I feel like everything happens for a reason. I feel that God places certain people in your life at certain times, forms situations at specific instances for crazy purposes, and just basically gives you a dose of something you need just when you need it. Even if you don’t realize you need it. I was shown this again yesterday after our family’s Thanksgiving dinner.

Let’s take a step back. I am a woman. It is ingrained in me to have a desperate need to be loved, accepted, cherished, and protected. I believe as a woman two people are meant to fulfill that need (other than God) in a special was in her life, her father and her husband. I have scattered and broken memories of my father ever fulfilling that need. Memories of uncertainty and hurt are weaved throughout my past. Luckily when I was 11, God sent me a step father (whom I refer to as my “dad”) to take care of me and my family. Without a doubt I am convinced he was the best thing God had given me at that time. I was able to see how a husband should love a wife. How a father should treat his children. How a man should be. He stepped in a became something I hadn’t had before. He carried the load of a mother and her three children and happily and graciously provided for them. But, even though I received that gift I was still left with feelings of bitterness, emptiness, brokenness, pain, and anger from past years. Oh, anger. It will probably always be something I struggle with. It cuts deep when I hear of men forsaking their families. It pains me to hear stories of fathers leaving and never providing for their children. They are cowards. And they Will answer for that one day…see the anger?! Don’t worry me and God are working of forgiveness too 😉 It is a journey that God has taken me through the last 14+ years and he will have to continually lead me to let go and move on.

So I sat Thanksgiving night with my sisters, mom, and aunt talking about life and how grateful we are for the blessings we’ve received and the topic of what women need arose. God is great, he meets those needs, etc. My sister played us a video that we had all heard once before and although it was touching the first time I had seen it, (because my dear husband sent it, how sweet is that?!) it took on a whole entire new meaning. It was there sitting at the kitchen table, while the man spoke of how we were worthy of love and how amazing we were and how special we were regardless of who thought it because GOD thought it, it struck me just how affected I was by the absence of yet another phone call telling me “Happy any-specific-holiday”. It is strange how we think we are “ok” or how we tell ourselves it’s “no big deal”, yet it is. “It” was a big deal yesterday. Because yet again, a small piece of me thought to myself, “nope, not important enough this year…like all the other years…that I would get even a text”. It may have been a small piece, but it was a large enough piece that it still hurt and that rejection crept back in. That moment it hit me hard. I’m guessing all us hormonal women were watching that video and crying for different reasons. I was crying because God spoke to me at the moment and he said that I WAS worthy, and special, and important, and valuable, and basically that I was fearfully and wonderfully made REGARDLESS of what anybody would ever say. We as woman, as human beings, HAVE to get that in our spirits. We are valued and loved! He died for us because we were that awesome.

I began to think about how my daughter would never deal with what I dealt with. She will never feel the sting of rejection from her dad. My husband would go to the moon for his baby girl and give her everything she would ever need. He would never forsake her. And for that, I will always cherish him. Luckily I didn’t sleep around looking for love and acceptance in the wrong places, or find drugs to try to fill the void, or end up pregnant as a young teenager because I needed something to make a man stay with me, etc etc, God sent me my Brian when I was 15 and shielded me from all those crazy ways to look for acceptance because he loved me unconditionally from that moment and did cherish and protect me. He swept me off my feet and treated me like a queen. And I could always see how he did value me. Between him and my step dad…well they probably saved me from a lot. God’s workings are everywhere. In big things and in small. At the that time in my life I don’t think I valued them as much as a do today. I was shown many awesome things when my step dad came into my life. And I was also shown many awesome things when God gave me Brian. Because of them my daughter can have a better life. This Thanksgiving I was thankful for something new. Something that I had never thought of before. God revealed the extreme importance of the 2 best men in my life. I am forever and deeply grateful for both of them.

For those of you wondering, and even if you aren’t wondering 😉 ….here is the video I was referring to. It is an amazing reflection on who God thinks we are and what he thinks of us.

http://www.godtube.com/watch/?v=01BBFJNU

“You are beautiful, you are smart, you are funny, you are kind, your unique

You are worthy of LOVE and AFFECTION, you are never too much and you are always enough

you are precious, you are a Diamond a Rose a Pearl, the most stunning of all God‘s Creations

YOU are worth more than you can ever imagine

your worth more than the numbers on a scale or the hair product you use or the shoes you wear

more than how many girls wish they were you or how many guys wish they had you

more than the price tags on your clothes or the percentage on the top of your math test

or even the number of followers you have on Twitter

Your Worth surpasses ALL EARTHLY THINGS because in the eyes of the Lord God, you are LOVED

You are Worth dying for, regardless of Who YOU think You are

whether you model in a magazine or you model pottery with grandma

whether your on the Hot list or the Not list, whether your head cheerleader or a high school drop out

whether your miss popular or you never had ANYONE you can call a FRIEND

whether you love yourself or love your life or you cant stand to look in the mirror

and you feel as if everything in your life is falling apart

whether your such a winner or you feel like the worlds biggest failure

regardless of who you think you are the reality is You Deserve Someone who will give up their LIFE for you

because YOU are POWERFUL and STRONG and CAPABLE

Read about the WOMEN in the BIBLE, ESTHER, RUTH, MARTHA, MARY

these women Changed the world FOREVER

and inside of you EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU is a women with that same POWER

and that same STRENGTH and that SAME WORLD CHANGING CAPABILITY

and your responsibility is to find that women and SET THAT WOMEN FREE

This is WHO YOU ARE

and any voices in your mind try to tell you differently are from the ENEMY

and the next time you hear that voice you say NOT ME SATAN I am the Daughter of the LIVING GOD

CHERISHED, LOVED AND ADORED ABOVE ALL THINGS BY THE CREATOR OF ALL THINGS

FOR THE GLORY OF ALL THINGS

I AM AWESOME

PLEASE DON’T YOU FORGET IT”

-Jon Jorgenson