healing hooves

What Being A Overcomer Means

2006-11-28T09:21:00.000-08:00

Believer who doesn’t quit no matter how hard the battle seems, they always stand firm when others have already ran. Always Getting Up Again, Rising Again, and seeing the vision of what God has in store for your life, Not what Man is trying to tear down. When all things seem impossible, and things have gone astray, not letting that stop them, because they heard the voice of God say "Remember I have already given you the "Land"." Knowing the being Victorious means having the "Right Attitude Of The Heart At All Times". That there is NOT EVER any reason for them to ever Run from anyone or any situation ever again, because they are as equally loved and respected by God as everysingle person, creature, and creation on this earth, and that helps them when they are being attacked not to attack back. It is growth, and validating that they are growing with God each and everyday....................That is the most awesome thing to Me to experience...........................sb

dare to dream of meeting your hearts longing

2006-11-25T17:34:00.000-08:00

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your hearts longing. It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive. It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals, or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain. I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, or to remember the limitations of being human. It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true, I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. I want to know if you can be faithful and therefore trustworthy. I want to know if you can see beauty, even when it is not pretty every day, and if you can source your life from its presence. I want to know if you can live with failure, yours or mine, and still stand on the edge of a lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, "Yes!" It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done for the children. It doesn't interest me who you are, or how you came to be here- I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back. It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself, and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments. May 1994

2006-11-22T09:17:00.000-08:00

Things I Am Thankful For For my two wonderful daughters. For a Heart that can stay strong even in the toughest of times, because my heart knows now that I am a loving child of God. That even though my car broke down, found out financial situation was worse than I ever realized, that still I kept my head up and Faith Strong, and God took care of all my needs. That even while I was in that state of uncertainty I still found ways to help others who are in need too. That I have wonderful friends, who I now call family who tell me they Love and care for me and my family all the time. For a job that understands the meaning of Family First. For waking up each day looking forward to what it is going to bring.

cool reflection on raising a child with a disibilty

2006-11-09T09:10:00.000-08:00

I read this and it is so true, it made me go back and reflect when Jesse my daughter with Spina Bifida was born, and how I felt this way in the beginning, and how we have learned, and growed in our journey as a family now. I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this...... When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting. After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland." "Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy." But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay. The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place. So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met. It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts. But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned." And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss. But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.

Taking a break

2006-11-05T17:10:00.000-08:00

I wanted to find the perfect pretty picture to post today, because it will be here for awhile. So I found this picture of a cute dog made of flowers. I am going to take some time to visit with God on the direction He wants for my life. I have been in recovery for three years, and my heart feels so full of life again. This time it is filled with life with the love of God too. So I want to honor this new heart that God has worked hard with me to restore. In the beginning of my recovery I took weeks of just being quite and listening because I did not know God, and I just did not know what else to do. So I want to go back to that now, and figure out what it is I am going to do with all this love, hope, faith, and Grace that has been given to me. I will write from time to time, and want anyone that reads this to know I Sonja Brooks am looking forward to tomorrow, and the weeks to come, what lies ahead actually excites me, and to be able to say in the future God I do this for You is something that I just can't wait to happen...............YSIC Sonja

The Beauty Of The Earth

2006-11-03T06:45:00.000-08:00

Spring passes and one remembers one's innocenceSummer passes and one remembers one's exuberanceAutumn passes and one remembers one's reverenceWinter passes and one remembers one's perseverance.- Yoko Ono, Season of Glass There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven -A time to give birth, and a time to die;A time to plant and a time to uproot what is planted.- Ecclesiastes, 3:1-2 Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature— the assurancethat dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.- Rachel Carson For eternally and always there is only one now,one and the same now; the present is the onlything that has no end. - Erwin Schrodinger Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil paintingand autumn a mosaic of them all. - Stanley Horowitz

What kind of REST are you getting

2006-10-29T17:11:00.000-08:00

What kind of REST are you getting Running, Exhaustion, Stress Temptation. The Rest we get when we live according to what the Human Race requires of us. We work all week, dealing with what the world throws at us in our work, in our homes, and just in our personal lives. Then we it comes to our weekends we spend the 6th day catching up on all the things we missed doing because of our weekly schedule. By the 7th day which is suppose to be our day of rest, we do take a few minutes to just relax but we are still finishing up the chores so we will not have to deal with it next week, and after that we have to start getting ready to prepare for starting that work week coming. Seems living in that world we do not have much time for rest. All the word rest means to us is Running, Exhaustion, Stress, which leads to the Temptation in Life that lead us even further away from the rest that God wants for us. A restless heart leads to a reckless life . We need to learn to submit our schedule to God's wisdoms, it is necessary for us to operate at an optimal level. Restoration, Energy, Spiritual fitness, Tribute to God Gods REST for us consist of restoration on that day we choose to submit to his schedule for us. We do that by being still and listening to what he has to say. Psalms 23 verse 2 & 3 states: 2 He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, 3 He restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his names sake. I ask what are your still waters you seek to restore your soul, where are you green pastures to lie down in to seek Gods wisdoms. It is a must that we find at least one full day to be quiet in a calm peaceful place to get spiritual restorationon. By doing that we receive great new levels of Energy, the kind of energy we need to go out and face the challengeses that the world throws at us daily. This makes us spiritually fit, and in the end being all that you can be for YOUR LORD is the ultimate Tribute to God. So I say Rest in the Human Race losses Life, but Rest in God's Place gains Life.

Don't Be Afraid Of Suffering

2006-10-22T16:06:00.000-07:00

This Sunday I started my new church experience with United Methodist. I am so glad I have learned to listen when God prompts me in new directions now. I have felt God filling new parts of my inner soul these last few months, and at the same time I felt myself acting like that pervarable stubborn mule with his seat planted to the ground as he trusty lead person was trying to bring my him safely. That has been me off and on these last three years, more on than off I would have to say. I am stepping up more and letting my own trusty lead(GOD) have the reins. I have to say I was truly touched as the Pastor spoke of not being afraid to struggle. He told many stories about life and struggling and ended all with God will take care of You. There is a verse he read that I loved, and it goes. Do not fear what you are about to suffer... we boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not dissapoint us....revelation 2:10, and romans 5:3 In the past my struggles made me weak, sick, and came close to producing death for my own soul. That was when I did not understand, because I did not know God. While stuggling still scares me, I know my struggles will not last forever, God will take care of me, His love is everlasting, his promises does bring me hope thru the hard times now. I think I am going to like this new church of mine. My young daughter likes it too. These feelings stirring inside of me I know are the things that God is preparing in me to help me pay forward what he has given me in my last three years of recovery. I am glad I found a church that makes me want to go into the depts of those things stirring in me and explore what it is God is doing there. I am looking forward to the future for me and for my family. God's Love is an amanzing thing. Sonja

and the journey begins

2006-10-19T06:30:00.000-07:00

Wednesday Oct. 18, 2006 a day to remember. For about 6 months now I have been searcing for the answer to help my daughter find her way to start her own little journery to God. I have been on mine for three years now, and came to the realization it is time for me to step up to the plate and help do for my kids that my wonderful christian family has done for me. My 12 year old is wheel chair bound with spina bifida. She is very quite, timid, and shy when amoung new people and enviorments. At the beginning of my recovery she did go to church with me, and everyone was nice to her. Still Jesse told me Mom, I just do not feel that I belong here. The people are nice, they come to me and greet me, then they just sit me in the corner and expect me to be the nice girl that just gets to spectate and never be involved. Now I know alot of that is because she is so shy, but also in my opinion if you are going to have teaching for all children then you should forcast ahead of time for those with special needs, if you are going to invite them into your fellowship. So me being the mom that caters to all Jesse's emotions, and sometimes that is a negitive thing even though I think I am keeping her safe. I stop going to church so she would not have to, and on the occassion I did go I let her stay at home with big sister. That is another story in itself. I found a church called United Methodist, and they even have on their web site, special needs ministry. So I did some calling lost of e-mailing, and made arrangements for Jesse to go to their Wednesday night fellowship class, before us starting to church that following Sunday. Last night was her first Wednesday night, and when I got home big sister was coming her hair while Jesse was sitting in the wheel chair crying and saying please do not make me go. I did make arrangments for her best friend to go, and while she still did not want to go, doing that did get her out the door. We got to church, and I left her and her friend, with big sulky frowns and sad faces with the group of kids and leader. It was so hard walkng away from that, and just leaving her there being so sad. Two hours later I go and pick her up, and she is with three other girls just laughing and having a good ole time. I was so happy to see her having that kind of fun fellowshiping with kids her age. She talked and talked about all the kids and what they did, and even ask about Sunday. I said do you and Narussia want to go back next week, and they said Yes. So here we are starting a new adventure with God with the children. I am excited for Jesse and Narussia. I will keep you posted in their progress in days to come. God is amazing. Sonja

Long Black Train By Josh Turner

2006-10-17T07:32:00.000-07:00

There's a long black train Coming down the line. Feeding off the souls that are lost and crying Tails of sin only evil remains. Watch out brother for that long Black Train. Look to the heavens, You can look to the skies. You can find redemption, Staring back into your eyes. There is protection and there is, Peace the same burn in your ticket for that Long Black Train. Cause theres victory in the Lord I say, Victory in the lord. Cling to the father and his holy name, and dont go riding on that long Black Train. Theres a engine there on that Long Black Train. Making you wonder if your ride is worth the pain. He's just a waitin on your heart to say let me ride on that long black train. But you know theres victory in the Lord I say, Victory in the lord. Cling to the father and his holy name, and dont go riding on that long Black Train. Well I can hear the whistle from a mile away. It sounds so good, but I must stay away that train is a beauty making everybody stare, but its only destination is the middle of nowhere. But u know theres victory in the lord I say, Victory in the Lord. Cling to the father and his holy name, and dont go riding on that long Black Train I said cling to the father and his holy name and dont go ridin on that black train. Yes watch out brother for that long black train The devils a ridin that long black train.

MeMe Five Things

2006-10-16T08:23:00.000-07:00

Five things I would do if I had 5 minutes to myself..... 1. Take a fishing pole and a lunch and go to a stock tank to do some good ole fishing 2. Go to the horse lot and just sit and watch the chickens, goats, and horses play and eat(I do that daily all by myself it is great) 3. Go and get my nails done, hadn't done that in years 4. Get some candles, bath oil, and have a long hot bath, and this one I would give 30 minutes instead of 5 5. Go to my computer and write, finish my book healing-hooves. Everytime I get close to finishing, I seem to have more to say. Five Items I'd love to get rid of..... 1. The fear from my girls hearts about lifes stuggles, we are working with God on this one daily 2. Getting all this weight off of me so I can go out and enjoy life with the girls more 3. The doubts that my friends have that keep them from going to their next step of recovery 4. Dysexia, and all spinal cord birth deffects 5. World hunger, especially for the children Five Items I would'nt part with... 1. My Childrens love 2. My passion for writing and telling my story 3. My extended family 4. Friends who deeply love and accept me. 5. God Five words or phrases I would love to hear....... 1. For my mom to say I am sorry 2. For my oldest daughter to say I am ready to leave this darkness and come to the light with you and Jesse 3. From my work, great job and now it is your turn to go to the next level of success 4. From my friend Sam, I am having the surgery 5. From Me, I am woman hear me roar, This is a good meme, it makes you think, I tag anyone who needs something to do today.

making liberty in christ a reality in me

2006-10-12T07:24:00.000-07:00

Understanding the meaning of mind, soul and spirit being complete with God. Equations that will equal liberty: This was my study last night in Breaking Free. It is fascinating to me that you can hear words spoken over and over, matter of fact for me it has been three years now. I have done all the steps to my recovery, listen to the sermons on Sunday, hear God speak thru my beloved friends, and still I always seem to be off in the balance of completion with my mind, soul, and spirit. Then God came to me in the most profound way last night. I for the first time understood why, why my life began as it did, why it went in the direction my parent choose for me, and why it is changing in the awesome direction God is leading me in. I also for the very first time had to mourn in great sadness for my own parents, and while that part did make me very sad, it also took away a tremendous sense of why I was always so unbalanced within my own self. I hope this will make sense to you. It is such a huge thing for me. My lesson last night: When I was created it was by God's truth, and I was a pure newborn babe, ready to be molded for all his glory. Then came along my parent’s truth. While they came to this world just as I did, they however changed the direction of what they wanted their truth to be all about. This is where the equation comes in. My parent’s truth soon became controlled by their experiences in life, and the environments that they choose to be surrounded by. They choose their own perception of truth by that equation, and their own selected memories soon distorted the truth more and more. They also choose for their surrondings not to include the teaching of God's, and choose to live by societys example of what goodness means. One big thing too. Since their truth had none of God truth to balance their inner souls, their lives became incomplete always. Satan lies began to hold them captive, and they choose those lies to build my own foundation, which took me away from God's truth that God wanted me to be molded by. This made me be held by Satan’s lies also for many many years. I forgot the goodness that God created in my heart, soul, and spirit on the very day of my own birth. Here is the good thing though. The next equation. God’s truth is greater than my own truth. So I begin to learn some of God’s truth and that made me feel better. I started to be a good person again. I learned that all the things my parents told me that God hated me for, all those things I could be forgiven for, and God never hated me, he just needed me to understand the total equation for Liberty. It was last night that I not only realized that I am a better person now since my recovery, but that also that goodness that God created in me at my birth, has always been in my soul, my heart, my spirit, it was always there. I just forgot God’s truth, when I let my parents truth became mine. What freedom I felt when I finally got that last night in all of me. My truth plus the truth of God that I now know embrace love and live does equals freedom for me. I then at that very moment became very sad for my parents for the first real time. My dad died two years ago and when he died he had his truth, but none of God’s truth in him so he died incomplete. That made me cry for him in a true sense of loss for his own spirit and soul. My mom well she is still alive but also chooses to live with her truth only. She does go to church I hear, and I do pray for her, and will now even harder because I want for her what God has given back to me. Freedom. I woke up this morning still the same Sonja as I was yesterday, on the road to recovery, being excited for the next adventure that comes my way on this journey with God. And oh yea one more thing. I feel a new balance in my life, one that I know is going to take me to new levels with my Friend God. I am grateful for my friend Jan who ask me to do this study with her, that gave me a new breakthrough for my life. I know this study of God’s words was the necessary thing to help me in making my liberty in Christ become a reality for Me.

For Paulette

2006-10-11T10:57:00.000-07:00

This post today is for my friend Paulette, I Love You My Sister “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze. For I am the Lord, your God, the Holy One of Israel, you Savior’” Isa, 43:2-3 To me my good friend Paulette and I know to you too this is saying His presence is the basis for courage in our storms. I know the winds are raging with you now, and the waves in the storm are higher than ever, but God he is over both the wind and the waves. Sometimes it is in the most extreme of storms that his PRINTS are seen the most. He is in this with you I know you know that, and he loves you because you are created in his image and all his glory. We Humans will probably never learn to enjoy our storms, but isn’t it an awesome thing that we can learn to enjoy God’s presence in the storms of our lives………..Praise God…………and thank you for being my friend Paulette………Sonja

Being Satisfied Completely

2006-10-06T10:14:00.000-07:00

I was asked this question in my bible study class today, and have to say it really hit me hard. This is my first bible study since coming to God, and I am still new to learning all the words of God’s readings from the bible, and having to read the scripture that went along with this question brought back some hard memories for me. Question: Is your soul your spirit your own inmost place the real you entirely satisfied with Christ. Verses Isaiah 55 1-2 Come all you who are thirsty come to the waters and you who have no money come buy and eat Come buy wine and milk without money and without cost Why spend money on what is not bread and your labor on what does not satisfy. The definition for Satisfied as stated in my book….to fill, accomplish, the filling of something that was empty, the act of replenishment as well as the experience of satiation. I guess I could have done the easy thing and said Oh Yes I am so blessed and my spirit is full and satisfied, but there is this one thing that keeps getting in my way. This is the one thing I do know is for certain....Not only is God’s truth and absolute necessity in my progress for recovery, but my complete truthfulness is also a necessity for my recovery. So I have to say No to this question, I am still confused and scared about do I just say God here it is take it……….or does God expect me to use this Free Will gift he gave me and figure out how to deal in an earthy way and still stay Godly with HIM. This is so confusing to me. In the book is says………why do we work so hard for things that are never enough, can never fill us up, and are endlessly insufficient. When I read things like that, I look at my life as an example………….I work hard, but I do not get to know about the things that are insufficient, or never enough, because I still struggle with just the basics. Basic survival for just living, and being the soul provider for me and my girls. I hear from people all the time……….well Sonja that is just life, 80 percent of people are just like you it will always be that way for some. So for me to be satisfied in my heart, mind, and soul do I have to know what Gods limitations for Sonja is. If God created me in his image, and my mind is now healthy and strong, then why should I have to have limits put on my life and me being able to just do the basics. I know in order for me to have complete freedom means allowing Christ to fill the empty places in my life. All empty places. I know I have salvation from sin, but I do not feel in my heart I have satisfaction of my soul completely. I go and read the part where God says you who have no money come buy wine and milk without money and without cost. I can apply that to my spiritual soul, but it is the reality of what I have to live in while here on earth that I am having a hard time with. I do know that now that I am gaining peace as each day goes by that the hard stuff does seem to be more doable at times, but then it is the big stuff that if you do not take immediate action on will effect the actual welfare of you family that still scares the heck out of me at times. I do accept the help of others now and do not feel shameful for having to get it, but I still would love to live in a world where my kids could say MY MOM can do this on her own, you know just the basics………I know we can never do all things in life on our own, that is the spiritual side I am complete on, it is the completion of all parts of my soul that I am having to work hard at and still get confused on in the present time of my life……..in my weak days I use to just all settle for the circumstances that controlled my life be it bad or good, mostly though it was always bad. Now days as I am learning to Love my own self again I just do not want to settle. Still I am learning that there is a great time line that God wants us to go through before all the past damage from our darkness is gone even when we are healed spiritually. I am glad for my new tools God has given me, so that I can live in my current circumstances that are still controlled somewhat from the damage of my past. My Faith is knowing that someday it will be greater; this is just a true test for me from God. Maybe the most important test of all.

Things I Am Thankful For

2006-10-05T08:16:00.000-07:00

1. Going thru the Fire and Rain, and having God release the shackles from my feet so that now I can dance and Praise him. 2. Actually feeling that each new day does bring the miracle of his forgiveness. 3. Having the real Love of my family now, and great Trusted Friends. 4. For all the days I now have shining rays of light in my heart. 5. To know that my life is a testimony of Gods love, and no longer a circumstance of past generations dark behaviors. 6. Knowing that God did not forget me all those years I forgot him, and he keep up with all the details of my life to Heal Me and Give Me my Purpose. 7. Knowing that I was created for the purpose of giving Gods invisible character a glimpse of visibility thru my obedience and love for him. I fulfill what I am meant to be when God is recognizable in my lifestyle.

