November, the month of Giving Thanks, Creating Families and most importantly the month of Jessica getting her groove back!

 
In case you are not aware – World Adoption Day is November 9th.  Hank Fortner, one of my Mosaic pastors started Adopttogether.org, a non-profit focused on helping beat the number one barrier to families looking to adopt – MONEY.  There are a lot of families out there that want to adopt, but simply don’t have $10K, $20K, $30K or even $40K sitting around to make the adoption happen.  This is where Adopttogether.org comes in and helps secure funding for families wanting to adopt through crowdfunding.  World Adoption Day is a day of celebration for both parents and kids who won big when adoption changed their lives.  World Adoption Day is also a day of awareness for adoption so please join us on Monday November 9th by posting a selfie with a smiley on your hand to spread awareness or to celebrate your own adoption story or that of a friend.
 
Halloween marks a year since I left Los Angeles and Thanksgiving marks a year since I have seen my mother and brother.  I am excited to be able to spend Thanksgiving weekend with them at the beach this year! We will be catching up while we enjoy the views from our beach-front balcony on Florida’s gulf coast.  I am very happy for this opportunity as I want very badly to be able to spend more time with them as well as a host of other people, but my finances are just in the way at the moment. 
 
As I have mentioned previously, I now feel that I came to a much-needed standstill here in Jacksonville.  It appears that I needed to slow down and take some time to heal internally, which is what has happened.  From Celebrate Recovery to Redeemed Esteem to many other confirmations God has laid in my lap over this past year – it appears I just needed a lot of internal healing and I now feel that I am beginning to come back to life.  My focus is returning, my productivity is returning and my overall energy is returning.  One could argue that I am beginning to dream again!
 
I would also like to note that this might have something to do with a recent change in my morning prayer! In addition to praying the lyrics of Hillsong’s “I Surrender”, I have started asking God to help me release my potential each and every day to the point that when I reach the end of this life, that I would not have an ounce of my God-given potential left.  It’s a bold prayer that I am not only praying for myself, but also for my mother and brother who are also dreamers with dreams in their hearts.  For it has come to my attention that one of my biggest problems is my inability to release my potential. In other words, my inability to take the God-given dreams in my heart, put them on paper and then transform them into reality.  I have the paper part down; it’s the whole transforming dreams into reality that seems to have had me stuck for far too long.  And it looks like this new prayer might be working!
 
To kick off November, I will be sharing my first full testimony at the Mandarin area CR on the 6th and am very excited for this opportunity.  I didn’t have a 20 minute testimony written upon the invitation, but I recalled a piece of advice I read from Seth MacFarlane that echoes countless other successful people both in entertainment and in ministry – that thought is this – when opportunity knocks, don’t hesitate, just say yes and figure out the how later! 
 
I am also moving forward with a new project that God placed on my heart during Hillsong weekend here in Jax.  I am calling it Hillsong weekend because I went to Hillsong Nights on Saturday and went and heard global founder, Brian Houston speak at Celebration on Sunday morning.  He spoke on dreams and dreamers and God breathed a new project into my soul that very day.  I have been reluctant to start work on it because as with anything God gives you – it is bigger than I am and I don’t feel I can do it all alone, but I am not meant to – I am meant to create it piece by piece with my Creator.  It’s not supposed to be my thing, it’s supposed to be Our thing!  I have the outline for the steps that need to be taken and am working on step one for the remainder of this year.  I am really excited and really terrified, but I think all creators feel this way when embarking on a new project so I guess I am in good company.
 
I am also ready to get back in gear career-wise.  I know I cannot stay at my current employer as the money nor the interest is there so I am back on the hunt for a good opportunity, but this time around I have a confidence in myself, my passion and my abilities that I did not have previously.  It definitely changes the opportunities I look at and how I approach them and with any luck I will be in a new and better situation soon!  With any luck I will begin to see a little of that restoration from Joel 2:25, the life verse God has given me which reads “… He will restore all the years the locusts ate away…” which I am taking to mean that God plans on restoring all of the things I missed out on while I was caught up in my addiction, depression and self-torture and I for one, can’t wait to see what He is going to do! Er’ I can’t wait to see what We’re going to do!
 
I hope all of you have a wonderful Thanksgiving and don’t forget to reach out to any singles, widows or flat broke folks that might be spending the holiday alone unless you invite them to spend it with you!

