Steps to a New and Better YOU!!

When you live in sin, trying to do it all yourself, your efforts don’t last very long before you realize that you need something greater than yourself to help get you through. For some, they turn to drugs, alcohol, sex, stealing, lying, food, shopping sprees – anything to help ease the pain, to lessen the burden. Me – I turned to God – the foundation of my youth. I knew that I needed him. I realized that nothing else that I could possibly think of could fill that void in my life. Nothing else could bring me TRUE joy. Sure, there were and still are things in my life that bring me happiness, but if only for a season – TRUE joy lasts a lifetime and is from God. Joy can only be found in Christ – it is in the eternal things – the things from God that will bring you true joy.

When I came to the realization that I needed to make some changes in my life, the first thing that I did was pray and asked God to forgive me in my foolishness and renew my life. I told him that I no longer wanted to do this on my own – that I could not do this on my own. I wholly and completely yielded myself to Him. I had to be honest with myself. Ladies, if we cannot be honest with ourselves, we are only hurting ourselves and keeping true healing from ourselves. If you want to be completely free from all the lies, the hurt, the pain, then you have to be honest with yourself and with your Heavenly Father. There is nothing that He doesn’t already know anyway, so why try to hide it? It was very important to me that I was honest with myself and that I knew beyond any doubt that I was making this choice on my own and not because of anyone else’s opinion or judgment of me.

I consider this moment to be my true salvation experience. I can’t explain the feelings that I felt that night, but I knew that they were very real! I danced and sang into the night with praise cd’s, crying out to God. I meant every word I sang. I felt the meaning of the words from the bottom of my soul. God had at this very moment saved me from myself.

The second thing I did was file for divorce and bankruptcy. Patrick had not tried to see or talk to me in over a year. I ended up paying for everything myself. Thankfully, the Lord allowed one of my customers, a lawyer to collect payments from me so that I could afford it. I made sure that man was paid every month…on time! Lawyers do not generally make payment arrangements and I knew it! I made sure I did not take it for granted.

The next thing I did was clean out my apartment of all the paraphernalia that I had, all the alcohol, cigarettes, recreational and prescription drugs, even my clubbing outfits went straight to the dump. I cut off my relationships with the guys that I was seeing and threw away their apartment keys and phone numbers – I was officially DONE with men, and honestly – I was okay with that. Then, I bought a newspaper.

I decided that I needed to find a church of my own. Not one chosen for me, not one that I tried to fit into, but one that would accept me, love me, and forgive me. Isn’t that what the church as a body is supposed to do? I found one. My only agenda was to get right with God, to dive into everything He had for me and to find out what that was. I found two churches in that newspaper that I thought I would like. I chose the first and decided that if I didn’t like it, I would go to the other one next week. I never did get to try the other church. When God places you somewhere specific, you know it!

I attended the service and liked it. The Pastor came up to me after service and introduced himself. There was another guy approaching us to introduce himself, but before he could, the pastor did it for him and in the process, let me know that he too was single. The pastor was trying to say that there were other singles in that church, but instead it came across as a set up. Couldn’t this pastor tell that I was DONE with men and I didn’t need to be set up? In fact, I was still married – about to be divorced – in only 1 month! I was just getting my life back together! I didn’t need another relationship to mess up! Not one of us in that little group knew what had just happened – the very thing that God had orchestrated and put together; for the man that the pastor introduced me to was William.