A letter to my high school classmates...

I was once like you, I desperately longed for and searched for love. A love longing I was born with, you were born with it too. When our parents could not fulfill this perfect love we desired and so desperately search for (whether we knew it or not) We began seeking it out in all the different temporary highs of this world and I'm talking way before high school. Maybe food was our comfort before we recognized we were filling or attempting to fill a void that only a perfect love could satisfy.  That started our path to being over weight or unhealthy which carries literally and figuratively so much weight to our self esteem and self worth.. Then it was our "best friends" who weren't really the "best" at loving us... They were actually kind of mean at a young age. So all of us "best friends" sought and competed for boyfriends who would "love" us (as we desired) the same way their parents may or may not have loved them, so "perfectly" then we cried empty tears of rejection after we were broken up with by what we thought was true love. Then sought out to be the rejector instead of the rejected to never feel that way again. 

It was barely high school when we decided our own feelings would reign supreme over all others and our hearts grew a temperature colder. All the while we still have the deep longings for a real love, a prefect love, that continued to rule and drive us until we would find. We gave pieces of our selves away to each boy or girl that could sell us their best "love" lines. Then we all carried the same shame and later rejection from the significant other we so willingly gave our selves to to feel the love we so desperately still wanted to know. Most of us woke up to the shattered dreams of high school as either young mothers, drug addicted brothers, drop outs, alcohol, drug, and party addicted college students. Young mothers and fathers who now all bare the decisions and responsibility of giving love (we were never really given) to a baby who is also created with the same desire to be loved as early as their forming in the womb. How will we love? How can we bare our own hurts and pains from rejection that we have carried for so long and know how to love this baby so the cycle will not repeat itself. This rejection that tells us we are unworthy to feel worth, unworthy of happiness, unworthy of... Love.

And to our addicted brothers who were rejected by coaches because we weren't "good enough"... We weren't useful to win games, and that's the most important role a coach plays in our lives a coach can play....right? Winning games? Why weren't we good enough? Didn't that coach or teacher see the way we LOVED that sport? How could those college scouts not see the passion in my heart and how bad I wanted this? Rejection takes root again. Maybe I really wasn't good enough? Or maybe I was "in love" with something that would not, that simply could not love me back. Maybe I was yet again suffering the results of a coach who was trying to build a reputation or increase the numbers on the board. Instead of building a young player who was searching for love to justify their purpose for being in this earth. All the while, coaches and players alike were just acting off of a desire that went and was still going unfulfilled by a LOVE that we were all born longing for...

So throw that dream away, harden your hearts with drugs and alcohol, partying, sex and unhealthy relationships. At least these things may bring us popularity and a chance to feel the love we want so bad. And once the party dies we can use these things for a greater cause- numbness- it feeds our cold hurting hardened hearts. We have all decided no feeling is better than the rejection we have picked up carried for so long when ALL WE WANTED was a love we were born longing for that (if were honest) we never asked for.. As a matter if fact now were angry.. Why am I here? I didn't ask for this? I didn't ask to be born with a desire to be loved? that would go unsatisfied because of generations of parents, best friends, boy/girl friends, coaches, and teachers who were once children not loved perfectly and felt rejected and so on?

Have you been through one or all of the above? Been through a lesser or far greater version of these scenarios in your lifetime? I have. I'm Jessi Johnson that you all went to school with, a real person. I have felt many of these feelings and dealt with many of these rejections and can still see the faces of those I went to school with who suffered or who still are suffering the bad after taste of our school years in their mouths, better yet in their hearts.

 I've shared this to bring the message, the Good News and bring Hope to you. In all sincerity of the feelings this letter brought up to  you as each word reminded you of the bitter sting you hold in your heart from your childhood and your school years as you could relate. Bringing back feelings we all have been trying to bury from our own versions of the rejections, shames, and reasons for unworthiness of love we share.... I found it.

I found the love we have all been longing for, His name is Jesus. And He has called me in this very normal morning to unexpectedly share with you all the feelings I tried to hide and bury from my school years. He called me to share this because, He know you. He knows you feel like I have felt too. He knows you are weary from baring the rejections and carrying the shames and disappointments... and He says to you:

"I am here, I am waiting on you. Yes you, my beloved. I love you. I know you're not perfect, I know you feel scarred from your past, from circumstances, situations, shame and rejection. All because you were searching for a love and a desire for your purpose. I am perfect love and I love you. Not the cliché "Jesus loves you" kind of way... I have a love for you that takes your breath away and wipes away all the scars you thought were permanent. My Father created you, for this purpose, to love and to BE LOVED. Come to me beloved." -Jesus

(Please excuse grammar and improper use of everything as far as proper or correct writing goes) ❤️ ;) 

I love you all.

today is a big day thanks to God.