Knowing your purpose from faiths lifts

2006-10-03T09:15:00.000-07:00

Discussion: Do you struggle with knowing your purpose? Like me, do you sometimes wish that you could do something HUGE for God; to maybe earn this precious gift of salvation you have been given? Or maybe striving to prove you are worthy of His grace? I use to wish I could do somethingng huge for God to show him how humbled I am for the recovery he has given me. So I would try to find a designated purpose for me that I thought he wanted me full fill for him, and work for that one goal. Now days as I grow I lead my days more by principles because when I do that I feel I am living my purpose for him in all my ways, small as they may seem to most, still it is more unified for God, My list for each day is to Know God and always believe in Him, To Glorify Him in my daily actions, to find satisfaction in Him, To experience Gods peace daily, and to enjoy the presence of God in my life. One of my favorite verses that I try to lead by example with is Isaiah 43:10 You are my witnesses,declares the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am He

purpose

2006-10-01T18:18:00.000-07:00

My principles for living in my purpose that God has intended for me. Daily study and pray time asking God to guide me and help me apply his teachings and Will in my life. "In the same way, faith by itself, if not accompanied by action is dead." (James 2:17) Always make sure my lifestyle reflects what I believe by making sure myt talk matches my walk. "Let us not love with words or tongue, but with actions and in truth."(1John3:15) Yield myself to God to be used to bring his good news to others, both by my example and by my words. "Live and act in a way worthy of those who have been chosen for such wonderful blessings as these."(Ephesians4:1) These verses for me is what I try to live by to fulfill my purpose for God. Isaiah 61:1-4 1 The spirit of the sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good new to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and realease from darkness the prisoners, 2 to prolaim tge year of the Lord's favor and the day vengeance of our Lord, to comfort all whom mourn, 3 and provide for those who grieve in Zion-to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and the garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair, they wil be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor. 4 They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastatedl; they will renew the ruined cities that have been devasted for generations. These verses here are what I try to incorporate in my daily life for my purpose. Isaiah 61:1-4 1 The spirit of the sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good new to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and realease from darkness the prisoners, 2 to prolaim the year of the Lord's favor and the day vengeance of our Lord, to comfort all whom mourn, 3 and provide for those who grieve in Zion-to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and the garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair, they wil be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor. 4 They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastatedl; they will renew the ruined cities that have been devasted for generations.

things to ask yourself

2006-09-29T19:45:00.000-07:00

Today I received bad news. I can not say publically what this news is because it is an ongoing thing. Still every part of everything I have done for the last three years became frightened. My immeadiate fear was, the chains of darkness that I broke and replaced with new links given to me straight from God well I felt they may break, and if they break then I become broken again. Satan he is one fearce component, when He sees You at your best with God, then He attacks You the hardest. Darkness toke my earthly family away from me, along with every tool for life I had in me. God brought me a new family, each member of that family brought new tools so I could rebuild a great foundation and come back to God. Well now Satan he is attacking all of everything God has given to me. I am afraid, but I remember Fear can be dealt with if you do it in a Faithful Way with God's help. Lamentations 3:40 tells us; "examine our ways and test them, and.....return to the Lord. I have found to keep moving forward daily i must keep my daily inventories balanced. I must look at the things I did right as well as the things I did wrong. Then admit promplty and make amends when needed. A good way to keep myself balanced and going in the right direction is to ask myself these questions daily. 1 What goo did I do today? 2 In what areas did I blow it today? 3 Did I do or say anything that hurt someone today? 4 What did I learn from my actions today? 5 How many people did I make smile today? I am going to follow God, where ever He may take me I promise with everything I am I will follow. For the days to come I must give God daily time, to fuel my heart for the battle of Satan and all his lies and the things he want to steal from me. I will put WHATEVER boundaries needed with WHOMEVER needed. God give Me and My family strength to live in your ways each day, wisdom to know how to make the necessary changes needed to keep walking in those ways to make it to the next day, and the courage to know when we can not change what it is making us confused and weary, and how to apply that to going forward also with you. Sonja

psalm 98

2006-09-29T08:07:00.000-07:00

Today's posting is a tribute to my good friend Chuck C. Chuck is our leader ar CR and he has been with me on my journery of recovery since day 1. He himself is celebrating his 18th year of recovery, and he is a true example of what living in the light of God's Grace and Love is all about. The power of sincere prayer combined with positive faith can result in enormous success even when all other efforts have failed. For where we are fully and whole-heartedly united with the will of God we find our lives suddenly brimming with bounitful blessings and our hearts, peace filled, overflowing with love. This is the way Chuck lives his life daily, and I am honored and humbled to be blessed by God to have him as a part of my christian family. This one is for you Chuck PSALM 98 1. 0 sing unto the Lord a new song; for he hath done marvelous things: his right hand, and his holy arm, hath gotten him the victory. 2. The Lord hath made known his salvation: his righteousness hath he openly showed in the sight of the heathen. 3. He hath remembered his mercy and his truth toward the house of Israel: all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God. 4. Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all the earth: make a loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise. 5. Sing unto the Lord with the harp; with the harp, and the voice of a psalm. 6. With trumpets and sound of cornet make a joyful noise before the Lord, the King. 7. Let the sea roar, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. 8. Let the floods clap their hands: let the hills be joyful together 9. before the Lord; for he cometh to judge the earth: with righteousness shall he judge the world, and the people with equity.

sonja's quote for the week

2006-09-27T16:52:00.000-07:00

"You Cannot Conquer What You Will Not Confront"--- :"There is no growth without change and there is no change without loss and there is no loss without pain

Beating the Addiction of Eating for Self Comfort

2006-09-27T07:17:00.000-07:00

Addiction To Me……..something that is not good for me at all, but that keeps me needing and wanting it anyway………the question is Why does it keep me needing it. That answer to me now is………..I for so many years lived in accordance to what my sinful nature taught to me which was also built into the foundation of who I was. Because of that my mind was set to my sinful nature desired. That was Food, self medicate, Food, the cure all fix for all that attacks me. Starting out at 150 pounds it was no big deal, Food was fine, and it was not drugs, booze, sex, or anything bad, just food. Then one day I looked up and there I was. 425 pounds worth of comfort all over my body. My friend Food that I thought was keeping me safe form being a druggy, or a sex crazy person, has damaged my heart, and every working organ in me, and ruined my body completely. I just forgot How to Love Myself when I got lost in all that darkness. Today 20 years later I have learned the lessons and now live according to God’s spirit and have my mind set on what God’s desires are. So I am no longer controlled by the nature’s spirit, because the spirit of God lives in Me. I am in my 7th mth after gastric bypass surgery. I now look in the mirror everyday. Three weeks ago went I went to the doctor I was 82 pounds down, and I am thinking I may be 100 now, go to the doctor next week to check. It is nice to be able to breathe again like a normal person, to walk more than 25 steps without having to sit down, to sleep lying down instead of sitting up so that I can breathe, to be able to put my own socks on………..man there is so much to be thankful for. So now I have a new burst of energy. I am going to get my 6 mini meals a day back on my working diet plan. Boy I wish someone would have told me about that before surgery. Not to say I still wouldn’t have had it, because the doctors told me It was my only choice due to the extensive damage I did to myself while self medicating with the Food. Still it just makes so much sense to me. One meal, one snack, one meal, one snack, etc. It is not that hard, and dog gone it I am worth taking the time to do it right. So here I go, I am PUTTING MY STAKE IN THE SAND for this health stuff. February is right around the corner, it will be one year after surgery, and I want to be 140 down. I rode horses for the first 20 years of my life, I love the western way of Life, I have lost that for so many years, and I want it back. My girls want it back for me so they can share it with me. So me and my Friend God, are going to step it up a bit and get Sonja back on them horses and making some good memories with those two wonderful girls of mine…………..YSIC Sonja

Faith and Fear

2006-09-25T09:48:00.000-07:00

discussion question from faith lifts: In what areas of your life is your faith weak and your heart weary? How does this scripture apply to those areas and how can you put this promise into action in your life? One of the things that use to really confuse my about my recovery is when people thinking they were helping me would come to me and say. Sonja you can not be afraid, Fear and Faith have no place with each other. You cannot Love and Trust God and have Fear still in your heart. Let me tell you, for someone who is just stepping in recovery, that knows now that they absolutely Love the Lord, but still struggles because not all the darkness has left them. Well hearing things like that from people can really confuse an already tender and shaky heart and mind. Just think about it a heart in recovery, well it has just been broken completely. Ripped in every direction it really needs to be in order to repair properly. So it is like a new born babies heart, tender and soft, and vuneralbe for remolding and building a new foundation. That right there is a scary thing for anyone. So fear in my opinion is just a factor in all the new emotions that will be coming to that new heart as it travels down the road to recovery. I am not saying a good emotion given to us by God, more of an human emotion given to us by those in this world oppressed from God. As I am learning thru reading the bible for the first time. I just got to say really quick on that subject, Wow, I did not know there were so many amazing stories. I am reading back and forth from 2 Chronicles, and Isaiah. There were Kings who gave it all to God, still had there scary moments. Kings who lead in horror worshiping idols, killing sons, doing witchcraft, you know they had almost 24/7 in scary moments. So this is what I am seeing now for the first time it is becoming clear to me. Faith may be choosing like me to believe God even when your heart and soul is being overwhelmed with Fear. So perhaps Faith is tested by; What We do with Fear, and not whether or not we have it. Titles of People and even there own heritage means nothing if the King of their Hearts desire is not God. That is why I felt like nothing for so many years. Because my own parents were oppressed from God, made us think of them for our King, and to worship and obey only them , instead of what our own young hearts desires were wanting, God himself. Don't get me wrong we need our parents, we need to be loved by them, but it is their responsibility to mold us in God's image not theirs. Satan can not force us to go where he leads, we have to freely choose to go their. When we do that as parents we not only show God how we live in the face of fear, but we also show our children the paths to Satan not to God. So while I do get less fearful each day, when fear does come to me now I will not let Fear say I am a defeated Child of God, I will just say God I am going to show You how I now will deal with this Fear creature, it is by your wisdoms, and you spirit in me that I will deal with Fear now, and only that way.

faith lifts message to me

2006-09-23T20:19:00.000-07:00

THIS PICTURE IS CALLED HEAVEN'S GATE, THIS ONE IS FOR YOU MY FRIEND SAM i received this e-mail from heather at faith lifts today. I am exteremly honored to have my writing on faith lifts. here is her e-mail you can go to my links and hit faith lifts and get to the site thanks sonja Sonja,I hope you get this tonight:) We are going to use this as a guest entry for Sunday (tomorrow). It will be up at midnight tonight and will remain up until midnight tomorrow .... so if you want to direct your readers to faithlifts to read it, that would be great! Thank you for submitting it! Sorry it is so abrupt, we had an emergency opening and I thought yours would fit perfectly!Heather

2006-09-23T16:18:00.000-07:00

I have an amazing story to tell today, actually a true miracle sent from God himself. My friend and sister from CR has been living and fighting self-hatred for many years, and Satan well he had a grip on her she just could not let go of. Don't get me wrong, she tries, and tries, then gives up and comes back and tries again. This has been her battle for many many months. Friday night Sept. 22nd, God presented himself to her in a might big way, a miracle, and he blessed many to see and be a part of it. It was amazing for her, and life changing. She wrote a story that is quite a story to read. I encourage anyone reading this to go and read her blog, bookmark her blog, because I am here to tell you as her sister, her friend, her recovery buddy she and God are fixen to start one amazing journey of recovery, and I am humble to be able to share that journey with her. I love you my sister. Remember what I say. It is not by Your Power, Your Might, but only by the Spirit of the Lord that you will have victory. He planted the seed Friday night deep within your soul, he showed Satan that it is YOUR time my sister, YOUR time. Live may not have been so beautiful for you, but I am telling you Life is fixen to become one beautiful ride.................Go With God My Friend Sonja http://justalittlelessmelord.blogspot.com/

Where The Spirit Of The Lord Is THERE IS FREEDOM

2006-09-21T18:46:00.000-07:00

When oppressed, We the children of God have a tendency to prepare shelters for ourselves rather than do what Freedom and Liberty demands. Those shelters can easily turn into strong holds, which turns into a destructive nature that Satan feeds upon, and we often have little defense to protect ourselves from that. It is not by Power, nor by Might, but only by the Spirit of the Lord that We can be Victorious. When I read that it brought something to the surface inside of me that I have never given thought to before. These last three years while in recovery my heart still always had a feeling inside of it that I was not letting God have completely. I never could quite understand why this pulled so deep at my heart. I have become so strong in so many ways these last three years. Still as a mother I have always felt like there was something missing for my girls, something from me that I am still failing at with them. When I look at them I know they feel physically safe, but still there was something missing in our home. I have been thinking that it is the fact that to this day I still can not provide financially all the things I believe they should have. They still have to do without so many of the simple things in life. As I was listening to Beth Moore talk tonight about Finding Freedom, I thought about how my parents who ruined the foundations of their own children "should have held our hearts with tenderness and filled them with God Grace and Love". While they did give us shelter, and we always had everything financially that we wanted, I can remember still always feeling insecure and scared when it came to the matter of my own heart. I never heard the word Love in our house, I never saw my dad embrace my mom, or for that matter my parents embrace any of us kids. Though they did make sure that as long as we played by their rules we had plenty to play with. I know now that my very own parents allowed themselves to be oppressed from God, and while they did give us all the things they thought we needed to be safe, they were also putting up shelters against our hearts because they left out the spiritual part of molding those young tender hearts, those shelters they built became my strong holds on my own heart, and that always made me feel unsafe and sacred when I had to face anything concerning my own life building process. That made me realize what it is that I am missing in my own house with my girls. I have worked hard for me these last three years, and I do have a safe place where I am rebuilding the parts of my heart that need to be rebuilt with God. That is what I also need to be doing with my girls. While I do want to gain success and grow financially for them, more importantly I now see, I must help them to learn how to come to God to grow the spirit on Him in their young hearts. With that they can face anything and be victorious.

road map for success

2006-09-21T07:30:00.000-07:00

Having a road map for success in my daily life and journey of recovery and discovery. Living in Darkness for so many years erases any kind of direction I had for moving forward and gaining success in Life. While I know God is the answer to all things. I do believe He also wants us to have goals to help us while he is taking us on our journey of discovery. When I first started three years ago on my journey I wrote these principles down in my journal to help give me a road map or sort to get started with God. I found them last night and thought I would share them. So here are some very good principles to apply to your daily life in all you do and say to help you stay in a forward moving direction. Envision Growth By applying these principle to your daily life and recovery process for those who are in recovery you are ensuring that you are prepared and well positioned for a successful life. Demonstrate Integrity Communicate honestly, demonstrating respect for others. Make clear commitments. Make promises cautiously, promising only what you will deliver. Behaves honorably, whether or not someone is watching. Treat everyone equally regardless of position and influence. Accept responsibility Be a Positive Influence Communicating with courtesy, demonstrating respect for others. Recognizing and rewarding the contributions of others. Recognizing and appreciating the value of diversity. Measure Everything Recognize that accurate measurements are necessary positive change Be accountable for those measurements Recognize that clearly stating expectations and accurately following through with those goals are critical in demonstrating individual success Know The Details Seek accuracy in all things you do. Ask questions when you don’t understand. Keep asking until you fully understand. Be a keen observer. Demonstrate a personal commitment to learning and to upgrading your new skills

let God help You

2006-09-20T06:27:00.000-07:00

DISCUSSION: Have you ever let your emotions and your worry so overtake you that you forgot to slow down and let God help you? I do believe it was all those things that led to the complete brokenness 3 years ago on the day I choose to take my life are the things that helped bring me to this very point in my life. When my house burned down, I lost my job, my car broke completly, and my child had her 15th surgery at the age of 10 I did give up on life did not know God to let him help me but he helped me anyway. I could have just dwelled on all the sadness of what was lying in the rubbles and ashes of that fire, but God wanted me to see what greatness was lying ahead in my future. Have you ever thought about the fact that flames, sparks and smoke all reach towards heaven? I believe all the impurities of my past rose in those ashes and God took them all. A good friend of mine, David D. from CR, wrote a great acronym for the word "fire," and when I think back to that time it is his words that come to mind. Those words are: Feeling Intense Restoration Eventually. Characteristics of fire are light, heat, destruction, purification and restoration. I can now see my past life with new meaning. Even though I was in the deepest darkest pits of desolation, I now stand and live in God’s light and love. I have been pronounced innocent, and what ended that life of total destruction began what has now been the greatest adventure of my life. But He knows where I am going. And when He has tested me like gold in a fire, He will pronounce me innocent. Job 23:10 You have tested us, O God; you have purified us like silver melted in a crucible. Psalms 66:10 We went through fire and flood. But you brought us to a place of great abundance. Psalms 66:12 God helped me with his Grace and Love to replace all those past pains with new feelings of hope, love, dreams and even a new family.

