Change is here! Check it out and Im back!

Photo Copyrighted By Tara Eveland Photography 2013 

What does it mean to be saved? What does it mean to be the Salt and the Light of the world? Well the bible says we are the salt of the earth, and what happens to salt when it loses its taste? Its no good. In fact, its just used to step on when it snows right? At least thats what we do with it!
Anyways, I just wanted to give a quick update and let you all know that I am alive, well, and I am totally revamping this blog! We have left the UPC affliated church, not because we do not believe in ONE GOD, or any other doctrine, but only because we will not follow condemnation from MAN, God brings love and light and we are called to be 'salt and light' to the world, not to bring condemnation to those that do no follow him yet. If we are to win souls, and thats MY goal, then we have to do it by showing our fruit. Showing that we ARE THE LIGHT, and by not losing the flavor of our salt ;)
Now, I get that the bible calls us out to be 'different', and 'set apart' from the world. And we should be. But does this scripture refer to how we DRESS, or our HAIR? or does it have something deeper, such as "being kind, being loving, showing mercy, showing grace, forgiving". You can dress head to toe in what your church wants you to in order to be considered "righteous" by men, but what is in your heart? Have you witnessed about Christs love today to anyone? Have you helped a stranger? Offered a meal to a needy person? Have you dined with sinners and told them of how God has changed your life? Or are you too busy worrying about how so and so cut their hair? Or maybe you are too busy on Facebook attacking those that are not living just like you.
Whatever the case, please know that Jesus came here for the SINNERS. He did not come here for the righteous, he did not come for those that have it all. We need to get back to being "apostolic" aka "apostle like". And that is what I will be doing and my new message through this page will be.
Also, I will be speaking about the healing journey from Childhood sexual abuse, and how the Lord God is the only thing that ever gave me my peace. New changes are coming so bear with me while Im under constructions. Also included will be snippets from my business, my newborn and family photography business, just images of my work and also my family; gotta have the personal things too :) I will be taking guest contributors as well. I want to write at least two blog posts a week for you all!

Much love,
Make it your goal to share Gods love with ONE person today!

GOD IS ON TIME!

PRAISE THE LORD! GOD IS SO GOOD! Answered prayer right here; I waited 5 years for this prayer and on Christmas Eve the Lord answered it. I WILL tell you what it is, I promise. Right now it is best to just say that GOD IS FAITHFUL.

GOD IS ON TIME.

GOD IS GOOD. 

ALL THE TIME!

Praise him through the rain!

We have the best Pastor on earth! That being said, this is a concept that he talks about often, the fact that just because we may not always FEEL God, we know he is there! If we base our love and faithfullness for the Lord on our feelings alone, then we won't get very far in our walk with him. Just like in marriage, we don't always FEEL loved or loving towards our spouse, but we keep on going, working on it, and doing the things expected of us, because we know that we DO love them, they are our spouses! It is important that we don't base our obedience to Jesus on how we feel. I know that I myself have been guilty of this in the past. Its too easy to have a bad day, let your emotions get the best of you, and just conviently "forget" to pray or read your bible that day. I know in the past when I have felt I was in a "drought" and couldnt feel the Lord, I had often used that as my excuse to fall back outta my bible reading and prayer. What did that do? It only made me feel more out in the desert and alone.
Lets consider Noah for an example of the kind of obedience I'm speaking of. God spoke to him, told him what to do and he was faithful to that. Although it took years, and he was seriously ridiculed, and Im SURE he questioned his actions at time (he was in fact human), he STILL listened and followed through with what the Lord had told him to do. And what reward did he get!

Hebrews 11:7 "By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith."

THIS WAS POSTED OVER A YEAR AGO AND AS I SCROLLED THROUGH I THOUGHT IT SOUNDED GOOD TO REPOST TODAY :) ENJOY :)

In this age we are taught, even PROGRAMMED, to live our life by feelings and desires. We know as Christians that we are to conquer and overcome the desires of the world, and turn away from sin. That part becomes a lifestyle and becomes easier with everyday we walk next to the Lord. No, temptations never cease, but what Im saying is that after awhile with God, it becomes easier to leave it behind. But our FEELINGS never leave us, nor can we control them or make them become "easier" in any way.

We will always have bad days, down moods, and rainy days. Its human nature and its how our creator made us. But, it is how we HANDLE our bad days that determine how many we will have. God is not meant to always be FELT. But it is what we do when we dont feel him near that makes all the difference. Are you OBEDIENT even when you dont FEEL him?

