Christina

I started this blog mainly for the simple reason of keeping a journal. I feel like sometime life hits us so hard with obstacles that we tend to overlook the daily blessings that God gives us to sustain us through our trials. Journaling is my way of recognizing the beauty of each trial placed before me, because of what it does to my relationship with God, my father. He is always there for me and always makes everything so beautiful, even when I continuously get in His way. 

The struggle to have a child and create a family that follows after the heart of God has actually not been my biggest obstacle this year. I started a girls home for recovering addicts just so that I could help these girls see the beauty of restoration in their own lives. I am a prime example of doing everything all wrong. The "chief of sinners" as my pastor always says. But my life is also a prime example of what God can do with us when we step out of the way, surrender to Him and trust in His plan for us. 

That example is what I try so hard to show my girls. The most difficult task in my life at this point is that. Trying to conceive a child has been heartbreaking and scary and frustrating and confusing, and so many other emotions....but trying to show young women who are so sick, so wrapped up in their addictions and pain, that there is a better way, is almost impossible. Almost...

The first day we open our women's home, The Titus House, we had so many hopes and expectations for our new ministry. We just knew that our home would be blessed in such a way that would show the world who God is, how He can change lives. Restore broken hearts to new again, heal the sick, bring love back into the hearts of these deprived young women. 

We poured our hearts into that home working day and night for weeks to get it ready for these girls. We tried so hard to make this house a home, not just another "halfway" house. Because in our minds, nothing was going to be done halfway in this home. 

We had 14 freshly made beds ready for occupancy. We were ready to change lives! There was no doubt that within the first month, we would have all 14 beds occupied and I would be pouring my heart into these girls who would clearly hang on my every word and do exactly as I instructed to find peace and healing in their lives!

Ya right! Day one we got one girl. A beautiful girl named Christina. She was excited and grateful and so bubbly and full of life! We loved her from the moment we met her. 

Day 2 Amanda. Everything Christina was not. Sad, scared, no family, bitter, angry.... very angry, and extremely self destructive. 

We went 3 months with 2 girls and one or two who floated in and out not really trying to recover, just needed a minute to regroup before their next run. 

O.k. so not exactly what we expected but we can work with 2 girls. Our financial plan went out the window but God can provide and 2 girls is better than none, I thought. 

Christina had a strong family support. Her mother was extremely involved and her father was her rock. We encouraged her to follow the plan of her parents and listen to them before anyone else, even us, in order to restore her broken relationship with them first and foremost. And she did. She was a very compliant girl who respected authority and really gave us no trouble at all. In fact, she was so good that I started to think she must be really sneaky and know exactly what to do and say to keep herself under the radar. That theory proved wrong later on.

So our focus was on Amanda. And what a roller coaster Amanda took us on. She didn't just have addiction issues she had an eating disorder, cutting disorder, mood disorder and of course, daddy disorder. This girl needed so much love but had no idea how to receive it . She fought every good thing I tried to do for her and every good word I tried to speak into her life. My house manager at the time had no tolerance for her and actually became extremely hard on her and on Christina. 

These girls needed nothing more than someone to show them that no matter how far they fall, they can always find a way to get back up yet inside my home, when I was not there, they were being told that they would never recover and never get better. My house, my ministry,  became destructive for them simply because I had a manager who although spoke about god constantly, actually knew nothing about Him or His character, not my God anyway. 

3 months after we opened Titus we got just one more woman. The decision had to be made at that point weather to close down this beautiful home that we had so much hope and dreams for, or to make some changes and start over. It was clear that God was not allowing our house to grow but I could not figure out why. My heart and soul went into this house and the girls in it. I knew that there must be another reason why and God revealed it to me when He allowed my manager to just leave one day with the simple explanation of "I am leaving and taking all the girls with me" in a text message. 

Long story short, Amanda left with her. It broke my heart. But out of the clear blue sky after being so wrapped up with the drama and the ups and downs of Amanda's life, Christina, my girl who flew under the radar all this time, calls me in a panic from work.

Christina wanted to speak to me so desperately to tell me that she loves and trust Ryan and I so much that she would never just leave the house based on someone else's decision to leave. She went into the details of the past few months and how she had watched Ryan and I run the house and really respected what we had been trying to accomplish. She knew it was difficult, especially with so little clients, but she wanted to make sure I knew she was sticking by my side no matter what.

Here is the crazy part of this. There are so many other details involved but the bottom line is, I was trying so hard to help this sick girl, doing and doing and doing, and getting no response, no respect and no results and I had this other girl (who I really didn't pour into that much because she already had very wise parents directing her), watching the whole thing and seeing my heart behind all my efforts. How is it that the girl I was trying to help could not see it but her roomate, who I was not even directly dealing with, could!? What a gem! Christina was like a true diamond in the rough. 

God played this all out so beautifully because my relationship with Christina from that moment on became one of trust, mutual respect and love. All along it was Christina that God was working through while I tried so hard in my own efforts to get Amanda to see Gods glory. God was working on the heart of whom He chose to work on. 

