The Broken Silence

So, Im back and the silence is broken. Sorry it has been so long, but I find it difficult to exact change in my life and be reflective both at the same time. You will notice that this blog ebbs and flows. There will times of silence and I can guarantee that the return from said silence will usually be a long blog entry.

So I have spent the last semester with 2 focuses. I have developed my leadership skills through mentorship and study and I have developed into asomewhat well equipped staff member at TELUS. I LOVE MY JOB!!!! Did you get the emphasis there? I don't think I could have found a better job for my skills or a better environment to develop my skills as a leader. The most important thing when dealing with people in my job is relationship. With both clients and other staff members, if I don't develop a relationship with them, there is nothing to go on.

A new thing to remember

Heard on "House" Nov 27, 2007.

"Never a saint without a past, never a sinner without a future."

I am so high Maintenance

You'd think once someone affirms me and gives me direction that I would be able to take that and run with it. A week ago, my boss gave me some really strong feedback. He let me know that I am doing a great job. I am meeting if not exceeding all expectations for myself. AFter that, you would think I would be able to not worry about how I'm doing. A week after that feedback, I was in tears because I couldn't seem to get my job right. All my manager had to do to get me straightened out again this week was affirm those positive skill sets. After he did that, I was smoking on the phones again. The key is going to be how do I do what my manager did on my own? That will be my next exploration.

The future is here

Apparently my friends think I have mellowed out. I never really thought about it. As I look back, I guess I have. I'm thanking God for it cause that's the only way it could happen. I guess I just realized that every moment of my life is weaving a beautiful tapestry that people will look back on. Before the colors were sporatic and crazy. I have tried to make each moment count now and learned to appreciate each one. just because someone does something that bugs me is no reason to freak out. I am hoping that the colors work better together now and that the weaving pattern is working together. By God's grace, I hope I can look back at the end of my life and see that it has ended up weaving a beautiful picture of Jesus holding me in His arms. I guess we'll see.

The Reason For it All

So I was just going back through all of my old posts and I realized that I haven't made it very clear as to why this blog is called "My Life As A Worship Leader". After I put my daughter up for adoption, I had to try to figure out exactly what it was that God wanted me to do with my life. I spent 2 years working for Fanny's Fabrics and in that time did what I could to seek after God. My Music Pastor, who had also been my Youth Pastor when I was younger, encouraged me to help him out on the worship teams. He was a really skilled musician and I think he was an amazing worship leader too. It would have been cool to learn how to lead worship from him.

In that 2 years, I felt most at home when I was helping out with worship. Whether I was wrapping up cords, playing piano or singing, I felt like I was exactly where God wanted me. I realized that he wanted me to be a worship leader. I looked at some Bible Colleges in town and found the one that sounded right. It had a strong focus on the arts and a drive for excellence. I applied and was soon accepted even though my marks weren't the greatest in High School.

I started at Rocky Mountain College in the fall of 2000. That is where I met 2 of the most amazing women I will ever meet. They wer not professors, but students. Jen and Michelle are possibly 2 of the greatest things that have ever happened to me. They are true friends who don't let me get away with murder. If I am neglecting them, they call me on it. If I am overworked, they let me know and help me get things under control again. The 3 of us started on a journey to get to know God and His will for our lives.

When I started at Rocky, I found out they had a theatre program. I have always loved being the centre of attention and so thought maybe I should do a theatre degree instead of a music degree. I soon realized just how much work it was going to be and after 2 years and being 1 credit away from completing a diploma in theatre arts, I moved on to music. Music has been my love since I was a very little girl. It's probably part of the reason I managed to survive my childhood.

I started my music degree in the winter of 2003. I was excited about becoming a famous musician and maybe fulfilling my promise to my daughter of becoming the lead pianist for the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra. Someone once told me, if you're going to dream at all, you might as well dream big. Somehoe they convinced me that I could fly if I wanted to. Soon after starting the music portion of my studies, I realized that a worship leader doesn't want to take all the credit for themselves. They want the glory to go to God and the only measure of whether they are succeeding is that the congregation feels like they are meeting God.

I started to realize just how much power a worship leader has and this time it had the opposite effect. I was terrified. I would have run the other way if God wasn't standing behind me making sure I didn't take off. I remembered the power I had on the streets and how many lives I hurt while I wielded it and I seriously rethought my desire to become a worship leader. I have never once waivered from knowing that I am to become a worship leader. I have had moments that I question how God is taking me there, but I always come back to knowing in the bottom of my heart that that is where I need to be.

Being scared of the power I was learning about did strange things to me. I would do all kinds of strange things that would get in the way of me succeeding. I couldn't even break it down for you if I wanted to. Just try to picture a kid who really wants to be a major league baseball player and you try to give him the bat, but because he's afraid of actually getting to where he wants to be, he runs around the field flailing his arms and yelling and screaming. That was what I was like. I have never been one to just lie down and accept defeat. I have had to deal with mental illness, physical, illness, personal confidence issues and many other giants on my path. Since I was a little girl I have remembered David and I know that Goliath lost. Any challenge that seems too great for me, I picture the challenge as goliath and me as David. So far it's worked. As another thorn gets in my path, I pick it out as fast as I can. When I feel like I've been hit with a 2x4, I try to stand up and shake it off. Through the face of adversity I have persevered only because God has given me the strength by reassuring me of what I was to do with my life.

This year I finally got permission from the chair of my program to do my practicum. I didn't go well. I won'tgo into detail abou it, but it was bad noughthat the shool decided to wipe he practicum from my record. I didn't pass, i didn't fail, I was just unprepared and improperly supported. I started this blog towards the end of my practicum as I was realizing it was going to be unsalvagable. I realized that there are some personality quirks that i have that are going to stand in the way of me being a successful worship leader. They weren't significant enough to bring up with a counsellor, but they were substantial enough to interfere with my journey to being a worship leader. I realized that my life as a worship leader doesn't start when I get hired at a church. It starts now. Every decision I make right now affects my future as a worship leader. I needed a place where I could think through the issues I was having and understand myself a lot better. Eah blog entry I make makes me a better worship leader in the future. Each issue I resolve here becomes one less that has to be encountered in the field. As I said, I am not afraid of a challenge. I face it full on. The posts you read here are thing that in the future will be lessons I teach students under me who want to become a worship leader. This becomes my journal of who I was and the power God has over that as well as who I want to become. It becomes my own accountability tool because for some reason, in my mind, nothing is true until it is written down. If you are committed enough to my life to want to see how I grow and chang into becoming a worship leader, this is the best place to do it as the information here is post internal mess, but prerevelation. You will be witness to those grand revelations God gives to everyone on a journey with Him. I am glad to have your company on this journey and your input is very much appreciated though if you choose to stand silently and watch the Potter at work and admire His work when He is finished, you are welcome to do that as well. Thank you for being with me on this journey.

