Interesting Spiritual Knowledge token…
The Number 5 stands for GRACE in Biblical Numerology.
I just realized that it was five years ago I was in my car accident. I was rear ended while at a dead stop by a vehicle going above forty-five miles an hour.
The discs in my neck liquified and started drilling down my spinal column and two discs in my lower back herniated to the point of no return.
I went through a period of time that I lost everything. My ability to do anything, my music, the three working musical bands I was in, my singing ability, my job, my relationship with my seventeen year old daughter, and eventually myself. It was a huge turning point in my life. God had a reason for that season, but I couldn’t see it at that time.
I had to have Spinal Fusion Surgery within 4 months of the accident. I had lost feeling in the top of my right hand and the bottom of my left hand and arm. I had back pain my whole life due to scoliosis and damaged nerves, but the accident expedited every disability I was heading for in old age. It was incredibly debilitating. But because I am a fighter, I decided to survive and move forward.
After the nine hour surgery, I stayed in the hospital overnight. Within four days, I took myself off of the strong pain meds I was prescribed. I fought to get out of the Neck Collar and was back to work within two weeks. I pushed myself so hard to physically heal that I did not give myself room to emotionally heal and lost my ability to find direction.
I pushed myself emotionally to look past all my losses and be strong. I did not want to deal with the pain I was going through. The problem was that I was not being strong, I was simply dismissing my pain. Burying it into a hole that I was not even aware of at the time. Unfortunately, this behavior has a tendency to come boiling up out of us later on. I wasn’t allowing myself to feel anything at all. I lost in every way possible. My relationship failed, friendships failed, I lost jobs and ambition, I lost my dog and even my business. I couldn’t play guitar anymore or sing… I lost Hope.
Just a week into my five year experience my daughter started to lose her battle with Bi-Polar Disorder. I could hardly find the ability to walk when she ended up in a hospital for ten days on suicide watch. My fiance and I did everything we could to encourage her. We brought in several new programs and counselors to help guide her back to Joy and nothing worked. She felt that Mom could not be there to help her and she looked to her father states away for support. She moved away and left a huge hole in my heart. Not only was I dealing with physical inadequacy, now I was a bad mom.
When my eight year relationship ended a year later, I stayed living as roommates with my ex-fiance. It was a temporary solution to a temporary problem. I began to believe that I had no ability to look forward to anything. Just four months later, my sixteen year old dog died due to cancer. Shortly after this I fell into a deep depression.
I started a tail spin that changed my life forever. In that time, almost two years after my accident I realized that God stripped me of everything I had built around me for security. I had built a business for the past eleven years that gave me my home, my life and offered my family with joy and a feeling of wellness and just like that, it had all collapsed. I felt like I had been living in a dream and woke up abruptly to find that none of what I saw as a reality was truth. I started dealing with an innate anxiety and feeling of shame.
Then when my life was at its all time bottom, Covid 2020 hit the United States. The pandemic swept through our lives like a tornado. It ended job opportunities, political stances, life goals and ambition. I had plans to move to Tennessee. And again, everything was put on hold.
Finally, in 2021 I am given the way to move to Tennessee. I uproot thirty-three years of my life and drive across the U.S. determined to find a new chapter and identity. I was finally ready to leave behind everything. My daughter was doing well on her own and we had reconciled our differences. Musicians had found new projects and were playing and happy. My friendships that were salvageable had been repaired and the ones lost were gone and forgotten. My ex fiance was moving his new fiance into my room in my house and I was being discarded, but I had lost all hope in what he and I had, so it was all good. I was ready to move on and find something new.
Arriving to Tennessee I had high ambitions. I had hoped that it was all behind me, the loss at least. I was tired of losing and I was frail to speak highly of the place I was emotionally. I moved in with a dear friend who had moved to Tennessee just a year prior. She invited me with open arms. I found a Self Contracted Project with an Internet Radio Opportunity and local musician. Within 5 months I realized I was working for a local con-man and lost everything again. I was left with nowhere to live, no money and hopeless.
I leapt into action with my logical fight or flight response. I do not fly from opposition or fear of failure. So, I just kept fighting, which by the way is not a great coping skill. I found a place to live on my Self Employment credentials. I took on a job that scared the hell out of me and got to work rebuilding. The job was for Managerial work for a fast food restaurant. I cannot express how much I would regret that decision just three months later.
