Hey there!
I hope everyone is enjoying their Saturday.

Well, today we OFFICIALLY start 30 Days of Faith:) – I introduced the project with my friend, Cady’s blog post ” You and Me”“,
which if you haven’t read it; you will want to re-read it over and over. It’s just one of them REALLY deep words of wisdom.
And regardless of what you believe, I KNOW you will enjoy it:)

Day 1- Dealing with Pain.

First off let me say, that even though you see a list to your right of people writing for ” 30 Days Of Faith”, it was Cady’s idea that I would also write all 30 days as well. So what you will see is a a little post from me in regards to faith, and then I will lead you to the next blog post.

We all have pain in our lives, and its funny, because I can hear the echo of ” Lean On Me” in the back of my mind as I write this. But maybe that’s really what it comes down to; we deal with pain; by LEANING on somethingelse.

What do you, or have you lean on to get you through pain?

If you are someone who believes in God more than likely you will answer, ” Oh that’s easy, I lean on Jesus.” but REALLY,
can you REALLY say that is the case? Do you REALLY and TRULY believe that in EVERYTHING that you face in your life?

More than likely though, we’ve all leaned on some sort of addiction.

As a teenager I was a cutter, I shielded my pain by cutting deep inside of myself, where that pain would stay and hide from the rest of the world. Where I could keep it close enough…that I could CONTROL it.
I’ve done the malnourished thing too; I would eat no more than 500 calories a day, to CONTROL what I looked like on the outside.
As an adult, I’ve had a miscarriage, and ate through my pain, CONTROLLING Who I had become.
I’ve done the drinking too; and it was to CONTROL how I felt on the inside.

There are other ways people deal with pain too. And most don’t see it as an addiction, but I TOO have fell into this.

you can’t CONTROL people. You can’t CONTROL what they think of you. You can’t CONTROL what they say about you. You can’t CONTROL what they DO to you…You can’t CONTROL how they FEEL about you…

All these ” addictions” are just merely a temporary shield from pain deep inside.

I had to learn on my own, face down on the floor in a puddle of tears that I wasn’t here on earth to live with pain,
I was here to deal with it.

There is a difference.

I would like to use my mom for an example here. She has Chron’s disease, and I’ve watched her DEAL with it since I was 3 years old.
She actually had some health issues arise recently, but it didn’t stop her from driving 4 hrs to see me and help me with somethings here where I live. She’s never let herself REMEMBER that she was sick. And whenever it did hit her, whenever she was in severe pain. I would watch her just take a pain pill from her doctor and go on with her day.
My mom has always had amazing strength in dealing with her pain.

We need to see that as a real example, only we need to see that God is more in control of how we think, feel, about ourselves then we could ever be.

I know even though my mom takes the pain medication, that God is the one that ultimately takes the pain away.

I stopped cutting when I realized that the pain I felt on the inside would quickly come to the surface when I took a look at my arms. And I would hear God’s voice saying, ” There is no reason for you to do this, who cares what these people think
about you, or did to you…I AM STILL HERE FOR YOU.”

I started eating normally when I realized that I had no energy for anything I loved to do, and my thoughts and feelings
were always completely negative, it made me depressed and just apathetic towards life. Everything.

After the miscarriage, and beings that I was a Christian, it was very hard for me to find that place with God that I had been in before. I felt like He was looking down at me and pointing fingers like I felt the rest of the world was doing.
But one day I was sitting down and I just said aloud, ” God I want to start from scratch.” and it seems it is all it took,
right away things started to change…my attitude changed. By saying what I had I had chosen to accept that I made a mistake, but what happened to me, it wasn’t a mistake. God was teaching me that things happen I may not understand, but its for a greater purpose than I can see. Day by day it got better.

I stopped drinking so much, because it would only make me feel drained and bitter the next day. It ultimately took away my personality and made me gain tons of weight. I was to lethargic to do anything.
So now when I drink, I have a glass of wine, and I am tired, ready for bed.

Bottom line. We cant’ CONTROL our pain, we just have to NOT let it CONTROL us.
We have to find things in our lives that make us smile.
For me, its blogging like this, its spending time with friends that love the same things I do,
its looking outside and seeing a beautiful creation, and then going out my front door to experience it.

My faith has taught me to deal with pain. It’s always going to be in my pocket. It’s apart of me. But it isn’t apart of my life to the extent that it keeps me from LIVING it.