Hello Bonnie.
I have been reading about your experiences for some time. While I would be possibly be interested in exploring the Thursday writing time, I am unsure of how to begin. Badges. Writing prompts. Well, I’m not a blogger, so am embarrassed to say that I am lost and don’t know where to start.
Also, was wondering, in this process if emails are listed with Thursday notations.
Thank you for whatever help you can provide. If not, I will continue to read. 🙂 Note: I did try to post this via your ‘contact’ window, but it would not send, telling me to use another source, so am writing in this manner.
thank you.
courage,

Faith you inspire me. You are a blessing and thank you for sharing your journey with us. I am excited to do the faitj jams. I have never done them and so I am ttaking a leap to write.

I do not have a blog, but really feel the Lord leading me to write. I have not been open to share like this. Bonnie you have inspired me, the setting your heart free really speaks to me. I will ponder the heart this week and see were the Holy Spirit leads me. I feel afraid, but letting go, writing or commenting I believe will help the healing.

The discipline to write every day, once a week or month is a huge calling and one that we should all be practicing. I love that you challenge us and yourself to write once a week. I love that you give us some help with a prompt just like the Father prompts us in life to write, speak, teach, listen and pray. Thank you for engaging this pen of the ready writers where words come together heralding life and God in it.
Kindest regards,
Barbara Collins
@MadreMinutes

I do not have a blog, I feel the leading of the Holy Spirit to share my faith journey. Bonnie you have been such a blessing and inspiration. I feel unsure about writing, but know that when I do share there seems to be a release. I find comfort in knowing the faith journey is not ment to experienced alone. This will also allow me to exam my own heart as the Lord has begun a healong work in me.

I’m excited to express my feelings-

I am Also following you quitly fr.o.m. A safe place. You toutch people at a far distans. I live in Sweden. Started following you just around you panik atacks. I hade simulur problems at that time so I fully understand the hopelessnes. I do write some in Swedish, poems and stuff. But English Isent my nativ launguage. So I might not say so mutch here. But I want you to Know that Thrue the Hard Times’ it Was like fresh air to me every time I recived your post. Thank you !

Love Elisabeth

I love reading your words Bonnie! You have bared your soul to us here and it’s very refreshing and humbling. I don’t have a blog but I do occasionally comment. I keep a notebook with me at all times….just in case. I have found that God can speak through the ordinary and the extraordinary and sometimes I need to capture those moments on paper to have for the future. Those little nuggets really come in handy during the rough times and I want to leave something behind for my children. It’s a way to share my heart and my love for God with them.

Peace and blessings to you!

I’ve enjoyed reading about your journey and prayed God be with you and nurture health to return. Emotional traumas are so painful and scary. It is so exciting to know that our being here listening has helped you. How sad it would have been not to have heard your voice. You have blessed us all. God bless and keep you growing and healing. 😀

I believe that God led me to your blog long ago so that I would know that there are others like me who have struggled with the past… who love to write… but sometimes it gets so overwhelming from the pain of the past that it is like being frozen. I see through your journey that God is freeing you and I am hoping that God will free me too. I would like to try to write on Thursdays but I don’t know how to blog or what a badge is. I guess I will just comment and see what happens.

I am so excited that you are starting the Faith Jams back up again Bonnie! And the Lisa Leonard design that speaks the most to my faith journey is the bracelet that says “let you light shine”.

In your brokenness, you allowed God to use you in ways you may not yet realize. Thank you for being so real. You bless me.

Blessings and love,
Debbie

Hi. The Lord bless you as you continue to encourage the people you meet each day either online or in your daily life. The Lord strengthen you for the journey and protect you from the evil one.

The Lord bless you with joy and peace.May He encourage you each day with more ideas and words of encouragement as you brew your cups of faith to share with the world at large.

I’m glad I discovered your blog today. I was inspired by what you wrote – but it’s too early so I will post it next week.

