sex, food and in control

I felt so good to be able to reach into my brain and ask myself the tough questions no one seemed to be talking about around me. I wasn't fooled into thinking everyone knew what to do, because if that had been the case then we would all just offer up what works and people would go about their business as usual a cooler slimmer version of yesterday's self. Since I wasn't finding anyone who wanted to let me know what the deal was with food and I sure as heck wasn't getting anywhere, I turned to sex. It worked. When you're naked you better believe that you don't want to tote a big round carcass onto the other person. So for awhile when I was with Luis I had the slim sexy spice boy to keep me preoccupied, but that was only on the weekends. I had to find things to keep me busy Monday through Friday night. I loved having the apartment to myself. I had total control over what happened there. Well, sort of. I like all things tidy, no clutter, no television. I had a tv box but no cable, just a vcr player for movies. You turned my tv on and it had a blue screen. I had grown up in a family where food was consumed in immeasurable amounts while watching the boob tube. I was so afraid that if I had tv I would never be able to get away from eating in front of it and be as large as a house. I saved so much money and wasted time from not being in front of the television that I wasn't in a house that had one until I had married my first husband. I am not gonna lie, I love tv just like the next person, it can be very relaxing or fun. It's just at the time I needed something more from life and I hadn't found the "Laura" that I was proud of yet. I was finding more solace at work accomplishing something for someone else and going to the gym after work to get this darn thing in shape. I was on a roller coaster. I would work all day dreaming of this cute little life I had with spice boy and I would go to the gym at night. It was great. I would call him on the way to the gym and talk til I got there. I would walk into the gym and it would hit me like a ton of bricks. SEX. Maybe it's just me but I have to say finding myself and growing up into a woman who knew better was A-Okay by me. I loved walking into a place that never let me get too comfortable. I still to this day remember so vividly all the friends I've made and all the connections that I have for life from being that naive little chub that walked through the door at 18. It was a vicious cycle that I was on. Let's just say one of those cheap thrill rides at a small time carnival. It was brutal. I couldn't get myself to stop thinking about food, which would then send me into pictures in my head of Mr. and Mrs. Clump making out. I was not going to be a fat woman who ended up with a fat husband or boyfriend. I would die first. I would try and get it together and most of the time I was okay as long as I was busy. I could find myself looking back over the day and if I was busy at work or busy at the gym working out, I was not hungry, but when I got home I would eat everything in sight. I found a local pizza joint where I started going to buy a grilled chicken salad with no dressing and a bun.......then I had to go bun free cause carbs were a fad a while back and I had to let them go. It's a holiday weekend today and like any other normal person there's picnics and parades and I'm all for it. It's just when you're trying to find your inner peace, holidays can make a chubby person cuss. What the Hell Holiday!? Why are you here, why can't you just be a Tuesday .....Nothing happens on a Tuesday. I am so compassionate to anyone who struggles because when you're at these places that serve all the "bad foods": chips, pretzels, dips, any kind of pasta or potato salad you're doomed because if you're like me you could gain ten pounds in a single sit down. It wasn't that bad but it felt like it in my pants the next day. I was sick and tired of fighting the hunger pangs. It nagged like a hangnail or stone in your shoe.(seriously if you've ever had a stone in your shoe than you know it can make you feel like your foot is going to fall off if you don't stop and take care of that immediately) ;) It seemed to get easier once I started listening to my body. I knew when I needed to eat and when I didn't. The hard part came with life or rather work. It wasn't always easy to get a handle on when to take clients or when to eat at work and that was the next challenge I had to face. I'm not in an easy industry to begin with, considering we are the bandaid on the bullet wound called reality. Pinterest seems to make it possible in a click of a button but what it takes to get a handle on skin, hair and nails in an hour means no eating for the miracle worker. It's ok. I love helping people so I managed to learn what to take along to work and what not. But the next task was managing my body. It's not easy to look in the mirror at yourself. I mean really look in the mirror. I avoided it until I was dressed, and even then I was critical at what I saw. My past has haunted me with my skin stretched and wrinkles that shouldn't be there because my skin was stretched past the point of no return. I wake up everyday to my past creeping into my future. One day I'll get it sawed off and be done for good. But in the time being I'm right where I needed to be to learn what needed to be learned about all the choices I had made up until that point in my life. Even if they all weren't ones I really understood. I was growing up and it hurt, but I've learned to break the muscle down to strengthen it you have to tear it and let it heal. This was my process. I needed to be broken for a little while longer so I could one day be unbreakable.