I Believe

2006-09-19T08:10:00.000-07:00

This picture reminds me of how i feel today. the brown ball is society, and the red filling inside the ball is society telling me I can not have all the things society says i need to have in order to excits by their standards,,,,,,,,,,,the beaming lights all around society is God's protection for me telling me if you have Faith in me then I will show You the way to take care of your NEEDS. Faith Lifts Topic for Today Discussion:How is God calling you to be faithful in the “simple things”? In what way can you apply this today? As I am approaching my third year of recovery back to God, I am starting to want to acheive in areas I have never had to courage to excel in before. While living in darkness I gave up on all things, and when I did that the World told me because YOU have stopped living withing the standard of what Society says you have to do in order for Society to give back to You We(society) are going to have a abandon You. So at the very end of my darkness I had no home, no job, no hopes, and could not get anyone to help me with anything.Today as I am getting stonger I still have no home, no creditablity according to society, but I do have all kinds of Hopes and Dreams now for my families future, and desires to acheive in my job to higher levels than I have ever dared to go.So while I am struggling, and these 400 dollar electric bills, and high gas prices try to tear me down from ever getting any kind of good playing field at all with my stability, I now still see Hope for the future. I have no choice but the trust God, and give ALL my Faith to him, because the only alternative is to go back to darkness, and let Society win over God. No, No, No, I will have Victory, Victory with the Lord.I do Believe in the Simple Things, I do Believe in Love Of God, and I do Believe Society can be proved wrong, I just go to let God help me show them that……………..Sonja

putting my faith in action to change the road my children will get to walk on

2006-09-18T09:18:00.000-07:00

Davids faith was active. He picked up the stone and placed it in his slingshot and swung it. It took a physical act to put his faith into practice. Discussion:How can you physically put your faith in action today? In what circumstance in your life is God calling for you to step out, pick up that stone, and follow Him? How does the above quote impact your struggles in this area? My story is one of family dysfunction at its finest. Those family dynamics caused tremendous pain for me, which brought both physical and emotional damage to me, and my own children. What I have learned in recovery is that; there ARE reasons why families follow the same destructive behavioral patterns and pass them down from generation to generation. I was taught those dynamics as a child and also as a young adult. That the beliefs put inside of me to destroy me Could be changed. Now I will say it was a painful thing to uncover, even more painful to accept, and extremely hard to change. But I knew this was the only way to Break the Chains of my darkness to give me and the ones I love total freedom. No matter how hard and painful this recovery process was going to be I knew I had to do it because How was I going to be able to love and be there for anyone else in the world when I could not even love or be their for my own self. I had to do this to show God how humbled I was that he did not think of me as that horrible person I was told by my parents that He thought I was. So I put all my Faith in God that he would bring to me all the tools and warriors I need to break those chains. I also knew that by showing my children I could fight the battles of my darkness by depending on God that they too could have a chance in this world for a brighter future. They had already missed their childhoods, and could never get that back. They also had a mother that in the past was scared to show any kind of emotional or physical love to them for fear that they would be destroyed by God for having my sinful love in them. Just like me they knew nothing about Godly things. The only Truth they knew is the Truth I showed them, and that was the Lies my parents taught me. For my children the cost of my damage was just too high for me not to make those necessary changes that I now know I must make, and give God all my Faith so that I can do just that. While I can not go back and do anything about this horrible past that I had to go thru and my children had to live thru me. Thank Goodness I can change what tomorrow will bring for me and those two wonderful girls of mine. What a perfect Legacy to give to those girls. To Break the Chains of Darkness given to Us so that they and their own children can now travel down a road of hopes and dreams of brighter tomorrows. That way when it is Time for them to walk in My shoes with the children they may be blessed to have they can give all of their hearts to them, and Love them they way they need to be Loved, and even be Loved Themselves the way they deserve to be Loved. My recovery Has given me my Purpose so that I can show those girls they too are people of Value, created by God himself, and do not have to live a life of hopelessness and dark circumstances anymore.

Helping hands

2006-09-17T11:41:00.000-07:00

This picture reminds me of how my heart felt when I knew God was really calling to me saying IT IS TIME to start your journey of recovery. While darkness still ruled in my heart, God had left many beams of light thru warriors he sent to me so that when it was time they could form a brilliant beam warming the way for me to start my Journey Of Recovery Today's post is just a simple request. I have a friend, actually I am her official buddy at Celebrate Recovery. Even though I can not break confidentially by telling you her story, I can however ask you to join in conversations with her on her new blog she just started. Like mine is it simple in style, but very expressive in her messages from her heart. Please fellowship with her, and support her, as I feel God is calling her to really start the Big Stuff in her journey of recovery. YSIC Sonja Brooks here is her blog http://justalittlelessmelord.blogspot.com/

getting back to church

2006-09-16T13:21:00.000-07:00

tomorrow I am going to United Methodist Church for the first time. It has a whole program for special needs children, and I do have a special needs child with Spina Bifida. I am scared but even more excited to go. YSIC Sonja

breaking free

2006-09-15T20:58:00.000-07:00

Just got back from CR recovery and I am feeling pretty inspired. It was testominy night. My best friend ask me to do a Beth Moore study with her called breaking free, we are getting the work books tomorrow and starting next week. I am exicted. It is about making Liberty in Christ a Reality in Life. Tomorrow I go to the horse lot and get to play with the baby goat, chickens, and two colts. I love going out there and just doing nothing. I took pictures and will post some soon as the get developed. Have a Great Weekend................YSIC Sonja

My Layers Of Heaven

2006-09-15T07:59:00.000-07:00

Looking at these pictures it makes me think of all God's layers of heaven that He gives to Me. I know that may sound beyond what is reality because we think of Heaven as the Realm Of The All Mighty, that is the Heaven to us that is above and beyond everything that is familiar to us now, and where we desire to make our HOME when we go to Glory. With me it is like someone who is seeing God and all his gifts bestowed to me thru the eyes of a newborn babe, I see different layers of Heaven. I see the Atmospheric Heaven, and God's little pieces of perfectly created touches here on our very earth. At the age of 49 I took my first plane ride, and flew in the midst of beautiful majestic fluffy white clouds. I had this amazing feeling of just wonder in me. At that time I did not know God because I had not yet started my journey of recovery, but now I know that was a inner spiritual feeling of just awe and wonder that God was letting me have while still living, a little piece of what His Heaven would make me feel like. God knows I have this love of wide open spaces, and when he lets me see moments of acres of beautiful undeveloped land covered with pure white clean snow. I get a feeling of complete peace and solitude, and total comfort. Those too were feelings stolen from me for so many years of my life that God lets me feel now thru the beautiful things he has created that hold tenderness in my heart, his little pieces of heaven right here on my earth. Then there is the World OF The Planets Heaven for me..........I have a young daughter that loves science and every chance we can get we try to go and study things beyond the universe. While all the scientist have an answer that seems to go in the opposite direction of God, Jesse and I we know that when we see amazing things like Beaming Flames Thur the Night Skies going up to the infinite skies and beyone. We know that these are picturesque moments given just to us. God letting us enjoy more of his amazing creations Beyond the Universe. I love the fact that I was absolutely able to give all my past hurts, and hang-ups to God and just let them go. It lets me see life and people in a new light. A light that is God's creation also. It makes tomorrows exciting now, and knowing someday I get to live in a place that is amazing beyond comprehension of Total Perfection of His Great Works gives me peace about being here in a world that for so many years tried to make me believe this wonderful amazing God hated and wanted to destroy me. I love knowing these are the kind of thoughts that my heart holds dear now...............Sonja

free blog design

2006-09-15T06:10:00.000-07:00

Autumn is my favorite time of the year, and it's just right around the corner. To celebrate the beginning of the season, I'm having a contest for 2 lucky people to win a totally free, completely customized blog design from Bluebird Blogs. Information on how to enter: - Send an email with your name and blog address to bluebirdblogs@gmail.com. - Your name will be entered into the drawing. - Entries will be accepted from 7:00pm EST on Thursday 9/15/06 until 11:59pm EST on Friday 9/22/06. *Bonus* - Mention this contest in a post on your blog and receive 5 extra entries into the drawing! The winner will be announced on http://bluebirdblogs.blogspot.com on the morning of Saturday, September 23rd, 2006 . Good luck to everyone! Thanks so much,

God's Glory Is Above All Things

2006-09-14T08:09:00.000-07:00

When I finally learned in my past life that my human persecutors in that life were stronger than me, and there was no hope. I knew failure would my only end result because I had become to overwhelmed. There was not one person in the world as I knew it then that understood and cared for my soul. So I cried out unknowing to me it was to God, the highest of Priest the one who knows who does understand. He answered me. I now know there is no refuge in this land of living on earth without the Hand of God to guide You. God's Glory is Above All things of this earth and now my trust and soul trust in My Lord. Psalms 142 1. I cried unto the Lord with my voice; with my voice unto the Lord did I make my supplication. 2. I poured out my complaint before him; I showed before him my trouble. 3. When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, then thou knewest my path. In the way wherein I walked have they privily laid a snare for me. 4. I looked on my right hand, and beheld, but there was no man that would know me: refuge failed me; no man cared for my soul. 5. I cried unto thee, 0 Lord: I said. Thou art my refuge and my portion in the land of the living. 6. Attend unto my cry; for I am brought very low: deliver me from my persecutors; for they are stronger than I. 7. Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise thy name: the righteous shall compass me about; for thou shalt deal bountifully with me.

giving my doubts to God

2006-09-13T19:07:00.000-07:00

I am giving my self doubt and feeling of unworthiness to God more and more each day. In the past before recovery it was always Sonja deserves all the horrible ugliness in life because she is sinfull and shameless as my parents told me for so many years of my life. Today as each new piece of God's Grace and Light comes to my heart I say Sonja is deserving of goodness in Life. While my life is still very hard and my material wealth is really no more than it was while I was in darkness I know that as long as I keep going in a forward direction with God and keep trusting in him there will be brighter tomorrows for me. They just come in different ways now. I even look forward to tomorrows now. I do want to find that purpose that God intended for me when He created me and let that be what my character stands for. That is amazing to me to just be able to write that and then read it knowing Sonja Brooks holds that truth in her heart. Jesus......said, 'I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life' " (John8:12) "Then you will know the TRUTH, the the TRUTH will set you free." There is a saying I love and it goes. "Blessed is the man who preserveres under trial, for he stood the test of time and received the crown of life that God promises to those who love Him. I will continue to work hard in my recovery because I do Love God dearly and want to receive God's crown of life..................YSIC Sonja Brooks

What is the purpose of Life.

2006-09-13T09:31:00.000-07:00

This is an absolutely incredible short interview with Rick Warren, "Purpose Driven Life" author, and pastor of Saddleback Church in California. In the interview by Paul Bradshaw with Rick Warren, Rick said: People ask me, What is the purpose of life? And I respond: In a nutshell, life is preparation for eternity. We were made to last forever, and God wants us to be with Him in Heaven. One day my heart is going to stop, and that will be the end of my body--but not the end of me. I may live 60 to 100 years on earth, but I am going to spend trillions years in eternity. This is the warm-up act - the dress rehearsal of God wants us to practice on earth what we will do forever in eternity. We were made by God and for God, and until you figure that out, life isn't going to make sense. Life is a series of problems: Either you are in one now, you're just coming out of one, or you're getting ready to go into another one. The reason for this is that God is more interested in your character than your comfort. God is more interested in making your life holy than He is in making your life happy. We can be reasonably happy here on earth, but that's not the goal of life. The goal is to grow in character, in Christ likeness. This past year has been the greatest year of my life but also the toughest, with my wife, Kay, getting cancer. I used to think that life was hills and valleys - you go through a dark time, then you go to the mountaintop, back and forth. I don't believe that anymore. Rather than life being hills and valleys, I believe that it's kind of like two rails on a railroad track, and at all times you have something good and something bad in your life. No matter how good things are in your life, there is always something bad that needs to be worked on. And no matter how bad things are in your life, there is always something good for which you can thank God. You can focus on your purposes, or you can focus on your problems. If you focus on your problems, you're going into self-centeredness, "which is my problem, my issues, my pain." But one of the easiest ways to get rid of pain is to get your focus off yourself and onto God and others. We discovered quickly that in spite of the prayers of hundreds of thousands of people, God was not going to heal Kay or make it easy for her. It has been very difficult for her, and yet God has strengthened her character, given her a ministry of helping other people, given her a testimony, drawn her closer to Him and to people. You have to learn to deal with both the good and the bad of life. Actually, sometimes learning to deal with the good is harder. For instance, this past year, all of a sudden, when the book sold 15 million copies, it made me instantly very wealthy. It also brought a lot of notoriety that I had never had to deal with before. I don't think God gives you money or notoriety for your own ego or for you to live a life of ease. So I began to ask God what He wanted me to do with this money, notoriety and influence. He gave me two different passages that helped me decide what to do, II Corinthians 9 and Psalm 72. First, in spite of all the money coming in, we would not change our lifestyle one bit. We made no major purchases. Second, about midway through last year, I stopped taking a salary from the church. Third, we set up foundations to fund an initiative we call The Peace Plan to plant churches, equip leaders, assist the poor, care for the sick, and educate the next generation. Fourth, I added up all that the church had paid me in the 24 years since I started the church, and I gave it all back. It was liberating to be able to serve God for free. We need to ask ourselves: Am I going to live for possessions? Popularity? Am I going to be driven by pressures? Guilt? Bitterness? Materialism? Or am I going to be driven by God's purposes (for my life)? When I get up in the morning, I sit on the side of my bed and say, God, if I don't get anything else done today, I want to know You more and love You better. God didn't put me on earth just to fulfill a to-do list. He's more interested in what I am than what I do. That's why we're called human beings, not human doings. Happy moments, PRAISE GOD. Difficult moments, SEEK GOD. Quiet moments, WORSHIP GOD. Painful moments, TRUST GOD. Every moment, THANK GOD.

wordless wednesday

2006-09-12T19:20:00.000-07:00

Finding a way to have a voice when anger tries to shut you down

2006-09-12T19:01:00.000-07:00

Well I have to say this has been a trying day for me. As most know I am going to a recovery program called Celebrate Recovery, and I am always inspired to write after my Friday night experiences. Today I got an e-mail by mistake from a woman telling one of our leaders she is tired of the non-sense e-mails she gets forcing others opinions and expressions on her. All my post I have added to my blog and all are inspired by God's teachings, but I guess to some who are just angry and bitter they may be blanket opinionated statements. In my past life I would have let someone like this person shut me down, and just quit completely. While I will refrain from sending future CRA e-mails to respect my very wonderful leader I am however happy God gave me the strength to start this blog so I can write when my heart calls upon me to do so. In closing I will just take this statement as for what it is...........a statement from someone who is far away from God, and is not ready to hear his teachings from others on the journey of recovery. I will continue because my Love for God is far more stronger and important than the ramblings of any bitter angry person. I will pray for this person however because like me she is a child of God, she just doesn't realize how to behave like one yet. It will come someday and I will have patientance for her and her journey just as so many have had patinetance for mine. YSIC Sonja Brooks

God's Healing Rains

2006-09-11T08:00:00.000-07:00

“We cannot go back and make a new start, but we can start now to make a new ending.” In recovery they teach us not to dwell on the pains of the past but to concentrate on the Hopes of tomorrow. I have watch a few stories on TV of how one family has come together with another after 911, I have gained strength myself from listening to their stories of battles fought from that tradegy and the wisdoms they have all learned. So many familes now have this unbreakable chain that they have formed with one another. If they see someone starting to fall, they take that chain, circle it around each other and help to hold themselves up till they can stand on their own once again. What I learned from that is while we do know that we cannot save one another, only God can do that, but we can however unite together to support each other unconditionally. I am sure that this very day those familes I saw stories about stand hand-in-hand in that circle with people from all different walks of life. These people now trust each other to be a link in that chain that now binds them all together, and that to me is an amazing thing. I love this reading from the bible:

If any man is thirsty let him come to me and drink. He who believes in Me as the scripture said,"from his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water" John 7:37:38

I believe these same waters are God's Healing Waters, that he allows to Rain On Us In Our Times Of Needs. YSIC Sonja Link to faithlifts http://www.5minutesformom.com/faithlifts/

2006-09-10T00:46:00.000-07:00

My Prayer For Today I Pray God that when I meet a mother weeping with darkness in her heart and emptiness in her eyes, That I take the time stay by her side and tell her about you God, and that there is Healing in her cries. I pray God that when I meet a child that has had to travel down the road of darkness that was left by those that child loves, That I take the time to stay by that childs side and let her receive God's perfect fingerprints given to me through my gentle loving hugs. I pray God when my heart speaks to me with Godly wisdoms from all the lessons learned these past two years That I can rise above my fears of worldy perceptions of me, and tell those lost souls that I meet traveling in this world today without hope, that there is an amazing God who really cares. To let them know God that You have a created a masterpiece, and they are a part of that painting too perfectly created by You. This is my prayer I give to you today My Father, My Friend Sonja Brooks

In what ways have you experienced God's GRACE in your recovery.

2006-09-08T19:56:00.000-07:00

To answer this I must circle back to 20 years ago when darkness ruled my life and 2 and one half years ago when I reached the very rock bottom of my days of living in the will of my demons. These were the fears that Satan put in my heart and soul by those who sought to destroy me. Fears in order from strongest to weakest. 1 Being told by my parents I was an unworthy sinful piece of garbage, and everything I created or touch would be destined for failure. 2 Being afraid to embrace my two daughters for fear God would destroy them because he hated me so much as my parents taught me. 3 Fear of the world because it told me while I lived in darkness I was not worthy of having its worldly possessions. 4 Total self destruction because I believed as long as I was destroying my own self God would leave my two girls alone and not destroy them anymore than he already has. Now come back to the beginning of my recovery on that same day of the final day that Satan wanted to finish his work with me. God He Is Amazing. He knew I was a simple woman who knew nothing about all things Godly. So while I was developing all these great big fears that I let build my foundation of doom and darkness, God said it is time to tear that foundation down and build His House Of Light, Hope, and Faith. He did that by keeping up with every horrible detail of each one of those fears I had, and He knew the exact order that his gifts of Grace must come to me in order for me to Heal. God's Gift Of Grace To Sonja 1 Of course He Knew this had to be the strongest of all his gifts to come first on that most important day that would change my life, but at the same time it had to be done in the most simple and delicate way so I would not take that final jump into the the final death of darkness. So God brought me Jan, who simply Held out her Hand to Me with God's perfect fingerprints all over them never once expecting anything in return. To this day almost three years later she still sits by my side just offering God's Grace that He Has on Her just for me Sonja. That to me is an amazing thing. 2 Giving me the tools I need like courage, preservance to endure the hard truths of my own failures and forgive myself, hope so that I can go to my daughters and ask to be forgiven so that we could heal and I could embrace them the way they deserve to be embraced. 3 Teaching me to know that it is the Heart of a Person that determines their Wealth rather than the Look of a Person that the world seems to think it should be. To this day I have no more worldly possessions than I did 20 years ago, but because I have God's Grace and Love I am learning to live in this world that still wants to deem me not worthy of its material wealth daily. 4. Letting me be able to look in the mirror and see that I am a child of God. Perfectly created by those same fingerprints that he put on all those wonderful people he has sent to me to teach me his great wisdoms. 5. A Safe Place "Celebrate Recovery" that I know I can go to and tell my deepest darkest hurts and pains and know his warriors are there to be my guardians of my recovery, and they unconditionally accept me daily as their equals. These are my gifts of God's Grace, given to me in the most perfect order at the exact times in my life that I needed to have them to find my way to Him. He is an Amazing God, and I am glad he is My Father and My Friend.................YSIC Sonja

getting back to my safe place

2006-09-08T06:55:00.000-07:00

MY name is Sonja I am a new Christian that has been in recovery for two and one half years…….leaving a 20 year life of total darkness and despair behind me. About three months ago I said yippee I am cured God is good, and I said I did not need any more of God’s 12 steps and 8 principles written in His Bible anymore, just be happy and love God and all will be well. Well after about three months of spiritial starvation I began to feel weak and sad and even seeing old tapes of satan’s darkness trying to come and retape God’s new tapes of his wisdoms from the very hard lessons I had to learn. Thank goodness for my Christian family, they picked me up and said "Sonja" what makes you think you know more than God, "He" says the journey is never ending and you must always walk in his way’s………..so here I am trying to find my way back to my safe place to work on my ongoing recovery and getting fed that good old spiritial food again………I am so grateful for God who has never forsaken me even in my weakness of this new journey of mine… tonight is Friday night our CR meeting night and I am sitting here at work fighting those tapes telling me I have all these excuses not to go........wanting despertly for my best friend Jan to call me and tell me Sonja I will be there to pick you up at 6..........so I ask all to pray for me today if you read this....I do have the strength to go I believe and will fight these old feelings trying to keep me away……..ysic sonja brooks

