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For years, I knew about Jesus. I could quote scriptures, sing the songs, attend the services, and even say all the right prayers. But I was missing something deeply personal — something I didn’t even realize I was created for.
I was missing intimacy with Him.
Not the kind that’s spoken of in lofty theological terms or tucked neatly into devotionals, but the raw, honest, sometimes messy kind of intimacy that transforms you from the inside out. The kind where Jesus isn’t just Lord and Savior — He becomes your friend, your confidant, your heart’s closest companion.
The Awakening
It didn’t happen overnight. Honestly, it began in a season of brokenness. I had reached the end of myself — worn out, spiritually dry, and emotionally numb. Religion didn’t work anymore. Performing didn’t heal. And pretending didn’t fool God, or even me.
So I got real. I sat in silence. I told Jesus I didn’t know how to connect with Him but I wanted to. I wanted to know Him, not just know about Him.
And in that quiet space, He met me.
Not with lightning or fireworks — but with a gentle, undeniable presence. It was like my heart exhaled for the first time.
What Intimacy Looks Like
Intimacy with Jesus isn’t always mountaintop moments. Sometimes, it’s letting Him sit with you in the valley. It’s being honest when you don’t feel like praying. It’s worshiping when your heart is heavy. It’s trusting that He’s not looking for perfect words or polished faith — He just wants you.
Now, I talk to Him like I would a best friend. I ask Him what He thinks. I tell Him when I’m mad, or confused, or when I just don’t understand. I listen — not always with ears, but with my spirit. And I’ve learned to recognize His voice — tender, loving, never condemning.
Intimacy also looks like obedience. Because the more you love Him, the more you want to follow Him. Not out of duty, but because you’ve tasted something real — and nothing else satisfies.
The Ongoing Journey
There are still days I drift. Days I forget. Days I substitute routine for relationship. But Jesus never pulls away. He’s steady. He’s patient. He always calls me back — not with guilt, but with grace.
And now I know: I was made for this. We all were.
To walk closely with the One who created us. To be known deeply and loved completely. To sit at His feet and simply be.
Final Thoughts
If you’re longing for more — more than church attendance, more than spiritual checklists — know this: Jesus longs for you, too. Intimacy with Him isn’t reserved for the spiritual elite. It’s for the weary, the curious, the brokenhearted, the hungry. It’s for you.
Start by being honest. Start by being still. Whisper His name, and let your heart open.
He’s already near.
(Click the link for one of my favorite Bible’s on my journey towards a greater intimacy with Jesus Christ. https://amzn.to/4eGOk07 )
It is unbelievable as I type that statement! “I am going to be 50 years old!”
Not that I ever watched Saturday Night Live growing up, but I believe everyone has seen the Sally O’Malley skit at some point in their lives. As I look at that number—50—I can hear her voice distinctly. “I can kick, stretch, and kick because I’m 50!” Well, I am 50 in about 3 months.
I look back at the “nearly” 50 years of my life in awe, amazement, and gratitude. It is amazing to believe that I have been alive for 1/2 a century!!!!! While I don’t feel like I’m about to turn 50….the history of my life tells me otherwise. I had so many plans!
One thing that being a Christian has taught me is that we can make all the plans we want, but God’s plan and purpose will prevail.
Never in my wildest dreams would I have dreamed that I would have the life I have today. If all of my plans had turned out the way I planned, I would be a concert pianist traveling the world performing. I doubt I would have had a marriage because there would not have been time for one, and I definitely would not have time for children or anything else for that matter. I doubt I would have found myself living in Slidell, La being married to the most amazing man I have ever been blessed to meet and living the best life I could have ever imagined or prayed for.
If you have read my previous blog “Do I Have To?” , you would know that we don’t live in a large house. We don’t even own our house…we are still renters, but our home is 957 square feet, and we love every inch of it. Every Friday, we can have anywhere from 6-18 people at our church Life Group. (Don’t ask me how we manage to feed and seat that many people in our limited space, but it works out perfectly.) We don’t have luxurious vehicles, and often times we may go without a paycheck even though we are business owners. Nonetheless, this is the best life I could have ever prayed for. My husband and I are best friends, and we never argue! Rest assuredly, we don’t agree on everything, but we do not argue about those disagreements. He calls me out when I am acting like a moron, and I make sure that I do the same for him. Still, we do that for each other without arguing. I have heard so much disbelief when we tell people that. Some think that we are not telling the whole truth, but I am sure if you are around us long enough—you will understand completely. I work with my husband on a daily basis, we are on the worship team together, and we just enjoy being around each other as much as time permits. There is an unexplainable difference in your marriage when Jesus is at the center of it all. The closer you get to Jesus individually, the closer you and your spouse become. We have our individual quiet time with Jesus, but we also have time together with Jesus—outside of church activities. HE is the most important aspect of our relationship. One of the key things, is that we have learned what not to do based on all our past relationship mistakes, and we have learned how to talk to each other. One of the best things to do as a couple is go through this course “Love & Respect” by Emerson Eggerichs.