God be with you,
Ai Boon

Bonnie – I am so glad to know you have turned a corner with your writing! Just this week I have made my own return to my private journal after an absence of several years and have found such sweet release and a strengthening bond with my Savior. I do not blog, but will consider writing a bit in the comments. Looking forward to reading here more frequently as the Faith Jams begin again 🙂

Hi, Bonnie, and others!
Bonnie, I’m not sure how I found you–maybe by articles/blogs that were reposted in Crosswalk.com. But somewhere along the way your transparency, and your journey grabbed hold of me and my heart. There were similarities in our experiences, as children, and now as adults. While your blog entries sometimes express the cry to God I have barely uttered, other times it is the cry I need to speak but haven’t, or can’t yet. Othertimes the healing of my own path is echoed in yours, affirming for me the ways of our Healer. Sometimes, I see Faith Barrista in my inbox and know I can’t just then allow myself to read it because I can’t loose myself in what will be stirred up, because I have other places I need to be, to carry on in life just then. I save it–but have not yet read all I’ve saved.

So, reading, thinking, “Be yourself” as the topic can be hard–as lots of stuff is sometimes. Lots of times I’ve not been able to “be myself” in my lifetime. I’ve needed to be the diligent, obedient daughter, or the daughter that complied and didn’t make waves to stir trouble in others. Or the wife that put every other ahead of self–denied self into oblivion, then had to find herself again when no longer a wife. The mother who was the only caregiver, nurturer, provider for children, working hard to avoid repeating history, so therefore unable to consider myself, what I yearned for, needed, wanted. Just do what is needed and keep at it! And at it! And at it! Then I was the middle-aged woman, alone, needing to make a way and a future for old age sustanance. Trying, trying, slipping and falling. So much I hungered for–mostly to not be alone in the flesh with no one to talk over the day’s events and trials and joys–when there were some. I journaled sometimes. It was the only time and place i let the hurts flow and the anger out. It was the only “safe place” to do that. Perhaps because that was my only outlet, sometimes the journalling just took me down lower and lower like water gushing down a drain. So there are times, I’m afraid to write “the real me.” Afraid to look harder at the feelings, the worries, the hardness of grieving, when it seems like there is more grief than anything else in my life. Still, there HAS been some healing and looking at hard facts and realizations of my life. Lots of repentance. Acknowledgement of a measure of grace and even blessings, even if I feel more stuck in the “uck.”

A handful of years ago, it had seemed that I’d finally come out of the muck and the mire into bright Sonshine and wholeness, with great trust in, and love for, my Healer and Restorer. Full of love and strength and confidence I let Him lead me into a mission placement to utilize all my hard history in ministry and to witness to others I might stand beside, and encourage in their tough paths. I gave and gave, and then got tired and then decieved and broken again. Returning to my once safeplace, I’d lost my own support systems and encouragers. I’ve questioned lots of things in my faith, my God, my journey. My struggle now to live is as hard, maybe harder, than in the years I had young ones depending on me alone–with God we hoped. Back then I had hope for better times, easier times ahead. Now, I see that is not likely in this life and that is hard to face or accept. Now the anger is back, bigger. But I hide it from all but God because it is so unacceptable to those around me, as is the pain of the hurts and losses of a lifetime. I motor through each day, seeing infinitessimal changes of healing once again, having a hard time being thankful for anyof it because it is so small and I have much less time left for it all to add up to make a difference. I’m tired of being broken. I’m tired of feeling so alone with a God that seems so distant, like every other important relationship of childhood and adulthood. Questioning without solid answers. For a while, I knew better who I was, and Whose I was. While I may still be the same person, I’m less sure of what I once knew. Less confident. More afraid. But for this moment I will not hide the real me, and risk to share.

Oh how I love how you write…echoes of my own heart. I have been journaling since the early 1980’s. I write because there is no one to listen to my heart except my Father. Healing and the ability to live alive are the reasons I write words on paper…

I’m So Excited To Start ThIs Journey Here!! 🙂