When Formulas Fail…

I was faced with my first major life crisis at 20 years old. The kind of crisis “good Christian girls, who followed all the rules” are not supposed to face.

It was a moment when your faith is shaken. It is a moment where every solution being presented, “just keep praying,” doesn’t “work.” It is a moment when you start to have to look critically at every piece of yourself and what you have been taught and try to wade through to find truth and a way forward. The only other option would be to just set up camp in the valley of misery and despair and do nothing but throw a fit.

And I did throw some fits, quite a few.

So many of us face these moments…

Someone you love abuses you, a child dies, a car wreck that kills two of your teammates, a ski accident ends in a life lost too young, a wife decides she doesn’t want to be married to men, a couple that can’t get pregnant and has attended 10 baby-showers in the last 10 months. A life-changing diagnosis, the end of a marriage, the loss of a lifelong friendship.

Pivotal moments that change everything.

In my moment of reckoning, I realized I had a choice to make…

I stay in the place of a powerless victim, as if all of this is happening to me, or I turn the table and decide what I want and what I want to become because of this.

I decided I needed to learn how to be a woman confident in who I am, intentional about my own happiness, emotionally integrated, and focused on my purpose and what I am here to do with my life. I needed to learn how to be WHOLE.

I came across this definition one day as I was reading my Bible and it changed my life:

Peace, shalom (shah-loam) Strong’s #7965: Completeness, wholeness, peace, health, welfare, safety, soundness, tranquility, prosperity, perfectness, fullness, rest, harmony, the absence of agitation or discord. Shalom comes from the root verb shalam meaning “to be complete, perfect, and full.” Thus shalom is much more than the absence of war and conflict, it is the wholeness the entire human race seeks.

This is the WHOLENESS the entire human race seeks. Yes, it is. This was what I wanted. I wanted to be able to be at peace with myself, with others, and with my God.

Standing in this confidence, that no matter what life was going to throw at me next or what choices other people made that might greatly impact my life, I was going to be okay, I was going to be whole and complete in and of myself, not dependent on anyone else’s choices or action. Just me, myself and my creator.

My dear, this is what I want for you. I want you to experience the fullness, the wholeness that comes from wrestling through your inner insecurities, facing yourself, shining grace on the dark places in you that you feel ashamed of, I want you to experience peace to the very core of your being, that is not determined by what is happening around you, but by what is happening IN YOU!

You have the ability to tap into the “Great Spirit” that dwells inside of you and walk towards this life of completeness.

I am with you in the journey

-Shalom-

From my Heart to Yours