Grace

Something was said in church today that has me thinking. A young lady serving a mission said that many people think that grace is the light at the end of the tunnel when in reality grace is the light that carries us through the tunnel. This thought really struck me. I have heard all my life the phrase that we are saved by grace after all we can do. In a way, that can be misinterpreted to mean that we have to get through the tunnel before we reach the grace, but this Sister suggested that grace is with us the whole way.

I’m not sure that I have thought enough about grace to say what I have believed about it. Looking back on my life I can definitely say that I have felt God’s grace every step of the way. Wikipedia explains grace this way: “In Western Christian theology, grace has been defined, not as a created substance of any kind, but as ‘the love and mercy given to us by God because God desires us to have it, not because of anything we have done to earn it,’ ‘the condescension or benevolence shown by God toward the human race.’” I have undeniably felt that love and mercy even when I felt that I didn’t deserve it.

I think that the reason this Sister’s thought on grace is on my mind is because even though I can see and identify God’s grace when looking back on my life, I don’t think that I always acknowledge or recognize it in my current trials. I go through each day struggling to know how to take care of my children, my home, and all my clients at work and don’t give full recognition to the God that gives me strength to perform all those tasks. It is God’s grace that makes me capable of getting up and going to work when I have only had two to three hours of sleep. It is God’s grace that calms me when I feel that I just can’t respond with kindness to my children being out of control. It is God’s grace that enables me to show forth love and compassion to everyone that walks through the doors of our office, no matter what their life circumstances. Every single aspect of my life exists because of God’s grace.

God’s grace is truly what gets me through the tunnel. I know that God is aware of me and is always offering his love, support, and compassion every step of the way. I am so grateful today for the knowledge of a loving God, who is my Father. I love him and truly desire to emulate him each day of my life.

God’s Grace

by Amy Tiare

Crawling through the darkness, searching for the light

Moving through the tunnel of life

Off in the distance, a spark, a glimmer

Maybe there is end to all this strife

Will I ever reach it? Is there hope for me?

Can I bask in the warmth of the light?

Feeling so discouraged, the path is just too hard

Is there a God who hears my plight?

Show me, oh God

Open up my eyes

Reveal to me your loving face

Lift me from this darkness

Lend me strength to go on

Embrace me in the arms of your grace

A sudden flash of light, my eyes are opened

A wondrous scene is soon revealed

Scurrying in the tunnel, a host of angels

Removing obstacles and acting as a shield

All this time I have thought that the end would show God’s love

That the light would be a sweet release

Now I see the truth, that God is all around me

While traveling the tunnel there can be peace

Show me, oh God

Open up my eyes

Reveal to me your loving face

Lift me from this darkness

Lend me strength to go on

Embrace me in the arms of your grace

Symbol of Freedom

Independence Day is celebrated across the United States to remember the birth of our country, becoming free from oppressors. One of the great symbols of our freedom is the American flag. For as long as I can remember, I have loved the American flag and the national anthem. I cannot get through singing, “The Star Spangled Banner” without tearing up. When I look at the American flag I can sense and feel all those who sacrificed throughout our history to create a country where I have the freedom to worship the way I desire to worship and to enjoy the many freedoms of travel, work, and numerous other freedoms we have. It pains me when I see people disrespect the American flag because of all that it symbolizes to me.

When I first left my marriage, I had no intention of changing my name. I felt that it would be less confusing for my children if we had the same name. But as time went on and I struggled to truly become free from the oppression of my marriage, I felt that as long as I carried his name I would never be free from my ex. There was a part of me that felt like he owned me. I considered going back to my maiden name but felt that returning to that name would be symbolic of going back to who I used to be. I was no longer that person; I was an entirely different entity now.

The middle name given to me at birth was Tiare (pronounced: tee-ah-ray or the more common way of saying it is to say the letters T-R-A). It is the name of a flower used in the South Pacific to make leis. The flower is symbolic of beauty, friendship, and purity. I have always loved my middle name. As I struggled for freedom and personal identity, I began signing my poetry with the name Amy Tiare. I felt that my middle name was a name no one could take from me. As a woman, my last name would change based on marriage but my middle name would always be mine. As I struggled to establish who I was, I knew that I needed a personal symbol of becoming a new person. I finally decided that at the time of the divorce I would take my middle name and make it my last name.

I love my name! Even though no one knows how to pronounce it, it is a thing of beauty to be called Amy Tiare. Just like the American flag, my name is a symbol of freedom for me. Freedom from oppression, freedom from fear, freedom to express myself, freedom to live. There is a song sung by the Christian group Mercy River called, “Free.” I discovered it shortly after leaving my marriage and felt it very symbolic. The lyrics go like this:

Free

By Jenny Phillips and Tyler Castleton

Far beyond the burden of this over grown path

There are clear and open fields of green, green grass

How long has it been since you ran in those fields of green

And like a child let go and felt your hair fly in the breeze

This is how God designed our lives to be

We’re free, we’re free, to live, to live

With joy with life with love for Him

So raise your hands up to the skies

We choose to let His light inside

We’re free.

