Her Closet Conversations

Alena's Closet Conversation

October 10, 2021 Alena Season 1 Episode 1
Her Closet Conversations
Alena's Closet Conversation
Show Notes Transcript

Welcome to Closet Conversations in today's Episode, Alena shares with us why she started a podcast and what it means to FAITH IT!
 
 She answers the question for the week before walking us through her life journey, giving us a seat inside of Her Closet Conversations with  God. 
 
 Check out Alena's Blog here: https://www.heralabaster.com/blog/

Tag  Alena on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heralabaster/

Follow Her Closet Conversations here: https://www.instagram.com/herclosetconversations/
 
 
I am excited to hear what you thought of this episode!'
 
Keep Faithing it!

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Welcome to her closet conversations podcast where we discuss the thoughts you have in your head that no one knows. I'm Alena, I'm the creator of Her Alabaster. I'm a wife and a mother. I'm so excited you guys, this is my first podcast. God has me on this journey called life. And I'm hoping to encourage women to life experiences of myself and other women. So please join me every Sunday, as we have candid conversations about life, in our personal experiences, and how we can have the courage to be vulnerable. Faithing it while God unfolds our purpose. So it's our first official episode. I'm so excited, y'all. So last week, I asked the question, do you have faith in God, but lack the trust in Him to do what He has called you to do? The definition I gave was, if faith is the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen, trust, being the assured reliance on someone's character, I had to faith it all week, your girl didn't think she would make it. Work. Family, I was struggling to balance it all. But I knew I could make it it was just in the midst. I couldn't see it and that my friends is facing it. Well, I guess I should tell you a little bit about myself and this journey to her closet conversations. I'm from the land of the sun, sun and sea, basically, or you vacation. I grew up in the Bahamas and moved to Florida in 2000. About a year after moving my parents then separated, which caused me to doubt God, this doubt planted a seed of fear within me. I remember seeing I wasn't getting married, because how could I trust anyone, like, forever ever, ever ever marriage was a long time. then here comes me at 24 wanting to get married. And my mom thought I should wait because I was still in school. But I figured that God would work it out. It's amazing how we want God to work it out when it's convenient for us. those early years of marriage were a struggle because I didn't want my marriage to be anything like my parents on I wanted to correct all the mistakes. I saw through a child's eyes, which cause issues in my marriage. I remember my husband telling me that he wasn't my father, which made me realize I needed to deal with something's going on internally within me. This year, we hit the big 17 Thank God. He's so faithful 17 years. My husband was in the Navy and we had been married about five years. And after deployment, I got pregnant. He was not expecting that children were not even on my radar. And then I had a miscarriage. This miscarriage water the seed of fear that had already been planted inside of me. It made me feel Though I wasn't whole, I was broken. Why could my body hold a baby? Why couldn't they do the simple thing that it was made for? After having over 13 miscarriages? My husband and I looked into fertility. But the way the medicine made me feel and the doctor visits every month in a room filled with other women, knowing I wasn't pregnant, because I just didn't feel I was became, it became mentally too much. So I never told my husband, by the doctor, that I had stopped taking the medication in the middle of the treatments. Plus, we had just found out my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. And honestly, I was starting to feel like I was in a boat in the middle of the ocean with a big hole. And I was going now fast. I didn't want to tell anybody how I felt because everyone thought I was so strong and handling everything so well, when really inside. I want to pretend that life wasn't happening to me. one weekend, my mom came to visit me from Miami, and we were sitting in the car about to go into JC Penney, when she asked me, if I would stand in the gap for her. Tears begin to start to roll down my face. As I told her I couldn't. I wanted to. But I didn't want to be the weakest link. I didn't want my faith to be the cause of our life. About six months later, I found out I was pregnant. And I had a dream that my mom is holding my baby and she looks so young and vibrant. So I just knew she would be healed from cancer. And I told everyone I told her and I believed it and I prayed for it. Unfortunately, she passed that December and my baby girl was born. The following June. Her passing led me into a depression that continued on until after I had my baby for about three years. I mean a new baby. No