my BIG mouth

(((Giggle))) No truer words ever said.....well, besides the BIBLE. But I mean me...about me. I do have quite the pie hole. Or I used to. I just think, "wow I have come so far from what I was". Let's think about the correlation to what I've been saying over the past few months. My MOUTH. It's been such a struggle. Is that weird? Abnormal? Un-treatable? Should we call someone? Look into that? Lol. I think it's a shame for most of my life I struggled to have such wonderful things happen or questions answered when I needed them most that I needed something to put in or on my mouth. Hence the wonderful addictions of the world. SEX, DRUGS, ROCK-N-ROLL. Mine is more like FOOD, SEX, CUSS. No joke. I used those three things to lash out. Think about it. Addictions always put a band-aid on what's really wrong. I needed the pleasure of eating to sooth me. I needed a boy to kiss me to soothe loneliness. Also back then it was how I gauged whether or not I was sexy (attractive, pretty, beautiful, everybody wants to be sexy on that scale you know it!) enough. Last but definitely not least I cussed, better than any trucker. Mostly towards people who where hiding behind closed doors. You ever have any of those people in your life? The ones that just won't bring that kind of behavior out in public????? Yeah I finally cussed at them. Not always to their face. No No. I'm classy. I did it mostly in my own room. Okay maybe family! I cussed directly at my family, but I had a theory on that one. I was hoping it would put me at distance with them because as you've gathered we have little in common other than breath. You can think what ever you want about that last sentence. It's nasty, I know. It isn't meant to impress you, rather be honest. It's just another look at the whacked out world I was living in. Yeah this one. The one we share. I mean I know we all have messed up times in our lives, I'm okay with that. It doesn't need to be a state of mind for the rest of our lives. I personally don't think it ever needs to be a thing we experience, but if it is I've learned we can come away from it and really grow. I learned that my mouth was my most powerful weapon and biggest gift yet. I'm thankful for the many lessons it taught me. It's a gift from God. My cussing????! Hell no! My mouth. I know you might not be able to understand what I'm trying to get across. I love to relate to the scripture GOD has given us and he tells us to be careful of the mouth for it can be so destructive. It's true. It took me a long time til I fully grasped that. I was about 24 when I really understood how powerful this mouth really was. Remember I told you I was in counseling for 11 years. I learned back then I needed to have rational thinking people to be around or I go crazy. Ha! (How I have made it this far is beeeeeyond me) I didn't always make the best decision or say the right things. No. I have made huge strides to be better than my old self. I strive daily to be mindful of many things in my life, but more importantly I've wanted to use my mouth for good. I want to stand up against the injustices of life and bring the light of Jesus to the REAL WORLD. Out on the streets where I find he's most relevant. Just sitting in church acting perfect and then coming back out to the real world only to cop out of what's really going on drives me nuts. Doesn't mean everyone does it but it happens often enough that it's destroying our towns and communities. The road that lead me to that very conclusion was such a bumpy disgusting road of lies, delusions, facades, expectations, obligations and, last but not least, irresponsibility.