Terror embodied

So there is a reality that I have not wanted to face for a very long time. I may have lost my gift. I haven't commitedly and successfully played piano since before I was beaten up. I wonder if the hits I took to the head when I was beaten up caused some brain damage that wouldn't be recognized. Most people think with a certain amount of their brain. I always found school easy until that day. After that, focusing became nearly impossible and anything that involved both sides of my brain at the same time is a chore. I can't seem to make my fingers do what they are supposed to. When I try to play, I can hear what the music should sound like in my head, but it doesn't sound like that when I try to play it. I know I have to be patient and try to practice, but I'm not used to having to practice very much. The music came to me before as if it was already a part of me. I could master a song in a matter of a month. I have now worked on the same songs for a month and they sound no better to my ears than they did when I began. Kenny Masters wrote a book called Effortless Mastery. He said in there that sometimes you will get to a point when it is about mastering everything at this level. He had a teacher who stopped this thinking. They stopped playing songs altogether. He had to do a 5 finger exercise over and over for his entire practice time. It wasn't about perfecting it or impressing anyone. It was about enjoying the exercise. This is a point that I haven't gotten to yet. I tried to jump in with guns blazing, but I don't think I'm ready yet. I want to go back to grade 7 and remind myself of the songs I loved that year. Grade 7 was the last time I really remember enjoying music. I know I can never completely go back, but maybe if I experience something that used to grab me, kind of like when worship has gone dry, sometimes experiencing something simple that used to light you on fire can reignite the flame.

Breaking the Silence

So here it is. I apologize for the silence. I have spent the last few weeks reading and writing. For the first time in a very long time, I actually handed in my paper. It was 2 days late, but it was handed in. I should be able to do the other assignments a little easier now. I am shocked at how easy it was. I thought it would be so hard to write a paper, but when I relax and just do what I'm asked, it's rather simple. It helps that the concepts we are being taught are rather intuitive. They seem to me to be common sense. I would be interested to know what other people are thinking.

So, now that that's over, I'm on to the next assignment and you get to take part now. Any feedback over the next few months would be appreciated. So I have to do a mentoring project for my leadership class. I have to meet with a mentor for an hour to an hour and a half a week. That project started today. Bronwyn Smith is my mentor. We talked about a few things today that really got me thinking. First is what is THE most important quality a leader can have. To me, it is being trustworthy. If I can't trust my leader, I will not follow them. I know this is exactly what we've talked about in class, but talking with Bronwyn, I can use analogies and stories to help me understand why. I looked at several leadership relationships I have had and the biggest breakdown was when I stopped trusting people. I think I'm good with trust though. I try very hard to help people trust me. I try to make sure I do what I say I'm going to. I make mistakes, but I admit to them. For example, I have a client I have been working with for several weeks now at work. There were some errors made on his account and it has interrupted his real estate business. Needless to say, he was a little annoyed. I promised to call him back at certain times and made a sincere effort to do so. I was never more than 45 minutes late and I made sure he understood before the process started that it might happen sometimes. Every step of the way, if I told him I would do something, I made sure I did it. I needed him to know that when I said something, I meant it. If there was ever a breakdown of trust, I ran the risk of losing him as a client. If someone trusts you, they will compromise when they can't have it their way.

I think one major thing that could stand in the way of me becoming a great leader is my insecurity related to my effect on the dynamic of a group. I love to watch groups and figure out what role each person plays in the group as well as what people's strengths and weaknesses are. I am unable to do that with myself because I am so concerned with how I am affecting the group. I overanalyze every choice because I am afraid that someone will react negatively to it. If I were to start trusting my gut, otherwise known as the voice of the Spirit, I would probably find myself having more success. The problem is, I don't know how to turn the switch off. With several things, I have changed the subject to something else such as my addictions through the years. I started on praise, moved to drugs, moved to alcohol, moved to the feeling when the Spirit moves and now it's caffiene. I can challenge each addiction as I find it, but rather than getting rid of the root of the addiction, I just move it to something else. Same thing here. I used to overanalyze absolutely everything. It was paralyzing. Now I try to enjoy my life. My house is okay. I don't have to figure out exactly what needs to move. I don't need to have the exact right color combination. All I have to do is enjoy it. It's mine. I still overanalyze anything that has to do with interacting with people. I'll have to see where that journey takes me.

The goals we have set so far are to explore my definition of leadership, open my bag of tools, they look more like puzzle pieces to me, and figure out how they work together and how best to wield them. I have seen over the past year many of the qualities of an excellent leader, I just can't seem to apply the concepts. I think what I want to get out of this mentorship is to figure out how to use the skills I have. I believe I am a natural born leader, I'm just not here yet.

The Second Hardest Thing I've Ever Had to Do

So in my life there is only one thing that will reign eternal as the hardest thing I have ever had to do. That is to give my daughter up for adoption. I am about to come a close second to that one.

I attend a church where God is moving in everyone's lives. He may not be growing the numbers, but each and every person is experiencing God in a new way. I have been privileged to be a part of this group and have everyone in the congregation speaking into my life over the last 9 months. The wisdom of my elders has helped me to learn from some very serious mistakes. They have begun to breed in me humility and submission, two things I have struggled against for most of my life.

My arrogance took me to a very bad place in the last year. I am a very wild spirit and difficult for anyone to control, much less guide successfully. I don't think the supervisor's of my practicum realized this when we started. I showed signs of very deep issues that would take constant one on one mentoring to heal. There was no one in the church who could commit the time needed to do this and I didn't have the money to hire a psychologist.

I ended up in a very arrogant and lonely place. A place where I don't think even God wanted to be. when I looked up from all of the plans I was making, I realized God wasn't there. He was still at home in my heart, but He wasn't answering the door.

Since then, I have sat down and wept like the Israelites at the rivers of Babylon. I have wept for my sinfulness and my offense against God. I have been frustrated by the possibility that I could make such a huge mistake.

Like the child who just realized she broke her mother's favorite vase, I started "behaving" myself in hopes that God could turn the other cheek. I wanted to stay with these people I have come to love and who have come to love me in return. It is a safe place and I didn't want to go out among the wolves again.

I hoped that God would let me stay, but we must give up the things we love to follow God. He will ask of us things that we don't want to do. They will still feel like the right thing to do, but they won't necessarily be the easy road. He has finally let me know in no uncertain terms that He knows about the vase.

Like a loving Father, he doesn't come with violence and frustration. His steadfast, loving hand supports me even as it disciplines me. God has shown me my mistakes, but He has also shown me what He loves about me. He has not exalted me, but He has consoled me. I know that I am in His arms.

It is from this place that I am to venture out. I have to leave the little church that has become my home. I have to say goodbye to the people who have found it in their hearts to forgive me. God has asked me to go to another church. One that can handle the trauma that I am trying to overcome. One that can help me ask God to give me the freedom I seek. One that can show me who Jesus really is and how He wants to be in my life.

I have been in such a place before, but it is nowhere close to home, so I can't return right now. If God brings me back there sometime in the future, I may consider it. For now, I have to find a church where I live. I'm scared of getting to know people again. There is always the fear that people won't understand me or that I may not represent myself the way I want to. I guess I have to trust that to God. It's easier said than done, but I guess God only shows us our weakness so we will rely on Him for everything.

The next step on my journey

God asked something of me this week. He has been asking for a long time that I learn to wait. I tend to practice what I like to call active waiting. I can only wait because I busy myself with so many other things that I can't think about the thing I am waiting for.

A while ago, God asked me to wait for what He is going to do in our church. This week He upped the ante. I am not only to wait, but to do it in the throne room with Him. No action, just waiting. I had hoped I could come to the throne room, put my face on the floor and think about the character of God or picture what I hoped God would do in our church, but He has asked me to listen to Him without thinking about anything else or needing Him to say anything. It's really hard to explain.

