From Lost to Found: Finding Peace in the Midst of Chaos

By Sharon Brannen

My mother was a princess because her father was the King of Kings! Somehow she always knew she was a princess. But it wasnt until she began to experience the debilitating effects of ALS and was forced to be still that she was truly able to know her Father and know that He was God. And in coming to know Him, she came to know peace.

And when was I finally still enough to know? It wasnt during my Catholic-school upbringing as it could have been. I learned of God there, but I did not come to know Him there. What I did come to know there was an overwhelming fear of Him. In fact, by the time I was introduced to AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) at age thirty-four, I thought I was going to hell. I was certain that I had broken all of the Ten Commandments except for maybe thou shalt not kill. And it was even possible that I had broken that one in a blackout.

I had felt lost for most of my life, and therefore, had lived a life of chaos and uncertainty. My quest for peace began sometime in my midthirties, when I decided to get sober, but it wasnt until years later that I would truly find that peace. Unbeknownst to me, there was something blocking my progresssomething I thought had been resolved within myself many years earlier. It was only through the death of my mother that I was finally able to move forward and find freedom from the self-sabotage that had kept me stuck for so long.

This is the story of my journey from lost to found, my quest for peace. It is a journey that would take me deep into the darkest corner of my soul and back. A journey that, unknowingly, would lead me to God. My hope is that it provides you with an understanding of what it truly means to be still. And that in being still, you find peace. Safe travels and may God bless you along your journey as I know he will continue to bless me along mine.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: May 30, 2017
• ISBN: 9781504381109

Sharon Brannen

Sharon Brannen was born in St Louis, Missouri and moved to Texas with her family at the age of 13. She has resided in the Houston metropolitan area ever since. Sharon was a Licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor for 15 years before going back to school in 2009 to attain her Associates Degree in Nursing. She graduated from nursing school in 2012, and in 2013, began her second career as a Hospice Nurse - what she considers to be her true calling. Following the death of her mother in 2016, Sharon was inspired to write her memoir. After many years of struggling in her own life, she has come to believe that peace is attainable by all. Her goal in telling her story is to inspire others in search of something more to find their inner truth, and in doing so, find Peace.

Book preview

Copyright © 2017 Sharon Brannen, RN.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Balboa Press

A Division of Hay House

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.balboapress.com

1 [phone]

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-5043-8109-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-8111-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-8110-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017908175

Balboa Press rev. date: 05/27/2017

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1: The Awakening

Chapter 2: The Beginning, Or Not …

Chapter 3: Her Lost Years

Chapter 4: My Childhood

Chapter 5: My Lost Years

Chapter 6: My Sons

Chapter 7: I Couldn’t Be Alone

Chapter 8: My Journey To Peace

Chapter 9: Her Journey To Peace

Chapter 10: The Gifts

Chapter 11: The Patients, The Joy

Chapter 12: Found

About The Author

For my mother, who, as the ultimate gift, allowed me to see God in her blue eyes.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am certain that I have forgotten someone in trying to put this all down on paper, so please, if you are the one, forgive me. I promise it wasn’t intentional. To you, along with the following, and everyone that ever has been and ever will be part of my story, THANK YOU FROM THE VERY DEPTHS OF MY SOUL!

GOD-for EVERYTHING!

Mom-for allowing me to see God in her blue eyes.

Derik and Dylan-for being my inspiration and reason to change, and for never stopping loving me through all the craziness and wrong decisions.

Barbie-for unconditionally loving my son and my grandbabies.

Jaci-Layne, Gabe, EZ, and Danica-just for being my beautiful babies.

Tanya-for being my positive reinforcement any time I started to stray.

Barb-for never doubting for a moment that I would one day be a famous author.

Terri, Gerri, Tracy, Mandy, and Lily-for their honesty and direction in helping me bring it all together.

My sisters-for being part of the story that made me who I am.

Dr. Aaron Chapa-for teaching me how to care for my body while encouraging and guiding me in growing my spirit.

Brandon-for teaching me that we all have the power to do absolutely anything.

My patients and their families-for allowing me to share their stories with the world.

Hay House-for the guidance and support through the writer’s workshop and introduction to the many spiritual leaders that have become such a part of my life today.

Life- for giving me all that I could ever want and more.

INTRODUCTION

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.

—Henry David Thoreau

When do we find God? And who really finds who? Do we find Him, or does He find us? Is it when He’s ready to show himself, or when we’re ready to see Him? Those are some of the questions that I used to ask myself. Today, however, I don’t question it at all, because today it doesn’t matter who found who. What does matter is that I am no longer lost.

One thing I know is that I could not have found Him or been found by Him until I was ready. In fact, as I look back over my life, I can tell you of many failed attempts that He made to enter my life before I was ready. Or were they failures? Is it even possible that God has failed at anything? But each time He came close, it was as though I ran and hid under the bed for fear of Him finding me. I knew that if He did find me, He would see the truth, and in seeing that truth, He wouldn’t accept me just as no one else had ever accepted me. It was that fear of rejection that kept me lost for so many years.

Maybe the first attempt He made to enter my life was when I was baptized as a baby. Because I was raised Catholic, that was how it was: I was born, and shortly after, I was baptized. Without my having any sense of awareness as to what was going on, someone put holy water on my head and said I was a Christian and was cleansed. And why did I need cleansing when I was a pure and innocent being? I hadn’t yet had time to dirty myself, to need cleansing. The cleansing should have come a little further down the line, after I had become soiled and impure, after I had violated several of the Ten Commandments, after I had turned to the outside for my salvation. I had not known to turn inward, and I don’t know if it was because I hadn’t listened or because I hadn’t been taught. I went to Catholic school through eighth grade, so one would have thought that someone would have said something during that time. Maybe they did, but I missed it.

