I woke up and pulled cards. The first was 3 of wands representing deep loss and heartbreak. The second was the six of wands that came out in reverse. And this represents that a promotion or reward has been postponed but it’s still coming. The third card I pulled was the Hermit card. I specifically asked the mirror, “You’re my only friend and you’re free to do whatever you want to do. What do you want to do?”

The ideas that cross my mind are the same each day it seems and all of them are tied to what someone else would want me to be. I think about getting my body in perfect shape and have a background story playing of how that would be beneficial if love comes back around for me. I think about pouring my all into real estate projects and in the background I’m thinking about creating career opportunities for my kids and abundance that will keep them save while assuring I can have nice things. I think about creating candles for prayer and I think about how God might be pleased that I’m fighting the jerks that called me a witch and have never read Revelation 8:4 about the angels and the significance of the smoke.

In all of this I’m trying to prove something to others or award others in some way. But from the moment of waking up this morning I was sent into tears by a text message from my daughter. She said that I gave her anxiety and sent many paragraphs about how upset she is that I waited up for her on 4th of July and called throughout 6am this morning to check on her. She lied to me and she keeps secrets and I can hear a frustrated little girl in the undertones screaming, “I’m grown why won’t my mother leave me alone.” But that little girl just days ago wrote me a letter of how depressed she is and how happy she is I’m here because I’m the only one on the planet that gives her strength. Well, maybe I’m just a placesetter in her times of darkness and maybe that’s ok. But I know I’m not her future. She wants friends her age and love and experiences. And if i truly love her I want that to. I want to kick her out of the nest yet again and watch her fly.

So if every role I’ve ever played is over now and I’m truly free with no one to impress or answer to and there’s no one left to save, then what am I? What purpose do I have left here on Earth?

The Hermit card represents a part of the journey where you resort to the cave. It’s not a permanent place of isolation but rather a place where personal profound truths can surface. It’s a place where wisdom is gained and in that darkness everything falls into the stillness of its death so that the light can shine only on the place that’s still alive. Ironically, I am in a new home that’s called Bee Cave and have the next month here. I’ve been distracted since I’ve arrived and the anxiety looms over my connection to activities that aren’t setting my soul on fire. Making crafts used to bring me joy. Not now. Making videos for others and storytelling of success stories used to bring me joy. Not now. Being a mom and cooking and cleaning and buying things for my kids used to bring me joy. Not now. Building a business empire in real estate used to bring me joy. Not now. Maybe the bee cave is where I go through every single room that once occupied a place in my heart where a fire burned bright and sift through the ashes to be able to see that all of those things are passed away and gone. They don’t carry the life they once did and they can’t give me the warmth they once provided.

I bought an expensive Amazon cart of products to create lotions last night. I have felt led to this for awhile now – starting with the encounter I had with the essential oil marketing lady on the plane back from Kona. And I fought with myself last night because I don’t have an excess of money coming in to buy things that will collect dust. Also, I already tried this when I was in Florida. I had the idea to make body oil candles and spent so much time on a website and online shop. I tried to make products and had the idea of passing them out on my flights.

I could see that I was about to go back into a past season and repeat a mistake by trying to create products to heal. And then I remembered while in Florida that when I prayed for God to send me something to show me my purpose I woke the next morning with a strange unmarked package full of black massage stones. Ironically, the thing that caught my attention with the woman on the plane who was seeking help for her anxiety was the shirt she wore. It said “Healing Hands”. I read it out loud and she perked up with excitement to share with me how she was on tour with a camera crew to capture the story of the people in Hawaii and the culture that backs the brands essential oil collection.

I had healing hands once. I prayed and massaged a man’s paralyzed limbs daily until they started coming alive. The last book my mom gave me was about healing hands and how God had miraculously caused a man’s hands to start producing an oil that healed everything he touched. I thought at the time it was a sign that I should become a message therapist. But I don’t even know if I’d want to do that and I don’t have $5,000 to go to school and even then I remember Camilia telling me that they don’t make much money.

The stones have a spiritual meaning to me because Christ poured his blood out into the rocks. There’s something about the stones that also tie me to the book of Skyla and the image I created back in 2013 of the girl covered in blood and stones as the cover of that book.

When I close my eyes and hold the only stone I have a left – a rose colored crystal, I hear “medicine stones – the oil is in the rocks”. How would I put oils into rocks and how would that be healing? A friend sent me a song the other day that he wrote and it talks about the stones speaking to us. And I have this thought in my head about the purpose of Christ being buried not underground but beneath a stone. The stone has something to do with immortality from life to ascension where death is overcome. He put the immortal blood in the rocks. Also Bee cave is a place where there is plentiful limestone rock.

This feels like death. I’ve been trying to resurrect the version of myself and all of the people and places that once gave me life and I’ve exhausted myself. The prayers for love and healing and new beginnings are an effort to bring a jewel back from the dead and she’s asking me to let her go. And he was the one who loved her and she loved him. Like Jack and Rose – timeless in the eternity of love’s story but separated by the journey they took on that ship. She arrived on the other side alone and she didn’t get to look back because there was nothing left to look back upon. It was over. All of it. The man who was never the right husband for her, the mother who couldn’t love her and the boy who rescued her from it all for a moment only to disappear in the ocean. She survived it but she had to die a different kind of death. She had to accept that her old life would never be again. She had to take on a new name and she had to face a new world where no one knew her. Born again from the wreckage.

D is asking me to let him go. He wants me to let him go with a smile. He wants me to move on and have a good life and I hurt so bad because he’s the one thing I never wanted to let go of. To find him was like finding new life and to figure out who I am on the other side of a past that no longer exists and a love that only now exists in my heart – unknown to any other human I just don’t know how to give up this hope. But he’s asking me to. He’s asking me to let him go with love and to now that our love was beautiful and sacred but it’s expiration date has arrived.

He wants me to quit checking his social media and he wants me to stop praying for his return. He wants me to let him go. And he wants me to let go of the story of us from past lifetimes and beyond. The weight of the stones is so heavy.

But in the suffocation and the stillness of the ending there is release.

