In The Beginning…

First I want to help prepare your heart for what is on mine through a quick simple but pure prayer. Here is my prayer….

Heavenly Father we rejoice in today as it is a new day.  Help our hearts and minds to be fully aware of our surroundings as we go through our day today.  Help us to remove all negative chatter in our heads that could cloud a message from you today.  If it is the first time ever hearing your word through my post Lord,  may it be a Blessing to them.  I pray it offers to them a place of peace in their own story or a hope to fill the emptiness that may be robbing their joy.  Heavenly Father open your gates in a mighty way through using my story to relate to theirs and bridge it to yours. I pray for healing, restoration and courage to be overwhelming to the souls embarking on this journey with me.  In Jesus name, Amen! 

Where do I begin today? This is a typical thought a woman asks herself on a daily basis. Literally!  Well I do anyway.  As a woman we are made to multitask.  From balancing the single life, wife”ing”, mom”ing, boss”ing”…. our jobs consist of cooking, cleaning, driving, working, appointments, school schedules, friend sleepovers, grocery shopping, among so many other jobs, should I go on? 

We all began somewhere! Genesis 1 explains the beginning of time.  It’s one of my favorite books to study because the magnitude of wonder.  I can read it over and over again. It just fascinates me to know how the Heavens and Earth was created.  How God created Man and then Woman.  How he breathed Life into it.  How just a word from God was spoken and “POOF” there it was in all his Glory, the Sun, Moon and Stars. Just look outside at all the wonder around you.  I’m in aw of it everyday. Do you see what I see? 

Humble Beginnings….

Just like the beginning of the Earth and it’s being, so is the story of our own lives.  To be a part of a story that started with adversity from the very beginning, it humbles me. My mother was married at 16 years old.  She married a friend who was so kind to her. He Loved her so.  I know she married him to leave her life back home. So she didn’t marry him for Love. That was her first big mistake.  She and my grandmother were just alike. Beautiful, charming, full of life, exciting, spontaneous, energetic, the life of any party, literary.  Shortly after marrying the first man, she divorced him. On to the next one. With him, she had two sons. Throughout that marriage, she was not able to stay faithful. It ended and then she got mixed up with my father. Then I came along. In three years my mother had three kids just that quick. Three kids and no way of being able to take care of them adequately.  She was always unsatisfied in her life still searching and seeking the wrong things and getting mixed up with the wrong kind of people.  I won’t share much more of her testimony because of two reasons, it’s hers to tell, and unfortunately for her,  she is no longer here on Earth to say it.  She left this place 12 years ago at the age of 48.  So very young.  Without God in her life she ran it ragged. Her body just couldn’t keep up with her wild spirit.  I lost her long before that though.

My Beginning….. 

At the age of 13 years old I became the property of the Bluegrass State! I was originally from Elgin, IL.  I ended up in Kentucky when I was 9 years old.  After my mother had me, she went on to have my sister with another man and then I had a younger brother whom also had another man as his father. So I’m part of a 5 sibling group and 3 of the 5 have different fathers. My mother ended up meeting and marrying number 3 after all her children were born and his mother lived in Kentucky.  Hence the how I got here.  Long story short that marriage lasted 6-7 years before he decided he had enough. I couldn’t blame him one bit.  So all this time I’m being raised by a person who is faithless and as lost as a kid in the kitchen looking for the dishwasher. All you mommas know what I’m talking about! 

It was unfortunate for her because she too had the same wild beginnings I did except my grandfather an army Veteran was too stubborn to let my grandmother go.  I also think back then too that marriages tolerated much more than they do today.  My grandparents were married for 41 years before he passed away from his injuries serving in World War II.  

His passing was a blow to my mother’s spirit that just fueled the devils schemes.  She spiraled our if control and made so many bad choices that they all caught up with her. She left my brothers on their fathers doorstep and never looked back. She moved to another state with a new husband and 2 young girls. Alcohol and medications were not a good fit for her. I believe she had some mental health issues that she, like many others do, medicate themselves with substances that mess with their heads even more negatively.  

I ended up in court one morning in front of a judge pleading in a letter that I wanted to stay with my ex-step-grandmother.  Say that several times fast.  I was at an age where the abuse and neglect had me pleading for change.  The judge granted that my sister and I could stay with her until my mother got her life in order. That order never came. She gave up her rights in court a few weeks later and then left the state.  From that day forward I was to find my place, my identity as a child marked with bruises and battered was over.  But who was I now!

It happened on my 13th Birthday the last day I was to be in my mother’s guardianship.  I was exhausted from sitting in the dispatchers office until the early morning hours trying to decide for myself and my sister do I tell them that I want to go to my ex-step grandmother’s house before we go to a foster home. The dispatcher knew I had her in my mind but prior to that time my mother was being detained and in one last shot at her abusing me she placed her hands around my neck and was choking me telling me I better not call her. It took 3 officers to get her off of me.  So can you imagine a broken young adolescent girl abused in front of police how I must have felt?  

Someone out there reading this has a similar story of the beginning of their childhood like mine.  Beyond just the abuse that I sustained from my mother’s hand,  I also had been molested by a neighbor at the negligence of my mother’s. So I’m 13, puberty, witnessed all the men my mother had encountered,  molested, beaten, broken spirited and barley holding my head above water believing I had no worth.  

Through feeling so incredibly alone from a physical person I was introduced to God shortly after this nightmare was coming to an end.  I started looking at life in a new light. Even though I had see the world for what it is without God, I always saw a silver lining of Grace and Mercy. I had always felt with all the opportunities that I faced where I shouldn’t be here but I still am as a higher force than man could ever explain. I knew in my soul that there was a God before I actually knew of him.  I have my ex-step grandmother to Thank for the introduction to him. For her prayers and influence in my life.  She is no longer here with us but I know she is looking down with a big smile. 

You see in Genesis, the first book of the Bible, you can read about the beginning of time. As you read along you will soon read further into how the world became what it is today. How sin just took over the hearts of men and women.  How they turned from God and how they caused self-inflicted blows to their own stories by choosing Evil over Goodness.  

Let me hope that in this first of many posts you find this encouraging and not depressing in any way.  I’m encouraged every day by my humble beginnings. I may not know exactly what to do looking forward in my life, how I can raise my children to be God fearing instead of fleeting because I can sometimes get a little self righteous due to my knowledge of the word, which can back fire. I’m human in every sense of the word.  I fail every day to say and do something I should in the Glory of the Lord. The Power I have that others can as well is the Gospel of Jesus Christ who died so that I can live again.  I die to myself everyday waking up to a new day. I have more gratefulness than I did the day before because I know our life is a vapor.  I’ll go more in depth with that later.  

So I want you to go with me on this journey to do understanding your identity Through Christ Jesus.  The Bible App has reading plans. Come along with me while we read together Bible in a Year.  I’m having to go back and read due to a stroke I suffered last February.  If you have had a stroke and are reading this My Heart Burns for you! I get it! You are doing great! Keep up the recovery! You got this! 

In the meantime end this time with your own prayer to God.  You are Blessed. Know you are Blessed! Show Gratefulness!  Most importantly be Thankful to God for his provisions and his Sufficient Grace! 

Cassie