a support story: Mercy Gives Back

It was six years ago now, when I lived in a residential facility for young women with life-controlling issues. Sometimes I wish I could put those two girls side-by-side, the girl I was back then and the one He's breathed to life now. Truthfully, I think it would be hard to believe they were one in the same. Some may call it a transformation, a miracle, a good program, or simply behavior modification.

But I know it to be--redemption. That process of what was once dead becoming alive & new.

That's the crazy thing. I wanted to die. I spent years literally trying to die. Spiritually, I was dead.

But GOD, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, EVEN WHEN WE WERE DEAD in our trespasses, made us ALIVE TOGETHER WITH CHRIST--by grace you have been saved. [eph. 2:4-5]

Praise God, He had a plan for my life which so far exceeded my own.

Over the six months I spent at Mercy Ministries, the Truth of God's word finally began to penetrate deeper then the lies which had dictated my life up to that point. I began to experience freedom and to trust Him. That emptiness I felt inside which I had tried so desperately to gratify with anything and everything was being filled with the love of Christ, and it satisfied me more richly and completely then any of the million other things I had tried to fill that hole with. I began to understand how He created me to be dependent upon Him, and to be satisfied in Him alone. Life since then has been full of challenges and victories, utter brokenness and great joys, but I do know He has been my hope each step of the way.

Abide in me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. [john 15:4]

BEHOLD, all things are made new.

So fast forward six years and here I am, trusting Him in new ways through this support-raising journey, confident in one thing alone--that God has redeemed my life and has called me to share that same hope with students studying here at the U of A, literally coming from the ends of the earth, some of whom have never heard the name of Christ.

For the Lord has commanded us saying, 'I have made you a light for the gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth!' [acts 13:47]

This support raising process continues to provide countless opportunities to share God's story of redpemtion. The neatest part in all of this, is a full-circle moment which came with the very first partner to join my support team.

     __________________________________________________________

It was a Thursday when I saw the email come through. Just a week or so after my first newsletter went out,back when I had no idea how God was going to provide for me in this process.  This email was to let me know my very first supporter had given! I was so excited and grateful. There is something incredibly surreal and humbling about seeing that very first check come through. As the Lord would have it, that first gift was from Mercy Ministries, this very place which God first used to draw me to Himself & redeem my life from the pit.

How cool is that--only He would be sweet enough to use this ministry to point me to Christ through whom my life was made new, and now their impact carries over not only to thousands of hurting young women, but specifically to 1,800 interantional students literally coming from 112 different nations in whom God has called me to invest my life, and I can actually do that because of support like this from so many of ya'll--including Mercy!

"I remember the days of old; I meditate on all that you have done. I ponder the work of your hands. I stretch out my hands to you; my soul thirsts for you like a parched land." [ps. 142:5-6]

Today, I needed to recall his faithfulness in bringing to me to here. I needed to hear the gospel, the way He's displayed it in my life. He really does pierce through sin and shame to teach us where the only lasting, eternal satisfaction comes from--Christ. 

There have been so many humbling and deeply encouraging stories of His faithfulness though this support raising process, I just thought I'd start at the beginning. I have no doubt He will provide just what I need--and I have even greater confidence that He knows what I need far better then I do. 

to so many of ya'll--"I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all, making my prayer with joy, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now." [Phil 1:3-5]

On Celebrating FIVE Years of Mercy

Five years always felt like an eternity away to me. In fact, I remember dreaming up one, five, and ten years plans back inside the walls of that big white house. I tried to find them, but couldn't. It doesn't really matter anyhow, because I am certain these five years have looked so different from the plan.

And I am so thankful. In tears thankful, actually.

I never planned to be a girl in need of mercy [or Mercy Ministries, for that matter]. But the truth is, I've always needed it.

Once you were not a people, but now you're God's people.
Once you had not received mercy, but now you have. [1 Peter 2:10]

Had my life been guided by the course of my own plan, I would be a wondering soul still in need of mercy.

In fact, that about sums up my life prior to walking through those doors of Mercy Ministries. Although, I don't really know that I knew just how lost I was or how needy. God used those six months to reveal Himself to me in a way I never thought was possible for "a girl like me." Surely I had out-sinned the cross. I would never be like the pastor's wife or the faithful grandma in the back pew every week. Forget about being a Proverbs 31 gal, I could barely keep myself presentable for an hour--more or less dream of doing any of that. I never really believed He could change my life like He had people around me. It wasn't even about whether He would of not--it was that He couldn't. I was the impossible statistic with the mile-long list of all the reasons I'd never function as a normal person.

It was that mindset which fed the sin cycle that had me on a perpetually spinning sphere through those dark years. And it was moving so fast, the immanent pain of falling just kept me gripping on tighter. And spinning faster. The more I hung on that I might preserve my own life, the more death I knew. Until the spinning nearly stopped and death knocked ever so closely. After that, I knew I wasn't just a perpetually spinning person. There had to be something (or someone) spinning me and now slowing me, so to speak. I knew a lot about God. But I didn't know the redeemer of my soul.

