I woke up this morning with this post literally running through my mind. I want to tell you why I am share the recipes, helpful tips, and encouraging things I do on here and on my Facebook page. I am sure I annoy people with them, but that is not my purpose.

My long term goal seems so odd for me to say this, but it is the truth. Something I have desired since I was a young girl at the age of 8 was to encourage and inspire people to live healthy lives. At 8 years old I knew by watching my birth mom and my sister that we were not a healthy family. We had so much emotional, physical, and spiritual abuse that it could be cut with a knife, it was so thick in the air around us. I knew at the ripe old age of 8 when I first got my library card and starting checking out my own books and I went to the adult section with all those psychology books and self-help books that there was something more than this. I was right. There was. I wanted to share, encourage, and help those I love and those I come in contact with to know this too and reach their full potential. The only conclusion that I have come up with is that God instilled in my heart at my young age the importance of people knowing how valuable they are. That the negative yelling, screaming, fighting, punching, and abusing each other was not the answers they were seeking. Neither was the drinking or drugging or having sex was going to fulfill them as people.

As I grew up those natural instincts inside of me started getting squashed as I went through my own hell and painful life moments and I didn’t start seeing this part of me again until I actually got sick. I share what I feel and know, I know God guides me to the books I read, the recipes I find, and even to amazing people that I am supposed to learn from, help, or even the situations I find myself in.

As I have shared in previous posts I want to start “Healing Voices” a place where voices are learned to be used and heard. Losing one’s voice can happen literally, like in my case, or even figuratively. Feeling like you don’t have one makes you feel deflated and so worthless. Not being heard, not being respected or valued as a man or a woman hinders the healing process and puts up the barrier to where God wants you to go. I want to give that to people, not by the normal therapies, but by art, dance, or even simply being heard by the right person or group of people. That is what is in my heart at this present moment in my life. I scroll down my Facebook page and what I see is the root cause of each and everyone’s complaint is that they are not feeling valued by others, but value doesn’t come from them. It comes from God knowing that He died on the cross, knowing that He chose to endure pain in order for us to be alive in Him should make us feel like the most amazing person alive. If we feel this in the root of our hearts and souls with Jesus then I believe that we would be able to show that to all of our relationships. We would be able to communicate with respect, love, and appreciation even when we are angry or hurt by someone’s actions. Sometimes when someone has an action against us, there is usually a reason. I wish that everyone would just share and speak honestly with respect to each other instead of combativeness. I understand that certain subjects trigger emotional outbursts. Heck I know this more than anyone because I just had this experience a couple of weeks ago with one of my neighbors. She did not deserve my passionate outburst over a simple pamphlet that made me want to vomit. I hate those conspiracy theorists who claim to be a Christian, when their own dogma is based on hate and punishment. That just makes my skin crawl and my neighbor just asked a simple question “did you get one of these?” I asked her forgiveness and even apologized. Letting go of the ego and saying hey I am sorry and this is why I did that goes a long way. Not admitting that I make mistake causes a lot more damage in relationships then pretending that I don’t make them. Even saying I am sorry that I wrongly did whatever to a child causes a lot of respect for the parent and heals the relationship. I learned this when I was 14 years old with my mom (not my birth mom). One morning, my mom accused me of eating an entire casserole out of the fridge in the night and when I said I didn’t she called me a liar and told me that God knew my sin. I was so fuming mad that I walked to school in 10 minutes instead of the usual 20 minutes it took me. My mom found the casserole in the microwave where she left it the night before and forgot she had it in there. What my mom did that gave me a lot of respect was she called the school to speak to me to apologize for her mistake. She didn’t wait until I got home, she did it right away. That healed our relationship, it helped us bond together. I felt valued by my mom’s simple apology.

I hope you all know that you are valued and loved and that you do have a voice even when it looks like you don’t. That is my deepest desire for everyone. Keep on breathing and fighting for you and don’t be afraid to say I am sorry, please forgive me.