Brokenhearted Girl

Hi My Sweet Friends,

Earlier this week, I informed you that this post was going to be very transparent and raw. So, before I begin, I would like to address a few different things.

1.  The blog post you are about to read is about my PAST.  It is NOT a representation of who I am today, but it is a part of my story and who I am today. 

2.  Many of you reading this will be blessed and allow my story to change your heart. However, I know that there will also be some backlash from this post and I am prepared for that.

3.  If you are NOT  prepared for a VERY candid message, please stop reading after this sentence.

4.  For obvious reasons, I will NOT be naming any men mentioned in this blog. I would like to respect their privacy and I am asking you to do the same. Please DO NOT make assumptions because they are more than likely wrong.

Alright, let's go ahead and face our demons head on.


Last week I wrote a blog titled, "The Best Thing That Ever Happened To Me". In that blog, I shared my story of heartbreak with you. Today's story will recount of the aftermath of that heartbreak. It will convey what happens when you don't allow God to come in and properly heal your heart. It will allow you to mentally deduce what happens when you try to heal yourself, by filling the void in your heart with the wrong things.

So let's go back to the night my ex broke up with me. Now in my previous blog I mentioned that he broke up with me in his house. What I didn't mention is that I never left that night. I thought spending a night would change things. I was wrong. I spent the entire night crying myself to sleep in HIS bed.

Stupid, I know.

The next morning I woke up, packed up the few things I had there, and left to my house. I was so devastated, empty, and depressed, that I didn't even bother going to work. I knew I wouldn't make it through the day because at that point in time, I was barely making it through life.

So I get home and the whole day I just cry, sleep, wake up, realize how alone I was, and then cry and sleep again. Finally,  I woke up around 7pm and took a look through my Facebook posts. I saw that a girl I recently met had posted a message about being home alone with nothing to do. So I inboxed her and asked her if she wanted to go to a party at a local bar with me. She said yes, and I picked her up.

We go to this local party and end up chugging drink, after drink, after drink. At the time I just wanted to drink my misery away, and it just felt like there wasn't enough liquor at that bar to numb my pain, so I started chugging shots like they were water.

At that point, I had a good buzz going and my heart still felt shattered, but at least I couldn't feel the emptiness. I was surrounded by music, people and my new friend. For a moment, I forgot about how in a matter of 24 hours, my entire life had changed.

Then across the room I see an old friend. He comes over to chat and we get to talking. I eventually spill my little heart out to him about my breakup. He listens and then eventually starts becoming more flirtatious. I take the bait and flirt back. Now all of this is happening, and although I was drunk, I was still well aware of the commitment he was already in with another woman. Yet, my broken heart didn't care because anything, even this committed man, would help soothe the pain.

Eventually the night ends, he takes my friend and I home because we had too much to drink. He walks me to my door and kisses me. It could have all ended there but I decided to return the kiss. Again, not thinking about his commitment, or the fact that I just had my heart crushed the night before. I was just a broken girl looking for someone to kiss my pain away, so I let him.

That one night turned into many more nights. The many more nights we spent together, we became more attached and then we eventually slept together. We did this for months. I was well aware of the fact that he lived one life during the day, as did I, and then we lived another life together at night. I kept his secret and he kept mine, and then we kept secrets from each other.

Although I spent many nights with this one man, I still spent several other days and nights with my ex.  I just took my heart, body and time and played it like a ping pong ball between two men who didn't love me or respect me.

In the midst of dealing with the pain from my breakup, I started to to develop feelings for this new man. A man who had no hopes to commit to me or have any type of future with me. A man who saw my vulnerability and used it to his advantage. Somehow, lost in the world of my own heartbreak,  I became the exact thing that I said I would never become; a home wrecker.

It didn't just stop there. Everything about me changed. I was this new person, so careless with the things I did. I became a liar. I started to lie so much. I lied to my sister, to my best friend, to my parents, my ex, to this man and most importantly I lied to myself.

I started to have this really poisoned mentality. I convinced myself that I was just "playing my ex the way he played me" and "I was just doing me".  I was living a life of deception because deception was easier to live and deal with, than the truth of what I had allowed my life to become. I didnt have the strength or guts to turn around and look at the mess I had created. I didn't want to turn around and look at all the garbage that had ripped through the garbage bag of my life. I just wanted to keep living this lie and double life until it caught up to me. So, I just took my heartache and kept placing it in the wrong things. I took my pain and I chose to place it in my bed, in men, in liquor and in lies.

