My Life Map

My life map, my story, tonight I shared it with 4 other ladies.  Tuesday nights for the last couple of weeks I've been going to a bible study.  Its on a book called Community, I don't have it front of me right now for more details of who its by and all but basically its to build community with others.  The group was for anyone but it turned out to be only woman attending.  Woman of all walks of life and ages.  Its where my boyfriend's mom works and attends church, she is part of the group.  She is the one or invited me to go.  Other than knowing her a little bit prior to this group I do not know anyone else in the group.  I don't think we are all in ages of 40 to 70. 

In our study we have gotten to the chapter of sharing our story.  Its interesting to think of it as a life map, showing where we began, where our journey has taken us and how we have ended up at this point in life in the present.  We were to share about the ups and downs of our lives and how God has been apart of that process.  Each of us has been very different.

Tonight two of us shared and we went over on our scheduled time.  Next week will be Ben's mom turn to share her story.  She still hugged me after I shared mine lol.  Not that she wouldn't but she did just learn a ton about me in a very short time.

After hearing the other share I was a little hesitant, well I don't know if that is the right word or not but I realized that my story had so many low points and I wasn't raised in the church as the others either.  But I do know that the things I have gone through has helped me to become who I am today and has helped me be closer in my relationship with God so I knew it was okay to share and that would be expressed in my story.  Because despite it all there were always joys and blessings to be found in it all, always!

I wrote my highlights out on a piece of notebook paper torn out of a spiral notebook, written out like a time line with years to help explain each part of my journey until now.  Looking at it written like that was a little crazy and overwhelming to go through at first but it all happened and it all became part of my story of God and his strength that He gave to me in it all.  All I have for it all is gratefulness.  Sure I could have done with out a lot of it, and it wasn't enjoyable to go through, at least the low points but I'm grateful for all of it.

I exposed the tough, sad, broken areas of my life to these ladies that have shared their stories of struggles, I felt safe and okay with it.  On the drive home I felt refreshed and cleansed again, a little rattled with some of the memories but it passed into feeling at peace with the life I lived to the life I'm living now.  I'm in a good place now and I still have the Lord with me as I had Him with me on my journey that He began 45 years ago.

Well its getting late and I'm tired and I've lost my train of thought so I think I will call it a night.  I think I've expressed my thoughts for now.  It all comes down to living life in Christ in all that comes with it and being thankful, blessed and at peace.

Goodnight