this is my story. this is my song.

This weekend we got a way with our church family for a couple days of fellowship, worship and perspective. This annual weekend is always one of the highlights of my year and this year proved no different. I love how on these weekends away God has a way of putting his finger on stuff in our lives that when we are in our everyday lives we are too close to see. But in these settings he is free to dust things off and awaken things in our hearts forgotten in the business of ordinary day to day life.

The whole theme of the weekend was about getting rid of shame and living a good story. 

We need to let go of shame in order to see clearly the story we are telling. 

Friday night as I stood in worship my heart felt free and alive. I was just Heather. Not a wife or a mom or anything else and it felt.so.good. In this season of life God is showing me more and more of who I am. At times I almost feel as if I have been under water for years and just now coming up for air and learning to swim. 

I can breathe. I feel free and alive.

I can be hard on myself and can look back and feel like I lost so much of myself in those early years of birthing babies. Marriage and motherhood are two of the greatest things that ever happened to me. But at times I have felt like I was in an identity crisis not really knowing who I am anymore because I was constatnly changing.  But God is showing me that surrender was necessary and part of the process. 

There was things I needed to let go of to become more of who I was called to be.

 Motherhood is a life changing procces that involves a lot of surrender. Surrendering our bodies, our lives and our dreams is part of the process. The surrender can be hard and painful at times and you feel as if you are lost never to be found again. But now in this season parts of my heart are slowing coming back...and I am better for the things I have walked trhough and learned along the way. 

But when I allow shame to cloud my story I am not seeing the beauty of the process and celebrating how far I have come. 

This weekend God touched deep places of my heart and pulled away a shadow of shame that has lingered over the past. It was as if I was looking back with foggy glasses and he tenderly came and wiped them off so I could see more clearly. I wept and He whispered his truth over my heart and I felt clean and whole. 

That is the Father's heart for us. 

And when I talk about shame I am not talking about huge regrets but just an overarching feeling that I often had about parts of our story. It was like a shadow. It wasn't real.  I read a quote today by Brene Brown that sums it up perfectly, "Where perfectionism exists, shame is always lurking." Bulls eye. I am a recovering perfectionist and have super high expecations for myself. It is learning proccess to be graceful and loving with myself.

And coming home I could start to see things differently. Almost as if I was watching a slideshow of my life. God was showing me the story we are writing and it is good. And when shame is removed the hard parts, the messy parts and parts that were unpleasant just become part of the what makes it a good story. Because all good stories have conflict and tension and some battle to overcome. 

I am celebrating how far I have come. And looking forward with expectation for the things yet to come. 

I am filled with a thankful heart for the journey we are on and the story we are telling.