How much more beautiful is that when you wake up one day and think God why aren't you helping me with this ministry and all along HE WAS. I just wasn't listening or seeing it. My heart was so determined to "fix" Amanda but God had other plans...Christina...

So here she was, my new manager. Supportive, trusting and willing. She was always so willing. Right after we made Christina manager on January 1, we filled up with 9 girls within that same month. God knew what He was doing all along. 

Christina has been with me since day one of my ministry. We have had so many crazy days, so many unbelievable things happen that just don't happen in real life, but they happened to us. She has stuck by my side every inch of the way and gone above and beyond my expectations of a manager for this home. 

There are times when her and I will talk and we will try to name all the girls that we have had come in and out of the house this past year. There is about 20, maybe more....but none like Christina, sadly. She is the exception to all the rules. 

Recovery is a funny thing. No matter how hard these girls want it, they just simply refuse to submit to it. They think they can conquer it their way. They think they can create their own recovery plan, or just be sober but not change their behaviors. Its heartbreaking to watch a woman with so much potential, destroy herself over and over and over again. But the bottom line is, these girls, they don't have love. Somewhere along the path of their life, their perception of love was skewed. Somewhere along the path, they changed their thinking and turned to drugs or alcohol to replace that pain that pierced them so deeply that they could no longer stand to live with it. 

I know because I was that same girl. No I did not turn to drugs or alcohol, but I had my addictions. I had my destructive behaviors that I used to cover my shame, my pain and my sadness. The bottom line is that we all have those feelings of fear and loneliness, we are all broken, drugs and alcohol is just a side effect of the real problems. And for most of us the real problem is love, or lack thereof. How can we ever turn our back on these girls who just cry out for love. They do it in the most destructive way but all they really want is to be loved. And at this point, God is the only one who can fill that void. 

And nobody wants to hear about my God. This past year and a half, I have often said to Ryan we are not making a difference. Titus hasn't changed lives, our dreams didn't come true, these girls just don't listen, they don't want to hear what i have to say. Titus is a failure.

 But then, I think of Chrissy. She is the one, the only one who has been the reason Titus has NOT been a failure. And isn't one life being changed just as important as 14 or 25 or 50? Of course it is. Our ministry has changed the life of one girl and for that I am so truly blessed. 

Christina is now leaving us. She is moving onto to continue her education and start her life again. She has been restored and it is so bittersweet. I don't know what I will do next. I don't know if I have the heart to continue without her but what I do know is that when I see her transformation, I know that it is only through the Grace of God and His hand upon her life that she has truly made this change. 

With God's help, Christina finally decided for herself it was time to make a change. But the foundation was laid for her when she was just a little girl. The love and comfort she received from her mother and the confidence and strength she learned from having a daddy who has always been her rock. These things are irreplaceable in a young girls life. These things are things that had we all had, we may not have led the destructive lives  we had to lead. Christina's parents gave her something that was originally intended by God for us all to have and that was the nurturing of a mother and the strong loving hand of a father. 

My husband being raised much like Christina, comes from a family that also is not perfect, but not broken either. All of his remarkable qualities come from his foundation of family,  and as a man, his fathers heavy hand. Not since Ryan had I seen someone like Christina with such solid morals and such confidence in her abilities as a young women. She had the security always having her dad to turn to and the loving arms of her mother to always cry with her and feel the pain with her when she is down. 

Gods plan for family was to show the world who He is, to explain to all of us what unconditional love looks like. The purpose of parents to a child is to be the example to our Father in Heaven to us. The same truth and love, grace and mercy that Gods expresses to us, our mother and father also do. The purpose of siblings is to learn to take the grace and mercy that our parents teach us and try it out on them. Once we begin to show that to our family, we then take it out into the world and show it to others. 

Christina has done that, she has been so graceful and so merciful with even those girls who didn't respect her or her position. And I applaud her for that. God placed this broken girl in Titus but also knew the foundation in which she was raised and knew it would rise above all the other lives in that house, not in a way to look down upon them, but in a way that would help build them up higher. My Titus girls don't know the Lord just yet, and most of them, don't know the special bond of family,  but Christina has been the example of Gods grace that God would want us to be to others, and the only family that these girls may ever know, and honestly, what more could I have ever imagined for my ministry. 

I don't know how much Christina has learned from me, but I have learned so much from her. If I ever get the chance to have a little girl, I can only hope that she would be as beautifully spirited as this young women. She is tenacious, strong willed, intelligent, diligent, responsible, funny, clumsy, awkward and beautiful all at the same time. I will miss her more than I can express but I am so honored to have shared this past year with her. She was my grace from God. Gods mercy on my ministry this year was Christina. She was the gift that He placed right before me that I didn't see for 3 months. Christina is my blessing and her story is the worlds blessing. Her life as it is today is one of honor and dignity. She isn't just drug free or alcohol free, she is free. God has given her back her wings and I am so eager to watch her soar .