That's about when I came through those doors of Mercy Ministries. And for the first month or so, I fought hard to jump back on that spinning wheel. It was what I'd known for over a decade, after all.

I could identify more with the girl wondering and in need of mercy then the mercy being offered to me itself. 

Lucky for us, His word calls us "a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light."[1 Peter 2:9]

This fifth year of life after Mercy has taught me His plans are worth putting all of my trust in. Even when that means abandoning mine. Sometimes, that doesn't make much sense to us. Other times it's easier.

Either way, He chose me?! In my ugly, sinful, prideful mess of a self--He called me beloved, chosen, royal, holy. Then He decided to give His son in place of me that I might know Him intimately as Christ's blood washed out my sin that once separated me from Him. I deserved death and He gave me life. It's a choice of course, as when a gift is offered we're not forced to take it. But by much grace, I received it and He caused it. Of course, why stop there? Then He said nothing I could ever do would separate me from His love.

And that summed up the work Christ solidified in my heart through my time at Mercy---nothing would ever separate me from His love. I could never be too screwed up to out-sin the blood of Christ shed on that cross. I didn't have to starve or inflict pain upon myself to atone for my poor decisions because His work was enough to cover past and even future sin.

Had it been up to me, I would have left that place without ever knowing such truth.

I'm so glad that wasn't God's plan. And I'm so humbled by the men and women He surrounded me with that fought and interceded on my behalf all those years.

This fifth year of life after Mercy has led me from India back to Arkansas where I've spent the past year finishing my bachelors in social sciences [and finally got that degree!], nannying for some precious boys [to be joined by a baby sister this fall], hanging out with international friends in our awesome Cline house, and experiencing the sweet blessing of an awesome body of Christ at University Baptist Church. The sweetest of parts of this past year were none that I ever dreamed up. My plans would have led somewhere far different--and yet again I remember why it's so sweet to trust in Jesus!

Next year I'm headed back to my hometown [and home to Mercy!] of St. Louis where I am accepted into the accelerated BSN program at Goldfarb School of Nursing. At least that's where God has led thus far, but I'm learning to grip it all a little more loosely these days! And when it comes to dreaming dreams, I very much desire to be a wife and momma one day. And until then [or perhaps all at once] I still believe God's leading me overseas long-term, just whenever He gives the go-ahead.

But I'm realizing too, the here and now is really quite sweet.

Before we know it, we will be with Him in glory and I want these hours and days He is giving to make me more of a sojourner on this soil and a proclaimer of  the glory to come. With a whole lotta grace, I hope to see more men and women in need of mercy find it in knowing Him for the first time. Any role He allows me to play in that is the greatest gift I know. 

And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Chirst, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To Him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen. [1 Peter 5:10-11]

If you feel like reminiscing with me, what a journey...
On The Day I Arrived at Mercy

On Celebrating ONE Year of Mercy

On Celebrating TWO Years of Mercy

On Celebrating THREE Years of Mercy

On Celebrating FOUR Years of Mercy

On Celebrating 4 Years of Mercy!

Lives transformed, hope restored. 

That is their slogan.

God's unfathomable grace in my life testifies that He can indeed transform and restore, even for the one convinced her mess is beyond the sacrifice made on the cross. 

I find myself today, sitting on this hard mattress, mosquito net encamped around me, gazing out over little brown bodies running with bat and ball, cows grazing quite contentedly amidst the trash, and the rooster squawking away at the most unaccounted intervals. This place is colorful and confused, as millions of gods are plastered across most buildings covered in the bright brilliance of turquoise and purple and orange. The government turns off the power pretty much whenever they feel like it and in those hours and days, life becomes far more simple. I love these people too much to leave. And in spite of it all, God is at work in this place.

How in the world did I end up here? I cannot wrap this finite mind around such infinite grace [apart from which I am still that girl, bound and broken].

Today, I am in the middle of nowhere India and all I have is the gospel that says Christ saves and frees us captives. When I walked out of the doors of Mercy Ministries four years ago today, I never imagined this is where the Lord would bring me. Or that He really did that—bound up the captives and proclaimed liberty to the prisoners. Like forever. 

But I promise you, He does. And we need it on both sides of the world.

What a blessing to reflect upon these past four years [and even the dark ones prior] from half-way across the world in a place that the holy spirit is very much alive and the gospel very much in demand.

I actually completely forgot the four years had come and gone. It wasn’t until my teammate randomly had on my i-pod and listened to my Mercy graduation recording that I thought about it.

As I listen to graduation day, I am so incredibly thankful for the staff and my mercy sisters. I am thankful that Jesus grabbed a hold of my heart in those months and that I have not had to spend a day apart from Him since. I am also glad they didn’t make it easy for me to leave, during that very first week after I decided I didn’t want to be at Mercy [after hundreds of people had prayed me into those doors, of course].

