You don’t need anyone to complete you…

Your “ME TIME” is the most important time of your day…

You can Do it ALL- Be it ALL- and Have it All…

These are the messages we receive.

These are the LIES we believe when we forget to FOCUS.

The truth is…

We are all a mess!

Some of it is LIFE.

Some of it is OTHERS.

Some of it – Much of it is OUR OWN MAKING.

We all would like to believe that we are the Princess of our very own Fairy Tale.

Waiting to be Noticed…

Waiting to be Appreciated…

Waiting to be Elevated.

Waiting to be LOVED.

But sometimes the problem that gets in the way of our “Happily Ever After”

is the fact that we are often more like the Ugly Step-sisters.

We become them when we participate in bad habits such as…

Gossiping.

Arguing.

Comparing.

And Striving to place ourselves ahead of others.

Maybe we are more like Fiona…

Wild haired and freckle faced.

Trying desperately to be brave as we struggle with the definitions and constraints of a polite society.

Or perhaps you are more like Sleeping Beauty…

Living alone, depressed and isolated.

Allowing yourself to remain captive by your belief in the misunderstandings of your past,

and the silence that you have chosen.

But then along comes your fairy Godmother…

and POOF!

Your dreams all come true with the simple touch of her magic wand.

In our real life, dreams can and do come true

when we are finally able to realize that we are loved so completely by God.

He loves us…

Freckles.

Faults…

and Flaws.

When we can accept the love of our Father,

We are finally able to realize our beauty is nothing without the overwhelming beauty and grace of Christ transforming us.

We can discover that it is OK to disappear.

To Empty ourselves and become so much like Christ

that when we look at ourselves,

we see a reflection of Christ looking back at us.

A true Princess knows that she must transform

Selfishness

Into

Sacrifice.

Bitterness

Into

Freedom.

A princess must be willing to Change her struggle to BE

Different from others

Into

A struggle to make a Difference

FOR Others.

When we FOCUS on the truth

We become the beautiful Princess,

transformed by the magic wand of the Holy Spirit.

We can finally set out bravely on our quest to discover the path that Christ has laid down for us.

My entire childhood was very homogenous.

I was surrounded by people who looked like me. ( literally, I grew up surrounded by cousins that I spent most of my time with)

They acted like me.

The believed the same religious dogma that I believed.

We even ate almost the same foods.

So later when I was in my early twenties, I became a Correctional Officer, and the diversity at the prison came as quite a shock to me.

I learned something extremely valuable at the prison.

I learned that sometimes the worst sinners can make the biggest difference in our lives.

For me, that sinner was a man on Death Row. He has since been executed, but he will live on in my mind and the mind of my children because of the impact he had on me.

We were both very artistic, and through that medium, we developed a sort of friendship.

He would always have a joke for me, and a story behind the art project he was sending out to be mailed to his daughter.

The moment that changed my life came when I was about 5 months pregnant with Arminda. He asked me if I was going to name my baby after him.

I told him that in no uncertain terms would I be naming this baby after him.

He said I should because me and him were the same person.

I disagreed, but he stopped me mid-sentence and said,

” You and I have both had our souls touched by a monster that we thought loved us. I let go of my light, and became that very same monster. You held onto your light and defeated your monster. Never, ever let go of the light that you have glowing inside of you. It is your power, your beauty, your very lifeline Melanie. Protect that light.”

WOW… Talk about

Since that day, I have been tempted to let go of the light, and the struggles that come from being a Christian…

But, I was warned by a man behind bars,

literally living in a cage,

waiting to die

“To NEVER let go.”

The memory of his words that day burned into my soul so deeply that it has carried me through some really tough times.

What I learned at the prison was this…

Sometimes God wants us to sit with the sinners and listen to their experiences.

Sometimes the worst people are sent to teach us to be different.

And the biggest lesson I learned was that I was just like them, maybe my sins were different from theirs,

but we were both humans trying to figure out where we fit into this crazy world.

We both have struggled with our identities.

We both lived with regrets.

We both longed for the past to be different, and to have the chance to just move on.

When love gets skeu-wompous we become messy people.

Our Christian lives are help up by two pillars.

1: the Love of God.

2: our need to be Loved BY God.

When that gets messed up.

When we don’t really love God,

When we are just trying to Please Him, or to look good to the people in our circle.

When we misunderstand or fear God…

We become messy.

Our pillars develop cracks in them that make them extremely unstable.

We forget just how much God loves us.

We behave toward others with fear.

We become people who are feared.

Faith becomes something to be defended or proven.

Christianity becomes a contest.

Gods sacred word becomes a bludgeon.