Change, my friends, is the name of the game.  God has been gently making me aware of why nothing seems to be happening for me here in bright, sunny California.  I mentioned in a previous post that I have been pondering the idea that my sobriety might have been why I was led here and that since I am now sober, my time here might be up.  Over the past few months, God has been making this more and more clear to me and I believe I know where He wants me too.   

It’s like God has taken my dreams and started replacing them with His own.  It feels weird.  Once, I knew what direction my life needed to take, I began badgering God for a place to land.  I know the words ‘badgering God’ don’t sound too smart, but I felt that I needed more direction than ‘leave LA and look for stuff like this…’ And so over the course of a week I would get up each day asking God where He wanted me and I would see a map with a circle over one half of the country.  Each day I would ask the same question and each day the circle would get smaller and smaller and smaller until it was over a city.   I know of this city, but I have never been there; however, after doing some research, it does meet a lot of my requirements: on the coast, at least medium sized, good weather, lower cost of living, etc.  It’s crazy for me to even think of moving right now and I have let God know that it seems financially impossible at the moment so I am leaning on Him for this potential move.  I also cannot fathom leaving the friendships I have here, some of which are just beginning to blossom.  And then there is Mosaic – I get up each Sunday excited for worship, excited for a brain challenge from Erwin and Hank and I simply cannot fathom finding a place that matches the energy of this faith community I now call home.  But more than anything, I know I want to be where God wants me because if I am not where He is, it won’t matter how I position myself; the doors will remain locked.

The real uprooting that is taking place in my life is the ripping out of the belief that I am simply not good enough for anything or anyone that God has planned for me.  I guess this has always been an underlying current in my life from sports to career to men to my overall social graces.  It started one night when I was looking at myself in the mirror and getting superbly upset and Jesus reminded me of that day I actually saw myself in the reflection of a man’s sunglasses.  My entire rib cage was exposed.  I had no idea I was that skinny.  I never saw it reflected back to me.  The mirrors I look into only reflect an overweight and hideous looking person.  Then God reminded me about how I tend to get unwanted attention from men.  They always have to look me up and down about five times before they start talking and they have to whistle or say something stupid… Jesus reminded me, in that moment, that I cannot see myself correctly.  Later that night Jesus tapped me on the shoulder while I was going to sleep and said, “It’s time to deal with this.  We have to for what is coming.”  I simply replied, “Okay, but You’re gonna have to do it because I cannot even begin to deal with all that encompasses.” Crazy thing is… He is doing just that. He has made me acutely aware of how much I bash myself on a daily basis.  I mean every other sentence is nothing but self-degradation whether it be my appearance, my efficiency, or my brain.  It wasn’t long before He was cutting me off and by that I mean that internal pulling that makes you stop talking mid-sentence and you’re like yeah sorry and you move on to another topic.  At this point, I can’t even get those sentences out of my mouth.  I mean I’m even starting to like the way I look in the mirror! That’s a first, people, that’s a first.  Jesus is doing exactly as I asked, He’s uprooting this unhealthy and limiting belief from my life and I have absolutely nothing to do with it.  It’s just happening.  But then again, that’s the God I serve.  He never gets angry or frustrated with my incredible humanness.  He just meets me where I am, only giving me what I can handle, always calling me to a greater purpose and He never fails to carry me when required.

Perhaps next month, I will be able to share about the new dreams God has placed in my heart.  I feel like God has taken the dreams and plans I had on the front burner and replaced them with the dreams I had put on the back burner.   I never really got on the whole Tebow bandwagon, but I have been looking into him lately because it appears God might be doing the same with him in that he seems to have also had two very different goals in life and per recent events, God seems very concerned with the one and not so much with the other.  I guess time will tell if he stays on his new road or gets diverted back to the NFL.   And time will reveal whether I will be starting down my own new road and whether that road is here in LA or in a city on the other side of the country that looks really nice from a Google Maps perspective.    

Oh and one more thing! In case you haven’t heard already, November 9th, 2014 is the first ever World Adoption Day!!!  Spread the word to adoptive hearts everywhere whether they were adopted, have adopted or are interested in learning more about adoption.  World Adoption Day is a global celebration of life and family and we want everyone involved!  Go to worldadpotionday.org to find out more!