Saving Grace

"My child, be attentive to my words; incline your ear to my sayings. Do not let them escape from your sight; keep them within your heart. For they are life to those who find them, and healing to all their flesh." (Proverbs 4:20-22)

I am still alive. Yes, I have wished otherwise, but here I am, still breathing and actually, I want to be.

The last week has threatened to end my life, my thoughts and emotions had been swallowed up in a hole so deep, I did not think I would ever get up again. But I underestimated the power of God, I forgot that He loved me and that He has mercy on the lost and that above all, He would not let the demons get me from fulfilling my destiny. He has stepped in again and rescued me from the clutches of suicide and self harm and I am still amazed at how quickly He has responded to my call. I will never again underestimate the power of my Father up high, who loves me more than I could possibly know.

On Saturday evening I decided to attend the encounter night which was being held as a night of worship and praise with the fellow Christians I had been meeting up with over the last few months. As a last attempt to reignite my passion for Jesus, I went along, expecting to feel like an imposter, a measly rat who had ran back to her pain and addiction and was not really deserving of a chance to find her hope again. As soon as I got there, those thoughts were quickly abandoned as I was warmly welcomed by everyone and almost immediately felt the presence of the Lord in the room. As the drums began to play, voices began to sing and the pressure that had been building up in me over the last few weeks began to surface. I cried to the Lord apologising for veering so far off course and begged for Him to heal my broken heart and mind. I told Him how I now realised I could not fight my battles alone, how I was ready to now lean on Him fully and to follow Him wherever He would lead me. This time I really meant it, my heart almost burst with the sincerity of the words I uttered forth to Him. As I silently sobbed, the Lord placed a vision in my mind of me walking into a pool of crystal like water and as I resurfaced from  it, I physically felt the sensation of being renewed, of being strengthened. I felt the water as it cleansed me from head to toe and I sparkled as I stepped out of this healing pool. The Lord was fulfilling my requests, He was washing away my pain and filling me with His love and I soaked it up as my body trembled with the sheer power of His love and forgiveness. I knew I was being healed. I knew He was answering my prayers.

When the night ended I went to speak to one of the girls there who is currently a student mental health nurse and is working in one of the mental hospitals near me. I asked her whether she thought it would be better for my health if I allowed the crisis team to put me in one and she strongly advised against it. She told me that while my body may eventually leave a place like this, my mind would forever be trapped back in the hospital and I should do all I could not to let myself be put away in one. She then kindly took time and sat with me in her car and gave me a reality check that I not only needed but desperately wanted to hear. Her words were direct but they were true, I choose to live the life I wish. If I don't want to live like this then I can let God heal me and I can choose to ignore and conquer the thoughts of suicide, of hate and of pain. It is my choice to let this life happen and it is my choice if I let it continue or if I choose to believe in the saving grace of the Lord. Wow. It was words that I had read, words that had been suggested to me, but never had the impact of what she was saying ever before struck me in the way they did that night. She kick-started in me a fight mechanism that has stayed with me since that moment. I did not know how to get the process of self repair to begin and she gave me the ammunition that I needed to set the wheels in motion. That night, she prayed over me and I let her words of encouragement ease their way into my mind and spirit. I truly believe God put her there for me that night, this girl has just about saved my life and God used her directness and compassion of heart to get through to the tortured mind that was breathing through me. She rescued me from a battle that I no longer had the strength to fight and I owe her my life for that. I really do.