Learning To Emrace God New Creations In You

2006-09-07T06:53:00.000-07:00

Well here goes yes I know doubt and fear have no place for God creations, but sometimes those old tapes still try to come back in and erase all these new recording and this is what they are messing with me with now. For so many years of my life I have perceived myself as someone with no value, unworthy of even the smallest of attention from anyone including my own two beautiful daughters. I even let myself go from a 150 pound woman full of spunk to a 425 pound woman who wanted to the whole to leave her alone. After being in recovery for two years, dealing with the matters of the heart, and getting enough courage(one of the many gifts God gave me) to deal with the physical damage that I did to myself I am starting to see the Sonja from years gone by come back again. Only this Sonja has something even better, the gift of God’s Grace and Love. Still when people look into my eyes now and tell me how they are starting to see this new wonderful person, I feel fear come to me again. I think it is because with growth you have to learn to accept change and trust the future and those who are brought to you in that process. While I do have two people in my life other than my two beautiful daughters that I do feel that way about no doubt at all. It is all the others of this world that bring this feeling of fear to me. Fear that I am going to get trampled on the ground again, fear that when they get to know how minimal my life positions are they will deem me not worthy again. Of course there is the big one, fear that I will fall in love and be thrown away like all those in my past life did and then I will go straight back into darkness. Now I know I have forgiven all those of my past, but with that forgiveness I also put up the proper boundaries that I believe God wanted me to so that I will be protected. So my question is with all this new change in my life, do I have a constant stream of new boundaries with each change to protect me and only allow so much to come to me. Or do I just totally trust this wonderful God of mine that I have given all of the darkness to. It is confusing to me at times because I want to be a leader among those walking in darkness, but I have not been out of darkness long myself, and just am not sure how to make this new life of mine fit so that this Free Will stuff does not bring new darkness back in. Do not get me wrong I love where I am at, and I do Love My Father and Friend God with all my heart. It is just I am trying very hard to believe that a world that has told me for the last 20 years that I have not conducted my life well enough to have things like a home, car, and other things that we need to live with the world that I can deal now and stay in this wonderful state of mine and heart that God and I have been working so hard for. YSIC Sonja Brooks

fighting the battle of forgiveness

2006-09-06T13:40:00.000-07:00

This week my recovery is focusing on forgiveness. In the beginning of my recovery while I did believe I could be forgiven I still absolutely knew that there were some things I had done that not even God could forgive me for. Forgiving myself has been the biggest battle of all to fight. Being like that kept me stuck for many many months not being able to move even one step forward in my journey of recovery. As I learned about God, and was taught that he does forgive us for all things in our past, I would let those dark burning coals go out one by one, but still there were those few really bad hot burning coals I kept way down deep in my soul, and when it came to God well I kept him there with them fearing it would be too much for him to handle. Then a very wise man said this to me. Sonja if God has forgiven you for everything what makes you think you know better than God himself? Through adversity I have grown and eventually I did gain freedom by giving those last few dark burning coal to God when I took him out of that pit they were in. It was a long hard lesson learning forgiveness, but a battle well worth fighting………….ysic Sonja Brooks

tuesday sept 5th

2006-09-05T10:32:00.000-07:00

I have finally posted all the jouranls of my life for the past 20 years. So now that all who have read my testominy really know me I feel safe now to start with the new current me, Sonja a newly born again christian who is celebrating two and a half years in recovery back to God's Grace and Love. Oh yea and by the way I just finished my second book healing hooves, and just soon as the editing is done I will send it off for publishing. So today I will start with a fun little reading I found on another blog. Here goes. Meme questions from bloggy land 1. If you make sweet tea, do you use Luzianne, Lipton, or tell what ever your brand is. I stay with the tradition my wonderful grandmother passed down to me, Lipton, cooked on top of the stove, steeped for another hour before preparing. There is nothing better than that first glass of Lipton tea fresh from brewing, and it also takes me back to many wonderful memories of my grandmother, who was called to Glory many years ago. 2. What brand of toilet paper do you use? Angel soft, anything more about this question, it just TMI!!!!!!!!!!! 3. Which brand of bath soap do you use? Is it body wash or bar soap? I love bottle soaps from bath and body and avon, my two favorites, warm vanilla sugar, and then from avon, vanilla tea. 4. Which cereal do you buy for yourself? I just had gastric bypass in Feb of this year, so cereal is out for me right now, but I love kellogs frosted flakes, with a big bananna cutt up in it. 5. What brand of dishwasher detergent do you use? Is it liquid or tablets? I guess this is where I am a little quirky, I wash dishes with good old fashion liquid detergent do not rinse, put it in the diswasher, and then just let it finish, I manily just used the diswasher to heat dry. Man that is weird now that I actually read this. 6. What is your favorite fruit to eat? Since my bypass surgery hot food makes me sick, so cold fruits well that is a little bit of heaven for me, watermelon, cantalope, apples, and peaches, although it has been hard to find some good peaches these days........sonja 7.Which brand of laundry detergent do you use? I am a single mom in the lower chain of the finacial class so it is what is the cheapest at the dollar store, when I can afford it I like Gain. 8.Do you like chocolate? No, never really cared that much for chocolate, but now cheesecake that is another story, that has been my hardest thing since my surgery, giving up cheesecake. I just love me some good ole cheesecake, jack in the box has the best for a quick fix. 9. Are you right handed or left handed? Right handed 10. Do you still write checks or use a debit card? In my past life while living in darkness I did not do so well with having checks, so now the newly God loving me who knows she is worthy of greatness, knows to stay away from things that played big roles in my dark years, so I am strictly a debit card girl, no checks, no credit cards, just what I have week to week, and that is all I need. So there you go a little sneak peak into Sonja, have a great day

there is victory in the Lord

2006-08-27T15:10:00.000-07:00

FEELING INTENSE RESTORATION CLOSING THOUGHTS For so many years of my life, I could not understand why I always failed in matters of the heart. I have finally realized that, after going back and doing my personal inventory and being in recovery, I was trying to fix all the wrong things. It was when I finally reached down into those deep, darkened pits that haunted me for so many years that I truly learned what was causing those pains. Taking ownership of those pains and really working on them brought my heart back to life. I could eventually even give them to God, and ask to be forgiven. As I heal, I am finding that I no longer need all those crutches that I used for many years to medicate those pains that were damaging my heart and, later on, even my physical well-being. In the end, what I learned was that I wasn’t failing in matters of the heart all those years. It was that I just wasn’t listening to my heart at all. I was listening to those who sought to destroy me and who wanted to control the outcome of my destiny. I listen now to my heart, which is owned and operated by God and God alone. Now I am succeeding in matters of my heart one layer at a time. It is so amazing to me that, while I spent more than twenty years of my life being mad at God and even hating Him at times, He was still always there keeping up with every detail of my deepest, darkest pains. When I was ready to come back to God, He knew exactly what it was going to take to get me started on that journey. And it was going to take His greatest warriors to help show me the way. If it were not for my new friends and recovery program, I would have left a legacy of darkness with no hope for the future to the two greatest gifts in my life, my daughters. While my family has been damaged by our past life, the great thing is that out of all this I now know there will be greater tomorrows. I truly believe that my life began when that fire took all that we owned and, even though I know God had nothing to do with the fire, losing my job, my car, and all my daughters’ struggles, I do believe it was all those things that led to the complete brokenness that helped bring me to this very point in my life. I could have just dwelled on all the sadness of what was lying in the rubbles and ashes of that fire, but God wanted me to see what greatness was lying ahead in my future. Have you ever thought about the fact that flames, sparks and smoke all reach towards heaven? I believe all the impurities of my past rose in those ashes and God took them all. A good friend of mine, David D. from CR, wrote a great acronym for the word "fire," and when I think back to that time it is his words that come to mind. Those words are: Feeling Intense Restoration Eventually. Characteristics of fire are light, heat, destruction, purification and restoration. I can now see my past life with new meaning. Even though I was in the deepest darkest pits of desolation, I now stand and live in God’s light and love. I have been pronounced innocent, and what ended that life of total destruction began what has now been the greatest adventure of my life. But He knows where I am going. And when He has tested me like gold in a fire, He will pronounce me innocent. Job 23:10 You have tested us, O God; you have purified us like silver melted in a crucible. Psalms 66:10 We went through fire and flood. But you brought us to a place of great abundance. Psalms 66:12 God helps me with his Grace and Love to replace all those past pains with new feelings of hope, love, dreams and even a new family. I do not know what my final legacy will be, but I will tell you this, it will not be one of darkness left to those two wonderful girls of mine. I hope someday I can take my story and help to show others like myself how to break those chains of darkness that bind them, to defeat them from generation to generation. I would like to show them how to look at the roots of their pains and heal them from there instead of just medicating them with the many things that this world has given us to lose ourselves in. If we can all learn to see each other as God sees us, then we can get past all the stigmas that make us want to turn our backs on those we love and care about. When we do that, then we can learn to embrace those who seem so lost to the outside world and help to show them how to find a way to start their own healing process. To let them know that if they follow the road that God has laid out for them, letting God lead them each step of the way, then they can live in victory and have joy, peace and love in abundance. And nothing and nobody on earth will be able to take those things from them.

time for new beginnings

2006-08-25T10:57:00.000-07:00

Entry # 19 Now that my heart is emotionally strong again, this is the time of new beginnings for me with my Lord. The first stage in this new journey is to let Him be the guide to help me heal all the physical damage that I did to myself and my girls while living in darkness for twenty years. I will begin the work of this adventure on Monday at my doctor’s office. I start this adventure weighing 430 pounds, with vascular disease that has taken over my legs and damaged my heart to where it no longer works the way it is supposed to. My knees are completely gone, and my hands have been taken over by arthritis. However, for the first time in my life, I no longer look at all this as my punishment for being a shameless sinful person. I can now see it just as it is, damage that can be fixed. I go into this with no fear, and I am completely ready to restore myself back to complete health to go along with this new life that I have been so blessed to receive again. If I can do this, then I will have won the battle over the ones that tried to emotionally destroy me. I will finally get to slay every piece of this dark dragon once and for all. I remember one Friday night in small group our discussion was on faith and if you truly knew that your faith was enough to endure all the things in life that are thrown at you. At the beginning of my journey, if someone had asked me what the word faith meant to me, I would have simply said, "I have no idea as to what the word faith means. All I can tell you is that, because of my shame, it is something that is not meant for me to have in my life." With all the tools that have been given to me on my journey of recovery, I have gained the courage to let all those emotions (that haunted me and made me believe I was destined for failure) come to the surface, and I faced them head-on one by one. Having the courage to let go of those emotions was, unknown to me at the time, my faith-building process. Doing that also gave me the strength to face the emotions that I was accountable for and change them so that I could live a life of purpose and vision instead of a life of circumstance and destruction. That is how I lost my fear and gained my faith, which I now let control the decisions I make in life for me. I know that there is a lot of hard work ahead of me, and the great thing about all this is that I can take Jesse on this adventure with me from beginning to end. She too will get new health and maybe even be able to walk better with her crutches. That way, she can get one step closer to accomplishing that dream of hers to be a winning horse-performance rider. It may seem as though my journey of recovery has come to a successful end, but in reality I am getting to take it to an even higher plane than I could have ever imagined being able to travel to. Entry #20 November 7, 2004...the day I committed my life to my savior, Jesus Christ. As I sit in the waiting room watching my friend Thomas T. baptize his own mother, tears start streaming down my face once again. I sit there with my best friend Jan by my side and looked at her husband Chuck on the other side of the baptismal tank waiting to baptize me. At that very moment, I feel the most complete sense of Peace I have ever known. In the last eighteen months, I have cried because of total fear over-taking my body, and I have cried because something new was coming into my heart after each layer of darkness (that had caused me to be afraid) was defeated. Today, once again, I am sobbing uncontrollably because I am now embracing and giving my life, faith and love to God. The same God, who for so many years I was made to believe had controlled every pain and heartache that had been given to my girls and me. Here I am at this very moment in time walking down the steps of a church I now belong to, getting ready to be baptized in holy water by my two best and dearest friends, Jan and Chuck. They are the two living angels that God sent to me over a year ago to help show me how to come home to Him. As I stand in the water listening to Chuck speak about my recovery process and how proud he and Jan are to be part of my life, I know the circle of my new life-building process is becoming complete. I saw Jesse sitting in the audience being supported by all our new, extended family members. She was smiling at her mom, knowing she was receiving her own spiritual marker from God, and I was a part of that because I fought the battles of the demons that sought to destroy me. I asked to be forgiven, and even learned to forgive those who had tortured my heart and soul. I hope and pray that some day I can be an example of God’s work, and that I can give God’s love, faith and unwavering commitment to others who are as completely lost as I was. I pray that I can give to them what Jan and Chuck have given to me on His behalf. I know how to truly be quiet and listen to God, and know that He is enough to fight and win the hardest of battles. Fear is a word that I do not let control my life anymore because I have replaced it with Faith. God’s Faith and Love, and that will endure in my heart and soul forever.

being a person of purpose

2006-08-25T10:39:00.000-07:00

jesse and robyn brooks

Entry 17

While Jesse continues to fight for good health now as I do, I can also see her taking a new and different path with her personal life. She used to eat for the same reasons that I once did, because she was sad and the food would medicate her, to comfort her. Now at the age of eleven, and after watching me go through so many life changes, she is becoming more aware of her personal appearance.

Jesse came into this life fighting every step of the way after being born with spina bifida. At the age of six hours, she had her first surgery, and spent the first half of her life in and out of the hospital. There has been emotional damage done to her also during my years of living in darkness, but unlike Robyn, who could choose to leave, she has had to stay by my side and experience a lot of the same emotions I have had in my new journey of recovery. Jesse has forgiven both Robyn and me every time we have made mistakes in our lives. Never once has she stopped believing in either one of us. I can see her growing and laying the groundwork for her own journey to find her true purpose in life now.

There have been so many physical limitations in Jesse’s life, and people have used that to feel sorry for her and take pity in her. As for me, I am now seeing this amazing young girl…soon to be an even more amazing young woman that is destined for great things. I believe she will someday have her own great story to tell, just as her big sister Robyn will.

I had to forgive myself for thinking Jesse’s disabilities were a punishment to her to pay for my unforgivable sin, and I had to ask for her forgiveness also. I do not see that anymore. Just like me, Jesse is a child of God. Her destiny was planned long before I conceived her. I truly believe now that God does not give us any more than we can handle if we truly give Him our faith and love. Jesse handles her life with great pride and dignity. She now has dreams and hopes of being a person of purpose and not just one of circumstance.

Entry # 18

In just a couple of weeks, I will have eighteen months of recovery in me, and I will soon be receiving my 18-month chip. I have decided to take the second year of my recovery to reprocess all that I have learned and to decide what my next step should be. I have learned to live life one day at a time. My life now consists of daily decisions made from a heart filled with God’s Love instead of a mind that knew all the tricks of darkness to use on me.

Some of the most inspirational times during these last eighteen months have been on Friday nights at CR during sessions we call the round table. We all gather together in a big circle and talk about where we are in our recovery process. At this round table, there are people fighting sex addictions, drug and alcohol addictions, physical and emotional addictions, and co-dependants trying to save everyone but themselves.

In the beginning of my recovery, I used to fear these people and dreaded having to sit in that circle and be asked to talk about my life. I believed these people had nothing at all in common with me, and therefore they could not do anything for me except to maybe try and send me back into the darkness of my past life. As time went by, I began to see that all of them were just like me. We were all there at that round table reaching out to one another in all our brokenness, seeking any kind of wisdom we could and hoping to get just one more step down our roads of recovery. I even began to see that, at the very same time we were all seeking guidance from one another, we were also filling each other with new spiritual food.

Each Friday night we gain strength from stories of old battles fought and lessons learned. We now have this unbreakable chain that we have formed with one another. If we see someone starting to fall, we take that chain, circle it around our fallen brother or sister and help to hold them up till they can stand on their own once again. We do know that we cannot save one another, but we can however unite together to support each other unconditionally.

Two years ago, I came into this family circle a defeated and lost person with no voice at all. Today I stand hand-in-hand in that circle with people from all different walks of life. These people now trust me to be a link in that chain that now binds us all together, and that to me is an amazing thing.

Now here I am at the age of fifty-one, starting all over again in my personal life, only this time with God leading the way. There is also now a calling in my heart that Celebrate Recovery is the place that God wants me to give back all the new wisdoms I have learned that helped to bring me out of darkness. I know he will call me to that role when he is ready for that journey to begin. There are some favorite verses I love to read that help guide me at times through the process of my recovery.

Psalms 51:8-13

Oh give me back my joy again,

You have broken me, now let me rejoice,

Do not keep looking at my sins,

Remove the stain of my guilt, and

Create in me a clean heart, O God.

Renew a right spirit within me,

Do not banish me from your presence,

And don’t take your holy spirit from me.

Restore to me again the joy of your salvation, and my willingness to obey you.

Then I will teach your way to sinners, and they will return to you.

When my recovery comes full circle, I hope to be able to live these words completely and always honestly, for that is the heart I yearn to have.