Either way, I have been terrified of submitting because I have been stretched a lot lately. I realized that the people who love me the most have shown me how they feel by trying to "sharpen" me. They have given me constant "constructive criticism" to help me change into a better person. They speak more about what needs to be different about me than enjoying exactly who I am right now.

I appreciate where they are coming from and what they are doing, but the strange thing is it means I don't get it when my husband just wants to like me for who I am. This translates into my relationship with God as well. I am scared to enter the throne room because God has already done a lot of things in my life. I don't want to be exactly the same person for the rest of my life, but it's nice to take a break from change.

For this reason, when God asks me into the throne room, I am scared to go because He will want to change me again. He has reassured me this time that this isn't the case. He just wants to spend time with me, His child. It's kind of like when I go to see my daughter. I don't go to tell her how to change. I go to appreciate the person she is becoming.

After I met with my spiritual director yesterday, I felt safe enough to obey. As soon as I got home I looked around at boxes that needed to be unpacked, dishes that needed to be done and laundry that needed tending and decided to stop making excuses. I know that my Father in Heaven loves me. I know He only wants what is best for me. If He is asking me into the throne room, there is a good reason, even if I don't know what it is.

So I went. I went exhausted and pensive. Wishing I could just rest and frustrated at having to meet my Father, I entered the throne room. I felt like a child who had to put away their video game to come to the dinner table at first. I didn't realize what a privilege this was. After a moment in the presence of the King of Kings, I was humbled. I wasn't just humbled because He was the King. I was humbled because with the attitude I came with, He had every reason to discipline me. He could have thrown me out of His presence. Instead, He said "come sit with me. Rest a moment." I sat with my Lord and berated myself because I was drifting off. I was so tired and exhausted I couldn't even have a conversation with my King.

Have I mentioned that my God is gracious? When I can no longer function, He is there. His Spirit spoke to my soul and said "I know how tired you are. I didn't ask you here to do something. I asked you here so I could spend time with you. As you long to watch your child sleep, so I long to see you rest."

I fell asleep in the presence of the Creator of everything. He reminded me to come boldly to the throne of grace to receive mercy and grace and then said sleep. I haven't had such a restful sleep in a very long time.

Jesus loves me. He wants me to draw near to Him when I am in need. When my soul aches and I don't understand, He doesn't say to jump through a bunch of hoops then He will fix everything. He said "Come to Me all you who are weary and I wil give you rest for your soul." My saviour, as always, kept His promise to me.

IT'S OVER!!!! Friday Sep 21

It's official. A journey that began 5 years ago came to a close today. I woke up this morning and realized we had been paid. Our budget has had my last payment for my debt repayment program for the last 3 months, but it never was real. I thought something would happen that would make it impossible for me to make the payment. For this reason, I decided not to wait until my due date to make the final payment. I did it. Every sacrifice we have made over the last 4 years finally makes sense and is okay. A work that God began in me many years ago is finally complete. I'm dancing on the inside and I don't think anyone will be able to stop me.

Prayers of a Not-So-Saint

Heavenly Father,

you are the creator of everything. You made each and every person on earth the way they are and you know each and every one of us. You know when we come and when we go, when we wake up and when we sleep. You put us together in our mother's wombs. You know us so well that you know how many hairs are on our heads.

This scares me Lord. If you know me this well, you know that I have been a hypocrite. I don't want people to know that I am scared of you. I am scared that if I start talking to you again, you might tell me that I have to let go of all the good things that are in my life.

I know that you love me. You know better than me what is good for me and what is not. I do not live with my heart in submission to you Lord because you may not let me have what I want.

I confess this to you now. I am sinful and cannot do anything out of my own strength. Lord, you know my heart. All I really want is to serve you. You sent your Son to die on the cross so that in times like this, the price would already be paid. Lord, thank you for loving me even when I'm not so sure you should and thank you for sending your Holy Spirit to speak to my heart.

Lord, I ask that you would search my heart and show me anything undesirable in it. Give me humility to know that without you, I am nothing. Give me courage to come to you for everything, not just things that are hard. A life lived in your arms is worth more than all the treasure in the world.

Lord, take over my heart. Help me to always know that I am not worthy to lead your sheep into your presence. Show me that only by fully relying on you can I know your will for them.

Sweet consolations when I was a child gave me the impression that I had a direct connection to you Lord, that I knew your will without asking you. Forgive me for my arrogance, Lord. teach humility to my heart. Show me that as I humble myself in your presence, only then will you show me the path.

Lord, this is a hard process. My knees are stiff and the ground is hard. The pride in my heart makes it difficult to bow before you. But you created me for one purpose Lord. To worship you. All I know is that I need to turn my face and heart towards you.

I love you, Jesus. Thank you for coming and showing me that God really does want a relationship with me. Show me the path to the throne room and remind me that I don't deserve to be there.

I pray all this in Jesus' name
Amen

My Christmas/B'day Wish List

This seems to be the most convenient place to put my wish list. This is not an emotionally driven post, just information for my family and friends to know what to get me for my birthday and Christmas.

PANTS WITH POCKETS PLEASE!!!

-Ladies suede gloves
large 1 pr black, 1 pr brown
-Clothing from Cleo
Large tops, size 14 petite pants, size 16 regular blouses
-Clothing from Le Chateau
x-large tops, size 16-18 blouses, size 14-16 pants
-Dressy winter Coat
preferrably white button up thigh length wool walking coat with no belt or accents on the waist
-acoustic guitar
-money to pay for school
-Gift Certificates/Cards
-Wal-Mart
-Cleo
-Le Chateau
-Chapters
-Rideau Music
-Sears
-iTunes Store
-Sofa
-card games such as Racko
-Jean Pare Cookbooks
-Black leather pumps
size 9w
-Funky shoes
-a new car (it's always worth a shot right?)
-devotionals that appeal to a worship leader
-books by Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross. I like the ones translated by Mirabai Starr the best

For my two best friends

You know, I really wish there was a way for me to tell people that I am not poking fingers at them. I don't know if I've mentioned this yet, but I have two of the very best friends anyone could ask for. They are transparent, in that they let me see everything about them when they feel strong enough, and the are solid. They know what they believe. They only question it to strengthen their faith. They think about what they believe before agreeing with it and don't change what they think just because everyone else in the room thinks something different. They love. No qualifiers, no specific people, they just love. Never have I met people who could put aside stupid foibles to find the very precious gem at the core of any soul. They are my inspiration. They are the ones who help to keep me on the right path and I don't know where I would be without them.

Autumn Lea

So for almost 9 years now, I have wrestled with the most important decision I will ever make. I have already made the decision. I only wrestle with the fallout from that decision. What was it you ask?

Well, I think the better question is who was it?

Autumn Lea.

I wonder Autumn, do you really know how much I love you? I pray that God would let you feel this special love that I have for you. It's hard to tell you since you are so far away and still so very young. I miss you always. Every morning when I wake up, I realize that I could have woken up with you in my arms. Every meal I eat, every movie I watch, I know that if I had been more selfish, I could have done it with you beside me. Do you know why I found a new family for you? God showed me just how little I had to offer you. I had tried to live my life without His strength and instead of gaining for myself everything I dreamed of, I lost everything I ever wanted.

