This is the first thing I saw when I walked outside this morning and it was so beautiful. It was like God was waving from heaven and saying I’m here and I’m gorgeous. I originally was going to write about the morning session but the evening session was so powerful that I am writing about it. Herc had an awesome post about this morning which I was going to copy and paste into my blog. However this stupid phone will not let me and I don’t have wifi for my computer. Sometimes technology is a big fat hinderance.

This is my seventh big stuf camp. 2008 was the first year I went and the theme was broadcast. Looking back I was pretty much a walking disaster. I had been in counseling since October of 2007 and things were going well personally. I was learning I was a pretty cool person after all. My take away experience was I FELT love for the first time in my life. I knew in my head people loved me but I never FELT it. I tried explaining this to Brian but in true dude fashion he told me it was the stupidest thing he had ever heard.

Its seven years later and I feel like I heard the rest of my story. When a person enters a valley or a painful spot in their life they tend to do one of four things all which do not actually deal with the situation and cause their story to veer way off course. A person either 1. Numbs it with alcohol drugs etc. 2. Ignores it. 3. Becomes angry or 4. Shuts down. I would be a 2+4 combo. I am really good at blocking people who have hurt me from my head. This is a bad thing to do. I also shut down and for most of my life I just pretended I was invisible. I still tend to do this when I’m running along the side of the road. I really don’t think anyone can see me which is probably why I rarely ever noticed anyone honking and waving at me. So if I shut down block pain out of my head it totally explains why I never felt love. God tore those walls down at camp seven years ago. My husbands dude comment shot them back up but I did finish counseling and most of the time the walls are down. When people have hurt me in the past seven years, I worked through it, forgave them, kept my memories but moved on. Such a much healthier way to live.

Mole moral in times of pain and trouble turn toward Jesus rather than the other ways to deal with it. He will let you cuss at him and say you hate him and still love you and be your friend!!