So today I woke up late and rather than beating myself up with how lazy and useless I am, I cleaned my house. I then did half an hour of an exercise DVD, had a healthy breakfast and lunch, read Patricia Kings book on spiritual encounters and meditated on Gods word. I have decided to fast from TV (aside from GodTV and spirit school DVDs) till the weekend to get my relationship and focus on God back where it needs to be. I'm sure it will be hard as I have a near dependency on escaping from my world into others through the wonderful world of television, but I need to break free from this brain washing and manipulating behaviour. As for today, have the voices of hate, rejection and disgust gone? No, they are still there but today I fought back and either ignored them or changed their perspective. Am I now fully healed and ready to take on all the pain that is packed inside of me and turn it into something positive.......not yet, but I have taken the first steps to getting there. Life is a complex journey and for far to long I have allowed it to be led by the memories of my painful past and my doubting of who I am and what I am worth. Today I fought back and tomorrow I plan to do the same, one day at a time towards the life that I know God has planned for me to not only live, but to love. I cried for help, He heard my call and I can thankfully say I am still here to tell my story. That's the power of amazing grace.

Love Always.x

Suicidal Thoughts

So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. (Isaiah 41:10 NIV)

I can only begin to describe the last few weeks as a return to the personal hell that I seem to have been living most of my life. This game of hope followed by total destruction has finally exhausted me and I am now again under the care of the mental health crisis team. I am no longer engaging in any activity that does not consist of self abuse, be it binge eating, destroying mental thoughts, alcohol and drugs and my life has shattered around me in an almighty mess. I am back to where I began all those months ago, struggling to keep the demons of suicide from winning once and for all. As I have promised to be honest throughout this journey, I see no point in creating an illusion that I am coping. Quite simply life has got the better of me and I no longer wish to be a part of it. I am plagued daily by thoughts of hate and hopelessness, the sun refuses to shine on my mind and my desire to achieve at making a life for myself has now all but diminished in that from whence it came. I am merely existing, a robotic being operating under the heavy weight of my own suicidal battles and my desire to be free from the breath of every day life. I have reached an all time low and this time, it threatens to destroy me completely.

My passion and desire to pursue God this year has been met by fierce opposition from the demons in my mind. I am terrified of the horrors that haunt me every waking hour and disturb me in my sleep. My attention to God has slowly but surely disappeared off, my ability to focus on anything positive, a near impossibility. How have I got here again? What has been the point of the last eight months? Why through all the pain and hate does my body continue to function?

I have once again cried out to God, desperately asking to be found, to be saved from myself. My rescue does not yet appear to have surfaced, I feel alone and disgusted with the way I have successfully managed once again to fuck it all up. The addictions of my past caught up with me, they tempted me into a false sense of security, a place where I thought I was in control. How silly of me, I am an addict, I have no control. The path of peace I began to travel along has all but disappeared from beneath my feet and I am struggling to come to terms with what the point is of me continuing to fight this battle. I am exhausted with the lack of ability on my part to keep anything remotely worthwhile or positive in my life. I am disgusted that I have been so naive as to believe I could ever really free myself of the dreaded demons that refuse to leave my mind. This girl is a mess, a destruction, a ticking time bomb waiting to internally explode her poison of hate and evil over any good thing that comes into contact with her. That girl has and always will be, me. Rebecca, the daughter of death. The character, the pretender, the great deceiver. So far removed from her own soul that she no longer wishes to continue the quest for greater life. Hope has failed me again. I am so lost, so devoid of positive emotion that I am sure that in the spirit I look like a flaming fire of disease, spitting venom at the world and its entirety.

Well what can I do now then? What can possibly be the solution to the problem of the burning hate, the relapse to addiction, the moving away from God? Who can possibly save me from the beckoning calls of deaths doors and do I even want to be saved anymore? Have I had all the chances a girl can get? I'm back at the bottom rung again, back here with the sinners and the demons, existing on a diet of destruction and disgust. It will take more than a miracle to save me this time. This time I know what it feels like to be picked up out of the pit and given a purpose and even worse, I know how it feels to go ahead and completely undo all the good work that this chance gave me. Have I even got the strength to go through it again? Would God even want me back, after all, I failed so miserably at attaining my closeness before, can he really trust me not to royally mess it up again? I guess all I can do is wait and see what will be of the broken woman that sits inside of me. I will once again raise my voice to the heavens and ask that He hears my call and somewhere deep inside I must find the faith to believe that He will hear me and He will want me back. He will give me the chance to learn again, to have the passion burning a hole inside of me that makes me thirst for him and not destruction. Can He find a way to help make the poison that is slowly killing me, escape me from inside these bitter walls. I can only pray that he will.