You were God's way of saying "Here's a second chance. Don't screw it up this time." He has walked with me every step of the way showing me what to do and what not to do. I still make mistakes and want to do things on my own, but ultimately God always reminds me that only with His guidance can I ever do good things.

Take a look at your life Autumn. You have a mom and dad who love you so much I couldn't imagine what it must be like to live with. I never knew if my parents loved me. Once in a while we would say the words, but in our family we didn't do anything to show other people. You have a sister who thinks the world of you. I remember when you first went home. I heard stories of how Alex wanted to help feed and change you. She wanted to burp you and hold you. She wanted to play with you. More important than anything else in the world to me, Autumn, is that she wanted desperately to love you. She considered it a priviledge. You are blessed my little one.

I thank God that the one thing that causes me the most grief in life is something you may not have to deal with. You know that you are loved. Because of what my life has been, I still question whether God can find it in His heart to love me. I wonder if I have been good enough, have I done enough good deeds, have I loved other people enough, have I entertained enough angels? Have I found favor, Lord?

As you, Autumn Lea, are my child, so am I His child. I pray for you as He prays for me. I hope for you as He hopes for me. I want to hold you as He wants to hold me. A precious child, so innocent in the eyes of the world. I pray the Lord would protect and guide you. May you live in peace under His strong wings every day of your life. May you know the love and grace in His heart that he extends constantly to you. May you know when you have erred and flock to Him who is able.

There aren't enough words in my heart to tell you how much I love you Autumn. The season you are named for is the one that you became in my life. Without the Autumn and the following winter, the Spring could never come. And it is here.

Who's This For?

So I am forced to ask myself who this little project is for. I am frequently finding myself checking this blog hoping desperately that someone will have posted a comment that will affirm me. I have to remember that this site asn't about other people affirming who I am. It's about me being myself without wondering if people are okay with it. To tell you the truth, the hardest time to go through this is when you're PMSing. Sorry guys, but it's the truth. I have about a week every month that I wonder if I am good enough to be alive. I question why God saved my life. I wonder if anyone will miss me when I'm gone (Not that I'm leaving soon, I just contemplate weird stuff). It's funny, because I know God tries constantly to affirm me himself and yet, I seek out a physical and tangible source for affection and affirmation. Someday I will be able to let myself feel the constant, undying love God has for all of His children.

MOVING!!!!!

So the newness of it has set in and I'm flying high cause I'm going to have my own place soon. We're looking for a place that really is our own that we don't have to wonder if the neighbours are going to kick us out or if somebody else is hogging the laundry. It will be ours. I used to think that was mandatory. I wouldn't live somewhere if it was anyone else's. Now, it's a priviledge. My husband and I won't have to ask permission to snuggle in front of the TV. I can leave food out on the counter if I want to. It's the little things in life you appreciate. I'm trying to think rationally about this so we get the right place, but right now it's kind of hard. Luckily there's an application process so I will have to cool my jets before jumping into anything. We are going to rent for at least 2 years and then try to buy our own place. Wouldn't that be cool. I'm going to write more about this after I come down off of cloud nine.

Stability

So the biggest fear I have had for most of my life is stability. We moved around quite a bit when I was little, and when we had stopped moving around I took every opportunity I could to create chaos in my life. I finally saw this week why I can't live with that habit anymore.

I realized just how much work it takes to be strong for someone who is suffering. You actually have to think about things. My husband's younger brother died last week and he needed to be with his family. I am in a place right now where I don't want him to be frustrated with me when he needs to be thinking about other things. I was allowed to take lots of time off to be with my husband during this and if I had used it, I probably would have found an excuse to be a weeping puddle of mud in the corner that he had to attend to. I decided not to do that.

I took as little time off work as possible because if you take too much, you have to restart the training process. The sooner I finish training, the sooner I can start working normal shifts as well as take on overtime so we can get out of debt. When I did get home from the funeral, I realized how much slack Rich has been cutting me when it comes to cleaning up after myself and not overspending and dealing with my dad.

Let me reiterate that I am married to the indisputable greatest man in the world. He is patient and kind and gently nudges me to strive to be a better person. The thing is, when my husband says I need to be a better person, he says it with so much love in his voice that I want to be better because that's what he deserves.

Sorry about that little tangent. So, stability. I subconsciously don't do the things I have to because in the bottom reaches of my heart, I am afraid people won't notice me anymore or appreciate my uniqueness. If I stop having mental breakdowns on a regular basis, who is going to notice me? I will blend into the background and no one will be affected by anything I do, because how could they be affected when they can't see it. At least, that's the way my brain says it will be.

The thing is, people would probably take more notice of me if I started keeping it together. There are some extraordinary things about me that just can't be ignored. These things are actually being outshown by the disorganization and lack of emotional maturity that I express.

I guess something I really struggle with is that I want the freedom I had when I was in school to make mistakes. As long as I am still a kid, I'm allowed to do stupid things. People will let things go because "I was just learning". I'm afraid that if I successfully move my life into a place where I have stability, I will have to be perfect. Adults don't make mistakes do they? An adult would never pull an April Fool's Day joke on their pastor in the middle of a service. An adult would never spend every penny they make before they've paid their bills. I hope you can hear the sheer stupidity of these statements.

I have grown up in a house where I have never been good enough. I had to do it perfectly or I shouldn't do it at all. I would try to help my dad by cleaning the car and rather than get excited about the fact that I wanted to help, he criticized the places where I had left dirt behind. Didn't even acknowledge the fact that I had spent 3 full days working on the project. Didn't say thank you for taking the seats out and vaccuming under them. Just got upset because I hadn't done the job perfectly.

This is the plight of the perfectionist's child. Perfectionism breeds perfectionism. Until I fully accept that I will make mistakes in my lifetime, I will never succeed at stability. I am always stirring chaos into the mix, because if there was no way for me to succeed from the getgo, I don't need to freak out WHEN I fail. I need to start thinking in ifs. IF I fail it is okay. IF something goes wrong, I can handle it. I also need to realize that I don't have to assume that the if will happen.

See, I tell all of my friends to plan for the worst and hope for the best. I think I do this a little bit, but not enough. I have a picture of what the best is in my head, but I constantly tell myself that I can't achieve it. I'm tired of living like this. I want to plan for good things and have them happen. It's funny, though, cause I can hear my mother in law Bonnie saying "Then don't make such a big deal about it. Just do it." I find it kind of frustrating that the simplest answers in life can be the hardest to actually do. I have to say that I did some good things since I got home and I feel really good about them.

My bedroom was a disaster when I left for Moose Jaw. I used the excuse that I didn't have time to clean it, but that wasn't true. I couldn't find a reason to do it. I also thought if I do it now, I would be expected to do it all the time and I didn't know if I would be able to clean my room every day. I better not attempt something if I might make a mistake someday. Yeah Right.

