I’m not sure how to write all that is swirling around in my heart. It’s been so hard to contain what’s going on inside of me, to define and explain it. All I can say is that I continue to find myself over and over again becoming so overwhelmed with the thankfulness I feel about where I am. The journey God has taken me on is so amazing and the way he has orchestrated even the small details of the lessons I’m learning, the changes in me, just delights me in ways unexplainable.

I think about my life now compared to years 18-28 and I am struck with the contrast. It was like I lived those ten years asleep, not enjoying this incredible gift of LIFE. I can’t explain just how ALIVE I feel now, how awake I am compared to then, like sleeping beauty finally kissed by her true love. It’s like life sprang new in me and it’s bubbling out, uncontainable, onto the floor, into the cracks, dripping into the basement, filling up every room to the ceiling, pouring out the windows into the street. I feel like everywhere I go it pours out of me in ways I can’t help… it just bubbles and flows out, on and on. I feel like I’m about to burst with the LIFE flowing in me and it just amazes me.

I think that in losing my marriage, and in that, getting torn down to the very core of myself, God has slowly whispered to me about who I am and who I’m not. It’s so freeing to embrace yourself, your true self. It’s so amazing to throw away the untruths you’ve believed about yourself, pulling the millstone of all of those lies from your neck and tossing them into the depths of the sea. It’s so freeing to just LIVE in who you are, not apologizing for your self but embracing it. I am starting to see that all the tools that I need to accomplish the jobs set before me are hidden in my true identity. And that identity is so GOOD and so special.

Yesterday, independence day, I kept thinking about my own personal independence. This gift I’ve been given has not been lost on me. I was saved from the depths of fear and loss and abandonment and disgrace…from heart-wrenching pain that went on and on and on. I am just SO, SO, SO saved. It is so good. Life is so good. I’m just reveling in the freedom. And this is just the beginning…