(sounds like tons of people I know) I dislike all of those words and how they break down the human body. I can't stand cop outs. They make me wanna cuss. So I studied what was going on in my mind and body and why I just despised the behavior. It's because it's void of forgiveness to yourself and learning to take healing and responsibility for your life. Which I believe are all gifts from God. I waited for years to feel the touch of someone's mouth and to feel special. It didn't need to consume me, had I understood how to take care of my body through food and water. I didn't need to have years of horrible skin irritations from being overweight and my thighs rubbing together just waiting to chafe. I didn't need to be made fun of every day of my young life, I didn't need to be dismissed at home because my parents couldn't deal with their own miserable upbringings and fake lives. I didn't need to try to survive everyday not knowing what would come tomorrow. ARE YOU GETTING THIS?? I didn't know what to do. I didn't know why I chose food over God, sex over God. I remember one night with my ex husband telling me I could cut right through steel with my mouth. I finally got who I was. I was a strong warrior woman who could be available for God or could be used by the devil. I had to choose the side I wanted to work for. Yeah Yeah Yeah. I know that sounds a bit cliche. I mean this. I wasn't supposed to marry him to begin with, I did it to run away from the problems I was facing with dead relationships with family and work.(I learned that lesson later.) I began to put the pieces together the moment he said that to me. He saw the same girl that my parents saw with my MOUTH. It clicked! They have the same lies and facade. They act one way at church or work, but when it comes right down to it they can't keep up with work, bills, responsibility, accountability, REALITY.....that's the big one right there. I would lash out every time I was surrounded by a person who hides. People hide from everything it seems. I will continue to reach out to people to explain we do not need to hide. We can forgive ourselves from what we did and start new. I had to forgive myself for lashing out, cussing, eating, sexing instead of using my time and my mouth to help people. Does that mean that I don't do those things now? Hell no! ha! I want to caution you to understand that as long as you live you will have to use the same vessel that was choosing poorly to be the same vessel choosing wisely. The same mouth that was eating processed foods and either bingeing on them or purging them is now the mouth that chooses good organic foods and uses my food to nourish my body from the inside out. The same mouth that was kissing boys I had no business kissing now kisses my husband ONLY. The husband who knows EVERYTHING ABOUT ME (and reads this blog). He loves me and my once wayward lips. The mouth that was cussing out family members and constantly near fake people has chosen total distance and peace rather than friction. That included me getting a new job by opening my own salon and time away from the whole family tree where the hiding behavior still continues. I decided to take a different path. One that allowed me to be responsible for everything I was doing. I wanted to make a path that would make a difference in everything I did and everyone I've met. I take my health seriously so that when I eat I can get up in the morning and use my body to bless others by saying hello, making them look and feel beautiful and to give hugs and support where I can. I talk to my husband every minute I can and give HIM a hundred kisses a day to give him the love he needs to feel encouraged and supported. So yes, I use this mouth for food and kisses, but this is the time in my life where I choose to do something amazing with them. And as far as cussing.....as long as there is evil on the planet you're bound to hear a fowl word every now and then. Satan doesn't listen to please and thank you anyway........