So I came home and cleaned my room. All of it. I didn't stop because most of the clothes were picked up or I didn't know whether to keep a piece of paper, I cleaned it, but I didn't go nuts. I didn't have to have the perfect place for everything. I have a stack of papers on top of my computer that I don't know exactly what I'll do with, but I'm sure I'll find something to do with them. I'm really proud of that cause I used to think if I did something, I had to do it all the way. No stopping, just get it all done. That's a lot of pressure to puton yourself. Obviously with such a high standard you're going to fail and the only person who will catch me is my wonderful husband and God. I think they need a vacation for a while. We'll see how this goes. It'll be interesting to see how long I can keep my room clean.

In a Daze

Sorry to everyone who checked in and thought I had gone and started another project and not followed through. My internet was down all weekend. So I'm back at work and blogging again. I was hoping that today I would tell you about the really good stuff that has happened in my life because there's tons of it. Unfortunately, that's not the case. I woke up to a ringing phone this morning at 1:30. I thought it was strange when my husband hurriedly got off the phone saying "I love you" to someone, which they don't say very often in his family. I sat up and asked him who it was and he said it was his mom. A feeling of dread came over me as I contemplated what could bring on this early hours phone call. So what's wrong? My brother in law has passed away. Even as I write this, I feel as though it's all a really bad dream and I'm going to wake up soon. I hadn't done laundry since before we moved so Rich had no clothes to wear. We decided that he would go into work and get all of the paperwork done while I would stay home and get his laundry done and pack for him so I haven't slept yet. Having gotten up very early yesterday, I am going on my 30th waking hour hoping I can sleep soon. We cover so much stuff in training at work that I don't dare miss a day that I don't have to. So here I sit. Desperately wanting to be at home comforting my hurting husband (which would consist of sleeping and holding him when he wakes up). The police don't have any information for us yet, so we wait. i will be alone this week. My first test with my new attitude. Can I be strong when my husband cannot? I hope God will give me the strength to make it. I will continue to update during this time, but I hope you can appreciate that this news sent me into shock. I am still quite numb. I am feeling the fear and confusion in waves. A couple of hours of stability then it hits me again and I start asking God why? How can this make sense? I start thinking about the questions my husband's family must have and how I would answer them and frankly, it's not looking good. How can I, as an aspiring spiritual leader, not have the answers? I know I can't know everything right now, but I wish I had some answers for them. I will write more later.

FYI

Just in case anyone is wondering, I will be leaving this blog alone for one more day. I want to make sure that everyone who needs to gets to read these before they are hard to find. After that I will be blogging on a regular basis.

The Truth revealed

When I first created this blog, I thought I would be sharing all the exciting things God is doing in our church. It turns out, this is where if you are okay with the real me, you can see it. You need to know before you keep reading that I am doing this blog as no holds barred. If I am thinking things that may freighten you, I will not warn you. this is where I take down my walls and let you see the real me. The purpose of this is not a pity party. I have realized over the years that I am better at writing than I am at talking. If you are okay with all of these then please keep reading as I would love for you to know the real me. This said, I am not going to try to be politically correct when I am writing. I will write about my initial reactions the way I have them. I will usually not apologize for any of this, but I know some people in my family will be hurt so I am apologizing in advance. I have to start being honest with myself and God about my life.

My Story - Rated R with no apologies

I haven't been as forward with my story in the last few years as I used to be. There are few people left in my life who know the whole story of what has hurt me. Here it is so you can understand. I will warn you ahead of time, it is honest. I have not sugar coated anything and it is not for the weak hearted.


I didn't get a childhood with any innocence. I was born into a family that was divided before it even started. My parents weren't lovey dovey with each other or my brother and me. For the most part, I remember my parents yelling at each other. I don't remember what about, but I always thought it was my fault. If I could work harder, if I could be a better child, maybe they would start to like me. The harder I worked, the worse I did. We moved around so much I never got to know my friends. In my little 5 year old brain, I thought my parents were punishing me. Every time we moved, I wondered what I had done wrong. I had to say goodbye so many times, I never really got to know anyone. I got to the point I could tell when we were about to move and I would lash out at my friends so they wouldn't like me anymore. One less goodbye to say right?

To this instability, you add the stupidity of an older man. When I say stupidity I am being nice. He molested for the first time when I was 5 years old. To this day I am stilled ashamed of this. I've always felt like I had to pretend I had gotten over this, that I wasn't allowed to be ashamed of it, but I can't anymore. It has caused problems in my relationship with my husband, my dad and every male leader I have ever been in submission to. I cannot trust men for anything because they are going to hurt me.

It might have been tolerable if this was the only thing I had to deal with, but there are several hot tempers in my family, including my own. I am a really bad liar so if I had done something wrong, my parents would know right away. I remember more than one occasion when I wasn't going to change my story because I knew that would give me away as a liar, but my dad wasn't going to let me be a liar. He would try harder and harder to get me to tell the truth and eventually he would snap. It didn't happen often so he wasn't "abusive", but it happened, so I was abused. I have never wanted to admit that because of the stigma it would put on my dad, but now I can't look out for other people anymore. They have made their decisions.


Again, you would think the heap is heavy enough, but I was molested 4 times before I was 12. In Saskatchewan, there was no training on what to do if someone touches you inappropriately in our school. I didn't know I had been violated until we moved to Calgary.When I came forward about it, there was a very strong reaction. I didn't know why people reacted that way at first, but thought "I guess I should be ashamed of myself". Some people in my family haven't spoken to me since, my dad has been adament that if I was going to say I was a Christian, I had to forgive the man who molested me. I can honestly say that I have forgiven him. God said He would deal with this person and, since I have seen how the repurcussions have destroyed his life, I believe God already has.

At that point in my life, my teachers were the only people who hadn't hurt me. They would shower me with praise and tell me how smart I was. In the classroom, I was good enough. The other side of that door was a dangerous place, though. People didn't like me and I didn't know why. I had to assume that there was nothing likeable about me since no one could find anything to like about me. The girl I thought was my best friend would trick me into meeting her at the park where one of her other friends would come beat me up. To this day I don't know why she did it and I could really care less.


At this point I began to detach emotionally from my life. the pain was overwhelming and if I continued to feel everything in my heart, I thought I would collapse. You'll notice that things become less emotional and more practical after this point.

In Junior High, I would stay in the solace of the classroom as long as I could. I would be in the library volunteering as early as I could every morning. My lunches were spent in the safety of the office, volunteering on the phones, and after school I would stay as long as I could to help my teachers clean up at the end of the day. Unfortunately, the school could only save me from the pain until 4:30 at night. Being turned out into the world was inevitable. Why didn't God let me have something to save me at night too?

My heart was aching by the time I was 14. I blossomed early and had no one in my life that would speak to me about boys and what they really wanted. When boys started paying attention to me, I thought "Finally God is changing my luck. Someone likes me." You know that line in that movie where someone says in a really high pitched voice "He likes me. He reeaally likes me." That was the theme song of my puberty years. I just wanted someone to say I was good enough for them. As you can guess, my boyfriends were using me. They would take what they could get and when they found my boundaries they would leave. After a few boyfriends left for the same reason, I would assume my morals were too high and I would relent. With each boyfriend I would go a little further, but I knew in my heart that sex was not a good thing so I wouldn't go there. By the time I hit high school, things were changing. The students in my school started getting vicious. They would spit on me, lock my stuff in lockers when I left it alone, push me out of my seat on the bus. There's no end to what they would do to say "I DON'T LIKE YOU!"

