God’s Faithfulness in the Midst of a Pandemic, Infertility, and Divorce

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Before 2021 began to fully roll out, God gave me the word “refined” as my own personal word for the year. I was not searching, begging, or pleading for Him to rain one down on me; He simply placed it in my lap one day as I spent time with Him. A portion of me was excited about the word but another part of me considered for a moment the process in which things go through to be refined.

The word refine is a verb with the meaning “to remove impurities or unwanted elements from a substance”. In the process of refining gold, the most common method is by flame. This process involves a craftsman sitting next to a hot fire with molten gold in a crucible that is stirred and skimmed to remove the impurities or dross that rise to the top of the molten metal. The flames can reach temperatures in excess of 1800 degrees Fahrenheit.

As usual, I stuffed the idea of living uncomfortably into the closet of my mind and proceeded forward. I did not want to waste time fearing circumstances I could not foresee. I failed to recognize the fear of those unknown circumstances was already well within me, and the rising temperature of the events of my life would only push those unwanted worries to the surface. The time for me to sort through the things I tucked away into the corners of my mind was rapidly approaching.

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Gifts, Blessings, and Jealousy

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While lying in bed, tossing and turning, listening to God as He unveiled the last bit of revelation from the past 24 hours, I kept replaying the words our fill-in small group leader said just before closing out with prayer. They stated that we should not be jealous of what others shared during our meeting; that God speaks to each of us in unique ways; that the way He speaks to us during one season may be different in the next and that is a part of our individual journeys; not to be compared to our neighbor’s.

I remained restless as I thought over it; reflecting on a moment when I stood in my kitchen after getting home from the group meeting. The enemy was using the same statements our group leader shared in an attempt to muffle the words God had spoken to me through the duration of the semester. I began to feel a sense of sorrow for sharing them. A weight of responsibility began to fall on me as I wondered if what I shared was the catalyst for the spirit of jealousy being nurtured. I began to cradle the gift of a-deeper-intimacy that God had given me over the semester saying, “There there, we mustn’t offend others by having you out in the open…maybe some other time we can fellowship out in the light“.

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It’s Not All About the Benjamins.

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Just imagine it. You are rapidly approaching the month of December and the holidays are right around the corner. You know from your previous year that your spouse will be home for roughly four to five weeks straight because the business they work for does a seasonal shut down. Oh, and did I mention you are no longer working? Bills are piling up. You have ran clean out of money for emergencies. Don’t forget your second vehicle’s battery is corroded and you two are now living paycheck to paycheck. Living off of ramen and instant potatoes. For the cherry on top, God has promised to provide for all of you and your spouses’ needs during this time but that neither of you are to pick up ANY work. Come again?!

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New Year. New _______.

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Most people this year are probably already gunning for their debit and credit cards to pay for new gym memberships or the latest tech gadgets to help them be more productive this coming year. Me on the other hand, I’m sitting here just wanting to know what places God wants me to be in 2020. I spent the majority of 2019 being fearful and honestly, disobedient. I do not desire to do that again next year.

Yes, shedding another 65 to 75 pounds next year like I did this year would be fantastic, but what I really want is a fantastic marriage with stellar communication. I want faith and a will that is eager and ready to be paired with the words “Yes Lord, I’ll do ANYTHING!”. I want to love others and extend grace to them in a way they know it is not me, but it is God working in me to get through to them. I want to know, without a shadow of a doubt, when I die, my life on earth made a sweet difference in Heavenly places. I want to be able to stand before God anticipating Him say “Well done, my faithful servant.”.

Sunday’s Drive

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The year is coming to a quick close and Sunday was a day that pushed me beyond a boundary that I had held up for quite some time. I believe for over a year now, my husband, Juan has vocalized his desire to start a gun business. Whether it be a gun shop or a shooting range or retail for shooting gear, if it has to do with guns, he wants in. With that being said, we had been bumping heads when it came to this because of past time delegations on planning and researching for the business. There was a time when I hardly could get him to pry his eyes off of Reddit and other sites geared toward gun sales and deals.

