#stosswrites

[stosslenz]

Why we don't all walk around with flowers in our hair every day, no matter what, baffles me.

Stoss Writes

[stosslenz]

The World Keeps Spinning + You’ve Only Got ONE Life To Spin Along With it,You Do What?

Writing late at night has always suited me. It feels right, it feels good. I enjoy looking backwards- probably- no, certainly- too much. 

Tonight as I cuddle up into nice warm bed, my mind whirling with thoughts of processing.. I must write, I must share with you what victory has been happening inside of me!

Pardon the cheesy, but damn, I think today I realized how short life is and I am pretty sure this was actually, factually, unarguably, something that just changed the rest of my life.

I’ve lived a lot of different types of lives in 25 years, most likely more than the average american, white, 25 year old woman has encountered thus far.

In all of these various ways of living and life experiences, I’ve stumbled upon many valuable lessons, that also brought a sense of maturity, a sense of eagerness to discover and hold onto more good…

BUT then all at the same time I’ve already missed SO MUCH good, while devoting too much time to things that are a waste of time, a waste of life, things like FEAR. 

FEAR was the true Lord over my life for the last 25 years. A monstrous, destructive, mean, nasty Lord at it’s best. 

Fear convinces us of so much, It can be paralyzing, especially because fear is like a creepy compelling defense attorney that has folders and files filled with evidence proving their case.

So fear doesn’t just stop at the more ridiculous things like, a monster being under your bed….no fear uses really good REAL stuff, the real evil in the world, the real death, decay, and pain the world faces daily and tells us to curl up in a ball and do nothing because one of these are coming to destroy us, to take away all of our happiness.

Fear is a shitty asshole and I hate nothing more than fear.

I also have really spent too much time hating myself for listening to fear and letting it have the role in my life that I have.

I hate that I have let fear control me the way I have. My obsession with being afraid to not have “enough feeling of control” has literally until VERY recently absolutely, 100% has kept in a bondage that was sucking the life out of me.

You all, I’ve told you about my issues with anxiety, with depression, with my trauma response issues etc but I don’t think I’ve been so honest about my relationship with fear kind of being the core component of it all.

I had been chained to fear in a way that has ruined too much.

And Back in early November I finally hit my bottom.

Through my hands up in the air and said, 

“OKAY, CANNOT GO ON LIKE THIS. WHAT DO I DO GOD? HOW DO I LEARN TO FULLY SURRENDER TO YOU?! I DO NOT WANT TO LIVE LIKE THIS ANYMORE!���

And I wish I could tell you some singular wild testimony of how this being ruled by fear abruptly stopped- but the reason why I’m telling you this, is because I don’t think it always happens like that for us all.

Some people do get their isolated FREEDOM moment and those are real and special. I love hearing those stories.

But maybe your story is more like mine, maybe you’ve been on a journey to be victorious from fear for a long time, and you just kinda started waking up and telling fear to get the fuck out of your life, and then slowly but surely with some really hard work and ass kicking…fear is one day no longer the Lord of your life.

For most of us, I think it is a process, a journey, not a moment.

My journey is filled with me reacting instead of responding, filled with moments of anxiety, insecurity, desperation, hopelessness, and anger…oh boy A LOT of anger…being afraid all of the time…being chained to fear…eventually will either drive you absolutely looney like to the nut house looney….OR piss you off so bad that you act out and lash out angrily…also leaving you looking…pretty damn looney.

And today, through a serious of different experiences, learning different news about different folks, and spending time with people who I always find myself being filled with peaceful soberness about life…I come to bed tonight reflecting on much, realizing how short life is, how much time I’ve already wasted in my life long devotion and pursuit of fear…

that that way of life is totally behind me.

Like GONE.

This season has been a tough one, involving a lot of surrender- and you know what? I’ve never been happier. I’ve never felt like I truly had surrendered my life to God and said DO WHAT YOU WILL God, take me, take it all, every dirty part, every magnificent part, all of it. Heal it, touch it, consume it, take away what you need- just YOU be my ONLY LORD.

And every day since I’ve began living this out in this last month, God has showed me layers and layers of freedom that I only have ever believed were possible for OTHER people.

For the people who were eligible for happiness- which until a month ago I spent my entire life believing was NOT me.

Happiness? Me? No way, super under qualified. Not eligible…do you know anything about where I come from? Yeah, no happiness for me…just doom, and lots of it.

That is how I my every day thought process for the last TWENTY-FIVE YEARS has gone down, this made much of life’s curve balls very difficult to handle…as you can imagine.

But not anymore.

I think I went through every emotion you can experience as a human today, but one thing I noticed which again is the reason why I’ve written this post…is this…

Today was not controlled by fear. 

Fear was not a foundation or motivating factor in anything I thought about, did, reacted to etc. 

SERIOUS VICTORY.

I mean to go from being a girl who has been diagnosed with a panic disorder, who grew up breathing into paper bags ever since she can remember because she had daily panic attacks, whose life has been honestly controlled by hypochondria in the realest, most embarrassing ways you could ever imagine…IS A HUGE DEAL.

I felt so much today. But I didn’t feel anything I thought I would have in light of the different things that came my way.

I processed and felt confused but was at peace with not having clear answers regarding a lot of political matters, as today was the Women’s march and we’ve just sworn in our 45th President of the United States etc…that I do not understand at all…and instead of being afraid to not know, to not be sure, I was at total peace.

(THIS NEVER USED TO HAPPEN)

I found out my first love is getting married to the woman he left me for and I didn’t cry, I FUCKING SMILED.

