Letting go is hard to define. It means something different to everyone. This episode will help you take steps to let go of pain, trauma, and disappointment. With the help of the cross and grace, you can take this very important step into freedom from shame and live a beautiful life!
[I’d love to hear how this episode helped you. Please comment below or send me a private message via email HERE! Feel free to share on all social media platforms. Also if you want to subscribe to the podcast to get notifications when I broadcast again, click HERE!]
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Are you a people pleaser or crave other people’s approval. It’s ok to admit, if so. Healing can’t come unless we own up to where we are. This week’s podcast can help you and actually heal you if you put it into practice. I’m going to show you how to overcome in this area and live a more wholehearted life. So if you’re ready to stop hiding and really show up for your life, this podcast is for you!
Blessings!!!
[I’d love to hear how this episode helped you. Please comment below or send me a private message via email HERE! Feel free to share on all social media platforms. Also if you want to subscribe to the podcast to get notifications when I broadcast again, click HERE!]
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The older I get the more I realize, you really can’t predict anything.
Life is not certain in any place.
Faith is paramount no matter what you believe.
You can’t really count on anything except your fingers.
You can rely on God to do what He wills.
And He wills what’s best for us.
Sometimes, what He wills is best
and what we will is best are polar opposites.
The older I get the more I see how broken we all really are.
The ones trying to have it all together are the ones falling apart the most.
The ones who could care less are having all the fun, living life to the fullest.
The older I get, the younger I want to be.
Although I regret all the time I’ve wasted, I still keep wasting it.
I’ve learned many lessons, but it’s always after the fact and the chance to try out what I’ve
learned may not come around again. So lesson learned, period.
God gives us quite a large margin for second chances, but when they’re gone
They’re gone.
The older I get the more I understand that every person’s reality is subjective.
Totally. How in the world we ever see the same thing is beyond me.
Life is way shorter than I ever thought!
The older I get the less stuff I need.
I’ve learned that stuff is overrated and time is the real treasure.
Time is what I should be putting in my pocket, not change.
Although change is necessary, as long as I have time, I can make change.
They say your past doesn’t define you, well I say phooey on them.
Every step of my past has defined the woman I am today.
For better or worse. It is so.
All I’ve ever been has made an impact on who I am now and who I am now
will determine who I become. And when I become, my past will have defined me for certain.
The older I get, the more I see that God gives us choices.
He expects me to choose life. Sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t.
The times I don’t are the times I can’t see my way. The times I do
are only because He illuminates the way. He provides. I choose.
Then I live out the consequences.
Simple.
The older I get, life becomes simple.
Not easy, simple.
It’s always been simple, I was just too greedy for gain, strength, applause,
approval, validation, and recognition to walk in the simple.
For that, I need a boot!!!
Thank God that IS one lesson I can apply the learning to!
And I can start today!!
Let Christ be glorified in all!
Crisie
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Cannot this hope keep silent
While I mourn still more
Not ready to give up
Not ready to sleep
In peace that is calling my soul
I’m crazy you must think
To withhold from myself
The soft light of daybreak
The kiss of the sun
To hold on to all that is left
Left of her smile I remember
Held in my heart a sweet gift
So if I let go
She’ll fly away home
And all will be left is my guilt
That I didn’t go to her
When she bid me to come
Far Away Home
Far away love
Still farther my heart from her soul
Still this peace it awaits
To comfort and embrace me
When I am ready
When I am done
Wrestling death as long as it takes me.
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Photo by Fabrizio Verrecchia on Unsplash
Behind the eyes of a castaway
Lies the heart of a seafaring maid
Born for the great wide open
Shipwrecked in fear and shame
Photo by Jonatán Becerra on Unsplash
Her heart dreams of sun dancing on water
Like before, when she was sure and brave
Now, buried in regret and sorrow
That speaks down to her hope in this fray
Photo by Hannah Reding on Unsplash
Tempted to give up the ‘morrow
While she struggles here in the today
Her past weaving tales of her ruin
Her failure, a foe that berates
Photo by Ross Sneddon on Unsplash
She looks longingly out over the water
Her hair flailing wild in the breeze
Reminded of home and all that she’s lost
Her quest now, her soul and her peace
Photo by Fabrizio Verrecchia on Unsplash
For time, it stands still in the midst of her grief
As weeping endures in the dreamer
Shadows become her companions
As they dance by the fire that keeps her
Photo by Nathan Lindahl on Unsplash
Photo by Sam Hull on Unsplash
Fragile smile as her eyes look away
To the hope where her rescue awaits
The letting go, she’s sure to obtain
As she awakes to remember her fate
Photo by Tomas Jasovsky on Unsplash
See this crucible has a great purpose
It seasons her heart in its wake
She’ll rise up one day out of ashes
In unshakable, resolute faith
1 Peter 5:10
“But may the God of all grace, who called us to His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a while, perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you.”