If we can't feel the Lord one day, is it because of our attitude? Have we prayed that day? Did we start out in quiet time with the Lord? Or did we wake up and try to tackle the world all alone? Maybe that is why we dont feel God at times, because we didnt take the time to seek him

The next time I am having an awful day, or I feel like Im walking through a "valley" so to speak, I want to try this. Im going to read my bible, pray to the Lord to fix my attitude and if that doesnt work, I will make myself praise through it. I beleive the quickest way to get rid of a bad spirit/attitude is to "praise" it away! The enemy cant STAND when we lift up the Lord through our trying times!

So, the next time that YOU dont feel God will you still be obedient and seek after him? Or will you wonder why your mood won't change? Why the days keep getting worse? As Gods children we dont have to go through the valleys alone, and he is ALWAYS there, even when we cant FEEL him by our side!

To my Anonymous Texter

First off I have to say that you did rattle my cage for at least a good hour, until I realized all I really needed to do was sit down and pray, open my bible, and yet again seek Gods affirmation that what I am doing in my campaign with justtell.org is the right thing to do.

For those that don't know I received some awful and of course anonymous texts this morning from someone claiming to pray for me, but also in the same texts saying that I made up stories of abuse, using my daughter to gain pity on myself, and all kinds of things I won't even mention or give utterance to because they are so ridiculous. Anyways, I was pretty upset for awhile, as this person wanted me to be. I reminded them in the text that obviously they were not following their own 'righteous' advice and doing as the bible says "when you have a problem with your brother take them aside in private and talk to them about it", instead this person chose the low road of privately texting me horrible things.

Anyways, this blog is not about that it is about how GOD WORKS THROUGH EVEN WHAT THE DEVIL TRIES TO DO TO BRING US DOWN. See, the devil HATES that I gave a voice to my daughter, HATES that sexual abuse/touching discussions are always going on in our house, and HATES that he cannot destroy yet another childs life from them keeping silent. Think if she had NOT told me, or I had NOT went in there, how many years might she have endured that and kept silent if I had NOT taught her to come tell me about 'bad games' and when someone tries to touch her 'private parts'. You think it might have been months? Years? How long before you think it might have escalated to full blown sexual abuse or even rape??? My God has shown me I am doing the right thing, and my logo is NOT on that picture to get people to go to my business page and book a photography session (that doesnt make any sense since I only do maternity/newborn/family and live no where near most ppl that see this photo),  it is so that people know WHERE they can go to reach me, as so many already have with questions, concerns, and to tell lillian how brave she is!

This is my facebook status AFTER I sought God out in this situation, and I only wish I would have done it sooner rather then spend that hour texting back and forth that awful acting person that claims they are a christian with all their self righteous hateful words to me:

"I asked God to give me guidance with this issue this morning, to reassure me I am doing the right thing yet again, and this is what I opened up to in my womans devotional bible "The cost of being a disciple". I read it and cried. No, I will not take down my photos as I have thought of doing after these texts, NO, I will not take away my daughters voice, her story, or the campaign to help even ONE more child out there have the courage to come forward. So shoot me all your hate mail, my Lord is big enough to carry it on HIS shoulders, but I will finish what has begun.

Luke 14:28 "Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it,everyone who sees it will ridicule him, saying, "This fellow began to build and was not able to finish."


I WILL FINISH THIS CAMPAIGN. THIS IS AMERICA, I HAVE A RIGHT TO PHOTOGRAPH ANYTHING I WANT (WITHIN THE LAW OF COURSE) AND TO SAY ANYTHING I WANT, AS WELL AS YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO VOICE YOUR OPINION ON IT. BUT DO NOT TEXT MY PRIVATE WORK NUMBER UNLESS YOU WANT TO GIVE ME YOUR NAME AND HAVE AN ADULT CONVERSATION, AND ESPECIALLY DO NOT DO IT IN THE NAME OF THE LORD BECAUSE YOU AREN'T GOING TO HAVE TO ANSWER TO ME FOR THAT ONE.


Have a great day everyone, I am off to enjoy the rest of mine too, just wanted to share those thoughts, God Bless, keep your head up, and pray for those that hurt you

Teaching our Kids to break the Silence: My personal Campaign

So a few months ago I found this site called People of the Second Chance. Its a christian ministry focused on radical grace and forgiveness, and telling your story to get past traumatic events in life and move on, growing and getting past the labels and abuse of your past. Love this site! They have recently called on a campaign of handmade projects, to fit into a journal. This is where the story gets thick.

2 years ago my daughter was left in a room with her older stepbrother for possibly 5 total minutes. He is 8. During that time he managed to get his pants down and was talking to her about what they were going to do all the while trying to get her dress off. He told her it was a bad game, and not to tell her mom. THANK JESUS I walked in right then, when I did and he did not actually get to touch her. BUT, she has a story, one she speaks about  often, and so much that I take her to MY sexual abuse counselor just to help learn what is 'right touches' and 'wrong touches'.

