Perspective...that's an interesting word, even more interesting is its definition...the facts known to one.
Facts known to one...FACTS...truths as one sees them, TRUTHS...
Perspective is a choice. How I choose to view things, is a choice. I have learned this well. I could look at my life from many different perspectives. I could see it through the eyes of my family (who all have their own perspectives), from my friends, from acquaintances, even from those who don't know me. I could see all the things I don't have, or I could see all the things I do. I could look at my brother's situation and see hopelessness, failure, rejection, disappointment, and a "lost cause." OR I could choose to see what God has done...that Shawn would not be where he is today (spiritually speaking) without going to prison. I could CHOOSE to see that he is not the same, he is stronger, wiser, and he's for sure spending eternity with the Lord. I could look at my relationship with Tracy and see failure, pain, rejection, mistakes, disobedience, hurt, etc. OR I could see it as good, but knowing that there is something BETTER. It's the perspective that you see.
When Jesus died on the cross, I am sure that there were people who felt hopeless...this promise of a savior and yet all they saw was death, pain, a dying man. But, what if there was one who saw a chance for redemption, a dying man who would rise as a SAVIOR to the world? Perspective.
Yes, I don't have a job. I don't have a car. I don't have a place of my own. There are a lot of things I DON'T have, but the way I see it...God has a lot of room to show off:) He has alot of room to work miracles, to blow my mind, to fulfill promises, to knock my socks off, and to receive all the glory through every detail!!:)
My challenge to you is maybe you need to CHANGE YOUR PERSPECTIVE:)
Dreaming His Dreams,
Andrea
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Friday, January 11, 2013
Blessings...
Blessings...it may look like I don't have alot. It may seem that way, from your perspective. From your perspective, you have many blessings, many 'possessions.' Change your perspective. What I have is not temporal. What I have is peace that passes all understanding, everlasting joy, promise for a future, hope unending. I have an intimate relationship with the Great I Am. My name has been written down in the Lamb's Book of Life and my future is secure! My sins have been forgiven, my past forgotten, and my future bright!
So, while to you, it looks like I am not blessed-right now, I have no job, car, home of my own-that is farthest from the truth. I am more blessed in this moment than I have ever been my entire life! While your 'blessings' will fade away, mine will last for eternity!
Thank you God, that I am blessed beyond comprehension; that my eyes are not on what is seen, but what is not!:) you are my life!
So, while to you, it looks like I am not blessed-right now, I have no job, car, home of my own-that is farthest from the truth. I am more blessed in this moment than I have ever been my entire life! While your 'blessings' will fade away, mine will last for eternity!
Thank you God, that I am blessed beyond comprehension; that my eyes are not on what is seen, but what is not!:) you are my life!
Thursday, January 3, 2013
It's personal...
Here I am, writing again. This blog, over the past couple of years, has been an outlet. Here is where I have shed tears, shared my pain, frustration, and confusion. This is where I expressed my anger at God when everything happened with Shawn; Where I expressed my hurts, my sorrows; This is where I wrote about finally finding love and where I wrote, with tears falling down my face, about losing that same love, grieving for it. This is where my hopes, dreams, fears and failures found a home. This is where I open my heart and share everything that I'm feeling with no regard to what others will think. This is where I am human. I pray that it encourages, strengthens, and gives hope to those who read. I hope that it inspires you to press forward in your own lives, in your own struggles, in your own pain, to find the hope that lies ahead, the joy that comes with the morning. This has been my release.
So here, today, I come once again to express my deepest thoughts.
2012: there were some things, some personal things that I closed out in 2012, that I "put a period on." Things that I refused to take into 2013 with me, so I closed them. What I realized through this was, for me, healing. If you have been a reader of mine for a while, you have walked through the greatest heartbreak I have ever experienced. You have seen, through my eyes, a love lost, a heart broken, a choice made. It's funny, I have really learned (I always knew, but learning first hand is something completely different) the effect that people's choices have on one another. You see, Tracy made a choice to leave Waxahachie, to go back to Austin. I believe he made the wrong choice. I believe that this is where God wanted him, and absolutely not because of me. I believe that even if Tracy and I were not together, that this is where he wanted him. God had things He wanted to teach him, places He wanted him to go, people He wanted him to impact, to minister to. God left the choice up to him. It's almost like those books I used to read as a young girl, the adventure ones where you got to choose the ending...if you chose A, this happened, if you chose B, this would happen, and so on. God gave him a choice, doing everything He could to show him exactly what the "right" choice was...Tracy chose option B. That ONE choice, led to another choice, that led to another choice, that now has him living a life that I know he would never have planned for himself. A life that isn't what God had chosen for him either. He never had the strength, the passion for God, to make the tough choice; to choose the harder of the two. He chose the "easy way out" as one would say...and is now seeing the repercussions of those choices.