I eventually realized that I could please my teachers all I wanted, but it would still hurt every time I walked down the hall. I gave up on pleasing anybody. I would stay out as often as I could and started exploring other things. I was in Pathfinders by this time (The next level up from Girl Guides) and the rumour was going around that I was a lesbian. Of course it wasn't true, but that didn't stop them from saying it. I started wondering if they were right. One night during camp, the meanest girl lured me into her bedroom and pretended she was interested in me sexually. She wasn't; she just wanted to demean me yet again, but I didn't know that. I decided to try what she was talking about and needless to say, it didn't go over well. The leadership never found out, but everyone in the troop knew. No one ever spoke to me again.

By the end of grade 10, I had started skipping class to hang out with the druggies and the smokers, also known as the "dirties". I failed a couple of my classes and got in huge fights with my teachers. At the start of grade 11, I started dating the leader of one of the gangs in my school and ended up in the crosshairs of his ex-girlfriend. She decided to make my life a living hell, pardon the expression. She started beating me up as often as she could and by the fifth time, the school police officer got worried. You'd think he would be worried about my safety, but no. He was worried about the balance that had been established at the school. I was asked to transfer schools.

Around the same time I started hanging out downtown with the drug dealers. When I was asked to change schools, we did all the paper work, but I didn't see a reason to continue going to school. I would tell my parents I was going to school and I would go downtown. this didn't last long as my parents said I was going to school as long as I lived under their roof. This is when I ran away for the first time. I spent a month at a time living on the street and then a c-train cop would pick me up and send me home since I was a missing person or I would get frustrated with the absolute lack of direction my life had and I would go home. That would only last a day or two and then I'd be on the street again.

It was during this phase of my life that I realized the evil that I was capable of. One afternoon, a friend of mine called. We were close, but he was not my boyfriend. We just understood each other. I had given him a ring that I made in high school and he had given me a ring that he got from his dad. He decided he had had enough of Calgary and he was leaving for Los Angeles. He phoned me at my parents' house to tell me he was going. I didn't want to lose the ring I had made and asked if I would get it back and he said I had to come get it. My parents overheard the conversation on the phone and thought I was leaving to go be a prostitute for him. They thought they had to stop me at any cost.

My mom showed up at my bedroom door with a rope. She told me she was going to tie me up so I couldn't leave. I felt like I was being treated like an animal. All I wanted was for one person to love me and I couldn't even get that. She realized she couldn't tie me up so she went and got a broomstick and said I'd have to get by her first. I took the broomstick and hit her in the knee as hard as I could. The stick broke and she grabbed one end of it. We started whacking each other as hard as we could and I ended up with my scalp split open and she ended up with a gash in her hand. She wanted to goad me into slugging her so she could have me arrested. During the fight, she started saying I was acting like a schizoid. She danced around shaking her hands going "schizzy, schizzy, schizzy!" Do you know how badly that hurt?


I finally got sick of playing games and wrapped my hand around my mom's throat and held her up against the wall and started choking her. I told her I was leaving and there was nothing she could do about it. She called my dad to help her and he started coming for the stairs. I knew I was done and bolted for the door. Just the fact that I could hit my mother and wrap my hand around her throat makes me feel like a worm.


By this point, I thought I would never live up to the expectations of anyone. Anyone who would try to kill their mother is not worth the breath in their lungs. I was suicidal. My life wasn't going anywhere. There is a bridge downtown in Century Gardens, a park on 7th Avenue and 8th Street, where I had been hanging out. I usually sat in the corner of the park and smoked pot, but this time, I didn't even want to do that. A walking bridge went over the park and I would sometimes stand on this bridge and watch people. Not in a creepy way. I was just interested in how people interacted and fascinated by the diversity God had put in human life. That day I wasn't interested in either. I wanted God to squish me like a bug. I stood on the overpass looking at the brick path below and tried to contemplate the odds of success. I tried to calculate the distance from where I was to the ground, wondered if I would fall far enough to definitely be fatal. Just as I thought I would jump, the man who had been looking out for me while I was living on the streets showed up. Understand that this was the first man that didn't ask anything in return from me. It was not an inappropriate relationship. He had been living on the streets for more than a decade, knew the ropes and had seen too many kids die from stupid mistakes. He wanted to make sure that didn't happen to me. I wonder if God put him there for a reason, but only God knows. I didn't jump, but neither did I feel any better. I was still a lowly bug forced to live with the lowest in society.

I think I should interject here and give you some time to process. As you can see, there has already been a lot of terrible things happen to me. At that point in my life, I felt unimportant, useless, thought I was a nuisance, and felt like no one would see anything in me that was worth loving. I was facing a lifetime alone and couldn't see anything within me that was worth loving. I tried more than once to kill myself, but felt even more useless when I failed at that. Take a moment to put yourself in my shoes. This is what this site is about. To try to let people understand just where I began, because without the beginning, there is no middle and no end if you know what I mean. Instead of seeing the mistakes I make and thinking "What a weirdo. What would make her do that?" and leaving me alone again, try to understand why I fear everyone. Try to see how badly I hurt.

I will try to slow down for you since I am still processin the things that happened next in my life. I think it is obvious that while I was living on the street, I started having sex. I was not carried away in a romantic fairy tale where sex was an intimate, emotional union between a man and a woman. Sex was my currency. It was the only thing I had that had any value and I would give it ou very freely. I lost my virginity when I was 15 years old. I didn't even know the guy's real name. It felt dirty and wrong, but it made him want me more. It made him think about me all the time. Think of the power I had. I could make a man leave his friends and family to spend time with just me. As an added bonus, I also got a bit of an adrenaline rush out of it. I wielded the power I realized I had as often as I could. People thought I was just a weak little girl and they were taking advantage of me, but it was I who was taking advantage. Men would hang on my every word, waiting for the chance to be with me. I wasn't only liked, I was needed! Wouldn't you take advantage of that?

I took advantage of it. As often as I could. I would try to see how many people I could manipulate. How many relationships could I tear apart? How many men could I have under my control? I would tease some men and make them think they had a chance with me when I knew they really didn't. They would hang on my every word.I would soon find out that this power I now wielded had a down side. Before I was 16 I was pregnant for the first time. I actually kind of liked the father, I would have stopped the power trip for him. Of course, he said he would only take responsibility for it if I had a paternity test done. I agreed, but stalled as long as I could. Before I was actually able to have the test done, I had my first miscarriage. There aren't many 15 year old girls actually able to carry to term.

For most girls, this would have been the message from heaven to mend their ways. They would have at least started being cautious. Not me. I saw the way my boyfriend reacted and would actually start trying to get pregnant without the guys knowing. Now, I don't know what it is with me, but I must be extremely fertile. It wasn't long before I was pregnant again. This time, I didn't know who the father was. I took my best guess and told him about my predicament, thinking he would feel obligated to take care of me. What more could I ask for? I would have the guy I chose and he would be forever forced to bend at my will or he would lose his child.

Well, this time, I wasn't running with such an upstanding crowd. He wanted nothing to do with the baby and didn't care what people thought of him. I realized at this point that I had to be choosier about my targets. I was still only 16 years old and had a fairy tale of a life planned out in my head. I wasn't thinking I would have such a wonderful life with me and my baby. I wasn't even thinking of the baby at all. I just wanted to find my "Prince" Charming and get on with my perfect life. I continued on with business as usual.

