Learning to Ask

 One of the things I learned as a child was not to ask for anything.

I became very good at it.

I learned to silence my needs before anyone else had the chance to dismiss them.

I learned to take care of other people while quietly ignoring myself.

Somewhere along the way, I came to believe that having needs was a burden.

So I carried them alone.

For most of my life, I prided myself on being independent.

I rarely asked for help.

If I could find a way to do it myself, I would.

Looking back, I don’t think it was independence as much as self-protection.

It felt safer not to need anyone.

These past few years have challenged that belief in ways I never expected.

Physical pain has humbled me.

I have had to ask for support.

I have had to ask for medical care.

I have had to ask for encouragement on days when I had very little strength of my own.

None of it has come easily.

Every request has asked me to loosen another old belief.

The belief that I should be able to do everything by myself.

The belief that my needs don’t matter.

The belief that asking for help somehow makes me weak.

I don’t believe those things the way I once did.

But I can still feel them.

Healing has taught me that receiving can be just as courageous as giving.

It takes vulnerability to let someone help carry what has become too heavy for one person alone.

I have made progress.

I can see it.

But I also know there is more work to do.

Perhaps that is all right.

Perhaps every time I ask for help, I am teaching the little girl inside me something she never learned as a child.

Your needs matter.

Your voice matters.

And you never again have to carry the weight of the world by yourself.

Letting Go of Attachments

 Around the same time my relationship with God began to change, something else began changing within me.

I started making a conscious decision to surrender my attachments.

My desires.

My need for certain outcomes.

It didn’t happen overnight.

It unfolded slowly over several years.

As I looked back on my life, I realized how dependent I had been on people, places, and things to make me feel whole.

I used to believe that love was found in the excitement.

And happiness was found in the adventures.

In finding the next wonderful experience.

My partner and I traveled together, explored new restaurants, went shopping, and enjoyed discovering new places.

Those experiences brought pleasure.

But eventually, something shifted inside me.

My partner, Jack still wanted to travel, even though his health no longer allowed him to enjoy it the way he once had.

To my surprise, I found that I had simply had enough.

Not because traveling was wrong.

Not because I stopped appreciating beautiful places.

But because I no longer needed those experiences to feel complete.

I surrendered that, too.

The same became true of possessions.

I don’t deprive myself.

If there is something I need or genuinely enjoy, I allow myself to have it.

But I no longer feel driven by the need for more.

Somewhere along the way, I realized that chasing feelings could never satisfy the quiet discontent that once lived inside me.

Only surrender could do that.

As the attachments fell away, something unexpected took their place.

Contentment.

If it were not for the physical pain I have experienced these past several years, I believe I would be perfectly content living a quiet, uncomplicated life.

Perhaps that is one of the greatest gifts surrender has given me.

The freedom to discover that peace is not found in having more.

It is found in needing less.

When God Became Silent

 About eight years ago—perhaps a little longer—something changed.

The way I experienced God disappeared.

The signs that had once brought me so much comfort were suddenly gone.

The nearness I had depended upon became silence.

In the middle of that silence, I sensed something unexpected.

A quiet message arose within me.

“Don’t look outside yourself anymore. Everything you need is within.”

I wish I could say I welcomed those words.

I didn’t.

I had come to rely on experiencing God both around me and within me.

Losing that familiar sense of His presence felt like losing a dear friend.

To this day, I still miss the way I once knew Him.

There have been seasons when that silence has been painful.

Seasons when I have been afraid.

Seasons when I have longed for the comfort that once filled my heart so effortlessly.

Yet I continue to wonder if the silence was never meant to be abandonment.

Perhaps it was an invitation.

An invitation to stop searching for God somewhere outside of me and begin discovering that His presence had taken root within me.

That has not been an easy journey.

Some days I still long for the old way.

But little by little, I am learning to trust that faith can change without disappearing.

Perhaps God never left.

Perhaps only the way I experienced Him changed.

And perhaps this season is teaching me a deeper kind of trust—one that doesn’t depend on signs, feelings, or certainty, but quietly whispers, even in the silence,

“I am still here.”

The Life Preserver

 My first introduction to God came just before I entered recovery.

I had what I can only describe as a spiritual awakening.

I won’t even try to explain it.

Words could never do it justice.

What I received was something I had searched for my entire life without knowing it.

Faith.

For the first time, I experienced a love and a presence that reached places inside me no person ever had.

It felt as though God had thrown me a life preserver at the exact moment I was drowning.

And I held on with everything I had.

Because I was drowning.

I was drowning in pain.

In shame.

In guilt.

In self-hatred.

God became my closest companion.

I talked with Him every day as though we were dear friends walking through life together.

I trusted Him.

That trust carried me through some of the darkest chapters of my life.

Even after I entered recovery, there were devastating losses.

My daughter’s death.

The many griefs that followed.

Yet through it all, I felt God’s presence beside me.

I never felt abandoned.

It was as though He held me up whenever I no longer had the strength to stand.

Looking back, I realize that my relationship with God became the safest relationship I had ever known.

He didn’t shame me.

He didn’t punish me.

He didn’t ask me to earn His love.

He simply met me where I was.

For a woman who had spent so much of her life searching for safety, it was the greatest gift I had ever received.