When "Why" becomes "What"

Hi everyone,

It is funny how this week off from work has really brought me back in time…or maybe when we have to walk through storms in our lives, it is through clinging to the rays of sunshine that we once knew that help us endure until the storm passes.

Having spent time around a campfire this weekend, it took me back 30+ years to Thanksgiving spent in the woods with family and friends.  It was an age of innocence.  This Thanksgiving I was also reminded of my first Thanksgiving away from home in Germany.  It is not a holiday celebrated there and doing so on a snowy day far away from my family was a memory I will always cherish.  I guess reminiscing about this time of innocence and my love for Germany just left me with feeling that I wanted and needed to put up a real Christmas tree this year.  Not just any real tree, but my first Christmas tree in Germany was a live tree in a pot.  This year to me it symbolizes bringing life back into my home.  Family and friends have been absent from my home for the past 2 ½ years and being given this gift back – well it means more than any gift that Santa could bring me on Christmas morning.

When it comes to gifts, there is no greater gift than to do things for someone else, though I have now learned the hard way that there are those in this world that thrive on exploiting kindness.  Though I will never be able to answer “why” a person would be this way that I will leave up to the professionals what I do know now is this, during those early adult years God spoke into my heart and told me that I was supposed to be doing something important.  For years though I have not been able to put a finger on what that exactly was that He wanted me to do.  So as November comes to a close, what I am most thankful for is that I now have moved past the “why” that I mentioned in a previous post and am embracing the “what” with the enthusiasm that I had in my young adult life. 

They say that the only way you can help someone go through abuse and recover is if you have been there yourself.  Unfortunately, like so many women in our state I have.  However, I can take my experiences and now use my gift of writing to tell my story.  Abuse knows no age, color or economic status, it does not care about a person’s educational background and it can come in different forms.  However, the common denominator though is 9 times out of 10 always the same – there are red flags which we as women do not see through our rose colored glasses of love.  

If I can use my story to help save the life of just ONE woman, then I have used my talents in a manner that God has intended for me.  I silently prayed and told the Lord that if He would lead me out of the storm, so that I no longer had to just “endure” life, but would finally be able to live it, then I would shout from the mountain tops what He had done for me.  I would use my life to give a voice to the silent and hope to those who feel hopeless.

Though I have been working on 3 books for several years, I think it is of the utmost important to now put all of my energy into this project.  The words are just coming to fast to ignore.  I have been asked does taking on a project like this scare me and my answer is NO because God has this!!  All He ever asks is for us to listen and follow Him when He asks.  So I shall…