Broken Dreams and Beautiful Harmonies, Part 5
How my faith brought me home.
This is the conclusion of Broken Dreams and Beautiful Harmonies, a five part series discussing my marriage.
You can read Part 1 HERE, Part 2 HERE, Part 3 HERE, and Part 4 HERE.
I’ve really struggled with ending this series about my marriage because there is so much that happened over the last year that has turned my broken dreams into beautiful harmonies.
My story is still very much unfinished, but I don’t see it as broken anymore.
It’s a beautiful compilation of immense hurt, pain and sadness combined with awareness of myself, ownership and humility which turned everything into joy, peace and happiness. Yes, there are still broken parts of my story. Perhaps there always will be. But I am able to see why there are broken parts and be grateful for them because they have pushed me closer and closer to my true self. The one I really am.
I can’t finish this story without talking about my faith, so that is what I am going to focus on in this last part. Over time, I will give more details about things that have shaped me over this past year, such as my Mindset Coach, books I’ve read, skills I’ve learned, eating right and exercise, friendships and self analyzing… so many things in this story that added up to give me the peace I have today.
But my faith was the catalyst for my change, and that is what created beautiful harmonies, so that is what this story needs to finish with.
I am fully convinced that every single person on this planet is a spiritual being. Shells waiting to be filled. It’s up to us to fill them with a spiritual connection. I found mine through Jesus, but if you fill yours another way, I want you to know there is no judgement. You are welcome here. Always. It doesn’t matter who you are, what you’ve done, what you believe, or how you live your life. If you have gotten anything out of my story, I hope it’s understanding that I am still very much in the muck and mire trying to fix my own self. So I don’t really have time to judge you. With that said, if you have not found your spiritual connection, I pray that my story below encourages you to search for one.
As you will see, a spiritual connection will change your life, like it has changed mine.
The beginning of anxiety is the end of faith, and the beginning of true faith is the end of anxiety.
-George Mueller
But first a little backstory to my faith….
I was ten years old when I first “felt” God.
I remember I was sitting on the ground of our “cottage”, or the granny unit of our house. We had a visitor, a friend of my mom’s who was deeply spiritual. She and my mom were talking about Jesus.
I was raised a Christian. Talking about Jesus wasn’t a new thing for me. I went to a Christian school, and I had been to every Sunday School you could imagine. But even with all the times my mom dragged me to church, healing services, prayer revivals, I will never forget this day in particular.
This was my first awakening.
My mom and her friend were talking about the Bible and I remember thinking I need to listen to what they are saying. I don’t remember at all what they were talking about. But I do remember one of them asking me if I had ever asked Jesus into my heart to forgive me of my sins.
Now who knows what propelled me to feel anything at that moment. Maybe I felt guilting for fighting with my brother, which was a common occurrence. Who really knows. But I do remember looking down at that cream colored shag throw rug that my mom had laid over the Mexican Saltillo tile, and starting to cry.
I felt something. I had never felt something like that before.
I remember asking Jesus to come into my heart and forgive me of my sins. It was that simple. I remember feeling peace. I remember my mom and Mabel crying.
Something was there. Something was in that room. And I knew whatever it was, it was heavenly.
I’m not sure how long I stayed kneeling there crying, and I don’t remember much about what happened after that, but I do remember thinking this Jesus stuff was real. Up until that point it was a culture my mom had raised me in, but from that moment on, I knew there was something different out there. In my childlike mind, I committed to knowing more about it.
When I turned sixteen, I had another supernatural experience.
This time I was more aware. And it changed me. There was no turning back after that. My faith was sealed. I knew God was real, I knew He loved me, and I knew there was more to this world then just me, my friends and my family. There was something else. And I could feel it.
However special that experience was when I was sixteen, unfortunately it eventually just turned into a lifestyle. Or a culture, I guess. While I lived the words of Jesus daily, I don’t know if I really knew what they meant. This is commonplace for a lot of Christians…your faith becomes culture. I had yet to learn what loving God really meant.
Real understanding of God comes through suffering.
And no one wants that. I mean, if we all walked around asking people if they enjoyed suffering, the majority of people would tell you no. Here’s the thing, without suffering with Christ, we become dead. Lifeless. Useless. It’s taken me 47 years to understand that the point of Jesus to begin with isn’t so your life would be perfect and everything would go right. The point of Jesus, God’s beloved son who came to earth to die for our sins, is to help you make sense of this cruel, senseless world. Jesus isn’t there to give you a magic wand or a set of rules and regulations. Jesus, and the cross, is there to help put that puzzle of bad choices, poor behaviors, and crappy circumstances all together to make a beautiful work of art.
That’s the point of Jesus. That’s the point of the cross.
So if that’s the case, wouldn’t it make sense that we would have to suffer? If there is nothing to put back together then what is the point? What good is a “perfect” Christian?
This next and final part is about how I found myself through my suffering.
It’s how I became awake. It’s how I became alive. And yes, I talk about Jesus and God. A lot. But I also talk about how grateful I am that my life turned to ashes. And how I lost it all. Because without that I would not be what I am today. I would never have chosen those things to happen, but those painful experiences pushed me to be different. And the Amy that is today is a whole lot better than the stressed out, overworked, overwhelmed, million dollar business owner Amy.
The Amy today is free. Calm. Peaceful.
And I found that through suffering. All of this pain, sadness, loss…. I found myself there. The real Amy emerged. And I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
“You let the distress bring you to God, not drive you from him. The result was all gain, no loss. Distress that drives us to God does that. It turns us around. It gets us back in the way of salvation. We never regret that kind of pain. But those who let distress drive them away from God are full of regrets, end up on a deathbed of regrets. And now, isn’t it wonderful all the ways in which this distress has goaded you closer to God? You’re more alive, more concerned, more sensitive, more reverent, more human, more passionate, more responsible. Looked at from any angle, you’ve come out of this with purity of heart.”
2 Corinthians 7:8-13 MSG
Now for Part 5: