For the next few weeks as promised, I will be blogging about what it means to live a God Styled Life. My life in its self is nothing special but there are parts of my home, health, and things I do for peace of mind that lead me to a God-inspired life. I love my home and love creating vignettes that speak to my faith in God, this coffee bar in my kitchen is one example, the picture hanging on the wall was given to me by a dear friend, it is a reminder to me that God does indeed have a plan for my life! I love incorporating Gods word into my home decor. 

I remember being a young kid and enjoying helping my Dad move furniture and rearrange the rooms in our house, in part because he was always the one to move the furniture but he also enjoyed a different view of the beautiful mountains from our picture window in the living room, my favorite room in the house, to this day I still dream in color of that scene from our window, it reminded me of the line in the song America the beautiful, ” for purple mountains majesty” the sunsets and those purple colored snow-capped mountains are truly the stuff that dreams are made of. 

Having always been one to style my bedroom I shared with my sister for many years I made sure she held up her end of the work to keep it clean and organized, but she didn’t seem to understand my need for order and cleanliness which would lead me to do her fair share as well when it would really get to me. To this day I love all things decor and organizational, although at the time of this writing I am looking at a bit of clutter,  that is a blog of another matter.

So how does this all tie into a God Styled Life? I want God to be reflected in my home and not just in my kitchen but throughout my home, so I will take you on a tour of the vignettes of God inspired decor in my home and we will discuss creating God styled spaces and places.

Follow me for the next few weeks as we explore ways to show Gods presence in our homes, our hearts, souls, health and daily lives. Lets journey to our own God Styled Life!

Saved To Serve A God Styled Life,

Maggie P

This is what half of the other me my body carried for the last 33 years looks like now, I am at just about halfway to my goal weight, the necklace I have on in the picture I would never have been able to wear as it would have not fit around my neck. But I am not writing about that today, I am writing about the other person I have been carrying around for longer than I care to remember, so long that she almost needed a different name, you see she had issues.

Part of this weight loss journey this time around is teaching me truths about myself and how I ended up with another whole person on my body. I learned from an early age to be an emotional overeater, my Mom did it to deal with her emotions and so I followed suit when life got the best of me, but it was in college when things got really bad for me, I started dating a guy I had meant at orientation, we ended up being in the same  program and study partners our first semester. I was pretty nieve back then, but I thought I knew all there was to know about big city living, I was from Denver, Colorado but hadn’t lived there since I was 10 years old.

When we are young and nieve we tend to believe what we are told or at least I did, I believed that when my boyfriend at the time told me his parents would be home at lunch so we could go work at his house on our project, I believed him and when we got there that they must have changed their minds about coming home for lunch, they didn’t and they never did come home for lunch on any given day. Alone and in his territory he pounced and destroyed what trust I had in humankind, my no didn’t mean no to him and when it was all said and done, I pretended it never happened and began the downward spiral of  building my fortress, my physical protective layer so that would never again happen to me.

So I leave college and that experience behind, move back home and have a baby, my pregnancy was complicated and I gained even more weight, 80 pounds to be exact and there are health issues with my sweet baby girl, she comes a month early to the day, is born with a bi-lateral cleft palette and hair lip, can’t latch to breastfeed, I am a single Mom and one hot mess. At this point, we are in and out of hospitals and then when my sweet baby girl is about 3 years old she contacts spinal meningitis, we rush her to our family doctor who then transports her to our local children’s hospital( the very one our daughter now works for) but that is a blog post for another time.

What does this all have to do with my gaining weight and my now weight loss journey? I recognize that in the process of building the fortress around my body in the form of fat that I brought along all the emotions I buried with eating, I did finally get counseling for what happened to me, but I continued to use food to self-soothe when my emotions ran high. A whole other person later I met my now husband and what I didn’t count on was that he would love me from the inside, out. He went through some of the side effects of dealing with being assaulted, I wish to this day it was someone I didn’t know and I wish I handled the aftermath differently but I have no regrets of bringing my sweet baby girl into this world, God knew I need her and he provided a father for her who loves her and her Mom deeply but more importantly loves God. ,

On our wedding day, my husband gave me a letter of intent to adopt, our state requires a year of marriage and almost a year from our wedding day she officially became a Daddy’s girl, but truth be told she was that from the moment they laid eyes on one another. So half of the other person I have carried around is gone as is the baggage she carried with her. This year my husband and I celebrated 27 years of marriage and this past Spring we celebrated our Daughter’s success as Children’s Miracle Network’s Dance Marathon Person of the Year! An award voted on by her peers at the Children’s Hospital she works at and her previous hospital.

What I have lost in pounds I have gained in health, love and a new lease on life!

Saved To Serve A God Styled Life,

Maggie P

 

Once upon a time in a not so far away kingdom lived a princess, who deeply loved her king of kings, she was just an ordinary princess whose heart was to serve in the kingdom called Everywhere, the princess thoughts were set on things above until one day her thoughts became about self and her outer beauty and what another saw of her on the outside, this brought thoughts of self-centeredness to the point her focus was no longer on kingdom thoughts but rather of herself.

One day while walking along the river of peacefulness, she decided to wade in the waters and reflect on life, and life was full of selfish needs and wants, never had the waters she walked through felt so rough and more like a raging river than a lazy river. The princess waded and before long her feet started to stumble over the rocks and stones beneath her.  This was not the calm usual wade through the river of peacefulness it had been in the past, her heart was in much turmoil and constant discontent, her vision for what was ahead was blurry, rather than enjoying the coolness of the water on her legs and feet and  the beauty of the kingdom’s countryside she continued to stumble and at times would fall, so much so that her feet had open sores and bleed.

On this particular day the princess waded were she had been warned not to go, the raging rapids that lead to the waterfalls of emptiness, this was so far away from the kingdom she would no longer be able to hear her king of kings voice when he would call out for her to come home because it was getting late, however the princess continued making her way down this forbidden path and came to where the peaceful  river and the raging rapids met, at first it seemed the water was so much cooler there so the princess put her foot ever so slightly into the cooler waters on the edge of the raging river and that’s all it took, next thing you know the princess is being swept down the raging rapids and heading straight for the falls of emptiness, she cries out; oh save me my king of kings but he does not hear her because she is so far away from the kingdom of Everywhere her voice can’t be heard.

As she falls over the edge of the falls of emptiness she lands into the pool of loneliness where walls of towering rocks surround her and she floats on the pool’s surface as the day turns to night and the cold darkness settles in, it is there that she cries out for the king of kings to come to save her, unknown to her he has already sent a search party and as they ride through the night looking high and low the king of kings is already there and hears her cries, at first he does not answer  as her words are too faint to be heard  but as the night wears on and the cold harsh air touches the princesses skin she begins to shiver and cry out even louder, oh my king of kings please hear my cry, I have gone where I should not have gone and now as I float in the coldness of the dark of night I long to only feel the warmth of your presence, to hear the calmness of your still small voice and feel the love of your tender mercy as you wrap me in your arms to carry me to safety.

From the darkness come a small light and a still smaller voice saying I hear you, my child, I am here, is that you my king of kings? The princess asks through her sobs, yes, it is I and I am here to save you from the pool of loneliness all you need to do is cry out and I am with you, my child and at that the princess let the tears flow as she cried out to her king of kings, gently he lead her to the shoreline and put his loving arms around her and carried her back home to the kingdom of Everywhere.  The moral of this fairytale is this, there will always be stumbling stones in your life, but God will always give you the option the turn those stumbling stones into stepping stones, but that choice is yours to make, which will you choose?