You all… I thought the photo was cute. I had no feelings of bitterness or jealously or anything HONESTLY other than happiness for them, because I know we were not supposed to spend the rest of our lives together- and hopefully they are- why shouldn’t I be genuinely happy about that?

(This DID NOT used to happen- I used to get such anxiety about the day when someone told me they were finally engaged)

But no! I didn’t say woe is me, why am I not in love with someone new like he is, I DIDN’T EVEN COMPARE MYSELF ONCE…

I felt free, free to keep living my life and know it’s nice to know things work out well for us, even after all those nights of fighting and crying.

Perspective is a great friend of peace.

I don’t know about you, but nothing on earth sounds worse than being stuck with someone you shouldn’t be with? That would have been my marriage to my ex, had we somehow stayed delusional long enough to get to that point haha. We would have been miserable, we were not made for each other in any sort of way, like not even really compatible friends…we communicated very poorly and now it seems he’s found someone he communicates well with..and does life with very well…

Seriously, Yay ex boyfriend! You deserve that. You deserve every ounce of feeling safe + like you belong with + to someone in the most special way- I believe that, congratulations!

I honestly am laying here watching the transformation of Jesus in my heart like an open surgery of some sort.

Like…Who am I?! Because these feelings are genuinely right here in my core parts of Stoss- my heart- my soul.So foreign but so good…so free!

Then I found out that one of the best moms I’ve ever met, whose little girl I nannied last year, has recently been diagnosed with breast cancer, and is receiving very aggressive treatment and a complete mastectomy, which completely broke my heart. 

I hear this and was wrecked, so heart broken for this family, but also relentless in a stance of hope + eager to begin a journey of fervent prayers with them.

This all caused me to think so much about life, and that’s how the wild realization finally sunk in and changed me…life is short. We have very little control, if sometimes any at all. We don’t get to choose a lot of what happens to us, but we always get to choose our response.

Today I remembered Jen Eldridge and the years my community growing up had with her and her example of unconditional love, to lose her to a long and hard battle with cancer. 

I remembered Maria Cruz who we just  recently, December 2nd 2016, said goodbye to after a battle with a brain tumor, a woman who was devoted to praying for me long before I even became close to her personally- that was just the faithful and amazingly caring woman she was.

And Tori Hendrix who I never knew beyond social media but was the reason why I wanted to be a wedding designer/ event coordinator for so many years..how she was taken home so young last year as well…

Recently so many have been taken from us way too soon, and then so many others don’t get taken but are put through hell on earth in battling to keep their lives…and there is not really anything we can do about it.

Life happens. We get hit by hard stuff sometimes, actually often times.

We fall in love with someone not right for us and end up heartbroken.

We lose people we love.

We live in a world where injustice is celebrated instead of stood up for.

We have fragile bodies that while wondrously built often get taken down by Cancer + other life threatening illnesses more times, than not ,it is beginning to seem.

We make plans to get this job, or move here, or marry this person, or do this big thing, and then it all changes, in an instant.

Easy to be fearful when you think about that all right? Easy to go back to that doom doom doom mentality I told you I grew up with earlier?

Sure, easy to go there…Yes. But do we have to?! NOOO.

 Today we get the chance to be alive while we are. No matter what we face. 

And that is a beautiful chance, filled with opportunity, opportunity to be free and enjoy life! 

I think whenever it was, when I woke up recently and finally decided fear wouldn’t be a anymore, and have continued walking in that, even though things are tough right now, even though there is still a hypochondriac in me somewhere that tries to whisper scary things to me sometimes, even though I have no control over my ever increasingly dysfunctional family, even though I have a lot to heal from and to learn about loving myself before I am able to love someone else the way they deserve…even though all the even thoughs…

I’m truly learning to be happy, joyful, content, at peace, thankful, hopeful- and not afraid or longing for things of the past.

I’ve traded my bitterness, shame, fear, mess, baggage, all of it in for who God says He created me to be…and that is a beautiful, confident, healthy, FREE, woman who follows Him surrendered and without ever relenting!

I think God does great things when we surrender our lives to Him, the first thing being the breaking of chains, the giving freedom to us who have been in bondage, and releasing us into a new FREE, redeemed, life. 

Life is wild, and there is no use trying to tame it.

It was never meant to be tamed or controlled, it was given to us to simply LIVE!

We get one life, with numbered days, not promised all easy ones either…so why not do whatever we can to make it the best one we could possibly have?

Why tell ourselves were unworthy, we’re not eligible to be happy, we’re not good enough for this or that or because of this or that…

no we need to stop.

Stop looking back. Stop believing the lies, stop surrendering to fear and all the other ugly stuff fear brings with it.

Time to surrender to something that actually makes us free and full of joy and peace- for me that is Jesus. And boy am I thankful He has been patient with me and allowed my journey to keep going, and been beside me every messy step of the way!

Every time I breathed into those paper bags or collapsed on the floor or spent hours on WEBMD or actually in the ER for “mysterious illness”…every time I didn’t believe God had anything good for me…every time I denied His truth and accepted fear as my God instead…

He was still there for every second of it all, and He still is there with me, healing me in all these ways I flat out used to tell Him were impossible.

Thank you God for not listening to me haha, Seriously just thank you so much for not letting me have that much power and for not giving up on this stubborn child of yours!

There is a lot more possible you all.

We all have our battles, but let’s go into them fighting for the right things, life- real life is worth fighting for.

Do not lose heart. Keep going, freedom is SO available for you. Nothing is impossible.

Love,

Stossi