Talk to God
Talk to God. Plain and simple. Talk to Him.
It doesn’t matter how you start or how clunky it feels. It may feel like you’re talking to an imaginary friend at first, do it anyway.
Push past your insecurities, questions, logic and reasoning. Push past your pride, discouragements, disappointments and disillusionment. Push past your church hurt, childhood trauma, and ANYTHING that is keeping you from talking to God, and simply talk to Him.
I write.
When I talk to God, I type. I type much faster than I write, but there is also something grounding about grabbing a pen and writing in a journal. Writing with a pen and journal gives me more time to contemplate, but by far, my favorite way to hold a conversation with God is to sit down at my laptop.
I think thoughts towards God literally ALL day long, but it’s important to intentionally talk to Him and sit with Him to listen.
When I think about how I used to talk to God, it was almost a form of manipulation, a way to stay on His good side. Throughout my children’s lives, at times I could see them doing that with me as well. They would go long stretches of time seemingly forgetting that they even had a mother, but then when they wanted something, they’d bring on the charm. For a season, if they ever talked to me, I’d mentally brace myself for the ask; there would definitely be something they were wanting if they were giving me any attention at all.
As they are maturing in their relationship with me, especially my oldest, she will sometimes slow down, come into my office and sit across the desk from me, plop down in Jesus’s chair and want to talk. These moments are some of the greatest delights of my life. When they WANT to talk to me and truly listen, I delight in listening to them and treasure the moments I can impart a little wisdom that hopefully will carry them through the challenging seasons in this life.
I imagine God takes the same delight when we stop our childish ways of only thinking of Him when we want something and start to sit down just to tell Him about life. I imagine it makes His heart swell when we bring our hearts to Him and sit long enough to hear what He has to say about our experiences.
Talk to Him. Push past WHATEVER you have to push past and talk to Him.
Now that I got that out of the way, I’m going to explain the picture I included with this blog.
This ministry, Donna Sanchez Ministries, is nothing short of a divinely orchestrated miracle. Several years before I was healed, I was considering changing my name. I hated myself and there was some part of me that thought if I were to change my name, I could change my identity. I had printed off state documents to legally change my name, $175 and I could legally be whoever I decided to be. The problem was, I couldn’t decide on a name I’d be satisfied with for life.
During this season, in my heart, I heard the LORD whispering, “There is going to be a ministry in your name, reserve the website.” I’m not sure I could tell you at the time that it was God. It was just a thought that I couldn’t get to stop repeating in my head until I impulsively had my husband reserve the website donnasanchez.com and then the thought quieted and I forgot all about it.
A year before I was healed of bipolar, I was recovering from a rectal prolapse surgery when I had a thought that wouldn’t stop repeating, “Don’t sit down.” It seemed ironic since at the time, I was in so much pain I could neither sit down nor stand up straight, but to get the thought to stop, I pulled out my laptop, started writing and what I would later call the first “letter” just flowed out of my fingers. It was about the armor of God. Even though I wrote it, there were thoughts in it that didn’t fully make sense to my mind, but after I wrote it, I forgot all about it.
A year after that letter, after eight months of wrestling with words a new friend Alanna spoke to me, in a moment, I was healed of mental illness and now, almost three years later, I still tear up thinking about the peace, joy, and confusion in that moment when my chaotic mind became still. Even typing those words, tears are making my screen a little blurry. The JOY of the LORD just spills from my eyes on a regular basis.
After I was healed, I asked Alanna to disciple me and she joyfully agreed. I laugh because I’m not sure she fully understood what it would look like to intimately walk with someone through the metamorphosis of renewing my mind, commanding my soul to be still and learning to BE still. There was a time I asked her why she remained so emotionally detached from me and she said, “If I allowed my soul to get tangled up in this assignment, we would not be in a good place.” God has given her SUCH wisdom in how she has walked with me. She KNEW that God had given her this assignment and she would not allow her thoughts and feelings about it to cloud that knowledge. I am learning to do the same.
In recovery, I once asked my sponsor what was my best and worst character trait. She said “boundarylessness.” She said it is sometimes good that I don’t adhere to social etiquette and push past people’s boundaries….and sometimes it’s not. She called me a free range chicken. That still makes me laugh because she said it with love.
Anyways, a year into discipleship, God had refined a lot and I showed up one day and said, “Alanna, I feel like God is telling me to delete my YouTube channel and start over because what I USED to know and what I know now are so very different.” She said, “Thank God! He told me that a year ago. Are you ready for the website?”
I had never told her about the website or about Him saying there would be a ministry in my name. I remember my eyes filling with tears when I asked what she meant. She hadn’t told me much about herself other than she had quit her job to pursue the LORD full time three years before meeting me. It didn’t take long to discover that her background was in web development and project management. She is INCREDIBLE at what she does!
Alanna single-handedly created the entire website. When God told me to write Walk Around Your City, A Call To Pray, I told Him I didn’t have time. I couldn’t imagine doing all the work to make a book happen. Alanna encouraged me to just say yes to God. She said, “If He tells you what to write, I’ll format it for publishing for you.” One day I woke up and in a handful of hours, the book was done. I emailed the file and she did the rest.
It is SUCH a delight to sit down with the LORD and talk to Him! Writing that book was EASY.
One day last September on a flight out west, a line started repeating in my mind and on a three and a half hour flight, a recovery book flowed out of me. I handed it off, Alanna formatted it and it will be released soon.
