Narrative Essay On A Trip To Texas
One Sunday, as I was driving back home from visiting my family, it began to rain. It was just me and the boys and they had finally settled down from fighting sleep and I entered into a place of worship and dialogue with God. He began to take me back to the moment when I wanted to mend the broken pieces of my life and fill the voids with a relationship with my father so bad, that I came so close to meeting him but God blocked it.
I began to reminisce back on the moment I visited Texas for the first time in my adult life (and probably ever) and I just had my first son 6 months prior. During my pregnancy I struggled with thoughts of abandonment, not feeling loved by my father and ultimately, always feeling forgotten and unwanted. The enemy would …show more content…
make me begin to wonder if my husband would become that type of man after we had our son. Would he leave me, would he ignore our son, would he move forward in life business as usual. I tried to find the balance between casting those thoughts out but also preparing myself for “reality:” The reality that left me broken for 26 years. Months prior, after finishing the re-release of my first book I was telling a college friend of mine how much I really wanted my father to be a part of my life and it had almost become an obsession. Very calm and cool he says to me, "What if God didn't purpose him to be in your life? What if this is God’s strategic plan that he was just the vessel to get you here?” At the time I didn't understand God in that manner but I was discerning enough to feel like that COULD be a part of God’s plan. That concept was one that penetrated my spirit so much so that I put it as a dedication in my book for those who struggle in that area like I did.
Scott was in a wedding and because I knew for sure we would be in Texas, only a few hours from where my father lived, I saw it as God opening a door for me to bring closure to that area of my life. Often the things we see as divine opportunities for ourselves, God sees as divine encounters with Him.
Because I saw this as a "God filtered opportunity", I made this entire agenda with his family. We were going to meet and I was going to have questions answered and maybe I would finally feel WHOLE! I was chasing this desire to be full that I didn’t realize I was chasing the wrong father to fulfill the job. This relationship with my father became an idol, something I worshiped and thought about more than anything else. This “God filtered opportunity”, in my mind, was God’s way of bringing completeness to my spirit.
As I’ve grown spiritually I’ve learned that the uneasy feeling when I’m trying to make a decision is Gods way of literally turning my stomach to bring me to a complete place of pause and reflection. But during this time I was still partying quite frequently and despite the weather being typical humid and random rain Texas weather, I felt very confident and excited about this plan.
The morning of our trip I woke up, looked outside and there was A FULL STORM OUTSIDE. I'm not talking about a few showers I'm talking about black skies, huge raindrops, thunder, lightning, wind: the works. To add to the major shift in the weather, my stomach was turning so hard I kept feeling like I had something stuck in my throat making it hard to swallow AND I felt uneasy: call this God’s BLOCK!
My prayer is always not to miss God when He shows up. We might walk in disobedience and finally take heed and receive our ah-ha moment but I never want to change the course of the plan He’s created for my life due to my pride deafening when He’s telling me, absolutely not Caneeka.
I spent that morning going back and forth with God because part of me KNEW before I left home that SOMETHING was going to happen to prevent this meeting from happening. Primarily because the word my friend spoke was so real and because of the dynamic of our friendship, being someone I hardly ever talk to, I knew it was God speaking though him. But the other part of me was yearning for that void to be filled: I wanted closure. I wanted to feel loved. I wanted to stop feeling like I was unwanted and forgotten. I wanted to feeling like the elephant in the room of the minds of those who might not ever think about me.
I wanted VALIDATION from a group of PEOPLE who could not then, or ever, validate the woman God has created.
I mourned in that moment, filling pillows with tears that resembled the view outside the window. I cried because I knew that He had spoken. Not just for that moment but for the rest of my life. That when we place more of a desire and emphasis for a person, place or thing and it's not God ordained for our life and the purpose He has for our LIVES, we will MISS the beauty in what He's trying to do in us, with us, and ultimately protect us from. 2 Corinthians 12:9
That was 6 years ago but that drive was a beautiful reminder of how far He's grown me from that moment of desperation for an earthly father.
He continues to strengthen me each day always reminding me that He has always been the one who fills voids. The one who has loved me then, now and forever. The one who embraces those struggling with an orphan spirit. The one who has remembered me before I was conceived and will never leave or forget me.
God continues to take these ashes of my life and make them into a beautiful testimony – From a girl who felt empty but now his grace and out pouring of love makes me whole.
God I thank you for stepping in and redirecting the focus of my prayers to be rooted in you and your heart and not in my pain and emptiness. I get lost in worshiping you because your version of my story is beyond my comprehension and there's freedom in that place of trust and surrender.
Whether it's a man, woman, job, physical move, friendships, school choices, opportunities that you think are once in a lifetime or a gut wrenching desire to be wanted by someone you feel should automatically want you, trust me, embrace the God led blocks in your life...
