Behind the scenes: I typically give a brief look into the relationship I have with the person I interviewed here. However, this weeks interviewee is significant and a special case. No light or heavy words will be left here to describe her. She doesn’t want them or need them. As she told me in our interview, “Honestly, I don’t want people to just see my past and clothe me in it.” Instead, I want to walk through her heart with you: why she chose Jesus, where she feels the safest, and what God has written on the Tablet of her Heart.
Where is your safe space?
“I don’t know. I don’t know if I have one. I don’t hear God’s voice audibly. But–this may sound weird–when I hear the wind blow through leaves and trees, I sit in it. I hear His voice in the wind.”
What did you envision life being like as a little girl?
“Not what it is.”
“I don’t think I necessarily had a vision for what I wanted it to be, but I did know I wanted it to be different than what it was. My dad was an alcoholic, so there was a lot of chaos.
What I wanted–what I still want–is security and stability.”
How would you describe yourself?
“I would say I am stubborn or that could be tenacious. When I talk to people and I share parts of my story, they tell me I am a survivor. I guess it’s true, but I just don’t feel it. I don’t think this is just true of me. A lot of women or moms feel this way.
People often say, ‘I don’t know how you do it!’
Honestly, I didn’t have a choice, but to live through it.”
Who has carried you through the times when you could not stand?
“My mom carried us when I could not stand.”
Faith also carries me; but, I can’t say it is an unwavering thing. Sometimes you have to hang on to another person’s faith when yours isn’t enough. He gives people to walk alongside you.
It says in Philippians 4:13, 14:
‘I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. Yet, it was kind of you to share my trouble.’
We are supposed to carry each other’s burdens. I love that because everyone always uses the first verse, but He also gives us people to walk through the troubles and the trials with us.”
What has God written on the Tablet of your Heart?
“I think I am just starting to figure out what He has written on it. The things I have done and the things that have happened to me are just that—they aren’t who I am. ”
“Beloved and renewal. I see them in the distance and He is trying to write them on my heart.”
Why Jesus?
“It’s funny, I didn’t really become a christian until I was 30. It was after I had my son that I asked myself, ‘what do I believe in? What are my traditions?’ Shortly after that, I quietly asked my mom to get me a bible.
“In every time there has been a big, hard thing, I think, ‘Really? What are you doing? Why me?’
We don’t always know the why’s of life, do we? I had the honor of interviewing a woman who has lived a life she never dreamt, never asked for. She carries a multitude of ‘why’s’ within her; yet, while we were together, she uttered a phrase that resonated with the depths of my soul.
“I also know that, I have to have hope. Because I have lived without it before. Honestly, right now, I am in that cycle of knowing He loves me, knowing He is for me, knowing He has a plan, knowing all of that. Knowing it, not necessarily feeling it, and not necessarily even believing it. But, I still cling to Him.”