God says lay alone in the cave and let the rain wash away your pain. Rest and wait for the light.

Song I heard was “I wish it would rain down… down on me” by Genesis.

I see the woman in the bottom of the ocean. She stops trying to swim and she lets go. She stops breathing and enters into the stillness. And there she remains… lifeless… until the light decides to come get her.

Well I just woke up from another dream. I was trying to find a job and this guy was trying to help me. In an earlier part I remember going through a neighborhood and a man said that he wanted a house with a pool and he was waiting on me to find him one. Then another lady said to me, “You have to be consistent.” I felt awful in the dream because I felt like I wasn’t working hard enough or that I must have not have had a passion to stay the course in real estate.

Then in the last part of the dream there was a guy with me. He kept talking to his mom about hiring me. It seems she had a lot of money. I think she had many businesses – one was like a restaurant or bakery. I was working for an airline and I was with a friend at the airport and we were doing something silly. I don’t remember what it was but I was wearing a little white dress. It wasn’t a pretty dress it was more like a long tank top a child would wear playing in the mud. I remember we got wet somehow – playing on a waterslide or something and we were laughing and playing and running around the airport. We weren’t at work we were in off time just having fun.

I went back and wsa talking to the woman and told her about the fun I had. I was laughing as I told her the story and then later she called me to a big desk with a bunch of people waiting in line. This seemed like it was in the airport. She told me people were coming to get me. It was like calling the police (an authorative kind of people) and I was shocked. I asked her why she would do that? She said she didn’t want to get in trouble by not reporting something she was aware of. Then my uncle called me and I told him what was going on. He asked, “What?! Why would she do that? Why would she want to get you fired?” I was crying and very heartbroken and confused. I walked away and said, “I guess if I lose this it wasn’t meant to be.”

I hear God speaking to me about my mother. He says, “Everything that was done to you to push you away was orchestrated to make you leave and push you into a new season. These are contracts that are set to help you move away from what’s not meant to you forward to where I’m taking you.” I feel like this is a piece of clarity about forgiveness. People say rejection is God’s protection. I hear this phrase often. But what God is showing me in this moment is that rejection is his redirection.

The Bible says God sets the lonely in families to drive the prisoners out with singing and praise. But the rebellious stay stuck in a sun scorched land. I once looked at this scripture with sadness thinking about someone that was rejected by their own family or casted out and feeling lonely in the place that is meant to be called home. But the scripture says that God does this – it’s his design to drive out someone who is stuck in a situation that doesn’t cause their heart to sing. There’s a dream they may not even be aware of that’s waiting for them on the other side of that ending.

I also feel this dream was showing me how I have repeatedly returned to my mother for approval in everything I do – and I do feel the woman in my dream represents her. Mr. Steve Harvey often says in his speeches that when God gives you a dream the fastest way to lose it is to tell someone. And then he emphasizes that you should NOT tell your family. He tells tells his stories and speaks about how his closest people laughed at him when he said he was going to be on TV one day. And he even makes mention of how important it is not tell your mom what God has shown you.

When I met Dave I had two women in my life I told everything to. One was my mom and the other was a lady in Nebraska who ran a Bible study and an online ministry named Angie. My mom pretty quickly started filling my head with doubt. She said that he is likely seeing many women and I’m just an option for him. She said she knows his type. She may have been right about him but she may have been wrong. Either way it planted a seed of hurt and suspicion in me. Angie said that I needed to get away from him immediately because I’m a Godly woman who doesn’t sleep with men without marriage. Both of them were giving me good motherly advice. I’d say the same to my daughter in that situation and they may both have been right.

But later I remember I started making prayer candles. I had thousands of different scents and flavors and each one had came from meditation and beautiful messages I received from God. I remember in one single moment my bubble of joy was busted when my mother had a screaming fit over a phone call and told me that I’m the source of her stress because I won’t go get a real job and stop playing with candles. “It’s not real life!” She yelled. “I wish I could sit around making candles all day but I have bills to pay so I work two jobs! I work my ass off and I don’t have the money to take care of you when you run broke!” I sat there in the parking lot of Specs crying rivers that day. I had been so happy for so long and then it one instance it was like the wind had been sucked out of my sails.

Shortly after that I dressed up as Rainbow Brite for Halloween. I had forgotten all about my childhood hero – the girl who rode a white unicorn around the globe turning all of the fear, sadness, anger and darkness into joy, light and goodness. Rediscovering my inner child in the many months I spent healing after Covid had brought me back to these beautiful memories the little girl who believed she could change the world once cherished so deeply. It was all connected. The prayer candles and the daily work outs. I had never felt so happy and free before. In the background I was receiving spiritual messages daily – visions, dreams and what seemed to be physical and internal healing happening in a flash.

The next hit came from that experience. I posted a photo of myself in that costume and wrote a long message about how I dressed up in that costume with many memories of my earliest days with my Granny. I talked about how she handmade me costumes and a little wand and encouraged me that I could do anything I wanted to do in this world. I talked about how she taught me about Jesus and how she loved me with what I perceived to be His unconditional love for us all. A woman who works in real estate and also as an assistant for a guy who does a healing ministry sent me a horrible message. She told me that I looked like a sex icon and a harlot and that I am blaspheming Christ to mention his name in such a horrid image of myself as a woman who calls herself saved by God.

I cried for days and felt so shameful. I prayed and asked God why he would heal me – my body especially if the outcome was for me to be condemned by the people who work for him and his church. There were other things that transpired in this season. As my dreams led me to decide to leave my hometown and give everything I’d acquired over my entire life to the little church where my Granny served during her life here, I decided to attend a service there. I was looking for strength, or maybe just her presence – a little touch of that unconditional love by someone who connects with heaven. I was hoping they could pray over me and encourage me. The woman who runs the services did pray over me. She told me that I was in a bad place and it wasn’t God’s will for me to move to California. She warned me that my soul was in danger.