She did come to me and tell me even though he told her not to. Why did she do that at 3 years old? Shouldn't she have listened to him, or at least you would think she would anyways. No, not my brave little girl. She told her mommy, and I'd like to think it is because I started at a young age telling her the ugly truth about the world. No I didn't say it like I would to an adult but I told her "someone might try to hurt you, touch your private places, and tell you not to tell, but you always always tell your mommy no matter what they say because they are lying, THEY will be the ones in trouble, not you." SO, this is her story, and she knows she is brave for telling me. In my mind it takes alot for a 4 year old to go against her 8 year old brother and tell a story that he told her would get her in trouble.

I wish I was as brave as she is when I was a child. I would not have lived my many years in abuse as I did. (but you can read that in my testimony, or on a different post) this is about my daughter.

My BRAVE, AWESOME, BEAUTIFUL daughter! And here is the first picture in the campaign of photographs that I hope to be blessed to help others with.

P.s. She is 100% involved in this project, of course she only knows 'kid appropriate' things about it, but she does love this sign, had me read it to her many many times, and now it hangs in her room. She KNOWS she was brave and KNOWS she did the right thing, so for all those that would say it is wrong of me to take this picture and post it, shame on YOU for wanting to silence a voice, no matter how small we can all have our stories and we ALL deserve to be proud of being brave enough to share them.

Pss. To all of those that want to say "what about the kid, he was just a boy" we DID get him the SAME councilling that we got my daughter, to the point that we could. We do not have custody of him and his mother chose to brush it off as just something all kids do. We did call the police and dcfs and there was an investigation into if he had been abused. Long story short, some other kid had taught him that "game" and told him the same things "not to tell" its a "bad game" and all that stuff that kids are told by adults that chose to take advantage of them. I just wanted to add this because of the many people saying shame on me for telling HER story, because it might affect HIM. If he wants to tell HIS story, then fine, but I am not his mother and that is up to her to help him with and talk to him about, it is not my place, nor would it be appropriate.

Getting Real with Postpardum Depression

I have decided to open up and be very transparent and open here, no matter what you think of me. Why? Because God has called me to do so. God does not give us a spirit of fear, but that comes from the devil. I learned a LONG time ago that the devil wants NOTHING more then to KILL us, to DESTROY us, to bring us down to the depths of no returns, and he is the ultimate deceiver at making people feel like they are the only one to have ever felt that way. Let me tell you a story about a Christian woman, a mother of 2 kids with a great husband, that loves going to church, that adores and worships the king of kings, lord of lords, but also a women that is

BROKEN

TIRED

STRUGGLING

SOMETIMES DESPAIRED

SOMETIMES OVERLY JOYED FOR NO REASON

SOMETIMES CANT STAND TO BE AROUND HER KIDS

FEELS AWFUL FOR FEELING THE WAY SHE DOES

KNOWS IN HER HEART THAT SHE SHOULD LOVE HER BABY MORE THEN ANYTHIGN IN THE WORLD

TAKES MEDICINE DAILY TO HELP WITH MOOD SWINGS

REPENTS ON HER KNEES FOR GRACE AND MERCY EACH AND EVERY DAY BECAUSE SHE HAS TO!

This woman is ME: Tara Eveland. And I struggle from BIPOLAR DISORDER & since I’ve had my son 6 months ago, POSTPARDUM DEPRESSION

*If you have read my testimony then you know I haven’t had the easiest life, or the best childhood, that is not to blame here, maybe it is maybe it isn’t, but blame isn’t my game for this post. This post is to encourage those women out there that are living for God but being beat down by that dang devil because you have a mental illness. Because you had that perfect little baby but inside you just cant be happy about him. You don’t know why you don’t want to hold him, it hurts you even MORE that you physically do not want to take care of him. Yes, you might go through the motions and give him everything his physical body needs,but you aren’t being that angel that God sent that baby to. You aren’t giving that loving, nurturing, caring vibe and actions to that baby. And it isn’t your fault, you WANT to, you know you LOVE your baby, you decided to have him with your husband that you love, you were so happy about having him ,and then he got here and BOOM, what happened? The world dropped out. You aren’t happy at all! This didn’t happen with my first child, a girl, who is 4 now, I was so loving, overjoyed, the best mother I could ever be to her, so now I am wondering, is it really just me, what am I doing wrong? I have been blessed with an answered prayer, he is so perfect, his first word is MA MA and “mama” doesn’t even want him around. What is wrong with me???

