Let's Get This Party Started

"Let go, and let God."

We hear that phrase a lot when we are going through storms of life. It takes a great amount of strength and perseverance to let go. An even greater amount of faith and trust to let God. We, as humans, want to do the thing for ourselves and make stuff happen, right now, without the pain of letting go and without the patience of letting God.

I have to laugh at myself sometimes when I look back on the last 20 years of my life. I see the girl who once had such naivety about her. Don't you wish you could go back in time and have a conversation with yourself? I'd be like, "Listen here, kid..." Even though we can't, we get to use those experiences born out of our ignorance and let them teach us to let go.

I have been in plenty of seasons of letting go. It is painful. It is not easy. It feels like being gutted at times.

But. It is healing.

I'm finally in a place where I get to use my voice. I get to tell my story. I get to embrace it and love it.

I married my second husband in August of 2014, after 6 1/2 years of singleness from my first marriage. My second marriage had been rocky from the start, we both carried unhealed damage with us into the marriage. We had a blended family. 2 his. 2 mine. 1 ours.

We had a very messy, mess. He was abusing alcohol. I was extremely confrontational about the drinking. He had a pattern of hiding it and lying about it. He would get verbally abusive. And towards the end, he would often talk to other women behind my back when the threat of divorce was thrown at each other.

In February of 2019, I had been doing a study by Lysa TerKeurst called "It's Not Supposed To Be This Way" and it was wrecking my heart and showing me my part in what I was doing to my husband and marriage. I was one-week post-op of a hysterectomy so I had some rare downtime. I began searching for change and seeking help from God. I hated myself for being so bitter and a broken mess. And that hate was usually spewed at my then-husband, who was an equally broken mess.

The day my marriage shattered I had poured my heart out to my husband. I said everything that I would guess he'd ever wanted me to hear and to confirm about my behavior being just as abusive as his. He was sitting out in a shanty ice fishing. He was cold. Bitter. Hateful. His words, "not even God himself could fix this," are what echoed in my mind while I drove home. I prayed that God would shatter my marriage and make it what He wanted it to be, and I would trust Him the whole way.

Some hours later after our daughter, who was 3 at the time, was put down to bed there was a confrontation about a woman who had texted him. I had been suspicious about him cheating. We were in the kitchen while arguing, me with his phone and holding it behind my back. He was demanding it back and had chest-bumped me back into a corner. I threw his phone thinking that he would go get it. Instead, he had a look of sheer hatred come across his face and in an instant head butt me which resulted in a broken nose and his arrest.

My marriage was shattered.

In the days, weeks, and months to come, I had to go into a place of survival mode, self-preservation. I set aside what happened, and sheltered my children. And then, little by little, like peeling back layers of an onion, I began facing my toxic marriage. The death of my dream. The death of me. The death of him. The death of our family.

It has been four years. I was able to close the book. I have been able to let go of the pain. I have been embracing the single mom life, again. I have been working on loving myself, loving my children, and learning to find a healthy, healing, love. And I've been letting God love me. Like really, really letting God.

As I continue to write, my hope is, through my story, you may find strength, hope, healing, and inspiration. My friend, you are here by Divine appointment. So I hope we can journey together and some way, somehow, my story can inspire you to chase your highest potential, chase your healing, find your joy in the journey, and love yourself like your life depends on it! Because it does!

This is just the beginning.

Peace. Love. Joy. Calm. Abundance. Favor. Clarity

They await.

Let's go!