Graduation Day [July 24, 2009

A Day In India [July 24, 2013]

God had me at Mercy for a purpose far exceeding anything I could have ever asked or imagined at the time. Like literally, I was just so hopeless and consumed by my eating disorder and abuse and kingdom of self that I didn’t even know [or care] what day of the week it was, more or less the significance of “those plans I have for you.”

I had a plan—death.

As I stood behind the pulpit (to give testimony) yesterday, no shoes on my feet and a saree wrapped around my body with my back exposed, my eyes filled to brim as I glance out over all of my brown-skinned sisters and brothers, the brokenness and the hope in the their eyes. I told them how I ran after death in pursuit of filling up the hole deep inside and how that race led me straight to the bottle of pills. I told them how God saved my body from destruction that night and how it could only have been Him alone. A few stood and all cried out praise to His holy name. I had to breathe deep just then, as even I could not praise Him enough for such a life lived in and through His grace alone.

Don't worry, sisters, I am so far from perfect I wouldn't know it if it hit me on the head! I still wrestle plenty. The lies consume here and there, and it's real. Like the way I haven't had a fresh vegetable in a month and the men that view me as a commodity to be used every time I step out in public. India presents all kinds of new challenges and I cry a lot. But I know there is a way out. I can always choose life. That kind of hope is something I never had before.

And so, four years later I love Jesus more. I know His word more intimately and I need it more then I ever knew. [After all, no matter how hard I try, I do NOT have it all together!] I am more of a hot mess then I was then, but His grace, well, it covers that too. My sin is continually being revealed and I just keep thinking one of these days He will give me a break! I guess it will all come, when we see His face, yeah?

At Mercy Ministries, I fell in love with Jesus and He continues to guide me in this messy life on earth. I have reason to rejoice, hope and testify--only because of Him. I long for the day when He makes all thins new, and yet in the meantime I am so incredibly thankful for a life that is no longer consumed in myself, a life where I have the option to choose life over death. An option to share it with others consumed by death too.

Without my time at Mercy, I am quite certain I would not be on the other side of the world, burdened for needs and confusion of this broken nation. Without the Jesus I came to know through my time at Mercy, I don’t think I would be alive today.

(Thank you to those faithful women of God who serve with this ministry. Each of you have imparted wisdom into my life that still impacts my walk with the Lord today. And of course, my family and friends still on this journey with me--I am so thankful for you. Mercy sisters, we are blessed and I pray each of you would know His grace is sufficient [so boast all the more gladly in your weaknesses] today!)

Sarah, so thankful for you!!! 

And if you feel like reminiscing with me...

On Celebrating 3 Years of Mercy! [Mercy sisters and sister in need of Mercy, this one is for you!]

On Celebrating 2 Years of Mercy!

              [www.mercyministries.com]

In Which I Tell the Part Untold {And Hope You See Redemption Too}

*Let me first advice this is a tough one—it's been months in the writing and revisions have been plentiful. Some content is for mature readers only. I hope you will have grace with me in these words, as they are part of my story that's yet to be told. I know I am one in every four and I hope these words offer hope for us all. 

I was not quite to puberty and I stayed with him on the weekends. He hid the VO under the kitchen sink as if it was a secret yet to be revealed. I guess passing out on the couch by seven or eight didn't give it away though. Neither did the slurry attempt at English or the flipping over the kitchen table after he tried to sit on it once, twice. Anger and sorrow filled the room most nights, though, heavy and thick hanging in the air. Combined with the smoke, I remember suffocating.

His stenchy breath carried across the mattress and I knew his attention was all mine now.

I still remember the big fish tank he bought me and the food. He let me eat junk--and lots of it. All the carbs you can get, right here, he could have had a sign. Ice cream and chocolate chip cookies always plentiful to wash down my heapfuls of pasta and meat and garlic bread. The stuff mom never let me touch. I think I binged even back then and I just didn't get it yet, I didn't know about the hole deep down I was trying to fill and I didn't know how to fill it. I didn't know how big it would grow or how much it would hurt. There was a lot I didn't know. I was a little girl.

But I did know that food made me feel safe when the gunshots rattled the windows and when my dad sexually abused me in the bed late at night.

It lasted a few years, on and off and I lost my voice somewhere in the process. Maybe because I was too busy stuffing it with food or running for miles on end. Maybe because the suffocation nearly drowned me. Maybe because the hole was growing quicker then I could fill it and my attempts seemed futile. And maybe I just wanted him to love me—even if I had to give my body to get it? One day mom stopped making me spend my weekends with him so it stopped and I stopped thinking.

In fact, I didn't think about it at all for the next five or six years because I had no memory of it. They call it "repression" and I call it God's unfathomable grace. Either way, nearly half a decade later all the memories plummeted into recall as I listened to two dads talk about protecting their young daughters from the neighbors boys' on a car ride to Chicago.

There were three who abused like that and one was a neighbor boy.

I thought I was crazy, truly. How could I just 'not remember' all those years and then suddenly...

Until a close friend points out, if it had come up even days before it did, I would have ended my life—successfully I think. Grace.