I was so confused and hurt. I felt so hopeless and like God had left me and all these people were sent to throw stones and spit on me in my lowest and darkest moment. About a year later I learned that this woman was telling people in the church and around the community that I was a witch. She said that when I gave all of my things to the church she felt the spirit of witchcraft on my candles. The next time I was in town I decided to go there. I asked her while there if I could come get the candles and she said she had thrown them away because she felt the spirit of witchcraft. At least it was confirmed – what they had said about me to others in their gossip. I did notice that she kept all of the other things I’d donated. The church was beautiful decorated in all of my furniture items and hand-made pieces of pottery and wood.

I had a dream when I had returned back to Florida shortly after that church visit. Jesus appeared to me. He was holding a Bible up in front of me and he split the pages where it read “Old Testament” on the left side and “New Testament” on the right side. He kindled a ball of fire in his hand and threw it on the left side setting the Old Testament on fire and then looked at me with pools of love and swirling flames in his eyes and he asked, “Do you understand?”

I did a little. The first time I felt truly reached in my heart and soul by what we call “The Gospel” was in listening to the teachings of a man named Matt Chandler back in 2017. He was in a storm of his own fighting an incurable cancer and he spoke the words of the Bible with explanation that I’d never before heard. It was the truth though. I could feel it in my bones. He said that the entire Old Testament was a testimony of what humans can never do. No matter how great they were or how perfect they tried to be or if they slayed giants and lions and overtook kingdoms, they still failed to achieve the promise of God. All of them failed. He said that’s why Jesus came to fulfill the law and to prove that no one else could. No man can be good or sinless or right before God. So because of God’s love through his son we are accepted in our impurity and our faults.

I look at it like trying to get into a mansion and my name isn’t on the guest list. I’m not rich enough, famous enough, important enough or pretty enough. It’s absolutely impossible for me to maneuver my way into that palace. But the King of that palace who runs everything and who’s very name causes the heavens and the earth to tremble loves me so much he’d literally die for me. So he puts my name on the guest list at the very top. The people might question it and the doorman might ask him, “Are you sure? You want this peasant girl to come in?” And he looks at the doorman and his eyes fill with compassion and tears and he says, “She’s my most beloved of all. She goes whereever I go always.”

It’s through him that I’m made worthy and he doesn’t care what I am today and the mistakes I’ve made in the past. In fact he knows I’m going to make major mistakes in the future. He’s not trying to fix me or change me or make me feel bad for anything. Quite the opposite – he just loves me. He loves my darkest moments and he loves my greatest flaws. He loves my little girl spirit and the dark morbid mindsets I fall into at times too. He doesn’t judge me for anything and nothing surprises him ever. He already knows everything I’ve ever done and everything I’ll ever do in the future. And with all that knowledge he was on the cross looking at my existence – all of it from start to finish with nothing but pure, blameless unconditional love and he said, “I love her so much I’ll die for her.” He didn’t later go up to Heaven and look down to see what I’m doing and decide he wants a refund. He didn’t say, “Hey I bought the wrong girl, She’s awful and dreadful, do you see what she’s down there doing? Give me my money back.” He shed his blood for me so that I’d never question how much I’m worth to the Kindgom of Heaven and this story changes everything about what GOD was projected as in the Old Testament.

The God that judges and hates and condemns and sets fire to cities and floods the world entered a contract with Jesus and with us to never do that again. He paid for us. He accomplished our freedom and by his blood we are made righteous and eternal. And when he said “it’s finished” I believe it was in that moment. Never again are we meant to strive to please a judging God that’s separated from us. Never again are we to worry that God might not be pleased with us and might decide to throw us in a lake of fire because we’re too bad. We can’t add anything or subtract anything from the blood of Christ – it’s done. It’s decided. We are immortal because of that moment and that contract and that completion of the old and beginning of something new. That New Testament is meant to speak of the New Covenant – the one that never passes away.

What does that mean now in today when we see that people live and die and go back to dust as their bodies perish? Well, I think it means we’ve been dying and coming back to live here again for many moons and lifetimes before this one. I remember some of mine – not entirely but in little glimpses. I remember living on a shoreline for a season with a man I love in this lifetime and I was taken away on a ship. I remember being a small child in another lifetime who lost his father to accusations of him that weren’t true and then growing up in the wilderness among the animals because I didn’t believe people were good. My father met me at the gates when I passed over and gave me a big hug and said to me, “Everything that happened was meant to be part of the plan.”

So if we’re not on this earth as a test to try to make as much money as possible and accumulate things (where moths eat and where we lose everything we accumulated when we leave in a hurst) and if we’re not here to figure out how to be Godly and perfect and try to make ourselves perfectly behaved to achieve Heaven so that we don’t get tossed into hell after we’re done then why are we here?

When I was in LA I visited a church called BELIEVE. They all wore these hats that said Believe until Earth becomes like Heaven. Can you imagine such a thing? Can you imagine a place where there’s no more fear, lies separation, inequality or judgement of one to another? A place where there’s no jealousy or hatred and where each person is living in the freedom to do the job or function that they were created to do in joy and in the ultimate blissful feeling of purpose. A place where each soul has its perfect mate and there’s no such thing as dating or divorce. There’s no jealousy and no competition. We’re all in perfect health, perfect union with love’s blueprint and we never die. Life is beautiful and each day is a gift that we wish would never end, only to wake up to another day that’s full of new blessings and adventures….. I have dreamed of such a place.

I often think that I can never be happy here on earth when there’s so much suffering around us all. I can’t imagine a day full of joy with the news we see on TV and the homeless in the streets. I worry about the kids that are being abused all around the world today, the children who are suffering in silence like I did wondering why they were born into a family where they don’t feel fully known, accepted and loved. I worry about women who are stuck in bad marriages losing their light a little more each day and feeling like it’s just the way it is and there’s no hope for them to ever experience change. I worry about men who spend their entire lives chasing a dream to make their parents proud or to be considered wealthy and successful so that they can attract a beautiful woman and be respected in a world that values meaningless material things.

I worry that I’ll not live here long enough to see the redemption of love on this planet. And then I also worry that I’ll live too long in a place that seems to heavy my heart more and more each day. How do I proceed in such a predicament of worry? How do I make a difference when I’m just one woman who has no physical means to open a non-profit or a mission of any kind and who has no companions or friend groups to help me even if I knew the thing that could make a difference. And I’m a woman who doesn’t even have anything to show for my desires that anyone would look at it with seriousness. I don’t know anyone who would look at my life and say, “That’s what I want. I want what she has.”

