After The Show

Whew, we made it. Here are the thoughts that were going through my mind Tuesday morning: so excited, sick, think I have diarrhea, think I’m going to vomit, nervous, uh, what am I doing, and elated. Bobby Sneed is a friend that I have had for over 13 years and it was not only encouraging and comfortable to have him as my first guest, but I really wanted to honor him for being such strength in my life during this divorce recovery. I remember sitting at my dad’s kitchen table and he said to me, “You know girl’s gone wild? How about I was the male version. I got a lot of counsel from people but none of it was Godly.” He kept me from being the making of Christian girls gone wild with his honesty about the raw emotions and desperation you experience with divorce. You can check Bobby out on facebook.com/mrbobbysneed . His book “Marriage, It’s In Your Hand’s” will be available soon and you know I will have him back again to let you know where you can get it.  Handmaiden Live Radio airs Mondays at 11:00 a.m EST.

I’ve lived my life wanting something for so long. Well, let me say my Christian life. It seems as if I’ve waited, waited, kept waiting, and am still waiting. I’m not sure if I’ll have my deepest desire. For years, I’ve thought that all of me was for a specific purpose. But if the power of God in my life over the last 8 months is any small indicator of my future…I can release the grip on that dream, embrace His presence, and bloom where I’m planted.

Anything that is missing in your life is because you have not recognized its value ~Dr. Mike Murdock

In His Service,

God’s Holy Handmaiden

Headaches of a Holy Handmaiden has a new home, http://handmaidenlive.com . It is bittersweet that I am not going to be seeing this theme that I have typed in for almost a year. Please stay in touch and connect with me today on http://handmaidenlive.com

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Love Revelation Unabridged

Sundays have consistently been trying and difficult for me since the beginning of the year.  I don’t know if it’s because it’s the 7th day or what but never the less as great as they get, I can always anticipate a “dealing” with.  I have a true heart for service.  It keeps me up at night, I can talk to you all day about it, my heart beats for it.  As I continue to put that x-ray of my heart to the light, I still see its there.  It is selfishness.  Don’t be deceived by the fiction novel you can pen and the truth that you feel.  Love has become my complete obsession and God not withholding any good thing from me 🙂 continues to put the spot light on my mess so that I can honestly move forward if I absolutely desire change.

I want to create a home that is a nest without thorns.  I long to treasure and protect the solitude of my mate.  My passion is to protect, strengthen, encourage, and pull out the king in that man.  When the day has grown long, my heart is the refuge that shortens it…and then came this evening, the broadening of the Love Revelation.  All of that is beautiful and warm, but not it or enough.  I have to come to a place where I make the decision to love the life force in a man.  Whatever gives him power to live has to be my complete obsession.  I have to find the power of God in him and love it entirely.  So if he is coal miner, it’s not sufficient that I support him by packing his lunch and leaving a love sonnet on a napkin.  I have to ask if there is a hat in my size and make that coal mine my life.  And if I can’t go in the mine, I have to get as close to him in it as I can.  If he a musician and travels the world, his world and travels become mine.  Not my ability to wait and create a life for him, but to make his life mine, for it to become one.  I thought about a young entrepreneur friend who just moved to a large city to revamp his brand, he calls it his manifest destiny.  He is in a relationship and I thought, hmm, now how is that one going to play out.  I then realized it’s not about geography, time, or frequency. If a man’s life involves 18 hour days, it is not about patience for when the grind ends and we can be together.  I have to love that grind as much as he does.  I will have to respect and never question how he chooses to spend his time regarding his callings.  I have to crave to be his apprentice.  It’s simple, we choose life or death daily.  I want a man who LIVES and more than that, I have to love what gives that man life more than I desire to create a life for him.

The selfishness exposed in this love revelation is yes service and love are synonymous but it’s not suitable for me to create a dream for two by trying to construct what I feel is a happy life.  Devotion is not enough, there has to be a marriage of his mission and my thirst.  What you need to live may include long nights, tired mornings, little time at home, or unusual solitude.  But oh honey, I understand now that this is a relationship principle, not specific to religion or belief.  I have to fall in love with what you love, what keeps you up at night, what you talk about all day, what all of your time and money are invested in.  Your dreams are my dreams and as we grow and have a family, your children will understand and love what daddy does, without question, just like mommy.

A note from a fellow woman who hungered passionately to serve:

But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.  Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me.” (Ruth 1: 16 & 17, NIV)

In His Service,

God’s Holy Handmaiden

Dear Love, (part 1)

After writing The Release months ago, Mr. Maybe, and the unveiling of Mr. Available I have been frequently asked the question “So are you dating?”  Here’s the real via a letter (part 1 of many to come) to my “Love.”

