“The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me; your steadfast love, O Lord, endures forever. Do not forsake the work of your hands.” – Psalms 138:8
“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” – Romans 8:28
Dearest brethren,
As we are told in Ecclesiastes 3, “to everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven”…and that those seasons often come to an end. They can also come to a death. A death is why I am here, why I was ever led to start writing here.
The old man (er woman) was told to die and so it began. The slow, often difficult yet well-worth it death to self, shared out loud in obedience to the voice of my Lord and my Father in Heaven. This space right here is how He took my comfy place (“pen and paper”) and used it as a tool of healing. Healing into being comfortable with being a vessel for Him and the words I was given to share. Which, in turn, led to opening me up to being vulnerable to and in front of others. Living such things openly for strangers was hard at first but I grew into it and relished in any opportunity.
15 years of writing for you, out of the 17 years I have now been a born-again disciple of Christ.
A completed work
The past two years He has been walking with me through what I believe was the final stronghold left to break; one I was not cognizant I carried forth out of the ashes of my past. A stronghold I so easily see and understand in others, in regions, but not so in my own life. That is why He has taken time in doing so. The oppression that was generational yet one I was coerced into carrying from a young age wreaked havoc on my life for so long, it had become engrained into my very being, into my thoughts and decisions, my unconscious mind. It is something that needed to die with my mother yet I struggled to be free of it.
But, it was a work that I am so grateful and thankful to say has been completed in me since earlier this year. I can now recognize and defeat those oppressive thought patterns. And, the final straw that broke the camel’s back was two-fold: forcing old out and allowing The Father to remove the fear of what He had waiting for me. Yet another new life, one that involves me finally allowing His goodness to prevail so that I can fully exit the old one. I had to stop allowing people, certain situations, and lost desires of the heart oppress me. I stopped being a ‘yes’ person unless that ‘yes’ was to something He wanted for or asked of me.
I was grappling with something big back in early summer and one morning while in the shower I heard the unmistakable voice of my God saying, “You do not dream big enough.” This statement broke me. I knew it was Him and I knew what he was referring to. I had a lifetime of disappointment, a lifetime of loss, of discouragement and walking away from “dreams” for various reasons following me around…and it was time for those things to flee, in Jesus’ name! I said okay, thy will be done, and within a week that big thing I’d been grappling with led to a scary yet exciting door opening for me. A door that had been closing in my face since 2018! And, what He did, the gift He presented me with, is perfect. It arrived in His perfect timing, As always, His thoughts and ways were/are so much higher and greater than my own.
Recently, The Father has been nudging me forward into the next thing, a purpose I have been working toward for almost two years. And in this new season of purpose He has shown me it is time to close the door to the old: it is time to release this long used space into the past, because I am not the same person who needed a place and a way for her voice to be heard any longer. Writing had long been the only way I could express myself without being “seen” because being “seen” meant being vulnerable. (See above.) We had a talk a couple of weeks ago and He told me it is now time to use my speaking voice for Him (and hey all those years of theatre/acting experience – to everything there is a purpose). Wow, has The Father proved this to be true by opening doors of opportunity to do just that. What a blessed privilege it is to speak to groups of women, to minister to their hearts by sharing not just parts of my testimony but being a living example of God’s goodness and mercy. A walking, talking, Psalm 23. Amen.
Humble endings
Friends, I am so humbled and honored that you have chosen to join me for any leg of the journey I have shared here on Writing Down Life.com – and am still waiting on a final word from the Holy One on if I will shutter this website or keep it up for others to find and connect with, but I believe it’s leaning toward truly letting it go. I am to take some of the writings and utilize them in other ways so not all will be lost.
If you do not hear from me again, here, I pray that He leads you toward and settles you into that peace of the Lord that passes all understanding. That if you too are on a healing journey, He helps you see how worthy you are of this kind of freedom. I encourage you to allow it to transpire, transform you completely, and that you are eager to thrive. Personally, I am eager yet slightly nervous as I walk into the next season of life, into what He is presently calling me to, but my life is not my own and would not have it any other way!
Until we meet again, in the upside of heaven…
Blessings and shalom I leave with you,
~S
