Welcome Friend

 

If you’re here, it’s because you want to know who I am and what you’ll gain by visiting A Universe Within.  I’ll do my best to describe the author behind the scenes and I hope you’ll feel inspired along the way.

The short story:

I live in northeast Georgia with my dearest love and husband of almost 15 years and our two adorable boys.  Second only to God, my family is the most important thing to me.  I’m very close with my sibling and parents (the latter of which live only 3 minutes down a winding, hilly road from us).

I love nature, music, books, writing, coffee and tea.  I love conversation about the deeper things in life and laughing until no sound comes out.  I’m often sought out by friends to be their counselor and confidant.  I love to have my soul stirred by the beauty of the created world and I focus on making my dreams come to life.  I have remodeled two homes with my talented carpenter husband.  I enjoy the art of design, both for the home and for life.

I have come a long way from where I started, in a small town in Kansas.  Those long ago golden days of my youth hold many happy memories and several tragic ones as well.  Here you will find my lifestyle; the good, the bad, and the ugly parts of being human.  I’ll share with you the tools of how I have learned to reframe my mindset to not only chase my dreams, but catch them, using the God-given power found inside all who call Him King.

What you’ll get from my site

• You will learn how to rise up from trauma and cultivate a life of peace and joy
• You will succeed at changing your mindset from the viewpoint of scarcity to plenty
• You will obtain a set of skills to reimagine your life and then make that life reality
• You will deepen your relationship with God and learn to apply Him in all you do
• You will be inspired and become inspiring to others around you

 

The extended version:

My name is Hadassah and like my name, I’ve led a bit of an extraordinary life.  As a shy little girl, I loved to draw and write stories; creating worlds that only I knew about.  I excelled in school, read voraciously, and daydreamed a lot.  I had a big heart for stray animals and creatures in need and for many years my response to what I wanted to be bounced between, a writer, a veterinarian, and a ballerina.

I’ve always been imaginative, creative, and deeply in tune with the emotions of others.  (about 7 years ago, I learned that my Myers-Briggs personality is an E/INFJ, which accounts for less than 1% of of the population and is known as the empath of the personality world)

This truth has brought me into and out of some traumatic experiences in my life.  When I was only fifteen years old my best friend was hit by a drunk driver and sustained a massive brain injury.  He nearly died.  I went months staying by his side in the hospital and continuing to support him through rehab, many days as his only visitor, witnessing him talk and walk again for the first time.  I missed months of school, was told I couldn’t cheer the following school year because of my absences, and overall found myself in the saddest of places a young girl can find herself.

During those turbulent times, I lacked support from my other friends who couldn’t understand what I was going through (not many adults could, let alone adolecents) and I found myself seeking it in what I would come to realize was an abusive relationship that lasted the next four years.  Though not physically abusive, the mental and emotional abuse took it’s toll and at 20 years old, I felt as if there was nothing left of the tender girl who once saved baby birds and stayed by her best friends side.  There was no joy in my life and I didn’t recognize myself anymore; I was just a shell.  I made the most dramatic decision of my life to pickup and move oversea’s where my sister lived, in Austria.

While there, I wrote a lot in my journal and I remembered how much writing brought me joy.  It was a need I’d had my entire life but I had given it up along with my other dreams, during those prior years of trauma.  With time, I found my true self again.  I finally remembered who I was and why I loved her.  I returned home to the U.S. determined to return to college and make something of myself.  After bouncing between different majors I finally settled on one that made the most sense to me at the time.  I graduated magna cum laude from Wichita State University with my Bachelors of Science in Nursing.

Right before I started my nursing school journey I married the love of my life, Kirk.  Would you believe me if I told you that I wrote about my perfect mate in my journal in Austria and when I met him, I quickly realized that I may have conjured him out of thin air?!  But truly, God made him just for me.

After love, marriage, and the baby carriage we started having some real life adult problems in the way of financial hardships and the decent of a covetous spirit over my life.  I lived in a big city now with real big city friends all of who seemingly had more than me.  Bigger houses, nicer cars, finer clothes.  I found myself feeling lack in spite of all the blessings around me.

I was only working part-time because I wanted to stay home with my baby and my husband, though an extremely hard worker, was only making enough for us to live but not thrive.  We lived in an area of Kansas that didn’t have many financial opportunities.  After the birth of our second son and a failed attempt to sell our house in a down market, we moved back to that little town we’d escaped years ago.  It felt like a giant step backwards.

Just when it felt like we couldn’t get any lower, one winter morning on my long drive to work, my car slid on the ice and nearly pitched my SUV over the guardrail of an overpass down into traffic.  I was out of work for 8 long months.  As a nurse, we aren’t much good without full function of our backs.  I did physical therapy, saw specialists, and finally was referred to a pain clinic to see if they could help me with my pain.

I was not addicted to pain medicine, on the contrary, I didn’t even take any because I had two small children at home that needed a functioning mother.  I subjected myself to the best of what medicine had to offer, enduring painful injections in my back and shoulder.  It was a very hard time for me, as taking care of tiny humans who need picked up and cared for while constantly being in pain, was emotionally exhausting.

The worst thing about that time in my life wasn’t the isolation I felt or the tightening of our financial belt to survive, but the dark cloud of pain that hung over every joy in my life.  It was always there to dampen the sunshine in my life.  The beauty of the situation is that even though it was a difficult time, I remember my relationship with the Lord was so close and real.  He was truly my rock.

Finally, after exhausting western medicine, I finally found my healing in massage therapy with a dear friend of mine.  I was finally given the okay to return to work but both my husband and I felt led to follow a path the Lord had opened up to us and we relocated across the country to be closer to my parents.

Moving away from our previous life was extremely difficult but so rewarding.  We became debt free and grew in so many ways as a family; closer, stronger, spiritually sound.  I started thinking of what my life’s legacy was going to be?  While I loved helping people in my job at the hospital, I’ve never been truly satisfied with my abilities to help them to my full potential.

Years ago, during my back injury, I started exploring the world of blogging.  At the time, I knew not one lick about it and so I spent the next 7 years researching the intricate details of the blogging world.  Initially, I’d wanted to write “a year in frugality” to document how we’d pitched and squeezed every penny to survive during that season of our lives but I never found the courage to get started.

Honestly, I was procrastinating out of fear.  I was full of fear that I would be judged by my peers.  I was full of fear that I wouldn’t be perfect enough for the world of edited photo’s and everyone trying to one up everyone else.  Paralyzed by my thoughts of inadequacy, I left my dreams as that, just dreams.

Then I started asking myself some tough questions; where does fear come from?  Fear is not of God!  I realized that our mindsets rule the outcomes of our lives.  When we harness the power to control thoughts, we in turn can change our results in life.

Finally, here I am, at the end of one chapter but the beginning of another.  Now the day has come!  I have done a lot of soul work over years and I finally realized the undeniable truth that I am a daughter of the King and as such, I hold His divine power inside me.  I’ve witnessed this power first hand and I want to share how you can harness it too!

You have the power to create a life you love and I created this site, a Universe Within, where I plan to show you that you can come from poverty (yes, I was homeless for a brief time as a child), emotional discord and tragedy, uncontrolled pain and suffering and you can completely turn into a beautiful, fulfilling, rewarding dream life!

God is larger than the Universe and His spirit lives in you!