I really do miss LA!  My friends, my adventures and Mosaic. While I no longer have that constant nagging in my soul telling me to leave the City of Angeles, I also no longer have any sort of life.  My days consist of job hunting and playing with my roommate’s dogs.  I knew I was going to be up in the air for a while and I also knew that once I officially had a new city, it would take a while to start a new life, but the reality of it is just now hitting me and, for lack of a better word, it sucks.  As of right now, the only time I get out of the house is to go for walks, go on a job interview or visit a local church.

 I think it is safe to say that Erwin McManus and Hank Fortener have changed my worship DNA.  They and the Mosaic team introduced me to a freedom in worship that I never knew before and I am finding that freedom to be important in my next faith community.  I currently have 22 churches to visit in the Jacksonville area so here’s hoping one of them will offer the tangibles I am looking for and the intangibles that I require.  For me, worship is now a response to Who my Creator is, all of Who He is; His kindness, His mercy, His grace, His power, His unending love – all of Him.  I can no longer just stand in a service and robotically sing songs as if they have no meaning.  For me, worship is personal and messy and emotional and amazing and inspiring and communicative and heartfelt. Worship is my response to what Jesus is doing in me, for me and through me; and it was my time at Mosaic that taught me this. Mosaic also gave me an idea as to the energy Heaven is going to have when we all come together to worship our Creator. It’s going to be an energy we don’t want to be away from and I promise to try to bring some of that energy with me wherever I go.  If you ever find yourself in Los Angeles, I encourage you to attend one of Mosaic's services.  Whether you are a believer or not, the experience will be worth it.

 My friends in LA wrote a story on my heart.  They reminded me who I am and how much I matter.  For some reason I have always deemed myself as someone’s second or third choice, but my friends in LA told me a different story.  I learned that I am someone worth knowing and that I make a difference in people’s lives.  I learned what it means to be me, to stand up for myself and that I am someone other people want to be around.  I’m funny, spontaneous, adventurous, insightful, caring, intelligent, somewhat crazy and 100% worthy of love.  I am still trying to wrap my head around that last one, but my friends in LA are living proof of it and I miss them every day.

 LA is also where I learned what it really means to trust Jesus with my life.  LA beat me into a corner and left me for dead and in doing so I finally surrendered my everything (alcohol) to Jesus and I got sober.  It was the hardest thing I have ever done and it has changed my life forever.  Folks, I am living proof that AA works because I was one of those people that could not imagine, a me, without alcohol.  I mean when I heard love songs on the radio I thought about my favorite vodka drink or my favorite wine.  The tables have definitely turned and when I hear love songs on the radio these days, I now think of Jesus and something He has done or is doing in me, for me or through me.  Alcohol is no longer my everything. Jesus has taken its place and I trust Him daily to keep me sober as I navigate life without alcohol and trust Him to bring friends into my life that don’t drink for their own reasons.  I trust Him to keep me afloat financially and I trust that He has a plan for my life even though it doesn’t look like it right now.  I trust that there is a reason that I drove across the entire country and landed in a small city on the opposite ocean with just a few grand to my name and I trust that everything is somehow going to be okay and that I will be able to one day explain to all of you why I had to leave all that I loved so abruptly.  The only thing I know right now is that God is being very quiet.  Not exactly what I want from my Creator as I watch job opportunity after job opportunity slip from my grasp.  I have heard, however, that one of the keys to success is one’s ability to be comfortable in complete uncertainty so I guess I need to suck it up, enjoy my break from the daily grind and trust that if I am supposed to stay in Jacksonville then I will. I am, after all, in my Father’s hands and He is the pilot; I’m just a passenger on His flight who isn’t entirely sure of her destination.

 Lastly, leaving LA has made me acutely aware of how important it is for me to feel important and to be seen as important by people that I do not know.  Every time I have an era in my life come to an end, I fall back down the rabbit hole because I have no idea what to do with myself now that I’m not Jessica the athlete or Jessica the HR professional or Jessica the production coordinator or Jessica the show host or Jessica the bloody whatever… every time I loose my title my identity disappears with it.  I need to get rid of the notion that I am what I do.  I am so much more than a job title, but for some reason, my identity is wrapped up solely in outward success and as a result my light is very dim and my light should never be dependent on the thoughts of other people.