Alanna is the little redhead in my picture.
Then along came Chyla. I was preparing to teach a Bible study and a friend said she had invited someone to the Bible study and she felt we were to pray that Chyla would come. Chyla came. It has been almost two years and Chyla has NEVER missed a Bible study. I have, but she hasn’t. She was new to faith and SO hungry to learn more about the Bible. Her blossoming faith, her curiosity and her understanding as she learned was the most beautiful thing I had ever experienced.
Within weeks of knowing her, it made NO SENSE at all, but I sat down for my time with Alanna and said, “I can’t explain it, but this girl at Bible study… I have a sense that she is going to play a significant role in this ministry.” There were many reasons this thought seemed crazy. She didn’t even have a Bible prior to coming to Bible study, our communication was a bit challenging, but there was just this deep knowing.
Chyla, 15 years younger than me, has become my best friend, closest confidant and has taught me more about life, love and the character of God than any single person in my history. She is the kindest, most compassionate, pure hearted person I’ve ever met. When I think about Hebrews 13:2, I think about Chyla. Without telling her story, I can’t explain this, but if angels walk the earth in human disguises, I’m CERTAIN that Chyla is one of them.
Chyla is the blonde in the picture.
When God told me I was to put a copy of Walk Around Your City, A Call To Pray, in the hands of every pastor in Beavercreek and Xenia and every Christian school principal in Dayton, she volunteered to find them. She, not knowing the LORD told me to order 144 copies, found 144 names. She created Excel spreadsheets and Google maps to make the deliveries easier. She loves to ride shotgun and go out on deliveries when she’s able.
When the LORD led me to start the trinket project at Daniel’s Peace Park, she encouraged me through every step of it. She speaks about God and people in a way that naturally has me questioning the motivations of my own heart based on the purity of how she sees people. She is generous in the most quiet and unassuming ways. So much of how I now see God and people has grown from her very quiet, gentle, inquisitive nature. Chyla is by far one of the greatest treasures God has ever given me.
It’s really hard to get discouraged when Chyla is there. She gently reminds me of all the things God has taught me, all the miracles we’ve witnessed and encourages me to keep going.
Saturday, I was sitting across the picnic table on the back porch from Chyla and I said, “Sometimes I start to wonder why we bother doing any of this.” I told her about sitting on the porch swing in my front yard the day before watching two little girls across the street blowing bubbles. They would dip the stick in the wand then spin in great delight making bubbles all around them. Within seconds, the bubbles all disappeared and they’d have to do it again.
I said, “Sometimes it feels like we’re just spinning in circles making bubbles and as soon as we make them, they pop.”
I have great delight in making the bubbles! I LOVE writing as God inspires. I LOVE talking with the pastors and principals (when they finally agree to meet with me). I LOVE putting together the trinkets, filling the trinket box, pulling the prayer cards and praying over them all. I love what we’re doing, but sometimes it just feels like spinning in circles making bubbles….like our lives are held in that little tube and we’ll just spin and make bubbles till we’re out of soap.
She asked if I was discouraged. I said, “I don’t know. I just know, it feels like spinning in circles making bubbles, that’s all. I’m enjoying it. I know we’re called to it, but…..I don’t know. Maybe I’m discouraged.”
So today I was running a camera at church and the LORD started speaking to my heart. He always speaks in line with what I’m thinking. If I’m thinking about life with a certain analogy, He uses that same analogy to speak to me.
He said, “You see this image in your mind, three little girls blowing bubbles, and you wonder what’s the point. Are you just having fun? You know there’s a greater purpose, but because you’re in a season of obscurity, this is all YOU can see.”
I pulled my phone out and used Gemini to make an image of what I saw in my mind; three little girls delighting in making SO MANY BUBBLES…
After making the image, the LORD continued, “That is what YOU see. I see this.”
“The three of you have learned how to DELIGHT in My presence.
When you think of what Alanna does in this ministry, you think it seems like SO MUCH WORK… it seems hard. That’s because you were not GRACED to do what she does. What she does is a DELIGHT for her!
You sometimes feel bad because Chyla makes everything about you. She supports you, encourages you and builds you up. You want to turn around and have something to offer her, but you miss the sheer DELIGHT that she takes in helping you in any way she is able. YOU find gathering and organizing data tedious and burdensome, but I GRACED Chyla with a joy for such tasks.
I take great pleasure in watching the three of you delight in making bubbles because I see what YOU can’t see yet.
As you continue joyfully walking in fellowship with Me and with each other, you inspire others to see Me differently as well. Each of My children will relate with Me uniquely, just as the three of you are so unique in how you relate with Me. They will not all sit down to the computer to write what they hear, but when they seek Me with diligence in their hearts, truly LONGING to find Me, they will discover as the three of you girls have, the weightless JOY of a life fully surrendered to Christ.
Keep blowing bubbles. Don’t worry who’s watching or listening or why you’re doing what you’re doing. If you’re listening and obeying, you can spend every day for the rest of your lives DELIGHTING in making bubbles and I’ll take care of the rest.”
After He spoke with me, I thought about those two little girls across the street. They had NO idea I was sitting out there on that swing watching them making bubbles and squealing with delight. They had no idea that their childlike playfulness caused me to wonder what the point of everything we’re doing is. They would probably think it was odd that 24 hours later, I was still talking to God about watching them blow bubbles… they were just having fun, and we should, too!