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Photo by Torsten Dederichs on Unsplash
Turbulent Ocean
Tossed about sea
The sound of the heart
Inside of me
Seething and sighing
Through night and
Through tears
The sigh is deafening
The lonely is a prison sentence
And I hold the pardon
Photo by Valeriy Andrushko on Unsplash
This is the only home
I know
Alone
Unknown
Bowing to a whim
That’s not my own
I can see me
On the other side of decision
Me free
Me, being me
But so afraid of that cross
The crossover
Through the raging rapids
Of pain and loss
This fear of losing
Holds me captive to
The place that’s not my own
Someone else’s idea
Someone else’s life
Someone else’s yes
My soul sighing
No!
My whole life
Photo by Velizar Ivanov on Unsplash
But loss
Holds down my arms and legs
Hands over my mouth
Constant threat
Looming
Looming
Over my life
Mocks freedom
Photo by Israel Sundseth on Unsplash
But there is One
To Whom I’m known
One who speaks for me
One who speaks over me
A little while longer
And joy will not withhold
Its reward
Its ecstasy
Its home
Photo by Kevin Hansen on Unsplash
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I celebrated my 58th year of life yesterday! Congratulations to me! I’m still here! Although 58 is not that old, it may seem kind of bizarre to you for me to say “I’m still here”. But there is a reason that I’m very conscious of that every year. You see, I’ve had two sisters in the last 10 years pass away. One suddenly, due to complications from diabetes and the other, after a long battle with cancer. Every year I celebrate a birthday, I’m reminded that neither of them will make it to the age I am now.
That’s been a sober mindset for me since their departure and one I wish I never had to adapt!
Photo by Becca Tapert on Unsplash
However, I do celebrate! And this year more than any other in the last 40, is pivotal. The last few years of my life and journey of faith have been some of the most difficult of my life thus far and I’ve shared many of those struggles here on the blog. I’ve suffered many physical issues which I thank God are starting to improve, but I’ve endured a very personal emotional ramble of sorts, that has dragged me into some pretty dark places.
Places, frankly, that I didn’t think I was going to recover from. I’ll tell you why. When we reach a certain age, regret and evaluation of our lives become a sort of reckoning that is almost impossible to run from. It was this impasse that I encountered, that would not be ignored and that demanded an account.
Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash
Photo by Eye for Ebony on Unsplash
Photo by Rodolfo Sanches Carvalho on Unsplash
It’s really quite a merciful place in the scheme of things but it didn’t feel like that in the beginning. It was dark and unsparing. Questions without answers. Judgment without mercy. I was brought to the end of myself in ways I’d never experienced and all I could do was fall on my face. In despair, in shame, in anger and in tremendous feelings of abandonment by God. Denial could no longer hold my past together and painful truths about events, people and myself came flooding in or should I say “out of” my soul that were having their day, finally.
Some of those moments have been expressed in my POETRY here on the blog.
When we’re young, we think we’re invincible, untouchable. We think we can cheat life in so many ways, but a day of reckoning does come. An account of all we’ve stolen and misappropriated over the years to hold our mirage together, to uphold our version of the truth to stay safe and invulnerable comes to call. And it was payday for me. The last 40 years of my life was demanding to be seen and heard and there was nothing I could do to silence its claim! It had a right! I’d been in charge for all those years and now it was time to surrender my version of reality to the truth! It’s been the most painful process of my life. And one I’m still walking through!
