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.

Neuroplastic- What does This Mean?

 A few months ago, I was introduced to a word I had never heard before.

Neuroplasticity.

At first, it sounded complicated.

But as I began learning about it, something clicked.

I came to understand that sometimes the brain and nervous system can continue producing pain signals in an effort to protect us, even when that protection is no longer helpful.

In some strange way, my brain seems to believe it is helping me.

It has learned to stay on high alert.

To protect.

To brace.

To prepare for danger.

The heartbreaking part is that what may have begun as protection now feels like suffering.

I won’t pretend this has been easy.

It has been one of the greatest challenges of my life.

Every day I wake up hoping my brain and nervous system will begin to learn a new story.

A story of safety.

A story that doesn’t require pain to keep me protected.

I am incredibly grateful for the people walking beside me.

My doctors.

My support team.

My dear friends.

Their love has carried me through some very dark days.

But love alone has not made the pain disappear.

That has been difficult to accept.

Healing, it seems, cannot be rushed.

It cannot be forced.p

And it cannot happen simply because I want it badly enough.

So I find myself returning to the same place again and again.

Patience.

Compassion.

Faith.

Perhaps neuroplasticity also offers hope.

If the brain can learn patterns that keep it stuck in protection, maybe it can also learn new patterns that lead toward safety.

I don’t know how long that journey will take.

But today, I choose to believe that my brain is not my enemy.

It has been trying, in its own imperfect way, to protect me.

Now, little by little, I hope to teach it something new.

That the danger has passed.

That my body is worthy of peace.

And that healing, however slowly it comes, is still possible.