I might have been spared the memories for a season, but there always was this underlying darkness that enveloped me and I never could explain it {or break out of it}. I had spent much of those years in and out of hospitals and treatment programs for bulimia, depression, sexual sin, self-harm, and suicide attempts. I had a whole lot of daddy issues too. Just six months prior to remembering the abuse I had graduated from a biblically based treatment program for young women with life-controlling issues called Mercy Ministries. I fell in love with Jesus there and my life was impacted greatly.

When the abuse surfaced, my world did a 180 and I had no control over any of it. At least that's how it felt. I felt so dirty and no matter how hot the water, I could never get clean. I hated him so much. And yet I longed for his approval and his love, even still?! The darkness of the night gave way for me to relive this nightmare night after night after night. I remember staying awake for days at a time because I just couldn't see his face again that night. I couldn't watch it all happen. I couldn't save that little girl. For years, I would wake up in the middle of the night and find myself huddled under a desk or in a corner. I couldn't stop the pain. I saw no way out.

For awhile, it was my fault. I tried to pay for the way he hurt me by hurting myself. My bouts of depression and bulimia raged once again and I flailed aimlessly beneath the weight of it all and some days I begged for the waves to just draw me under already.

What I would give to have my innocence back. I think I still grieve the little girl lost, even today.

But not everyday--there are glimpses as of late, moments where I see her redeemed living fully.

I don't really remember when, but one day I saw a glimmer of light. It started to grow slowly and a path began to form before me. Eventually I began to follow, through the thickets and mud, pressing on towards the light. I am still not there but my world isn't so dark anymore. Everyday, I choose life and relationship with Christ provides a steadfastness in the ups and downs of this path {life}.

Sometimes, our pain just cannot be broken down into 12-step programs or quieted with a drug, though there were days I wished for both. The flip of the calendar has truly been my saving grace, though.

For the past several years I haven't had much a voice but those who knew have held me up and I have spent months swimming in pools of grace. It seems my swims are more regular these days, as the ashes continue to float away from me.

My dad is in a half-way house now, about seven months sober, a first in these past fifty years or so. I haven't seen him in a year but maybe one day I will. He will never be the dad I long for and it is making me all the more dependent on my heavenly one. Oh grace.

And God has used this last year mightily. He's restoring my trust of man through an adopted dad and mom who moved me into their family for a season and it has been a journey worth the pain and I see healing. He is redeeming so much that was stolen through this family. But more then that He's restoring my ability to trust Him as the Perfect Father, something my dad never was and never can be.

My fear does drive me to shame and fig leaves when I let it.

But one day I will choose to joyfully submit to my husband because it is what He intended in the beginning and abuse does not negate me from His plans. In fact, it draws me all the more tightly to the hope and the future He promises because life apart from Him seems all the more messed up.

I remember suffocating in the bed after it was all over, under all the smoke and secrets and shame. I remember closing my eyes and teleporting to a beach with an ocean and I remember breathing easier listening to the waves and sucking up that warm ocean breeze. That was my way out, my light in the darkness as I curled up tight.

One day years later God would provide relationship with my grown siblings {my dad's kids}. One way or another they would actually take me to the beach on vacation with them. Sitting on the sand gazing out over those waves and soaking up the warmth and their love--none of which I deserved--I would first realize my need for and confess my belief in God. Over the next year those siblings would play a pivotal role in my salvation. They simply loved the heck outa' me like no one ever had.

Ya'll, do you see the redemption?! Oh such mercy makes me weep buckets remembering. I deserve none of it, yet He made a way in the wilderness, streams in the wasteland. It makes me trust no matter how messed up this world. He is bigger and none of your pain is in vain--ultimately He will glorify Himself through it and the way that He uses us--that is simply grace.

And I know it's nothing shy of divine that brought me to that place in my own little world, as I lay sprawled across that mattress. Those moments brought a foretaste of what was to come, of what is coming still.

It took a long time and I don't feel so dirty anymore.

Redemption is evident with each of flip of the calendar and today, today remembering is overcoming because of the blood of the Lamb and word of my testimony. I am redeemed.

Do you see it? The chain of redemption shaping your story, the way telling is overcoming?

Let's hear it. Let's hear your story.

And for the other one in fours who have hidden away, there is hope. I only know one thing for sure--in Christ there is life everlasting and hope abundant. It's there for you too.

*Child sexual abuse is not rare. Retrospective research indicates that as many as 1 out of 4 girls and 1 out of 6 boys will experience some form of sexual abuse before the age of 18.1 However, because child sexual abuse is by its very nature secretive, many of these cases are never reported.

Focus on Your Pain, Your Past, & Your Parents

So, this world is pretty messed up. 

Everyone I know has some kind of hurt in their life which still opens fire every once in a while. Or every day. There are those deep waves beneath which we toss and turn, those wires that feel mismatched sometimes. I think we all feel it—this underlying brokenness that was never supposed to be. 

We all fight to attain the image in which we were originally fashioned, though often times we cannot articulate it just so. And sometimes, the battle in the waiting isn't so pretty. 

