And by the way. my name means "Grace..."

The simplest and clearest way to explain the whole purpose of my writing is something like this:

Everything I write is meant to spread the news of what God is doing in my life and the lives of those I know; to encourage and bless others; and most of all to give all the glory to My heavenly Father. Simple.

To understand the rest of it you'll have to understand God's work over the course of my life. I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior when I was 16 years old (praise the Lord!). Before that I was... Lost. Dead. Completely and utterly suffocated by sin.  Even in that state, God had a plan for my life. He had special gifts for me that He would eventually teach me how to use to serve Him. He threw those gifts in as a part of me during my creation, and I was born with them. The thing is, gifts like that in the wrong hands can only be used against us. And whose hands are we in when we're not with God? Yeah... Those would be the devil's. Really bad hands.

So what's the gift? Seeing. That includes having visions and being able to actually physically see spiritual things and beings, among other things. How did that go wrong? Honestly, Satan used those gifts to terrify and torment me. I can remember at an early age being in my room at night and seeing horrible things right there next to me. There would be strange men hovering over my bed; gruesome looking creatures staring at me as I tried to go to sleep... Anything and everything that would possibly scare a kid, pretty much. Then sometimes I would close my eyes and have visions of my family being tortured or my house burning down or someone shooting me repeatedly. This probably began to happen when I was around 7 or so. In the morning, it was easy to convince myself that it was all my imagination. I knew well enough then that no matter how real everything seemed, only "crazy people" saw things. So I went through my childhood years struggling with immense fear and honestly, wondering if I was nuts. I was so afraid that I crawled into bed with my parents almost every night until I was at least 13 and even after that I still repeated this embarrassing behavior occasionally. I was terrified.

Fast forward to 20 years old (almost a year ago). From 16 to this point, I had stopped seeing things. No more visions. No more spirits. Nothing.  Everything from my childhood I just chalked up to my being a huge scaredy cat and an active imagination. However, the truth was this: that when I became a Christian I no longer belonged to the devil. He could not choose to use my gift against me anymore. What I didn't realize during that time was that none of those things had gone away; they were just dormant until God, the true ruler of my life, chose to activate them.

When He did, I wanted to check myself into a loony bin. When you're an adult, you can tell the difference between real and imaginary. First the Lord began to give me visions. This I could have confused as being "just me" except for the fact that he was showing me events and actions that would  not occur until a few minutes, an hour, or a day later than when I saw them. Cool. The Lord was giving me a little flair for the prophetic. I didn't mind. Up until a couple months before this, I had been pretty closed off to the Holy Spirit. I didn't really believe in spiritual gifts or anything like that. The prophetic thing was honestly a little bit of a shock to me. So imagine the first time I saw a spiritual being in broad daylight. I thought I was whacked out. Luckily, through the help of God, my then fiance (now husband), and many other brothers and sisters in Christ, I was able to get through it and gain understanding of what the Lord was beginning to do in my life.

Over the last year, the Lord has shown me many things and taken that gift to entirely new levels. I am seeing the power of God demonstrated daily. It's a blessing to be present in places that He is working. Overall, I feel extremely humbled and grateful to be used and to have the ability to encourage others.

I started this blog as an answer to Satan's lies-- That I have nothing valuable to say. That people won't want to hear it or won't believe me. That people are going to think I'm crazy. The mere fact that he attacks me in these areas gives me confidence that I am meant to speak out about what God is doing. Silencing the Lord's people is all part of stealing God's glory; and that's really what the devil wants. Recording the visions the Lord gives me here is a decision not to give in to that. I will not be silenced.

So there's the backstory for you. Hopefully you'll check in every once in a while to see some of the cool things God is up to. :)

Peace, Love, and Christ
Kharis