by Alesha Sinks | Jun 25, 2019 | Family, God's Word, Just Me
I stretched myself into my bed, weighted blanket pulled up, wrapping my heart, heavy and tired. I felt exhausted. Angry. Bombarded…by all the opinions in my head.
Parenting is hard.
And there are so many good ways to parent…how do I know I am choosing the right one?
How do I know that the instant decisions I’m forced to make over and over and over every single day are the right ones? The best ones?
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So often I know, I know they aren’t. I apologize over and over. I snap and yell and rant again and again, and then must circle back to asking forgiveness.
I try this.
Then that.
I say one thing
Then I change my mind and try a different vein of logic or type of consequence or chose a rewards system or give simply let it slide because I
don’t
know
what
I’m
doing.
Maybe you hear them too? The dozens of voices. Opinions. Loud and demanding and, unfortunately, contradictory.
How do I know I’m listening to the right one?
And I can feel the them rising…the voices. Slowly louder and louder in my head. Crushing me with their volume and their weight.
Do this…not that.
If you do this, you will hurt them…
If you don’t do this, you teach them bad habits…
This is kinder…
This is wiser…
This is effective…
This is better for the long haul…
This is practical…
This is for their heart…
..and I am drowning in the voices.
But suddenly, in my head but not from within it, His voice speaks above the din. Softly. As if nearest to me out of them all.
“Don’t listen to them, listen to me.”
And I realize that somehow I thought His voice was there, in the chorus and chaos of voices in my head. I somehow thought His voice was among them, shouting at me with judgement, with fear, with shame.
I forget that His voice is different.
His voice is outside of the crowd. Separate. And only in turning the crowd of opinions down, will I be able to hear His voice, firm and safe. A steady place to rest my heart and mind. A safe bottom to plant my anchor.
The steady thrum of options and opinions isn’t necessary to my parenting.
Being guided by the Holy Spirit is necessary to my parenting.
So I’ll lay my anxious heart down tonight, a little easier. My head will be a little quieter. And my mind and heart will repeat this simple prayer.
God, let me see my children with Your eyes and Your heart. Let me hear Your voice and let my heart be sensitive to Your touch. Give me Your wisdom and strength and grace as I parent, and the humility to allow myself to be parented by You in the process.
And this simple mediation.
His voice is not in the crowd.
Be blessed
by Alesha Sinks | Jan 22, 2019 | God's Word, Just Me
So we’re three Monday’s into the New Year and maybe we’re just starting to realize that a New Year and a few resolutions jotted into a fresh planner doesn’t automatically result in a new you.
A new me.
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Maybe you started this year full of hopes and dreams and prayers that this year would be different. Prayers that a change in the calendar would bring that change into your life you’ve been waiting for. That a shift in the date would bring a shift in the winds of life, a shift in the temperature of your soul.
How many of us have started this new year wanting nothing more than to make a clean break with 2018 and step into 2019 fresh and full and vibrant and new?
But maybe, as the weeks of this year have begun ticking past and a steadily increasing pace, you’re finding the fresh and full and vibrant and new of a new year escaping you. You want a fresh start and a clean break, but you can’t seem to get there.
You want to leave 2018 in the dust, but it is the dust and the dust is in your hair and your clothes and probably your mouth too, because dust tends to just get everywhere and hang on.
I feel you.
And it’s okay.
Because we can’t always walk into fresh and free as easily as turning a page on our calendar. The past clings to us and all the new and different we can muster can't completely shake off the dust of past mistakes, past hurts, past regrets, past pain, past loss, past heartache, past decisions, past moments that hang on as memories, whether we invite them or not.
Maybe today already, just three short weeks into this fresh start, you’re feeling the pain of the past clouding your fresh start.
This year, like most every new year, I’m tempted to think that this is the year. New year, new season, new me.
But I also know the truth.
There is no new me without a dying of me.
Let me say that again. Differently.
There is no new me in the new year without me dying to myself in the new year.
Dying to old habits.
Dying to old thought patterns.
Dying to old fears and insecurities.
Dying to my selfishness and self-absorbed tendencies.
Dying to a purpose of living for me so that I can come alive to my God-given purpose.
And Ann Voskamp says it best…
“There is no growth without change, no change without surrender, no surrender without wound—no abundance without breaking. Wounds are what break open the soul to plant the seeds of a deeper growth.”
The Broken Way: A Daring Path into the Abundant Life
And a new you in the new year might not sound so wonderful when you stop to take a hard look at what it takes to make you new.
It took a Savior, leaving heaven’s perfection to wrap himself in earth’s fragility.
It took a God-man stepping into our wrong and shame and bearing it all on His perfect shoulders.
It took Jesus, the flawless sacrifice, allowing His body to be broken so that our brokenness might be healed.
And not just healed, but repurposed for glory. His glory.