How do you fight when you don't know just what you're fighting for? And how do you know that you're not the only one when we all keep quiet in our searching and tell ourselves it's just us longing and no one will relate?

My growing up years were plagued in pain and hurts that still send me flailing about into adulthood. My past is ugly and shameful and dark. I screwed up and lot. My parents both love me but it has taken years to believe it because they didn't show it. I blame a lot of the pain on them and some of that is fair. 

I have friends that had amazing parents. Some who grew up rooted in purpose and established in love. Others who had an unnatural peace with their purpose in this world and they lived it intentionally. Not everyone has flopped around so much, but each of us has more pain. Even the most loving parents screw up. And I have never met one person to claim life-long perfection. So here we are, all of us focusing our attention on something. 

I remember the midnight searches that defined my youth, in the basement sitting behind that lit up screen, desperately scrolling through page after page trying to find any indication that I wan't the only one. Anything to tell me who I was because I heard who I wasn't all day long. That someone else was messed up too. I remember spending Friday nights at Border's, hours consumed in the self-help shelves, just searching. 

Was there was another girl anywhere in the world that didn't feel loved and hated herself for it? Desperate to know someone else tried to fill the void with food. Someone that thought to cut themselves to numb the pain before I did?Anyone who doesn't have it all figured out? Anyone? Knowing someone else was hurting too gave me hope, this odd confirmation that it wasn't over for me, this sense of belonging. We all want to. 

Soon enough, I belonged. An unknowing victim led astray via the self-help of the world. 

Our solution:  pile the shelves floor to ceiling with self-help books, just give her a pill (we can figure out what's wrong later), and maybe you should go to a counselor—for the next twenty years-ish. 

I still have a shelf or two of those books, I've been on pills for the pills over the years, and I sometimes I think I was raised talking to strangers on those couches that always seem to smell like grandma's. 

And truthfully, I dream of writing books that help girls and studied several years away in pursuit my very own smelly couch. I have a best friend that is about to go for her Master's in counseling and I encourage it because it's not all bad. 

And so we hunger for answers, fixes, and wholeness. In our desperation, we blame because it makes more sense that someone caused it then it does that it's just this abstract feeling that we can't get a grasp of, that something is broken but what? We are an instant gratification society and we want answers. We want quick fixes. And we want to be on top of the next best. We want to save the world and ourselves too. Today or tomorrow. If this is gunna make me feel even less, I'll take it. If reliving those years of his abuse will make it hurt less, I'll do it. If telling her I forgive will erase the memory, I forgive!

In counseling all those years it was most often breath spent focusing on these three. It's a funny triad, a three tiered web of intertwined madness. Especially when I focus on it, I go crazy. 

It's been four years this month—four years since I walked through the doors of Mercy, the place that really challenged me to think about what I think about. Does that make sense? 

I had spent nearly two decades focused on my pain, my past and my parents. Generally (with a few exceptions of course) every website, every book, every counselor and doctor—their approaches differed yet their solutions coincided—look deeper within yourself because that's the only way you'll overcome the pain, relive your past until it explains why you do the things you do now, oh and most of it is your parents fault, but you should forgive them just never forget. 

In other treatment programs and hospital stays, I had always been encouraged to share the depths of my darkness from the past and present. I can remember being reprimanded in one inpatient stay for saying that I didn't think my bulimia was all my mom's fault. We bonded over our issues in treatment, and competed. I never would have known how to abuse laxatives if it weren't for another girl in treatment teaching me. I called them friends but we all just used each other to prove who could be better at dying. I don't think I ever would have come that close if they hadn't paved the way, encouraged me deeper into myself, my very messed up self.

But now this place was telling me I couldn't bond with the others over my past sin. In fact, we were encouraged not to tell one another why we were there until graduation, a day of celebrating God's redemption of the pain. Living in a home for young women with life controlling issues would make it so easy to find hope in others' brokenness, the way I had much of my life, to go down together, so to speak. I think this is one huge reason for Mercy's 93% success rate. They simply change the focus. There is a time and a place for wrestling through the pain, the past, and parents. But that time comes once a week in the wisdom of a counselor with a different focus. 

This idea that we must look deeper into ourselves to find strength needed to overcome is actually quite contradictory if you think about it. If I am born with a sinful nature (no one ever has to teach me how to lie), then would it really make sense that the strength to overcome could come from somewhere deeper down? Personally, I don't think so. I don't know about you, but the deeper down I get into myself, the more I realize just how messed up I am! Strength to overcome myself has to come from something greater, someone bigger then me. Someone not so messed up like me. Reliving the pain over and over again just makes me hurt more. And focusing on the past only keeps me from experiencing God's grace which is sufficient only for today. And truthfully, dwelling back there makes me forget to live now—it makes me forget who I am now and the way that God is redeeming. The past can blind us.

