Letting go

Grief will never be an enjoyable journey. It is a process of saying good-bye to someone or something you love. It is a process of readjusting your life without that one thing in it. And the layers grief has seems to continue in a rapid pace of the pure knowledge that you are missing out and letting go of something so important to you. This week was a week of grief for me. No one died. But the process my heart felt of letting go of something I love defined the grief I am oh so familiar with. It feels like you are gripping something so hard and watching it slip out of your fingers. It is quicksand in your heart and the world feels like it is going around you as you stand still. You become an spectator of life without really living it. I lost two days of being a spectator.

Grief is in it's ugliest form makes you feel so alone and ravished by your emotions. Some asked me this week if I was lonely. I had to really smile inside. I am one of those people that have never felt lonely. I have always had love and support around me. But the feeling of being alone is different. It is a place where you are standing in your own circumstance and cannot seem to process it with anyone because there are no words yet, just deep emotion. I felt alone this week.

I attempting to buy a house in Woodland Park. Little did I know that buying a house would unearth so many things in my heart. It all started last sat when my closest friend in Colorado offered me a simple challenge. I don't even remember her exact words but fear entered my heart and I began to panic. I didn't know why I was panicking but the world's walls seem to be closing on me. It hit me. I am not moving back to Maui. I know you might be smiling at me. I have lived here a year and a half. I love my love and what I do. But I am someone that is so delayed in the realities of life that it hasn't really sunked in.

My time in Maui was some of my happiest days of my life. I spend all of my 20's there and made friendships there that became family to me. Maui is filled with memories that will always make me smile. So many fun experiences, travel and living life to it's fullest. In those years there was so much heartache but Maui and the people there became my home and family. We walked through many deaths together and celebrated many victories. It was a great season of life.

I really do love my life here in Colorado. When I moved here I moved with little expectation what it would be like. It passed every expectation I had and it seems at times too good to be true. I have again made the best friends that we can love each other, dream together and push each other to be ourselves. I am so blessed. None of this makes giving up a season that I love easier. I love not only love maui, but my life there too. I love living by my best friend. Seeing her son every day. Walking to the beach. Having the best church in the world. this week was saying a final goodbye to a place, people, and life I love. Again, I know it seems delayed. But I think I really have been "testing" out colorado. I guess I always thought I would go back to Maui. But this week as I sat on the phone with my best friend weeping I knew that it was bringing closure to a great season there. It was letting go and redefining home to me. It was investing long term in the people around me locally. It was saying good bye to one place and welcoming Woodland Park as my home. I have got to live with now my dearest friends here in Colorado. I never in my wildest dreams thought I would get to do so many things I love. I am bartending, which is fun. I am now committed with Robin Pasely to do women's events for the next many years. I have my own accessory line. And I continue to walk with women on their journeys. I truly love my life. So this process should be easier, but it is not. I see memories. I see laughter. I see things that will always make me smile.

this week was a week of letting go and embracing the beauty of making this place truly my home. I invite you to come see me here. There is so much excitement of what is to come. The tears are temporary for this week. As I buy this house I begin to create new memories, deepen my friendships here and will always come back to Maui to visit with a smile in my heart.

The foundation of Christianity is forgiveness

The foundation of Christianity is forgiveness. I am not going to pretend I thought that amazing phrase on my own. I am stealing it from Robin Pasley. I have not only stolen it from her, but I am beginning to tatooed it on my heart. Because it is changing the foundation of who I am. It makes sense, doesn't it. It would mean that not only is our purpose to love. But our only purpose is to love by forgiveness. The only purpose of the cross was to offer forgiveness to us. He was motivated by love, but the purpose of his suffering was for forgiveness.

As many of you know I came to Woodland Park, Colorado to be near Ben and Robin Pasley. I have known Ben and Robin since 2001. They have been in my heart for many years and the path became clear to move by them last year. I now live with them and I am beginning to travel with Robin. The same questions keep getting asked to me.

1. What is it like living with the Pasleys?
2. What is changing in you?

I am committed to start blogging about it. I will begin to share my journey living here, what I am learning and how spiritual family can literally change your life.

Living with the Pasleys is that for me. It is my spiritual mom and dad. I will begin to share stories and things I am learning. But plain and simple they are family to me. They have been the best example of spiritual family I have been in my entire ministry life. It is not just impacting my ministry life, it is impacting my heart and soul.

