Is your faith greater than your fears?

In some areas of my life, yes I’m sure I still do. Allowing my faith to be bigger than my fears, is still very much a work in progress of dying to those irrational fears and trusting in God’s reasons and providence.

Recently one of my greatest fears I’ve had to overcome has been starting this blog to write stories about my inner life. Primarily because my encounters with Christ’s one, holy and apostolic church, and with the three persons of the Holy Trinity, are all treasures in my heart. Throughout the years each encounter has uniquely brought me so much healing, love, joy, comfort and inner peace.  

Unfortunately due to past woundings this led to an irrational fear that if I shared my stories with you about these precious experiences and memories, they would be taken away from me and somehow be tainted, dismissed, discredited, or worse corrupted by another human being. And if that person happened to be someone important to me whether it was done intentionally or inadvertently, I was afraid I could not bare the painful consequences. 

As this unrealistic fear began to surface I remember thinking, when did I start caring more about what another human being, including my own family, thought about me and my personal experiences over what God thought? When did I start "loving the praise of men more than the praise of God." (John 12:43). I was reminded again in Scripture "... God is greater than man." (Job 33:12) and “It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust man.” (Psalm 118:27)

 By the sheer grace of God, these irrational fears really began to crumble and lose their stronghold over me, during the Lenten season of 2020. While the world was falling apart that year with Covid-19, the Holy Spirit led me down another path on one of the most healing journeys of my life.  

Part of that journey was reading Wendy Speake's book The 40-Day Sugar Fast.  In one of my favorite chapters, the author says "Those who have experienced the bondage-breaking power of God are called to share the source of such power with those still held captive..."

Wendy also says in her book, "Christ has set you free, which sets you free to share Him! If you have friends and family members, neighbors, and work colleagues who are still held captive by addiction and unbelief, you have at least one clear calling in your life today: share your faith by sharing your transformed life with them. Share your faith out loud, right where you are today." 

That’s when the seeds of faith began to germinate from within my hardened heart. I found myself being less fearful about asking the Holy Spirit to show me what areas in my life were still broken by bondage? What areas did I still need to integrate with God? What areas in my life was I still using buffers to fill my God holes?  What areas still needed to be transformed? 

As I became more aware of the answers to those specific questions, I also become more and more convicted to share my precious encounters with Jesus' Church and the Holy Trinity.  

Wendy also reminded me that when Jesus ascended into heaven, He commissioned all believers to go and tell the world about Him.  

God has good works for me to do and good news for me to proclaim. My job is not to sweat the small stuff but to trust. God has an assignment for me to do.  He has commissioned me to simply share stories of our encounters together. He showed me how these had been gifts to share not treasures to keep hidden. Due to fear, I had become like the man with one talent (Matthew 25:18), now it was time to share and let the Holy Spirit multiply what God had gifted me.  

For me, this was definitely an act of letting my faith be bigger than my fear.

If this is true for me, then it’s certainly true for you too! If there are any areas in your life where you overcame fear with faith then I ask you, please don’t keep those experiences to yourself!  These are grace-filled gifts that have been given to each of us to be shared with others.  

You never know when your courageous story could be exactly what the Holy Spirit needs to heal someone else who is struggling!

So I ask you now dear reader, what fears do you still need to heal and redeem? Where is your faith greater than your fear?

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I pray you found what you were needing today. Please leave a comment below, I would love to hear how this post might have been helpful for you.

 Remember you are not alone! No matter what you’ve done or failed to do you are still loved unconditionally by a very merciful and just Lord and Savior!

May God Bless You,

Leslie

How did your family of origin impact your adult life?

 

For the first 40+ years of my life, I would have answered “No!” to that question with the justification of “what happened in the past needs to stay in the past, what’s the point of rehashing past experiences”.   Today, my answer would be very different.

 I learned firsthand how incredibly unhealthy it is for one to go about their adulting life, ignoring their childhood experiences within their family of origin. Why? Because left unexamined I can promise the people around you today are paying a huge price for that negligence. 

No one is immune to this reality.  No matter how good or bad your childhood was, we live in a fallen world.  What I can add is that my past does not define who I am today, especially as I've healed benign and cancerous hidden wounds, but for far too long it did have a silent negative impact on my adulting life. Whether I wanted to admit it or not. Welcome to the wonderful world of masquerading!   

