When God Speaks

Recently, someone made the statement to me, “Before you try and be the martar, you need to think about what’s best for you.”
It hit me like a ton of bricks and affected me deeply, it broke my heart more than it already is. Do we really live in a world where if you give more of yourself than you selfishly take, you are “acting” like a martyr?
Rewind:
In November 2023, I had made a will and spent more than 3 weeks planning to take my own life due to the fact that a lifetime of living with a tainted heart had led me to a place that would not only destroy my own existence but would harm those I love in more ways than we can list on paper. Over the past year, beginning with one honest conversation with someone who loved me enough to point me in the right direction, and then with the support and love of an angel God sent to help guide me through the process, and with the support of my parents, I have learned that there are worse things than having your sin come to light. I have learned that sinking to the depths of the deepest, darkest parts of the ocean of life, can be the most cleansing experience and there you can have a true spiritually awakening.
Before you continue reading there are a few important things I want you to know:
1. To those I love: this all may be hard to read. Feel free to not follow if you don’t want to read my words. Life is 90% perception, and others’ perceptions of me may vary against what you read… either with your thoughts on my intentions, my actions, my personality or who I was vs who you saw me as. I am apologizing now because my only intention now is to use the words God gives me to help other women who feel as unlovable as I have most of my life. Seeing me grow up before you, you may not understand or know the turmoil that my mind was in most of my life. I am not justifying anything I’ve done, instead I’m choosing to try to understand it and correct the err of my human existence in the hopes of maybe saving another woman the heartache and disappointment in self that I have experienced. To my loved ones, please know how much I love each of you and please trust God’s guidance in my life as I begin this unchartered territory.
2. I am NOT a martyr. Trust me when I tell you that I know what a screw up I am and just how IMPERFECT I am. I would classify myself up until last year more as a pharisee… I have lived my life trying to be a martyr in the hopes of receiving love and acceptance when in reality I was more rigid and unloving to those around me based on what I interpreted was expected of me. It has led me to losing everything… you will read about later. I am sinful, I am broken, I am raw, I am hurting, I am lost…. I am human. But as of a year ago, I am trying to live a life of looking to Christ first and me last. Everything I do or say in relation to those I love is not so I can “look good” or be thought of as good, but because God has called me to love on people, and I will strive to do it by trusting God when He speaks to me on how that person needs to be loved.
3. This journey will not be blame game, a victims story, or a pity party. I will do my best to give accounts as I remember them, but keep in mind my memory sucks on certain things and as you know, when you’re living a life of sin, your reality and the truth are often not coherent. I will simply only promise to be real, honest, vulnerable, and raw as I navigate the new life God has called me to. I will try not to name names as to protect those I love. But I will give you all the dirt, the ugly, the scary, the hurt, the broken, the healing, the love, and the hope that has happened and will continue to happen in life. In my life.
4. I am ONLY doing this because God called me to do so (more on that later). I am not seeking self-validation, praise or justification. I am not comfortable with this as I am not ready to put my story out there. I don’t feel I’m emotionally, mentally or physically ready for this calling. And before you say “God doesn’t call the qualified, He qualified the called.” YES, I know! But that doesn’t change the fact that my insecurity, embarrassment, shame, regret, and guilt are allowing me to accept and acknowledge how broken I am. I am still in my learning season of life that God put me in last year and I don’t feel ready. But when God wakes you up from sleep at 4 a.m. and says “It’s time”… you listen. And then you give it all you have, even if all you have is only portion of the woman you are becoming.
5. I am no longer living or acting with the intent of garnering your approval or acceptance. I am choosing to pray over decisions and seek God's help to CONTINUE to heal me. I am not there yet, I have a long way to go to undo 48 years of mentality. I have bad days, I sometimes take 5 steps backwards and let my irrational emotional dictate me. But I'm doing it. I'm moving forward even if it is slowly. I know God protected me last year and I know He has changed my heart. I strive to love people and even when I am "off", my intentions are not to harm anyone anymore out of selfish ambition.

So, with that said, I am officially beginning the plan God put in motion when I was roughly 13 years old. Some of you may remember that when I was roughly 13 years old at Valley Grove Baptist, God called me to ministry. I had my own human version of what that meant. And for 30+ years, I did what I thought He meant. I have spent the last year learning how wrong and distorted my version of that plan was and WHY. I have seen the destruction, heartache, hurt, bitterness, anger, and unforgiveness that led to.
I think self-accountability is highly underrated in our society. We are quick to blame, quick to find excuses of why we act how we act, quick to judge others without fully coming clean of our own heart, quick to run away when times get hard, quick to see how wrong others are and not see what part of that wrong was our doing. I have been shown and learned just how wrong I’ve been, seeking happiness in the wrong way, always looking for approval and love from those around me as I sang, preached, led kids, youth, and women in church. I did it so people would praise ME with “you’re so talented, you sing beautifully, man that was a good bible study, you are so good with kids” …
But I was missing the point. We are not called in life be successful or validated in our own worth. We are called to allow God to be praised by what He gives us in either talent, money, love, friendship, family, etc. Without HIM, we are empty shells of tissue and organs. No amount of success, money, fame or any other feel-good outcome can make us anything more than that, only with HIM we find the true value of whom we are.

So, this is the first post of how I got where I am today and hopefully will continue to where God takes me from here. By following God’s instruction on how to tell my story, my only hope is this: If you are a woman who is broken, hurting, heartbroken, at the bottom of the ocean… you know there is hope.
How do you tell a story without a happy ending? You acknowledge that there will be happy ending exactly how God intends, and you just hold on for the ride until it comes to you.
Much Love and High Tide ,
-A-