Velvet High Heels

We moved to our new house on April 1st. Now almost 5 months later and we finally emptied our storage unit. Now I have to make more room for stuff.  Our office has been the catch all room for our new house. Lots of stuff came out of the old office and all the boxes labeled office have just been piling up.  Today I started the large job of unpacking and doing a secondary purge of everything I am unpacking. I have set up a box for stuff to give away, a garbage bag then a box for the boys room and ours, for the odds and ends that don't belong in the office.  I came across the box labeled pictures and scrapbooks. The problem with unpacking scrapbooks & photo albums is: it is very distracting.  I love looking at pictures and letting it transport me back to that moment in time. One of my favorite pictures of hubby and I is from Homecoming. It was 1998 and this was the most expensive dress I'd ever purchased, up to that point. I wore it for both my homecoming and his, we went to different schools.  It was a red satin dress with velvet straps that fit me like a glove. I even was found matching Red Velvet High Heels that I wore with it. 18 years later and I still have this dress and shoes.  I've always dreamed that one day I will lose enough weight to fit back into the dress and I would make hubby take me to the Nutcracker all dressed up in my beautiful red dress. Even when we moved I packed it up carefully dreaming of the day I would get to wear this dress again.

I put away the scrap books and opened up the next box and, to my surprise, in a box labeled office, there were my red velvet high heels.   I picked them up and smiled and looked at the boxes in the room I am using to sort things(give, our room or trash). For the first time ever I thought it is really time to get rid of the shoes and the dress. Even a month ago if anyone had suggested this, them would have been fightin' words. But some things have changed.  I am a person who loves my memories so much I would almost say I live in the past a bit.  While I charish my memories just as much as ever, things change, people change and God has been shining a light on many things in my life that need to change.  It is so strange because the girl in the red dress is a big part of who I have become but I am not the girl in the red dress anymore. Lots of things have changed. Hubby and I have grown in so many ways.   I realized that even if I got to a weight where that dress fit again I don't want to wear it again.  I would want to buy something new, that makes me feel sexy and most importantly something that reflects the person I am now.  I am a God fearing wife and Mom.  I've completed a half marathon and have found more confidence in my work out clothes than dresses and skirts dressed to the 9's.  

For so long I've been affected by what people think about me or in some cases even more by what I assumed people were thinking of me.  I've reached points pretty recently where I thought I didn't care about that any more but there was still somethings I was holding on to. At Church 2 weeks ago it was a communion Sunday. For those of you who don't know details of communion here is a short explanation, It is when people eat a piece of bread and take a sip of wine or grape juice in remembrance of what Jesus has done for us.  God even warns us about taking communion with out considering what it means and why we're doing it. And if we don't do this we are taking judgment upon ourselves. Anyways, before they have people pray and partake of communion, you are given the opportunity to either not participate and or examine your heart to make sure you are in the right place to take communion. For the first time in years I had a couple things on my heart that made me feel like I couldn't take communion with out giving these things over to God.  Right then and there I let go of some really BIG things. I took communion and felt amazing. This is when allot of revelations started coming like I said God was shining light on things and releasing me from these things that I didn't think were possible. 

The Bible says in John 15:1-2 "I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, so that it will be even more fruitful"  The long and the short of this blog post is change happens, change is good, change makes you grow and more change is on the horizon.