My Growth Journey

So many words come to mind when I think of the seasons of growth we go through.

Painful, uncomfortable, confusion, sadness, peace, recognition, happiness, reflection

Seasons of growth are not easy. I am currently in one myself. It has been 41 days since my season started. Since I was abruptly thrown into this without any warning or choice.

Do I know why it happened? Yes. I am reaping the consequences of decisions and choices I made 4 years ago.

Do I like this season? Absolutely not. I hate the emotions, the reality, the pain. Not only the pain that I am feeling and dealing with, but the pain I know I caused to others, to my husband.

Do I think this was needed for me? Absolutely I do, but I still don’t like it.

What did I do? That is a story for another day.

Growth forces us to do a lot of self-reflection. It’s not about staying in bed all day and crying, though admittedly, I did do that for the first 2-3 days, and that is okay! We need to feel our feelings as they come up, we need to sit in the heaviness of everything so we can process our feelings. How else do we heal, pull up or bootstraps and make changes if we can’t sit in the pain long enough to recognize the truths about our feelings?

These past 41 days, I have been on what I describe as a tidal wave of emotions. Sometimes I am up at the peak of the wave and can’t stop crying for hours and hours on end. I also have days where I am at the bottom of the wave, after it crashed, when the water is calm and peaceful. I am starting to have a lot more days of peace and my peak tidal waves only last for 30 minutes.

I dedicate every single day to myself now. I manage my responsibilities- kids, work, house, dogs- but then it is about me. My healing. My intentions. My needs. My truths. My desires.

I needed to change. I needed the slap across the face from the Holy Spirit in order to get me to recognize my “why’s”, my patterns, my trauma’s, my true feelings, my deepest desires.

So, here I am. Focusing on myself and doing the work I didn’t know was needed until it pushed me off my pedestal.

What am I doing? Great question. I am doing whatever feels right for me, in that moment and on that day. I live day by day right now. I have established new routines that I was drawn to and feel strongly about.

What I do daily, no excuses:

1. I read my bible every night at 8 pm. I dedicate 30-60 minutes of my night before bed to sit down and read.
2. I recently got back in my yoga. This was something I did for every night for years, until my family had a large move and life, lifed. I fell out of my routine and have been feeling the negative impacts for too long. That changed. Plus, I get nightly meditation with it!
3. I listen to my intuition and trust the direction I feel pulled towards. I have always had a strong intuition; I just haven’t always listed to it. I disregarded it way too often. If I would have listened to it more, I wouldn’t be where I am.
4. I do specific trauma therapy for my situation. I did a lot of research on my situation and found a group that just gave me the strength and motivation to follow my gut.
5. I rest when I need to rest. That doesn’t always mean sleeping, but it usually does. I am so emotionally drained. Most days I need to lay down and just close my eyes.
6. I learned how to regulate my emotions and ground myself. Hello emotional growth! This was needed and I never even realized how much.
7. Journaling. I don’t do this nightly, but when I have all the emotions built up in my head and body and just need to release them. Stop holding onto emotions! Just stop. It is not going to help you. Release them out of your body and then burn them. Watch all your emotions burn away into the universe. They are no longer yours.
8. Personal boundaries. Okay – this one is still in progress. I am still learning this one. It is okay to put your own personal boundaries up and to enforce them. Even for me.
9. Forgive myself. Every night I forgive myself. I have developed a self-mantra that I repeat to remind myself that I am enough, I am worthy, and I am forgiven. If others don’t believe that; that is their problem, not mine.
10. Pray. Not only at night but all day. Whenever I feel called to pray. Sometimes it is just a conversation with God. I just speak to him while I’m doing chores. Try it. It’s incredibly peacful.

I have a high sense of what I want, where I want to be, who I want to be with and what my future looks like. My intuition screams at me daily and it does not stop until I acknowledge what it is saying to me or I physically do what it is telling me to do.

I have new dreams that I am pursuing and I will make come to fruition. I have old dreams that no longer fit into my life that I am working on letting go.

I am trusting God and his plan for my life. I am leaning into my faith for everything I don’t know and can’t see.

PROVERBS 3, 5-6: Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.