When you finally understand the phrase "Sometimes we laugh to keep from crying". I feel like Im drowning and no ones coming to save me. Life is a trip and Im just trying to stay a float. God these are test right? Could You help me please. Send some relief. Some assurance that I can get through this, that one day it will all make sense. I am trying to do Your will and not go off on my own path. What is your will? How long will I be here in the valley? Please help me to know that Your beside me. Please help me to know what to do next. Im lost and nothing makes sense. Im not depressed but I am feeling pretty low.

Dear God, I don't want to feel empty anymore. Anything but empty God. It's the worst feeling in the world. Please fill me up forever your all I want.

Lord while my prayer has always been may I never live outside of your will, I never thought I would. I know that I sin everyday I am so imperfect but I want to be perfect for you Father. I want to do your will everyday. I dont want to know a life where I dont live for you . God I thought I was done with temptation and lust, When you saved me from the pit of hell I thought it was finished. Father forgive me for falling short and please take my sin away. Help me not to stumble help me lean on you. Keep me in Your will father. I will worship you more loudly, more boldly and unashamed, Because my sins were many and You have forgiven me. I love you Daddy.
“Look at this woman kneeling here. When I entered your home, you didn’t offer me water to wash the dust from my feet, but she has washed them with her tears and wiped them with her hair. 45You didn’t greet me with a kiss, but from the time I first came in, she has not stopped kissing my feet. 46You neglected the courtesy of olive oil to anoint my head, but she has anointed my feet with rare perfume.
47“I tell you, her sins—and they are many—have been forgiven, so she has shown me much love. But a person who is forgiven little shows only little love.” 48Then Jesus said to the woman, “Your sins are forgiven.” Luke 7:45-47

Refocus

I dont know about anyone else but sin starts in my mind. Usually I can catch the sin and put the fire out or sometimes I will water it, with music, with tv and in this paticular case browsing instagram and looking at cute couples and hating the fact that, that is not Gods will for my life right now.
So I went to church like last week and my pastor was giving us the new song for worship we(the worship team) sung it the first time with no emotion and then my Pastor gave us this mini sermon about how the song is saying God Im so unworthy but God have mercy on me. God you love me so much even with all my sins that you show me mercy everyday and that mercy can even take away the thngs that makes me sin and replace it with better. I cant say it as eloquantly as my Pastor did but it bought me to tears and so I cried durring worship(Because I am a cryer) And well the next thing I knew all these guys were after me but not fitness man. Fitness man was after my body and how badly I wanted to give it to him. But I cant, because he didnt pay the price for me. Our relationship minus a few details are completely surface and so I started talking to these new guys,boring they were all so boring. So what is it God? Why do I crave the struggling entrepreneur with a roommate rather than the safe guy with a career and a home. Could it be because I am the struggling girl trying to figure out what my career will be? Me and fitness man are completely in the exact same place in our lives right now and I wonder if that is why I crave him. Nevertheless I shared this with my Pastor and told her my plan was to finish up our last 3 sessions and never see him again.
Because I work crazy hours and because I think we like each other he works around my hours. We planned a session for 1030. And as I'm on my way to train he calls me and asks me if I can take him to get his car from downtown l.a.On the car ride there I was able to tell him this would be our last three sessions. He told me how much he didn't want them to be and how he would give me sessions for only $10 because he really wants me to keep going because Im doing so good. Our energy started to change it was so flirty so touchy. I was distracted. Kashs Dad begun to text me which only added more to the distraction. Clearly I wasnt going to work out that night. I have started to have my doubts about Kashs Dad Im pretty sure that him being absent for 3 years should have been the biggest doubt. I had questions like did he even like let alone love my son, Were we ever going to be friends and could he lead us as a family. And as fitness man and I kissed and hugged all on eachother preparing to go way to far Kashs Dad answered all my questions without even having to ask. I didnt ask him anything but he told me everything not knowing it was everything I was concerned about. What the heck is going on? Was it a full moon or something. Clearly the world was going crazy or maybe I was.
I woke up this morning with the word REFOCUS on my mind. Refocus on the kingdom, refocus on God. I have to stop watering my sin with secular music I cant look at someones life on instagram or facebook and wonder why its not happening for me. So the new game plan is to get a gym membership and to stay away from all these randoms that have been approaching. Its really God over everything. Im starting a new fast this Monday let me know if you want to join me I still have journals I can give you.