This new you might sound hard and ugly and painful. But it is worth it.
This brokenness, this dying to self, is nothing to fear. See we don’t become new and whole and healed by ignoring the past, the pain, the struggle. We don’t become new by doing a hard reset on everything we don’t like about our lives with the flip of a calendar page.
We become new by allowing the brokenness to come and taking the brokenness to the Healer.
We become new by dying to ourselves, our rights, our opinions, our privileges, our desires, so that in our dying we can be made new.
If you are plunging forward into this new year just hoping against hope
begging God for a fresh start
for a new beginning
for a chance to leave the pain of the past in the year that’s gone
or maybe wondering how to leave the dust and pain of the past behind when it is clinging so tightly to every broken piece of you
remember that all you need to bring into this new year is your brokenness.
Be brave enough to bring your brokenness into 2019 and take it to God who is the Great Healer.
There is healing in the brokenness.
There is growth.
There is change and abundance.
There is a new you.
But it is not found by ignoring the past.
It’s found by digging into it with the One who is in the business of redeeming broken pasts. The One Who is in the business of taking death and turning it into life. It’s found by allowing yourself to be more fully broken, so that all the bits of you that need to be left behind can die, and so that God can pull beauty from the ashes, refashioning the broken bits of you and me into beauty and glory and…new.
{If you have more questions for me on this topic or are curious about this God Who restores and redeems brokenness, feel free to email me by clicking the mail icon in my blog header. I’m praying that you can, through your brokenness and God’s help, become the new you that God desires to form you into, in this new year.}
Happy New Year
by Alesha Sinks | Dec 29, 2018 | Just Me
A few weeks ago I wrote about that journal. The one I call my “When He Speaks Journal”.
Another thing that journal holds is my end of year reflection and upcoming year’s goals.
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Last year, I skipped it. We had just taken the first step in what would prove to be a year long journey of pain, healing, brokenness, growth, and heartache. I felt so lost in life at that point last year that I couldn’t bring myself to look back too much or forward too far. In fact, it felt impossible.
Now, a year later, I’m still broken and still healing in many ways, but I’m also feeling a new strength. A deep and quiet strength. A firm bottom under all the unknown. Or perhaps, what I am really feeling is a firmer faith in the Strength Who was there all along.
So this year, even though in some ways life feels just as uncertain as it did a year ago, I’m going back to the habits of reflection, intention, and hope.
For several years now I’ve been using Lara Casey’s method of reflection, evaluation and goal setting. Each year, in blog post format, she has tenderly guided me through this challenging process, this deep work in my heart and soul.
It’s not easy or fun, this reflecting. This looking back and evaluating. This digging deep and getting really, truly honest with myself and with God.
I know that for my looking back to truly guide my moving forward to growth, I must wipe away of all the little pretenses I set up around my own heart so that I can see clearly who I am and the habits that shape me.
This process of reflection and evaluation can be quite painful if it is not surrounded in immense amounts of gospel truth. God’s truth. Even then, it can feel hard. And vulnerable. And uncomfortable. And too much. And discouraging. And shameful. And not worth it. And…painful.
But I have seen the value in it in my life and soul.
So I can detach myself from the painful emotions connected to looking back in honesty, because I am held by a God Who loves me fully, although He knows me fully. I can step back and ask God to show me what He sees in me, the good and the bad, then in humility I can ask Him to show me how to walk forward in righteousness and faithfulness.
This week I’m slowly going over the past and present to evaluate and pray and reflect. Soon I’ll start the planning and dreaming and praying for the future. Seeking to uncover what God is guiding me toward. What He is calling me to.
I wouldn’t have done this on my own. I’m too impatient to look back. Too prone to questioning myself and obsessing over the past and it’s mistakes to reflect.
So I’m incredibly thankful for those who have forged a path before me. Those who have wrestled out the truths and patterns and methods that produce to healthy introspection and reflection, planning and intending.
If you need a gentle, grace-filled push to spend the time and do the work of reflection and planning, join me. I’m writing these steps and my own answers out in that same journal. Well, a fresh one, intended for the same purpose as before: to make note and take note of when He speaks to me, so that I won’t forget.
What better way to start 2019 than with reflection, intention, hope, and the awareness that I am held by a God Who loves me fully, although He knows me fully, and Who will lead me into righteousness and faithfulness as I seek His heart.
![He Answers: [The Prayer I Forgot]](https://i0.wp.com/aleshasinks.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/IMG_1408.jpg?resize=1080%2C675&ssl=1)
by Alesha Sinks | Dec 17, 2018 | Just Me
A few weeks ago, over an emotional conversation, I told a friend, "I'm surprised I'm not crying right now. I've cried, or at least teared up, pretty much every day for the past few months."
And it’s true.
The hard of the past year has brought me to a place where tears seem as though they are ready and waiting at any moment. I never was that person: a crier. I never was her.