I had thought that I was playing my ex by sleeping with another man. I was determined to show him who was in charge, that I wasn't phased by him, that he didn't hurt me, and that I could move on without him. I quickly found that the ONLY person who was being played was myself. I was willing to put my body, respect, morals, happiness, wholeness and heart at risk to prove to some guy that I won! In the process of trying to win, I lost it all.

In all of my life, in all of the things I had experienced, this was my rock bottom. It didn't end there. There were many other things that took place after but I will save that for another day.

It took me almost 2 whole years to look back at my life, grab my pain and drag it to God. He came in like a wrecking ball and just started cutting out all the poisonous people and things I had allowed in my life. I Started to lose friends, exes, men, and all types of things.

I was literally so committed to just allowing God to pull me together and fix me that I stood home all the time. I still stay home a ton because I don't need to go out there and continue to place my life into the wrong things. My life is precious. I am responsible for the things I allow to come in and out of my life and I have learned to protect it. I'm not the vulnerable girl I used to be, but it took me a really long time to get here.

When I consider who I was a few years ago, I see that the pain and hurt didn't just come from my ex. It came from all kinds of things that I never allowed God to deal with. My ex leaving me was just the last drop of water that made the bucket tip over. The pain he caused me was familiar to my heart and it's defense mechanism was to guard itself. I had taken the pain that my father caused me, my stepmother caused me, my mother caused me and my previous ex caused me and I allowed it to build up until I become reckless with my life and my decisions. I enabled others to hurt me, use me, and taken advantage of me. I became OK with hurting myself and being vulnerable to hurt.

I'm not proud of who I use to be. I was hateful, unforgiving, malicious, deceitful, a home wrecker, messy, and insecure in who I was.

I was filthy.

I share this story with you in hopes of you realizing that you too can overcome your sins and faults, even the worst of them. The only thing you CANNOT do is change your own heart. That's impossible for you to do. You don't have the power to take years of pain, sin, filth and destruction and transform it into goodness. You do not have that power and neither did I.

It wasn't an easy road for me. I had to fight my way through this.

My whole life I had battled with feeling alone. I always felt alone as a child and that feeling just overtook my life and became natural for me as an adult. When I was a little girl, my mother wasn't always an active part of my life.  Because of this, I felt as though I wasn't enough. I felt if I had been enough, she would have fought harder to remain in my life. I felt as though her love for me wasn't enough to want to stay. Then, as an adolescent I battled with a stepmother who didn't accept me for a very long time. She had married a man she loved, but she had an extremely hard time adjusting to accepting his children. She treated me unfairly and often did things to hurt me emotionally. Again, I felt alone and as if I just wasn't enough to love. Then, I battled with my father,  who often was stuck between choosing his wife or choosing his daughters. He often chose to protect his wife, and overlook the things he saw. I wanted so badly for my dad just to once see the truth and see what was going on in our home but he always chose to ignore it. Again, I felt alone and as though I was wasn't enough to protect and love. Eventually things became so bad at home that my father kicked me out of his house.

I thought my life would be better once I left my dad's house, but that's when my life exploded. So at this point I clung to the only thing I had left and that was my high school sweetheart. Again, I was disappointed. I found out he not only cheated on me, but he cheated while I was at work, he cheated before I came to his house, he cheated after I left his house and he had girls in my car. I found out that there was not just one girl he was sleeping with but there were many. He had other girls paying for stuff he gave me. He had friends covering up for him and I was so blind that I didn't see any of this. He cheated on me for 2 whole years, with the same girl and then many others and I did not even notice once. Finally, one day, he got so fed up with having to hide his cheating, he left me. So, I started hanging out with girls who did a ton of drugs, slept with tons of men, did witchcraft and had no moral compass. I didn't do a lot of what they did but I surrounded myself with these people who didn't care for me and were no good for my life. I also had no where to really live at that time. I literally, for almost 6 years, jumped from house to house. I partied every single weekend and was always high or drunk and just crashed at some random friends house. It was really the only thing that helped me temporarily forget how alone I felt.

During that time in my life, I could be in a room full of people and inside my heart I felt as though I had no place to call home, no one who cared for me and no one who loved me. No matter how many people said it or showed it, somehow, the devil had convinced me that I was not worthy enough of fighting for, I was not worthy enough to love and I was not worthy enough to have a home I could call my own.

All of the stuff you just read, led me to make bad choices with men and in life. I never confronted issues I had and I NEVER had the strength to leave things that were toxic to my life, and for the life of me, I could not forgive those who had hurt me.

