When I was a much younger girl, I loved journals. They were a safe friend to me when I did not have many.

I grew up in a household and church that did not do much talking about our feelings, and those things that lingered deep inside us even if we wanted to admit it or not.

From the time I can remember, I always wanted to understand me, the thoughts that came through my mind, and the feelings that caused deep pain and grief, deep anger, and deep love.

No one seemed to want to help me do that; instead, the examples I was shown were quite the opposite: stay private, bury it deep inside, and above all, DON’T talk about them.

This is where the brokenness inside me began to grow.

Age nine was a big and hard year for me. I found out I would need a hearing aid and began understanding that I had a moderate hearing loss that would lead to deafness much like my mom. I also began thinking about God in a way I hadn’t before. I was searching…searching for truth.

I would hear the gospel at church and watch all that was going on around me, then I would go to school and listen to my friends who went to a different church with me and watch all that was going on around me and things just didn’t add up in my mind or my heart.

So, I began to ask God, “Who are you?”

This began the journey of a lifetime for me.

That year I got my first hearing aid; I took a step towards Jesus. I believed that I was a sinner that needed a Savior, and I wanted to know Jesus more.

Soon after I was baptized, and I began living the checklist of Christianity with spontaneous conversations with the Lord in between.

That checklist living didn’t lead too far; I felt lonely, my hearing was going, and I was so different from the other kids and felt very less than in so many ways. I was depressed yet didn’t know that was what was going on. I lived in a very controlling household and had feelings no one really wanted to talk about and no one really understood me or seemed to want to try too much.

It made people feel better if we just acted like we had it together and things were ok and fine.

And the feelings get stuffed deeper and deeper.

I hit a breaking point, and I told the Lord that I wasn’t sure I was believing He was really with me. Things seemed to be much better on the other side, and off I went to explore that.

This decision left me in a much worse place, with more brokenness and feelings to stuff deep down inside to add to the other pile, and it nearly destroyed me in multiple ways.

God used this time in my life to draw me back to Him and realize my need for Him as well as understand that He had been telling me the truth all along.

Later that year, my oldest son was born. I watched God provide through this incredible, hard, and challenging season of life. I got married to my husband, Duane, a couple years later, and my youngest son, David, came along a few years later.

All along through this I was writing in my journals. Praying and writing my Bible study time with God. It has been interesting to look at some of those old journals to see what scriptures I wrote down and the prayers I prayed.

Writing has been healing for me, a place to put my questions sometimes, my feelings, and the cries of my heart.

It has been about fifteen years since I first birthed the idea of doing a blog, which led to dreaming about writing a book, which birthed book one: Created to Relate: Living Beyond Religion, and then 2 years later, a book number two: Living Beyond Religion; Rediscovering Community Through Relationship with Jesus, which will be out soon.

This has been an incredible journey, full of pain, grief, healing, learning, and growing.

This is where it began.

We will continue this next week. I pray that as I go through sharing more about me, my background, the vision God has given, the depth of my heart, and the glimpses of who this Desiree Taylor person is that you will feel like you know me a little better.

I want to become friends…but most importantly, I want to become a community with you.

See you next week!