I also made a choice. I chose to stay. When I couldn't hear anything else, I heard "Be Still." When everyone around me was telling me what they thought I should do, what they thought my next move should be, all I heard was "be still." When the very love of my life believed that the only choice I wasn't making was him, I heard "be still.". He didn't understand. He believed that I was just rejecting him, that I wasn't choosing him, oh how wrong he was...I was just doing the ONLY thing I knew to do, the ONLY thing that I was hearing...I was "being still." I tried to make him understand, but the more i tried, the more angry he got. My heart would break over and over again at the thought of him thinking I didn't want him, that I didn't want to be with him. I loved him more than anything in the world. I loved him with every fiber of my being, my every breath, but I loved God more. Everything was so uncertain, everything, even my relationship with him...but the one thing I was hearing more clearly than anything else was "Be still." So, that is exactly what I did...as I watched the one person I loved most dearly, and everything else that I had, get stripped away from me. I made a choice. The difference between the two is that I can sit here today as I type, once again with tears streaming down my face, that I don't regret my choice. I chose to "Be still." God didn't ask me to "be still" alone...He never asked me to "be still" without Tracy, He just asked me to "be still." Tracy chose to walk away from me, He chose to not trust me enough to "be still" with me. He chose...and so did I.
All of this to say that I realized I still held some anger, some resentment, some hurt, and feelings of rejection towards Tracy. It wasn't what it was by any means, but it was more than I wanted in my life. What's done is done. The choices that we made have been made, and we are both living out the blessings and consequences of each choice separately, we can't go back, I won't go back. I once heard that falling in love with someone, giving them your heart, is giving them the power to hurt you more than anyone else on the planet. How true that statement is. I loved Tracy more than anything, and he was the one person who had the "power" to hurt me more than anyone else; And that he did...whether it be intentional or not. My flesh wanted him to feel at least a little bit of the pain, the hurt, the rejection that he made me feel. I wanted him to be alone. I wanted him to acknowledge that he hurt me, that he chose someone else over me, that he broke my heart, that he made me feel like I wasn't good enough for him. But I didn't get any of that-he moved on with his happy little life and premade family and I got to be alone.
That last day of 2012, December 31, I sat on the floor in my room and just cried. I cried because I had been hurt, and cried because I had allowed that hurt to turn into something that never should have been. So, I laid, face down humbling myself before the Lord, and I cried, I wept. I repented to the Lord for holding on to such pain, for not allowing Him to heal the little parts that I was still holding onto; and I prayed for Tracy. I prayed that God would bless him, that He would pour out blessings on him in such a way that he can not deny it came from the Lord. I prayed that we both would only remember the good times, the times we laughed, the times we were happy. I prayed that when he thinks of me and when I think of him, that this is how we would remember "us." Who we were in the beginning. The "us" that laughed together, prayed together, dreamed together. The "us" we were before all the junk, before those choices were made. I want to and I want him to remember this "us."
In that moment, I prayed that all the hurtful words, the pain, the sorrow, and the grief would be buried, and only the good would remain. That when I think of him or when he thinks of me, that this is how we would remember "us." I loved him and I know that at one time he loved me...that I will be forever grateful. There was a time when he made me laugh, most of the time at his expense, but I still laughed;) He taught me that I was lovable, that I was beautiful, that the very things I disliked about myself, were the very things that he fell in love with. I choose to remember these things...and I pray that he chooses the same. It's in this moment that I truly, with my very heart and soul, forgave him.
I can not speak for him, but I do not regret my choice to "Be still." Trust me when I say it was not an easy choice, it wasn't. Maybe it should have been, but for me it was the hardest choice I've ever made, the hardest one I ever hope I have to make. Through this choice, I learned that God is enough for me; That even in the midst of what felt like a tsunami, He was enough. He will never leave or forsake me. He loves me more than any one person will. He has big dreams for me. He has a husband, a family, a ministry for me that I can't even imagine...all rewards of just "being still."
I thank God for revelations. I thank Him for loving me enough to not allow me to stay the same. I am thankful that His love for me never changes, that He never rejects me, turns His back on me, lies to me, or hurts me. I am thankful that His best is what I yearn for. I'm so thankful that I am not the same!
Dreaming His Dreams,
Blue
So here, today, I come once again to express my deepest thoughts.
2012: there were some things, some personal things that I closed out in 2012, that I "put a period on." Things that I refused to take into 2013 with me, so I closed them. What I realized through this was, for me, healing. If you have been a reader of mine for a while, you have walked through the greatest heartbreak I have ever experienced. You have seen, through my eyes, a love lost, a heart broken, a choice made. It's funny, I have really learned (I always knew, but learning first hand is something completely different) the effect that people's choices have on one another. You see, Tracy made a choice to leave Waxahachie, to go back to Austin. I believe he made the wrong choice. I believe that this is where God wanted him, and absolutely not because of me. I believe that even if Tracy and I were not together, that this is where he wanted him. God had things He wanted to teach him, places He wanted him to go, people He wanted him to impact, to minister to. God left the choice up to him. It's almost like those books I used to read as a young girl, the adventure ones where you got to choose the ending...if you chose A, this happened, if you chose B, this would happen, and so on. God gave him a choice, doing everything He could to show him exactly what the "right" choice was...Tracy chose option B. That ONE choice, led to another choice, that led to another choice, that now has him living a life that I know he would never have planned for himself. A life that isn't what God had chosen for him either. He never had the strength, the passion for God, to make the tough choice; to choose the harder of the two. He chose the "easy way out" as one would say...and is now seeing the repercussions of those choices.