After about another month I miscarried for the second time. If you have never miscarried before, this is an excruciating experience. I was in so much pain I couldn't get out of bed. I had no friends so I couldn't rest or I wouldn't eat. I had to travel from the Mustard Seed to CUPS to the Drop In Centre while still recovering. I was told by a nurse at CUPS that I didn't need to go to the hospital because it was so early in the pregnancy. She said my body would just treat it like a really severe period. Either I lucked out or someone was saying some prayers, because I recovered safely. Now, you would think again that there might be some revelation of a different path here, but the only situation I had ever been in that benefited me in any way was this one. It was going to take more than 2 early miscarriages to get me to change my ways. I went back to business as usual.

In the midst of all this, I went home for a whole month. I taught myself math 20 and physics 20 both in that time. I got 84% in math and 96% in physics. I was a rather intelligent person and knew that these marks would be more useful to me than anything the men I was hanging around could give me. I started going to school once in a while. I still got in trouble for attendance problems, but I started to remember what it was like when the teachers liked what I was doing. Needless to say, the way I was treating the men in my life was having an impact on the way they were treating other women on the streets. Other women were being treated horribly when they had done nothing wrong. This one will be strange for you, but do you remember the girl who would beat me up when my "best friend" would trick me into coming with her? Well, apparently old grudges die hard, because she was on the street with me and still did not like me. I tried to ignore her, but when you are the most powerful pimp's girlfriend and main hooker, you get some priviledges on the street. She got to pick on whoever she wanted and you were dead if you ever ratted her out.

Well, I was still on her bad side. I managed to mostly stay out of her way until Aug 17. I will remember the day for the rest of my life, because it was the day that I should have died. She found me at the park and accused me of stealing $200 from her. She took me to Prince's Island Park and proceeded to beat the snot out of me, quite literally. On the way there, we had picked up 2 of her hooker friends, so it was 3 of them against me. I had no chance. I knew the kind of horrors prostitutes had to survive and I didn't think I was capable of enduring them. I knew they were tougher than me and I submitted to their punishment. They told me to get on my knees and one of them kicked me as hard as she could in the nose.

This is why I say I should have died that day. The way she kicked me, my nose should have been broken and the pieces forced back into my brain, killing me instantly. I should be so lucky. My nose didn't break and I didn't die. I did fall over on my side though and that's when they started kicking me as hard as they could in the ribs and spine. They were wearing hefty boots, so if nothing else they should have broken a bone if not causing internal damage. Neither of these happened. they continued to beat me to a pulp, kicking me in the ribs, back, face and knees waiting for me to say I would turn tricks to get their money back.

I wouldn't cave. I think the girl who had a beef with me got sick of waiting. She told the other girls to back off. I prayed they would go away and I could get back to life as usual. They didn't. Brandy picked me up by the hair and dragged me over to a rock the size of a basketball. She took the back of my head in her hands and drove it as hard as she could into the rock. The pain was almost unbearable. I started crying and covered my head as she continued bashing my head against the rock. After three or four hits, she realized I was cushioning the blow and told me to move my hands. I don't know why, but I did. She pulled my head back further than any of the other times and as hard as she could, smashed my head against the rock.

This time, whether I was smart enough or tired enough, I lay still on the ground. The girl said "I crushed her skull!" and they ran. I waited about 20 seconds. You'd think I would be thanking God at this point, but I was hoping there was brain damage and I would soon die, instead. There wasn't any. A few seconds later, I stood up. Wearing clothes that hadn't been washed in weeks, having not showered in quite a few days and covered from head to toe in blood from the blow to my nose, I stumbled out of the bushes. I had never been hurt this bad in my life so I thought I should probably try to get to a hospital, but my face was swelling up so I couldn't see. I could see a man standing by the fence about 50 metres away, talking on a phone. I went and asked him - quite politely, I might add, considering my condition - if he could please call me an ambulance.

He immediately ended his call and told me to sit down on the bench that was nearby. A guy who introduced himself as Guy was rollerblading by at the same time and stopped to keep me awake while the other man called 9-1-1. If I could ever find them I would thank them from the bottom of my heart, but I never knew the first man's name and the rollerblader's name was Guy. What do you think the chances of finding him are?

Anyway, to sum up what the doctors said, the bruises on my body matched up with the story I gave them, but if the story was true, I should have been dead. It's a miracle I'm alive and for that reason, when it's going well for me, I praise God every day. When life hurts I get mad at God for rescuing me. Either way, I know that I am here because He wants me here. My job is to find out what He wants me to do and do it.

I don't think I have to say it, but I realized I couldn't go back to my old life. I had to try to change something. My parents said I couldn't live with them unless I went to school, so I spent the next few weeks recovering and mentally preparing. I was determined to not fit in. I don't know why. While I was on the street, I hung out with some people who practiced Wicca, Vampirism, and Satanism. They had tried to teach me some things about their religions, but they never stuck. I decided to use what they had taught me to not fit in at school. In Drama class I would do skits about casting Wiccan spells and Satanic cults. Everything weird got pulled out of the bag.

What I had succeeded at doing was alienating the whole school so I could justify still hanging out with the few people I still knew from the street. I wasn't as powerful as I had been before, but I still got to pick my friends. In October, I found out I was pregnant for a third time. I was despondant and didn't care what happened to me. My life wasn't worth anything. My parents told me that if I wanted to live with them, I had to get an abortion. No other options. They weren't having a baby or a pregnant girl in their lives.

I couldn't have cared less about what happened to me at that point. I went along with it. My dad drove me to all of the appointments and it became the little black thing that got swept under the rug and never talked about. My family wouldn't mention it for any reason. Most of my extended family still doesn't know about it to this day. It's not like I want to announce from the rooftops that "I HAD AN ABORTION!" but the fact that my family doesn't know about it makes me feel like I can't talk about it. In my world the only things you don't talk about are things you should be ashamed of. So here is yet another thing to add to the heap of shame I was already feeling. I recovered quickly and was back to school within a week.

In the midst of this, I was still doing drugs. I started dating my drug dealer and he would give me free pot if I would have sex with him. The arrangement worked. We never said it out loud, but I believe that was the arrangement. I started losing interest in the power I had once found in using sex and drugs against people and started taking an interest in school. The teachers at my new school could see that I was in trouble and made an effort to get me to be there regularly. I started to remember what it was like when people with real influence noticed me.

Here, I have to tell you about Mr. Globa and Mr. Bennett. They were two of the most amazing teachers I have ever had. I didn't appreciate Mr. Bennett until later, but he was just as important. Mr. Globa knew the crowd I hung around with at school and deduced that I was a smoker. It probably had nothing to do with the fact I wore my military style bomber jacket through the entire class and had a pack of cigarettes in the sleeve pocket. I would ask to leave his class to go to the bathroom and go out to the smoke pit behind the school. It took him a while to catch on, but when he did, he would start coming out to the smoke pit to get me. He never rubbed it in, he just told me to get back to class. I later found out that he played sax and wouldn't you know it, I started getting interested in his class. (For anyone who is just getting to know me, music is my life. If I had created the universe, people who play music would exist on a higher plane than others. :-P) Mr. Bennett would phone my dad every time I missed a class and my dad would get pissed. I didn't like it when my dad was mad, so I made sure I never skipped Mr. Bennett's class. I got a 74% in grade 11 English and I think the effort he put in was the only reason I passed.