There's freedom (and something better than you could've imagined) on the other side of your "Here Am I" surrender... Thy Will Be
Done.
I began to reminisce back on the moment I visited Texas for the first time in my adult life (and probably ever) and I just had my first son 6 months prior. During my pregnancy I struggled with thoughts of abandonment, not feeling loved by my father and ultimately, always feeling forgotten and unwanted. The enemy would …show more content…
make me begin to wonder if my husband would become that type of man after we had our son. Would he leave me, would he ignore our son, would he move forward in life business as usual. I tried to find the balance between casting those thoughts out but also preparing myself for “reality:” The reality that left me broken for 26 years. Months prior, after finishing the re-release of my first book I was telling a college friend of mine how much I really wanted my father to be a part of my life and it had almost become an obsession. Very calm and cool he says to me, "What if God didn't purpose him to be in your life? What if this is God’s strategic plan that he was just the vessel to get you here?” At the time I didn't understand God in that manner but I was discerning enough to feel like that COULD be a part of God’s plan. That concept was one that penetrated my spirit so much so that I put it as a dedication in my book for those who struggle in that area like I did.
Scott was in a wedding and because I knew for sure we would be in Texas, only a few hours from where my father lived, I saw it as God opening a door for me to bring closure to that area of my life. Often the things we see as divine opportunities for ourselves, God sees as divine encounters with Him.
Because I saw this as a "God filtered opportunity", I made this entire agenda with his family. We were going to meet and I was going to have questions answered and maybe I would finally feel WHOLE! I was chasing this desire to be full that I didn’t realize I was chasing the wrong father to fulfill the job. This relationship with my father became an idol, something I worshiped and thought about more than anything else. This “God filtered opportunity”, in my mind, was God’s way of bringing completeness to my spirit.
As I’ve grown spiritually I’ve learned that the uneasy feeling when I’m trying to make a decision is Gods way of literally turning my stomach to bring me to a complete place of pause and reflection. But during this time I was still partying quite frequently and despite the weather being typical humid and random rain Texas weather, I felt very confident and excited about this plan.
The morning of our trip I woke up, looked outside and there was A FULL STORM OUTSIDE. I'm not talking about a few showers I'm talking about black skies, huge raindrops, thunder, lightning, wind: the works. To add to the major shift in the weather, my stomach was turning so hard I kept feeling like I had something stuck in my throat making it hard to swallow AND I felt uneasy: call this God’s BLOCK!
My prayer is always not to miss God when He shows up. We might walk in disobedience and finally take heed and receive our ah-ha moment but I never want to change the course of the plan He’s created for my life due to my pride deafening when He’s telling me, absolutely not Caneeka.
I spent that morning going back and forth with God because part of me KNEW before I left home that SOMETHING was going to happen to prevent this meeting from happening. Primarily because the word my friend spoke was so real and because of the dynamic of our friendship, being someone I hardly ever talk to, I knew it was God speaking though him. But the other part of me was yearning for that void to be filled: I wanted closure. I wanted to feel loved. I wanted to stop feeling like I was unwanted and forgotten. I wanted to feeling like the elephant in the room of the minds of those who might not ever think about me.
I wanted VALIDATION from a group of PEOPLE who could not then, or ever, validate the woman God has created.
I mourned in that moment, filling pillows with tears that resembled the view outside the window. I cried because I knew that He had spoken. Not just for that moment but for the rest of my life. That when we place more of a desire and emphasis for a person, place or thing and it's not God ordained for our life and the purpose He has for our LIVES, we will MISS the beauty in what He's trying to do in us, with us, and ultimately protect us from. 2 Corinthians 12:9
That was 6 years ago but that drive was a beautiful reminder of how far He's grown me from that moment of desperation for an earthly father.
He continues to strengthen me each day always reminding me that He has always been the one who fills voids. The one who has loved me then, now and forever. The one who embraces those struggling with an orphan spirit. The one who has remembered me before I was conceived and will never leave or forget me.
God continues to take these ashes of my life and make them into a beautiful testimony – From a girl who felt empty but now his grace and out pouring of love makes me whole.
God I thank you for stepping in and redirecting the focus of my prayers to be rooted in you and your heart and not in my pain and emptiness. I get lost in worshiping you because your version of my story is beyond my comprehension and there's freedom in that place of trust and surrender.
Whether it's a man, woman, job, physical move, friendships, school choices, opportunities that you think are once in a lifetime or a gut wrenching desire to be wanted by someone you feel should automatically want you, trust me, embrace the God led blocks in your life...
There's freedom (and something better than you could've imagined) on the other side of your "Here Am I" surrender... Thy Will Be
Done.