Hey Y'all! This is LONG in advance lol. Bear with me. Read through to the end if you can, lol, and watch the videos if you'd like!
I really pray you are blessed. I made a 10 minute video trying to summarize all of this...but honestly its too much and does God no justice. I know some of us quantify God's goodness, so to encourage you all, I'm sharing the miracles I've experienced these last 3 months. The short of it: God is so very good... He's great... He's amazing... He's indescribable... He's magnificent... He's better than all of that and I'm humbled every time I think of how much He loves me. For anyone to go to such great lengths across the varied areas of my life to prove His love when He doesn't have to...I'm just so grateful. And to think I wanted to force things to happen my way, and getting my own way would be by having things happen in my timing...to think of the messes I've been in and the messes I've averted by just letting God lead is incredible. I wanted Him to do things on my timelines how I thought it needed to happen and if He had, I don't want to think about how things would have been. I absolutely accept that when you want something done big and fabulous, let God show you up. He doesn't do anything half way.
"Live" to me now means accepting opportunities and blessings as they come. Live means loving unconditionally and without boundaries. Live means accepting God's love however He chooses to love you. Live means giving God the space to be just that -- God. Live means loving people even though they aren't living as you'd like, reciprocating your love, being good friends, or even being good to themselves. Live means sharing your testimony and paying it forward by being a blessing to someone else. Live means not being selfish and sharing the bounty. Live means walking in your truth and being true to you and who God created you to be. Live means letting go so you can truly receive. Live means uprooting up the ugly, infected parts of your heart and soul so that you can truly heal and in healing, create more room in your life and heart for God's glory to be made manifest. Living means the opposite of dying. Live means thriving, warm red-blood flowing through you and just being the awesome person God created you to be, flaws and all. Live means letting the diseased balloons of poor self-esteem, self-image and self-worth go to float away and embracing the truth of who you are. Live means you stop apologizing for who you are and how you are living when you are walking in God's truth for you. Live means killing comparison and embracing joy. Live means taking calculated risks and stepping out of the boat to walk on the water in big, bold faith. Live means not letting your friends stay behind in the boat, and at least making them aware of how it feels to live beyond the walls.
So the last three months have been nothing short of beautiful...miraculous and wonderful. I've being doing Project Miracles (see this video here: https://youtu.be/uhFGkleegxY) based on the book Make Miracles in 40 Days for the last 3 months now and God has removed some of the ugliest hurts I've had in the process. I went from being someone who was optimistic because it sounded like a good idea to someone who genuinely sees life with optimism and hope and excitement daily. I've learned to love, made the decision to be all of me and vulnerable with the right people, and to take calculated risks because the life I see me having and living is waiting on me to choose it versus living in fear and complacency. Since then, I've let go of a lot more dead weight and baggage. The biggest thing...I acknowledged how I felt and the secrets I kept about being molested. I finally let them go and gained peace in ways I never imagined.
After I began Project Miracles, I did Calling in the One, which came as an answered prayer (to be prepared for marriage and parenthood) during my pre-30 prayer challenge. I completed it in 8 weeks (I got behind by a week) and in the process, I actually truly invested in myself, something I rarely do. I've gone on dates, opened up my heart to receive and I've learned to accept me as I am instead of beating myself up, including not questioning my likes/dislikes/desires. I embraced being okay with learning all I can about marriage but enjoying my singleness. But the biggest gift in this process was receiving love however God manifests it. This process made me want to get deeper in my relationship with God. It made me crave God and want to really embody being the Virtuous Woman. One of the biggest blessings was in having a tangible surrender process through the use of my Godbox (one of our assignments) -- a place where I can release things I've been worrying about and where I can literally cast them at God's feet.
While I was doing CITO, I also began meditating regularly...and specifically focused on Love and Prosperity. I began to brainstorm ideas of ways I could use my passions to create wealth and how I could love on me more to in turn be more loving to others. In the process, I learned the art of being present and really living in the now (I read part of that book actually, The Power of Now, and this process made it plain for me.) It's amazing being present and actually celebrating/enjoying the people and places in your life. Right now, I'm doing meditations on letting go and I've repaired some relationships, apologized to some people and opened myself up to receiving the right people in my life. I cried the ugly cry many times as I realized the things I was holding on to that were keeping me from living and truly loving. Now that I think about it, these last 3 months, and truthfully this year, were a season of purging and pruning to ready me to receive everything God has for me.