While this was not supposed to be about “How to Have a Successful Marriage” or how great my life is, I feel that I was supposed to share that for someone(s). There is hope! Life doesn’t have to be as bad as you think it is. Allow Him to make beauty from ashes.
So back to it….
You see, even amidst all of the ridiculous choices and mistakes I have ever made or ever could make, God was preparing me for this exact moment. I could sit here and contemplate on all the regret and ridicule myself for not staying on the path God had laid out for me, but He knew every single detour I would take. Sure, I could have been on His path A LOT sooner, but the lessons I have learned throughout it all has prepared me for what I am going through right now. There was overwhelming opportunities for me to choose the right path, but He already prepared the next strategy knowing I was going to make wrong decisions over and over again. He administered the same tests over and over until it was time for me to make the decision to pass them.
Have I arrived? Definitely not! I have quite a journey to go, but each and every day I am doing everything I can to follow the path He has for me.
My biggest problem, in my early adult years, was that I have always been impatient. I wanted all the things NOW. I was never one for waiting on the good stuff to happen, so I always did what I thought I was supposed to do—I would make it happen in my own strength, or at least try. I was your regular Veruca Salt…A VERY BAD EGG!
Don’t think for a minute, that I was raised that way. I was taught that if you wanted something, it took a lot of dedication and hard work. I was taught that it would take time and perseverance if you wanted to win the race. I didn’t grow up with a silver spoon, but I also didn’t lack for anything. Most of my life, I was brought up in church. I knew the principals of what God wanted, but I didn’t understand the walk nor the relationship. This attitude of impatience was of my own doing and of my own demise.
Throughout my early adult life, aside from impatience, I developed several negative traits. While I could go through all of them, I doubt you want to read a novel at this point. I am going to focus on one of the biggest negative traits (which seems to be a common one amongst the masses)….drama!
I was the type of person that thrived on drama. If I didn’t have it in my life….it felt like I was missing something. I don’t know exactly when this “need” developed, and I am not blaming anyone for it either…it was just a trait I developed. When I graduated high school, cell phones weren’t the popular thing nor social media. We didn’t even have dial up nor the internet because it just wasn’t the popular thing—at least not in my circles. Keep in mind, I am about to turn 50! Nonetheless, drama became a leading lady in my life. No matter where I turned she was there, and when she wasn’t—I searched for her. It was there throughout my first try at my college career, during my break from my college career, after I returned to college my college career for the second time, during any relationship I had, during my first two marriages, and all the things in between. I never realized how draining it really was and the type of person it made me out to be.
I had to be at center stage every possible moment. I had to be the one that was always breaking down emotionally because it meant that the spotlight was on me. If someone hurt me—I upstaged them with my role as victim. If I hurt someone—I managed to upstage them and play the victim role even then. It was addictive to be in the spotlight. It didn’t matter if I was active in the church or not….I was always the leading lady in the next drama series. I’d pretend to be this perfect individual who had it all put together while I was dealing with my church friends, but then I had a different life on the outside of that….one filled with drama. Life was a stage to me—always performing.
After I surrendered my life, I didn’t have a need for drama. It was like the void I had in my spirit was suddenly full. But you see, the enemy is deceitful and conniving. Somehow, he managed to put the right person, situation, or whatever you want to call it, in my life to suck me back in to a dramatic role. So have I arrived? Not by any means! I was sucked back into it. If you read my previous blog “It’s Time To Make a List and Check It Twice”, you will understand what I mean when I say that I allowed it to happen. The bitterness, offense, unforgiveness, etc. It was all wrapped up in a pretty package so I could make myself think that I was the victim once again. I thank God everyday that He brought me back to the path He has for me.
