This past year I have grown by leaps and bounds as a person.

I’m going to spend a few minutes letting you in on some of my reflections of where I began 2019 and the much different place I find myself at its end.

As a homeschooling mom, I’ve always enjoyed watching my kids grow into who they are becoming. They don’t stay the same, just like I don’t, and we were happy to see another one focusing on their future just before 2019 began.

Middle Son waited after high school until he was ready to pursue a higher education, and as he showed more interest in a particular college we encouraged it, even though the costs were projected to be higher than we thought we could afford.

My husband and I were beginning to discuss the feasibility of helping this child with college expenses like we had with the older ones. We knew this was going to be a bigger investment, so we did first what we have learned by hard experience to do: we took it to God and waited for his answer.

I was very thankful I had started meeting with a Christian mentor, another woman who helped pull me back down to earth week after week. I had written down what my biggest concerns were, what I struggled with and where I thought I needed the most help.

Even in the couple of weeks between filling out the form and our first mentoring session I forgot one of my main issues. I recorded it in a journal as “not being able to give up control”. That WAS a big issue with me, but it wasn’t what I had written down. At our 3-month review my mentor reminded me what my issue REALLY was: admitting when I do something wrong.

So I was headed into the new year actively asking God to help me see when I do something wrong so that I can correct it and make amends right away. And I was also digging in and asking him to show me why I have struggled so much with this my whole life.

Just before the end of 2018 I wanted to learn how to set better goals, so I started doing Boundaries by Cloud and Townsend, and I was finding that I didn’t really have a clue about my own personal limits, much less how to set any meaningful boundaries.

I was just beginning to get a grasp on the concept that I can’t change the past and I can’t change any other person. These are obvious, and I knew them in my head, but I hadn’t taken them into my heart.

I was learning, finally, that my responsibilities, needs, condition of my heart, health of my emotions, and God-led decision-making are the things I needed to focus on.

So, how did I do over this past year?

My husband and I, after praying and both getting a clear green light, have trusted God to provide the funds needed to help our son realize his goal of going to college at a school we all love, where he feels called to be.

And God has come through exceedingly, abundantly beyond all we asked or imagined!

He received more than half his costs in scholarships, and we were able to make both his first and second semester payments in full! God is faithful, and we are in awe at how eager he is to bless us.

As I plunged into my mentoring sessions, I often talked about my safety-seeking control issues. It has plagued me all my life, this need to keep everyone around me safe. I have done many things that secluded or separated my family and me from the world around us thinking that if I had knowledge and the ability to get in between evil and my kids I could single-handedly keep everyone safe.

I’ve spent a lot of time and prayer this year wrestling this out with God, and I’ve found that every time I set myself up as being in control, I kicked God out of his rightful place. I’ve had to give up my right to control any part of my life so that I can experience truly following God. I’m glad to say I’m controlling less, though it may take the rest of my life to get where I’d like to be!

And my other issue of admitting when I’m wrong? I figured out why I have so much trouble with that. In my mind, the people who abused me as a child were deserving of punishment. They were wrong. They did bad things.

And I never wanted to be compared to them: to hurt anyone else, be responsible for causing harm to anyone.

So I could never be wrong.

I’m a work in progress on this one. Baby Girl patiently tells me when I overstep while lecturing a sales rep over the phone, or speak abruptly to a cashier at the grocery store. Out of all my children, this youngest daughter is in tune with my moods and is helping me see when I let my frustrations get in front of my better intentions.

And now I can stop and admit I blew it.

And my world doesn’t fall apart when I do.

Working my way slowly but surely through Boundaries has been a tremendous help in all of my issues this year, many more than I’m talking about here.

I began by finding that I never learned what good boundaries were as a child. God revealed to me many truths about how my parents didn’t either. So it’s like I’ve had revelation after revelation poured over me by God about what Mom and Dad’s lives were like as kids, why they struggled to set and keep boundaries with their kids, and how I’ve carried that forward into my life.

And I’ve been able to forgive.

That’s probably the most remarkable thing that has ever happened to me, this release from the need to see justice done, no more desire to have someone else suffer for what they’ve done to me or others.

As I write this I am seeing that there’s another side to the command Jesus gives us to forgive others as we have been forgiven.

