It has been a year since I started my blog. It took a lot of convincing from the Lord to get me to do this because I didn’t feel like anyone would want to hear what I had to say. I battled back and forth for months with Him and then He reminded me that this was going to be a team effort and He would be there with me every step of the way. Because it is a team effort, I want you to know that the words that I write come from Him. I want you to know that my biggest desire is for the Lord to be glorified in what I say. I desperately want to be used by Him and I hope my words can be an encouragement to you. I want to say thank you for reading and I appreciate you so very much!

Life is not easy. Life is full of serious issues and tragedies. I have seen hurt and pain all around me. And to be perfectly honest it makes my heart hurt. I can easily let the pain consume me. I have learned that I have to go to God’s word when I get like that. I have to focus on who He is and on His promises. There is so much hate right now that it makes me sick because I grew up with a lot of that at home. Frankly, it is exhausting to live that way and I know that it is also destructive to our souls.

When I was a little girl, I wanted to stay away from my Dad as much as I could. Every day my brother and I dreaded him walking through the door after work. We tried to avoid contact with him until he had some time to unwind. Dinner time was the worst! He would pick at my Mom’s cooking or try to pick a fight with us. It was torture to sit there and listen to all the negative come out of his mouth. Before food fights became popular, my Dad actually threw the food on the ceiling. That food stained ceiling was a constant reminder to me of my Dad’s wrath.

I didn’t realize it at the time but I developed some coping mechanisms that weren’t very healthy. Lying was one of them. In my house, telling the truth was never a good idea. We had to lie to protect ourselves physically and emotionally. It was a way of life for my brother and I. When you do this for years you don’t realize what you are doing. I really didn’t realize the extent of this habit until I was in “The Patriarchs” Bible study by Beth Moore. She states, “Let’s face it. We are prone to lie when threatened. Furthermore, we can go from prone to lying to premeditated lying at the first hint of trouble.” She was talking about Abraham asking Sarah to lie about being his wife.

I stopped reading that statement and I started thinking about all the lies I had been living. I not only lied to others, I was lying to myself all the time. My brother and I lied on a daily basis when we said we were fine, even though one of us had just been beaten or been extensively yelled at for hours. Every day was a lie because we had to pretend we were okay. We had to pretend we weren’t living with a monster at our house. The pretending eventually caught up with my brother and I. He developed Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and I suffer from PTSD, anxiety and depression. Lying has consequences.

I wrote in my journal, “Abraham and Sarah made a pact to lie when threatened. I didn’t realize that my brother and I made the same pact. It was like my Dad was saying to us, “This is how you can show your love for me, LIE. Make everyone believe I am wonderful. Tell everyone you are fine. Don’t tell anyone what is really going on in this house.” Now that I think about it, Satan had a hold on all of us because he is the father of lies and he is the author of deceit.

I was sick and tired of all the lies and had this burning desire inside of me to find truth. I read books, read my Bible and wanted God’s word to become the truth in my life. I wanted to know what He had to say. I learned that if you try to find truth in anything but God, you will be severely disappointed. God has the only truth that can set us free.

It seems to me that lying has become a way of life for a lot of people. Some people do it out of habit, some out of fear, some out of deceit, and some out of pain. Regardless of the reason, lying is destructive and it not only hurts you, it hurts others. Truth is the only way to combat it. I have found that God’s truth is the only way to combat anything in my life, so that is why it is very important to know what scripture says.

Genesis 18:14 says, “Is there anything that is too hard for the Lord?” I actually thought that my issues were too big for God. I thought I was such a mess that God couldn’t handle me. I had made God so small in my mind that I had forgotten who He really was. I have been reminded over and over again of how great our God is. I think we all need to be reminded of who He really is and the only way to do that is to read His word.

1 Corinthians 14:33 “For God is not a God of disorder but of peace.” This verse made me realize how much of my life had been lived in chaos. God was the only way I was going to be able to live in peace. He wanted peace for me, not chaos. I think sometimes we forget that point. We get so used to living in turmoil and disorder that we forget that isn’t what God wants for us. I basically had to retrain my brain to look for peace and not chaos. I was so used to living in chaos that it felt comfortable to me. Peace was not something I was accustomed to. I learned that God’s ways are so much better than mine.

For years, I allowed myself to live in a destructive environment because I thought I had to. I thought if I lived in that environment I would be able to save my Dad. I learned the hard way that was not what God wanted for me. This quote from Beth Moore made me reevaluate the way I was living. “Oh do not listen to those who say you must live on the level, and in the midst of worldly men, in order to elevate and save them.” For me, living in the midst of all the destructive behavior just made me sicker and miserable. I had to get away from that environment in order to save myself from being dragged down into it.

So dear friends, I challenge you to read and study His word. See what God has to say about life. His words are the wisdom we need to live by because His truth sets us free! I am going to leave you with a prayer by Beth Moore. We need to pray this for ourselves every day. “God, invade my dream life, my thoughts when I sleep and every closet in my brain! Put your truth in the innermost places of my mind, even those I don’t know exist.”

Until next time and thank you again for reading.

Philippians 1:3 “I thank my God every time I remember you.”