Transparency Tuesday “Setting The Stage”

⚠️Trigger Warning ⚠️

2015: I was living in Hawaii, married, with a phenomenal small group that I led, with an impactful women’s ministry that I created. I served on the media team at church where I did video and our church's announcements.

That same year I experienced my first pregnancy loss.

Those of you who have known me for a while, y’all know the anguish I had been in for years because of it. After losing my son, I went into a DEEP depression. So deep, it almost cost me my life.

I stopped leading my group. I stopped my women’s ministry and stopped operating in almost every creative God-given gift about me. The same day that I almost kissed death, I spoke with one of the pastors at my church, who was my mentor, counselor, and accountability partner.

She told me I had two options: to either go to “Celebrate Recovery”, or that she would call the cops. I remember crying and saying, “I’m not crazy, I am just so tired of hurting. I want it to stop!”

My husband at the time drove me to my church which had “Celebrate Recovery”. I again had two options: to either go to the “depression” group, or the “Grief Group”. I didn’t want to go to the depression group because honestly that sounded way too depressing. So I went to the grief group and that was the beginning of my healing…

Fast forward to 2020. I found myself staring down the barrel of divorce and all but almost lost everything, including my SANITY!

Through consistent counseling and my experience with processing grief and trauma, I know what I needed to do, so I did it… I fasted for 72 hours with nothing but water. It was the longest fast without food or liquids that I had ever done in my life. During those days of fasting, God spoke to me. He said a few things but the one thing He said to me that I will never forget was, “I will restore everything you have lost in the midst of your brokenness and pain through the years, and I will double your portion ten fold.”

The first sight of that was later on in 2020 when I was blessed with a opportunity to lead a “grief group” (Amazing how I was once a attendee years ago, now I’m leading).

Fast forward to 2021. His promises are being kept. For the sake of story time, I’m going to keep most of it short, and I will write about it at a later date.

However, I will speak about this video!!! What you see before you is me doing the news and working media for my local church here. Starting next year, I will also be a small group leader again over women and lastly, you can’t hear the audio in this video, but if you could you will hear me talk about “CELEBRATE RECOVERY” and how it is now officially coming to my local church here!

This blows my mind because so many times in life, we don’t see the connection. We don’t see how things will pan out. We don’t see the purpose for the pain. But my God is so poetic, He didn’t just meet me in my pain, He sat there with me and walked me to a better destination, where my pain had purpose. He’s keeping His word and He is faithful to His promises! And little by little, He is restoring and giving everything back to me, just like He said HE WOULD! Let this be a reminder to not lose heart, but to hang onto His promises to you.

Music @forkingandcountry