Love Always.x

Uncertainty and Growth

"I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my loving eye on you." (Psalm 32:8 NIV)

Its been a tough week, a week of uncertainty and of revealing issues and emotions. I am changing, but there is a resistance which still clings to that which it knows. I can honestly say I have never been this confused, this worried, yet also this sure of my future. Its a strange concoction of feelings, thoughts and dreams that have occupied my being in the last several days. On one end I feel completely lost, with no job, no set lifestyle, no idea of my future, I spend time fretting and crying, at a loss for my use in the world. At the other end, I am growing in faith, learning to trust the Lord and finding that my heart really can be healed, I really can be put back together. I am lost somewhere between my present state of mind and what my destiny promises me. Its unsettling, but a necessary part of my walk of faith.

I didn’t realise how much I was dependant on my career and party girl lifestyle to define who I was. But, no longer having these as part of my life has completely thrown me into a world where I no longer feel I can tell you who I am. I am merely existing, floating between day and night, lows and blows, adrift on an endless sea of nothingness. When you take away the party girl, the loud outspoken queen of the night, I am no more than a shell, a quiet bookworm who often prefers her own company to that of any others. This was not the image I worked years to attain, this was the exact one that I ran away from, the one I tried to hide. She didn’t fit in with the character I wanted to portray; confident, at ease in her own skin, loud and fun loving. I worked hard to be the craziest, the most daring, the wildest girl in the room, anything to stop me reflecting back on the real me trapped behind the fake smiles, short skirts and lip gloss. I had succeeded in my goal, everyone knew that girl, she was the one to have a party with, to drink with, to laugh with. Now I am a mere shadow of my former self. The character no longer has the opportunity to come out to play and neither did I really want her too until I realised that its just me now. Just the quiet girl, the one who loves reading, writing and documentaries. The one who doesn’t feel confident enough to stand in the middle of a room of people and knock back any drinks on offer. I have changed, I have become detached from the identity I tried to portray. Now its just me and this is unknown territory. Its a slow process weeding out the real from the tried and tested. God is truly taking me on a journey and I have no idea where it is going to stop, who I'll be at the end of it and most of all, will it make it me happy?

Not having a job anymore, well, they have agreed to give me a career break but I doubt it will be the one I return to, is also creating a huge level of discomfort. We are defined by what we do and now, I do nothing, or at least it seems that way. Most days the fear of the unknown future threatens to send me ricocheting back into the life that I created, not wanting to take the risk of failing at another avenue. I endlessly search job sites looking for roles better suited to what my new life may lead me to, but scared of the possibility of not only starting again, but this time, the real me going out there and doing it all. How will I cope, will I be liked, will people accept me? All these questions hound my every waking thought and I can see no clear answer as of yet. I am truly lost and yet there is a strange comfort in these hours, one that continues, albeit slowly, to enter my consciousness. That comfort of course, is God.

The process of change and breaking away from the life I was leading is painstakingly slow and often frustrating. I like to know what to expect, but the walk of faith does not offer this as an option. Each day, even each hour holds its own surprises and God refuses to be bothered by my incessant screams for immediate knowledge of my future, be it relationships, career, finances or the million other factors I am desperate to know. Instead, He is taking me through my life so far, gently but persistently leading me into the darker corners of my mind and unlocking memory boxes I didn’t even know were there. With the Holy spirits guidance I am reviewing my life, in almost movie like sequences, watching as the life I have tried to run from unfolds in front of me. There is no real pain as this happens, its almost as if I am emotionless as these movie's play, but they serve their purpose in reminding me why I have made the choices I have and teaching me to let go of them because they no longer have a place. It is internal cleansing at its best, He needs me to let Him in, all the way. I am learning that the best way to do this is to just go along with it, to let Him have access where no one has before because I trust that this is the only way I will ever get better. I completely trust in Him.