 All in all, I had and will continue to have a love/hate relationship with Los Angeles.  It taught me a lot about myself and when referring to LA or Mosaic I use “we” so perhaps I’ll be back one day.  For now, it appears I have some things to do on the east coast – I just haven’t figured out what they are yet.

 I wish everyone a Very Merry Christmas and a Wonderful New Year.  Stay Safe.  Stay Classy and don’t be afraid to Let Your Light Shine Bright.  I will see you in 2015.

We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.
Joseph Campbell

Speaking of a soul nudging, I had an intense desire to worship on a week night in March.  I was just being pulled to the computer so I got some things done, logged into Pandora, clicked on the worship station and let it rip.  By the second song, I knew this was not going to be an ordinary worship experience.  God had made this appointment because He had something to reveal to me.  I have previously shared that I have issues grasping and believing God’s love for me.  I can fully believe it for everyone else and often encourage others in His love, but I have always had a hard time accepting it for myself.  Alcoholics are known for being hard on themselves and I can say with all certainty that I have this trait.  Becoming more and more aware of my lack of joy, I have been praying that God would help me to open up to His love, that He would help me receive it on a daily basis so that I can have the joy that so many other Believers seem to radiate.  I don’t feel that I can ever become a light in this world until I am fully able to receive this love and so I have asked Jesus to help me receive it, that His love would become real to me, that it would impact me daily. 

This week night worship experience ended up being a dialogue of love from my Heavenly Father to me.  Through the songs that played He told me how He already knew every mistake, slip up, wrong turn, absurd plan, stupid word and every disappointment I could ever cause Him and He still deems me worth taking on the worst death in history so that we can walk together through this life and escort me into an eternal life that is beyond what any imagination can fathom – supreme happiness – everything this world started out to be until we intervened.

I am proud to say that since this worship experience, I have noticed a difference in my attitude at work, in the car and during my personal outings.  I am nowhere near perfect, but I can tell that God is transforming me into that radiate light I so want to be and it is awesome.  If you are reading this and think you are too far-gone to ever make a change like I am making – then by all means read through my earlier posts.  I am not a saint and that is exactly why I am thankful for my Savior.

This worship experience has also redefined my goals for this year.  First and foremost, I am striving to love Jesus by living my life in such a way that it leads others to Him.  A second goal is to stay sober, which has not really been an issue as of late.  This, however, is due to the fact that I tend to only hang out with people who either do not partake in alcoholic beverages or I only accept invitations where it is unlikely that alcohol will be a focal point.  I know that I will have to branch out at some point, but until then I am happy to just be enjoying the sober life.  Lastly, God has reminded me of something He told me a few years back:  My job is to write; His job is everything else.  Insert eye roll or dumb face or whatever you would like because these are the ways I usually respond to this comment from my Creator.  It just does not compute in my brain.  How can I only carry the writing and God carry everything else?   It seems like a deal anybody with even a quarter of a brain would jump on but, I am one of those beings who seems compelled to make everything more complicated.  Nevertheless, I am complying and what I am finding is that as I make my writing a priority, interesting things start to happen around me.  For instance, the more energy I put into my writing, the clearer I become on what I want out of my daytime career.  I also have some doors opening in terms or new writing groups, critique groups and info-panels that directly correlate to my own business plan. Hmm, maybe I should listen to my Creator more often!  It’s a horrible statement, but it is true.  So often in life, we earnestly seek God’s advice, but as soon as He gives it, we tend to shrug and go make another mistake that makes more sense to us.  Somehow, He still loves us through it all and even patiently holds our hand while trying to keep us from walking directly into and/or climbing over the bumper rails He’s so kindly placed on our paths.

The winds of change are still blowing through my life at this moment and I know I am headed for a major career change, but I also know that this change will usher in a new era in my life.  I feel a resurrection of sorts is on its way – Whoever said it is not about the destination; it is about the journey was right.  Destinations change and often times you find that once you arrive, it is not at all what you had in mind so you might as well savor every moment and let the destination find you.  Besides, if it weren’t for the journey, how would you ever know where you belong?

Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls.
Joseph Campbell