I’m finally starting to FEEL forgiven. Because I’m finally able to give forgiveness to others.

Because no matter how far I’ve come in the past year, I’m not done, there’s more left to face and dig deep into and give back over to God.

And as a new year begins, I feel like God really does have a reason why he forgave me.

Because this is just the beginning.

I’ve started seeing a therapist.

I’ve wanted to for a long time, and a couple months ago I finally decided it was the right time.

And to give a little more background, I have also been meeting for the past year with a mentor, a Christian woman, through a unique local ministry that provides this service for free.

I feel like a totally different person than the woman I was when I first walked in to Journey of the Heart last July, looking for perspective. Over this past year I’ve learned to step back and look at day to day situations in light of the truth instead of through my emotions.

I’ve learned a lot about boundaries. How I didn’t grow up with many firm ones, and why I never learned how to set them in many areas of my life. I started setting them and experienced great peace in being able to say no.

I learned to respond instead of reacting. I began to make decisions based on what I was really willing and able to do instead of what others wanted me to do. I learned to not make excuses for taking care of myself.

Which felt really weird after so many years of putting everyone else first.

I think the timing of all this has been good for me and my family. My youngest is now sixteen, so as young adults I think they all benefited from my not doing as much for them. They now take care of more of their own things, which will help them as they transition to school or apartments.

Not to mention that after more than thirty years as a mom, I have my own things I’ve been looking forward to doing.

Probably the most significant change is that I have a mentor who faithfully turns my face back to God. Pretty much every time we meet she reminds me to ask for God’s input before I make any decision, and to search the Bible for direction.

I welcome the reminders to do the first thing first.

You would think that after having a relationship with Jesus for most of my life, that would be the most natural thing to do. Yet it isn’t.

So after almost a year of being mentored, there were things we had talked about that I felt a need to go into more deeply with someone trained to help a person know how to deal with their thoughts and feelings.

It was time to look for a therapist.

As with finding my mentor, God brought forward the right information at the right time. Even though the people giving me advice didn’t have all the facts clear, I ended up finding a Christian therapist that is helping me find freedom from things that have held me captive since childhood.

I’ll tell you a little about the therapy, but it really is different in the experience than in the description. And you can look up the description if you are interested in knowing more about it. I feel people like me, who are ready to dive in and tackle whatever issues come up benefit a lot from this therapy.

Splankna Therapy, according to the website at Splankna Therapy Institute ‘is the first Christian protocol for mind-body psychology.’ What happens in the practice of the Splankna Protocol is that I (mind, body, heart, spirit) tell my therapist where my body is holding on to the emotions that resulted from traumatic situations in my life. In isolating them she figures out what emotions or situations are keeping me stuck in reliving old hurts instead of healing and moving on.

The most satisfying part for me is that I pray and release the hold these things have had on me, and my therapist also prays healing over me.

It sounded like hooey to me. Bunk. Rubbish. Nonsense.

Then I tried it. And after only three visits I’m noticing real changes in the way I do life.

I have been able to name things that have held me back, put me on the wrong track, distracted me from my goals for most of my life. I have experienced NOT falling back into the same patterns of self-defense and control that have become second nature to me.

I have had revelations of lies I have believed, and been floored that I ever would have listened to them in the first place. And I have been able to call them lies and let the father of lies know that he doesn’t have a hold on me any more in that area.

I don’t know how long I will continue, but I am excited to be freed from more of my self-inflicted chains. I have tried to control my life, my environment, my safety and well-being since I was six years old, and I am so ready to hand it back to God, who is the only one who knows what my next steps should be.

Both of these ventures, being mentored and going to a therapist, flow out of the last four years of Celebrate Recovery. I now deal, one day at a time, with my hurts, hang-ups and habits; I identify my character flaws, my faults and shortcomings and ask God to remove them from me; I learn to recognize when I’m doing something hurtful and make amends more quickly; as I am hurt again I make the choice to forgive before letting the wrong fester into a much bigger wound than it needs to be. And most surprising, I have become willing to ask for help.

A neat thing has been happening with my therapist. She prays over me before we start, and she prays again when we are finished. And in her prayers, God puts thoughts in her mind, words to say, that are uniquely meaningful to me.

At our last session she prayed that I would be in line with the plumb line.