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Dear Dr. Robert Lang,

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Diagnosis

The diagnosis of having major depression came with a thrust and heaps of affliction on all fronts of my life. Just the night before, I spoke with my sister on the phone. Having given detail of the struggle I was enduring, I looked over a small bridge on Wabash Ave, in downtown Chicago; listening to my sister tell me it sounded as though the sum of my feelings equated to depression. Upon arriving home, I dodged the idea of looking into what depression was. The only context I ever heard it in was flippantly while around peers in high school. I never knew it was something as intrusive as this. I sat around watching Netflix until I was dissatisfied. I moved on to listen to Lauren Hill’s MTV Unplugged 2.0 on repeat until I had had enough. I wanted the emotional aches and pains to cease. The only solution that seemed to come to mind was the ending of my life. I looked at the bottle of pills I had lying around from a previous surgery. I resulted in looking up quizzes for depression.

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Dear Jesus,

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***The following is a prayer/letter to Jesus that I was asked to write down. When I wrote it down, I had no intentions on making it public but after writing it, I’m about 54% sure that the Lord was telling me to make it public. Other than spelling errors and names, nothing was altered, not even the grammar***

This morning when I woke up, I prayed and then I looked at some Scripture and read it. Last night I was listening to Nehemiah and fell asleep. I looked to see what all I might have listened to and went past the chapter that I last remembered hearing and trying to actively listen to. The next chapter was talking about how the people in the city next to where the wall that Nehemiah was building with other men, they didn’t like it. The men had to build the wall with one hand and with the other they had to hold a weapon so that they could also be prepared to fight whenever they needed to. It reminded me of when Pastor Ford had gone over these Scriptures and used them during a Father’s day sermon and also how I believed, Lord, that You had brought these scriptures to my attention beforehand. Thank you for refreshing my memory on these Scriptures and for reminding me that I need to be like Nehemiah and keep building while still being on guard against attacks.

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Waging War in the Maze of Your Mind

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We are told as Christians that we demolish arguments and every claim that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ (2 Cor. 10:5 NIV). But what happens when we try to wage war in the battlefield of our minds but our actions are still rebellious towards God (1 Sam 15:23 NLT)? What happens when we really believe that we are within the will of God in a moment’s time, only to have Holy Spirit correct us and bring to our remembrance the fundamentals of our faith we seemed to have forgotten? One of them being OBEDIENCE.

I woke up Wednesday morning in a haze, trying to understand what all I dreamed through the night. Dreams of shame being lobbied my way by family, selfish decisions, and a host of sexual moments I believed in my waking life to have surrendered over to the Lord. It seemed as though the previous two nights were just a prelude to the dreams that flooded my mind this time. Only now, I was beginning to question if those things that I used to do were still my desires. Was I still allowing shame, greed, and lust to sit on the throne of my heart where I knew God should be?

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Living Life Mid-air

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Living life walking by faith has been something that I’ve come to realize is like a big ball of fear with an awesome adventure inside of it. Kind of like those Wonder Balls I always wanted as a child but wasn’t allowed to have except maybe once. Though with the Wonder Ball, I enjoyed chocolate enough that I didn’t mind the hollowed out spherical contraption in which this mysterious prize was in, it wasn’t the reason why I wanted it. I wanted the toy inside of the candy.

And such is life when you are faithing it. The adventure and the newness of the territory that God is encouraging you to step into and trust Him for, that’s what you want, but like most of us, you don’t really care for the fear attached to it. You wish you could just know what was on the other side of what He is wanting you to do.

I started Warrior Letters in faith that it would be a blog for testimonies and then I kept changing the idea, worrying about the look of the blog itself, and while that is important, it wasn’t as important as being obedient and doing the first thing that God had called me to do with it, which was write. A flood of feelings of inadequacy filled my mind and every time I would begin to write, I would just freeze. It was like I had absolutely nothing to talk about. Though I had heard a pastor once say “if you talk about your struggles, you’ll have plenty of material,” it was still difficult to just step out and go for it.

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Are You Commonly Practicing Unbelief in God?

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I was reminded in my Jesus-time this morning while reading the Jesus Calling book, a sister in Christ gave to me last night, I absolutely have to submit every ounce of my planning to God. I did not realize that planning, even little things or trying to figure out how I was going to be able to pay this bill or that bill or what I can do in the physical realm to progress financially or in any and all careers that I desire to have, were all ways that I had been practicing and having disbelief in God.

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