I’m a bit teary eyed writing this and I didn’t expect to be But this will be my very last post here I will no longer be sharing my past in this space because I believe God wants me to write about the redemption He has done in my life I never thought I would experience this level of joy this level of healing yet here I am I will always share my story if God nudges me to but today marks the end of an era where my story was my entire identity

I started this blog a decade ago as a girl drowning in pain clueless that God was already working a redemption I couldn’t see This blog became the place I needed most a place to pour out the parts of me I didn’t dare to speak the broken the scared the raw And somehow in the spilling I found connection Somehow in the typing I realized I wasn’t as alone as I thought

For years I carried my story everywhere I went I carried the pain into every room It became like heavy luggage I refused to lose even when it was too heavy to carry on That heaviness became the only way I believed I could connect with people My pain became a badge of honor It even earned me titles like “Lived Experience Expert” I shared and shared and shared and the more I repeated my story the deeper the pain guilt shame and hatred engraved themselves into my heart

In these past few years I struggled with imposter syndrome As I read the Bible and God began healing my heart I realized His words about me and the words I spoke about myself were telling two different stories I called myself a wounded warrior God called me set free refined redeemed chosen and not forsaken As the little girl inside of me screamed “I hate me” God’s Word poured love over my soul again and again

There was a great conflict I just didn’t know which way to look or where to stand One foot was obsessed with healing yet my heart was never content and my soul was never healed and the other foot wanted to know about this Jesus people cried about and ran around the church for I felt split between the familiarity of my pain and the freedom God was offering me

But something shifted this year

God transformed my heart my mind and my soul I’m not saying everything is perfect I am saying God let me fall hard enough that my only option was surrender And in that surrender I drowned completely submerged in God’s hands God’s heart When I came back up from the water my mind and heart were set on Jesus I told Him that if He truly restored me I would give Him all of me and I meant it

When I rose from that water I could not bring back the identity of pain I could not carry the luggage of brokenness anymore God asked me to hand over everything I thought made me “somebody” He doesn’t want me to communicate through pain but through His love through the piercing that set me free He wants me to remember the cross and the cleansing freedom He gave me from everything that once defiled and broke me

So I’m writing this because this is my last post on Refined Treasure God is doing a new thing I will keep writing it is His gift to me but now I will write from a new identity found entirely in Christ

This is the end of an era

Thank you to everyone who has read my words and walked alongside me I don’t yet know my next blog name or exactly what I’ll write about but when God shows me I’ll share I will keep this blog up as a testimony to God’s faithfulness I will never stop being grateful for what He has done in me and through me

Some of my older posts may not be perfectly biblical simply because I was still growing and I still am What I knew 10 years ago is different from what I know now So don’t just take what I wrote as God’s Word always check everything against Scripture

Cheers