I can now admit that I was so foolish all those years to turn a blind eye to the effects my childhood has played on my adulting life. Now I cringe when I hear someone boldly claims "Their past bears no weight on who they are today, so why bother to go there. What happened in the past needs to stay in the past."  Unfortunately, that is a lie they have come to believe.  That is also when a huge familiar imaginary sign pops up, flashing, "Beware! Beware! Beware!"  Why? Because diminished self-awareness is very very toxic. These patterns of behavior seep into every area of your life.

The Holy Spirit has ever so gently been showing me this truth over the past couple of years in regard to my own childhood. This toxicity of my own diminished self-awareness came to fruition during a season shortly after the death of my dad when I had to begin reflecting more deeply on the full impact of my childhood experiences. 

 Understanding what it meant to be, a daughter, of emotionally diminished parents, as well as the only extraverted sibling of four sisters, in an alcoholic family. 

Facing the realities of how addiction is not a solitary illness. This means that even though one member of the family may have introduced the addiction, each member is affected by it. Professionals fully understand that addiction is a family disease, and the effects it has on each of the family members are significant. Addiction can cause severe dysfunction in how a family communicates and interacts with each other. 

My alcoholic family of origin was no exception. To cope with the unpredictable behaviors of my dad’s addiction day in and day out, over the span of fifty-plus years, each family member has definitely adopted their own certain maladaptive patterns of behavior in order to cope with his addiction. Unfortunately, these behaviors to this day interfere with each of our abilities to lead fully healthy and normal adult lives.

 

During that season of facing my childhood realities and grieving my losses, I also had to overcome more pain and fear as they surfaced. The Holy Spirit used those memories from a completely different perspective to gently heal me from more deeply hidden wounds. Cancerous emotional wounds that had very potent and silent consequences on my marriage and the family of origin that my husband and I co-created.

I had to go back and reevaluate what kind of impact being a Third Culture Kid (TCK) had on me during the first half of my life.  This time the Holy Spirit showed me how my dad was the final thread that I used to keep a stronghold on my past life that was no longer mine to keep present.  What I learned was that while alcoholism had a major impact on my personal life especially within families of origin, being a TCK had more of a cultural stronghold on my life outside of my family of origin.  

Both were major losses I needed to grieve.  Both stemmed from my childhood and were hugely instrumental in keeping me stuck in my life as an adult. 

 

So, now I ask you, "How did your family of origin impact your adult life?"

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I pray you found what you were needing today. Please leave a comment below, I would love to hear how this post might have been helpful for you.

 Remember you are not alone! No matter what you’ve done or failed to do you are still loved unconditionally by a very merciful and just Lord and Savior!

May God Bless You,

Leslie

Are you a redemptive listener?

This is not a natural talent for me, so you could say I’m a work in progress when it comes to being skilled at being a redemptive listener. 

Redemptive listening is an important interpersonal skill that I've been developing over the past decade, as I have come to learn and grow through various typology systems, mindset coaching, and communication workshops. 

I can say confidently that having familiarized myself with many different typology systems there are some that are excellent, and there are some I would definitely say are not so good.  But with each good typology system, my eyes, ears, and heart have been opened to whole new worlds!  Each good framework was very instrumental in helping me to foster altruism in so many areas of my life.  

I learned so many interpersonal and intrapersonal skills that are simply not taught in schools or most families today. 

As I became more aware and knowledgeable about myself and others, I grew personally as a daughter of God, a wife, a mother, a grandmother, a sister, a friend, a teacher, a leader, and a coach.  After several years of studying and implementing different personality type frameworks, I ended up choosing to become specialized in one particular multi-faceted model that uses the Myers-Briggs framework at its core. This particular system heavily uses listening and observational skills. I also have been trained in Catholic mindset coaching which is what I use during my one-on-one sessions with clients. 

 

Personally, I would say the greatest gift I have received from each of these profiling tools was how they empowered me,  to know and accept who God created me to be in my own uniqueness but to see others through God's perspective and not my own judgmental biases. They each gave me a better understanding of the diverse ways God has hard-wired each and every one of us. Ways in which we each perceive and filter out information. How every idea, action, and feeling stems from a thought. 

Understanding these similarities and differences can be instrumental in how we approach controversial topics, solve problems or resolve conflicts.  I'm more respectful of the unique ways others are essentially motivated to say and do what they do. I am now able to acknowledge and accept others' differences without placing unrealistic expectations on them. This includes my husband and children.

