nuggets from "No Longer"

I am being blog away once again by My God...again today.  If yesterday wasn't enough, He was over the top today.  His hand in my life, how He is aligning events and His timing is absolutely amazing!!!  

I am overwhelmed!!!!!!!  Truly overwhelmed.

The gratitude I have for Him is ENORMOUS!!!  I can't believe Him.  The last few days have been magnificent.  He loves me.  Truly loves me.  He demonstrates He Loves Me.  He keeps His word.  He is too awesome!!!  

My journey lately has been incredible!  I hope that I can convey everything on the blog because all I can do is get chill bumps and stand in awe.

This year has been a hard one.  And yet, at the same time, it has been an incredible one. 

God is working in my life.  Working deep.  He is tearing down the foundation of Misty.  He is taking it and reforming it.  The process hurts.  It is exposing.  It makes me feel vulnerable.  Vulnerable in a way I have ever felt before.  It is bringing feelings to the surface, feelings that I have tried to cover with just "pressing on, leaving those things behind".  It is shedding light on what needs work.  It is causing a wide range of emotions.  From deep difficulties to exuberant elation.  It is teaching me to learn from the details.  It is making me patient with myself, something I have not ever been.  I can be patient, loving, caring and supportive of others, but can't be of me.  It is growing me so much so that I now have developed growing pains.  A pain so severe that it is affecting every aspect of my life.  

It is making people stop and go, what is going on in your life?  I see God at work. I see your faith being strengthened.  It is making me have hope.  It is making me excited to see his work in you.  It makes me thrilled for you.  You have faced so much.  I believe he is going to be working great things in your life.

Yes, God is working in my life friend.  In my heart, I believe more changes are coming.  I believe we haven't begun to see what His plan is.  Some days I question Him and wonder why but the last few days, all I can do is step back and reflect at how amazing He works.

I attended the Beth Moore Living Proof Simulcast today with Ashley, one of my employees, and daughter of a friend of my girlfriend, Jennifer.  I woke up with the congestion of sickness worse than the day before.  My fever blister hurting.  Feeling washed out.  It is so hard to get enthusiastic when you feel like crud.  My heart wanted to be encouraged and learn, and at the same time my body said really must you do this to me again?  

As Beth Moore got started, I wasn't feeling the Spirit.  I prayed, Lord help me to receive today what you have for me today and what I need to hear.  

I texted two prayer warriors asking for them to pray too.  30 minutes into it, I was overwhelmed.  God had lessons for me.  Lessons I needed just right now, today, in my journey.

You see, I started professional counseling June 3rd.  I was determined to get through the hardest part of my story before my trip to Franklin, TN for Life Plan Coaching with Chris LoCurto and to not have to revisit that part of My Story when I returned.  I had a girlfriend say: Why do you do this to yourself?  Why don't you just let it flow as it should with counseling?  Why do you always set these goals for yourself?  I shrugged and replied, I don't know, I am always like this.  

God knew I am like this, but he also knew that I needed to be to that part in My Story or I would not have been able to do the coaching sessions that week because it involved a very dynamic part of my personal life, not just business.  

God also knew that I would come home from that time, refreshed, with a heart extremely thankful for the time I had in Franklin, ready to refocus on where He is taking me in my journey, resume counseling as I continue to work through telling My Story, and yet overwhelmed by the two days spent deeply learning more about me, feeling frustrated at how I continue to feel like I am not good enough and that I am a complete disappointment to you; desiring desperately to feel good enough, to think I am good enough, to believe I am good enough; and wanting to be thoroughly done with feeling, thinking, and believing I am NOT good enough.  

Despite the progress I have made in my life, I struggle to get past how to work through these feelings that happen without me even thinking about them.  These feelings are to the core of my being.

God knew, not even two weeks later, I would need to hear "No Longer" by Beth Moore.  God planned this message for me so that I would hear loud and clear:

God is NOT disappointed!!! 

God knew that though I had gotten a clear picture and vision of how I struggle to feel good enough, particularly very strongly in my Life Plan Coaching Session, that I would still be struggling to know how to break that feeling and be frustrated at learning to enforce and reinforce that I am enough.  I.Am.Good.Enough.  I must believe that I am good enough. The power to change this mode of operating is within me, with the strength from God because He has made me enough. Good enough.

God wanted Beth Moore to say and me to hear:  

Jesus still wants you! 

And when she did, that I would break down sobbing, utterly lose it, right there in a midst of over a hundred ladies, right next to my employee, right here and now today.  Nobody's wanted me, but awwwhhhhh, God wants me. 

God knew Beth Moore's Old Man Object Lesson would be used to have me see right before my eyes that I am dragging around the "Not Good Enough Old Man".  That my identity of not being good enough has been my belief foundation for so long that I am still letting it control me.  That though I understand it conceptually in my brain, it still is what is in my heart.  I haven't changed my belief system.  Yes, I have faced the lie and though I have buried it, I am still visiting that cemetery.  That I need to clearly understand I am No Longer The Same.  I am no longer not good enough.

Seeing God at work like this in my life the way He has been, only has me amazed.  

My God is Amazing!!!

Ashley & I
together at the Beth Moore Living Proof Simulcast 2013

Nugget #1:  Jesus has done something monumentally fantastic in your life!  You are not a constant disappointment. 

Nugget #2:  Believe who I say I am.  Believe you are who I say you are.

Nugget #3:  Jesus still wants me!