God does have a dream for me

2006-08-24T09:04:00.000-07:00

daring to dream again Entry # 15 It comforts me to know that God does have a dream for me. In fact, He has dreams for all of us, including my two wonderful daughters. Knowing this gives me hope that they too can find their true purpose in life. In the early years of my children’s lives, I believed my father when he told me that my children were destined to suffer because they were born of sinful love, that they would always have to pay for my unforgivable sin. For many years, every time I looked into their eyes, I saw my sin in them, and that made me feel unworthy to be their mother. Guilt was the only emotion I let control me in every decision I made for those two girls for many years. It was me that created the very dragon that now lives in my oldest daughter Robyn’s life that now seeks to destroy her. Her darkness did not come to her because of the choices she made. She was simply a victim of circumstance from the very demons that once controlled me, demons that were passed down to me from my very own father and mother. Not only did I give Robyn a life of bondage, I also completely took away her childhood by spending all my time preparing her to become Jesse’s caregiver so I could leave this world. As Robyn got older, she became more and more angry…angry because my family, and even her own dad’s family, chose not to acknowledge that she was worthy of existence. She was angry with me for cheating her of her chance to build her own dreams and to have hopes of all the possibilities of what she could be when she grew up. I fed that anger by letting myself be her punching bag to take her anger out on as a young child. I did that because of the guilt I felt inside of me for what I was doing to her life. There were so many mistakes I made with her, and the worst thing of all was that they were all done simply because of my own parents’ mistakes that were made in me. We didn’t have the tools needed to know any better, so we all just did what we thought had to be done according to the standards of the world we lived in. Now at the age of twenty, Robyn’s anger has grown to rage, bitterness and even hatred. All those emotions make her run from God as I did for the last twenty years of my life. She has committed social and financial suicide as well as trying to end her own life. It was in June of 2004 that Robyn tried to take her life by taking a bottle of pills. She managed to call 911, however, when she started to feel herself really slipping away. I have seen sadness, anger and even rage in her eyes when she looked at me, but never total emptiness. It was a big wake-up call for me. Changes had to be made in our lives as mother and daughter because she was now getting the same look of complete hopelessness in her eyes for me that I carried for my own parents for years. In the past, I did try to save her. But each time I did, it only brought more disappointment into her heart for me. Thinking back on it now, how could I have saved her when it took me over twenty years to come out of my own darkness? After years of fighting with her, and failing, I started to believe she truly was destined to fail in life, and it was all because of my sins. That would be her price to pay for the rest of her life, or at least as long as I was on this earth. I have seen, through Robyn’s eyes and heart, that her pain is much too deep for me to help her as the mom she has always known me to be. I have to forgive myself for believing she could never have a chance in life because of me. More importantly, I have to ask her to forgive me. I do know that God truly wants her to be free and have healing in her life. It is Satan’s dream for her to let that dragon, which now owns her heart, control her destiny. The good thing is that God’s dream was put in her heart long before she became that victim of darkness, and it is still in her heart just waiting to come shining through. I know now that I cannot save Robyn, only God can do that. What I do know, though, is that through my own recovery process, she can gain glimmers of hope to give her strength for her own journey that she will be traveling on someday in her future. So this is where my new trust and faith in God stands the test of time. God has shown me that I need to step back and listen to what Robyn is trying to say, and learn how to support her in a new way. I pray that, by doing this, she can find a way somehow to let go of the pain she now feels when she looks in my eyes. I want Robyn to truly be able to reach that unreachable star, to have all the things that she never dared to dream of having in her life because of the darkness given to her and myself. She is one amazing young lady who has unlimited possibilities, and she deserves to be able to go out and explore just what her own purpose truly is. I have given her to God completely, and trust that in His time, His hands will heal her. I will continue to support her by showing her every chance I can how God is changing my life, and maybe her heart will soften just enough to let that one little flicker of light come through that I know is underneath all that darkness so that God can start His work with her. I have asked her for forgiveness, and I truly believe she does still have a place for me underneath all that anger so that she can forgive me someday. I remember the last thing she said to me before she left home was, "Mom, you think you are so much better than me because you go to church. You have been to the road adventure and are in recovery and you say you now know God. Well, I know God too." She told me that when she hears my voice, it sets off a trigger in her mind that makes her have rage and hate for me. While I told her I appreciated her telling me that, and it was a big step for us, I did however let it stop right there without going any further. I wish I could have had the strength to tell her that I knew exactly how she felt because my own dad made me feel that same exact way. I know that if my dad were alive today and had the strength to tell us, he would say that his dad made him feel those same feelings. I pray for her constantly to find a way to break this chain that I have bound her with. My wish for her is that she will not ever have to have the same conversations with her own child that she has had to have with me. I did write her a letter a few days after she left telling her, "Yes, Robyn, I am sure you know God. The only difference from me and you at this time in life is that, while you know God, you are also running as fast and hard as you can from God, and that is because of Satan. He knows you want to be healed and forgiven, and even to forgive. Satan also knows your mom knows the way to fight him now, and yes, it is with the Road Adventure, Celebrate Recovery, church and my CR family. Satan also knows that I, Sonja, your mother, not only know God, but that I quit running and gave my life to Him along with all my past garbage. So Satan now has me as his strongest weapon to use against you right now, and he is working overtime to do it. Until you see this, Robyn, you will always have rage for me. However, the great thing is that, while Satan is aiming your rage right at me, I know the whole story now because I am healed, I am recovering. God is waiting for you, Robyn, and when you are ready He will give you the tools to forgive, to be forgiven and even to heal completely. So I will close to you by saying I love you. I will pray for you, and I do HOPE that someday you will get your own recovery to be healed. When that time comes, I will be here for you as I always have and always will be. I love you, Mom." Entry #16 The one hard thing a person has to do when going through recovery is to take a look at the actual damage you did while living your life running from God and being controlled by darkness. As a young adult, I was a very active woman and rode horses all the time. I managed to stay healthy and fit and took great pride in my appearance. After my father’s words took over my heart, I started to hide more and more within myself. I went from a size eight to weighing over 400 pounds by the age of forty-seven. I thought the best way to deal with my pain was to stop existing to the world. If I no longer cared about myself, then no one else would care about me either, and I could leave the outside world out of my life. I also took my children along on that ride of destruction, and they too now fight the battle of weight and good health as I do. As I am learning to love myself again, it is really hard for me to see the actual damage that I have done to my outer body, and also the damage that I have caused to my two daughters. My biggest fear has been of men due to all the abuse by all those men in my life who were supposed to unconditionally love and protect me. This fear has destroyed two marriages, potential friendships, and has even hindered the current job I have because a man is my manager. He is a good Christian man, but still I find myself shaking and clumsy in my choice of words whenever we have to meet, or I have to speak at one of our group meetings. I know I am setting the same weak example for my daughters, and I do wish to break that cycle of destruction so they might have a chance at a future with their own love of a good man someday. I have managed to make some new friends and even allow myself to be hugged by some of my male church family members now. I can feel my body shake and my voice crack when they get too close to me, though, because I still feel so ugly as a woman seen through a man’s eyes. While I am trying to work on this, I do not kid myself because I am still very weak and have not found the courage yet to get deeper than the pain of the damage that I did to myself. Sometimes now when I dream (yes, I have actually gone back to dreaming without fear of my demons coming back to me), I see myself healthy again and even having a new relationship in my life. My best friend Jan tells me sometimes that I will have love again. While I just laugh at her and say it is just not in the cards for me to have that, secretly I am wishing and hoping that what she says could actually come true for me. I feel healthy in my heart now, but I still continue to hurt myself by not being able to be strong enough to get my whole body back in the good shape it was in before I let the darkness take me away. While I was running from God, I could never see me as someone having any kind of a future. I do not see that anymore. I want to see what tomorrow brings, see my girls grow, and be there when the chains of darkness are broken from them as mine have been. I dream of a day when we can be a family of three again, living together with complete peace, joy and healing for us all. I am learning that it is the heart of a person, rather than the look of a person, that measures their worth. That gives me the courage to keep trying harder to find that place way down deep inside of me that can help me overcome this part of my life. Being overweight has been hard on my recovery process and hard for Jesse too. Spending every waking moment in a wheelchair is difficult enough for her, but the extra weight makes life for her even harder. She has had over fourteen surgeries in the ten years that she has been around, and each one had difficult recoveries because her weight made the surgeries more complicated than they would have been if she had been her proper weight. Her last one was twelve hours long, and it took her four months to just be able to get in and out of her wheelchair again. She has had so much pain in her life, and each time I would see that look in her eyes pleading with me to take it away, my heart just bled the deepest of tears for her. I knew it was me that brought all this suffering to what has always been a difficult life for her. Jesse loves horses so much, and her big dream is to be an accomplished horse rider and win a buckle in a big stock show. She talks constantly of someday having her own horse and riding it down the road all on her own. Someday she even wants to be able to help other people with afflictions by teaching them the same kind of horse therapy that has been such a wonderful part in her own physical recovery. I do feel guilty at times when I look at her because I see this obstacle of weight (that was brought on to her by me) keeping her from so many possibilities. We joined the YMCA to start a water therapy program for us both. It is so amazing to see Jesse in that water. She can stand, jump, jog and even run in that water. She is so tall and proud when she is in there, and I love watching her do the workouts. For me, the tough part has been having all the people stare at me. I am so big, and I look so horrible in my bathing suit. It is very hard for me to get in and out of the water, and I see the women looking down to the ground as I pass by and then talking in low breaths to each other after I go by. I did let this be a deterrent to me in the beginning, and I would not take us as often as I should have. I am getting better now, and I pray daily for the courage to get in that car and drive us to that Y. I still find more reasons for us not to go than reasons to go, and I do hope and pray that someday I can end this battle once and for all, and be able to give one hundred percent to this cause for my daughter and me. It will be a tough battle to fight, but seeing Jesse in an element of such great success in that water does encourage me for her. Sometimes when I dream now, I also see Jesse and me in a state of good health together and doing things we dare not even attempt to do now. I would love to go to Disney World with her and Robyn again and be able to sit in the same car and ride a ride with her. We got to go three years ago with Kidd Kids, but I could not fit in any of the rides or walk much at all, so basically all she got to do was ride about four rides, go on a plane and see Mickey and Minnie Mouse. While it was fun, it still was not the perfect Magic memory it could have been if I had been able to do my part in being there with her and Robyn. I hope someday to be able to make that up to them both. Maybe someday I will also get to see her in her very best element on a horse winning that belt buckle at the stock show, and actually see that expression of complete happiness when she picks up her blue ribbon and winning belt buckle. Or maybe it will be something as simple as just riding down the road. Who knows what the future holds for her? I know the more I come out of this darkness, the better it is for her to start her own life of dreams, hopes and possibilities without being afraid for her mother.

2006-08-24T08:45:00.000-07:00

flying with the angels Entry # 13 I am finding out that the number-one roadblock in my recovery is my fear of being seen and heard, especially in front of men. When my father disinherited me for marrying Timmy, it had a devastating effect on me. As the years went by, I was always afraid of every man that came into my life. What I could not understand is why this one man, even though he was my father, made me afraid of all men. It was when I started going back in time, while I was doing my personal inventory, that I realized my father was not the entire reason for my fear of men. He was just the one who finally pushed me over the edge to bring that fear to life. I started to pull up old memories that had been pushed down deep inside of me, and all of a sudden, all the pains of those times started to surface once again. I found myself going back to the time in my life when I loved riding horses so much, and when that love started to change to fear. I remembered the day my uncle said he wanted to take me to the pasture to show me all the land and animals and to have a long ride together with me. I could feel him getting up in that the saddle as I was in, and riding behind me all the way. After we got deep into the woods, he would start to put his arms around me really hard. Then he would slide his hands into my shirt feeling all over my body. I would squirm and beg him to stop, but he would always threaten me by saying he would leave me in the woods all alone if I did not be still. There were over one hundred acres in those woods and parts of it were very scary to me. So I would just get really stiff in that saddle and just try to escape inside of my own self until he would stop. This happened to me time and time again, and always my fear would make me keep this secret that was stealing my innocence away from me. I got to where, when my parents said we were going to their house, I would try to find all kinds of excuses for us not to go. Yet I always seemed to end up back on that horse letting him do those horrible things to me. I hated that I was so weak and believed him each time he said it would be ok, and he would not touch me. I now wished I would have told someone because I know this was the beginning of what literally affected every relationship I ever had with any man in my life. That is why, when my dad (who was supposed to always love me unconditionally) threw me away, it became the final straw for me. I just gave up completely and did not want to be seen or heard by any man ever again. I believe that also was when I started feeding myself in order to comfort myself so that I wouldn’t have to be seen. So this is where I start by confessing this horrible thing to God…easily said, but very hard to do. They say one of the things I must do in order to truly forgive this man is to go to him and tell him I forgive him for what he did. Although I am going to truly try to put this part of my life in the past, because I do want to be released from it, still I couldn’t go to him. He is an elderly man in his eighties, and his family has cut me out of their lives just as my mom and dad did. I choose to leave this as I have, and not go back to face him. I am hoping that is going to be enough for me to go forward. I am still frightened to speak in a crowd when men and women are present. But I do let myself be seen by some of my brothers in Christ now. I even give them a hug every now and then, and even let them hug me back. I cannot tell you what a huge step that has been for me to allow myself to be hugged by them. Having my best friend’s husband make a personal commitment to help me in my journey has also helped. I really believe that he believes in me. He is such a good man who loves and respects Jan and their daughter so much. There is still this little part of me, though, that does still fear that if I ever make him mad enough, he will not want to help me anymore. He will shut me out of his life just like everyone else has done to me. I think more than him actually doing that, I am more afraid of going back into the darkness if he does, and this time I may not be able to come back out. So while I do admire and respect him, I still keep a very strong wall up to protect me from that fear. When I get to the end of my journey, I would like to think I could trust to have a friend like Chuck without worrying about having that wall between us to protect me. Entry # 14 More and more, as the darkness leaves my heart, my eyes begin to see clearly again. My mind starts to process all the damage that I have done to myself while I slowly gave up on life, love, hopes, dreams and my faith in God. Today my new battle is the acceptance of my life as I see it today. I ask myself if I am worthy of the level of forgiveness that God has given to me for all the damage that I did. I question that, even if God has forgiven me, does it come with a price? Is that price learning to accept that, because of the physical, mental and financial damage that I did, this was it for me in this world? Each time I would ask the leaders (who society says we are accountable to) for help, they would reply by saying that all the reports they go by tell them I have not managed my life as I should have. So by the laws of society, they say I cannot go forward and achieve more than I already have. Do I accept the reality of who I am, a woman being presently confined in this slice of what we call "the world" today? I need to ask myself at every turn along the way if I am accepting this present moment. Am I just pretending, trying to escape into the darkness of my past or, even worse, a new darkness for my future? Do I get my forgiveness without having my "White Snow" moment from God? Does God say, "I forgive you, Sonja," but only at this one level of acceptance? Then finally, do I accept that my life here in this world will be one of a good heart, but a heart that has to continue to struggle because the damage was just too deep to be restored for this world to accept me? These are my demons, my new battles now…a new form of darkness trying to find a place in my heart that I have worked so hard to restore so that I can come back to God. For a long time, I saw myself in a tug-of-war with all those people who hurt me, working hard to forgive them one-by-one to make that rope around me become lighter. What I didn’t see until now is that all those people were just the ones that put that darkness in my heart. It was me pulling on that rope all alone, against my own self, that was doing all the damage to me. I did forgive all those people one-by-one, but the rope still pulled just as hard as before I started my journey. I began to see that it was simply because I had spent so much time working on getting all the ugliness and grudges I held from the list of people that hurt me, that I forgot to add the most important person of all to that list…me. I become overwhelmed as I start to truly face my own cross on the way to my new life. So I come to Jesus now for encouragement, remembering that Jesus also realized the enormity of the suffering he was soon to face in His own cross. A year ago, I believed it was God saying, "Sonja, it is time for you to just stand still and accept that you don’t get the hopes and dreams, just peace." Now, at this date and time, new emotions come to me because I do think I deserve to have hopes and dreams. Now my new self is fighting this battle with my old self that, while the darkness has been erased from my heart, it is still in my mind, questioning me every step of the way. I yearn more than ever for God to bring some clarity to all this fear, doubt and confusion that are trying to tear down all that I have worked so hard to rebuild. Now I listen hard, seek council and ask for guidance when confusion clouds my mind and tears at my new heart. One thing I have learned is that I still have years and years of thoughts stored in my mind, taught to me by the people who did not follow the teachings of God. I do believe that the heart and the mind have to do this journey together. While the heart is healing, the mind has to be reprogrammed in order for me to be able to live in that truth completely. I think that is why I questioned myself so much each time I had a joyful moment coming closer to God. Just as quickly as it came, it would also go away. I now take a list that I made of old truths and new truths with me everywhere I go. Each time I feel those thoughts coming in (of the people who sought to destroy me), I read that list of new truths of who I really am in the eyes of God. Now the joyful moments are becoming longer and longer. I know I am getting closer to becoming the person that God wants me to be. This is what I know now, that mercy and truth go hand-in-hand. God cannot give you mercy until you face the truth of your life and repent with real genuineness. You must be hungry for something real and genuine for your life because truth, and truth alone, is what is real.