There is so much peace that fills your soul when you decide to walk away from drama and all the mess that comes with it. Sometimes the enemy will try to entice you with people and situations that may reflect some of your own past negative traits that may have brought you a sense of comfort at one time in your life. Sometimes we may find ourselves flocking to those people because it is a familiar spirit. But that’s just it—it is a familiar spirit, not the Holy Spirit. Unfortunately, because of those familiar spirits, sometimes it causes havoc and the smart thing to do is to walk away.
Just today, the daily devotion was about praying for those who persecute us. There is so much peace when you make the decision to love them and pray for them. Pray with every ounce of sincerity you have that God blesses them. We are called to love like Jesus loves, and while it seems we should be friends with everyone, and they should be in our inner circles—sometimes they are only in our lives for a season. Sometimes that season has to come to an end. It doesn’t mean that we don’t love them, but not everyone will be by your side all throughout your life. I am thankful for the time that I’ve had with every single person that has been a part of my almost 50 years of life. While you might think that I am only talking about the positive relationships, I am even thankful for the people in which we may have parted on bad terms. I have learned much from the downfall of those relationships, and the role that I played in its failure. To those people, I am truly sorry for the role that I played. I’ve been able to walk away with many life lessons from every single person.
My cup is overflowing when I look back on every year of my life—the people, the lessons, the joys, the sorrows, the pain, the laughs, the heartaches, the shenanigans (even the ones we don’t speak of), the tests, and so much more. I could not have asked for a better way to live out my first 1/2 century of my life. Thank you to every single one of you for being a part of my story. I am excited to see what God does with this next chapter.
Since I gave up my love for Disney, it has caused me to think about change in a huge sort of way. If you are wondering why I made such a decision, please read my previous blog. I must admit that giving up Disney caused me to go into a mild state of sadness for a bit. It was almost comparable to a bad break up. Like a bad breakup, the after effects of your life require change. Change is inevitable when something you love is removed or subtracted from your life…you are forced to look at things differently. You are forced to look at life in “some” sort of way. Of course, you can choose to die (in a dramatic sense, of course), but that is not a direction I would ever choose because there is so much more to life. Besides, my break up with Disney was not THAT heart breaking. Unfortunately, it still felt like I lost a loved one. Nonetheless, the only direction I choose is to grow. How can you grow from what you thought was the “Happiest Place on Earth”?
Since we moved into the home we live in, I have taken every step to make our house a home. Every room is decorated and brings a certain amount of cheer to our home. People have often commented that no one could be depressed in our house. It is flooded with lots of color, flowers (fake of course), and inviting comfort.
However, the outside of the house has always been neglected because it was never taken care of to begin with. Sure, we have a yard guy, but all he is responsible for is mowing and trimming the grass. He will trim the shrubs upon request, but that is the extent of his duties. Needless to say, there are numerous areas of the yard that look like a wooded forest. It also has its fair share of poison oak and thorny vines. These are not exciting things to deal with. Nonetheless, in order to get the yard to look beautiful, one has to start somewhere. Right? So, I’ve taken up gardening. I suppose I felt that I needed to do something that would allow me to bring some beauty and joy into my life since my breakup.
The funny thing about this change is that I AM NOT A GARDENER!!!! I have killed so many plants in my lifetime (hence the reason I have fake flowers in our home—I can’t kill those). However, I am determined that our yard will one day look breathtakingly beautiful. For those of you that know me, you know that this is a huge feat for me because I am NOT the “outdoorsy” type of person. Y’all…I hate the outdoors! Being fair skinned has caused this love-hate relationship with the sun. Unfortunately, in order to get our yard in a beautiful state…there are sacrifices that need to be made. It is a very slow process, but at least I am making some progress. I have a vision….hopefully everything grows into that vision.
So let’s begin with the transformation. We removed the half dead box hedges in front of the house and replaced them with azalea bushes.
In addition to the azaleas, we also planted some knockout roses and gardenia bushes in front of the house. On the front sides of the house, we have some New Dawn climbing roses (that are obviously not climbing yet). We also added an arbor to the front and planted yellow climbing roses on each side.