mom. I just didn't know how to handle it. And, Lord, forgive me. I asked him to take me to my mom on many days, I just wanted her a person I had no my whole life. She was the only person in my mind that would be able to console me. But as my daughter grew, I learned to love her and realize that she had nothing to do with my mom's death. The two were separate. And we needed to make our memories. She was a gift. The child I prayed for that I thought I would never have. And I wanted. I didn't want her experience to be of her mom being sad all the time. Around this time, my husband, he left the Navy and started working overseas. This was the period of my life where friendships that I have now began to form and we we built the foundation, we would carpool the kids to school, you know, one would drop off, one would pick up everybody got to work on time. Holidays, it was like family, we had a system we helped each other out. Life was going so good that I lost my job. It was like life would not stop happening. And so the path depression returned with feelings like I was a failure. I had no purpose. What was I doing with my life? I even started breaking out in hives for no reason at all. And anxiety and stress will do that to you. I asked God Is this my portion. I started calling all out to the one person I knew to call that would come through in the midst of the storm. I started yearning for a deeper relationship with God I wanted a personal one with him. To him speak to me to have an understanding of his word. So I started to find a church home. I was no longer being fed at my current church and I wanted to be active I wanted to serve the Lord in whatever capacity I could. And as my relationship with God grew the my question got about his promises what his words said, which led me to ask God for my purpose why he created me December 2016, he told me to do something. And from that obedience, Her Alabaster was born. I remember reading the story of how Mary broke her alabaster box over Jesus feet and wash them. And jokingly, I always said, I would have poured out a little and save some for me. How foolish of me. Jesus doesn't want some of us. He wants all he wants, he doesn't want anything left inside of us. He wants it all. And from that story came Her Alabaster. Then the women game, the women were reminders of different times in my life, different things that as women we go through how could we use them as examples of God's goodness. Sarah was a woman of expectation and how she was waiting, trusting God on his promise. And she reminded me of my season of expectation when I was trusting God for something that I could not see. And he did it. Ruth was the blessing of friendship that I had in my life, and how women needed each other as we go through the highs and lows of life. Esther, you know, she reminded me that God gave me a daughter that I had influenced over. And he made me for such a time to be her mother. And so I had to be wise, with the ways that I loved and nurtured her. I started a women's group pushing the responsibility on others, because I didn't feel worthy of the calling, thinking I had to be perfect. Not wanting to be placed under a microscope. But Dorcas, she taught me how to build together as a women, how to come together and build community. And the woman at the well, well, in 2017, I went to a retreat. And we did an exercise where we spoke the reverse of what we told ourselves. As I looked in a mirror, tears begin to flow because I realized that I didn't believe those words, as I said them. And that made me sad. I had to acknowledge the things that I thought about that no one knew. Did I believe that I was fearfully and wonderfully made? Did I believe that God had a plan for me, that I was worthy to receive that all that God has shown me for my life? Was I a good mom? was a good wife, friend, could I complete the tasks that God had given me? what I felt was enough. Why did I have these feelings of less? Which led me to her closet conversations? What are the thoughts that you have that scare you that no one knows. You do not say out loud. The more I ask women, the more it seemed as if they were having the same conversations with themselves. How we needed to know what God had to say. Psalms 139 14 says I thank you God for making me so mysteriously complex. Everything you do is marvelously breathtaking. It simply amazes me to think about it. How thoroughly you know me, Lord, wow, marvelously. breathtaking. That's what God says about you in me. That's the story of how God brought me to her closet conversations, and one conversation at a time, we will come back the thoughts that no one knows we have. But before I leave here, here's our question for the week. What thoughts are you having in your head? And are you ready to confront them? Next week, I'll start with my response. But don't forget, new podcasts will drop every Sunday on Apple, Spotify and amazon music. You can find our Instagram page at her closet conversations, and me at Her Alabaster. Please don't forget to like, subscribe and share. Until next week. Keep facing it.