My Heart

My heart has always been eager to teach people. I love working with teens and their parents; teaching couples how to communicate as well as helping people heal from abuse and early childhood trauma. It started for me at a very young age. I can remember helping the other kids in my kindergarten class learn their numbers and their ABC’s……. I’ve been teaching ever since! People ask me how I can work with so many traumatic situations in people’s lives. I say, “It’s not a job. It is my very heart. I love what I do. It springs out of the heart that Jesus gave me."

Over the last 30 years as a Marriage, Family, Individual and Teen Therapist, I have had the privilege conveying to thousands of people in my counseling practice, classes and conferences how to apply Biblical principals in practical, everyday ways- you know (wink, wink) like how to stay in the Spirit when leaving the parking lot after church (ha!); on Monday morning when nobody is looking (oops!); on Thursday afternoon when your life has been demanding throughout the week (ugh!) or on Saturday night when you are remembering abuse from years ago, and so on. Life can be full, fun, fabulous and so very difficult.

As a ripe, new, budding therapist, the Father commissioned me to teach and activate people how to engage with the Trinity in simple and authentic ways as the foundation for dealing with all of life’s circumstances. I learned early on that engaging with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit was easier than most realize. Through SIMPLICITY, I enable people to have RICH and REAL experiences that promote intimacy.

Think about it. Jesus said in Matthew 3:2, “The kingdom of God is at hand.” Holy Spirit taught me that IF THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS AS CLOSE AS MY HAND, He said, “YOU DON’T NEED TO GO ANYWHERE to connect with US. YOU JUST NEED TO BECOME AWARE.” So simplicity means when I am sitting on my couch spending time with the Lord, I don’t have to try really hard to connect with Them. IN FAITH, I just tilt my head a little to the left and I am resting it on the Father’s shoulder. Or I close my right hand and in faith I am holding Holy Spirit’s hand. Or if I lean forward, I am leaning my forehead against Jesus’ chest in faith in the spirit realm. We can have these sweet touch points with the Lord all throughout the day.

It is what I call, “Anchoring.” Simple little things we can do every day to connect to the Creator of the Universe- our capable Father, His beautiful Son and our Comforter, Holy Spirit.

“And now we have run into His heart to hide ourselves in His faithfulness. This is where we find His strength and comfort, for HE EMPOWERS US TO SEIZE what has already been established ahead of time- AN UNSHAKABLE HOPE! We have this certain hope like a strong, unbreakable ANCHOR holding our souls to God Himself. OUR ANCHOR OF HOPE IS FASTENED TO THE MERCY SEAT which sits IN the heavenly realm beyond the sacred threshold where Jesus, our Forerunner and our Trailblazer has gone in before us. He is now and forever our Royal Priest after the order of Melchizedek.” Hebrews 6:18-20 The Passion Translation

How does that sound to you? We can ABIDE IN YAHWEH SEATED WITH HIM ON THE MERCY SEAT IN THE HEAVENLY REALM. (Ephesians 2:6) I have found in my years of working with countless people that the mercy seat changes everything. As we spend time with Papa there, we become more and more anchored to Him and His kingdom rather than to this world.

It says in scripture that we are, like Jesus, royal priests unto God. (1 Peter 2:9; Rev. 5:9-10) When the veil was torn in two, we were given ACCESS into the Holy of Holies. I believe we can crawl up on Papa’s lap on the mercy seat and meet with Him there. In Exodus 25:22 it says, “There I will meet with you and speak with you…” on the mercy seat in the Holy of Holies!

Do you want your soul to be ANCHORED TO GOD HIMSELF? I certainly do! I will spend all of my life getting to know our Heavenly Father, anchoring myself to Him and encouraging people through faith and simplicity to engage with Him deeply. From there, as we come into maturity as sons of God and as His heirs, we will be ruling and reigning with Him like He intended every one of His kids to do! (Daniel 7:18; Rev. 22:3-5)

Hundredfold Hearts

What does it mean to have a hundredfold heart?

It means that I am willing to become one with the Lord like Jesus prayed for us in John 17:21. Combining what Jesus said about becoming one with Him and what He taught about the seed and the sower in Matthew 13, I said to myself, “Lord, I want to be one with You and I want to bear a hundredfold fruit.” Is that grandiose of me? No. If it’s spoken of in God’s word, then IT IS POSSIBLE! For anyone who knows me (intense) and how the Father made me (a go-getter), I can’t settle for second best in anything. Only bear thirty-fold fruit? Absolutely not! Only sixty-fold fruit? No way! If it is possible to bear a hundredfold fruit, then I’m going for the hundredfold. Hello! How about you? Did you start out in your walk with the Lord saying, “I think I’m going to shoot for being a lukewarm Christian?” Of course not! What have you set your sights on? Do you want to be sold out? Do you want to be hot and not cold?