Team Food:1 point Team Laura:0 points

That's what it felt like. A game. One that I had no idea how to play and it was gaining on me big time. I had seen my family including cousins and aunts and uncles lose the game so many times with food that it seemed a hopeless fight. If food thought it was going to win against me, it didn't know who it was messin' with! I had a sexy boyfriend now and I wasn't going down without a fight. I was going to control my cravings and my weight. I just had to figure out what the heck I was doing wrong before I could fix it. I figured I could ask around and see what my friends knew. I mean c'mon not everyone's parents and children were heavy or seem to have an issue with food so let's ask around and see what other people have going on. I decided to ask "Hot Stuff" my friend from the gym how she had started to lose weight but then keep it off more importantly!!!? She had quite the interesting answer. She threw it up. Whatever she ate, she threw up. Isn't that "Bulimia"? I had been under the impression that girls were born with that problem not chose to have that problem. I looked at her like she had 3 ridiculous sized heads and said how the heck do you even do that??? She told me to stick my finger way back til I hit that small dangly thing in the back of my throat and my body would do the rest. I was mortified. I thought how could she even do such a thing? Why did she let food go in, if all she was going to do was have it come right back out???? Who was I kidding??? Did I have AAANNNNNYYYYY OTHER CHOICES STARING ME IN THE FACE????? Well, I could choose not to eat, but then again if I could manage the not eating side of things we wouldn't be having this conversation!!! I was so confused at the time how girls like me ended up having one of the 2 issues with food. All the while being hungry each day you wake up and your body needs you to care for it. My job was and is still sooooo demanding that how was I going to stop eating????? I had a big problem on my hands and I was going to have to think things through. I started to think everybody is hiding something. If my friend could hide from me that she was throwing up her food and her family didn't know, then maybe just maybe more people were doing things that I just needed to find out about. It comes right down to making a decision NOT to harm yourself and to get help where the help is truly needed. I was on that journey, but for the full stories sake we need to walk down memory lane to understand how my mind was working back then and how desperate I was to be liked by this boy so I was willing to undermine my normal body treatment. I want you young girls to understand it didn't matter what everyone else thought. It only mattered to me how I looked and I wanted something different to stare back at me. I wanted all the roundness and bumpiness to go away. No one on my life path seemed to want to offer up a solution to being overweight. My whole family struggled with the weight issue except for my one sister and brother. Which life has come to turn those tables as well. Food wins when you don't take the time to monitor yourself. It always wins in the end if you choose to be ignorant to it. I, like everyone else, didn't have a buddy system where someone looked out for me. It seemed that food was the new swear word and people had given that up for lent. You might think I'm over stating the horrible trenches that were our routine in the morning to figure out how to get through the day without over stepping your boundaries with food. I can try to tell you how wonderful life is, but the reality is it's only as good as the team you're born into. Or the team you find yourself playing with or living life out with, but in all realities we're all given a beginning team and if they are not of the mindset to eat healthly and mindfully, you're bound to find yourself on the same road I was trying to figure out for yourself. I don't want you to be there alone. I had so much to be thankful for and I was, but that didn't stop the cravings. I had so much I wanted to learn yet, and I was trying, but that didn't stop the cravings. I had many many things that I was accomplishing and I was proud of myself, but that didn't stop the cravings. I went to church every Sunday and I went to the gym 7 days a week and I kept my apartment clean and my bills paid, but that didn't stop the cravings. WHAT WAS I MISSING??????????? The real answer. The answer that didn't have anything to do with food. STRESS. What in the world does that mean????? It means my real problem wasn't with food at all. It was what to do with all the stress I was facing while trying to put my body back together that my parents had plumped up during my damaging childhood. I was not only trying to slough off the old me I had no control over, but