2006-08-20T12:37:00.000-07:00

mother and child Entry # 12 It is time for me to begin the real work of my recovery process, and I must start by acknowledging what my parents did to me and getting past the pain of it. I know that what my parents did to me was a horrible thing and, even more, what they did to their own granddaughters. My parents were the ones who started what would be twenty years of emotional self-destruction for me. What was it that made me so weak when I made that one decision in my life that made my parents choose to throw me out of their lives completely? As I am learning more and more from being in recovery, I think the biggest mistake my parents made with us kids was that they didn’t teach us as young children about God. I also believe that they too had left God and given-in to living their lives by how society said they must live. I was never able to build that foundation of faith, love and trust in the beginning of my life with God, so when I really needed Him I didn’t know how to reach out to Him. The only truth I knew were my father’s words telling me I had lost my value in life and with God. Therefore, all I knew was to fear God as I feared my own father. As I started to try to understand why my dad did all this, I began to look at his own life, or what I knew of his life from stories I had heard in the past. I know that my dad’s own mom died at a very early age, and his dad became a very angry alcoholic after that. He soon re-married, and my aunt told me she was the step-mother from Hell. She would give the world to her own kids, and make my dad and his siblings do without. She also emotionally abused them on a daily basis. I know none of this excuses him for what he did, but I can see now how (just like me) he had his own dark dragons that made him do so many ungodly things. He never allowed himself to get the help that I am getting now. So, while at the end of his life I am told he was reading his Bible, I do not believe he lived in the word of what he read. I believe he was only finding comfort from those words. My dad died over two years ago and, while I was never able to look into his eyes and get the answers I wanted, I did manage to get some closure during my recovery process. However, with my mom it has been a bigger battle for me to start the forgiving process for what she did to the girls and me and is still doing. Years ago, when I had gone to my aunt’s house in San Angelo after leaving Timmy, my mom told me on the phone that, as long as my dad was alive, she had to respect what he asked of her. She said that meant, for the time being, that she had to put Robyn and me out of her life. I let that be her free pass for years and years, even after the birth of my second child Jesse. I did try to talk to her a handful of times in the last twenty years with forced conversations, trying to break that wall down. However, she always held steadfast about doing what my father asked of her. There were times in those twenty years that she did come to my aid financially when it meant the difference of me being able to take care of the girls or having no other choice but to be on the streets with them. That has just been a handful of times, and she always sent the money thru Linda without a word to go with it. Linda told me she never let my dad know that she was helping me. I used to think it was her way of showing us that she did love us, quietly telling me that someday when she got the courage to face Dad, she would come and let us into her life. I even led the girls to believe this was her only way of showing her love to us, and I think they held on to the same hopes that I did about someday getting to meet her. After my dad died, I thought this was my chance to rebuild that relationship with my mom. I truly believed that Jesse and Robyn were finally going to get to have a grandmother. When I called my Aunt Billie Jayne to ask her how to help me with this, she told me something that my mom had just told her. She said my mom said that she knows she will probably not get into heaven for this, but she still chooses not to have the girls or me in her life at all. I was so angry when my aunt told me this. How could she do this to me and to her two grandchildren? I know she held me and looked into my eyes the way I did my own girls' eyes when they were just babies. I have heard her say as I was growing up how proud she was to have me as her daughter. What I could not understand is how she could think that I was so disgusting that she does not even want to go to heaven because of me. This battle got even harder for me than ever before. How was I going to tell my girls that all those acts of kindness had no love at all sent with them? I think it had been just a feeling of forced obligation to me, with no thought of the girls at all in her decisions. To forgive her, knowing she is still on this earth thinking those kinds of thoughts about my girls and me, well I just didn’t know if that was going to be possible for me to do. Being so new to this "living in God’s light" does make things confusing for me at times. I do believe that God did give us two wonderful gifts for our lives. He gave us His only son who died so that we may be saved from our sins. He also gave us free will so that we can choose how we want to conduct our lives knowing that Jesus died for us. It is that free-will part that I am seeing that we, as human beings, seem to get tripped-up on, myself included. I guess I could spend all my time and energy trying to decide how I am going to deal with all this anger and sadness that my mom has once again brought into my life. Or I could just put all of that on hold for right now and take that same time and energy and invest it in my ongoing recovery. That is what I am going to do. I will trust that, as I continue to heal and become closer to my walk with God, all this anger and sadness will fade away and be replaced with the forgiveness I am struggling with at this time. I made a promise to my girls at the very beginning of their lives that I would never be to them what my parents ended-up being to me. That is why I sheltered them and put so many conditions in my parenting to protect them from the outside world. Still, my darkness found a way into their hearts, and now it is working hard to destroy my oldest daughter just like it almost destroyed me. There has to be something here, something that could take two completely different sets of parents that instilled totally different values in their children, but still cause the same destruction. I started to look at my relationship with my mom compared to the relationship I have with Robyn and Jesse. While going back to my journals and re-living all our lives, I realized what it was that my mom as well as myself left out of our parenting. Just like my parents did with me, I also failed to build that foundation of knowing, loving and trusting God in my own children’s lives. So when my darkness started to enter Robyn’s life, just like me, she didn’t know what to do other than to run and be angry with everyone in her life. I started to see the cycle of how we all did the same things whenever life hit us with anything at all. My mom and dad ran from God when they gave in to the rules of society. I ran from God because I didn’t know God, and now Robyn is running from God too. I had even started to see the sadness in Jesse’s eyes as her heart cried for her big sister and her mom who was so sad all the time. I now see through my recovery that it is my children who are the key to unlocking this chain of ongoing self-destruction that has been passed down to us from generation to generation. From its very beginning, every life has a searching soul, and God has planted in that life a seed to be grown and nurtured. That way, as we face the trials of our life, we will have His foundation in us to endure all that the world throws at us. We must hold dear our children’s lives, every beat of their hearts from the very beginning when God hands their precious lives over to us to nurture. That is the key early in life. This is why I must now stand firm for the truth that I have been blessed to see, so that that truth will be seen in me always. I refuse to believe that we are only here to live and die and to never in our life ask why. I am fighting the battles of darkness and have felt God in my life once again. These battles fought, and lessons learned, are the things I must give to my own children now. They are the ones who are going to have to carry on down the very same road that was left for me to travel by my own parents. Only now, because I have begun to heal, they will have the power to pave a better way to travel down that road. What a blessing that would be for them to rebuild that road to be a place that their own children could travel on…a place to hope and dream of all the possibilities of what their lives could be, instead of just being the victims of dark circumstances like I had to be. Knowing that does bring peace to my heart.

2006-08-19T14:53:00.000-07:00

Entry # 10 As each layer of darkness began to peel away from me, I began to experience some great new emotions for about a week, things like courage, warmth, safety, value, and even compassion come to mind. I thought, being so new to this, that this was it. I had had my experience back to God, and the rest of my life would be all straightened-out. Little did I know that all this hard work I had done at the Road was just to open-up my heart and give me the tools I needed to begin the real work that was coming just around the corner. However, timing was not with me because it was the Holidays again, and those times have always been the toughest times for me personally even though I always tried to do the best I could for the girls. As I remember, the holidays were always so great, and I still have good memories of those times despite all the darkness that has come into my life. There were trips to Grandma's for Christmas, tons of food and listening to my grandpa’s stories of him growing up while sitting on the porch by his rocking chair. We sang Christmas songs, and each year we got one year closer to being able to leave the children’s table and sit at the grown-up's table when it was time to eat. Then, of course, there was Christmas at home with my parents and two brothers. We always had lots of presents under the tree and stockings full of all our favorite things. All of that was taken away from me, and I was robbed of my children being able to experience it, when my family chose to shut us out of their lives. My father told me that my extended family of aunts, uncles and cousins felt the same way, and so my shame became even greater. My girls never, in twenty years of growing up, got to have a Christmas with anyone other than the three of us, home alone and trying to make the best of it. I did manage to keep in touch with two family members through those years of struggle and abandonment. One was my dad’s little sister, my Aunt Billie Jayne. She lives in San Angelo while I live in Mansfield (hundreds of miles away), but we did e-mail a lot, and I spent some time with her and her family when Timmy and I first divorced and before the darkness took hold of me. My aunt has always been a straight-shooter. She told all my family that, while she would not try to bring me back into their lives, she would also not allow any of them to tell her how her relationship with me was going to be. I am so grateful to her for standing up for us. It has helped many times in my battles against my demons just knowing that she was out there in this world, a world that seemed to be so against me and everything I did or stood for. Robyn was a little over three years old when we went down there, and to this day, she still talks about the fond memories she had with them, especially the walks in the pasture with her Uncle Russell. I have not seen my aunt and uncle in years, and I do hope they get to meet Jesse someday and also revisit with Robyn. The other person I have kept in contact with is my older brother's wife Linda. But with her, it was always on her terms, and we were never allowed to come to her house to share in her life with her family. She and I worked together for over ten years, so that made it easy for her to be in a small part of my life. At first, she had to sneak off to see us, and dared not tell my mom or dad of her adventures. As we got older, she became more open about seeing us, but still it was always when she had time for us and in a neutral territory away from any of her family. My dad was a powerful man, and he controlled my brother through what he would give his family in the way of money and gifts. They were always afraid my dad would cut them off like me, and those material things he used to control them meant more to them than me or my two girls. She would also come by to give the girls Christmas gifts and bring $300 that my mom had given her. Never once was there a card or word to go with it, just the money. I always took it, though, because most of the time I was always behind on the bills. I would pay what I could and save a few dollars to at least give the girls a good meal on Christmas. Linda had a big house in the country, and that is where all my immediate family gathered each year for the Holidays. She used to come to work after each Holiday and tell me all their great stories and, while I did cling to every word she said, I can also remember going home many times and sobbing all the way because the girls and I never got to share in any of those memories. One of the hardest things for me the last two years has been trying to figure out what I am supposed to do with this part of my life. I see now that, in order to come full circle with this recovery process, I have to learn to separate the old me that feeds on the darkness from the new me that is trying so hard to build a new foundation for my life and for my girls. I have gone back and taken a real look at my past relationship with Linda. I have seen how unhealthy it was for me to let her make so many conditions on sharing her life with the girls and me. There is no shame in me, and surely none in those two beautiful girls of mine, and so I must let her go to God for right now. I hope someday that Linda can see that having conditions for our two families is wrong, and maybe she can break that chain so that we can have a real family relationship. If she does, then maybe I will re-evaluate all of this. But until then, I am thinking that it may be best for me to put that part of my life on hold for awhile. Entry # 11 I always felt bad for Robyn being ten years apart from her little sister. She was not only dyslectic, and always made fun of due to that, but most of the time she went to school in somebody’s hand-me-downs I had to get from Goodwill. She didn’t even have the basics to go underneath her clothes like panties, socks and later a bra. So not only did she have to deal with fighting for her educational rights at school, she also left the house each morning feeling inadequate about her appearance. The hardest thing about being a mom for me was that, while I did manage to keep a roof over our heads, I couldn’t give the girls the things that most kids take for granted while they are growing up. I made sure that the girls were in school when I did buy what little I could afford for them because I always had to have two lists to shop with. I had a list of things I had to buy that they could not do without, and a list of things I had to steal. Food, clothes and things that could not fit in my purse would be on the list of things to buy. Deodorant, soap, toothpaste and all the little things I could slip in my purse would be on the list to steal. I thought of the girls as I was stealing those things and how my mom and dad threw me away, and never even gave my girls a chance in life. I would make myself believe that, without me doing this, they would go hungry and be even more embarrassed than they already were in school. Putting them to bed at night was also tough for me because, while they did have one mattress on the floor to sleep on, they never had bed sheets, pillowcases or bed covers for that mattress. They would get one blanket each year from the Salvation Army to cover up with. We were lucky to have one good towel apiece to bathe with. Sometimes the girls would use the t-shirts, which they had worn the day before, to dry-off with when their towel wasn’t clean. My kids didn’t have grandparents, aunts, uncles or cousins to share their school and life experiences with, only a mom who was mentally abused and living in darkness. My most dreaded times were school functions for the girls because I just could not get the courage to go. They had no one else to take them, so they were always left out. They never complained, but I know all these things had to have had such a defeating effect on their already tormented self-esteem. That was our life then, our reality. Birthdays were also something we didn’t do, because we were too poor, and I was embarrassed by how we had to live, so there were no parties. My biggest fear was that no one would show up if I did get brave enough to give them one. I just knew that if that happened, they would feel even more abandoned than they already did. Only this time, it wouldn’t be by their family but by those they thought might be their friends. I wish I could have trusted their hearts more and hadn’t always tried to protect them. It was my own way of doing just that, which caused so much emotional damage to them. I did try to make things up to them at Christmas the best I could, even though in my heart that was a really sad time for me. Christmas for my two girls was the only time they got new clothes, shoes and one or two of the bare basics. It was always a good learning experience for them, though, because it was just us three against the world. We made it as happy and as wonderful as a family of three could do, I guess. While there were no more than one or two presents under a very small tree for them, we still managed to make memories of a different kind…like cooking their "must-have" Honey Ham for Christmas dinner, baking a peach cobbler for dessert together and always having a special ornament in a somewhat-bare Christmas stocking hanging on the wall for their box of memories. It was special for us to have that time each year to feel good about ourselves as individuals and as a family that had made it just one more year together. We did always manage to beat the odds and overcome the struggles of what the world threw at us somehow. This past Christmas I made some new ornaments and decorations from spare materials and things in the house to replace what was burned in the fire. I actually made enough in my new job that I could at least give them a good meal and one special gift. They had such a good Christmas, thanks to all my wonderful new church family members, that I thought they would be ok with a smaller, but still special one, from me this year. But God had something different in mind for us, and He was setting the plans to leave more spiritual markers on my children’s lives, and in a big way. My sponsor at Celebrate Recovery asked me if her home-team could buy the girls some Christmas gifts this year. She is an amazing woman who is also the smartest person I know. She has also been very influential in my recovery process. I told her that that would be a blessing to us all, and I thanked her for the offer. Home-teams at our church are what most people call adult Sunday School classes at their churches. We just have ours in people’s homes at different times during the week. I haven’t gotten the courage to join one yet. I guess you could say Friday night recovery was my current home-team experience. Right before Christmas, Sharon asked me if we would like to come and share in their home-team's Holiday Dinner night. That way, they could all meet us and give us our gifts. It would be the first actual, formal Christmas party we had ever been invited to as a family. I was excited that the girls were actually going to get to have that experience. When we drove up to her house, the whole front yard was outlined in Christmas lights. As we walked into her house, there was a twelve-foot Christmas tree with all the trimmings towering over the whole entry-way. Her house was so welcoming with Christmas decorations all around and candles glowing on all the tables we would be eating on. Everyone welcomed us with hugs and smiles and made us fit right in with them all. We sat around the table eating a meal with every kind of food you could think of and desserts that took up a whole counter all by themselves. Robyn got tickled at me because Sharon offered me flavored coffee in these very petite china coffee cups. I couldn’t figure out how I was going to hold that cup without spilling the coffee or just dropping it all together. I think Sharon and Jesse both were just waiting for a disaster to happen. Somehow I managed to drink that coffee without any accidents. As I was watching the girls laughing and telling stories with the people around us, for a few seconds I kind of went back in time to my Grandma’s house. I pictured them there having this wonderful new memory they were making. It reminded me of my years with my family at Christmas before all the darkness took over my life. After dinner we went and sat by the tree, and the men brought out the gifts for the girls, and there were even a couple of presents for me. I let them open one apiece before we left while all the men and women sat and watched. It was a tender moment for me, and I believe it was for them too. I am so grateful to all those wonderful people who gave my family such a great memory to keep with us always. We need times like this while we all heal, to let us know we will be a strong family again. All the way home that night, the girls were laughing and trying to guess what was in each other’s boxes. That night was a very peaceful night in our house, something we have had too few of in past times. Earlier that month, my new landlord had asked me if she could have a mission from a nearby town adopt the girls, and I said of course. These girls had gone over ten years without anything at all, and it was so wonderful that they were being blessed at such a critical time in their lives. So, instead of feeling self-pity like I would have in the past, I embraced it for those two wonderful girls of mine. For years, we were always told that we were not even worth the effort of acknowledgment from most everybody that should have loved us, and now complete strangers were just pouring out their time and effort to them to make sure they had a good Christmas once again. It was so sweet to hear Robyn and Jesse tell my landlord what they wanted when she asked them to make a list. They didn’t put down all the things you would think a teenager and a young girl would put down. They put down things like a bed-set with matching sheets for their bed, towels and wash rags in their favorite colors, a lamp for their bedroom, and all the kinds of things they had only dared to dream of having just a few years earlier. I also made sure that panties, socks and bras for both of them were hanging in their stockings. I have to tell you, my heart was overjoyed just watching my two daughters open all those gifts they got. With each new present, their eyes got brighter and their smiles got bigger. I saw little bits and pieces of their missing childhoods coming back to them, making a special place in their hearts for great memories in this new beginning of their lives. I see more and more how God was paying attention to the details of our deepest pains during all those years that we lived in darkness. Now, He is replacing those broken pieces with new blessings for us all. As a mother, it makes me feel good to know that my girls may not have to spend a life in suffering just because of me, and it also gives me hope for my own life.