As the days go on and the memories subside, I am learning to rest in God like never before. There is a peace that I have never experienced that comes over me, a comfort unlike any I have ever known. The other night, whilst lay on my bed, I focused my heart and mind on Jesus and gently uttered his name with each breath out. As I lay resting I found my self being almost afloat on a sea of complete peace and calm, my thoughts, all of them, could only think of Him and I became detached from my surroundings. This was a new experience for me, one that I think days of learning to pray had allowed me to achieve. It was almost as if I had entered a different world, there was a thick atmosphere of His presence as I relaxed back and in my minds eye, the Lords face flickered before me. I uttered words of love towards Him and as I did, from my left hand, whitish blue clouds of an almost round like shape, began to float upwards into the ceiling. I was transfixed on these beautiful formations and felt the wetness of tears surround my eyes. Here in my room, just me and Him, I felt and saw what seemed to be the presence of God. It was here, that my heart realised its greatest longing and a satisfaction unlike any I had had before, filled me with the most beautiful sensations. This was not about anything other than me and God and it truly blew me away.

I am learning as time goes on to build a relationship with Him and it is now beginning to show fruition. It was not easy at first to learn to let someone else into my heart, never mind someone that I couldn't see or touch. But as the days have gone on, I have started talking to Him whenever I can. Just simple conversations, mainly me asking for understanding, patience and strength and mainly Him responding with words of love and encouragement. I am learning to hear His voice in the quiet thoughts of my mind, the ones that could never come from me, for a start they are never negative. Somewhere along the way, a relationship has been carved out and each day afresh I go to Him and pour out my heart as much as I can and wait for His response. It is such a private moment, a unity of hearts that I didn’t ever dream was possible when I started this journey. This is still so new for me, so different, in some ways, so strange. But I know that what He has saved me from, and what He's shaping me for are always the better option than had I not found Him when I did. Whatever the future may hold, I can be sure of one thing, my relationship with my creator will forever continue to grow and that’s worth the days of daunting unpredictability. After all, He chose me and I truly believe He has the best plans ready and waiting for me when I am able to cope. Thank you Lord.

Love Always.x

Old Me, New Me

"I can do everything through him who gives me strength." (Philippians 4:13 NIV)



It feels like God is making me an empty vessel. I am being emptied of the life I have been living and filled with a purpose that I never knew would alter my perspective on everything that life pertains. I feel nauseatingly unsure of the next steps I will make in the world, but inside me the door of faith has opened and I do not hesitate to look back, I am so close to my destiny. I feel in the middle of a stormy sea, unsure of exactly how to progress on my path, but there is a silent reasoning inside of me, it is His voice. I am ok.

I’m not going to lie, the experience of being cleansed is thoroughly unsettling. God is releasing my past and letting me deal with it, revealing more of the pain but somehow enabling me to handle it. He is letting me let go, He is helping me move on, but I had to remember the reasons I kept myself in bondage to my demons. The past has come to my attention, my experiences that have shaped me, are flashing before my eyes and I am able to identify why I have ended up where I am today. I must learn where those voices of pain and hate came from and know that they are the past shadows, keeping me trapped and I no longer need them in my future. It's time for me to move on and let go.

Today has been difficult, in all honesty Iv been quite depressed, which I hoped wouldn’t happen now I had the main focus of my life on God. However, the worldly worries and cares I had with me last year are still here now: I'm overweight, my house needs cleaning, I'm not a good enough girlfriend and a selection of other attacks on my mind. I cant ignore them though, they won't go away. In focusing on God I also need to somehow make time and enthusiasm to keep fit and keep my house at least slightly clean and tidy, but I think the key is not taking it to the extreme, a lesson I am yet to learn. All of today the thoughts of how useless I am have kept me trapped behind the same door I have grown accustomed to hiding behind and in the end I just lay down on my bed and talked to God about how confused I was about my life and could He help provide motivation for me to complete the basic tasks without feeling overwhelmed. This did not happen instantly, instead I felt compelled to continue to read Matthews Gospel in the Bible. I did this for a couple of hours and found a verse that seemed to resonate within me:

“Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?” (Matthew 16:24-26)

Strangely, this seemed to put everything in to perspective. Of course I am still going to battle with the desires of this world, the need for perfection in all areas of my life, but that is because I am still renewing my mind. As uncomfortable as it will be for me to give up the life that I know and the demands and expectations that go with it, it is necessary so I am able to live a life towards God and kingdom realities. I will have to lose my life, my often unrealistic pressures I put on who I am supposed to be to the rest of the world and learn to live towards another reality. It is the road less travelled, it does mean loss of self but gain of a life that truly represents Christ in me and I in Him. This is the life I have chosen, but of course as shown above, it comes at a price to the self I am so used to living with.

I love being a child of God, but it is no easy journey that I have elected to go on. It requires much more thinking, honesty and humility than any other path I have chosen to follow in the past. It is one that is shaking the very belief systems that I have built my life on and breaking down attitudes I didn’t even realise I possessed. It is tough because the world and its standards of acceptance, fight for my attention, all promising me the happy every after I still seem to be searching for. If I lose enough weight, keep my house sparkling, be a rosy perfect girlfriend, speak Spanish, play the piano and bake a perfect cake, then happiness will be mine. But all I have done over the years is add more and more expectations to the plate so that in the end I have buckled under the weight of the ideal life I am trying to create but never quite making it past the writing of lists. I have been stuck in the planning part of my life for as long as I can remember but now as I finally find a way that will let me let go of these pressures, they have come back taunting me with their final offer.... acceptance. I will be liked, I will like myself my brain tells me, when I have completed all of the tasks above and more. That little voice keeps telling me I cant really expect to be loved and honoured when I am lazy and useless and never complete anything. Its the voice that I have allowed to rule over me for far too long. I let it become what it is, I fed it with magazines, television shows and comparing myself to others. I let this created world of my idea of perfection stop me from ever even starting a life, because there was too many pressures and ideals for me to choose from. I created a character that no amount of hard work and years of determination would ever be fulfilled because she was never meant to be. She was created to take me away from who I really was, to distract my attention from finding out more about the real me and ultimately to remind me of what a failure I was. The battle between her and I still continues, even now, even when I am desperate to escape from the clutches of the world I was trying to create.

So....what can I do? The only way I can battle this head on is to have complete and perfect faith in Gods ability to save me from myself. I have to believe it, I have to follow it, because if I give up I'll be back where I started, in a life that traps me into a false sense of living. I continued to read the Bible today and in it found the focus I needed to put me back on the path of hope and glory. I also managed to make a relatively healthy lunch, cleaned my kitchen and bathroom and sorted through my emails. There are a million other things I could beat myself up for not doing, but I did the most important thing of all, I spent time with God, both in prayer and in reading His word. As I did this, the pressures of the world around me seemed to disappear and I became me again, I could breathe and I regained focus and perspective on my day. God did give me the motivation to get the things done that needed to be done and to leave them at that. Till tomorrow......

Love Always.x

Searching For Jesus

"I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 3:14 NIV)

So the new year has begun and my thirst for a relationship with my creator is fully in place. I am so thirsty, hungry, desperate for a closeness between Him and I that will literally transform my life and those around me. I am ready this year to give Him my all,  my everything in pursuit of His Kingdom and most of all, His face. I am like an adventurer out on my mission to uncover the secrets of who I am in Christ and what Kingdom living consists of and I know it will be the most life changing, challenging and beautiful exploration that my life could ever hope to go on. I have such a deep aching within me, a pull on the innermost parts of my being to rise and find him, to look and to seek the treasures of being in a relationship with the one who made me, who made it all. Day three and I am fit to burst with the excitement of the months ahead.