trying to control the new stress of having NO IDEA what to do with every meal I had because my childhood taught me nothing. It taught me very little other than how to survive the up and coming apocalypse. I want you to get a hold of how important this is. Our childhoods teach us so many things we don't even want to learn let alone UNLEARN. I had one outlet for stress and dissatisfaction with anything going wrong in my life and it happened to be the same thing that I needed to get a handle on to live a long healthy life. DO YOU SEE MY PREDICAMENT? I had to put up a boundary with food yet eat it to survive. It haunted me night and day and I was just unable to handle it anymore. I faced every second hungrier than the last second and I needed to eat something. I decided the best thing to do was to eat something I liked that way I could be okay with it coming back up if I ever needed to purge it. I went with pizza. My all time favorite. Still is to this day. I wanted to be sure I was doing what I wanted and not what I thought I had to do. Like I said this has been a life long journey and at the time I hadn't mastered learning about the nutritional breakdown of foods and what to eat to nourish my body holistically. So here goes the first thing I decided to purge. My pizza. The whole thing. I mean of course, if your going to purge a pizza it isn't going to be one slice. Oh no. THE WHOLE DAMN THING. How could I have gone through with it?? You don't know a desperate girl until you've met my past. She would have done anything to figure food out. I never felt so much pain in my life. It hurt like you could not believe to force the body to purge something it so dearly wanted to hold onto. I can remember it like yesterday the good 6-8 months I purged everything I ate. I got so good I didn't even tear up anymore. Oh yeah your whole body reacts to throwing things back up. It isn't a pretty sight. I had a heart to heart talk with myself after that treacherous couple of months. The issue of food didn't go away. The decisions didn't get easier. I hadn't learned anything of value to pass on to another human being. I had more questions than ever. I wasn't losing weight. I hated food more than ever because I had more responsibility than ever to get rid of it. I was hiding and we know that isn't good. I was worried someone was going to find out. I was taking my life and wasting it trying to find the right answers on this quest to figure out food. WELL WE KNOW THIS ONE ISN'T WORKING SO KNOCK IT OFF. AND I DID. One thing I can be thankful for is my brain. I tried it and, with no results whatsoever other than realizing I was a Pro Purger, I hadn't mastered food at all. It still had the handle on me and I needed to take the responsibility to accept what I did to my body. I stopped it. It wasn't easy, I cried alot when it came time to eating and I wasn't sure really what to do. But I decided this couldn't possibly be what the Lord had in mind for our lives. I knew he didn't want me hurting all the time and hurting my very own body. I'm not stopping till I figure out what he wants from me and this isn't it........

You'll kiss a few toads before you find your prince

"Is this love that I'm feeling, or is this the love that I've been searching for......"??(to quote Whitesnake, for you young bucks look it up) At that exact moment that Luis kissed me I had never felt a surge come over my body quite like that before. Yes, yes, I've had people kiss me and I've had boyfriends Duh!!!! This was different. I had put him on a pedestal that no one had ever sat on in my life before. Heck, no one in my family tree was so beautiful....I mean this guy was gorgeous. Not the kind you find in a second hand store (a little Prince for ya!!) I didn't know it yet but this was the part of the journey with love that you have to find out for yourself. I had parents, I thought I knew what it was to look at people at church with their spouses, I saw people all the time getting engaged and I thought wow......Do their knees shake when they kiss??? You could always fake a knee shake, but why bother if you can find the real thing yeah??!!! I thought my whole world had fallen upside down. I knew life was going to be more fun by the minute because I had to await this guy's call while I was at work and I had this guy to talk about while I was at work and I had this guy to look forward to after work, and the gym of course. It's funny how I type this out now and back then even texting was just really coming into play in relationships. I remember checking to see voicemail envelopes blinking in the top right of the phone screen. Those were the days, the days where voicemail chicks didn't drag on the introductory of who called, what time and what to do to listen or delete! UGH!!! That chick drives me nuts. I would check