Today is a big day for my little family... Two falls🍁🍃🍂 ago Caleb and I started believing God for a job that would allow me to continue to stay at home with Jocci and our future children. We were also believing that Caleb would enjoy the job. 

Caleb got his mining papers and we just knew by at least January (2013) he would be getting a job in a near by mine. He applied at a couple mines that we never heard anything from as well as 3 other good enough paying jobs that he would have to travel too work if he got were hired. 

Although we always try to make the best of any time/situation in our lives, THIS was a really hard time for us.. The ups and downs of interviewing and testing for job after job while trying to hang on to hope. It's an emotional roller coaster on top of trying not to live off your parents (whom we already lived with, did work for to have money, and take care of our little Jocci). I had to change my thoughts, re-adjust them through every up and down, and most importantly find the "perscripture" as Madea would call it (hehe) or Word of God, for my problem! I found 

"The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want." Psalms 23:1

This scripture doesn't mean that I wouldn't want or that God would only provide to me my needs. It mean that The Lord is my care taker, He KNOWS my needs as well as my wants.. He knows the desires of my heart and He will take care of those. All in His perfect timing of course.

So I held on to this word.. I meditated on it, posted it on my social networks when I needed an outlet. Repeated over in my head, spoke it out loud. Especially in the dark moments when I felt discouraged and wasn't sure how I could continue to hope. 

Around April Caleb got a call that would change our lives..from

Continental Tire... He had an interview!!!! I would always speak Gods favor over Caleb as he applied for jobs, went into interviews as well as trusting that if this job wasn't the job God had for Caleb then we didn't want it. Not only did he get the job, he was hired directly on through the company and did not have to work as a contractor! 

He was paid a small to some but good enough amount for us to make a budget and live comfortably on at my parents. On the TOP of the priority list in our budget (very first a foremost) was 10% tithe. From his very first check we tithed and did not miss tithing God's small 10% or giving more when we felt lead to, from not one pay check. After all, if it wasn't for God we wouldn't have the income at all AND if He could not trust us to tithe off of little how could He trust us to eventually tithe off of a lot. God would not asks us to tithe if there was not something better for Him to give back to us! He loves to give and to bless His children. WE WERE SO EXCITED! 😁

 So I continue on.. Although this was enough for is to pay the small bills we had, take care of our family, and have money to give, save, and live a little.. I know my God knew our needs and our desires. We share an old beat up explore of my parents that we didn't take for granted. So a new car.. We obviously lived at home with my parents, so our house being finished. Were two major needs/desires. 

We get married, never dreaming to literally come home pregnant, have no home of our own for two children and a small suv that only 2 doors work on. One up front and on in the back, difficult for two adults and two children with car seats!

But we continued to trust God, trust our tithe, trust His blessing upon on us and keep on keeping on.

So the new year was approaching, Caleb was hearing of job openings in the mines. So one morning we woke up extra early, loaded our little family up and I drove my tired from work man to a contracting place to take fill out an application. Still trusting, praying, believing, meditating! If he could get a job in a near by mine we could have more time together (less of a drive) save more gas, and afford the things we needed/wanted for a home and two children!

Not too long after, He got the second call that would alter our lives for the better! He has an interview with The contractor and come to find out he was hired!!!! This was a pay cut from continental but with the difference in gas it would equal out. But ended up being an even better pay check after overtime.. We continued to tithe off of our new higher income, continued to trust God as He had entrusted us with a little more.

Now. Bringing us to today. Three short (the minimum required 90 days) months later from being hired by the contractor to work in Wildcat Mines, Caleb is HIRED ON COMPANY and today is his first day!!!

I know this was a long/detailed story. That's kind of just how I tell stories, I'm a details kind of person. But I really want anyone (if any crazy person read this whole thing, praying someone did lol) to know that trusting God can be hard, but it is ALWAYS worth it... Since we started trusting God financially, tithing, and being faithful with little.. God's Word has never come back void. His Word is Truth and I got it deeply rooted in me through the ups and downs that "The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want!" He is my provider!!!! and this is a real life story of someone most of you know that there is NO denying it! 

It was not always easy, it did not always look promising, but His word is the truth regardless of what my human eyes could see and regardless of how I felt. I don't trust my eyes or my feelings. I trust Gods Word above all!

I am beyond thankful for a husband who believes and trusts in God with me, who chooses to be an honorable worker and co-worker of integrity at whichever job he is at and try to love people He works with the best he can as Jesus wouldThe two of us are MOST thankful for a God who is personal, who loves us, and who is TRUE to His Word, ALWAYS!