2006-08-18T20:49:00.000-07:00

Entry # 7 One Friday night right before Thanksgiving, Jan and Chuck invited Jesse and me to their home to meet their Bible study group. I really felt uneasy about going, but I agreed to go because I loved being in that home. Since I have spent the last twenty years hiding within myself, fear literally takes over my mind and body now if I have to get in front of a large crowd. Fear was working overtime that night as I walked into Jan’s living room with over twelve people waiting there to greet me. As soon as I got there, I headed straight towards Jan’s recliner, which has also become my favorite place to sit. Only this time, Jan had a chair sitting in front of the fireplace and told me to sit there. After introducing Jesse to everyone, they took her to Jan’s daughter's room to play, and it was just me there facing all those strange faces. It was so hard for me to look at each one of them as they introduced themselves to me. Jan saw my fear and quickly started reassuring me that it was going to be ok. Chuck looked at me, and said, "Sonja, you thought you were here to meet us all, but we have other plans for you in mind." Well, I tell you right then and there, my heart felt like it was coming straight up out of me. I started shaking and just sat there with this look of total fear on my face once again. All of a sudden, each person was handed an envelope. Chuck said there were letters in each one of those envelopes that they wanted to read to me. The first letter was a story about how all these people in that very room wanted to help the girls so that we would have shelter and food for the Holidays. There was $200 in that envelope. After reading it out loud, that person stood up and gave me a hug, and then handed me the letter. I was so touched that all I could do was just sit there with tears coming down my face. I didn't really understand what was going on. This went on and on all the way around the room. Each person read their letter to me with a story of how they wanted to help me. Here I was, someone they knew nothing about, yet they had been in prayer about me for weeks. I just could not believe this was happening. Why would these people do this for me? I was not anyone special in their lives. One of the letters was a story of how they wanted to give me money to go out and spend on my girls so they could have the kind of Christmas they deserved. There was even one for me. That letter told me to go spend all this money on myself so I could have a special Christmas too. I have never had anyone give me a gift like that, other than what the girls would make for me in school. Jan had also been talking to Jesse and knew she loved science, and has always wanted a telescope. After all the letters were read, Chuck went to the kitchen and brought out the biggest telescope I have ever seen for me to put under the tree for Jesse. By then my voice was shaking uncontrollably, and tears were still coming down just as strong as when that first letter was read. I tried to tell them how humbled I was that they would do this for me and my family. I wanted them to understand what a life-changing experience this night had been for me. Chuck looked at me and said, "Sonja, it’s not over yet. We have two more surprises for you." A man and woman came out of the kitchen just as soon as he finished speaking. They started to tell me how blessed they had been to be able to buy a new mini-van, and they wanted me to have their old one. Just as simple as that, he walked over to me, handed me his keys and gave me a hug. I just stood there trying to grasp what had just happened, not really understanding if this was for-real or not. Chuck said, "I have one last letter for you." He read the letter, and it said that he wanted me to be able to use the van right away so that I could find a job and take care of my kids. So he was paying for the first three months of my car insurance. Each person came to me, formed a line, and then they gave me a big hug and "Happy Holiday" wishes. I actually hugged each one of them back. I haven’t embraced anyone the way we all did that night in many years. It was all so touching to me. I left that house with a new van and over $1,500 in cash. I also had a gift to put under the tree for Jesse that I could never even have dreamed of before. That night I found myself saying out loud, "Thank You God," not only for the great gifts that had just been given to my family and me, but also for the fact that He actually showed me what it is like to receive His total gift of Grace. I, Sonja Brooks, who has spent the last twenty years being mad at God, yet He still brought all these people to me. They even saw value in me and wanted to help me help my girls. My heart was consumed with Joy, and for the first time in many years, I felt love coming back into my heart. Entry # 8 As I began to heal and start the real work of my recovery, I had many personal battles within myself. I believe it was because I yearned so much for my heart to have a true spiritual experience with God so that I could validate all this hard work that I was doing. I wanted to believe that God really does want to love me as His child. Yet this spiritual experience never seemed to come to me, and I had this deep emptiness inside me because of that. I think that is why I would keep going back to those memories of my dad telling me I no longer mattered in life. It was that, and the fact that I had given my soul to Satan. Even though I could hope about some things again, I still could not hope about being forgiven of that. At the beginning phase of my recovery, I was able to continue each week even with this emptiness simply because I was so humbled that these wonderful new people were in my life. They were willing to share with me the wisdoms they had learned and their personal experiences of their own journeys of recovery back to God. That allowed the small piece of my heart that opened up at the Road Adventure to continue to get stronger and stronger. I would have moments of feeling like God was going through me but not staying in me. I have even felt joy and warmth at times in these last few months after having small victories in my battles with my demons of darkness. What would torment me the most was how I could feel those great moments of victory in defeating those demons (having so much joy in getting my heart on the path to healing again), and then almost immediately go right back to those feelings of unworthiness and self-destruction whenever something else challenged me on this new journey I had started. I didn’t realize it at the time, but each new experience I was having (like all the gifts at Christmas that were given to the girls and me and finding a new job in a Christian environment that challenged me personally) was bringing to life a new spiritual awakening within me. So when God would see that I was ready to receive that spiritual experience I longed for, I would be ready to embrace it. Even more importantly, I would then believe in the truth of it and Him. I began to work harder and harder each week, promising to stay completely honest in my walk, no matter what the effects of that would be, in each new step I took. I felt such a great sense of appreciation for all these people who, like me, were working on their own recovery but, at the same time, were being teachers to me. I was so grateful for a safe place to go to, a place that allowed me to go into the very camp of the demons that sought to destroy me and to have victory in getting back each piece of my heart that they had stolen from me. Last Sunday, our pastor said something in church that was so profound to me that I immediately wrote it down. He said; "Rely on good friends, the friends of faith that bring compassion and patience to your life, but know that those same friends cannot heal you. Only God can do that. They can, however, help you find the way to begin that healing process with God. Jesus begins at our greatest points of need, and he alone is more than enough." I am feeling that Celebrate Recovery is that power of circle coming around me to help me find my way to God to heal. Somehow each week I have been drawn to come back to Celebrate Recovery, though I could not hold my head up in the beginning to see the eyes of all those who had committed to taking this journey with me. However, I was able to actively listen and allow the small pieces of my heart that would come back to life each week to become lighter and brighter as a new layer of darkness peeled away from my soul. There is a saying that I now have in my journal that describes me so perfectly in the first months of my recovery, and it goes, "The heart can hear and feel what the eyes cannot see." Entry # 9 Three months have gone by since I started working on myself at Celebrate Recovery. Most of my time has consisted of just sitting and listening (along with a whole lot of crying) in small groups. Small group, which is the last hour of our recovery, is where women sit together and share thoughts about life and their recovery process. You have to state your name, what you are recovering from, and then you have three minutes to share what is on your heart. I always managed to get my name out and what I was recovering from. As for the rest, how could I share my thoughts if I couldn’t even hold my head up long enough to see who I was sharing with? So I just sat there and said, "Pass," when it came time for me to share. That became the norm for me every Friday night for the first few months. Then came the Friday night that was to be the breaking point for me and become the first huge step of my recovery. Our leader told us at the beginning of the meeting that this was the Friday night we had to pick our buddy for our recovery process. He said I want you all to stand up, look around and find a buddy. Girls have to pick girls, and boys have to pick boys. While I had made some really good friends there, and my best friend Jan was sitting at my table, I was starting to feel fear come fast and hard all throughout my body. I’m telling you, at that very moment in time, I saw everyone in the room literally going farther and farther away from me even though we were all at the very same table. It seemed as if they all immediately picked up their buddies, leaving me just standing there all alone. I saw myself on the other side of the room with not one person wanting to pick me. They were all larger than life in their joy of having someone to share their process of recovery with. Then there was me, this little tiny speck of a person, all alone in another world of rejection and despair. A part of me was saying, “Sonja, stay. You need to be here and face this.” Then there was an even-louder part of me that was saying, “This is where I have to leave you behind now. I cannot let someone who betrayed me so badly befriend one of my own children.” Right that very second, I grabbed my car keys and ran out of that building as fast as I could. All the time, I was hearing this loud voice (that I perceived to be God) saying, “Leave now, your time here is through.” My daughter Jesse was in another building at the day care, and I didn’t even go get her. I just ran straight for my car so I could get as far away from that place as I could. As I made it out to the middle of the parking lot, someone grabbed my shirt and screamed, “I am not letting you run out on me this way.” I looked around, and it was my good friend Jan with at least ten other people behind her. She began to tell me to stay. I kept crying and saying, “Please let me go. I have to get out of here right now.” As we stood there, people started surrounding me and laying their hands on me. I heard someone say, “Can I pray for you, Sonja?” By that time, there were over twenty people that had me inside a complete circle in that parking lot, so I agreed. All of a sudden, I saw this red-headed young man lift his hands to the heavens, and he started to command Satan to leave me right that very second. He said, “I Rebuke You, Satan, In the Name of Jesus for My Sister, Sonja." I couldn’t believe it. Why would this man, who barely knows me, say that? If he only knew what I did to make God so mad at me, then he would stop and say, "Take your keys and go, Sonja." Still he just stood there in that parking lot, circling around me and never changing his demands for Satan to leave me. It was strange to me, hearing him yell at Satan to leave me, when all these years I thought it was God who was controlling the circumstances of my life and my children’s. Could this be what my new friends talk of when they talk of God’s unconditional love? Have I been fighting and believing the wrong things all these years of living in this life of destruction? As he kept praying, my tears began to just flow from my eyes in a way they have never done before. Instead of tears of fear and defeat, I began to feel all the hardness and darkness, which had not yet left my heart, start to leave me. I began to pray inside myself, still being afraid for my voice to be heard by others. I prayed silently to this God that I am trying so hard to come to. It felt as if my tears were becoming stronger, and they flowed even faster than ever. Then there was a voice in me saying, “Sonja, I am here. I have always been here, right in your heart and soul. This very second, I have your heart wrapped in my hands. Through your tears, you are releasing your doubts and fears from your heart and replacing them with my trust and love. It is that trust in me that is going to give you the courage to defeat this demon that is once again making you run from me. Let it go and let me in, all the way into your heart." Right then, I held my head up, looked into the eyes of my new friends and said, "I will stay." That night I finally got that real spiritual experience I have been yearning for. I have heard my friend, Michelle T., from Celebrate Recovery talk of spiritual markers that have come to her during her recovery process. In the beginning, when people would talk of spiritual things, I always became confused because I believed I had no soul or spirit in me. Therefore, this spiritual marker thing would be a concept that I could never conceive of for my life. But I now believe that I have seen proof of this, for I have now seen one person's goodness actually passed down to another through the people that have come into my life this last year. My daughter Jesse, who I was always afraid to hug or say, "I Love You" to, came to me a few weeks ago and said, "Mom, have you noticed that when Michelle hugs you, she does it really hard and long?" I kind of laughed it off at the time, but I know now that that was a spiritual marker that God was leaving on Jesse through Michelle each time she would share her hugs with her. You see, those hugs are coming straight from Michelle’s heart to Jesse. In her heart are little pieces of God’s love that are coming straight through her to my wonderful little girl. God needed Michelle to do that for Jesse to show her how it is to be hugged by someone for real since her own Mommy could not do it at this time. I am grateful for Michelle and her gift of hugs that she gives us each time she sees us. Then there is my good friend Jan, who came to me one day driving her blue Isuzu Rodeo with her heart in her hand, who has stayed by my side each step of the way on my journey of recovery. How can I forget Thomas T., Michelle’s husband, who took the time to lift his voice all the way to heaven to pray just for me even while he was fighting with his own recovery? Of course, I have to mention Chuck, Jan’s husband, who is a very wise man that helps to guide lost souls in need of healing and always manages to go the distance even in the hardest of times with me. I am grateful for this whole new group of people that I now stand hand-in-hand with each Friday night, building this amazing unbreakable bond with. These are my spiritual markers of God’s love given to me. They are the most perfect of memories for me to hold in this new heart of mine to help validate His presence in my times of weakness. I have now let God's Grace and Love into my heart, all the way in, and this time I am not letting go.

2006-08-18T14:15:00.001-07:00

Taking the hand of God's Warrior and giving Him my Trust Entry #6 I haven’t paid much attention to the calendar days of the month since I quit my job last July. Time mostly goes by on a day-to-day basis. As I am getting stronger, it seems to be going by on a week-to-week basis, and that is a good thing. I woke up this morning, and here it is November already. Three months have gone by since I sat on my porch conceding to the powers of darkness that were controlling my every thought and move. Jesse and I have now started going to church with Chuck and Jan every Sunday. At first I felt too embarrassed to go. I do not know God’s words, and I have no clothes fit to be seen in, especially at a place of worship. I have even caught myself still being mad at God sometimes. Still, I managed to get Jesse and myself ready every Sunday, and we were always outside waiting when Chuck and Jan came by to pick us up. I thought that taking Jesse to church (even with God still being mad at me) would be a good way for me to take my sins away from her so she wouldn’t be punished so harshly anymore. I still feel very guilty for all the afflictions that have been put on my children's lives because I was such a sinful mother. While I was still not convinced that this God-thing could help me, I did have hope that maybe it could help my two girls. I found myself sitting in church each Sunday with uncontrollable tears, and they came down constantly while I was there. They were not the kind of tears I had ever experienced before, and that was one of the reasons I was always drawn back each Sunday. At times, I could still hear the voices telling me I was not worthy of all this new attention, but they did seem to get quieter when I was in that church building sitting next to my good friend Jan. She always had such compassion for me, and still does. Each Sunday when the pastor spoke, it was as if God was saying to him, "You see that woman out there? She is hurting and confused. She needs you to give her just the right words so that she can get one step closer to this thing she is yearning for to come back into her heart." After about a month of going, I felt as if my tears were making me feel a connection with what this place could do to get my heart to feel again. I wished that God could love me the way I always heard the pastor talk about His love for all the others that go to this church. I am glad that, in the beginning, I didn’t have a car that would work well enough to take Jesse and me, because we probably would never have made that first step even though I knew it was the right place to be at this time in our lives. I guess that was just one more spiritual marker of God keeping up with the details of my life while I was running so hard from Him. He knew it would take someone strong to get me to go, so he brought Chuck and Jan to me. One day after church, Chuck was at a booth promoting this thing called the Road Adventure, and something told me to ask him if it was something that could help me get some clarity to my thoughts. I asked him if it was just about church and religion, and he said no. It is a place to go to find out what is really down deep in the pits of your soul that is causing you to hurt so badly. He said it would give you the tools you need to start the healing process and even help you find your real purpose again. That part sounded really good to me because I felt that my only purpose in life was to watch my children pay for my sins, so maybe this could help me to heal them. I asked him if I could go, and he told me I could and that he would even let me ride back and forth with him. Chuck was learning that he was going to have to give his strength to God on my behalf right now, because I was just too weak to do this on my own. I am so grateful to him for knowing that and for seeing enough value in me to follow through with it. So we started a couple of weeks later to the Road Adventure, which would help me to begin my battle of self-recovery. I started that first night, still hearing the voices in my head telling me that I lived in a world where I could never rise above the burdens of my pain. My heart knew it had been broken completely, for I had been left behind not only by mankind but also by God. While others could dream and fly to places where they could be loved, I could not. My dreams would always be taken over by my father’s words, which would turn my dreams into haunting fears, until one day I didn’t even dare to dream at all. In the beginning at the Road, I sat mostly by myself shaking almost to the point of coming to tears. I even tried to get up and leave once when the message was too much for me to comprehend, but the trainers came after me. They convinced me that this was the bad stuff trying to surface so that I could face my fears. Then I would find the real meaning of what was tearing at my heart. I went back, and somehow got the courage to give more of myself to this thing called the Road Adventure. After two weeks of hard work, I learned how to get the right tools to reach down deep into my heart and pull out all those old tapes of the things that kept me in a life of destruction. I even began to learn how to start working on forgiving those who had damaged my heart in the first place, and that was a big, big step for me. I was told that when I could finally let go of all the fears that controlled my life and forgive them, then I could learn to forgive myself. That was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. But every time I managed to honestly work through each step, my heart felt just a little bit lighter. Maybe that is the secret to all of this - to do it honestly, no matter how hard that might be. I also saw that there are people out there in the world that I could rely upon to follow through on what they committed to me. Those people are becoming the guardians of my recovery process. One of the last things that happens to everyone at the Road is to be put in a Cradle of Love. The way they do this is to pick you up as if you were lying down, floating on air. Then they play a song that they hand-picked just for you, and then they rock you back and forth until the song stops. I knew ahead of time that this was going to happen, but as it got closer to me, fear started to completely take over my body. This was mainly because one of the things that I had done to myself throughout the last twenty years was to damage my body severely. I went from weighing about 150 pounds to weighing about 400 pounds at the time I was at the Road. I was so afraid to have these people touch my body, especially the men, because of my shame over how I looked. Chuck saw that I was losing control, so he came up to me and put his hands in my hands and said, “Will you trust me to help you through this?” I told him I could. He took me over to the middle of the room, and all these people surrounded me. They told me to just very calmly fall backwards, and let my feet come up as I did. I was crying and calling out for Chuck, but they all stayed right there with me, never once faltering because I was so heavy. Before I knew it, I was all the way in the air, lying in all their arms and being rocked like a newborn baby. At first, I shook and shook, and called for Chuck even more than I did at the beginning when he first asked to help me. Then all of a sudden, I began to feel this calmness rush all through me. I could feel the tears of the people around me hitting my body. These people, who did not know me, were all holding me, rocking me and even crying for me. It felt as if God had come to me that very moment to console me, even saying to me that, if I could find a way to give my faith to Him, then He could find a way to heal me. Maybe if I did this, then God would forgive me of the sinful love I put into my children’s lives that my father spoke of. To be forgiven by God was one thing I was just not sure could happen for me yet, but if I forgave all the people who hurt my girls, then maybe He really would take my sins from my children. So this would be the beginning of my new goal in life, and it would give me purpose for the time being and, for right now, that is all I could ask for. It was a very profound moment for me, one that I have never experienced in my life before, and the beginning of what now was to be the greatest journey I would ever travel.

2006-08-17T18:41:00.000-07:00

Finding Hope Again Entry #4 The days seemed to pass rather fast, and soon a whole month had gone by. Jan had now opened-up her house to me so I could do laundry and use her computer for job searches. I had discovered that, all this time, she had lived less than a mile from me. Isn't it funny how we had always lived so close to each other, yet neither one of us knew the other one was there until the day she drove up to my house when she saw me on the porch? Our families soon became close, at least everyone but my older daughter Robyn. It seems that she has started going into a dark world of her own. She has chosen to keep Jesse and me at a distance, and in the times she did allow herself to pop in, she always left angry and with an emptiness in her eyes. I can see the friends of darkness taking over her heart more and more, and she seems to make all her decisions based on what those dark voices trick her mind into believing. In the beginning of this new journey that she and I were traveling on with each other, I would try every way I could to save her. I did this by showing her how she was making one mistake after another. I never once looked down deep into her heart like I should have. I just pointed out what her actions were saying about what I thought was in her heart. She would become even angrier with me and would always leave yelling at me and saying anything she could to hurt me, keeping up that shield of hers. Maybe the only way to help Robyn is to save myself. Let her see through me how we can make it out of this wall of destruction that has been built around our hearts and souls. During these last eighteen years of my life, everyone in my family (who were supposed to love me unconditionally) threw me out like yesterday's garbage…all because of one choice I had made. It was not a bad or hurtful choice, just a different choice. My father told me that, because of the decision I had made to bring Timmy into my life, I could no longer be part of his family. He said that, from this day forward, I would never have anything of value because I just lost my value for choosing that man. He also said that my own children were destined for failure and heartache and would never know any other family except me. We would be deserted by him and by God, and it would be entirely my fault. After my father said those things, and as life began to hit me, I led myself to believe that every word he said had to be true. He was a powerful man and, because of that, my mom and brothers also had to do as he said. With every bad thing that happened to us in the last ten years (and there was a lot), I always knew it was God saying, "I am leaving you behind, Sonja, for going against your own family and committing such an unforgivable sin." That is the way our family lived for those ten years, and the way I lived for the last eighteen years. I lost my husband due to the guilt I felt of what I had done to my parents. My husband was a good man, but I became ashamed of him because I blamed him for taking me away from my family, the ones that had brought me into this world. When you think about it, he was probably the worst victim of all in this whole mess. I have never been able to tell him how truly sorry I am for not believing in him more and for letting my darkness rob us of what could have been. I hope that, as the years have gone by and my heart has softened, he has seen that in me. For many years I also believed that my older daughter, who was born dyslexic, would never become anything of worth because God was going to make her suffer as part of my punishment. While I always fought for her to get all she needed in school, I did not let her be completely free with her mind and imagination so she could explore all her possibilities because I did not want to see her get hurt if she did not succeed. This was my way of protecting her, I thought, but it only brought my own weakness into her as she grew older. Ten years later, when my youngest daughter was born handicapped, I knew the minute the doctor told me she had spina bifida that this was also part of my punishment from God. Even though her dad was not Timmy, I still had the sins of my love for Timmy in me, and that would carry over into Jesse's life as well. I loved those two girls so much, and at the same time, I ached for them because I knew I was their failure in life from the very first breath they took. Only now, at this day and time, there is this family that has come into our lives. They see my children and me, yet they still invite us into their home…a home where I feel warmth and security as I did when I was a young child in my own home. Could I possibly ask this woman (who says she wants to be my friend and help me) to show me a way to heal my heart? Will she see anything in me at all and think I am worth the kind of commitment it is going to take for her to really help me the way I need to be helped in my heart and soul? That same night I was talking out loud with no one in the room but me, not really understanding who I was talking to at the time. I knew my heart needed to try to find the words to ask this new family to help me find a way to bring some light back into this darkened, hard heart that now lived inside of me. Entry #5 Throughout the last fifteen years of my life, I taught myself not to allow new people to get too close to me and share in the lives of my children and me. It was my job to protect them. I thought that, by keeping the outside world away, I was protecting them from more emotional abuse. Little did I know that, by doing that, I was bringing even more of my darkness into their young lives. They never got to have any kind of social life or to build friendships that might have been there to support them when I started slipping into my isolation as the years went by. As Robyn got older, she always had problems socially in school because I had sheltered her and not allowed those skills to be built into the foundation of her life skills. She has always given all of her heart to everyone that came into her life. Fast and furious was the way she let them come into her heart. Each time one if those people stepped on her heart, she would always let them come back for more. She clung so hard to each one and to every little bit of life’s pieces of love she could get, that it didn't matter what kind of emotional abuse came along with it. I have learned through Jan and Chuck that there is value in letting the right kind of people into your life because, through them, you can gain strength, trust, and even great support in the hard times. I just wish Robyn had allowed herself to stay in our lives so she could finally get to feel what it is like to have such wonderful people as Jan and Chuck in her own life, people who see value in you no matter what others have led you to believe about yourself. I am thankful that Jesse is getting the chance to feel and experience the things that I did not allow Robyn and me to have because of my fear of being seen and heard. In the past, I had trained myself not to say "I love you" all the time to the girls because I always felt like I was a punishment to them for all the wrong things that have happened in their lives. I realize now how self-focused I was back then. By allowing my demons to control every decision I made, I became selfish in the developing of my daughter’s lives. I now try to listen more to what they have to say and to even encourage them to try new things with people that, in the past, I would have kept away from them completely. Today, because I am surrounded by such a loving and spiritual family like Chuck and Jan who express their love so openly, I have allowed compassion to come back into my heart. I find myself becoming softer with the girls. Still it is hard to say the words "I love you" to them. I am getting closer, though, to being the kind of mother they need and should have had years ago. Robyn stopped calling me "Mom" when she was sixteen. She always called me "Sonja," except for the few times that she would allow that little piece of her heart that still holds a place for me to come out. Then she would call me "Mom." Robyn has managed to pop into and out of our lives on an ongoing basis. Although she still holds that wall up there between us, I do believe she sees that my heart has become softer. Who knows? We may find a way to get that connection to each other back someday. I have to believe that. I am thankful for this gift of value that my new friends have taught me to see again. Both Jan and Chuck have always made sure they were soft-spoken to me and my girls. I didn't know it at the time, but they were laying the groundwork to help me find a way to start my journey back to God. The great lesson in all of this is that love is the essence of a true connection with each other. If I can learn to love others in this world, then just maybe I can understand this thing that my friends are calling God’s unconditional Love.