When your hands hang down and your skies are dark

When the wonder and joy have left your heart

Go and find that place where the world is open wide

Where you look into the sky and let your deepest dreams run wild

We were meant to feel His goodness in our lives

We’re free, we’re free, to live, to live

With joy with life with love for Him

So raise your hands up to the skies

We choose to let His light inside

We’re free

How will you celebrate your freedom today?

This is a drawing that my niece, Rebekah Dodge, made for me of the Tiare flower

Knowledge

I have been thinking a lot about learning and knowledge. I feel that gaining knowledge can be compared to being in a room. You start out in the darkness, stumbling around trying to make it through life, hoping to find some light. At some point you find a wall and feel around until you find a light switch. Flipping on the light switch brings great relief. You can now see! There are things in the room you never knew existed or couldn’t identify. What an amazing room you are in!

As you explore your surroundings and learn from what is there, you find a lightbulb. Upon investigation you discover that the bulb is labeled as 40 watts. Curious, you switch the lightbulbs and find that the old lightbulb was only 20 watts. The new bulb lights up so much more of the room! You can see colors that you couldn’t before. You can see that the room is bigger than you first thought. You are aware of all the things you already knew but add new knowledge because of the brighter light.

Exploring brings you to another bulb, this time 60 watts. Once again, changing the bulb brings new awareness and new learning. The more you learn, the more bulbs you find, making your world brighter and bigger with each new bulb. At one point you even find a window with a dark curtain over it, discovering that there was always a source of light, even when you thought you were in darkness; all you had to do was open the curtain.

It is possible that at some time in your learning you go behind a wall and lose sight of the first things you had learned, but overall the new knowledge just adds to what you already know.

An interesting side-affect happens as the light gets brighter in your room, you not only become aware of the wonderful new things the light illuminates, but you also become aware of the dirt on the floor, the cobwebs on the ceiling, and the clutter building up around the edges. If you aren’t careful, this awareness can cause self-judgment, self-criticism, and depression. In reality, becoming aware of all these things is just an opportunity to clean house, to get rid of the things that are not serving you in your life, to become a better and wiser person. The interesting thing about knowledge is that it is not automatically transferred into wisdom. Knowledge is becoming aware of the things in your room, wisdom is knowing when to clean house.

Until we return to the Ultimate Light, God our Father, we will never run out of higher wattage bulbs. There is always more to learn, more to see, both in ourselves and in the world around us. We may even find that there really are no walls to our house, the boundaries of learning are really only an illusion.

What wattage is your current bulb?

Serving

When I finally realized that I had to get out of my marriage, the big question turned to, “how?” I had asked several times if we could temporarily separate or at least have a partial separation where he got an apartment and stayed there during the week and spent weekends with us. His response was to plop himself down on the couch and say, with his arms firmly across his chest, “This is my house and no one can make me leave it!” I knew that in order to get out, I would have to be the one to leave. But how?

I became aware of a local shelter for women escaping domestic violence and had been told that I could live there with my children while we found a way to make it on our own. Immediately I thought that there was no way I could ever do anything like that. Staying there would mean that I had to finally admit to myself how bad things really were. I wasn’t sure that I was ready for that.

I spent a great deal of time in prayer and meditation, pleading with God for a way out, begging for a way to save my children from the daily fear that they were experiencing. During one of those times of meditation, the thought came to me that I needed to go to the shelter. I pleaded for another way to get out. I was terrified at the thought of going there. I’m not quite sure what I thought would happen if I went, but I knew that I wanted nothing to do with living there. It was at that moment, when I felt so caught up in how difficult my life and decision was, that God opened my mind and showed me a vision of sorts. In my minds’ eye I saw myself in the future teaching the women at the shelter. I didn’t know what I was teaching them, but I knew that they were listening to me because I had been there. I had experienced what they were experiencing. Because of my experience I was able to make a positive difference in many other women’s lives. Once I saw that, I knew it was time to save my family and make the move.

Within a few months of being out on my own I was asked by the shelter to put together a class for the women. After several discussions we agreed I would teach a class on self-care and dealing with strong emotions. For three and a half years I have taught a class at least once a month and have had the opportunity to share what I have learned through all of these crazy life experiences. When I first introduce myself to the women, they don’t always look at me but when I tell them that I was once a resident there, they always look at me and give me their attention. I couldn’t be helping these women if I had not been through all the things that I have been through.

