Last night I sat down at the kitchen table with my little girl, Kate. She has a new game she likes to play where we both write a story and then we read them to one another to see who has created the best one. When I was two pages into writing my story, an email came through on my phone. It was a request for me to be interviewed for my first nationally broadcasted appearance on both radio and television. In my excitement, I immediately forwarded the message to my sister. She responded, “Misti, did you notice the date?” 

 I paused. I went speechless.
There was a moment of reverence.
I couldn’t move.
November the 6th.
12:30 p.m. 

My first nationally broadcasted television appearance will occur one month to the day at the exact time I found out my mother had died in her sleep.

The story I had been writing with Kate was about a young maiden who had spent her days frolicking in the flower fields by her cottage and lying beneath the evening stars. She was longing for something more. She was searching for something deeper to pull her towards a more destined and purposeful path. One day the girl finds herself in a nearby river being swept away by a rushing current. The story begins by her being found almost lifeless having been beaten against the river rocks. She is taken in and nursed back to health by a kind man who finds her while his horse is drinking water from the river downstream. The man and his sister befriend the young maiden and begin to teach her the ways of their glorious utopian kingdom. The story is about how this rough, nearly death-defining journey, ultimately leads the young maiden to the place she had longed to be. However, her bliss came after years of searching, believing, and after a pulling down a winding river that provided many twists, turns, and frightening drops. The path down the river to the paradise that effortlessly embraced her came with bruises and scars from the beating of what often seemed like the merciless crashing of the rip current against her body. Yet, her river was merciful. It led her to find true love. Her bruises ultimately became her blessing. 

Losing my mom was like being placed in the roaring, raging river. I’ve since been tossed and turned and spun in a million different directions. This river of life has, at times, slung me against some cutting and merciless rocks and has dropped me over the highest emotional cliffs. I’ve felt like I’ve been spat out and left lifeless lying helpless beneath a scorching sun. This season of floating downstream has at times felt brutally unfair as more circumstances would emerge slinging me against unexpected rocks that tore into the delicate fibers of my heart. However, though I felt tossed to and fro by a violent current, there were those that came for me, and there was a Spirit that rose within me to nurse me back to health. I was placed within a utopian inner kingdom where my kind and gracious guides have been teaching the ways to achieve bliss in the midst of utter sadness and loss. This river has helped me find my paradise. It has been the current that has guided me to a dwelling place beside the waters of life. 

You’re going to encounter rip currents in your life. There will come moments of loss, betrayal, rejection, misunderstanding, and despair. You may find yourself beaten by the river of life, having toppled over one too many waterfalls. You may want to quit. You may be baking in the heat of a scorching sun, dry to your bones, and parched from a thirty, unsatisfied soul. 

There is hope for you for less the seed goes into the ground and dies, it cannot live again. 

Be ok with your burying beneath the weight of life’s dirt. It’s not your final destination. There is a cultivating that must take place in the hidden crevices beneath the surface. It will get intimate between you and the hands that are tending the garden of your soul. Let your Maker work with your dirt. Water will be given as needed. Sunlight will be provided when warmth needs to embrace you. Angels of mercy will be sent to strengthen you while you rest beside the brook. Ravens will be sent to feed you. You are destined to sprout, Little Seed. You are destined to rise strong and stand in the light of the sun. 

 I find it quite apropos that one year to the day after experiencing the absolute lowest point of my life, I will be positioned in one of the most elevated positions of my life as my voice is broadcasted nationally across radio and television. 

 We are brought low for one purpose:
to be lifted high.
Your breaking is your making.
It’s making you into the person you are destined to become. 

Rip currents are powerful, narrow channels of fast-moving water. There may come a time in your life when you feel you are being squeezed through a narrow opening by a life circumstance that is swiftly carrying you in a direction you had not intended on going. Trust God is giving you the push you need to arrive at the location He knows in His divine wisdom is in your highest and best good. Let the river carry you. Let God’s Spirit carry you. There is power and purpose in the stream of life. 

How do you survive the brutal hits of the relentless currents of life?
How do you emerge from beneath the dirt?
How do you rise strong after being brought so utterly low? 

• You believe you are being held in the hands of the Divine.

• You recognize all the hosts of heaven that are cheering you towards triumph.

• You know deep in your soul you are unconditionally loved.

• You see purpose in your greatest challenges and in the most defeating moments of your life. You embrace them as your teachers. You make a decision you are going to graduate with honors from the classroom of life.

• You focus on what you have. You focus on what remains, not on what you have lost.

• You accept you are here to make a lasting impression on this world and on those you love who are making this journey with you.

• You accept your mission is to become love and to teach love through whatever means you have been uniquely equipped and gifted to do so.

• You stop crying. You wash your face. You get busy being creative and sharing the beauty of all that you are with those you’ve been given to shepherd.

• You clean up your thoughts to think life. You clean up your words to speak life – over yourself and over those around you.

• You begin to ridiculously hope. What do you have to lose? There is nowhere to go but up when you’ve been buried beneath the dirt.

• You fully recognize that the power of the Almighty Creator of all that is abides within you and that if He is in you, He is most certainly for you.

• You begin to feel supported, held and loved. And with the support of all that is or ever will be and with the support of all the angels and the entire Universe behind you…

You rise.
You shine.
You thrive.

• You become authentically free to live the abundant life of contribution you have always been destined to live. You find your utopia. You find your love story. And you begin to broadcast how you did it to the whole wide, beautiful world. 

I love you, Mama. It’s been almost one year of tears to triumph. I did it. I did everything you always taught me to do. “Rise above,” you would say time and time again. I’m rising strong, Mama. “Write that book, Misti,” you would say. I wrote the book, Mama. I wrote the story. I’m making it pretty. 

I usually let Kate win the story writing content. Tonight, we both agreed mine deserved the golden star. But don’t worry, I shared my star. After losing her grandmother and best buddy, Kate has had her own season of grief. At nine years old, she knows all too well what it feels like to be tossed about by a raging river. We both deserve a golden star. We are two maidens who have been guided by a current down a River of Life and shown a glorious inner kingdom of utopian bliss. We found our love story. We held on to one another. We found love, and these are the kind of things I think our Maker wishes to exalt and broadcast before the world. 

See you on November 6th.

I’ll be the girl wearing a few bruises yet standing brilliantly and beautifully in the light of the sun.