As you can see these multi-faceted tools provide not only the vocabulary to communicate but the means to adapt contextually in different circumstances and still be relatable with people who are completely opposite. A very important skill for redemptive listening.  Typology systems are like bridges that can be used to connect with others who have vastly different and unique God-given strengths, talents, interests, values, temperaments, spiritual gifts, interactive styles, and personality types.  When we run into repetitive patterns of feelings and actions or reactions it is helpful to know how to practice Catholic mindset recon to root out the thoughts that are keeping you stuck. 

Still, to this very day, I find myself using these tools on a daily basis! And any time I learn after a workshop or mentorship that these tools have helped someone else to grow individually, and become a better listener and communicator, and as a byproduct, they've been able to save their marriage or heal a broken relationship within a family, I'm immensely grateful to God!  

It has been such a privilege and blessing to pass on what I've learned to others, so they can experience God's healing love, and His deep mercy, and see His goodness in others. 

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I pray you found what you were needing today. Please leave a comment below, I would love to hear how this post might have been helpful for you.

 Remember you are not alone! No matter what you’ve done or failed to do you are still loved unconditionally by a very merciful and just Lord and Savior!

May God Bless You,

Leslie

 

What's Your Genius Style?

My genius aka thinking style is Harmony/Perspectives. When I am healthy, I am connected and plugged into my relationships and the culture around me, and my narratives have meaning and purpose.

A few years after being introduced to the Dressing Your Truth makeover program, I became curious as to how these similarities and differences in movement patterns were being influenced from a cognitive perspective.  While I do believe Dressing Your Truth is spot on when it comes to typing our non-verbal patterns of movement, I did not agree with the founder's opinions or advice regarding the thought processes behind each of the four-movement patterns. 

During that season in my homeschool career, my oldest son was going into his senior year of high school. He was just reaching the age of college and career readiness, and he was clueless about what he wanted to do next.   That was ultimately how I came to deep dive into the Myers-Briggs profiling system, which is the foundation for Personality Hacker's profiling system. The MBTI has an assessment that can really help guide people to their best-fit type of careers. 

Personality Hacker's profiling system was profound in my own journey of personal growth in self and other awareness.  For those of you sojourners that are familiar with the Myers-Briggs indicator, you may really appreciate Antonia and Joel's approach. 

They are the founders of Personality Hacker and although this is a secular program, I cannot deny my experience of learning a lot!  In my humble opinion, Antonia and Joel are two of the most knowledgeable teachers when it comes to understanding the intricacies of the cognitive functions in the Myers-Briggs profiling system.  

On my own studying and exploration, I was blown away by how many other profiling models the Myers-Briggs framework crossed over with!  

To this day it constantly leaves me in awe with its fluidity, diversity, and flexibility. I've found that with each new crossover model, I am wanting to dive deeper and deeper into this brilliant framework of how the human brain perceives and trusts new information and then makes decisions based on that data. 

This newfound awareness led me to go through deeper training which specialized in developing and understanding how the cognitive functions work in tandem with one another and how they create the sixteen distinct thinking patterns known in the Myers-Briggs system.  

In my workshops, I get to help others learn more about their specific genius styles. This awareness will be profound not only in your own life, but in the lives of other family members!

Profiling Type culture in marriages and families gives couples, parents and siblings, greater insights into the necessary skills to develop so their relationships with one another can become more interdependent and integrated.

Now, dear Reader, "What do you think might be your best-fit genius style? Let me know in a comment below.

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I pray you found what you were needing today. Please leave a comment below, I would love to hear how this post might have been helpful for you.

 Remember you are not alone! No matter what you’ve done or failed to do you are still loved unconditionally by a very merciful and just Lord and Savior!

May God Bless You,

Leslie

Are you Dressing Your Truth?

 

Yes, today I can confidently say I’m dressing my truth, and it’s a big part of my self-care, but that wasn’t always the case. 

It started back in 2014 when one of my sisters gifted all the women in my family of origin, a program called Dressing Your Truth (DYT).  Unexpectedly this personal "makeover course" played a huge part in helping to heal a few unresolved childhood wounds, I had suffered, from growing up in an alcoholic family. It was also very instrumental in teaching me how to practice self-care.  

 

As I mentioned before addiction is a family disease, and the effects addiction has on family members are significant. Addiction can cause severe dysfunction in how a family communicates and interacts with each other. In order to cope with the unpredictable behaviors of the addict, each family member will adopt certain maladaptive patterns of behavior in order to cope with the addict. These behaviors will further interfere with each family member’s ability to lead a healthy and normal life. 