The only goodness I’ve ever truly experienced has come through seasons of prayer. When I prayed for healing over my ex-husband I experienced miracles and something about sharing that good news with others set a spark into my heart that I’d never before known. I loved walking those halls with encouraging news to share with others. I could see eyes light up with hope about their situations and I loved praying over people – as if I was showing them a new trick I learned – a way to receive the answers and provisions that are nearest to their hearts. It was like magic. And I don’t know how it even happened. The doctors made no progress with him in surgeries or therapy but everything he got back – every moment of healing came during our prayer. Magic. It was like a window in Heaven had been opened above us and everytime we prayed it would rain down miracles over us.

I knew in that season that God was with me and he loved me so much. He loved my family and my children and he loved my ex-husband and I knew we were very far from perfect people. So he loved us in that season and he’d give us answered prayers then I knew that he’d do the same for anyone no matter what they’d done in the past or what they do today. He just loves us and he loves answering us when we ask him for things.

I just started my period a few minutes ago. I know that’s maybe too much information for a writing that I might be called to release to a reader one day. But I think it’s significant because it speaks symbolically to me about a cycle. Every 30 days just as the moon waxes full and then disappears so too does the woman shed the lining of her womb. In the message I received yesterday from Arlene she spoke of a snake shedding her skin. She talked about how we must let the old die and pass away before we can experience a new beginning. And today I’m thinking about the meaning of a woman’s womb. It’s where the seeds of life are kept hidden. Everything we try to create and everything we wish to birth is placed inside of a womb and sometimes those seeds get fertilized by the touch of Love and a baby is created – the birth of new life and a new season of life. Other times we shed all of those hopes and dreams and experiences. They die and pass away with the flowing of blood from the womb. We’re cleansed of the past in this process. And then a new egg is created in place of all that wasn’t watered or fertilized into existence of new life.

I may not know what’s coming in this next 30 day cycle. I don’t even know what I want to create if the choice was left up to me. But I do know that I want to let the old cycle die. I want to release everything that I had tried my best to water that never turned into what I had hoped for. I want to trust that God withheld the gift of Heaven for a good reason – in seasons where I felt like I was dying of thirst and in desperate need for love and miracles and new beginnings. I want to trust that the ending of all things in my past were purposed and that it wasn’t my fault or the fault of another but rather just part of a contract. The times I had felt rejection or loneliness where love should have reigned, God was asking me to walk away and know that he was taking me to something else because it’s his good plan. And I want to trust that one day I’ll stand in the Heavens overlooking the Book of Life and the role everyone played inside of my journey and we’ll laugh together and smile and talk about what a great job everyone did in standing in their appointed assignments. I want to stop wishing that I could rewrite the stories of yesterday and I want to stop blaming myself for what I couldn’t do or couldn’t fix. I want to stop feeling angry or jealous over the love that didn’t choose me and instead be still in my heart and know that God is still writing a beautiful story in my life. I want to let go of resentment and let the sadness that I’ve felt inside turn into wonder of joy that is coming.

I often say that God never takes anything away without sending in a replacement. It bothers me to utter that because I don’t want something different than the gifts he’s given me. I love the kids he chose for me and wouldn’t trade them for anyone. I love the man he delivered into my life at a time when I needed love the most and I’d repeat meeting that man again every single day if I could. Each character is so beautiful and perfect in every way. And I don’t know what will happen – if I’ll ever see my son rise from the place he’s at or if I’ll ever see my daughter catch her dreams of performing on a stage in front of a big audience. I don’t know if I’ll ever see D again or if I’ll meet someone new who brings me childlike joy and laughter the way that he once did. But it’s all perfect either way. The love, the loss, the hope, the changing tides that never end and the prayers that keep me going in my darkest of days. It’s a beautiful journey and I believe I’ll see a day when I’ll reflect on everything and say with joyful tears in my eyes, “Heavenly Father, I can’t believe you wrote such an amazing story of my life.”

I just closed my eyes in a moment of silence and I saw two lines and heard “in between the lines.” Then I felt God’s voice speaking to me – asking me if I can read between the lines. He said this is where he is at – where HIS pen is writing. And then I could see that there is so much beauty in the in-between of seasons. When something is closing and we stand in the middle of an old chapter of our story and we don’t know what will happen next, it’s like the interlude period of a grand play. We take a break to use the bathroom and get a pub of popcorn and then we sit down in the seats of the auditorium with great anticipation – wondering what will happen next. It’s not dreadful, it’s exciting. I asked God in this moment of silence will love return to me and he said, “I can’t tell you. It’s a surprise.” And then I asked, “If I’m just a bystander in the audience watching your script play out and I’m not participating in the process then what am I to do with my time?” He said, “You have a job and things you do everyday. Do those things while you learn to receive.”

There’s something very liberating about giving the pen to God and sitting in the silence with expectation of good things that I can’t yet see. I don’t know he can turn my situation around and how anything could be fixed or moved or re-situated to bring me from loneliness to joy. But he does. He knows. God knows exactly what should happen next in this script and he writes with a pen that has the power to change everything.

He showed me that the Sandbox of Surrender is for the purpose of depositing my prayers. I journal there to give him in secret my deepest thoughts and desires. It’s a place of release and letting go where I turn my worries over to him so that I don’t have to carry them around anymore. And the purpose of the candles is not for prayer in that same sense. The candles are his presence. When I light a candle I’m not alone anymore. I’m in the presence of the light and I’m in a place of unity with God and stillness where I can simply receive his love and visions and directions and messages.

He says they are “Connection Candles” and he showed me the flame opening a portal to Heaven where my space is joined with the Heavenly spaces – where I’m reunited with the world above this one and I can feel the presence of Agape love and be filled with the light of Heaven. So the sandbox is a place of burial. It’s giving it to God and letting it go. Release. And the candles are a place of receiving from above. New light. New Hope. New Insight. New dreams. New Visions. New Love.

