I graduated High School ready to change the world.  I had spent the last 4 years of my life in high school dominating every arena I could get my hands on; sports, student council, peers and popularity.  I felt like I conquered it all.  From President to All – Star, Salutatorian and most everything in between I was the OVERACHIEVER 10X.  I was out the door with my badges of honor; “Most Likely to Succeed and Most Athletic”;  the Senior Mosts that mattered most to me.  I achieved the title, acknowledgement and I was ready for my next space to prove myself.  While I spent my life striving to be the STAR and the success in sports and business as I knew it I also knew there was a much bigger world outside of the small town girl in AZ that I was.  

California Dreams came true as I drove up to the most beautiful campus in the US in my little gray sports car ready to do life BIG.  The door to my little dorm creaked open and the stark reality of re-defining me in the small and big life of the city, college and community of  San Diego CA at Point Loma Nazarene University set this country girl running hard, chasing the dream!  In the first few weeks of training with the cross country team, I tore my groin and life as I knew it took on a whole new demand for surrender and acceptance.  Where I always felt power and control in making things happen, I felt powerless; physically I could not do it!   Where I used to lace up my shoes and run with the wind, now I was happy to walk to the training room for another day of therapy.  All the areas where people knew I excelled; instantly I did not, where I stood out in the gym I could not, where I was known; I was hidden and where I was strong I was weak.  Strength was being redefined at its deepest level for me.  When everything else felt taken out my hand I had to know who I was.  It was the ultimate journey of self discovery the first year in college, away from home, no one and nobody and all the hopes you had of creating your new world as you imagined and dreamed it to be; gone.  I was done! I was no one for anyone.  No one cares what a “star” you were,  all that matters is what and who look like now!  College is where the playing field once again is leveled and I felt robbed.  My identity was shattered. The athlete I was for all my life was a memory but not my future.  The community I was creating with my teammates and all the other athletes on campus started to look so much different when day after day I was not able to make practice.  I was the injured one; that’s for sure…. Scarred for life; if I let it.   

The HEALING journey began here.  In my biggest hurt physically and mentally I began to feel the depths of needing healing.  I needed to physically heal from being restrained, held back, limited, withdrawn and last in line.  I need to know what it felt like to be humbled in the hurt in order to hunger for the healing. I hadn’t felt like this since I was that little girl, the only child with divorced parents that no one believed in; who was told I needed to be held back in school and I just didn’t have what it took.  I longed to feel noticed, loved, and whole, yet my whole world felt pulled out from underneath me.  I planned to live in California and spend the rest of my days in the sunshine and in the water living the California dream; wild and free!  No scholarship anymore, tuition and bills too high for my dad to reconcile, I was back in Arizona attending NAU for my sophomore year.   Shattered dreams, yet I knew deep in my gut that was where I actually belonged.  I was trying to manipulate and control my life and be what I WANTED it to be and I would work hard to make it happen, and yet here I was life had happened again FOR me, not for me to prove, but for me to find my deepest purpose and meaning.  

What happens when all the Hard work, control, and motivation ends up being the reason you are forced to surrender.  I always correlated hard work and accomplishment with success and now, although I did all the hard work I was finding myself having to redefine success.   Where I used to think no pain no gain, all drive and determination I was face to face with the HEAL in my health; physically, spiritually, emotionally and mentally.  This was the beginning of a lifelong journey of the tug of war between doing more and doing less.  The struggle between control and surrender, dreams and peace to receive.  Manifesting and manipulating.  Fear and faith. Abundance and scarcity.  

In the last 25 years since leaving home that high school girl, I have walked through some very deep valleys as a woman, wife and mother of 6.  I’ve experienced the complete collapse of my health,  the near loss of 2 of my children, marriage on the rocks and businesses that were built to only be shut down by a pandemic.  

Life has a funny way of working out; it always does.  “God’s got this” has become my mantra when the reality of my humanness becomes so obvious that there is no strength in and of myself that could conquer the mountains I am up against.