Now, five years later I found myself sitting on an unfamiliar couch, in an unfamiliar apartment, in an unfamiliar town, in an unfamiliar state with very few friends and little to no prospects. I cannot express my anguish, my frustrations, my anger and my fear. I did not come this far to simply fail. I did not run this far to sit down and give up. I cannot give up.
Two weeks ago that was my reality. I was feeling hopeless. I was screaming at God pleading to understand why He had forgotten me. Pleading to understand His ways. Scorning my existence, my Faith, my Life. I did not understand why I was being punished and why I had to lose everything and why I couldn’t find a way to survive. My new job with this fast food restaurant was killing me. I couldn’t handle the physical demand or the emotional drain it had on me. It was demanding that I live outside of my moral compass and I hated who I was becoming. I had all but given up last hope. I was at my wits end. I had prayed, meditated, hoped and fought and I just couldn’t find another thread to hold onto. And just like that, I quit my job.
I found myself in this horribly unfamiliar place with no job, no income and no way to survive. It was all coming to an end. Then, I looked up again. I started to reflect on everything that had happened to me. Everything that I had caused to happen. Taking blame, shifting guilt, reasoning and crying out. My head was spinning out of control and I had no idea how to pick up and start again. I wanted it all to end. I did not want to try again. I did not want to keep fighting. I had no hope. Nothing made sense and I realized I was at the end of myself.
So, I started screaming at my Heavenly Father. I needed to understand what He was removing so that I could just give it up in order to survive. I had finally reached a place that I did not care what else I had to lose, as long as I was in his good graces. I wanted a good job, being who I was and not worried about all this loss anymore. I was vile in my speeches in empty rooms. I spoke of all the things on my mind. And slowly the Lord started to reveal my own ugliness to me. He revealed the why in all the losses. He revealed Himself and His plan and it was still so hard to see an end in sight.
It was the day after Christmas 2021 that God came through a friend and told me “I Care”. He told me I mattered to him. He told me that I mattered. That my emotions mattered and I had no idea how to hear that. I had become so strong that emotions had no factor on my decision making skills at this point. I had shoved all my feelings down, down, down. I was trying to live logically and I had created an existence where I was absolutely starving for creativity, energy, love and music. I was starving for Spiritual epiphanies and Glory. I couldn’t see God in Love or Love in God anymore. I had committed to a life of solitude, working a job I hated and just existing to pay bills and take Face Video calls with my kids. My heart had no part in my reality and I realized I was dying.
When the Lord started to open my eyes to his Care for me and my situation it softened me with a blow of tenderness that swept me off my feet. Eight days later I quit that crippling job. The day after I started this two week awakening.
It’s been tough, grueling and downright despicable. All of my ugly has come to the surface. I have spent these two weeks sobbing, screaming and angry. Yelling at God to answer me. Help Me. Admitting to the Lord that I could not do it anymore. When I reached the end of me, God began. He began His ways. He picked up where I left off. He became my everything again and I started to breath, to feel, to understand all that He had done in these short five years. I realized all the losses were building boundaries, understanding and spiritual knowledge in me that I never thought I needed.
So here I am, five years and sixteen days later. I write to you Brethren to tell you of my journey in finding Grace. To tell you there is Hope! There is change coming! But before change manifests itself in your life, it has to manifest in us first. Our ways are not His ways. I have realized how much I have grown… But moreso I have realized how much more I have to grow. Our Faith walk is so much more about His Love for us than our Love for Him! He has such a wonderful view of who we are in Him that we cannot even begin to recognize. We must keep pushing forward to see all that He has in store for us! To understand His Grace, we must come to the end of overcoming ourselves.
I will praise God all the days of my life. For His Faithfulness has prepared my heart and I am His and I am my beloved’s.
God’s Grace will walk us through the upmost pain and suffering we endure. His Ever-Loving Kindness will shine through every part of our darkness. His Mercy shall reign upon us all the days of our lives.
Keep looking up! If I made it through this journey, you can make it through yours. I am always here to share and talk more in detail about the ministry of Grace. For More hope and encouragement, Stay tuned to KeptCovenant.org
KEPT COVENANT 