Co-parenting by Gods grace.

So as the scripturein the last post played out in my head I got all these ideas. I wanted to interview my Pastor and ask her about her life as a single minister of Christ. I tried to wrap my heart around the fact that I might never get married because that might not be Gods plan for my life and it was hard. I went to church the next day and told my Pastor about the scripture and she immediately shot it down. She said God is just taking extra time working on my husband lol.  Whew! What a relief, why would God give me such a strong desire to be a help-meet if it wasn't in his plan
"And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him." -Genesis 2:18
and... Kash needs a Dad. Speaking of Kashs Dad we've both been throwing grace around. Dealing with the fact that even though our child is already 3 we still really don't want to be around each other :) And then I see God work on this mans heart. His heart that was so hardened towards our child that it is truly  Gods glory to see this man take us on an outing and even offer to pay for me. That he texts me and lets me know whats going on with him and plans out days for us to take Kash out. I even felt comfortable enough to let him watch Kash while I went to church for 2 hours. We still get angry and when the opportunity presents itself we take our jabs but still I know Gods hand is all up on this situation. Im so glad that hes getting to know Kash and Kash is so excited about it. He begs me take him to his Grandmas house and since I dont have a Mom or grandparents myself I can admit it makes me happy to know my son does. We're co parenting and I think Im starting to like it :)

Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart.-Psalm 37:4

Put some "respeck" on it

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Jesus I know that your God and that I need to put some respeck on your name... Is how I started off one of my many conversations that I have with the Lord.

 I just really needed to get some perspective on what was going on in my life. Does it really have to be so hard? And then God listened to me as I talked about wanting to love myself and I got up the courage to take myself out on a date. A real date, not like my outings to Veggie Grill by myself weren't real dates but this time I was going to a concert. I went to see Robert Glasper and Terrace Martin, my two favorite jazz artist. So I dropped Kash off with my Dad and then proceeded to get dolly and by dolly I mean shorts a cute top and my favorite purple vampira lip shade by Kat Von D. On my way out the door I get a call from my ex, you know, the one who helps me out with this recovery process.  He was also on the way to the concert and asked if we could just meet up.
When we got to the concert it was packed so we stayed outside and just talked. It was normal, it was innocent, it was nothing like the "We" that we used to be in the past. He helped me to gain perspective on my Dads recovery and I think he kind of understands that Im not the girl he used to have late nights and early mornings with. I wasn't even bummed that I missed the concert because after standing around long enough my ex and I both spotted Terrace Martin and Robert Glasper standing outside just chilling and guess who got to take pictures with both of them :) My night was made my ex walked me to my car and gave me a hug of course he made a smart comment about how I had him on some square stuff, but it was sweet still. Closure.

God gave me closure because that night made me realize that no matter how fine he was or how much I could relate to him he just wasn't the one and nothing could ever change that. I got home on a high feeling like I could do anything and so I called up this guy, a personal trainer who always comes into my job. I talked to him outside for about 15 minutes and I knew, he was going to be my trainer. Needless to say I have lost about 9 lbs so far and we have only been working out for about 3 weeks or so but there will be more about my trainer on my next post.

