The Health of My Heart

The response to my last post, “Surrender,” has been unbelievable. So many precious people have reached out to me and offer me encouragement. Several others reached out to share their similar and extremely painful experiences. Even more reached out to check up on how I am doing. I have been overwhelmed by love and I have felt the weight of every broken heart. To every single person who has reached out - who has expressed love, support, grace, pain, brokenness, etc. - I thank you.

To give an update on the health of my heart - I am happy to report that I am doing very well!

Though the last six months have been peppered with the pain and torment of divorce, I have also experienced so much joy and growth. Every day is a new challenge, as always, but I feel altogether healthy. I have spent a great deal of time this summer and fall seeking out the whole, happy, healthy life I strive to help others find. I have been purposely pursuing total health - relationally, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically.

On my journey to find healing, I have gotten to travel a lot (to Memphis, Nashville, Kentucky, Hot Springs, Austin, and Italy). I have plugged into The Porch at Watermark. I’ve made a lot of new friends and reconnected with old ones. I’ve spent hours and hours in counseling. I finished my Master’s degree. I became a Certified Christian Life Coach. I started to substitute teach. I’m eating healthier and staying active (I’ve lost about 20 pounds!) I am writing again. I am dating someone.

In the last six months, I have spent a lot of time hurting. But I have also spent a lot of time healing.

Thank you to all who have reached out to me to check on me. Thank you all for loving me well and giving me so much grace. I also appreciate each of you being patient as I took a sudden and unexpected step back from blogging and coaching. Now that I am feeling healthy and happy again, I feel much more comfortable offering my coaching services and wisdom via writing. (So check out my Coaching Services page and let’s get you into some coaching sessions!)

You are all amazing. I am so thankful to have a place to grow alongside all of you. I am so glad to know we are all in this together - pursuing health, wellness, healing, and happiness. It is humbling to me that you all let me be vulnerable and transparent as we journey together!

As always, you can expect more posts from me regarding how I attempt to practice what I preach. In the meantime, focus on the joy of the Lord and ask Him what it looks like to seek a whole, happy, healthy life. If there's anything I can offer to you so I can spur you on in that way - let me know!

Me, Too.

I don’t want to talk about the time I was five years old and on a Kindergarten field trip, a boy kissed me against my will and threatened to kill me with his karate if I told the teacher.

I don’t want to look back on the numerous times that as a child, I would walk the short distance from my house to the park, and a car would slow down and drive beside me as I walked. A man with a scary voice and a twisted up face would always roll the window down and say things like, “hey baby, where you going?” or “you’re beautiful, you know that?”.

I don’t want to think about the first time (of many) that someone grabbed my butt in the seventh grade hallway. I don’t want to remember turning around, embarrassed and shocked, to see him high-fiving his friends who were sneering and giggling and mocking me.

I don’t want to flash back to the time in ninth grade when I was wearing my “flyaway” cheer skirt, and I caught my history teacher licking his lips at me. I don’t want to recall his big wink and the chuckle he let out when I made eye contact with him.

I don’t want to talk about Halloween my sophomore year, when the boy I loved locked me in his house, pinned me down on his couch and tried to force himself on me. I don’t want to remember having to physically shove him off of me and onto the floor. I don’t want to hear his angry voice calling me “bitch” ringing in my head.

I don’t want to remember when I was fourteen and a boy I didn't like forcibly kissed me when I was laying down on my couch. Or when I was fifteen and another boy forcibly kissed me by grabbing the back of my head and pulling it towards him, sitting in his fancy SUV that was running in my driveway. Or when I was sixteen and another boy grabbed me and forcibly kissed me in front of my English class.

I don’t want to think back on the time I was in college and was filled with so much anxiety and fear after all of these years of sexual mistreatment, harassment, and assault, that when the boy I wanted to marry overstepped the physical and sexual boundaries I was comfortable with, I tailspun into a wild episode of depression and anxiety, unable to properly function for months.

I don’t want to admit that the man I did end up marrying used his addiction to pornography as an excuse to abuse me sexually, to molest me, to attack me in my sleep, and to rape me. Not only that, but when I wasn’t enough for him, when I couldn’t fill his sexual desires, he entered into another sexual relationship with another woman, hurting me even further.

I don’t want to talk about this. I don’t want to remember it. I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want every bad touch or scary feeling or creepy stare or gross word or sick smile to be seared into my memory. I don’t want to carry this brokenness with me. Because I don't want any of this to have happened. 

But it did. It happened. 

So I do want to talk about it... because I want to share my experiences. I want control of my own narrative. I want the boys who have hurt me to be held accountable. I want others to know they are not alone in their hurt. I want to be a part of opening the dialogue so that this sin has nowhere to hide. I want to remove all shame, all guilt, all embarrassment from every survivor of this kind of sexual torture.

Of course, I also want to be heard and believed. Ultimately, however, I know that not everyone will hear or believe me. Thankfully, though, I know I have a heavenly Father who hears my pleas, mends my broken heart, knows my testimony, and is restoring my soul. He is my hope and my salvation. He is my strength. He is my joy. He is the only reason I am alive and have not taken my own life, despite my flesh’s constant longing to be torn apart.

If you have a story like mine, please know I love you. Please know I want to talk to you and empathize with you. Please know I believe you. And please know that there is an abundance of life and joy and grace and healing and freedom that is found in my Savior.

A few weeks ago, I had the incredible pleasure of diving into the beautifully inspiring story of Stephanie May Wilson, as told in her book debut, The Lipstick Gospel. I literally could not put the book down until I had soaked up every word on every page. I took in the whole story in only a day and the only negative feedback I have is that I wish there was more to read. I couldn't get enough!

Stephanie writes a blog that I have been following for the past couple of years, and through it, she has changed my life. Her storytelling ability, along with her sweet spirit and heartwarming hope, makes for a very honest and insightful experience for anyone who stumbles upon her blog. I'm not even sure anymore how I became turned on to her, but I know that for as long as she's writing, I'll be reading.

In The Lipstick Gospel, Stephanie shares her struggles, triumphs, doubts, revelations, and her journey to find God all over the world. The first pages recount her party-filled days as a atheistic sorority girl caught up in the confusion the world had offered her. She then takes the reader along with her through her Colorado college experience -- a heart-wrenching breakup, an inspiring study abroad trip, her adjustment once back home in "the real world" and her first (and accidental) mission trip. 

She's found God in the brushstrokes of Michelangelo, in rich cups of Spanish coffee, on Costa Rican mountain tops, and in the wild worship of Ghanians. I invite you to pour a warm cup of coffee, wrap yourself up in a blanket, and crack open her book so you can get to know her precious heart's testimony of God's faithfulness in her life. I promise you won't be disappointed.

You can get the Lipstick Gospel here at Stephanie's store. BONUS: It's Cyber Monday and there's a huge sale going on! So pick up a few goodies for you and your girlfriends! And while you're at it, go ahead and visit her blog here.

*This post originally appeared on my former blog, Nothing But Nash, on December 19, 2014 and has been republished here to bring all of my thoughts into on consolidated place.

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