I came home from St. Louis last week really obsessed with food again. I tried a few days down that road too—well, it still didn't work. This was all after my mom paraded my slimmer body around and told me how jealous she was. After she told my step-dad to look at me and marvel. All I heard was how ugly I must have been before I lost some weight. It was a man admiring my beauty that made me want to eat it away. It set something off in me, something engrained in my deepest pain, my past, and both of my parents. 

These days, freedom for me is coming in "forgetting" my pain, my past, and my parents and "focusing" on the only one bigger then myself, the only perfect one—the one who formed my inners in the darkness and has been light ever since. 

It's not that I never think about this triad or will forget it all together. I talk about it when I need to, but not like I used to. Thinking too much is always destructive, I'm learning. Sometimes we just have to stop thinking and proclaim what is true. The Truth is active now, no matter what used to be so we have to fix our eyes on something more because the past isn't changing—it might never hurt less and your parents might always have something to do with it and yet there is a way out. 

When the Israelites were headed to the promise land, they got mad and cursed God. Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die in the desert where there is no food? They cried out. So God sent venomous snakes among them and many died. Moses prayed for the people and God told him to make a snake and put it on a pole. Then anyone who got bitten can look at it and live.

When this journey out of the past seems hopeless and when your parents spew venom that stings, fix your eyes upon the man nailed to the pole. When you look at Him, you will live. 

It is a Choice--And it's Not Over

I remember like it was yesterday as we stood in the dimly lit kitchen late into the night. I held myself up on the counter top because my whole body aged. He leaned against the sink and she stood across from me with eyes that exposed my sin. He has just come in from cleaning out my car. It had been building for a while by then, the lying and covering sin and the confession only to give in again.

We're done with the lying. Your words are empty and meaningless. If you choose to continue in your sin, even just one more time, you're out. 

I had battled it like this for years at this point and I remember believing I was free. God met me at Mercy Ministries three years back and from then on His grace held me. I wouldn't be alive if it weren't for what God did during my time at Mercy. Through the years from then to now, I was continually lured and enticed by the desires of my flesh--and I chose to let them rule me. A week without throwing up and a week consumed by it. And just six months ago I believed that throwing up once a week was freedom. Mostly because I was living life fuller and God's provision was evident. From the outside, no one knew. Because I wasn't consumed like before—its not like I was doing it twenty times a day, I rationalized.

This is not that big of a deal. I know you guys don't get it, but this is nothing compared to how it used to be. I really am okay. Great even.

So, thorn in my side I wrote off bulimia as something that I would just have to learn to manage. Yes, I was learning to manage my sin. And I really did think it was the victory promised.

Until this night where we stand together and yet very much separated as the consequence of my sin left me with a decision to make. Them or food. This mom and dad and siblings who love me or a number on a scale.

I don't think I need treatment. I can do this. I'll stop.

The truth is, I didn't want to give it up. Their counsel went against what any professional would say. Quitting anything cold turkey never brings lasting results? But I knew that God had worked a miracle to bring me to this house in the middle of no where Arkansas to restore me to Himself through the love and grace this mom and dad were giving me, and so in the quiet of my room I humbled myself before Him and told Him to fight because I didn't think it was possible. All I knew was that I wasn't ready to leave this family. Rules were put in place for my good and while it was hard, the discipline was in love and it was exactly what I needed.

When it was all over and all the hard words were swallowed down, a little bitter still stinging in my throat and a list unending of my failures and comparisons in my brain, they held me tight and that's when I realized just how much God loves me. That night it became real. Vision for a hope a future mattered more then food and the size of my pants.

Today as I look back six months or so, I am so grateful for God's grace in my life. The grace this mamma and daddy lavished on me. And more then anything, the way the holy spirit lived (and continues to live) inside of me. It is simply a miraculous work of God that He would equip me to walk in full freedom from an eating disorder. He really does fight for me because I couldn't do it.

I still can't do it. But today, His grace is sufficient.

This week I watched a mamma choose Jesus over her baby girl. I watched her hug her (not so) little girl goodbye, knowing that this might be the last time she saw her alive. We gave this little girl, my friend, my sister in Christ over to her sin because God does the same with us. Because we can't do this for her. Because she has to choose. I still don't fully understand how this is love, but I know God is and I know He calls us to be obedient to love her in this way. We love her so incredibly much it hurts. I helped her pack a bag and stood in the doorway as she went off into the dark night, unsure where she would sleep. We were going to move in together in a couple weeks. One choice and everything changes.

Whether it is what movie to watch or what to make for dinner--we all make choices and they lead one of two places. Life or death. God urges us to choose life, that we and our children may live.

I am learning to choose life. To speak life. And to believe that God does redeem lives--even the ones that I deem impossible or way too lost to ever 'get it.' Because that was me. Because apart from Christ in me, I am the bulimic, the drug addict, the liar, the murderer. But He gives me a new name--redeemed. It is a choice to believe it. It is a choice to live it. 

It's not over for T. It's not over for me. And it is not over for you. Let us choose life...life in Christ.

But exhort one another every day as long as it is called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. Heb. 3:13

Life as One of a Dozen: The Beginings

PART ONE

The story of how I came from a lifetime in the city to this country house in the middle of no-where Arkansas is truly nothing short of divine interference.