I have been a daughter of the multi-faceted, multi-dimensional, Everlasting Father for nearly 4 decades. I can remember praying, “Papa, get the most mileage out of me. I want to be sold out. I give every part of my heart, life and being over to You for Your glory.” Now I’m not saying that I have always been happy about having prayed that prayer, especially when it seems like everybody else is gliding through their walk with Him and I’m carrying around bricks! (Ha!) It is not easy to be sold out and to continually turn over every part of your heart. But I have learned through the years that if I stop looking at what I am giving up and start looking at His eyes and what He dreamed about me and my destiny, then I am super excited and eager to live out my part in Papa’s plan.

“So we must let go of every wound that has pierced us and the sin we so easily fall into. Then we will be able to run life’s marathon race with passion and determination, for the path has been marked out before us. We look away from the natural realm and we fasten our gaze onto Jesus who birthed faith within us and who leads us into faith’s perfection.”

Hebrews 12:1-2 The Passion Translation 

Won’t you join me on this journey?

My Story

If you could watch a video of my life growing up, it would look something like this: You’d see my parents proudly bringing home their second daughter. There were eventually 4 kids- girl, boy, girl, boy. We had a lot of fun the 4 of us- playing cowboys and Indians in the back yard; celebrating birthdays; eating turkey at a beautifully set table mom had worked so hard on the night before; running down the stairs every Christmas, first to get our stockings hanging on the fireplace and then opening all of our presents. The video would go on to show me taking my first Holy Communion, then practicing my jumps for cheerleading in Jr. High. In High School, I was captured scoring a goal on my Varsity Field Hockey team, going to the Homecoming dance and the Prom.

Everything can look great in photographs, captured on a video or on our Facebook page, wouldn’t you agree? Besides all those truly good times in my life, I found myself in despair. What you didn’t see on the video was me biting my fingernails and having anxiety attacks. I was popular in school, but on the inside, I felt completely insecure. By age 13, I started drinking with my friends, smoking marijuana and over time, eventually taking harder drugs. My friends and I also started stealing our parent’s cars in the middle of the night to take them out for a little “joy ride.” Once I started coping with my pain using drugs and alcohol, I got drunk or high every day for the next 7 years. My poor parents! I was one of those crazy teenagers. I lost my virginity by age 16. By 17, I got arrested for being drunk in public one time on Halloween. So dressed as Rudolf the red-nosed reindeer, I was taken to juvenile hall. My life was a mess! I felt completely powerless and out of control.

Thank You Father for sending people to share the GOOD NEWS with me at Coco’s restaurant in Santa Monica, California where I was waitressing while going to college at UCLA!!! I got saved and Jesus completely delivered me of drugs and alcohol the day I gave my life over to Him. Everything changed drastically that day. After feeling completely lost, empty, suicidal and desperate, Papa showed up for me, set me free and filled me with His joy!

The first scripture I learned in the Bible was Colossians 3:13- “He has delivered me from the domain of darkness and brought me into His glorious light.” It was like night and day for me and I have served Him joyfully ever since for the last 35 years. I knew what darkness and despair was like and I was never going back! I had true peace for the first time in my entire life.

A few years into my walk with the Lord, I started having nightmares. I would go to sleep every night for weeks and have dark-haired men chasing me with machines guns. I was running away in terror for fear of losing my life. When I got saved I was so hungry for the Lord, I read through the whole Bible in the first year. I devoured it. When I started having those horrible nightmares, I remembered that God had given Joseph the interpretation of dreams so I asked the Lord to help me understand what my dreams were about.

The Lord showed me that I had been sexually abused by some neighbors when I was 4 years old. Our family was friends with everyone in our neighborhood. Growing up back in the 1960’s, kids could play outside and go over a friend’s house without any suspicion of abuse back then. Nowadays things are different. Parents need to know where their kids are at all times and whose house they are going to. But back then when I was growing up, we could play outside for hours with all the neighborhood kids and just go home for lunch and dinner.

At first it was relieving to know why I secretly hated myself throughout my life; why I felt so insecure on the inside, had no voice and why I couldn’t say no to people, drugs or alcohol. No wonder I was bulimic. No wonder I picked a boyfriend who was unfaithful to me. No wonder! The list goes on and on.

However, after the relief wore off, I had a whole lot of pain to deal with. Thank You Holy Spirit for helping me. If I could’ve taken an x-ray of the fields in my soul when I remembered the severe sexual abuse I suffered at age four, you would’ve seen a lot of bad fruit trees growing there. I had a lot of weeds to pull out of my soul in partnership with Holy Spirit. Over the next season of my life, I spent my time in the Lord’s Presence crying out to Him for the healing of my broken heart and the loss of innocence at such a young age.

I remembered all of my abuse when I was a new therapist. I cried out to the Lord to open up His Word and to show me how to heal within myself as well as how to thoroughly help others heal so that we could all walk in THE FULLNESS OF HIS DESTINY FOR US. Hence, my counseling practice- True Identity Counseling and my international ministry- Hundredfold Hearts was birthed.

“As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present outcome- that many people would be saved, kept alive and preserved through all of this.” Genesis 50:20