So I invite you into my journey. I invite you into my life. This season of blogging will be about my life with spiritual family, Pasleys, and the spiritual enlightenment I am on. I start this "series" with a letter I wrote to the parole board regarding my attack. Many of you have read all the letters I have written and journeyed with me for the last few years. Most letters I have been convincing the board and the judge of how awful James is. This letter is different. I want to say clearly it is a result of the influence Pasleys have had on my life. They have taught me the beauty of forgiveness and challenged me in the most vulnerable place of my soul. So this letter is the beginning of my blog. I do say thank you to Ben and Robin for being exactly who you are and who you are to me.

Here is the letter:


My last letter to the parole board.
by Holly Morrell on Monday, March 28, 2011 at 9:46pm

July 2nd, 2007 will always be a night that I remember. It was the night that freedom was took from my wanderlust spirit. It was a night where suffering became a daily reality. I will never forget that night. The smell of the air as I ran. The warm Maui wind on my face. I remember the moment James Calvalho-Apo came upon me. I think I will always remember the fight. The kicking and screaming. The weight of his body on mine. I could feel his racing heart on my chest. In my dark days, I can still feel that pounding heart beat on me. There are no words to describe the feeling of being trapped and taken into someone's else's pleasure with no choice of your own. I screamed, but no one heard. I fought, but was losing ground. I want you to know, parole board, it is the worst feeling I have ever felt. For the last 3 years I have been healing, recovering and moving forward in my life. He doesn't steal every day anymore from me. There are now only moments where it still takes my breathe away. He is not in every nightmare, but still rests in that deep place of fear and unsafety. I know someday he won't even be there anymore. I am moving on. I am getting whole. Some people have told me I would never recover, but I am and continue to be.



Today is a day of releasing for me. I don't want to underestimate what this young man did to me. But it is time for me to move on and let go. There has been a lot of change in my heart in 3 years. I pray that that there has been change for him also. Today, over three years later I will not hold James Calvalho-Apo, to be the same man. He might be, but I don't know that. I don't know the journey he has been on. I only know mine. I am a believer of Jesus. I am going to quote a friend when I say, "the very foundation of Christianity is forgiveness." This has been a journey of forgiveness for me and I feel like I am here again. I don't know this young man. I don't know the brokenness that is in him. I don't know what led up to the attack. I know he attacked me. I know his reaction of defense and all the lying he did through the trial. But I don't know what is inside him. Today I offer forgiveness. It is not because he deserves it, but it is given to me every day. It is time for my heart to forgive my offender. I am not here to keep you in prison. I am not here to ask for your release. I am here to say I forgive you. I pray that you receive the forgiveness from me and from Jesus. There is healing and freedom in forgiveness.



This is the last time I will be responding to the courts. I am being taken off the communication line. I am continuing to get healing from this horrible attack. I do know that I do not see myself as a victim of James Calvalho-Apo any longer. I see myself as a daughter of a king.

I need to be near my spiritual parents.

My life has never been boring. I love my life. I love airplanes. I love time changes. I love the consistency of change. It has really calmed the chaos in my heart for years.

life is changing for me. I have felt the change inside me for months now. The things that felt so secure suddenly felt unsettling. I have been ignoring this unsettling feeling. Tonight the Father and I started to talk and soon there was was a definition to the unsettling.

it is time for the foundation to change.
the foundation that I have stood on needs to be rearranged.
taken apart and rebuilt.

there was such opposition for me to move here. I really believe that the enemy knew that the change that would take place would be so deep in who I was.
yet that change takes such a strong shift for me. That it will almost look I am not myself for a bit. I am okay with that. I might be questioned. I might be judged.
But here are my true motivations.

I want to be healthy. I want wholeness. I want a future that is not filled with fear. I want a future filled with the dreams deep within me fulfilled.
So I will relentlessly accept the change the Lord wants for me...

because He loves me. and i love him.

