I went on a road trip to see my sister in Kansas City this past weekend and during the 8 plus hour drive I finally understood how thorough our Father’s healing has been.

What began with me getting healthy, mind, body and soul became me walking into the arms of Jesus full heartedly.   I cannot pin point the exact day and time that this particular healing took place.  It has been a process much like learning to walk again.  If you ever had to relearn something you can understand the frustration when your body doesn’t do what it is supposed to do.  The frustration when the mind tells the limbs to move and they don’t do it as quickly or as easily as they once did.  This frustration and anger can be overwhelming to our humanness.  My personal healing process has been slow and steady; little by little.   It has been putting one foot front in front of the other in all areas of my life.

It has become about finding my balance and cutting out anything negative that would have a chance to harm me or to plant a seed of doubt, worry, anxiety or FEAR!  It took the extreme action of me putting and keeping a centurion at the gate to deflect and a filter in which to look at the world.   It has become about learning to unpack my suitcase, piece by piece and letting go layer upon layer of old beliefs that were created by others about my value, my worth and who I was.

It has become about letting go of things that the world says are so important.  It has been about my journey to not only finding me but loving me through God’s eyes.  It has become about opening my heart to love and then laying that Love at the altar for God to breathe life into it and to hold it in His hands.  It has become about learning to surrender and give freely of myself.  It has become about learning to give every single piece of me; heart and soul back to the one who created me to begin with.  It continues to be about me learning to lay my mind, soul and body down and then leave it at His feet.  It is where I am the safest and the most loved.

I realized this weekend that I am;  as of today anxiety free.  I’m no longer walking in the shadow of fear, doubt and worry.

I am so thankful that when He heals; He heals completely.  I’ve spent most of my adult life being completely afraid of driving over bridges; among many other things. I lived in fear, anxiety and worry; afraid I would do something wrong or say something wrong.  The irony is that everything I did was wrong, everything I said was wrong, nothing was ever good enough and it never could have been because God wasn’t the first, center or the last.

Psalm 91:14-15 New International Version (NIV)

¹⁴ “Because he^[a] loves me,” says the Lord, “I will rescue him; I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name. ¹⁵ He will call on me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him.”

Driving over bridges especially long tall ones would literally cause me to have a panic attack.  My heart would race, my hands would sweat, at the worst I would literally want to crawl into the floor board of the car and stay there.  I would sink as far down into my seat as I could and close my eyes until I was on the other side.  It was unbearable at times but as with everything in my former life, I had to learn how to shove my feelings and my reactions down deep and put it behind the brick wall I had built for myself over the years.    I learned for my own well-being to hide my feelings and my reactions otherwise I was ridiculed and made of fun; my panic,  my anxiety was funny and just another tool in which to hurt me.

Proverbs 15:4

“The soothing tongue is a tree of life, but a perverse tongue crushes the spirit. “

So today like so many miracles I’ve personally experienced in the last 2 and half years I am thankful and full of praise for a Father that heals all, completely and fully!

It’s been a process and each day brings new life and new revelations about how deep this healing has been; in Jesus we are made new.

It gives me a chance to do my life better than the day before.  My goal in this life is to live every second in surrender to my Father, my healer, my deliverer and my provider.  I am not naturally very good at following; being born the first of five, being those siblings mother at a very early age, being the mother of 4 and grandmother of 4, being a business owner and manager.  I much prefer the role of leader but I will until my last breath follow my Father.

I was the one who turned away because I was so tired, I was so weary, I let go of the hand that was holding me in the darkness because I had not an ounce of strength left.   I was the definition of dried up dead bones.  I didn’t want to breathe, I didn’t want to see the sunrise or the sunset.  I couldn’t see the beauty that surrounded me.  If I would have had the strength or the ability I would have ended my own life in those years of agony.  Thank God that years of being in the church stopped me from doing that and somewhere in my soul I knew I didn’t want to hurt my children that way.

However, He like all good Fathers was just waiting for the battle worn and bleeding daughter to return!  I let go of Him but He never let go of me!    Who would have known that an invite to church on Christmas Day 2016 would be the door that got thrown wide open for me?    I walked into church and have never look back.  Who would have known that June 4th, 2016 I would be baptized and that a year later I would be writing about my deep love of my Father and sharing with women about the grace, mercy and love He has for them and for you!

He is the center of my world; He is the first and He is the last.  He has blessed me beyond anything I could ever imagine with a family I love more because of my love of him, with healing that is true restoration and everlasting.  He has blessed me with a grateful soul for every single person in my life and the ability to see the beauty of all the things He created.  He has blessed me with looking through His eyes to see the soul of others.  He has blessed me with true compassion for others and a desire to help others find their way to Him!

He has blessed me with the tremendous love for another; the kind of love that has become soul deep and that grows every day, every minute, every second because I love my Father so fiercely.   He has blessed me with complete trust and faith in Him!

I am not worthy but by your grace I am made new!

Ephesians 2: 8.  For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith–and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God–

Do you have bridges in your life that cause you to want to melt into the floor, to turn away; to not experience the full joy of life?  Those anxieties, those fears, those worries, they are the distraction.  They distract you from your purpose in this life and that is to love the Father with all your heart, all your mind, all your body and all your soul.  It is a distraction from the promises God has made that HE is for you and not against you.  Those worries, fears and anxieties will and can be healed through Jesus.

His healing is so thorough that something so insignificant as being afraid to drive over a bridge can completely vanish and be replaced with complete joy and glory for HIM!

Isaiah 64:8

“But now, O, Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.”