I’m hearing the song, “You are not alone,” by Michael Jackson.

In other news, I just received a text message from my daughter. She wanted the number of a friend back home who rescues animals. She said someone sent her a picture of a dog that was being kept outside in the heat and she wondered if someone could foster the poor baby. I’m grateful for my daughter’s beautiful heart towards animals. And I know how much joy she receives when she’s able to help one of them find a loving home. So I pray that God will help her do that today. I pray that God will open a door of rescue for this dog to be released from this hot prison and welcomed into a home where he will be kept cool and showered with nourishment, love and affection.

I pray that everyone I love has a beautiful day. I pray they feel forgiveness from me and from all sources that weight their hearts. We’re all imperfect children and we’re all going to make mistakes. I pray for justice and peace and reconciliation in love. And I pray for gladness in our hearts for the beautiful gifts we’ve been given in eachother. I love even the ones who hurt me and I thank God for that gift. I want for us all to be healed in our hearts and free from our past.

In Jesus name, Amen.

I woke up this morning and did the usual mind racing as thoughts jumped around like firecrackers in a jumble of confusion over what I should and what I needed to get done today. And then a small voice that had no words asked the question, “Have you asked God?” So I closed my eyes and said “Jesus what do you think I should do today?”

It’s like I saw two train tracks appear in my mind’s eye – one with turbulence and hardship and another with a shiny vessel and blue skies. On the turbulent side I saw the word “manifestation” and I was immediately reminded of the book I wrote back in 2015. It wasn’t that my intentions were wrong in wanting to have true love but that I wrote a story of my own future and then later remembered this and fought with my own will and my own might to try to make this all come to pass.

Once I realized in 2022 that I was living a life that ran quite parrellel to the fiction story I wrote, I began trying to put the puzzle pieces together, assigning characters to the script and living my life in a kind of check and balance that worshipped the writing of my own hands. I thought it was a prophecy and I tried to stay on course of something that I had no spiritual evidence was even true. It’s madness that I fell into. Frustration and anxiety. And if I’m being honest, it felt like prison.

I remember back in 2022 when I woke up with remembrance of that book and then later that day saw Mr. California posting images on instagram in front of white horses carrying a buggy, (much like the kind that you see in movies carrying the royal prince and princess to their palace). He said repeatedly, “It’s me! It’s me!” I cried. I cried with a type of violence in my body because I was terrified that this person who didn’t even seem to see me and certainly didn’t model my idea of a soul deep kind of love could be my destiny. It felt like I was being shown my destiny to go right back into the type of love I’d been rescued from in my divorce. It was a sacrificial kind of love where I give my everything and I get back very little on a plate of tears and loneliness.

When I died in 1997, I was taken to a place where the Book of Life was kept and there I was given the opportunity to review my own in company of the Heavenly Council. We watched the whole thing from beginning to the end – to say there’s an end is to speak of something I don’t know. But I know we saw together my future that hadn’t yet taken place here.

To know a thing is a gift I’m not sure we humans are equipped to handle. Jesus had it. He knew that he’d be sent to the cross and I wonder how he contained his worry, fear and his own human nature with a mind that opposed such a story for himself. Can you imagine living your entire life working a normal job, (he was a carpenter) and then serving people, healing people and showing Agape love to the very ones who you knew would betray you, lie about you, hate you and ultimately kill you in the most brutal possible death known to mankind? How would you do it? How would go through with it? How would you stay on the path?

The word “surrender” has been with me as a type of sounding board since I began receiving messages in spirit about the Sandbox back in 2018. I understood that stress and anxiety was a product of fear that roared out of control when I leaned on my own understanding and ego to figure things out. I had decisions before me that were too heavy to make a wrong move. With a handicap man in a wheelchair, two kids, two dogs and two mortgages I didn’t see a way out to fix all of the problems that were spinning out of control before me.

In that season I learned to pray about everything – writing these prayers down to promote the focus of what I outwardly admitted I couldn’t handle and then I deposited these prayers into the sandbox as a ritual that forged the release of my worries over to God. I also learned to wait upon the Lord. Not every prayer was answered immediately and some were even answered in strange ways. I remember one day I was driving across the Kingwood bridge as I broke out into tears with a vision of driving my Yukon off into the railing where I could fall to the river and meet my demise. The end felt like it could peace for me. It’s a struggle I’ve always had when things are too much in this life because I do know the truth of my consciousness. I know that I am immortal and I don’t die. I know that death is nothing more than a doorway back to the Heavenly realm where my soul belongs. But I also know that I volunteered to come here to Earth and I have a mission that my soul wants to complete. So I wrestle and I pray and I seek.

On that day, I heard a voice interrupt my visions of doom with a peculiar message. “Call Keith,” it said. Keith was a man I hardly knew but had recently had discussions with as he was fighting stage 4 cancer and walking with the Lord on what he believed was an important mission – telling his story to young people. He had visited my Bible study group in my home on two occasions and had even reached out to my son without prompt to sit and pray with him over the trial he was facing with his dad. Well, I did – I called Keith. I wasn’t even sure what to say so I opted to have no filter and speak the truth.

“Keith I’m driving over the bridge having an all-out panic attack; crying and praying for God to help me and a voice just told me to call you,” I blurted out. “Ok, tell me what’s going on Jodi?” he asked with concern in his voice. I told him about the move to Kingwood into a rental house so my son could play football and the double mortgages I was paying. I told him about my daughter’s depression and how concerned I was that something tragic was looming in my home – particularly with my son as I was battling him to even get him to go to school. “Take your family back to Atascocita,” he said. There was no hesitation in his voice. He spoke authoritively and directly. “Call your landlord and tell her your husband just broke his hip and is in a wheelchair. Then move your kids back into their home and put your son back in school there around his friends. He needs his friends right now.

I hung up the phone with Keith and set things in motion as he had advised. To my surprise the landlord was merciful and all things smoothly clicked into place over the next 30 days. My daugthter snapped out of depression with ideas of remodeling her room and turning her ceiling into a sky of lights. We also together made a floating bed against her wall and set up a music recording studio together. My son agreed to go back to school and my ex-husband was happy to have his big wheelchair shower back and his oversized doorways. I was shocked how easy it all was. It just flowed together like it was all meant to be. That’s because it was.