Through all of this, I have learned a powerful lesson. I have learned that no matter what circumstance you find yourself in, there is always, always someone you can help, some way to make life better, some service you can offer. By finding a way to serve, you are able to find peace in the midst of the storm. I don’t believe that God causes the challenges we have in life, but I know that he allows life to happen and always provides a way to heal, no matter what. Sometimes he heals us directly, sometimes he heals us through other people, sometimes he heals us by giving us people to serve.

What opportunities has God given you for serving others?

Discovery

In 2014 I decided that for the month of July, the month to celebrate the freedom of our country, I would celebrate my personal freedom and express an opinion or discover something about myself every day because there was no one in my life that was controlling me anymore. I use to fear every moment how my opinions and actions would be reacted to, put down, or destroyed. July of 2014 was a turning point for me. I learned so much about who I am and felt so much love and support from all my friends who read my thoughts.

Life is full of ebbs and flows and I have found myself in a slow point in life, struggling to find purpose each day. I appreciate the cycles that life goes through and find that every stage fulfills me in a different way. In an effort to move forward once again, I feel that it is important for me to have another month of self discovery. It is difficult for me to commit to thirty-one days of posting thoughts, but feel that pushing myself forward is like paddling out to a wave on a surfboard. It takes effort to find a wave and get moving with it, but once you successfully ride it, the momentum takes you and it is no longer an effort.

This month I will post something every day. It may be a simple opinion about something that happened that day, a new food I discovered, or a complex thought inspired by the world around me. Whatever it is, it will be mine.  Discovery is always just a moment away!

What opinion have you formed today?

Self Worth

As we go through life and try to establish a sense of self, we look for things that make us feel good about ourselves. We look for praise from others to make us feel worthwhile and important. Often we look to certain events, experiences, or people to give us purpose and worth. The problem with this way of obtaining self worth from the outside is that it is very easy to have self worth destroyed and ripped away.  

While growing up, my greatest desire was to one day be a mom. I babysat many, many children, even taking care of triplets from the time they were two months old until they were nearly two years old. I also spent a great deal of time with my nieces and nephews. I couldn’t wait for the day that I would be a mom and felt that being a mom would give me a great amount of purpose and worth.

I got pregnant within the first week of getting married. I was thrilled! We were both so excited to become parents! I can’t remember if it was the day we brought our beautiful daughter home or the second day, but my husband said to me, “We need to have my mom come over and show you how to take care of a baby and be a mom.” I just looked at him for a while then let him know I didn’t think that would be necessary. I felt I had enough experience to get us started. He greatly disagreed. He informed me that since I was the second to last child in my family that I knew nothing about raising children. He was the oldest and practically raised his siblings so he knew better than me. I quietly refused having his mom “show me how to be a mom” and tried to stumble my way through the next few weeks.

The confidence I once had with children was quickly stripped away. I was told regularly that I wasn’t doing things right or, “that’s not how my mom does it.” So many things that I had wanted to do with my children faded away as I shifted to the mode of trying to please my husband to keep him from becoming angry. All those years of planning and imagining how it would feel to be a mother left me feeling worthless, lost, and terribly disappointed, both in my husband but most especially in myself. I should have been strong enough! I should be able to create a home and environment that I felt was healthy! I should… I should… I should... So many “I should’s.”

All my childhood I had placed my worth as a woman on being a wife and a mother. But being a wife and a mother was not rewarding like I thought it would be. I was not happy. I was not satisfied. I was weak. I was depressed. I was worthless. My home was full of contention, tears, and pain. It wasn’t the safe harbor I had always imagined it would be. I felt I was a failure.

The years of self discovery in my older teen years became a distant memory as I thought my sole purpose was now to please my husband and get through each day alive and with the same number of children that I started out with.

I remember a time after our second child was over a year old. I was feeling like I needed to do something for myself because the Amy I once knew had become so distant. When I was younger I loved doing Karate. I felt that if I could get in a Karate class that it would help me to become healthier and give me some of that self worth that I had lost. I proposed the idea to my husband who began making fun of me for wanting to do Karate then spent the next  hour lecturing me on how that would be a bad idea. Who would watch the kids? Where would we find the money? How would this impact him? He never told me “no,” he just told me how wrong and selfish it was for me to want to do this and left it up to me to make the final decision. Of course I never signed up for a Karate class.

A short time later, while looking for a way to get healthy and exercise, I saw an ad for a belly dancing class offered in the community. I jokingly said I should do it and he immediately encouraged me to, offering to watch the kids, saying we could take money out of savings since we didn’t have extra in our monthly budget. I was a little surprised by the difference in this response until I realized that me belly dancing would bring him pleasure. When something seemed to benefit him, he was okay with it. When he saw no benefit to him, he didn’t want me to do it. This experience only validated all the other attacks on who I was and what my purpose was. At that point I felt that my only purpose in being a woman was to please my husband. There was no other value to me at that time.

