Have bad things happened to you?

Yes, absolutely!  Maybe the better question is how do you cope when bad things happen to you?

Almost a decade ago there was a season in my life when I thought I was drowning and suffocating in a series of bad things. For almost five consecutive Fall and Winter months, I was hit with one major tragedy (painful life experience) after another from the brain surgery of a parent, to the serious motorcycle accident of my child, to the unexpected suicide of a close friend, to the death of two loved family members.
 
It was during that time, I was given this quote by St. Teresa of Calcutta…

…while these wise words did offer some comfort, they didn’t stop the silent negative impact these events were having on my already existing seasonal affective disorder. I remember being completely exasperated and desperate for a break, after the fifth year in a row.  To this day the Fall and Winter seasons are still quite difficult for me.
 
I prayed so many times during those difficult years, pleading and asking our Lord, "Why did I have to experience all these bad things in my life and when were they ever going to stop?!” I remember thinking if there was some kind of lesson God wanted me to learn I just wished I’d hurry up and learn it so He could stop “kissing me”.  I would beg Him for some kind of neon sign or two-by-four to hit me over the head so I could get the clarity I obviously wasn't learning yet and the relief I was desperately needing! 
 
Fortunately, an unexpected answer to my desperate prayers finally came during the summer of 2019 after spending an unusual amount of time covering many Adorations, for guardians who were not able to attend their regularly scheduled weekly hours.

 

That incredible summer I was introduced to this beautiful soul, aka kindred spirit, called Sonja Corbitt. Known as the Bible study Evangelista! 

Sonja happened to be one of the presenters at the Archdiocese of Atlanta’s Eucharistic Congress. She apparently made quite an impression on several of the parishioners from my church that were able to hear her talk. It was their enthusiasm that piqued my curiosity so I did some research of my own and learned that Sonja happened to be a convert to the Catholic faith from a southern Baptist denomination. Just like my husband and me!
 
I found not only her application of the Scriptures through her L.O.V.E. the Word program, but her extensive knowledge of Biblical and Church history, as taught through all her books and Bible studies, to be such incredible gifts to all of us Catholics.  Actually, to all of us Christians!!

So, what does that have to do with my desperate prayers and suffering?

 

Well during Sonja’s talk at the Eucharistic Congress, she alluded to a Father's wound. In doing some more research the Holy Spirit led me to this incredible recording online of Sonja’s complete life-changing story about healing the Father's wound.
 
Afterward, I felt the Holy Spirit immediately convict me as to the reasons why all those tragedies, injustices, and life pop quizzes had been permitted not only over the past five years but throughout my lifetime to date.
 
Sonja’s talk helped me to see that I was not only saved and made holy through prayer, the Eucharist, and the sacraments of the Church but “God was sanctifying me mainly through the sacrament of living… whatever happens to me — good or evil — all God asks is that I face it whether it is just or unjust, logical or illogical, reasonable or unreasonable”.
 
It didn’t mean I had to condone the evil inflicted on me or agree with the injustices that were done or put on masks to try and cover the pain and suffering. All I was asked to do was face them and only, when possible, change them.
 
Every time I disassociated and masqueraded to avoid facing the pains, fears, and hurt of the emotional realities, I had suffered yesterday, today, and tomorrow, I was like “the dog who returns to its vomit” (Proverbs 26:11) and this was definitely not following God’s will in my life.  My vomit may have looked different than Sonja’s, but like all vomit, it destroys the relationships in our lives!!
 
This ultimately meant that I needed to acknowledge all my fears and the emotional pains associated with past unresolved grief, losses, tragedies, and unjust circumstances. In theory, this sounded super easy, but in actual application, it definitely has not been!
Then some years later the Holy Spirit led me down another deeper healing path where I learned how to find the root causes aka uncover the thoughts behind each of my inflictions.
 
I’ve learned that not only was “this how I was going to carry my own cross through the Garden of Gethsemane with Jesus”, but this was how I could 'set my neighbor free'.
Did you know purgatory is something we can all do on this side of Heaven? And it can actually be more meritorious. This has been a reprieving thought I hang onto whenever I’m faced with carrying another cross through my garden with Jesus. 
 
I was reassured this was not a purgative journey that needed to wait until after my death, nor was it ever going to be one I could do on my own. It has been a journey of redemptive healing that I take with our Lord, one day at a time.  Ultimately this is now my welcomed redemptive suffering.

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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

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

What fears do you suffer from?

Unholy anger used to be one of mine until God freed me. How is anger fear based? Because under every unholy anger outburst is repressed hidden fear. 

I spoke about burying my fears and numbing my pain, in this previous post. One of the repercussions of not healing my childhood survival anger was that it eventually grew into unholy adulthood anger.  Then sporadic bouts of rage became habitually infused into parts of my everyday life.  There came a point when I believed I was never going to be freed of this bondage. 

Unholy ‘anger' by its very nature can feel powerful and in a twisted misperception it can make a wounded soul feel like they’re in control, but gratefully God loved me too much to let me stay stuck in this unholy anger. 

It took many trials, of God patiently permitting Satan and his evil dominions, to subtly turn the patches of my dry barren land, with all its hidden fears and unresolved grief into their personal playgrounds before I could courageously face and overcome these painful childhood realities, through Christ's persistent strength and love.  

I’m sorry to tell you this, but there isn’t a single personality type out there who won’t be susceptible to the same victimization if loss and grief go unacknowledged or unresolved in their lives.   

In my case, this unholy anger became my new best friend -- my security blanket -- my protection -- my shield -- my strength from way way back in my early childhood. I came to believe this false sense of security over many many years.  Unfortunately, my younger teenage self had become trapped aka enslaved and blinded by years of unresolved grief and loss, and I WAS CLUELESS.  

I took on the false belief and inner vow that being an angry, insensitive, unlovable, and unwanted person was just a permanent part of my identity. Even after years of counseling, while much of the pain and guilt, and shame around my alcoholic family were addressed, this tremendous childhood loss and grief went completely unacknowledged and unresolved, until my early midlife years.  

I went on living this lie for a large part of my adulting life until I started doing some inner healing work to break those inner vows. I was able to become even more detached from these lies after I attended a grief support group at my church, and was made aware for the first time of my huge unacknowledged childhood losses. In the counselor’s words, “My childhood identity was ripped away from me”.  Those were really strong words. It was during that season that I came to the full realization of how those old patterns of childhood survival that grew into adult-sized habits had stopped working a long long time ago.

 There was a very wounded and afraid part of me that had been carrying a very very heavy load of unreasonable guilt, unacknowledged loss, and unresolved grief for far too long!

That load was toxic and only served to poison the people around me, in particular the people I loved the most in my life. This also meant loving my neighbor as myself (Matthew 22:39) had become very problematic.  Today my remorseful heart aches for those who had to walk lightly on eggshells around my “vacillator love style”.  I pray they will come to forgive me as the Holy Spirit continues to heal those hidden fears and wounds, in all of us.

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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