The devil has had me on my KNEES literally thinking of killing myself over this at one point. Why? I would NEVER EVER EVER hurt my child, but if I can’t LOVE him, if I can’t be who God wants me to be for my baby, or be the wife that my husband deserves then what is the point of even being around. Would anyone really miss me? This baby wouldn’t right? He surely knows that Im not giving him my all.

WRONG! THESE ARE LIES FROM THE DEVIL! THESE ARE LIES THAT HE WANTS YOU TO BELIEVE! HERE IS THE TRUTH! I FOUND THE TRUTH, I SOUGHT THE TRUTH, AND I FOUND IT, GOD IS FOR US! GOD WILL HELP YOU LIKE HE HAS ME! LOOOK HERE!

Isaiah 41;9-14 “I took you from the ends of the earth, from its farthest corners I called you (OH DID HE EVER! I COULDN’T HAVE BEEN FURTHER FROM HIM WHEN HE CALLED ME TO SERVE HIM).

I said, “you are my servant’; I have chosen you and have not rejected you. So do NOT fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your GOD. I will STRENGHTEN you, and HELP you; I will uphold you with MY righteous right hand. (SEE LADIES, BECAUSE GOD IS SO LOVING, AND RIGHTEOUS HE WILL HOLD US UP NO MATTER WHAT, NO MATTER HOW UNWORTHY WE ARE, NO MATTTER HOW UNRIGHTEOUS THE DEVIL MAKES US FEEL, GODS LOVE AND GODS HAND IS HOLDING US JUST DON’T LET GO LADIES! )

11: ‘All who rage against you will surely be ashamed and disgraced; those who oppose you will be as nothing and perish. Though you search for your enemies;  you will not find them. Those who wage war against you will be as nothing at all. (DO NOT FEAR THOSE THAT WOULD TELL YOU, OR MAKE YOU THINK YOU ARE LESS OF A MOTHER FOR FEELING THIS WAY, YOU AREN’T YOU ARE MORE OF A MOTHER AND YOU ARE MORE LOVED BY YOUR CHILD FOR KNOWING THAT  THIS IS COMING FROM THE DEVIL, AND GOING AND SEEKING THE HELP YOU NEED)

13: For I am the LORD YOUR GOD, who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, DO NOT FEAR; I WILL HELP YOU! (GOD WILL HELP YOU! GOD WILL HELP YOU! HE WILL! HE IS HELPING ME!)

If you are one of the the millions of women out there RIGHT now struggling with post pardum depression, do not fear to go seek help. You are NOT alone, and you are VERY VERY much not alone if you are already saved and holding onto the hand of your Lord. Just don’t let go. Please don’t let go of that hand. Because as long as he is “upholding you with his righteous right hand” then NO ONE can touch you, not even the devil.

Seek help from you doctor. I am on medicine. I am on paxil and Depakote right now. Does that make me less of a Christian, nope. God gave man wisdom, God gave us doctors, God gave us resources to help us. Read your bible, do NOT step foot out of bed without pulling up a bible verse on  your nook, tape it over head your bed ( I am doing this today), and read it, read something like “DO NOT LET GO OF GODS HAND” Because I am here to tell you that fear and these feelings are NOT from the Lord, they aren’t. God trusted me with the most precious, loving, kind, and adorable baby boy and Im going to LOVE HIM THROUGH THIS! Maybe I don’t love him the same way I did my daughter, maybe I don’t love him as hard and feircly as I did my daughter those first 6 months, but I know I will, I know deep down I would give my life for him, and I know GOD trusts me with him, so who am I to say I am not worthly…

My personal email is tara_eveland@yahoo.com   if you are struggling and would like to talk, I am open and available. If you DO NOT know Christ yet as your personal lord and savior then honey please open that bible to acts 2:38 Repent, ask for Gods grace, it is free, you cant buy it, and he LOVES YOU ALREADY. He is waiting on YOU to love him back. Please reach out if you want to talk, or if I can help you in any way! I love you all in Christ.

Our Testimony of the Nightmare Trip to St. Louis

June 20^th 2012

God is ever Faithful

It’s so easy for me to pray for other women, to tell them of how God provides and to just trust in him and he will take care of everything; just like the bible says. So easy to say that, but when it comes to my OWN struggles, my OWN worried, sometimes my faith is just as lacking as Peters was when Jesus told him to step out of that boat and walk on the water. I have always thought of this story in the bible as a parable of how we should always keep our eyes on the Lord, trust in him, and when we don’t…when we look away with doubt at how far away we’ve stepped from that “boat”, then that is when we fall. But if we trust in him, and his ways, keeping our eyes on him, he has plans for us that far exceed what we can even imagine.

