Welcome to THE JOYFUL SURRENDER!

"But as for me, God's presence is my good. I have made the Lord God my refuge, so I can tell about all You do."

Psalm 73:28

WOW. I literally never imagined I would be doing something like this, but here I am. 😅

Welcome to my blog! This is a place where I'm going to regularly share love, joy, hope, whatever I'm learning, whatever the Lord places on my heart, more of my story and what the Lord has saved me from... all the things.

As an introduction this week, I'd like to share WHY I'm doing this.

I have always loved the Lord. If you've known me for a really long time, you know this to be true. Although I've always had a deep love for the Lord, just like everyone else, my relationship with Him has ebbed and flowed. I grew up with a legalistic background, and in my teenage years, my family and I moved away from that and into a faith where a whole lot more was permissible. I learned a lot about who Jesus really is and about his grace and love, and really how far it goes for us. And that was a good thing - moving away from legalism was a really good thing! However for me personally, it was like the pendulum swung too far from one extreme to the other, and I was not living my life in pursuit of holiness or weighing what was permissible vs what was beneficial for my Christian walk. This led to making a lot of bad choices, mistakes, and things happening that led to a lot of darkness taking root in my life as well. Eventually I started having panic attacks, and seasonal depression that got worse and worse each year over the course of at least 12 years. I also developed pretty severe social anxiety and a need to isolate myself.

In May of 2023, my husband and I both walked through the process of deliverance, and if you don't know what that means, it's what Jesus did just about everywhere He went in scripture. He went from town to town casting demons out of people. And for whatever reason, so much of the modern-day church thinks that the demons the Bible explicitly talks about just disappeared or that they can't afflict us anymore but I'm here to tell you, yes, they can (as long as we let them). And a lot of the time, they afflict us without us even picking up on the fact that it's them.

Partnering with unrepentant sin, especially on a long term basis, can be one of the biggest green lights towards allowing some of that dark oppression to take root, and that was in part my story.

Walking through deliverance, and finding the freedom that Jesus died for me to have, CHANGED EVERYTHING. It totally sparked revival in our home, and we moved from living a lukewarm-Christian lifestyle into a super Spirit-filled, on fire for God kind of lifestyle. It's been almost exactly a year now and since then we've seen more deliverance, miraculous healing take place, the total restoration of our marriage, and just a pure, authentic overall LOVE for the Lord and His word and His work and His people.

As many of you know, I had a career in real estate that I LOVED. I thought for sure it was something that I would do for 25+ more years. In September of 2023 however, the Lord spoke clearly to me and said I needed to walk away from real estate and pursue ministry on a full time basis. I spent months talking this through with people in my life that I trust, praying and asking the Lord for further direction, and over time He has delivered on that. He's made it crystal clear that He wants to use my voice to shout from the rooftops what He has done for me and encourage others to Him. And now, that's all I want to spend my time doing.

So here we are.

This has been a VERY nerve-wracking time. A time of uncertainty, wrestling fear and just really having to PRACTICE having faith that He had spoken and therefore He was going to walk me through - and to be completely honest I'm very much still in that place of practicing. Practicing trusting Him when everything doesn't always look super clear, or make a whole lot of logical sense, and when I'm still super scared to do this new thing He is asking of me. But He is asking this of me, and so I'm stepping forward in it!

I'm grateful to have a God so good that I can't wait to tell everyone about Him and all He has done for me. I'm grateful for how far He has brought me. I can't do anything apart from God, but I know God can do a lot with my yes. And I'm excited to see how much more He has in store for me, in this joyful surrender.