I had graduated from Mercy Ministries at the same time as graduating from high school and was not about to run off to college miles away after just coming out of a troubled girls home—so living at home and going to a small private baptist school with a full-ride for tennis became my reality. As it would be, I never played a single match yet somehow school was payed for in whole. Grace? I'll take it.

After a year of learning the hard way that being a Mercy Grad did not mean I was perfected—and that going back to the same old environment as a whole new person was indeed cause for extreme battles—I decided it was time to spread those wings and fly—away, far far away.

In some God moment where I heard Him more clear then ever in my whole four years of knowing Him, on a plane ride to the mountains of Virginia, He spoke to me through Isaiah. He told me He was going before me—and behind me. He told me to go to the mountains and proclaim the good news. It just so happened that as He told me this, I glanced up for a gaze out my window and was met with a birds-eye-view of the most beautiful mountain ranges I ever had seen—the only ones I ever had seen I supposse. I got off that plane and jumped in my best friend's arms—we drove off into the mountains and I knew this was the next step. A cross country move and life in the mountains.

The next week my application was in and I was accepted. Radford nursing school, here I come. Then I jumped on a plane to spend the summer in an aboriginal village in the outback of Australia proclaiming the message of life to many who were so near death. God moved and spoke boldly to my weary heart. I came back doubting my move into the mountains—{I am not proud to say, this was mostly because of the distance that would separate me from the boy who stole my heart overseas...but that's a whole other story.} It just so happened that some finances fell through at this point, and my journey to the mountains was no more—or so I thought.

I had two weeks until school started. No where to run, no escape from the turmoil of doubting the perfection of His plans. Lord, I KNOW you told me to go to the mountains. What in the world are you trying to do here?

Desperate to escape life at home, I began applying to colleges—random random colleges. I applied to two in Arkansas. The U of A called my name immediately as everything fell into place. Aside from the fact that I knew not a sole in this city which I had yet to even lay eyes on—oh and had no place to live.

Frantically, I started calling apartment complexes searching for a one bedroom anywhere. At one of the names on the list, a man answered and we got to talking a bit. He told me they didn't have any one-bedrooms left, but they did have a discipleship program. What...wait, what did you just say? Remembering still brings a smile—none but Jesus, this I know. Lord, I believe, help my unbelief might have been something I uttered as I prepared for the unknown that was to come.

A few hours later I had applied for the program and was accepeted. A few days later we loaded up my earthly belongings and headed towards those deep Southern accents and stench of Southern grease.

As I pulled up to my new home away from home, I saw mountains, and I knew. 

Yes Sir, Yes Ma'am. Welcome to the South.

I will go before you and will level the mountains; I will break down gates of bronze and cut through bars of iron. -Isa. 45:2

On Celebrating 3 Years of Mercy

Time really FLIES.

Today, marks three years of life in the real world since graduating from Mercy Ministries.

When I walked through the doors of Mercy, I was hopeless and broken, ready to quit on life. I had spent nearly eight years enslaved to an eating disorder, self-harm, depression, sexual sin, and the consequences of sexual abuse in my childhood. Two weeks prior to walking through those doors, I attempted to end my life, but God had another plan. As I lay in the hospital bed being pumped full of fluids and food, the Spirit was busy working in the hearts of dozens of prayer warriors who literally prayed me into those doors making what should have been a year long process quicken to a two week one. He knew I didn't have a year.

Those six months were life-changing. Messy and beautiful all at once—and he met me there. For the first time in my life, the Truth of His Word {which I was immersed in 24/7} began to penetrate deeper then the lies which had dictated my life up to that point. I walked through hard weeks and months of choosing forgiveness, dying to self, renewing my mind, accepting Truth at its face. Speaking aloud verse after verse as it poured over my weary, lie-infested soul. There was no magic solution—just Jesus being enough.

I walked out those doors thinking I had arrived—that I finally had it all together. Well, I didn't. And I still don't. But that is just God's grace in my life—in all of our lives really.

These three years have brought more hurt then I ever could have imagined yet His grace continues to run deeper still. 

It's a BLESSING He doesn't reveal it all at once—from Mercy graduate heading to college in St. Louis to life with a dozen in middle of no-where Arkansas traveling overseas and working full-time is unimaginable. Certainly not part of "the plan" upon leaving that house. Yet He has been gentle and patient, faithful to reveal the plans He has for me which have soooo exceeded my wildest dreams. 

Daily I see the ashes looking more beautiful, the wounds being bound up. I feel the years being restored deep within, years that robbed things I didn't even know were mine for the taking—those are being returned too. Far beyond my dreams. 

There have been many ups and downs, round-abouts, a few mountains and many valleys. Yet through it all, God has been faithful. Thus, I know He will continue to be.

As I look back on the photos from this day three years ago, I wish I could speak to that girl in those pictures. I wish I could fill her in on what is to come. I wish I could tell her about the road ahead. This is my letter to that girl, to every Mercy girl who walks out those doors, redeemed and made new.