Dear Love,

You are either one of two people.  If you are Mr. Available, I knew it within 10 minutes of being in your presence.  I love your candidness, your self image, strength, and confidence.  You do indeed stand a foot above the rest.  I guess I may talk about relationship, but honestly I freaked out when I felt the “real” with you.  I know at this time I can’t show up, being committed and the fear of it actually working out makes me run a 8:00 pace in the Boston Marathon.  If you are Unavailable, I have confused us both and wrote a Danielle Steel novel with myself as the protagonist.  I want you because I know in the end that we both have too much going on to be serious.  There is comfort in knowing that in the meantime its fun but emotionally I’m not authentically invested.  God knows I want to be with you, below are the reasons now that I can’t…

1.  I honestly feel like second goods.  There is nothing you, Joe, Jimmy, or Jon can say to change that.  I have to come to a place where I can openly receive God’s love for me and through His love, walk in confidence that in Him I am made perfect.  If I allow your words to be a balm to this wound, when you are absent, I will be looking for the words of Joe, Jimmy, or Jon to pour into my emptiness.

2.  Through my heartbreak God has given me release through typing on these keys.  I still do not fully recognize my value and only in His presence can I understand “this.”  Dr. Mike Brown said  “the Holy Spirit will never give you anyone to take his place and He will never try to take the place of someone He has given you.”  Understanding His sustaining power and honoring my difference is the only way I can both love you and honor Him.

Dear love- I am not the woman to use prayer instead of process.  I use prayer for process.  I’m not praying that God “bring” you or that you “find” me.  I am praying that every crevice is exposed in my life so that I work through these layers.  People say “oh, when you meet the right one, all those fears and reservations will be gone.”  I honestly believe this is a  ridiculous lie…it is something we tell ourselves so that we do not have to be responsible or address the hidden behaviors that have plagued our lives and relationships.  Sure I could pray you in, but do you really want God to send you an ornately packaged woman that is fanciful, fantastical, and FOOLISH?   Unfortunately, today on August 5, 2010, I am that package.

Honestly In His Service,

God’s Holy Handmaiden

Holy Moly, I’m OBSESSED!

One of my fantastical friends wrote a book creating a business around your purpose.  I was pulling an encore and was moved to tears on a personal level reading the first couple of chapters.  So I go through the female mental check list of why I could possibly be having a break down mid afternoon reading a book on business; am I hungry, did I forget some tragedy, early menopause onset, is period gone, coming, or here?  When I confirmed no to all the aforementioned, my eyes widened and da da da…this is touching me on a personal level because it applies to just more than business.

My marriage ended, but I’m wild crazy about marriage.  In an effort to achieve the full, honest, enduring love I so truly desire, I decided to become obsessed with love.  Yes, my traumatic emotional experience is divorce but this is applicable to anything you want to change or combat.  If I’m depressed, I could just as easily decide I’m going to obsess over being happy.  Let me insert a big old disclaimer right here.  Truth trumps period.  Often we try to overlook it in an effort to maintain comfort (preaching to self).  Putting my x-ray to light this evening I will truthfully say that I do not feel complete when I am not loving.  I’m glad millions of people are “called” to be single but I am the first one running out of that burning building.  I have seen the supernatural transforming power through the Godly marriage covenant and I just don’t think you can get a more powerful union on the earth.  My heart is to captivate and protect the heart of a king…ok this talk could go on forever.  I love love. I digress…

Back to truth trumping.  In my obsession with love, I have to seek the truth.  What it does and does not look like, how to identify it and generalize love in a variety of situations and settings, what it feels like tangibly, psychologically, and emotionally.  How to strengthen, cultivate, and protect it.  So in my obsessing, my x-rays show quite a bit of damage.  Thank God to goodness that if you can see it, it can be changed, healed, and or removed.

I’ve enrolled in the school of love because I have a true desire to be an expert in practice.  I will love again, be married again, and have the ability to provide incredible strength to my king.  For the lovers of relationships or marriage like myself, we have to get down to the bare bones and be transparent with ourselves.  Are we content to stay in relationship to receive a medal on length, when our marriages are sexless or sex deprived, when we honestly care more about our children than the comfort of our spouse, when addiction is present, when its abusive, or if the love isn’t there?

Before one of my girlfriends has an anxiety attack, let me clarify I am not the Roadrunner running off the cliff in the pursuit of marriage.  So instead of my bubonic plague of divorce being a weakness 🙂 I’m celebrating it as a difference that has allowed me an understanding of why you hear tornados before you see them.  Think on that for a moment.