When I listen to what God tells me to do and lean not on my own understanding, the pressure leaves and the anxiety dissolves. Back then I never questioned it. I didn’t go around telling people what God had shown me, what dreams I was given or what strange messages were prompting my decisions. I did however make Sandboxes and gift them to others who were going through trying seasons. But even in that I never felt that others truly understood the power and significance of what I had been shown and gifted in the function of the sandbox.

These prayers weren’t wishing upon a star kind of prayers. I didn’t write letters to God saying, “I want you to give me a new Corvette and a field of lollipops and unicorns.” It was a serious practice for me of being honest with myself and identifying where fear was attacking my life force and drowning me in dread. My prayers were relevant and timely to the here and now. As a child comes home from school and sits on her Father’s lap to tell him about her day and seek His wisdom I prayed to my Father in Heaven and sought his direction and help with all things.

A few days ago while staying over at my Mom’s in Houston I woke up and heard the word, “Ad-vice”. I knew that I was being shown this word from Jesus with a purpose that I needed to seek out. In the way the word was given to me in spirit there was a separation to the syllables – “add” and “vice”. So I did a quick Google search of the meaning of the word “vice” and found this.

The word vice generally refers to an immoral, wicked, or deeply flawed habit or behavior. It is the opposite of virtue

So the interpretation I received by spirit was illustrating to me that when we ask people, follow people or seek wisdom from human knowledge without first asking God and being assured that this voice is appointed by God to give us instruction, then we are adding an issue to our own thinking and beliefs about a thing. This world is insane; it doesn’t take a scientist to look around and see that humanity is quite lost and suffering immensely in our faults. And I have made the mistake of listening to many voices over the last several years as I’ve tried to find my way. It would seem my way wasn’t working as my marriage, family life, career and world of comfort was ripped out from under me in 2019. And I was in a very vulnerable place through all of that. I never stopped praying. But I did start praying from a place of muddied waters.

To remember the Heavenly Council is to remember that my life had a plan that was already written outside of time and the constraints of this human world. But if all things are already predetermined in this Book of Life that Heaven keeps record of than what is free will?

There’s a prayer that Jesus spoke before he went to the cross. It was from a place so terrifying and troubling that the scriptures say he sweat blood. Imagine that kind of anxiety and fear to cause the human body to sweat blood. He prayed to our Heavenly Father and said, “If there’s any way that you can take this cup from me then please take this cup from me. But not my will – your will be done.”

I’m quite certain that if I knew with my human intellect and understanding the things I would be required to endure in this lifetime thus far, I’d have not returned to the earth back in 1997. My human mind would have said, “No way Jose! I’m staying up here in the land of peace and love where there’s no suffering. I’m not going back down there to walk through all of that pain and tribulations awaiting me.” But my soul connected to God’s spirit said, “Send me.” It’s a strange thing to understand that I have another intelligence operating within me that doesn’t view this world the way my eyes and physical senses see it all. I have a higher view that does exists, even though it’s not often easy to find.

In 2016 I searched my first Bible scripture. I’d never before sought to read it, understand it or even pick it up. My reasoning was simple. If God wanted me to read a book about him, he’d at least write it in a language that I could interpret. I don’t speak “thee” or “thou”. This was a simple question I asked Google from my cell phone as I sat alone in the dark on the back patio staring at the waterfall that cascaded my pool with the sounds of rushing water. “What does the Bible say about a husband and wife?”

Earlier that night we had been in a Rockets game. My ex-husband surprised us with tickets and the kids were very excited. In the storm I drove my Yukon around the Toyota center; circling all of the parking lots that were full. “We’re going to have to walk,” my ex-husband said – signaling to me to drive a few blocks down and find a space. So I did that. As soon as I placed the truck in PARK, he grabbed the umbrella from the backseat and announced, “You pay for parking. Kids you’re coming with me.” I broke that night while I was standing in the rain alone behind a trail of bodies waiting to use the pay lot machine. Tears came out to my own surprise – like a pot of boiling water that refused to stay contained any longer. It wasn’t about me. It was about them. I saw my son’s eyes lock with mine as he jumped out of the truck and I saw my duaghter’s expression as she too followed her father. The man left the woman, (his bride) to stand alone in the rain without an umbrella and that example was just given to my children to follow. My son just learned how he should one day treat his wife and the mother of his children. My daughter had just witnessed what she should expect to receive from a man. Was I a wife or a slave? Perhaps I didn’t care about myself or the make-up melting off of my face as the terential downpour soaked me from head to toe but I did care that my daughter might one day be standing in my shoes. She deserved better than this. And I was horrified that my son might one day put a little girl’s hopeful heart through this same pain.

When I prayed that night for the first time I didn’t even know what I was saying if I’m being honest with myself. The idea was foreign to me as I read the words from Google from a ministry’s post. “The Bible says a man should love his wife like Jesus loves the church. He took her blame and her shame and he was willing to die for her. And the man should be the spiritual leader of the children.” I said those words out lout back to God with tears in my eyes, a cigarette in my hand and a gaze that connected with the stars above. “God your word says this and my marriage doesn’t look like this at all. I don’t know how to fix it but please help me.”

Perhaps it’s in our not knowing that we can become like a little child who seeks the assistance of a loving Father from a humble heart. In my experiences that’s certainly been the case. It’s when I find my end and have no more answers, ideas or solutions to try that I can at last surrender my troubles before the Lord and receive his guidance and provisions.

Nothing could have prepared me for what happened next and to this day I carry confusion and guilt around it all. But I ask myself what is the true point of our paths if I’m to judge every moment by the weight of the pain rather than the correction in the outcome? If my true heart’s desire is seeded in the character of my children and God knows better than me how to fix what I certainly didn’t know how to fix on my own, then who I am to say that it’s wrong?

Today I have so much turmoil inside of me and I can’t figure anything out for others or myself. I pray but I don’t even know if I feel worthy to pray. My prayers don’t sound like Jesus, that’s for sure. I’m not sitting in a pool of blood-stricket anxiety saying to the Heavens, “Not my will but your will be done.” I don’t have that kind of trust.