it on the hour when I was finished with a haircut or color and go into the back room and check my phone a thousand times to see if he called. Things really started to take a turn because I was serious about this guy and decided that after a week of honest calling and subtle texting that I was definitely making an impression on Mr. Picante. I think I was so nervous to lose him that I began to focus more on my looks. No BIG deal right??? I mean what girl in her right mind trying to lock in a cute boyfriend doesn't watch her looks like I need to lose 10 lbs yesterday??!!! It was the plan I had already mapped out for myself anyway, I mean I was at the gym, I was a graduate of food therapy counseling and knew I had to take the necessary steps to correct my eating, it's just now I had this cute boy around to help curb my desire to eat food ever again because I wasn't going to be the chubby chaffing trainwreck he left for another cute thinner girl. NO SIR! I was on a diet. Oh gosh. I don't know what's worse, the bad boyfriend sob story to come or the "diet" nightmare that became my life for 7 years. Now mind you it spanned over 2 relationships. I am so sorry body, temple, vessel but you have to go. You're not going to be needed here anymore cause momma's getting a cute boyfriend. I had understood I was choosing food when I was stressed out and as much as my therapist loved me and my cash, she couldn't help me every inch of my future. You can never guess what stress will be around every corner to even be able to stock the frig correctly for a binge bulge session anyway. I had to take this one step at a time and I was going to start with "anorexia" cause those girls had managed a skill that had skipped my entire family tree.(Please make a note: this is NOT A STAB AT THE DISEASE) Heck no I was 21 years old stupid and I meant it. I was at least going to try the opposite side of the disease I had been given. I was going to NOT eat. Hell, I didn't make it 20 min. I sat down and thought, each week that goes by I want to be thinner and sexier than the last time he saw me so he can not leave me.(it sounds immature, that's because it was and that is how girls think, moving on) I had to figure something out and I would because I always come up with a plan. I'm no wuss. I will do what has to be done even if it kills me. My mother used to say that I obsessed over losing weight so much that I would end up dead. I said "that's fine, at least they won't have to jump on the casket to close it". She could't relate that I would rather die than live one more day being worse than the day before. I was going to change my weight if it was the last thing I did. It became a depressing mantra in my head. I'm HUNGRY. The only thing I thought! If that wasn't it then "I wish I was thinner". Girls! We have got to stop beating ourselves up over not being perfect in one day. For those coming out of homes where there is a food addiction or homes where being thin was just the DNA of the tree to going away to college and gaining weight or after a relationship kicks in you pack on the munchie pounds.....It's okay to have to come to a challenge to learn how your body works best. I shouldn't have pushed mine so hard. I should have loved it more gently and allowed the boy to like me while working on things in my life that concerned me or slowed me down. Ya know nowadays I go places and see pop up franchise's that are a walk in make your own slow death ice cream bars. AMERICA WAKE THE HECK UP! I've yet to see any "grow your own garden" bars poppin' up. Of course not, a lot of people have learned to drown their sorrows in "I haven't gone to the grocery store or I hate my life today it's Tuesday" low-fat vanilla. Is that a stab at how society has morphed into social hours of drown in sugar?? No. It's a reality check as to why I was feeling the pressure to eat, eat , EAT EATTTTT!!!!! While knowing that the pressure felt wrong and the reality was I wasn't going to find anyone including my therapist who would admit there was an undertone in society that food controlled us. It did. It's just this time it controlled me while I was controlling it to not control me. It was controlling me. Bastard. It was gaining on me and I hated it. I loved the weeks because I could just get calls and texts during the day and I was working so the time went by fast. I would go to the gym during the week after work and then get home late in the day around 9:30 or 10 pm to eat something quick and then relax in bed and chill with the cat. I never had a computer or a tv so I would just lay in bed thinking about food and do word find puzzles. I was about as cool as an 83 year old woman!!! lol I loved that life because the weekend was coming and I was going to get to see my boyfriend. I had the perfect life. Or so I thought......

