Being Obedient to God

God’s asking me to do something uncomfortable. He’s actually been prompting me to do this for quite some time, but it’s scary for me, it’s out of my comfort zone, and it’s been easy to postpone. I don’t think I’ve ever said no to God about this particular calling,  I’ve just said not yet. I’m not ready yet. 

I think part of that unreadiness comes from my desire to have things all figured out. If I’m going to set off down a path, I want to have a plan and I want to know what the goal or outcome is going to look like. But that’s not usually how God operates. Today’s message in church helped to reiterate that. The message was titled “Why Would God Use Someone Like Me?"  Some of the highlights for me included things like, "God doesn’t call us what we already are, he calls us what we can be." "He uses the unlikely and he uses the insecure." "He is looking for courageous and obedient people." 

I want to be courageous and obedient.

I don’t know why he’s calling me to share personal details from my past, but he is. For the last 10 years or more, I have journaled faithfully. It was part of my own healing journey and helped me process through a lot of trauma and difficult situations in my life. 

I think that revisiting these journals now, a decade later, will bring additional healing and growth, as well as understanding, and I believe that God brings us through dark times so that we can be a light and a beacon of hope to others.

There were people throughout my journey who were that shining light of hope to me, and so my own hope and desire is to be that light and encouragement to others. Beyond that, I don’t know what God’s plan is, but what I do know for sure is that he has one and it’s going to be better than I could think or imagine on my own.

So it’s my turn to step out in faith and be obedient to his calling. Today our pastor said “When you step out, then you will find out”. I have been waiting to find out or figure it out before I would allow myself to step out and it’s time to make a shift.

I have a vision, a goal, a calling, to share some of my journal entries, and hopefully some reflection and insight to go along with them, starting with 10 years ago when out of nowhere, we got an offer on our house in Molalla, Oregon that wasn’t even on the market, and that set in motion a crazy series of events that six months later landed our family in Mazatlán, Mexico. 

Two years after that, in 2018, I went through a divorce and the years leading up to that, and the years that followed, were plagued with bouts of depression and times when I wished I wasn’t alive. But I knew I could never take my own life. I could never do that to my kids. But I did allow myself to make dangerous choices in a foreign country in the hopes that my life would end and I wouldn’t have to suffer anymore. 

It breaks my heart to even write that, but that’s the truth. That’s the darkness that I was living in during that time away in Mexico, and even though on social media our life looked like a dream come true, on the inside, my marriage was failing, my mental health was suffering, and I was full of shame and self hatred.

Through it all, I journaled. Writing was my therapy and my escape. I didn't always have answers, but writing helped me process and deal with the turmoil that was going on inside. And as I healed, it helped me experience joy and passion and God's grace and forgiveness, and healing, and it helped me find my way back to a life that I love.

It's been a decade since I started journaling regularly. I have a stack of journals full of stories, and battles, and miracles and I feel led to share some of that journey with you.

I'm going to be switching my posting platform over to Substack while I start sharing more personal details from my journal. For now, it will be free but I may make some content available to paid subscribers in the future and here are my reasons why:

• I am nervous about negative feedback and I want to make sure that the people reading my posts are truly invested in what I have to say and not just nasty internet trolls out to wreak havoc and cause turmoil. Okay, that might be a little dramatic but I have always been very sensitive to negative words and feedback and I would be lying if I said I wasn't afraid of what is ahead in terms of "haters" online.

• Writing and coming up with the courage to share publicly takes a lot of time and energy so charging a small amount for it seems reasonable. After all, when authors write books, other people pay to read them. In a way, I'm writing a book. It's just coming together one journal entry at a time.

• I really want to be able to keep my dad's property in North Idaho and turn it into something beautiful and peacful that hopefully all of you may want to come and experience someday. In order to do that, it has become apparent that I will need to have some capital to invest into the infastrutire there, including a septic system, a well, and eventually some additional tiny houses so that more people can come enjoy the property. When/if I do start charging, all the money collected from this new Substack account will go directly to the Casler Farm property in Clark Fork, Idaho to improve things and keep it in the family, and we would love for you to come along on that journey with us as well as come experience the peacfulness and beauty that the Idaho panhandle has to offer.

If this story resonates with you — if you’ve walked through seasons of uncertainty, grief, healing, faith, depression, rebuilding, or simply trying to figure out who you are and where God is leading you — I would love to have you follow along on this next chapter of the journey.

I’ll be sharing more over on my new Substack, Pages from Shay, including personal journal entries, reflections, lessons learned, and the perspective that only time and healing can bring.

More than anything, my hope is that by sharing my story honestly, someone else might feel a little less alone in theirs.

You can subscribe here:
Pages From Shay

Thank you for being here and for supporting me as I step out in faith and obedience, even when it feels uncomfortable and uncertain.