He may have attempted to come into my life again when I was sixteen. I was in a motor vehicle accident where the truck in which I was a passenger rolled several times. I was thrown out the back window and survived with only minor injuries. I’m certain that it never crossed my mind that that was God attempting to slow me down, redirect me, and guide me to Him. But, how would I have known to look at it that way unless I had been taught by someone? Perhaps that is where the lesson lies—in teaching our young to look for God. Today, I know to look for Him, but I did not know that when I was a child, or even through most of my adult years. Because I did not learn it as a child, my life took me down a road that did not invite me to learn it as an adult.

I never liked church as a child. Maybe because we had to go every day except Saturday. And maybe because we had to wear little lace doily-looking things pinned to our heads with bobby pins. And maybe because Catholic mass seemed like it lasted forever. And maybe because sometimes the priest swung this weird thing around that had steam coming out of it, and it stunk. And maybe because we had to go in this little room with the priest and tell him everything we had done wrong, and he punished us by making us say a bunch of prayers. Or maybe it was because I was slightly ADHD. Whatever the reasons, when I no longer had to go, I did not go. As I got older and began breaking more and more of those Ten Commandments, I could not find it within myself to go. I could not face Him as He hung there on opulent display, on the cross in the front of the church, and judged me.

Nevertheless, God continued His attempts to reach me over and over throughout my life. He never stopped trying, and He never gave up on me. I got glimpses of Him here and there, but nothing was strong enough to hold my attention for very long, until either I was ready or He was ready. I have come to believe that at any point, had I been able to shed that cloak of despair and shame and regret, and had I allowed Him one small space, He would have entered. But it wasn’t until I was fifty-six years old, when He gazed out at me through the sparkling blue eyes of my dying mother, that without a moment’s hesitation, I opened up and let Him in.

I implore you to give Him that space. No matter how old or young you are, shed that cloak, whatever it may be, and let Him in. Whether it be through friends, family, church, Alcoholics Anonymous, science, or even this book, let Him in, and He will take it from there. How it comes about doesn’t matter, only that it comes about. As I have learned through my own spiritual journey, we cannot live the life that God has prepared for us until it comes about, and the life that He has prepared for us is unbelievable. It’s a life filled with love and peace and truth and honesty and forgiveness and self-healing—a life beyond anything we could have envisioned for ourselves. As for me, I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.

But I did not get there easily. I spent many years way out there and then many more right on the edge, seeking Him but not quite able to grab hold and hang on. As I’ve come to realize the role that self-image plays in our belief or non-belief in God, it makes sense that I had a hard time getting there. I did not, or could not, love myself for most of my life. Therefore, if we are to move toward creating a more God-conscious society, we must start by teaching our children to love themselves. As a society, we tend to focus on church as the way in which to lead our children to God. Church is one option; I simply don’t believe it is the only way. And it may not do much good if they are filled with self-hate due to some external factor. They may come to know of God in church, as I did, but not actually come to know Him, which I believe to be the ultimate goal.

Our focus needs to be on teaching our children, from the time they are old enough to understand, that they are magnificent beings and are absolutely perfect, that nothing anyone says to them to the contrary is true, and that they are beautiful. I am certain that no one ever told me that I was beautiful, and therefore when other children started telling me that I was ugly, I had nothing with which to defend myself. It became my reality, my identity. We’re broken simply because we believe we are, and we will continue to be until someone comes along and tells us that we aren’t. The sad part is that it’s probably simply because someone didn’t know to tell us when we were young that we weren’t broken. We were magnificent!

CHAPTER 1

THE AWAKENING

It is possible to experience an awakening in this life

through realizing just how precious each moment, each mental process, and each breath truly is.

—Christy Turlington

G od woke me just after midnight. It was June 15, 2016, shortly after the birth of my granddaughter Danica Kay, who was born with my mother’s blue eyes. She was the only child of four to have blue eyes. Her father, my son Derik, and his wife, Barbara, both have brown eyes. I and Derik’s father both have brown eyes. All three of Derik’s other children—Jaci-Layne, Gabriel, and Ezekiel—have brown eyes. But Danica Kay was blessed with the blue eyes of her great grandmother, which I know to be the beginning of her story. It was five weeks after the passing of my mother, four weeks and six days after the day she’d allowed me to see God in her blue eyes.

I was triaging on call that night and was awakened shortly after midnight with a call that one of our patients had died. I got up and handled the situation as I had done many times before. I went back to bed and attempted to go back to sleep, but it was not to be. I didn’t know it was God at first, but as I lay there wide awake, it became clearer to me. A million thoughts were running through my head—thoughts about my mother, thoughts about a patient I had taken care of two years earlier, thoughts about a book that I had started over twenty-five years ago. These thoughts did not seem to be connected in any way and did not make much sense to me at first. But soon, it began to come together.

Sometime during my mother’s final days, I had come to view her illness, ALS, as a blessing. It was much the same way that the patient who came to my mind that night had come to view his cancer. Up until that time, my mother had spent her life in search of something, not knowing that what she thought was missing was inside her all along. All she had to do to unbridle it was be still and listen. Once she was no longer able to talk, she had to be still. And once she was still, she had to listen. It was then that she began to hear God. As she began to follow His voice, she found herself in church again after many years. It was there that she finally found the peace that she had been so desperately searching for her entire life.

My mother and I had never been close due to the complicated circumstances of our lives. But once she found that peace, it allowed me to have