That stuff happened for years and years and years. Until.....

I found Jesus.

He's loved me in ways my parents failed to love me. He's loved me in ways men have failed to love me. He's loved me in ways I have failed to love me. He's completely changed my life. There had been days that His love alone was the reason I woke up, and even the reason I ended up not taking my own life. His love alone was the reason I would wake up and do something with myself, even when I felt like there was no purpose to my life. I don't know who I would be if He never came into my life to rescue me. I don't even know if I would be sitting here writing this blog to you. That's how low my life was, that how hopeless I had become.

Today I am FREE! I am so, so, so FREE! I rejoice in that. I'm so different than who I used to be. I'm content in my singleness, in being alone, in being set apart from other people. I am content in who I am. I am content in my purpose for life. I am content! The things he has taken out of my life, He has replaced with greater and bigger things and for that I am deeply grateful.

The spirit of loneliness that used to haunt my life and hold me prisoner, hardly ever comes knocking at more door anymore. He already knows that I will not answer. He already knows that he has lost control of my life. He used to come banging at my door, trying to kick it down, to destroy my life again, but I would sit there crying out to God, and tell loneliness to go away and that he wasn't welcomed anymore. Eventually after all the pounding and banging, the spirit of loneliness left my life because I never opened when he came around.

Today, as I sit here and blog, I am content, whole, happy, I've forgiven my past and the people who hurt me, and my mindset is SOOOOO different.

I will be the first to admit that I have made SOOOO many mistakes and I had often gone back to my old lifestyle, but I have NEVER gone back and remained comfortable living that way. The reason for that is because God hasn't allowed anything to separate us, even when I have. At the club, in the bar, even while having sex with some undeserving man, the sweetest, most gentle, most loving voice always whispers, "Daughter, I am for YOU. I love you. These things you allow in your life won't give you the satisfaction, love and peace that I have to offer you. Daughter, come back to me." and I did.

I share this blog, my life, my past and my mistakes with you ladies to inspire you.  I was broken once and I fought like crazy to become who I am today, to break free of those things that held me captive. I want you to know that if someone so broken and ugly as I was can be transformed, then you can too.

Initially this blog was written to encourage young women not to sleep around and give their bodies away so freely. I hope you got that message, but I also pray that you understand that you can overcome ANYTHING.

I see you ladies posting statuses about your unfaithful husbands/boyfriends, your deadbeat baby daddies, your backstabbing friends and your struggles. This breaks my heart.

So I wanted to share my story with you in hopes that you would find encouragement, keeping pressing into God's promises, keep your eyes focused on Christ and fight like crazy to win your life back.

You can do it. You're an overcomer, Darling.

Stop placing your hope in sex, money, men, drugs, drunkenness and things that serve you no good. Pour your life and time into Jesus, because He is the only One who will ALWAYS be FOR you. He won't temporarily just numb your pain, but He will take it away and make you whole! He is the only one who can take the shattered pieces of your heart and perfectly place them back together again.

Rest in that promise, Darlings. He is for YOU!

Before I left you go, I would like to ask that you share this with as many women as possible. 

Jessica Torres

Founder of Beauty of Encouragement

The Best Thing That Ever Happened To You

Beloved,

God came and really exposed our hearts yesterday, didn't He?! He really showed us how ugly we can get. Trust me ladies, I'm right there with you. He's working in my heart as I minister to you all. Thankfully we have a loving and forgiving God!

Now, clear your mind, open your heart and let's welcome change into our hearts.

Today's blog will have some of you ladies breaking up with your man, ending one-sided friendships and walking away from people who serve no purpose in your life.

Let's give a standing ovation to that!!! What a thing to celebrate.

2014 is about one goal. That goal is to better yourselves and to remain FOCUSED on all things good. 

That's an excellent goal BUT we can't do that if we are constantly being surrounded by people who drown us in their negativity, selfishness, and greed. Those people will kill us emotionally, spiritually and they will take years of joy, happiness and peace from us.

Hunny, you've got to grab that life vest, buckle it up, fight for your life, and swim to safety! Swim fast and don't look back.

People like that will take from you until you have nothing left to give. Most times you are so focused on serving and loving them that you're too blind to see their mediocre giving to your life. 

I bet you can name a few people like this in your life, right?

I battled with this for a long time. With all kinds of people. Men, friends and even family. I was allowing certain people to take and take and take until I had nothing left to give. So, when I had nothing else left to offer them they eventually left me or wanted nothing to do with me. 

There are a few examples I can use, but I'm going to use the one below because most women can resonate with it.

