In high school, the one steadfast person in my life, my mom,
encouraged me to be something more. As much as I rebelled
against my parents, my mother’s vision for something better
fueled my hope and I held tightly to her vision. But like so many
of you, I wanted more for my life but did not think I was smart
enough or good enough to go for the more.
Funny thing about victims, a person takes away our self-worth
and then we spend the rest of our lives looking for others to bring
it back. I did just that when I let an overachieving boyfriend set
the standard for what success looked like. He was fractured like
me, but his pain manifested as perfection and performance. Little
did I know he was excelling to escape his hateful father and a
scholarship was his meal ticket out. He told me I was smart and
that I needed to go to college to be somebody. I loved the idea of
being somebody since I had been nobody for so long. I turned
my grades around in one year and headed to college the next
fall.
The busyness of academic life turned into my all-you-can-eat
buffet for silencing pain when I discovered that praise could
replace self-destruction as my new addiction. The poison of
perfection and performance started to sink in. For the next
sixteen years, I switched between being a show pony for praise
or a racehorse for competition. After achieving my medical degree

 in 1993, I went to Emory University for pediatric
residency. There I had my first son in my last year of training. It’s
a step I don’t recommend. Thirty-six hours on duty and the last
trimester of pregnancy do not mesh well. I finished residency and
immediately joined a busy practice in rural Nevada where my
interest in special needs children began. By the time I reached
my early thirties in 2000, my career track had left me wrung out…

END OF CHAPTER 1 PREVIEW

Not valuing who I was affected how I responded to the pressure
in and around me. It was that simple. I knew how to fix
my body; surely it was not too hard to fix my heart. So I read
some articles and books on overcoming rejection. All of their
techniques boiled own to me trying to convince me that I was
valuable and needed. When worthlessness is part of your
identity, these strategies will not work. Like the song says,
“Band-aids don’t fix bullet holes.”
I needed answers that people could not give. Would God
tell me? For years God and I had been building trust with
each other. Remember the night I flipped him off? Well,
several years later he asked me if I wanted to see that from
his perspective. I said yes. In my mind’s eye I could see me
crying and angry sitting on my bed in what I call the “Moldy
House.” But what I did not see that night was Yeshua sitting
on the bed next to me, hugging me, crying with me,
loving me. He took my angry outburst without a word of
anger or correction. This was not the God that churches had
portrayed to me. The safety I felt from that moment kept me
coming back for more. 

MAN OR A MOUSE?
Many say the ancient Hebrew King David saw into the future and
wrote of things he did not know. From 2001 forward, I continued
to read his songs. Number 23 really spoke to where I was. Here
it is in The Message translation for those of you who do not know
it.

“God, my shepherd! I don’t need a thing.
You have bedded me down in lush meadows, you find
me quiet pools to drink from. True to your word, you let
me catch my breath and send me in the right direction.
Even when the way goes through Death Valley, I’m not
afraid when you walk at my side. Your trusty shepherd’s
crook makes me feel secure.
You serve me a six-course dinner right in front of my
enemies. You revive my drooping head; my cup brims
with blessing.
Your beauty and love chase after me every day of my life.
I’m back home in the house of God for the rest of my life.”

The feeling of the song is inviting and comforting, but I had heard
mixed messages that made me dismiss the healing in it. The
person speaking starts by referring to himself as an animal — a
sheep that needs to be told where to rest, when to eat, and
needing protection. I lived there for a long time too— no
boundaries, poor self-care, and little rest. Many sermons on
being a faithful sheep to the Good Shepherd reinforced this
mindset. One pastor even went as far as to teach that God would
break us if we strayed just as a shepherd would break the leg of
a wayward sheep. That rod and staff message taught this
“sheep” to keep her distance. But the Love and kindness I
experienced in God’s presence gave me the courage to get a
little closer. He led me on quiet walks under the Big Sky, as he …

END OF CHAPTER 2 PREVIEW

I kept going to the virtual Table to “eat” comfort foods through
soaking meditation because living outside of a hierarchy felt
strange. This meant spending hours at a time focusing on and
“marinating” in the presence of the One who is Love. Choosing
where I put my focus and attention equated to my soul and spirit
eating, so I turned off the TV and bad news to feast. It felt so
refreshing to experience love in my many deep wounds. For the
first time in my life I just wanted to coast, so I pulled away from
negative people and rested. This was an important step in my
healing because I stopped living according to other’s
expectations and demands and trusted in my new healing
process. I spent the next five years in this intense soaking mode
before coming up for air.
When I did resurface, I noticed that accepting my value
was helping my health not only improve, but also
stabilize. Armed with what I knew about healing, I started a
women’s transformation coaching business. I had some good
success, but some people kept sliding back after our
coaching sessions ended. Knowledge and motivation did
not bring them lasting improvement. I did not know how
to fully apply our priceless value to everyday life. It
frustrated me. In the middle of this frustration, God kept
talking about wholeness…

BROKEN SEEDS DON’T GROW
Wholeness is a foreign concept to people. I know it was for me.
Brokenness was the normal state of everyone I knew. My
medical training had reinforced this. We learned to manage
disease, not cure it. Supplement companies and doctors who
claimed to cure were investigated. The message I learned was
that healing is complicated and messy. I had worked hard to
heal. People around me worked hard to heal. Their lives were full
of brokenness and the never-ending effort to overcome it. In
religion, it was not much better. Living broken was actually
preached as desirable because people believed it was the place
where God wanted us. People who cried out in the Bible in
weakness and brokenness were held up as heroes. No one
considered that these people were having a bad day or a horrible
season that they wanted relief from. “Seriously,” I thought,
“Fracturedville is no place to make a home.” Brokenness is a
powerless position. Militaries break prisoners, disease breaks
bodies, and betrayal breaks spirits. It’s a person on the ground in
the fetal position. It’s where dreams die, creativity stops, and
connections snap. Why would God want us there?
I started thinking about priceless items and noticed they were not
treated carelessly. A lot of energy goes into making them and a
lot of resources go into keeping them pristine. I looked at sports
cars, jets, works of art, and jewelry. The joy of these precious
items came when they shined. Some of my favorite priceless
items to admire are the English Crown Jewels. They are never
allowed to become tarnished or dusty because of their value. In
1815, visitors were able to reach through bars to touch them.
This is something unthinkable in modern times. One day an
“insane” woman grabbed the State Crown and broke its arches,
causing a great amount of damage. It was promptly repaired with
great skill and care.1 The truth started to sink in. As priceless
people, we were crafted to be whole, protected, and restored, not
broken. Wholeness became my new passion and I thought about
it all the time…

END OF CHAPTER 3 PREVIEW