Healing Stitches

By Candice Gaddy

Author Candice Gaddy shares her upbringing in a Christian single-parent home only later to realize she never really knew God for herself. In this true-life story, it took her losing everything, coming close to death multiple times, literally losing her mind with a stroke/brain hemorrhage to learn to trust God and the process of healing! Every new phase in life you must heal from the prior to be ready for the new level. The reader will not only hear from real-life experiences but understand from true biblical references how we are equipped to turn every battle scar into a weapon to defeat the enemy. There is no season of healing you cannot overcome whether financial, physical, mental, or emotional. Natural remedy doctors will tell you that often the best medicine is natural or just simply allowing the body to heal. As you read, sit still and "know that I am God" is what he is trying to tell you during your healing uncertainty!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9781685174507

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Healing Stitches

Candice Gaddy

ISBN 978-1-68517-449-1 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-68517-450-7 (digital)

Copyright © 2022 by Candice Gaddy

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Dedication

Introduction

Family Stitches

Career Stitches

Spiritual Stitches

Who Am I?

Love Stitches

Transition Stitches

Don't You Cry

Preparation

The Storm

God Is Good

It's Personal

Blessing in the Breaking

Sorrow to Seed

Truly Believe

Faith/Knowing God

Spiritual New Norm

About the Author

Dedication

First to my husband (Matthew Gaddy) for advocating on my behalf and standing by my side all these years!

To ALL my amazing village that helped me through the hardest period in my life!

All the health care professionals who act with urgency and accountability!

My life constants—Mother (Kay Nicholson) and Sister (Latarsha Dunkley) for Always believing in me and lifting me up! I could not do this thing called life without you both!

My amazing boys (Logan and Myles) that truly are my gifts from God and inspire me to be the best version of myself every day.

Most Importantly… To God be ALL the GLORY!

Introduction

Everyone has stitches, but how they heal is all about how you handle them. In this book, we will focus on overcoming life hurdles and healing. I will use my own life to provide examples utilizing everyday situations and supporting biblical references.

This book provides the benefit of walking you through how to learn from life's hard milestones/stitches to propel you to growth. Everyone has different forms of stitches that make up their life journey of growth. Life's stitches are remarkably like medical stitches in that they help you to heal.

You may have experienced a health battle, financial emergency, death, etc. Many people feel stuck because they have dealt with or continue to deal with so many struggles/stitches. They are looking for healing and hope after the pain. If that is you or you are dealing with a situation that you never thought would be you and wondering how you will overcome, this book is for you! You may feel confused, fearful, doubtful, question yourself, or even question your faith in God. I have been in all those emotional states.

I am going to walk you through real, true-life experiences of how I have overcome, and you can as well, while providing scriptures to cement the promises of God. This book is focused on the process to progress. It will help you overcome hardship and result in greater growth. Everyone experiences hardship, but not all heal the same and come out better on the other side. In this book, I promise to help you be one of those people better because of the scar. I will share my own stories. When I was literally flattened on my back, not knowing if I would ever see my babies again, I felt indescribable fear and confusion. I was in a constant state of insecurity, which was the worst possible situation as a prior control freak. I totally understand what you are feeling, and we are going to walk through this victoriously. So now let us read on to equip ourselves for victory not despite but rather because of the scars.

Family Stitches

Your steps are ordered (in advance before it happens). Nothing is random. God has a plan. I personally grew up in a single-family home (my mom, older sister, and I). Every week was almost copy-paste: Get up early Sunday morning in time for Sunday school, followed by 11:00 a.m. worship service. Grab something to eat because my mom hated to cook. Go to clean buildings (my mom's third job) after church, then get home in time to clean up and head back to church for night service at 7:00 p.m. Do not even dare act like you were tired because my mom could just look at you and put the fear of God in you. My mom was a minister, so sitting on the pulpit up front and always facing you. There was no room to hide. Many times, I would try the old trick of allergies rubbing my eyes just so I could close my eyes for a short period of time. The best was prayer time because everyone had to close their eyes anyway. I would just act like I was praying longer to get more time with my eyes closed. Most of the time, we would be out of evening church by 11:00 p.m. On some Sundays, if we had afternoon service, we would just then be heading to clean buildings after night service, which made for a long day. Then came Monday through Friday which was all school, choir practice, or Bible study some nights. Long story short, we lived in the church. Church was our family. My godparents and godsiblings were all church members, so we're close friends early on.

My mother loved kids and helping others. So we ended up having my cousin come live with us, and we started babysitting other kids that became like our siblings also. Eventually, my mother realized her passion and decided to open her own day care in our home. This was the first major leap of faith I saw her take was quitting her stable city job to pursue being an entrepreneur to follow her calling/gifting for children. This took over our home because she had day care every shift, and the living room was made up of swings and toys. It became our new norm, which as a child I hated. My mom's day care allowed us to meet a lot of great kids and parents. Our first kids were gorgeous and exceptionally well behaved. We took them on as our own. Immediately they were like family. It was a two-way relationship. My cousin who lived with us, like my sister, decided to move out with her family. I was sad because she really was like my sister. We grew up together, looked after each other, and got in trouble together, being close to the same age unlike my sister and I. This became common for my mom to look after others, teaching us to always do the same.

Bible study at home at an early age helped us to learn the Bible and love for Jesus. My mom would do it every Thursday, and we had to prepare. I was always excited about it and loved to do more than what was asked. It was the same way I was with my schoolwork. I had never made a B in my life in school all the way through middle school.

As you probably can tell by now, my mother was a single parent. She was from a small country town and had moved to the city when she met my father. Unfortunately, my mother grew up in a household with not a lot and always just trying to survive. There was not a lot of time to show emotion, so my mother grew up not hearing I love you in her own home, which later explained her being so focused on being strong and getting it done. My father was not in the picture for me as a child. This was extremely hard for me as I always longed for a relationship with him. He had his own struggles, but I always knew he loved me. I was truly a daddy's girl at heart, yearning for that relationship. My sister, on the other hand, was always so strong and nonchalant about