2006-08-17T18:31:00.000-07:00

Loosing everything that tells the story of who you are COMING OUT OF THE DARKNESS Entry # 1 For the last eighteen years of my life, I have traveled in darkness, controlled by the demons that overpowered my heart and took control of my every thought and move. I found every way (that my demons allowed me to obtain) to totally erase myself from existence to the outside world. In that process, I also started the foundation for my two beautiful daughters' lives to be one of fear, unworthiness and uncertainty. The one good thing in all of this, though, was that (while I was in this world of darkness, unworthiness and hopelessness) I managed to be seen and heard just enough so that, somewhere out there, someone was praying for God to bring just enough light into my life to start a journey of recovery back to Him. That prayer was answered, and this is the story of my road to recovery back to God. In March 2003, my two daughters and I had just moved into this cute little one-bedroom house with a garage apartment on one-half acre of land. It was a happy moment in a time of constant struggle, and we looked forward to finally getting to build some good memories together in that house. My older daughter Robyn got to have an apartment of her own. Jesse, my younger daughter, and I would share the house. Just two weeks after we moved in, we had a fire in the utility room. The whole garage apartment and utility room burned to the ground. We lost everything we owned that day, everything that told the story of who we were. Growing up away from family with no support made life a struggle for us. I always tried every way I could to have little keepsakes for the girls to have so they could have some kind of meaning in life. All of that was destroyed in the fire, and the girls were heartbroken over that loss. Robyn moved out to a friend’s home (rather, the closest thing she had to calling a friend) because there was no room in what was left of the house for all three of us. She seemed to become even angrier after the fire. I have to admit I didn’t fight for her to stay when she left. It was so hard making the choice to let her go out of our lives. I didn’t learn until much later the depth of pain that this decision brought to her heart. The summer was hard for Jesse, not having her sister there. Jesse was born with spina bifida, and she has already had thirteen surgeries in her short life. She leans on her big sister for strength because Robyn is not just her family, but she's also her best and only real friend. One of the things Robyn would do when she became angry was to lash out at me about how I forgot about her when Jesse came. She would yell at me that my whole life had become all about just Jesse. I think that has taken a toll on Jesse, and she blames herself for her sister being so angry with me and even her sometimes. Don’t get me wrong, though, for if Jesse is in pain, Robyn’s heart cries for her. She does love her little sister, and I believe she sometimes even feels the same pain that Jesse does when she is going through one of her surgeries. I know that it is the darkness in Robyn that I put in her that makes her say those things when she rages at me. However, I do hate that Jesse has to hear her, and I hope that Robyn and Jesse can make their own peace about that someday. July came, and Jesse and I were starting to manage again from picking up the pieces of what the fire did to us. Jesse also had a surgery in July that was twelve hours long. It was total reconstruction of her bladder. There were complications, and she had to overcome great pain. At the same time, the transmission went out in my car. My job was in Dallas, so I had to quit due to Jesse's complications and the fact that I no longer had a car to drive. It was right then in my life that I realized how much I had depended on Robyn to be that surrogate mom for me. Not having her there this time was very difficult for me, as well as for Jesse. It seemed that the world was hitting my family with everything it had to bring us completely down. I remember one day in August of that same summer, I was sitting on the porch trying to figure out how to tell my daughters that this was it. It was time for their lives to begin with each other because I knew that the demons had finally completely won and taken over my whole being. I felt as if my life on this earth would be ending soon. I could no longer hold out and fight those feelings that haunted my heart and soul. I knew now that I would never again be the person I used to think I was. The one and only reason that I had trained myself to continue existing was to prepare Robyn to take care of Jesse, who will always be wheelchair-bound. By doing this, I could finally let go of all the darkness that controlled my life. I believed that this was the way to have peace again in my heart and to take my sin out of my daughters' lives for good. Now I couldn’t even do that because I had alienated Robyn so much that she too decided to leave my life completely. I just couldn’t get the strength to make myself continue for those two wonderful girls of mine any longer, even though I knew they would have no one else in this world to depend on once I left. My journey began in the fall of 2003, sitting on that front porch of my little one-bedroom house conceding to the darkness that haunted my life. Entry #2 Today, I am here and able to write this journal of my life simply because of God's Grace, as the friends of Satan were making their final plans to control the last days of my life. God had set forth His own plans to rescue me and start me on the path of recovery back to Him. It all began when this blue Isuzu Rodeo came driving up my driveway as I sat on that porch. A woman got out to say, "You looked as if you were in need, so I just decided to stop and ask if there was anything I could do for you." I knew this woman because we had exchanged "hellos" at our daughters' horse therapy classes that they shared. Her name was Jan. Over the years, I had learned not to accept the words of people who ask if they can help you. This was because, when they see that we do not have what others have and that we cannot meet most of the simple expectations that life requires, they would always just quietly exit our lives. However, this woman's voice seemed different to me, and I felt she was genuinely listening when I told her what my family was facing at this time. Jan gave me a hug, something no one has done to me in years. She asked me if I would mind if she shared my words with her church family to see if they could help us in some way. With hesitation in my voice, I said, "Yes, you may." After she left, for the very first time in many years, I felt this calmness inside of me. While I was still convinced that it was time to let the father of darkness finish his work, I could also hear Jan's voice say, "Please, let me help you." I went in the house and just stayed quiet while I put Jesse to bed. That night, I remember going to bed and sleeping without the voices of darkness haunting me and putting more fear into my heart. I absolutely know now that God had chosen Jan to be His living angel on earth to come to me and make His voice louder in my heart than those of His adversaries on that day when those demons wanted to finally finish their work in me. Entry #3 Although my mind had convinced me that Jan would not be back to see me, the actual kindness in her voice when she spoke to me seemed to have given me the second-wind I needed to continue on. With no job, I knew I must find a way to at least have shelter and food for Jesse and me. My van had enough power in it to go about six miles in low gear before it would completely lock-up, so that is just what I did. I managed to find a couple of food banks to help us out for the time being. Days passed, and we were barely getting by, but somehow I managed not to let the darkness bring me down completely. About a week or so later, Jan came back by. I ran outside to meet her in the driveway because I was embarrassed to have her come into my house because everything we owned was so used and worn. She got out of the car and held out her hand with over $250 cash in it. She was looking at me with a smile that I saw came straight from her heart. This woman, with absolutely no other motivation than doing an act of pure kindness, was standing there with her heart in hand giving hope once again to me for my family. In just a matter of minutes, just like she did before, Jan had come in and out of my life, leaving a footprint on my heart. As I stood there watching her go down the road, tears were streaming down my face, and I could not remember if I properly thanked her or not. I hoped that she could see it in my face and voice, and somehow I think she could.

2006-08-16T15:40:00.000-07:00

My Life Changing Pictures of Timmy from the TV Series "Texas Ranch House" he played an African American Horse Trader You will read about him in When Life As I Knew It Changed RODEOING WITH MY DAD My dad was a Dallas Police officer, and he signed me up in the Police Officers' Rodeo Association. We would haul together to rodeos all over Texas, and I would always place in the top five, sometimes even winning. It was so cool making those memories with him. My dad and I became really close. He even danced with me once when we all went out one night. I have to tell you, I felt like a little princess that night having him share a dance with me. Those were things we just never did growing up as father and daughter. I remember another great moment with him when we went to the Dallas Fair Grounds to the Dallas Police Rodeo, and I won the rodeo that night. They gave the buckles out at the end of each rodeo. When I got mine, I looked at my dad standing there with all his buddies, and he was so proud of me. Even to this day, with all the darkness he put into my life, I still hold those moments that I had with him dear to my heart. I was really getting good at this rodeo stuff, and I wanted to go out into the amateur circuit to see what I could do. I knew it would be expensive, so I started making plans for a business venture so I could afford to travel and pay my own entry fees. My horse was a combination barrel and calf-roping horse, and I knew I could make money if I could find someone to sponsor me on my horse, someone who was good at roping calves. The son of the man who owned the land where we kept our horses knew a guy who was a great cowboy, but he didn't have a horse to ride. So he made arrangements for me to meet this cowboy and to start my new dream in life. WHEN LIFE AS I KNEW IT CHANGED I was at a rodeo in Grand Prairie, and here came the cowboy who was going to help kick-start my new rodeo career. He was tall and well built, but there was one thing that kind of scared me about him. He was also an African-American cowboy. How was I going to do this with my dad being so strict and having raised us to stay away from people of different races? I did stay to meet him, though, and I actually found him to be quite fascinating. So we came up with a game plan, and that was the beginning of my life of secrecy from my family. Timmy and I decided to haul together to the rodeos. Since my family would not be there, I thought, "What the heck? It will be just fine." That was my life for the next three years, and Timmy and my parents did manage to cross paths a few times. They mostly thought he was just a friend of the family that owned the pasture we used, and who came out to help with the horses. Life was great for me for about five years. I would do the Police Rodeos with my dad and family. Then I would go off and amateur with Timmy and this world of new friends that he and I had started to build relationships with. Timmy and I became very close and eventually fell in love. Loving him was different from all the other guys that tried to get close to me. We had been friends for so many years, and it just seemed natural for us to take it to the next stage, even with all the odds against us. I did try to test the waters with my family a few times by mentioning him as being a possibility of someone I wanted to have in my life. They let me know from the start that it would never be a possibility. So once again, I came up with the perfect game plan. I would have a secret life with Timmy and a separate life with my family. Timmy and I got a little house with a lot in the back to keep our horses in, but I always made sure he was gone when my dad or my brothers came around. I never even asked Timmy how he felt. He just always seemed to go along with whatever I asked of him. He came from a family of fifteen brothers and sisters who all lived in a little worn-down duplex in the poorest part of Mansfield. His life was hard, and I think he was just so happy to be out on his own that he just let me do whatever I pleased. And I did just that, never once considering his feelings. I became pregnant at the age of twenty-eight and, without even asking him, I decided to have an abortion. I knew babies were just not in the picture for us. I think that was the beginning of my darkness taking hold of me, and it also started affecting Timmy as well in how he acted and felt about us as a couple. But we did keep rodeoing and living together. As long as we had a place to go and money in our pockets, we always seemed to keep the true emotions of our feelings under the covers. Then I became pregnant again at the age of twenty-nine, and this time I was more in love with Timmy than ever. So we decided to get married, have the baby and do this life of ours together the right way. I just knew that when my parents found out that they were going to be grandparents, they would come to terms with all of this. We would all become one big, happy family. Little did I know how wrong I was, and what kind of effect this would have on my life as well as Timmy’s and my children’s for years to come. This is where my story begins twenty-two years later. My story is a story of coming from the darkness of absolute destruction and going back to the light, of living a life that people who sought to control my destiny told me I should live and living the life that God intended for me to live.

2006-08-15T19:13:00.000-07:00

MY EARLY YEARS BEFORE THE DARKNESS CAME INTO MY LIFE My family consisted of a mom and dad, two brothers, sixteen aunts and uncles, over thirty cousins and one set of the greatest grandparents anyone could ever ask for. Growing up as a child, I remember that life was good even though I had the classic "two-brothers-always-watching-over-their-sister" syndrome. I had to arrange all my events around the fact that they would be there watching every move I made and pulling me out of anything they thought wasn't good for me. Sometimes, though, it was fun having two brothers and being the middle child because it kept me very competitive. Having boyfriends was pretty much nonexistent for me. Not only did I have to hide them from my dad, but my brothers pretty much scared the ones brave enough to give it a try away before I had to chance to get to really know them. My dad was really a strict man and did not allow me to date. Even through high school I was all the popular girls best friend, and always in the way as far as the guys were concerned. We didn’t grow up in a family that went to church, so my dad’s laws were the only laws that I knew in life. As long as things went the way he said, life was good. He also made sure we had everything we needed to keep us busy so that we would do as he wanted us to do. My mom used to always bend the rules just a little for me so that I could have some kind of social life. My first date was on my senior prom night, and that was only because my dad was working the night shift. That relationship did not last long because just like everyone else in my life, he got tried of sneaking around hiding from my father. GROWING UP COUNTRY I started out riding goats at my aunt’s house in Godley, Texas, when I was about four years old. I believe it was that thrill that got me into riding bulls later on in my teenage years. I loved my Uncle Bobby and Aunt Ann. They were the poorest people I knew and had eight kids of their own, but there was more joy in that house than any house I had ever seen besides my grandparents'. My Uncle Bobby always made sure we kids got to experience everything we could about the country way of life. When I became old enough to sit on my first horse, I started going to my aunt’s house in Joshua. They would put me on this black and white paint named Nancy. On that horse, I learned everything about riding properly and, between the ages of about six to nine, I rode her all alone in the arena every time I went to spend a weekend there. My uncle was the smartest horse person I knew. Later in life, he had even trained a horse and won the world championship in cutting on that horse in the Appaloosa Association. Around the age of nine, he told me we were going to start riding out in the hundred acres of pasture they had, but he would need to ride double with me on Nancy until I learned the land well. That was the beginning of a secret that I carried with me all the way up until I did my fourth step in Celebrate Recovery. I became more and more afraid to go to my aunt and uncle's house, but somehow I still did. I continued to let that horrible secret happen to me over and over again for years to come. The one thing I do remember that still bothers me at times is that I could never understand why my parents couldn’t see the fear on my face each time I came from out of the pasture with my uncle. They trusted him so much, and his wife was my mom's oldest and closest sister. So I just kept the secret with me, never telling anyone. Later on in my teenage years, I bought my first horse, so I never went back to those woods again. All through school, I rode horses and even became a girl bull rider when I started College. Back then, that was a really big deal where I was from. I got a lot of attention from the boy bull riders, and it felt really good to me. Not ever being allowed to date in school I went alittle wild when I started hanging with the Rodeo crowd that I went to College with. I got married to a bull rider that I met in college, and that lasted about a year and a half. It was the first real boy/girl relationship I had ever had, but it was also very scary to me. I used to spend a lot of nights hiding from Michael, and feared him every time he got even just a little bit mad at me. I remember one night he got mad at me about a cake I had made. I went out into the barn and hid in the John Deere tractor for hours and hours. I could hear him calling for me, and heard him leave and come back several times. We lived way out in the country on over thirty thousand acres, so I know I must have scared him that day. Shortly after that, I asked Michael to take me back home to my parents. Our life together as a married couple was over. We actually became good friends again, though, and kept in contact for a few years. Since men seemed to be my biggest downfall in life, I couldn’t let myself open up to them anymore once we got past the friendship stage. When I came back home after my divorce from Michael, my dad and I started to become pretty good friends, and we shared a lot of time with the horses.

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A Word About Sonja Brooks Sonja, Robyn, and Jesse Disney World 2002 We went with Kiss FM Kids Kidds Taking Back What My Darkness Stole offers to readers my personal memories of coming to terms with a painful and tortured past. Those memories are recorded in my journals as a narrative in which I openly detail many painful life experiences including molestation by a trusted family member when I was a child. The reader will also learn about my family’s emotional abuse as well as the ongoing destructive relationship I had with my daughters, which was the result of my inherited darkness. I will also explain to the reader how I overcame those adversities in my life and experienced a renewal of my faith in God through the help of friends and a Christian-based recovery process. Through reflection and prayer, I have successfully battled those demons and am now facing the struggles of trying to repair the damage that was done to my daughters and me. It is my desire that the reader will be inspired and motivated by this book, which is a forthright chronicle of the personal trials I have suffered. I believe that my reflections and the candid descriptions of my experiences will create a text that is both introspective and enlightening. Furthermore, I am hoping that my suggestions will be useful to any reader who is dealing with similar challenges. I have tried to give relevant questions for the reader to consider at the conclusion of each chapter in my book. Sincerely, YSIC Sonja Brooks DEDICATION I dedicate this book to my two daughters, Robyn and Jesse who, through no fault of their own, inherited my darkness into their own lives. My wish for them is that, after reading my story, they will truly understand that, while darkness may have been a legacy brought into their lives, it is not too late to break those chains and go into the light of God's Grace and Love. To know the truth of who you are in God's eyes is better than the feeling of who you have been led to believe you are by others of this world. If you learn the truth and believe in that same truth, then you will overcome those feelings that have taken you away from that person God intends you to be. I want my daughters to know that, if they can learn to see themselves as God sees them, then they can have peace in knowing that their own children will not inherit this legacy of darkness and all the emotional torment that was passed down to the three of us. I would also like to acknowledge my two best friends, Jan and Chuck, who have inspired me each step of the way on my journey of recovery. It is their unwavering faith and commitment to God that let them see the vision of what my true destiny could be. Not once, since the day God brought them to me, have they taken a single step backwards from what they knew was to be their part in showing me the way to begin my recovery process. To have even one glimmer of their reflection seen through me in the eyes of others would be a great honor because, through them, I have seen the reflection of our own Savior, Jesus Christ. INTRODUCTION I believe that life is a process of finding the true purpose of what God intended for us when He made the decision to create us. What I am about to write may be hard for some to understand, but as you read my story, I hope you will begin to see what I am trying to say. I also believe that God's way of showing us how to be committed teachers of His words and healers of His lost children's hearts is by teaching us that, even in the hardest lessons of our lives, there are great wisdoms to be learned. We do that by overcoming the demons of this world, taking those battles won and then giving back to God by healing others who are in the darkness that we once were in ourselves. There is a saying I love that goes, "Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, for he stood the test of time and received the crown of life that God promises to those who love Him." These journals are the entries of the trials I faced during my time of testing, and I still work very hard to this day for I too want to receive God’s crown of life.