He'll Take The Pain Away

So, God gives me the idea for these journals, this blog, and a promise and then... Crickets. And then not only crickets but painful soul aching uncomfortableness. It was almost like I had to second guess myself, like God didn't you say open doors? Then why am I homeless and depressed? The funny thing is I didn't want to give up on God I actually continued to go to church and cry myself through it all. I invited people into my life trying to fix myself because clearly I had to be broken. So, ok, I am broken but it is a brokenness that only God can heal. And we all know God is close to the broken hearted (Psalm34:18) so that's a really good place for me to be. But these people I invited into my life only magnified my dysfunction and reminded me of how badly I didn't have it together( As if I didn't know that already!) And it only made me feel a million times worse and under super intense pressure to try to fix it. Then I had a nervous break down and it was scary, I slept for hours afraid to wake up to every day being the same thing. I could not deal with everyday being the same painful soul aching hopelessness that surrounded me. What happened next was what should of happened all along, I went to church and I cried out to God, not just any old cry I mean I cried from the pit of my soul. It was the most ugliest cry
 I could muster up and while I wanted to be embarrassed that I just ugly cried in front of the whole congregation I know that God had heard his daughter. Did I go to work and continue to cry in front of my manager? Yes. But he talked to me for an hour and encouraged and lifted me up and it was dope. I came out of the office full of hope. My manager even told me I needed a God crush :) I started writing scriptures on my hands when I went to work and it got to the point that I didn't have to look at them because I was living it "But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint. '-Isaiah 40:31
And so the weeks got easier but my gut feeling got stronger. And I begin to wonder if I was evil or crazy because I had crazy anxiety about letting a new person into my space. I tried and tried fighting what I knew wasn't a wrong feeling and continued to feel uncomfortable about it until I prayed and once again God lead me to Luke 12:57-59 and settling your differences on your own. So I tried once again to let this person in and nope she was going to drive me crazy so I cut ties with her. Just thinking back on it now, I prayed to God in April about him sending me 1 Godly friend (because I'm a introvert and I just need one) and he answered me back that day and he meant business  ;) He told me to stop looking for friends and to let Him grow me up. He told me He was going to be my friend because I wasn't ready yet. And I get it now God was right of course. But how do you tell someone that?

So the relationship ended with that person and it was just so easy that I didn't even think twice about it. I wasn't going to talk about her to anyone or try to get any advice the only opinion that mattered to me was God. About 2 days after it happened however I got strong confirmation from God that I did the right thing because she did decide she was going to discuss me with others. I say all of that just to stress, always listen to that inner voice. If you feel strongly about something your probably not wrong about it.
 I worked 4th of July so my sister took Kash with her out of the city and so I got off early and had no idea what to do. I made a vegan dinner and cleaned the  house and listened to an A.A meeting on youtube. Im going to backtrack a bit and tell you how I found the meeting. I have this ex that God told me to pray for. I got all excited thinking God was preparing him to be my husband lol, but that was the total opposite of who he had become in my life. My ex sent me the link to the meeting hes in recovery also and he kind of helps to walk me through it. So Im listening to this meeting my ex sent me to and its basically talking about how hard it is to believe in a God who is just fire brimstone and hell but what if it was a loving God. What if God could be everything you wanted him to be for you. What would you want God to be. So I sat with God and I wrote in my journal what I want him to be for me. I dont know if thats selfish but I felt like it was something I had to do. It helped to ease all this pressure to do the right thing off of me. God is love and He is merciful and just writing out who I wanted him to be to me helped to know he wont let me slip and that took fear away. It was nice. A date night with Christ.
I started thinking: In church you always hear things like it will get greater later. Why cant it be greater now? Why am I waiting for God to do what he promised when my todays are here now. I can be happy now. I can love my son now. I can strive for a beautiful relationship with my Father now and that can be enough. That is enough. I am joyful now and I thank you Father for those really dark weeks I know You were there even when I couldn't hear You. I trust You and I know that the plans that You have for me are perfect and good. Thank you Daddy. Amen.
"I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything, I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little. For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength,"-Philippians 4:12 NLT
P.S When I was in my lowest state God gave me a song. I found myself humming at work when I felt the depression creeping in and then I started listening to it every morning. Maybe it will help someone else.