My family of origin was no exception, which is why I can never condemn this wonderful makeover program. It truly was the perfect typology system at that time, to give my estranged family the platform to begin embracing our differences and to provide each member with the positive vocabulary to begin communicating, with and about each other in non-judgmental ways. 

Now, personally, I was never the type of person who paid much attention to current fashion trends, but I am the type of person who values aesthetics and simplicity!  DYT provided an easy-to-follow system that taught me how to coordinate multiple practical outfits from just a few items of clothing. It taught me how to train my eye for colors that would look best on me. This included hair and makeup which are two things that are starting to change as I enter the second half of my life. 

I learned how clothing is like an additional layer of skin that we wear. Unlike our birthday suits, we show this 'skin' to the outer world.  DYT taught me how to take the 5 elements of style in dressing that most authentically represent my expression of energy and harmonize my interior patterns of movement with the non-verbal exterior patterns of my movement.  These practical ways of dressing were milestones above my frumpy look at the time, which aged me tremendously!  

 

 I truly believe the Holy Spirit used Dressing Your Truth not only to teach me how to realign my exterior to reflect my interior life without deceit or artifice, but DYT was instrumental in helping me understand what fun this kind of self-care could be. It definitely helped me to remove some of those old masks I was wearing out.

If you're in need of a makeover from the inside out, then why not give DYT a try.

 

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I pray you found what you were needing today. Please leave a comment below, I would love to hear how this post might have been helpful for you.

 Remember you are not alone! No matter what you’ve done or failed to do you are still loved unconditionally by a very merciful and just Lord and Savior!

May God Bless You,

Leslie

What do you do for a living?

                                        

Well, after graduating from Florida State University in Tallahassee, FL, back in my early twenties, my first career of ten years was in the field of physical rehab where I worked as a Therapeutic Recreation Specialist. I had the opportunity to work in hospitals and in both inpatient and outpatient rehab facilities. My area of expertise was in traumatic brain injuries, stroke victims, and various orthopedic surgeries. 

Joan Glancy Rehab Center 

While working with a variety of other therapists and doctors from different teams, I learned so much about the human body, how the brain works, family dynamics, self-care or lack of it, and many interpersonal skills and intrapersonal skills.  Those were challenging years filled with lots of growing-up experiences and firsts. The skills and knowledge I learned during those early years still continue to serve me to this day.

                                                          Photo credit: youngisthan.in

After a very fruitful twenty-five-year second career of educating all my children from kindergarten through 12th grade, at home, I'm facing the reality that in just a short three years I will be fully retired from this cherished season in my life. Honestly, how did the time fly by so quickly?  Throughout these years of educating so many different grades, ages, and learning styles, I also co-founded a homeschool support group with over 200 family members. There are so so so many fond memories of all the parent-teacher support group meetings, homeschool conferences, nature study walks, field trips, science and foreign language co-ops, book clubs, presentation nights, Shakespeare plays, etc., that we all participated in.  I had the privilege of teaching, mentoring, and working with many diverse families, new and veteran home educators, adulting individuals, teens, parent-teachers with unique giftings, and several small community faith-based groups.  

 

I must confess while unpacking and sharing snapshot summaries of my first two careers with you, I was able to see for the first time how God had been preparing me along for this third career. Honestly, I often find I have to pinch myself because what I am doing right now in my life is truly a dream come true!!!

I am incredibly grateful to God for trusting me with this career. It is such a tremendous gift and privilege to be able to teach the skills and coach married couples, not only on "how to be married", but on how to raise intact and engaged families of origin. Through the skills, resources, and sacraments of Jesus' Church, individuals are encouraged and equipped to heal hidden wounds, realign their lives from the inside out, and grow in self and other awareness. 

I currently work with organizations that are all driven towards one worldwide mission --- to redeem and strengthen marriages and families in Christ and the sacraments He established in His one, holy, universal, and apostolic Church. One of the biggest goals of this worldwide effort is to stop the growing cancer of divorce and family breakdown from spreading not only across America but the globe!! 

Best of all, I get to volunteer alongside my respected and deeply loved husband, of 33 years (at the time of this writing); as we bring these skill-oriented programs and our personal coaching to married couples and families not only within our own parish but in other communities and churches worldwide. 

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I pray you found what you were needing today. Please leave a comment below, I would love to hear how this post might have been helpful for you.

 Remember you are not alone! No matter what you’ve done or failed to do you are still loved unconditionally by a very merciful and just Lord and Savior!

May God Bless You,

Leslie