By the time I realized that the only way for me to continue to live on this earth was to leave the marriage, I had no sense of worth. I had been told for a long time that our marriage problems were my fault, that our children’s behavior problems were my fault, that I was living in a fantasy world because I couldn’t prove to my husband’s satisfaction that he had any responsibility in our family’s issues. I had become so lost through this experience that I had no idea who or what I was.

Since leaving over three years ago, I have often wondered, where does self worth come from? How to I come to see the good in myself? How do I recognize the divinity within me that comes from being a daughter of God? How do I find and be true to myself? And how do I do all these things without being selfish or self-centered?

The Bible says that we are to love our neighbor as we love ourself. So that says I have to love myself. That can be a very challenging thing to do.

So who do I look to in order to know how to do that? I believe the Bible answers that. We have a perfect example in the life of Jesus Christ. Jesus taught to love, not condemn. This doesn’t just apply to how we feel about others, but how we feel about ourselves. He taught to be kind, always. He taught to take time for yourself like he did when he retreated to the mountains. He taught that sin does not define the person. We can always change, grow, and become better.

I believe very strongly in personal evaluations. I like change and growth. If I am the same today as I was yesterday then I am doing something wrong. The goal is to one day reach perfection so that I don’t have to be constantly changing, but I am a long way from reaching that point. I believe that in following the teachings of Christ, it will lead me to find out who I truly am and help me establish a strong sense of worth.

I feel that the more I get to know myself, that my self worth can grow from the inside out. It is that true self worth that will withstand the storms of life and bring me strength of character to keep me going no matter what I am told from others. I can feel that growing inside right now. It also helps to know that the only being I need to please is God. In doing all I can to please Him, I feel myself growing and becoming. And what a joy it is to be in a position where I have the freedom to become all that I desire and God desires me to be!

What have you discovered about yourself today?

Who am I?

Throughout life, I have struggled with the concept of knowing who I am. Who am I in my family? Who am I in the community? Who am I in varying relationships with people? I had been taught as a child that I was a child of God and that my identity should come from that understanding. I truly believe that I am a child of God, but what does that mean?

When I was an older teen and into my early 20's, I did a lot of soul searching, took a lot of seminars, read a lot of books, and felt like I did a pretty good job establishing an identity and finding out who I was. Then I got married. Very quickly I found myself in an identity crises. I thought I knew who I was as an individual, but I didn't know who I was when I was with someone. I found that when in a relationship I became a chameleon, changing and shifting to try to make the other person happy. Even compromising who I thought I was in order to keep the peace and make sure he was happy. Life became all about him and worrying about how every choice I made would be responded to by him. Even my likes and dislikes became void. And when I did stand up for something I felt strongly about, it was met with a great amount of resistance and conflict.

A coping mechanism that I came up with very early on was to try to avoid having opinions about things. If I didn't have my own opinion and just agreed with whatever was said, I would be safe. This wasn't true in all things, there were some things I was extremely opinionated about, but as a general rule I would shift and bend according to the strong opinions of my spouse.

Another tool for keeping myself safe was to not have hobbies or interests of my own. Before marriage I loved watching professional basketball. There was a thrill for me in watching the entirety of a game and going through the ups and downs that accompany the viewing of a sport. Often I would turn on the television to watch my favorite team. One day my husband came into the room and changed the channel. I told him I was watching the game. He responded that he didn't like basketball and I could check the score later. After several times of this scenario taking place, I stopped watching basketball and to this day have never viewed a professional sport. It was easier to not have my own desires than to face the conflict of clashing with someone else's desires.

Over many years of being a chameleon, the true me not only withdrew, but began withering away into nothingness. I felt as if I was dying a very slow and painful death. If something didn't change, there would be nothing left to the real me. I was so caught up in trying to please others that I no longer knew who I was. That is the journey I am on today: to find out who the real me is.

There is an older movie with Julia Roberts that I love called, "Runaway Bride." In that movie the main character has left several men at the alter and just couldn't seem to follow through with getting married. At one point a reporter that was doing a story about her, questioned the men about their experience with Maggie, the main character. One question he asked was how Maggie liked her eggs cooked. All of the men answered the same way, "She likes them just like I do!" Maggie had changed herself to be whatever the man she was with liked. In order for her to have a true, lasting relationship, she had to discover how she liked her own eggs. She had to find her own identity and be true to it.

I feel like Maggie today. I am on a quest to discover what kind of eggs I like. I hope that as I form opinions and have new experiences that I will be able to establish my identity and come to know the answer to the question, "who am I?"

How do you like your eggs?