Of course I've experienced losses (but good losses!)...loss of the lies I believed about myself. I've lost some friends and recategorized relationships. I've lost the inhibitions I had. I've lost the insecurities and identified others that I must release. I've released the reasoning I used for not stepping up and stepping out. I've lost the need to overthink things all the while trusting my gut and decided to accept people exactly as they are and love them anyway, whether they are an active participant in my journey or not. I've lost the need to lie to myself (and God) about the things I ignored.
I've given myself permission to live. To love people right where they are, to speak up and speak out. I've given myself the keys to freedom and to be me without reservations. I decided to stop trying to control things a while back, but being controlling dies hard. Fortunately no thing is immune to prayer.
I've read so many books I can't keep up (and I decided to complete one book a week as a new habit). I'm taking classes so I can improve myself and execute every area of business I can think of, and I decided to stomp across the water and make a splash in major ways. I decided to stop living behind the scenes and to shine in the lights. While I won't divulge every plan I have, I will say that I'm glad God answered my spoken prayers and unspoken thoughts.
To think, this whole process began with one word. Live. And I'm doing that. God is so funny!! Psalm 118:17 was a verse I confessed for my healing...and a song by Darlene McCoy just came on my playlist that is saying this scripture. "I shall LIVE and not die." For years I was dying y'all. I was miserable. I was broken. I was hurting. I was willing to give up. But I'm glad for all those years ago. All the prayers I've prayed. All the prayers God has answered and the ways He chose to answer. I am glad that I am living. I am grateful that I don't let life pass me by anymore. I'm glad that God chose to save me in 2009, and truthfully all the other times before then so that I could live this life now. The greatest risk I took was to trust God with everything, to surrender, and I'm glad I gave in to Him.
Lastly, so at the beginning of the final quarter of 2015, I will live in a new way: I'm moving again. I "randomly" updated my résumé on Monster and had been receiving calls about jobs and emails multiple times daily since the end of August (about a week after I began this prayer challenge) and on Friday I interviewed for a job and was selected for it the same day. If you want to know how good God is and to understand what He can do for you...think about Him increasing your salary multiple times in less than 15 months and healing you completely from years of torment because of being molested. If God never does anything else for me, He's done enough. He changed my mind, how I thought, how I saw myself and how I looked life and others. Only two years ago I was defeated by the fact I had not ever received a raise at my former job...I was grasping for a plan to get out of debt so that I could sow more into others. I also did not know why I was so afraid to love and felt incapable of loving others wholly. I knew it was the enemy coming against me so I had to put those things on the altar for God. I also had to realize "who" I was working for -- was I working for myself, my employer or was I working for God. I had to overcome the lie of who I allowed the devil to tell me I was. I sowed seeds with what I had: my money, time, talents, and words of encouragement to others. Since then, God has turned my life around in all of these things...to think now that at points these things consumed me, engulfed me even, is so surreal. I was hopeless. But God!! He spoke to me one day and began to clear away the lies. "No more!" These things began happening when God took the blinders off my eyes and I was able to truly understand that He is a limitless God. He elevated me in every area of my life so I could go back and help lift others. These things happened because God wanted me to know I didn't have to be in control anymore, that He will take care of me as He has and does daily. I can't take credit for anything other than doing the work He led me to do and expecting Him to blow my mind. He has truly done that...if you would have told me these things were going to happen a few years ago I would have laughed at you in disbelief and walked off. I really can't wait to see what this last quarter has in store for me and 2016!
So in all of this, I encourage you to live too! I encourage you to seek God for the one thing you can focus on, to allow Him to shape your year and your life through that one thing. He has taught me to live in so many ways, and He opened my eyes to how I was not living all these years. I was in bondage, afraid, limiting myself, and now I can say it's all God who did all of these things for me. Your suffering is not in vain, and although God may not do for you what He's done for me, the truth is that He is not incapable of it. He can do the same, less, better, and different. There is nothing God cannot do. God is limitless. God is Love, and love is the most abundant resource in the universe. Take your every need, concern, desire and want to Him and let Him reorder your life. Don't continue in sin and settling for less than God's best for your life by thinking that your sin is too big for God to deliver you from -- I've had my share of issues, being judgmental, critical of others and myself, doubting, unbelief, fear, lying, struggled with not trusting God for my husband and choosing to do things my way, to include compromising...I had to let it go because I was losing. Stop losing today! Stop limiting God. When you do that, you begin to make room for the overflow. Be encouraged y'all! I love you!!!
And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. Romans 8:28
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