Of course where there is glory in my life, there still seems to be the leftover remnants of sin. This is just part of my transformation. In the last two days, I have continued to smoke weed and to binge eat excessively, parts of my old shell that have re-emerged over recent months as coping mechanisms but also as a reminder of how much I enjoy self abuse. It annoys me that there is still a part of me clutching onto my past, but I refuse to feel too much guilt over it, that would please the Devil, making me start the chain of higher abusive patterns all over again. No, this time, I can see that I need more help in these areas so know that I can use these as part of my training. Exercising my power to say no to that which takes me away from my true calling. No easy challenge for me , but necessary to ensure I stay focused on the main goal of closeness between Him and I. I am ready to make the changes, but some of them are not yet ready to go. I want this year to be the year that all of the fragmented parts of my life can start to come together and work for the good of the whole rather than separate entities out to protect themselves and destroy the being inside of me.

This year I have to be much more present in my life. There can be no days off where I allow myself to drift like a wandering magnet back to the source of all my pain, the ignorance of who I really am. This year, I don't want the old coping mechanisms to come back in and reign over my existence, I want my life to be like the life that was always meant for me, learning from Jesus example and using this as a model for the type of life I not only want to lead, but know I'll be happy living. The coming twelve months have challenge pasted all over them, my past and future are to collide and I must choose whether to sink back to what I had or swim on and get what can be mine if I follow my true calling, the inner utterances of my heart. I am ready, I am focused but I am also aware of the changes this will make to everything I've ever known.

I stated before in a previous entry that choosing to follow God, means dying to the self every day. But this is not a negative plan to make me like everyone else, it is to find what lies beyond self, what reality is written within the tablet of my heart and what a life living from there can really be like. I am still learning so much and becoming acutely aware of habits and attitudes that have kept me trapped in a false sense of self for many years. The Bible says we become what we worship, so in the past I have worshipped pain, even unintentionally by choosing to engage in activities that destroyed my ability to find out who I truly am. Some worship fashion, approval from others, money, but they all lead to take you out of who you are and into someone else’s ball game. You can never be good enough, have enough, look good enough when you are chasing something outside of yourself. This is a hard lesson to learn, but a necessary one. It frees you from the bondages of this world and allows you to find that hidden you, that real you, the one that God chose before you were even born to come out in this world and leave a legacy of your existence.

I am relearning everything at the moment, what I like, what I love, what I hate and honestly looking at these, rather than going with what society expects or demands. In God I have found a standard by which to base my expectations upon and the main basis for this is love. Is what I do in life a sign of love flowing or is it not? If it is, then I feel it, I know it and I want to pursue it. The model of Jesus life would be a hard model to not fall in love with as I already have with the little I fully know or understand. It is a life that it easier for us to model when we really connect with our true selves, because it is how we were originally intended to live and can live. We just get caught up with the other demands that living in this world puts on us and soon we have formed ourselves to fit someone else’s ideal and forgotten about the perfection which already exists inside of us.

I am proud to be on this journey although I am nervous about the challenges I face. This is a dedication that will last a lifetime and one I had to be sure I was ready to make. Could I really say goodbye to the pressures and addictions of modern living and take it back to the simple journey of faith in God. Even more than that, do I really want to pursue God when so many people tell me that I am fooling myself, that He doesn’t exist, that if there was a God, I wouldn’t have been so ill and wouldn’t have battled with addiction. Iv spent nearly 26 years listening to the why nots for following God and in the end only my heart could decide which was the right choice for me. For the first time in 26 years, I really listened to my heart and thats why I know that I am making the right choice to pursue Him for the rest of my life. To pursue him with a hunger that can never be fully satisfied till the day I meet Him at the end of my life here. I will search high and low for Him, I will dedicate my days to Him and I will be the light that He wants to see in the world. I have never wanted anything so bad and know that this is the year that really will transform me.

Love Always.x