A few years ago, I dated a man who I had been friends with for years. I had been single for quite some time and I was getting kind of lonely. He was single and I was single, so we gave it a shot.  We dated and eventually our entire relationship became centered around what I gave and what I had to offer and what I was willing to sacrifice. I was a fool in love and so blinded by loneliness that I just didn't see his heart or his intentions. After almost a year and a half of pouring my all into this man he decided that he didn't want to be with me anymore. Yep, just like that.

We're in his kitchen and he's telling me it's over and that this is what was best for me. You know, the typical breakup line. I just couldn't believe he would end things after all I did for our relationship. I kept saying "You don't know what I need. You don't know what makes me happy."  The truth is neither did I. I didn't know what I needed and I sure as heck didn't know what made me happy.  I had placed my happiness in the hands of some human and I wanted what was due to me. I just wanted to be loved in return. I just wanted the same measure of effort, time, love and commitment returned to me.

So after an hour of begging and pleading, he takes me, looks in my eyes and says, "Later in life you'll look back and this will be the best thing that happened to you. You deserve better."

I was BROKEN. You know the kind of broken that has you crying never ending tears, leaves your stomach feeling empty and has your body thinking your heart was just ripped out of your chest? That kind of broken. The pain was so overwhelming. My heart was shattered. And the most ironic part about it all is that for months I had been telling my best friend how unhappy this SAME man had made me. Yet, I still wanted him. He was my comfort blanket and I wasn't letting go.

Loneliness will do that.  It will have you stay in a relationship/ friendship you are not happy in JUST because it brings temporary satisfaction.

It took me a very long time to heal from that heartbreak. Mainly because I had invested so much time and because it was similar to a relationship I had experienced years before. It was like history was repeating itself. I blamed it on "God teaching me a lesson" but in reality I just never took the time to wait for the right relationship, so I settled for a bunch of second bests.

Thankfully here I am a few years later and now I can see that the words my ex spoke that night came to life. Now I know that I have to take accountability for who I allow in my life and in my heart. The bible repeatedly says "guard your heart" . It wasn't just some nice little gesture Jesus wanted to share with us. It was a WARNING! He was telling us to go purchase that fancy state-of-the-art security system and protect our pretty little hearts with it because people were going to try to come in to ruin , steal and destroy it. 

Emotions have a funny way of making us believe that we need things that don't add value to our life. So, most times, you still hangout with that backstabbing friend, date that cheating boyfriend, or stay in that pointless relationship all because your emotions are telling you that you won't make it alone. All because your emotions are telling you that God doesn't have a bigger and better plan for you.

We know what we deserve and it usually doesn't come when WE want it to, so instead we just settle for the next "best" thing that comes along. Then when that fails, we are on our knees asking God why we are in so much pain. A pain we caused ourselves because we didn't patiently wait for Him to reveal His PERFECT plan to us. Instead, we rather spend years investing our time into things that were never meant for us. 

How foolish is that?

Ladies, this mentality will hurt us! Allowing the wrong people to stay in our lives WILL alter where we end up in life. It will delay our blessings and hinder us from finding true happiness. 

Examine your life. Examine the people in your life. Examine yourself. Examine what you allow and what you tolerate. 

Are there things or people who don't belong? If there are, get them out of your life NOW. Your time, heart and love is PRECIOUS!!!! Do not waste it on anything and everything.

 Cut those people and things off NOW!

But remember to do it all with love. Love them from a distance. Don't bash them. Don't wish the worst on them. Just tell them good riddance, show them the door and lock it. 

This is going to be hard,  Ladies. All change is hard but in due time it will be "the best thing that ever happened to you". I encourage you to be strong, to seek God's strength,  love and healing. 

Remember.......

HIS plan is perfection. Stop trying to control your life! He's God. He's got it handled.

Jessica Torres

Founder of Beauty of Encouragement  

Ugly Little Mouth

Ladies,

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog. I am so excited to pour love, encouragement and motivation into your life. Please bare with me because it may not always be perfect, but I promise it will always be sincere.

Can you believe we are already three days into the new year. Gosh, how amazing is that? A whole new year full of endless opportunities and blessings. I know that soon the New Year hype will start to dim down and you'll start feeling a little discouraged and your motivation will not be as high as it was on January 1st. That's OK, because we will all have those times and we need to encourage each other to stay focused on the goal. So, think of this blog as a place to refresh your mindset!

I encourage you to share this blog with as many women as possible. Just like you there are tons of other women out there lacking encouragement, feeling beaten down by life, and simply ready to throw in the towel.