But now, maybe I am.
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The next day, sitting on my couch, reading a book about how God does what He says He will do, about how God always answers prayers, I teared up again. That all too familiar burning behind my eyelids and simultaneous hardening in my throat. I closed my eyes and let the emotion rise. And fall.
It often happens that way. The saddness rising, full and intense, and then, nearly as quickly, it begins to fade leaving only a dampness in my eyes and ache in my heart.
I sighed.
There it was for today.
Would I ever again make it through I day without tears?
But at the same time this thought sighed its way through my tired brain, I turned my focus to noticing.
Noticing the tears.
Noticing the sudden surge of emotion.
Noticing the when and the how and knowing that if I noticed and waited, just maybe the Holy Spirit would whisper the why into my heart.
And in this moment, He did.
…
I don’t remember quite when, so maybe it was just always this way, but I learned to be pretty good at holding my tears. Holding on to them till a more appropriate time. As I’ve grown older, I’ve realized that the problem with tears is that they don’t work like this.
Emotions surge at times I often expect them the least and if I don’t allow myself to feel them in the moment, they often never come at all.
I held in tears over my grandfathers death so many times, that when the funeral finally came, and it was “time” to cry, I couldn’t. I still have never cried over his death.
As years have passed, I’ve grown to hate this part of myself. And more than a few times, I’ve found myself pleading with God that He teach me to cry. That He would allow me to release the emotions bottled up inside me at the right times.
I’ve begged Him to grant my heart the release and relief of tears.
I want to cry in joy and in pain. I want to cry for myself and I want to cry with others. I want tears to come and I want them to mean that I’m letting down my walls, the ones I’ve built so high and strong.
…
I noticed and I waited. And He answered.
”This is what you prayed for.” He whispered. I’m answering.”
The tears filled my eyes again.
And once again, I knew that He answers. That He really, truly, absolutely, completely, for sure answers prayers.
I used to think that if I felt nothing, saw no answer, heard no voice during prayer or immediately after, then it meant the prayer was answered no. Maybe I didn’t consciously think that, but I felt it deep down, and I often lived like it was true.
The tearing of this past year and the chronicling of when He speaks has shown me a truth I never really saw before.
He answers.
God answers prayer.
He does.
He really truly does.
The reason we miss it so often is that by the time our answer does come, we’ve forgotten that we prayed for it in the first place. And so we don’t notice.
But if we take the time to make note and take note and notice, we will find that God answers prayers all the time.
He really does.
I think I first prayed for tears in high school, over ten years ago. And once again, I’m tearing up just writing these words, because the realization that He answers is simply so overwhelming.
It’s not often immediate.
It’s sometimes different than how I imagine.
But it is real. He answers.
And on a random Tuesday, early in the Christmas season, the Holy Spirit whispered into my heart to remind me that my tears were an answered prayer.
Be blessed
by Travis | Dec 3, 2018 | God's Word
It’s easy to sit in church on Sunday and believe.
It’s the going home and wrestling that belief out into our hearts, actions and our everyday lives throughout the week that is the challenge.
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It’s easy to hear truth preached loud and shout our amens with passion.
It’s the painful and broken amen required of us that is the challenge.
It’s easy to sing the words proclaiming desire for God to build our faith.
It’s the actual taking those steps of faith when everything feels unsure and unstable and unsafe and unseen that is the challenge.
It’s easy to love God in the moment of blessing and rescue.
It’s loving God in the moments right after your world has crumbled to pieces, after God’s promises seem to have come up short, after all hope seems lost, that is the challenge.
It’s easy to plan and prepare for some hard obedience, full of faith in God’s care and call.
It’s the crushing moments of isolation and discouragement as you walk in your obedience day after day after day that are the challenge.
It’s easy to live out our faith in our heads.
It’s the actual speaking of words and reaching out of hands and committing to actually following through that is the challenge.
It’s easy to see a problem from a safe distance.
It’s the going all in with your heart, the letting yourself be broken over sin, the actual confession and repentance and change that is a challenge.
It’s often easy see and feel.
It’s the doing, the living, the walking out the truth day after day after week after month after year and
never
giving
up…
that is the challenge.
And that is the goal.
So often we make our goal the moments of feeling or seeing or hearing the truth, instead of the long work of living and doing the truth.
I’m guilty of this kind of thinking.
So are you.
We all are.
Will we read these words and nod our amens and move on with our lives? Or will we do the work to press these truths deep into our soul?
Will we do the work to put reminders in front of our hearts and our eyes day after day?
Reminders to keep on.
Reminders of the what and the why.
Reminders of the Who.
Reminders to dig in and press in with our whole hearts, not just with our ears.
It’s easy to hear and plan and think and know.
It’s the doing and the living that’s the challenge.
Be blessed