Wildly in His Service,

God’s Holy Moly Love Obsessed Handmaiden

A Sincere Thank You & The Me You Don’t See

I cannot say enough how humbled I am from the continued support and encouragement that I have received from the readers of my “diary.”  I want to sincerely thank you from the bottom of my heart for all of the emails, facebook messages, tweets, mentions, and reposts.  Every day I am completely overwhelmed by love and empowered by your stories to keep diggin’ in this journey.  Often I wish I could be a lab rat in a maze to really show who I am and what my life is like daily so that you could truly understand that all of this is entirely new and different for me.  My secret is that my entire life I have had a burning desire to serve someone great or in a large capacity.  I still haven’t been able to define the term “great” 🙂  What I do believe is that all of my experiences, creativity, my business, marriage, struggles, and victories, have all been preparing me for that time.  Creating comfort for another is my heart beat.

The two things I love most in this world are tea and books…equally.  I collect pigs.  I am my favorite person and I enjoy spending most of my time alone.  I loathe talking on the phone and my phone rings about 6 times a week.  I am black or white practical, have little imagination, and analyze nothing…except business.  When I network I have a goal to authentically be interested in only 3 people.  I will age you 20 years as you try to be interested in me talking nonstop about sowing.  I am direct and have little patience for people who do not see the importance in excellence.  If I love you I will tell you, if I’m scared I will show you.  Cake is my favorite food, I spend too much money on handbags with no repentance, and I am hypnotized by killer boots.  Loving in my life is as necessary as blood flowing through my veins.  My complete passion and pleasure is to serve to a degree that it is no longer me serving.  I have to choose daily to trust God.

In His Service,

God’s Holy Handmaiden

Living Enough Life

I met a woman a few months ago who told me, “Courtnee, we will ALL experience something.  We just have to live enough life.”

This morning when I was volunteering in Children’s I learned that one of my favorite little men would be graduating and this was his last week.  I was completely heart broken.  If I have a favorite, he is definitely it.  My heart has been warmed as I have had the privledge to watch his little personality blossom over the year.  Today I observed him as he was more interested in coloring than I remembered in the past.  I noticed that he no longer came and left the room crying, seeking attention, or having his bottle gridlocked.  Today I noticed he was no longer the kid who got his toy snatched, but the kid who got mad and snatched it right back.  He walked around the room with his little chest out showing he was obviously ready for his next venture.

On my way home from work tonight I thought about my own growing pains.  A lot of areas in my life are changing.  I am kicking and screaming and most certainly uncomfortable.  But my life is just like my favorite little man.  I may not be able to see it right now, but everyday I’m just living life and by nature I’m going to have to grow.  Although now its painful, difficult, and trying beyond words, very soon it will be time for my next season.  It may not feel like I am prepared for that part of my future, but I will be too big for my past.  And when I have lived enough life, like little man, it will simply be time for me to graduate and enter my next venture.

In His Service,

God’s Holy Handmaiden

The Walking Dead

This week has been quite interesting…I think I may use the word interesting instead of inserting a cuss word.  As I continue on this journey my battles become stronger, my energy spiritually goes through peaks and valleys, and some days I have to ask God, “you are still working this thing out right?”

The feelings that I have currently been experiencing are similar to months ago after the divorce.  Battling the thoughts, deception, and daily confirming my self confidence through Christ.  What is frightening is that I saw a reflection of my past.  For years I said that I believed and “waited” on God for restoration in my marriage.  However, after years of draining cyclical patterns of hope/disappointment, I’m not sure I was waiting.  I think I was dying.  Being isolated you begin to become immune to true happiness, joy, and it becomes natural to be content in your pain.  Like, if I keep living every day, most of those days in a zombie state, unable to be penetrated by more hurt and no sincere energy to believe in complete transformation, things may just work out.  But honestly, it didn’t just work out and I was the walking dead.

It scared me to think I’m here again.  I began to question how my exciting new life began to become so mundane.  I thought over the last 8 months and summed up that 1. Yes, God indeed proved Himself and I am sane, not imprisoned, and ALIVE 2. God has been consistently true, even when I questioned Him daily.  So daily as I came out and began to get stronger I didn’t realize that something was still missing.  The small whispers and little uncomfortable tugs I overlooked weekly.  The stronger I feel, the greater I see that He gently brings me to a place where I realize that He will never create a life for me that makes Him unnecessary.  I have to continue to be dissatisfied with the suitable or I will wake up next week and see myself walking fit in a death suit.  I won’t limit God to yesterday’s victory, a greater future is ahead.

As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God… Psalm 42

In His Service,

God’s Holy Handmaiden