moments come, they take me by surprise.  That enemy(Satan) is so sneaky……  After crying and wallowing in self pity for a few minutes I stopped.  I got up and turned on my little radio with my iTunes playlist of worship and began to sing.  Right there in my bathroom, I began to worship through song.  Worship through song has become even more precious to me now.  I cling to every word like I never have before.  I truly cry out those words to the Lord.  I let the words wash over me.

Then, I began to remember and recite some passages in scripture.  — “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; summoned you by name; you are mine.”  Isaiah 43:1,  “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit”  Romans 15:13,  “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!  And that is what we are!”  1 John 3:1.—

I am redeemed, He loves me SO much I can’t even comprehend, I have hope in Him.  STOP picking back up your guilt Dawn.  You repented, you asked for forgiveness, you have been made new!  Don’t let the enemy(Satan) destroy that!

I had also been reading about earthly wisdom vs. godly wisdom in James over the last several days.  James 3 to be exact.  It talks about the difference in what we get from the world vs. what we receive from above.  I love James 3:17.  It says “But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere.”  This verse is SO powerful and I believe can be a gauge on SO many instances in life, in our daily walk.  I have begun to call it my “heart gauge.”  But, let me come back to what was happening with me in this instance though.  I began to remember what I read about this.  These thoughts, these questions I was having in this moment – they are NOT from above.  Something was awry in my heart for a minute.  In this moment I had begun to look at what I didn’t have…I had begun to think I didn’t have a purpose right now and therefore began to dwell back on what I did, the destruction it caused.  I,I, I……me, me, me.  I was focusing on me, pitying me.  Selfishness, confusion, disorder, bitterness…these are NOT from the Lord.  It is evil, and comes from the worldly view, earthly wisdom.  The second your focus turns from Him to you, evil takes over.  Yuck!  It ain’t fun.  That’s why I want to jump, better yet, LEAP out of that awful spiral the second I feel myself going there.  I want to instead fill myself with godly wisdom.  Which in this verse speaks of it being first PURE!  PURE – nothing yucky in it…PURE.  No muck, not even a speck of dirt PURE.  Then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield and full of mercy.  Goodness what hope in this.  So, when I spiral, when I begin to doubt and be angry at myself, and wallow in the self pity pool – I remember that it’s not from the Lord.  He does NOT want me doing this.  He doesn’t want me swimming in this pool because it’s a muddy, nasty yucky one.  He wants me to jump out of that one and jump into the calm, beautiful clear waters of the pool above.  Living joyously in Him.  So, as I remembered all of this, still singing my songs…I began to feel the hands of the Lord wrapping around me, lifting me up saving me from that drowning nasty pool of anger, pity, bitterness and reminding me that I was His.  He has and continues to carry me through this journey not wavering in love, wisdom, peace and joy so neither should I.  He has purpose for me and He is definitely not finished with me yet.  That friends, completely transformed my day.

{SIDE NOTE – Please don’t confuse my anger with sadness. The sadness I have for losing a best friend is different than the anger and self pity I find myself in occasionally.  I still ache for that friendship and in those times pray desperately for that precious friend I had.   Anger is not where the Lord wants me to sit but I personally believe he allows me to be sad at times, to mourn that friendship so that I am reminded of hope once again.  I have written a letter and asked forgiveness from that precious friend.  But, I hope for the day I can stand before her and look her in the eye and ask for forgiveness.  And I find great hope in the fact that we will stand together in eternity one day with no sadness, anger or bitterness between us.  But instead rejoicing with a Savior together.}

So, while I hit that bump in the road, that little valley….I didn’t stay there.  I fought, I surrendered(as I do daily), I learned.  More of those will come, I know – but as I remain seeking Him every day, digging into scripture finding cherished little nuggets like James 3:17; my hope becomes greater, my joy becomes brighter, my faith becomes stronger.  And this journey……this journey gets better.

Hope friends, hope is the word that keeps poppin’ up.  I pray you find hope in the Almighty, One true King that stands waiting for us to grab hold and live for Him.  He has big plans for you, just like He does for me.  I don’t want to miss it.  I pray you don’t either.

More later……..