I also made a choice. I chose to stay. When I couldn't hear anything else, I heard "Be Still." When everyone around me was telling me what they thought I should do, what they thought my next move should be, all I heard was "be still." When the very love of my life believed that the only choice I wasn't making was him, I heard "be still.". He didn't understand. He believed that I was just rejecting him, that I wasn't choosing him, oh how wrong he was...I was just doing the ONLY thing I knew to do, the ONLY thing that I was hearing...I was "being still." I tried to make him understand, but the more i tried, the more angry he got. My heart would break over and over again at the thought of him thinking I didn't want him, that I didn't want to be with him. I loved him more than anything in the world. I loved him with every fiber of my being, my every breath, but I loved God more. Everything was so uncertain, everything, even my relationship with him...but the one thing I was hearing more clearly than anything else was "Be still." So, that is exactly what I did...as I watched the one person I loved most dearly, and everything else that I had, get stripped away from me. I made a choice. The difference between the two is that I can sit here today as I type, once again with tears streaming down my face, that I don't regret my choice. I chose to "Be still." God didn't ask me to "be still" alone...He never asked me to "be still" without Tracy, He just asked me to "be still." Tracy chose to walk away from me, He chose to not trust me enough to "be still" with me. He chose...and so did I.
All of this to say that I realized I still held some anger, some resentment, some hurt, and feelings of rejection towards Tracy. It wasn't what it was by any means, but it was more than I wanted in my life. What's done is done. The choices that we made have been made, and we are both living out the blessings and consequences of each choice separately, we can't go back, I won't go back. I once heard that falling in love with someone, giving them your heart, is giving them the power to hurt you more than anyone else on the planet. How true that statement is. I loved Tracy more than anything, and he was the one person who had the "power" to hurt me more than anyone else; And that he did...whether it be intentional or not. My flesh wanted him to feel at least a little bit of the pain, the hurt, the rejection that he made me feel. I wanted him to be alone. I wanted him to acknowledge that he hurt me, that he chose someone else over me, that he broke my heart, that he made me feel like I wasn't good enough for him. But I didn't get any of that-he moved on with his happy little life and premade family and I got to be alone.
That last day of 2012, December 31, I sat on the floor in my room and just cried. I cried because I had been hurt, and cried because I had allowed that hurt to turn into something that never should have been. So, I laid, face down humbling myself before the Lord, and I cried, I wept. I repented to the Lord for holding on to such pain, for not allowing Him to heal the little parts that I was still holding onto; and I prayed for Tracy. I prayed that God would bless him, that He would pour out blessings on him in such a way that he can not deny it came from the Lord. I prayed that we both would only remember the good times, the times we laughed, the times we were happy. I prayed that when he thinks of me and when I think of him, that this is how we would remember "us." Who we were in the beginning. The "us" that laughed together, prayed together, dreamed together. The "us" we were before all the junk, before those choices were made. I want to and I want him to remember this "us."
In that moment, I prayed that all the hurtful words, the pain, the sorrow, and the grief would be buried, and only the good would remain. That when I think of him or when he thinks of me, that this is how we would remember "us." I loved him and I know that at one time he loved me...that I will be forever grateful. There was a time when he made me laugh, most of the time at his expense, but I still laughed;) He taught me that I was lovable, that I was beautiful, that the very things I disliked about myself, were the very things that he fell in love with. I choose to remember these things...and I pray that he chooses the same. It's in this moment that I truly, with my very heart and soul, forgave him.
I can not speak for him, but I do not regret my choice to "Be still." Trust me when I say it was not an easy choice, it wasn't. Maybe it should have been, but for me it was the hardest choice I've ever made, the hardest one I ever hope I have to make. Through this choice, I learned that God is enough for me; That even in the midst of what felt like a tsunami, He was enough. He will never leave or forsake me. He loves me more than any one person will. He has big dreams for me. He has a husband, a family, a ministry for me that I can't even imagine...all rewards of just "being still."
I thank God for revelations. I thank Him for loving me enough to not allow me to stay the same. I am thankful that His love for me never changes, that He never rejects me, turns His back on me, lies to me, or hurts me. I am thankful that His best is what I yearn for. I'm so thankful that I am not the same!
Dreaming His Dreams,
Blue
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