Paul Calls…..

God is doing something and I feel it. When I got off the phone with Paul I asked if we could pray together. I seemingly spoke the words that have been flowing from my heart all morning as I asked our Heavenly Father to send Paul to the home where he would fullfill the purpose that he has for Paul in this coming season. Paul lost a leg and he’s legally blind but God used him to speak to my heart today and I know he will use him to speak to many more very soon.

It’s the wounded warriors that carry the sword of the Almighty in the spiritual battle that rages in this realm. Yes, God uses the Broken…

Well, it’s time to take Damion back to the airport and I’m grateful for his visit and all that the Holy Spirit has spoken to me in his visit. I realize in this moment that Damion’s story isn’t my story anymore – the fighter that keeps going and keeps getting up and refuses to give up on his childhood dream. My story is God’s story now. I want HIS WILL to be done and I want to surrender mine and keep surrendering mine because the script in the Heavens is superior to anything I could ever write from this carnal mind.

I surrender the book and the California guy and I surrender my desire to be back on top again in Real Estate. Whatever God has for me, I want to know about it and align with him and walk in it fearlessly without the “added vices” from others. I want to be on the tracks that flow with the plans that were written in the Book of Life before I ever was formed in my mother’s womb. God knows better than me why He created me and sent me here for a time such as this. And whether I have a small mission or a big one I just want to complete the works that I was assigned when I raised my hand and said, “I’ll go. Send me.”

May the Lord keep me and direct my steps. In Jesus name – Amen.

When I took Drako for a walk a man passed us by in a gray Toyota Corolla and stopped as if it was us that he was looking for. As the neighbor shared her story of the crazy green spider she found with me, she stopped in the distraction and asked, “Is this guy looking for you?” I said no that I’d never seen him before. Then moments later we were walking down the hill and the man passed us again, this time rolling down his window. I asked, “Can I help you?” He said, “27” and I shook my head no. “I have no idea sorry.” I assumed he was looking for a building in the complex and probably had a delivery.

Down the hill the heat intensified quickly as it does here in Austin. I grew concerned about Drako as he was panting and we’d travelled all the way to the other side of the complex. I wished the heat would give us a break so that he could be kept cool while we made our way back. Then suddenly, the wind picked up so strong that I found it hard to walk straight up the hill. Then I had the urge to sing out loud, “Spirit lead me where my faith is without borders.” I have always felt that the wind was very spiritual. I even think of love like the wind. It blows your way when you least expect it and you can’t always know when it will leave or come your way again. I thanked God for the wind that gave Drako a cool down on our walk back up the hill and then was startled by a man yelling down from his balcony at us, “Good morning!” I looked up and said good morning back to him and then wondered if he’d heard me singing. How embarrassing I thought. “That’s a beautiful dog you have,” he chimed again. “Thank you,” I responded with a smile as I made my way back into the little iron gate that lines our back patio.

Back inside I set up Josh’s room for Damion’s interview. It went very well, although I noticed myself zoning out a bit. I think about my son when he tells his story. He shared with the camera his dreams of being in the NBA and how that dream was shattered by an injury. But he finishes that thought with, “God had a different plan,” while wearing a smile on his face. I secretely wished that was my son on that chair telling the good testimony of a comeback that was made possible through God’s good grace. It’s hard for me to deny my disappointment as it’s something I carry with me all the time. It’s like a wound that hurts and no matter how accustomed I am to the pain after many years passed by, I still wish for it to be healed and resolved. Everyday I hope and I pray and I tell myself, “Today is the day that a miracle can happen.”

I wish that I’d get a call from him with good news. Maybe it’s the little things I need to see more clearly. Like for example, I noticed while sending my daughter a Zelle payment over lunch that my son had $390 in his account. That’s more than I’ve ever seen in there before. He’s working in his car to deliver food and make money on the Door Dash app. And that may not be my dream for him or anything close to what he’d hoped to be doing with his life today but he is alive and he is waking up each day and trying.

Damion kept saying, “For anyone going through a dark time, keep going. Just keep going.” It’s like it’s his life slogan and clearly the attitude he believes saw him through to a better day. His trial was hard and he was able to play basketball again a few months after he got hurt. He says he believed in himself and he believed in God. After the interview he said, “Wait I have to say one more thing.” And then he paused for a moment as I could sense the emotions rushing into his face and he spoke, “I just want to thank my mom. She told me that I can be anything I put my mind too. No matter what other people say or what voices of doubt spoke over me, my mom always helped me believe that anything is possible.”

I think about a greeting card my son gave me many years ago after his dad came home from the hospital. He wrote in it, “Mom thanks for teaching me to have faith.” And now as he seems to get angry at me when I talk about God or miracles or the hope for a tomorrow that I believe to be God’s plan still over his future, I am reminded that I might be the only voice that even says those things to him. So I can’t stop. I can’t let myself be defeated. Even if I myself am struggling to find my own way forward and even if I myself am struggling to wake up each day and find the good, I have to speaking faith to him. I can’t ever let the voice of doubt be my words to my boy.

He needs a job but he doesn’t want one. In fact he gets angry when I speak of it and he says that he doesn’t want to live a normal life. Meanwhile he beats himself up for not playing ball – like God was angry at him or punishing him for the injury he incurred back in 2017. And I don’t have an answer for him. I don’t know why that happened. I don’t know why football wasn’t his path and I don’t know what his path might be now. I wish I could help. I wish I had the power to open up doors for him and in my weakness I pray constantly for God to send an angel in his path to show him to a second chapter – someone who sees him; really sees him.

It’s not easy for me to celebrate others when I’m hurting so badly but I know it’s the right thing to do. Interestingly Damion spoke about this in his message. He talked about how he flew around to see his friends play in games and cheered them on from the bleachers holding crutches in his hands. Positive people want to see others do well. It’s just how we’re made and I’ve always been that way – wanting to see others succeed and have joy and victory. But why is becoming more difficult for me now?

Once upon a time good stories gave me hope. I remember watching Cheri go from an abusive relationship to a relationship where she was being used and then she met the guy who loved her – really loved her. I was so excited for her and I felt like I was watching through her what God would do for me soon. Then again with Annette, I saw her act as a caregiver to her dying husband and then she buried him with honor and strength with no intentions of letting a man into her heart again. But she met one by surprise, they rushed off to Hawaii to marry and now she’s happy and even working a job with less stress from the ownership role she had to step into when Keith died. I remember the man who broke down crying in my garage when he bought my Sleep Number bed for me as I was readying myself to take this airline job. He told me the story of how his high school sweetheart of a wife divorced him and left him broken hearted and confused. Then just as she left an old friend from facebook popped up and they traveled to meet. She rejected him and friend grouped him but she said as he was driving back to Texas a voice got hold of her on the inside and said, “Are you crazy? The man you’ve been praying for just showed up in your life and your friend grouping him and sending him home?”

These stories of hope I see in documentaries of some of the greats like Michael Jordan who was turned down by everyone and ended up being one of the best players to ever touch a court. I’ve listened to at least 100 speeches by Steve Harvey who was living in a car and down to $35 dollars in his account when one night (the night he decided to give up and go home), everything changed. Standing a phone booth he listened to a voicemail message from the manager at the Apollo who gave him the opportunity to come perform. The problem was, he didn’t have enough money to fly to New York. He said, “God are you serious? I finally get the opportunity to be on TV and there’s no possible way for me to get a plane ticket.” Harvey said he was so defeated in thought he just assumed it was a sign from the Heavens that it wasn’t meant to be. If God wanted him to go he’d give him the money to get there. Then another voicemail popped up with a message from another man who offered him $300 to do a small gig – just enough money to make the trip.

I’ve had my faith tested in big ways – huge ways in fact. I’ve stood in faith against the voices of doubt from experts who told me that my ex-husband wouldn’t live. Then armies of doubt came again and again to give me lists of all that he’d never do. He’d never walk or talk or be independent and he’d likely not even remember my name – they all told me. Then I saw God use the foolish things to confound the wise. He healed that man of every negative word that had been spoken over him.

So why isn’t God doing that for me now? On June 7th, 2019 my ex left my life with these final words. He said to me, “No man could ever love you because the only thing good about you was your looks and you let yourself go. Plus you have daddy issues and no one can deal with your crazy.” I remember feeling almost pre-vindicated through my tears of hurt and pain. It’s as if I knew that. because he had said those horrible things. God was going to show out in a big way to prove that him wrong. Over the last few years I’ve hung onto that little seed of faith as if it were my only lifeline. I kept telling myself over and over that even if I didn’t believe I was loveable and even if every man who’s ever been in my life had left me like I was nothing, God was on a mission to use the foolish things to confound the wise once again in my life.

Going to California was that leap of faith and I did it not once but twice. That man reminded me so much of my mother. He loves the worldly things – material life and fame and shopping and everything that’s not of the spiritual depths of what I’d call love. He made me feel like I could never be enough. I didn’t dress right or say the right words. Even my thoughts he’d condemn as wrong. He couldn’t see me – not my heart. And I ask myself why would God send someone into my path who would just further prove the awful words that were spoken over me? Am I only as valuable as what I look like to the human eye? Am I crazy because I’ve been hurt and don’t know to trust easily?

Well I don’t want to fill this way. If I could have anything I’d ask my Granny to give me Rainbow Brite’s magic wand from Heaven and I’d sprinkle pixie dust over my son and over myself and my daughter too. We’d all wake up to find the blessings that counter every single horrible thing others have said to us and the horrible things we’ve said to ourselves too.

Back in my room after lunch I looked up at my wall at the little wooden light sign I made before I left to take my last trip to California. Underneath a Marilynn Monroe picture I bought from the Goodwill store it reads, “I remain confident of this: I will see the Goodness of the Lord in the Land of the Living. Wait for the Lord. Be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.” Then underneath it is the number 27:13.

When I looked at it I remembered the guy in the gray Toyota driving around who approached me and drake and spoke out of his window, “twenty seven”.

In Damion’s story, he fought hard to return to basketball after he was wounded. And in my story I fought hard to return to love after my heart was shattered into a million pieces. And I ask myself everyday, “Now what?” What happens to the ones who don’t get the miracle? When we try everything and we walk in faith and give all of our stuff to a church and move across the globe twice following our heart’s desire and then return empty handed – what do you with that? It’s not a story I’d want to tell anyone because it certainly doesn’t speak of hope or happily ever afters.

I tell myself I need to enjoy the present moment and be grateful for what I have. Maybe that’s the prayer I should speak more to the Heavens today. Because I don’t know how to pretend and I’m so exhausted in trying to lie to myself and everyone around me. I’m tired of wearing a fake smile. I’m tired of telling old stories of miracles and then choking up when I don’t have a grand finale at the end but instead can only utter, “And then everything fell apart and I’m alone working a job I don’t belong to and my son’s sad and my daughter’s writing letter to me about how lonely she is.”

Why can’t what we have be enough? Why can’t today be a gift when the dreams are all gone and there’s nothing left to hope for anymore? Why can’t I surrender and let go and give up and just be free from thinking about the vindication that never came and the prayers that wen’t unanswered? I fought the good fight of faith and I ended up here and I don’t know how to accept it so I need God to help me to give up. I need him to cool that fire of the fighter that’s always been in me and help me to let it all go.

A small voice in me speaks ever-so gently, “You’d never want it this way anyway…” And I know it’s true. I love a good fight. I love to fight for righteousness and I love to fight for victory of what I believe in. But love doesn’t work like that. You can’t win love and it seems the harder I’ve tried to be the kind of person that is “loveable” in this world, the more defeated and unloveable I feel.

So now I’m going to mustard up the strength to make Damion a fine video. I hope it inspires many broken hearts and shattered dreams who once thought they’d become pro ball players. I hope it inspires kids like my son to keep going when there seems like no hope or no place to go. I hope it lights a spark in my heart too and I pray that I can glorify the light in this project. And most importantly, I hope that I can do so with a joy that celebrates victory even when I’m laying here in pain.