OK, so here we go..... Are you ready for this new journey? I am and I'm on fire for change.



Encouragement- the action of giving someone support, confidence, or hope


Wow, how awesome is that? the definition of encouragement is to GIVE someone else support, confidence or hope. 

Now, let's meditate on that for a minute......

Encouragement is a gift we are able to give to others. A gift we are able to speak into someones life. A gift that can support, restore hope or encourage someone else not to give up on life, to keep pushing, to keep fighting. However, too many times we take this beautiful gift and spike it with hate, jealousy and bitterness. 

Are you guilty of this? I sure am. I have also been on the receiving end of that and let me tell you, it's an UGLY feeling. 

I remember telling certain family members about my goal to open a business in my home. Immediately after finishing my sentence they started to speak negativity into my dream. It was almost as though they were just waiting for me to finish my sentence  so that they could tell me how I was going to fail. I felt hurt and upset and I even yelled at them. I mean, how could they? This was important to me. This could mean so much for my life and my finances. Without even thinking, they just started to stab at my dream as if MY DREAM was attacking them. I was mad, hurt, confused and upset. Then God reminded me that I don't need people to validate the gifts, dreams, hopes and visions HE has planted in me. I don't need people to validate my existence. He already did that! 

Now that's all nice and dandy, right? Jesus validated my worth, now I should feel free from people's negativity. Well, to be honest, I wasn't. I was enraged. I kept thinking of how my family should have been more supportive, uplifting and encouraging. In reality they weren't because they just simply didn't know how to. Generations and generations of people have this mindset of defeat. They are defeated in their minds, so out their mouth comes the same thing. 

That is when this very blog came into existence. I decided that I was going to speak encouragement into someones life every single day and I was going to be that tiny little voice that tells them "you can do it. Keep pushing through.".

Too many times we speak because we feel like it's our duty to the world. Too often we don't think about what we are about to say before we say it. Too many times we hurt people with our words and lack of encouragement.

Imagine encouragement like a gift you are giving someone. It's in the prettiest gold box with the perfect glitter polka dot wrapping paper, and wrapped around the box is the biggest, prettiest , perfect,  red ribbon. The wrapping of this gift is simply amazing and makes you excited to open your gift . There must be something beautiful inside. You can already tell because the gift wrapping is so thoughtful. So after anxiously waiting for so long you finally open your beautiful box. BUTTTTTT, You can't help but notice the awful stench coming from inside. As you make your way through the tissue paper, you feel something cold and slimy. Oh my goodness, your hand just touched a dead rat. In that beautiful box you were gifted a dead RAT!!!!! 

How do you feel? Disappointed? Forgotten? Upset? Angry? like a fool? Maybe even a combination of all those emotions? I mean, who would take the time to wrap such a beautiful box knowing it's filled with a rat?!

Has this happened to you? Have you gifted someone with something so special to your heart, only to find that in return they gave you back hate? We often gift our dreams up and hand them out to people we feel will support us and too often they taint our dreams with their poisonous words. 

It hurts, right?


So Beloved, WHY ON EARTH DO YOU DO THE SAME TO OTHERS? Why not do the opposite? 

Now, think of all the people who tell us their dreams and hopes. They are gifting us with their hearts desires and wishes, and in return we give them back a pretty little box filled with the negativity rat. We replace their dreams with our stinky opinions, our doubt, our hate and our negative words. 

It's a never ending cycle of negativity until someone breaks it. So......

Today, I encourage you to be mindful of all your words, your actions and your thoughts. Filter EVERYTHING! Speak encouragement. Speak life. BE that hope that people so desperately need! It starts in your mind and then it will pour out of your mouth. So today start by thinking positive thoughts and then speak on those positive thoughts. I challenge you to do this with me and see how it changes your day and your world. You may even change someones life, just by one thoughtful, encouraging, warm word.

Remember, your words have the power to speak life or death. Do not be careless with your words. Be accountable for what you say to others and to yourself. God himself brought things to life and ended things with just WORDS. He formed the world with words, "let there be light" and so there was. You too have the power to do the same with your mouth and words. What will you allow your words to bring to your life and the lives of those around you?

Go out there and be a spokesperson for love, hope, and all things good. Once you do this the universe will return it all back to you. 

I know we can do this, ladies! One GOOD thought and word at a time. Baby steps.

Please be sure to email us with how this new way of living and thinking has changed your day or life. We look forward to hearing from you.

Jessica Torres
Founder of Beauty of Encouragement