Yellow Knockout RosesThis New Dawn was constantly chopped, unknowingly, by our yard guy. It’s protected now. This one was spared more often than the other. However now they are both about to upgrade to climbing status, so we are in the market for a trellis to add to each side of the house. The yellow climbing rose bush produces the most vibrant yellow rose. So far we’ve only had one, but they started from nothing. I am definitely looking forward to when they begin to climb across the arbor. The chopped bushes you see were trimmed and weeded. They were overtaken by thorny vines, and they had grown entirely too tall. They made it quite difficult to see anyone on the sidewalk whenever we would pull out of the driveway. This was definitely a “safety” trim more than anything.
Since we moved in, there were some shrubs on the right side of the house. We requested our yard guy to trim them, and he did. Little did we know that the only thing that was growing on those “dead” shrubs were thorny vines that strangled them to death. Those were cut down, and now we are in the process of planting more Bridal Wreath shrubs on the side of the house instead. I know these grow to become most beautiful, so I cannot wait to see them mature.
I’ve always dreamed of having beautiful hydrangeas creating a pathway to the front entrance. So, we planted a few hydrangea shrubs. Although they started out as multicolored, our soil has turned them completely pink. My goal is for them to be multicolored, so the soil will be getting the nutrients it needs to make that possible.
This pathway is definitely a project that is in progress. It will take some time before it looks the way I intend it to look. At least this is a great start.
There are many corners of the yard that has shrubs and trees that have taken over and just looks like a forresty (I know that’s not a word.) mess. It is definitely not a task that can be done in one day. We did tackle one of the front corners of the fence that could have caused us to kill someone because it completely prevented us from being able to see anyone walking along the sidewalk.
That particular corner of the fence near the entrance/exit of our driveway was covered with some sort of thicket that was so ridiculously overgrown it reminded me of the thicket the Maleficent surrounded the castle with to prevent the Prince from finding Sleeping Beauty. (Okay, okay….just because I gave up Disney doesn’t mean I refrain from using the stories as analogies.) The picture here only shows a portion of how this thicket looked.
It was so thick and unruly that it actually grew into the fence. Besides that, it was infested with thorny vines and poison oak. We managed to get rid of most of it. Some of the branches are completely grown around the wire of the fence that it would take an act of congress to remove it. We are still trying to figure that part out. However, it has been cleared, and we now have another climbing rose bush. This one has yet to produce anything, but they are supposed to be orange in color. Like the yellow rose bushes, they too started from nothing. So in addition to all of the bushy hazards we had in the front yard, we have a huge eye sore. I am hoping that these daisies take over enough to camouflage the eye sore. If they don’t, I may have to try something else.
So that basically takes care of the front yard. We have a small portion of the backyard that is fenced in. About 2 years ago, we were trying to incorporate a raised garden behind the house, but it was an epic failure. So basically it has been sitting there with a few of my herbs that have been planted ever since and seem to thrive without my help. It also has marigolds that I planted when we first put it together. Now these marigolds are three years old. That is quite odd to me because I didn’t think they were supposed to come back. Nonetheless, they are in their third year (even after I pulled them out). I also threw a bunch of wildflower seeds in the raised garden and they are finally coming up. What I am starting to see is absolutely beautiful, so I cannot wait to see the rest.
A friend of ours gave us a few tomato plants. When I planted them a few weeks ago, they were just a few inches tall. They seem to be doing rather well, and it looks like I will have to support them very soon.
We also have two blueberry bushes that have been planted there for three years now. I was extremely excited one day when we came back from prayer because one of them is now infested (obviously this use of infested is in a good way) with blueberries.
We also have two strawberry plants that are producing rather nicely. So, I believe that I am pretty pleased with the way our raised garden is turning out. It is finally coming alive. My lavender has also decided to come back.
Clearly you can see that I have moved on from interior design, and I am trying to bring as much color outside as I have inside. While it is very simple to keep up artificial flowers, it is such a wonderful thing to see God’s creations bloom right in front of your eyes. I pray everyday that I don’t kill what He has created, and that He gives me the wisdom to know how to take care of it all. My neighbor is really amazing at taking care of flowers, so I just pray that I can do half as well as she does. She definitely has a gift.
As for me, I am completely out of my comfort zone, and I am trying to learn new things. Never be afraid to try something new. God has so many amazing things planned for our lives, but we have to be open to change. Often times in order for us to grow, we NEED to change. We need to fertilize our minds with new knowledge and water the seeds that He has already planted within us. Bloom where you are planted, and never stay dormant. Change is inevitable….it will cause growth.
A Little Bit of This and A Little Bit of That 