My whole life I have loved plumb lines. You pull them out and they are covered with purple chalk, and a weight hangs at the end and when you hold it up it hangs down and gives you a true straight up and down direction. If it’s against a wall, someone is holding the top and someone secures the weight when it’s hanging straight, and plucks the string to leave a straight line to orient to.

And in my life, I am seeking to find the plumb line that shows me I am oriented to God’s plan for me.

My therapy is showing me how I have not let the weight determine the direction of the line, how I have pulled it out in the directions I wanted it to go, snapped it and left a crooked, skewed chalk line that I have followed blindly.

I so much need there to be a strong hand holding my life line, and I need to see where God means for it to go, unaffected by the circumstances of my past and present. I need to see the direction of upright.

It’s been one of those weeks.  I have a couple of pieces in the works, but none of them are crying out, “Finish me!”  Maybe because things keep somersaulting and jumping up in totally different places all over my life lately.  My days are just not playing out like I expected.

If you are a mom, or have one, maybe you can relate.  You map out a day in a way that would fulfill some of your needs, and find a dozen detours where you end up taking care of other people and their obviously more urgent issues.  And as the next day starts, your own list is still as long as the day before.

A little over a year ago I decided to stop putting myself last.  Okay, don’t pitch a fit. That is not the same thing as putting myself first!  Because that’s not my intention.

I was deep into an intensive Bible study, and while facing some hurts from my past, I realized I’d let those situations affect me my whole life.  I had learned a lot of ways to handle relationships that weren’t healthy, and that left me wondering why no one was taking care of my needs the way I tried to look out for others’.  So as part of my recovery journey, I decided a couple of changes were necessary.  I needed to quit trying to fix those around me by doing things for them that they could do for themselves.  And I needed to start doing things for myself that would help me become the person God created me to be.

So over the last year I’ve done a number of new things, and returned to some others that excite me and spur me on to deeper personal growth.  And as fun as some of those activities were, the hardest part was walking away from home, leaving my family to fend for themselves for a few hours or days.

Spoiler alert.  They all survived.  But there were times I drove off leaving frustrated teens behind, wondering who was going to take care of whatever they wanted me to do before I left, hoping they would figure it out.

And I also survived.  Cranking up my YES-FM, looking away from the rear view mirror, heading out to a time or place where I could start looking to God for direction with no interference.  Is this where you want me to go next?  Is this dream you’ve put in my heart your desire for me, God?

Because sometimes I can’t hear him in all the noise of life.

And it doesn’t help that I’m not a good finisher.  I excel at starting things, especially lists of things I’d like to do, or have someone else do, but not so successful at wrapping things up.

Someday I’ll connect all the dots from my past that will make me say, “Aha!  This is why I’m like this!”, and when I do I’ll share some of that epiphany.  But while I’m working on that, I’m finding it is possible to change.  Just because I have a history of not doing this or that, it doesn’t mean I can’t learn how.  And just because I have dozens of unfinished projects in process, I can choose to follow one through to completion.

“One day at a time” is a familiar phrase to me, one I’ve repeated hundreds of times over the last almost four years, and it gives me hope for each new day.  Because when I have those days where nothing new is accomplished, I know another day is going to follow.  The same when everything falls apart or even when everything runs smoothly, I’m still living it one day at a time.

As I look back over the last year of taking some time out for me, I have a clear knowledge that God was leading me through these experiences.  I could list all the things I did, but I’d rather tell you how they’ve changed my life.

I made connections with a new writing group, not knowing that my local one was going to fold by year’s end.  I have been forced to face my own physical limitations and it’s shown me it’s ok to say no.  I’ve found I’m more artistically creative than I knew.  I’m able to appreciate my family’s unique gifts better than before.  God gave me a new friend, one I love deeply and can’t wait to spend time with soon.

I want to share with you a little piece of writing that I grew up seeing all over my Mamaw’s house, both the more well-known short version and the full version.  I believe God put that in front of my eyes as a girl to prepare me for the day almost four years ago when I walked into Celebrate Recovery for the first time and God began a total overhaul of me that isn’t anywhere near done, and has brought the most abundant living I’ve known so far.

If you’ve never read this before, let it sink in.  Break it down, phrase by phrase, and you might want to make a change, too.  Because it’s never too late to start living the life God wants you to discover.  One day at a time.