Anyways, back to the story. My drug dealer was getting frustrated that I wasn't at his beck and call, but he still had to get me drugs whenever I wanted them. He left in February of grade 12 for Vancouver. Personally, it was all I needed to get me back on track. I was frustrated with the life I had been living. This was a perfect opportunity to turn it around.

I actually managed to focus enough in school to get some decent grades. Nothing spectacular, but it was something. I graduated from grade 12. My grades were nothing to be proud of, but I had graduated. I started thinking that maybe I could make my life worth living. I started thinking about my future and who I wanted in it.

I was finally starting down the right road. I was working with counsellors to straighten out my relationship with my parents and my grades were on the rise. My parents would get messages at home that I was skipping classes quite regularly, but I was there enough to start turning things around. I started entertaining the idea that I might be capable of something. I was starting to think that maybe there was a purpose for me. Maybe I was more than just a piece of meat. That was when the crushing blow came. I had spent the last semester of grade 12 trying to be on my best behavior. It was nothing to be proud of, but I was trying. I found out in April of grade 12 that even though I had been abstinate since my drug dealer left, I was pregnant again.

I couldn't go through another abortion so I hid the pregnancy from my parents as long as I could. When I was past the point of no return, I told my next door neighbour and she let it slip to my parents. Needless to say they were pissed. My mom thought I had thrown my life away and for the first time in my life, my dad was dangerously quiet. They knew there was nothing they could do about it, but they made sure I knew I wasn't living under their roof with a baby. Soon after they found out, my parents realized their parents would be here for grad.

I already had my dress (which was quite trashy if I can reflect from a more mature standpoint), but I wanted the boys to see how "beautiful" I could be. The dress had a long, sheer triangle down the front which meant I would not be able to wear a normal bra and the back scooped down to the small of my back so I would have to wear an expensive backless bra even if I changed the front. My dad made me alter the dress to put a solid piece of fabric in the front at least. He couldn't change how low the back was or how tight it was, but he was not having me out in it the way it was. On top of all that it was skin tight velvet and would show lines where most kinds of underwear stopped.

My mom spent somewhere in the neighbourhood of $200 on girdles, bras and alterations so her parents and my dad's wouldn't know I was pregnant. That was when she said what could have been the most painful thing she has ever said to me. She said My life would go nowhere with a baby and that I would never become anything. She said my graduation was a sham because I would never do anything with my diploma if I had a baby. Those words stayed with me for a very long time. I felt like she didn't believe in me. All of the trials I had already been through meant nothing. I was used to being the exception to the rule. She didn't see it that way.

We got through graduation without anyone finding out. I was nearly hospitalized from the girdle I was wearing, but I made it through the night. After a few days, my grandparents went home and were none the wiser. I started trying to figure out what I was going to do. I looked for a job, but I was starting to show and it really is true. No one will hire someone who's 5 months pregnant. I also started looking for an apartment. I was determined to not use welfare. My baby would be spoiled rotten and that couldn't happen on welfare.

I spent 2 months trying to find a place and a job, but couldn't find anything. In my head, the world was out to get me. They just didn't want someone else to have a story of triumph like the one I was going to end up with. In reality, a pregnant 17 year old with no place to live just doesn't have a lot of chances at success. I started contemplating adoption. This began the hardest, most painful struggle of my life. I wanted to fix all of the mistakes my mom made with me by raising my daughter right. I wanted a little doll that I could play dress up with and use to get attention from people. How often do you see a baby and have to stop and coo?

This is the turning point of my life. The pain didn't stop coming, but it changed. Where people would make seemingly direct attacks on me in the past, from now on the pain came from my walk with God. I released the power the world had on me and decided they weren't worth it. I told God He could have my life. All of it. My self, my soul, the pain and the misery. I asked Him to bring me some happiness. I just wanted to smile once and remember it for a while. Is that too much to ask?

That's when it happened. I found the family that would adopt my baby. They had been married 12 years and had already adopted once. They couldn't have kids of their own and wanted one more. They lived on a farm in northern Alberta surrounded by family. She was musical to some degree and he was working on a degree in psychology. It was more than I had ever dreamed my daughter could have. I got to know them over the next few months and decided yes, they were the right parents for my little girl. They loved each other very much and wanted to share that with their family.

Enter the most amazing thing in my life. My daughter was born on November 1, 1998, also known as All Saints' Day. I had never celebrated it before, but thought it was at least a little ironic that the baby that would change my life was born on the same day we celebrate the saints. I don't need to go into detail on this one. There was a lot of pain involved in this one, but it was good pain. Labour pains and the pain of giving up my daughter were enough to make me realize I wanted something different for not only my daughter, but myself as well. I finally decided I wanted to live and I wanted my life to matter. In spite of all of the wounds in my heart, I wanted to heal and learn how to love the way God loves.

You see, while I was pregnant, I learned a few things. I got to take part in a little piece of creation. I thought I had all the answers before, but as this little person grew inside me and started to make her presence known by rearranging certain organs, I got to touch God. It's hard to explain. I realized that I, in my feeble existence, did not know more than God like I thought I had. No matter how hard I tried, I could never have come up with a more amazing way for life to begin. I wondered at the future of my little girl and whether she would know heartache like I had and that's where the realization came to me. I didn't learn it from someone else or something I experienced, I just knew it. God was the only way to give my daughter a decent life. I realized that if I prayed for her very hard, and thought if I could show God just how much I loved her, He might show her new parents how to do it too. Little did I know it was actually God showing me how much He loves me. But that's for another post.

You're probably wondering how that last story fits in with everyhting else here. Well, I started trying to relearn how to live and love. I started trying to figure out what God wanted from me. I still don't totally know what that is, except that He wants me to worship Him. In spirit and in truth and all the time.

The journey to that place has caused some problems, though. I have always known that my life was different than a lot of people's. I thought I needed to share my story with the world and use it to convert people. Usually when people heard it, they would get scared and never call me again. I started to learn what phrases scared people. I would stop saying them when I could and find better ways of saying them when I couldn't.

At church, I learned that there were some things you could say and some things you couldn't. I knew what not to say, I just didn't know why I shouldn't say it. What I mean is, people would tell me when I had crossed the line, but they didn't tell me what was wrong with what I had said. I was alienated from the world because of my love for God and I was alienated from people because of I don't know what. It was a very lonely place to be. It got so people wouldn't talk to me anymore and I realized something had to change.

Since no one had really taken the time to teach me how to hear God's voice for myself, I didn't know what to listen for. Now, I have a bunch of rules in my head and don't understand any of them. There is confusion between which groups of rules apply to which people and it is very frustrating. All I want to do with my life is to love God. I think there was some damage done when I got beaten up, because no matter how hard I try, I cannot remember things like scripture verses and song lyrics.

This blog is a place where I can fulfil that dream. You can feel free to read my posts and come on this journey with me, but I am not apologizing for wrong words. I will struggle with things and try to understand them and in the process I may say something wrong. Please don't hold it against me. Tell me what is wrong with what I am thinking, but do it lovingly. I am tired of hurting. I just want to do what God asks of me.