I grew up in a military family as a Navy brat. According to some of my friends my childhood was unique and exciting. We lived all over the world and got to experience things that most kids only dream of. My father was a Chief who expected perfection from his children and my mother was a kind, stay at home mom who loved her family more than anything. We lived everywhere, but we never had a chance to settle down and discover who we were. We learned to be whoever the society we lived with expected us to be.
That didn’t seem so hard to do because it was all we had ever known. Even when we lived in Northern Ireland, it wasn’t hard to morph into the group. But then dad retired…and we moved to a VERY small town in rural West Virginia. It’s a beautiful place with a very tight knit community and we moved there when I was in middle school. I didn’t understand the culture or the people and I had no idea who I was supposed to be. To make things worse, we had moved every two years for my entire life, so when two years was up, my heart was ready to go…but we didn’t. It was the only place I never adjusted to and yet, it was the one place I was forced to stay.
The years that followed graduation were a hot mess. I tried to go to college, fell in with the wrong crowd and did things that I’m not proud of. But I had a mom who prayed…and I had Aunt Margie and Grandmother Sue. These women of God spent time on their knees begging God to straighten me out, and eventually He did. Because of them, I get to give my everything back to Him. Everything, including my hot mess.
Scripture is filled with people who struggled with their own messes. Moses was a murderer, Gideon was a coward, Rahab was a prostitute, David was an adulterer, Miriam was a gossip, Esther was an orphan, and my absolute favorite…Lazarus was DEAD! Yet God found a way to bring all of these broken people into His amazing story of grace!
I pray that this blog touches your heart and begins to help you find the courage to share your story with someone who needs to hear it. Someone who needs to know that God can take their mess and use it to share His story.
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