__________________________________________________________________

Dear Mercy Sister,


The road ahead is going to be hard. You are not going to be perfect—in fact you're going to mess up {a lot.} But that's okay. You are human, a sinner at that. Don't forget who you are apart from Christ—don't let the title you bear from the last 6 months lure and entice your flesh. The Truth is, you need His grace more then you think. You need accountability more then you think. 


You need Jesus—more then you think.


You have not arrived, though you feel it crying out deep down in your bones on this day of celebration. As the high begins to fade and day to day life in the real world seeps in, you must remember Mercy graduate and all, you haven't arrived until you see Jesus face to face—oh what a glorious day that will be!! Your hope does not end when you walk out those doors. Graduation day is not the finish line. It is not where the victory is found. This day is not the finish line—seeing Him is. You have chosen life instead of death. And yet only He continues to sustain you—He is obviously not finished with you yet, sister. So run with perseverance the race set before you and hope in Christ alone.


Bearing the title of Mercy graduate and all, is not going to stop the trials from coming. Let no one say WHEN he is tempted....we will all be tempted until we see Christ. We are promised this much. The pain is going to come. The trials will be many. Yet His grace outweighs them all. Live here, in His grace. Sister, do not run from the pain. Let the ashes become beautiful—because they will, with the flip of the calendar.


It is okay when you have a bad day—but don't stay there. When you get stuck, remember the victory has already been won. When you think you have messed up one too many times, don't get lost in yourself nor allow the lies to consume you. You cannot out-sin the blood already shed. You are clean and covered in righteousness alone. You are new. Don't clothe yourself in old rags. Do not give way to your feelings. You can change how you feel. Speak Truth out loud when you would rather shut down. Shout it from the top of your lungs. Worship when you would rather pull away. Surround yourself with people. Don't shrink back. Stand on the promise. Cling to it. Proclaim it.


And on those days when the smells and sights and darkness are all too familiar, like a dog who returns to his own vomit—when you feel the need to somehow pay for being back here yet again—when you cannot believe you did the same stupid thing yet again—when you feel insane—when you wish you did not have to bear up beneath the title of Mercy graduate, well, remember He always gives us a way out and never more then we can bear. Look for the out. Believe it or not Christ is still sufficient. Yes, even here. He hasn't changed. He is the same as He is today, today on this day of graduation high. 


Please, sister, remember this. Jesus is the same inside these walls as He is out in the real world. Your dependency in Him is too. Don't forget you need Him alone. Apart from Him, you just cannot do it on your own.


Don't run from the brokenness. Don't hide your scars. Even when you think they are too messy to share. Even when you think no one will understand you. Put them on display. In our weaknesses His power is made perfect—all the more reason to boast in our weakness, to show our scars. People are messed up. We live in a fallen world. And we all have more hurt and heartache then you will ever imagine. So neat freaks, embrace the mess. Tell of the wounds and the binding up that is coming. Only by grace that you do not deserve, yet depend on. 


Just preach the gospel. Everyday. To yourself and to others. To the nations. Your life is not your own. Preach the gospel of grace, scars and all. You are no longer "that girl," you know the one. Even on the days you feel her rising up, you are a new creation, redeemed, bought with a price, the Bride of Christ, His royal priesthood, clean, and righteous. Nothing can separate you from His love. Your sin is cast as far as the east is from the west. Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved this wretch like me.


Above all, live in His grace for today, since that is all you are promised. Don't ponder yesterday or worry over tomorrow. Just enough grace for today. Praise God that is enough.
_____________________________________________________________

I am so incredibly blessed to be alive today. To live life with Jesus. To love people. To know Him intimately. To need grace and accept it freely. If it were not for what Jesus did in my life during my time at Mercy, I wouldn't be here today. The road is hard and the process of sanctification unyielding, but boy oh boy, is He faithful and ever gracious to complete the good work He began until we see Him face to face. 

Arriving at Mercy {3.5 years ago}

Graduation from Mercy {3 years ago}

Ash, Me and Julie—Best Friends and Precious Sisters

Sarah and I—so thankful for her continued friendship and wisdom

Phillip & Shelly—precious couple who have been such an encouragement

Julie—incredible friend who just really loves Jesus and encourages me

Mom and Kevin

Rye, Meg and Angel—blessed to have incredible siblings who continue to be such an encouragement

A Few Mercy Events Over the Years:

Run for Mercy 5K 2009

Half Marathon for Mercy 

Run for Mercy 5K 2010

Incredible staff who I am so thankful for!

Sharing my Testimony at the 5K Run for Mercy in 2011

The whole family came out to support me—what a blessing!!

Annual Fundraiser 2008: {before I actually went to Mercy or knew I would be going}

Annual Fundraiser 2009: {graduated from Mercy}

Sharing Testimony at Annual Fundraiser 2010:

And Today...I am thankful and encouraged as I see God's faithfulness and grace etched into each of these moments.