Photo by Erriko Boccia on Unsplash
But I felt, at this juncture, to share it. Because it’s becoming a place of hope and peace for me. And because I hope there will be some redemption in disclosure for myself and anyone who enters into the story with me. I don’t know. Or perhaps, it’s my deep desire to be known. In any case, here I am. Exposed. Open and vulnerable. And as hard as I fought to avoid this, it is what it is now and I can’t take it back. And you know what? It doesn’t feel so scary after all. Actually, it’s quite freeing! And in this moment, I’m recalling a prayer I prayed about 4 years ago, “God, I want freedom and I don’t care what it costs me!” It was a time of great desperation in my soul and now as I look back, I imagine the birthplace of all I’m currently being brought through.
Yes, I’m being brought, carried, held. A truth I’m convinced of! That although I’d experienced feelings of abandonment by God, I never was. Not once!
Photo by Leighann Renee on Unsplash
Which leads me to my next, very exciting, point. This website and blog. For years my blog has been about worship. Not music, per se, but the path we travel in communion and fellowship with Christ. And although this theme is core to everything I write or minister, I’m ready to branch out into a place of ministry that I’ve touched on in my blog from time to time, and now feel called to devote to fully.
The “Beautiful You” Project, as I’ve called it in my blog, has been part of my life message and will now become the dominant message of my blog. Because it’s the dominant message of my life! It’s a message that has been the heart of all I’ve ever written about- We are deeply and redemptively loved by God and that love is the driving force to all of life!
Photo by Vin Stratton on Unsplash
The core message of “Beautiful You” is for men and women, although, with me being a woman, it’s message will have a female bent, of course. But the core message is that we are deeply and completely loved and accepted by God and out of that love we are to show up for our lives. The enemy of our souls is a liar and the father of lies and we’ve bought into the lies that we are without value, not enough, and worthless and it’s in buying into those lies that we live lives of hiding, pretense, and shame. As a consequence, we never show up to be, fully, who God created us to be and to make the contribution that is the US to the world. I’ve seen it and experienced it in my own life, time and time again.
This experience has never been more fully realized than in the events of late in my own life and the realization of these places of wounding in my own soul. But God has and is healing and using them for His glory!!
The goal of this blog is to tell my story in hopes that in doing so, it will inspire others to rise above the lies they believe about who they are, and stop hiding. This is an ongoing journey for me and I’ve not arrived by any means, but I can share my journey with you and invite you into the healing. This message really is my heart. So THE WORSHIP LIFE Blog will now become BEAUTIFUL YOU Blog “Stop Hiding and Show up for Your Life/ A Journey of Wholehearted Living.”
Photo by Allef Vinicius on Unsplash
You can still count on honest, biblically based content, and even newer places of discovery because of the change in focus. There will still be music, but it won’t be the focal point. Healing, connection, and wholehearted living will be the focus. It will take some time to change over the website completely so I thank you for your patience as that is accomplished.
I would love to hear your thoughts about the change in focus and how this might impact your connection to the blog. Thanks always for your support and love!
Crisie
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There’s an ache that keeps me up at night
That wakes me
In the deep of the fourth watch
The silence is deafening
Empty
Quiet
Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash
But I’m not alone
I can feel Him
Present
Very near
He’s there
Photo by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash
Keeping watch over my heart
Keeping watch over the ache in my soul
The loneliness that owns so much of me
The unknown in my life
Detached from a place of belonging
Photo by Lane Jackman on Unsplash
Disconnected
Unknown
So deeply unknown
Life goes on around me
But eludes this space within me
Yet, His eyes
I can feel them toward me
Photo by Carlos Quintero on Unsplash
On me
Cocooned in His patience and mercy
I am
So much mercy
Preserved in His plan for me
Upheld in His promise
And here I rest
Photo by Anna Niezabitowska on Unsplash
Here I cease my struggling
The kicking and screaming
Calmed by His soothing lullaby
His love singing over me
His pity, remembering I am dust
He loves me
He owns me
Purchased with blood
Photo by Irina Iriser on Unsplash
Tears and the agony of His soul
The cost of my redemption
Redemption of the past that haunts my life
Redemption of all the broken parts
And so I wait
I trust
He holds it all
He holds me
Photo by Andressa Voltolini on Unsplash
Bringing sense out of confusion
Redeeming my shattered trust
Making something of me