Why bother telling you any of this......;)

It's true I love to tell my story. I find that over the past 34 (almost 35 years don't rush it) that everything I've ever been through is important. Not because it's my life per se but because it is a life given by God to live out his word. It sounded different in my youth than it does now. Things are changing so quickly in our communities. I rarely find people at total peace, with a smile on their face, just looking for another person to bless simply by saying "Hello". We've been placed on this planet with so much ahead of us to enjoy and to take part in. I find more people feel the burden of placing titles upon themselves. I've chosen to follow Jesus by asking for his salvation for when I die I would reside in paradise with him forever. I want to do what he asks of me (for the most part my 20's were a little hairy). I understand that not all people will understand what that word "salvation" means, but it really just gets right to the point and gives God all the glory: it says he has a purpose for our world and reality and he asks that we follow him and evangelize his name! I get so excited when I think about it! I also chose to become a hairstylist which to some people doesn't mean a whole lot but it's a much harder profession than one may think. You ever stand for more than 10 hours a day 6 days in a row, year after year after year?? It's not such a simple feat yet help a person understand the quality of what you do and what you're after might not match the potential they have with a comb and can of hairspray! Golly have I ever seen a bunch of messes on top of people's heads over the last 17 years! I chose to become a hairstylist not because I wanted to work with hair. I've always wanted to work with people, Hearts rather. I've wanted to inspire people to think about how important they are because they are given a total purpose by God to choose his son and then to live life to the fullest, walking among the lost, and the sick and to bring HIS light to those who are needing it. I've made a ton of mistakes as a Christian annnnnnd a hairstylist. I will admit it is par for the course so that I can become a better version than what I was a minute ago or a week ago or a month ago. For without making a mistake you can not truly learn the lesson. I find myself constantly searching the word and stories in the Bible to find a relationship with ANY situation I go through or my marriage goes through or my business goes through. I find that God gave us these tools, not to shame or become burdened with inadequacies, but rather to try to gain understanding that we have everything we need to achieve. We are afforded forgiveness and we can run the race by standing back up when we fall down and move on with our lives. THAT'S THE KEY POINT THAT I WANT TO MAKE RIGHT THERE. We need to then tell other people about what we have learned so that they too can have hope that things are not over. We can be forgiving of ourselves for what we chose to do then learn the deep rooted lesson in it and share what we are responsible for and how to become accountable one difficulty at a time. It makes a person more genuine and instead of being a superficial waif-like person you get a deep full bodied individual that can go anywhere and do anything because they understand that what God has created he breathed life into fully. It is doing life without truly understanding the deeper meaning in things that we become so insecure. I am walking and talking everywhere I go and find that so many people can only speak on a subject that they are taught on or have a total undivided interest in. If it is not something they have thought about or want to know they find no value. We have started an electronic society (I know I'm also using the internet) where everything we want or relate to is a one on one high five or thumbs up or sad face. We've lost the ability to talk one on one or in large groups so that as a community we can become more aware of the enemy (devil) and how he breaks us down. He has a plan in place to divide us and unless we work against that cause: to become more aware on how to make boundaries on that kind of evil it will divide us. It doesn't have to happen in a hateful way or even breaking the law. Oh no he'll find a way much more sleek and behind the scenes kind of way. His purpose is to break down. Period. If we as a society allow this, things will get worse. I share my story and all the un-likeable parts because in everything that happened there is a lesson to be learned and the responsibility to learn about what happened so that I could start fighting back against the evil that resides in many that walk past me everyday. I am not attacking the flesh, I am attacking what lives within us. If we do not choose our Creator God, what source of spirit do you allow in your life. I learned very quickly as a young girl believing in God, his son Jesus and the Holy Spirit, is different than living in a way that shares it with others. Does this mean that I think I am perfect and am some chosen one to lead the way considering all of my poor choices that I've made or will make? No. I just believe that God will be found in a way that is whole, real, honest, messy or rare. He will be found where it's to the core of who you are. You have to get to the point where you understand everything is created with a purpose and it will be used as he sees fit. I WANT TO BE A PART OF THE JOURNEY. I WANT TO BE USED BY GOD TO SET APART CREATION FROM DAMNATION. I want to share my story with you so you have somebody who can attest to the facts that life isn't always easy and you will make mistakes. You are not worthless or useless just because you may have found yourself making decisions leading you down a dangerous path. I've been there. Sometimes you have to ride that out just so you can learn the lesson to it's fullest. Ask yourself this: Did every person who ever read the Bible no longer sin in the future just because they read of someone else's similar journey. No, they had to make their own mistakes even if it was the exact same mistake for the sole purpose of learning the true lesson. Not all mistakes are created equal. Some mistakes can literally change your whole life in a second, some can even end it all together. The one passion I believe I've had since birth is people. I believe if we give ourselves a chance to thrive we will see a different nation under God indivisable. A nation who understands it's true purpose was to thrive while praising God for our existence to love the things we humans love. It may sound a bit hokey to you, but it's the world I'm so longing for.........