Weird enough I have no fear walking into this season. I trust my father. I think I am ready. I love my life right now. In my natural eye there is nothing I would change.
But my father is asking me to change something for life to get better. to be fuller. I trust him.

no one is asking me to change who I am. no one is asking me to change my plans. I am. I feel that I am walking into a season that needs my spiritual parents close to me.

the one consistent thing in this next season is that I will have my spiritual parents near me. I won't travel far from them. I won't be away from there for a long period of time.
you might ask why they are the focal point.

because i need them.

i am not sure if i have ever said that about anyone or anything. but i realize in my life the need for family and spiritual parenting. and I have both in colorado.
It is a season to cling to family.

my spiritual parents. my pastors. my friends.
ben and robin pasley.

home

Hello, from the mountains of Colorado. It has been almost five months since I transported myself from island to mountains. The experience of transition never fails to be less than exciting. There was so much in my heart being stirred that it has been impossible to understand it all. I am beginning to embrace the reality of the chaos that transition brings internally. It is a process of giving up the old and embracing the new. This sounds simple. Yet the path of the simple act of giving up and embracing new has been more than challenging for me. I never really realized how tight I was holding on things until I was trying to let go. The grip was shocking to me as I began the process of giving up my time in Maui. Maui was more than a home for me. It represented family, growth, and a place where I was understood, encouraged, and loved. I came to Maui as a young 21 year old and was took into a culture that I could be myself. It started out with YWAM, then New Hope Maui, and then just the beauty of island life and relationships. I think I really believed there was no place on earth other than Maui that I would feel safe, loved, content, and free. I lived in Minneapolis the last 2 years, but frequently went back to Maui every few months. My deep connections were still with people there and my church that I longed to be with. I got the best of both worlds for a couple years as I continued life on the mainland and had Maui every few months. I never had to let go, I could have both. Why, because Minneapolis was always temporary for me. It was a season I was there. I loved what I did, loved the people I was with, but my heart was in Maui and my family there. It worked in my heart for two years.

I don't know how to describe the difference of my moving to Colorado. I realize that I move and transition quite a bit. I do thrive on change and embrace it easy. I love the newness of a place, and newness of a job, and beginnings. But there is a deep seed of independence that has fear of being stuck, being misunderstood, and being left. Most people don't see that side of me because it rarely shows it's ugly face. I don't want to be trapped. I like the wind of change and the sensation of newness. There has been nothing that has been appealing to staying and creating a sense of roots. Until now.

Here I am in Colorado with some amazing people that captured my heart. It is not in the state or my job, it is the people that I am with here. That has made everything different for me. For the first time in life, I am ready to settle down and be here. That is a big step for me and affects my life and the choices surrounding me. I will always travel. I will always be ME. But now home is not a place, it is the people.

spring is flighting to come..

the
snow
is
l
i
g
h
t
l
y


fAlliNg.

The silence is the pounding reality of
the
new
season.


My ears hear the air.
my heart hears the
uncomfortable
sEnSe
of
cHanGe.

I can smell it in the air.

the SeAsoN is cHanGiNg.

the winds are changing.
the sun is being stretched farther into the night
the warmth upon my skin is pursuing my soul.

I have been bundled up for so long.
the layers of protection are
now shedding off
this
heart
of
miNe.

the scarf to protect my neck.
so I can have
movement
to look
to the
leFt or the riGhT.
the scarf has made it hard to turn widely and quickly.

the hat to protect my head.
my thoughts.
my mind.
the hat has covered my ears and
has slightly dimmed my hearing.

the gloves to protect my hands.
so i could still reach out
and touch.
the gloves stood between skin to skin.

the boots to protect my feet.
so I could keep walking
forward
the boots naturally slowed down my pace.

the jacket to protect my heart.
the vulnerability.
the fears.
the unnerving
reality
of
winter
the jacket warmed me rather than the evidence of the sun.
it warmed the exterior of me
not
the interior.

I have been treading water in an ocean of transition.
my legs have grown tired of
running after this concert
of cHanGe.

and
here
it
is.

spring is fighting to come.
the
rivers
want
to

FLOW.

the frozen waters of my heart are thawing.
the deadness of the trees are starting to see buds.

the brownness of the grass is slowly turning green.

sPrinG is fiGhtiNg to cOme.

my muddy footprints are becoming clear.

even though I am been waiting for spring.
holding on for spring.
grasping for this day..

there is something unCOmForTaBle

about
the
changing

of seasons.

we grasp onto the past.
we drown in the tension of change.


spRinG is fiGhtInG tO come.
to overcome.

to bring the new life

that
winter
has
been
promising.

today i am here.

the wiNtEr is paSsiNg.

the spring is coming.

i await the promise of spring
as it enfolds
right
before
my
eyes.