Let me tell you about my newest adventure in what I should start to call my “Faith building Journey” J

Yesterday am we left our small town and drove the 2.5 hours to St. Louis Childrens where our youngest was seen by a pediatric specialist. We went to our appointment, we won’t talk about the anxiety of making a wrong turn in construction in St. Louis lol. After the appointment we ventured to the St. Louis Arch and that can be a whole OTHER blog post about how God protected me and calmed my inpending panic attack!

Later that evening we took off  to check out Joes Crab, a restaurant that I had always wanted to try out, and I knew to take my camera because I had heard the stories of how cool it was. It sure lived up to its hype! But anyways, we went back to our hotel, took the baby swimming for his first time ever, and had a relaxing evening.

When we woke up today, I should’ve known right from the get go with my headache that we should just head home. But, my husband wanted to go to the zoo, so off to the zoo we went! On the 30 mile drive into the city we were listening to our praise music, said a prayer together (we had been getting on each others nerves all morning so though we had better pray together  before we slapped each other lol), and then proceeded to talk about the new church we have been attending.

We were talking about how we had been visiting churches, and how this particular one felt like where God wanted us to be and that we should decide so that we could start paying our tithes to the church and get more involved. As we talked about it, we were remembering the few times we have been there and how at ‘home’ we felt, how much the spirit of God was working in the church, and how the atmosphere was just brimming with the feeling of revival about to explode there. We really didn’t get to finish our conversation, or come to some “ultimate” decision about it, because we made it to the zoo, got out of the car and of course went about our day.

Fastforward about 3 hours and we were tired, sunburned and ready to go home! Walked to the car, I took one ‘last’ picture of our day which was the baby passed out asleep in the stroller with bright red cheeks from the heat. We got everything loaded up and ready to go…..and our car wouldn’t start.

Well, we had never had car problems before but it was obvious that it wasn’t the battery. My husband hit the starter, tried everything, nothing would start it. I was praying, but God chose not to start it. The first person he put on my heart to text and let know that we were having car troubles was the Pastors wife. The pastor of the church that we were discussing on the way to the zoo. She texted back immediately saying that she was on her way home from work and would call me as soon as she got in.

In the meantime we called both of our parents. No one offered to come help us, come pick us up, send us money, nothing. Did I mention that we had $13 left on us??? (We never travel with more then we are going to need and I plan everything, so I knew EXACTLY how much we were going to need for our trip, and the way I saw it was that we still were going home with $13 left over!) No tow truck would come without money. No mechanic; no one, and I knew we had to do something, having a 6 month old it’s not like we could just sleep in the car, we HAD to get home.

The pastors wife called me back and told me they were most deff. Coming to get us, but they were working on a car trailer so that our car wasn’t left behind also. What a blessing! We will call that blessing #1. The park rangers came and tried to help, finding out they couldn’t they let us come sit in their office (where I am now typing this to post onto my blog later actually) where there is air conditioning;praise the Lord! So that is blessing #3.

Remember me saying we only had $13 with us? Well, we were hungry. Knowing that it was going to be hours before help came to get us, we walked the park and looked at a couple menus. The cheapest things were “kids meals” of a hot dog fries/chicken nuggets and fries/or a cheeseburger for 9.90! My husband of course told me to get something to eat, but I didn’t knowing he was hungry as well. So, we went back to the ranger office and sat with the baby. We did NOT mention that we were hungry, were not talking about anything, in fact it was a completely different woman at the desk then we left to see about food, but after about 20 minutes of just sitting here she comes up to us with a plate of 2 huge hot dogs, ketchup  & mustard, a bag of graham crackers, and offered us cold water. Praise God, he DOES provide all our needs! That’s blessing #4.

Blessing #5 comes to this moment. Yes, I would rather be home, where we would be by now if our car hadn’t broken down. BUT, God has proven to us that we should be keeping our eyes more on him, trusting in his guidance, and that when we do look away from his word and promises to provide all our needs is when we do doubt, and then eventually fall.

At this moment there is still about 2 hours before our help arrives, but praise God that these men from this church, these men that barely even know us are driving to ST. Louis to pick us up, WITH a car dolly to haul our car home! Praise God that he has made it very clear to us where our church home is going to be, and where we will pay our tithes. We now know that we have family in that church, we may  not know them that well yet, but being our true brothers and sisters in Christ, the Lord has placed them in our lives for a reason and I am so thankful!

So, as I look over at my son sleeping in my husbands arms, and as we sit in a rangers office at a closed zoo, I am just in awe once again of Gods loving kindness, mercy, and his oh so gentle way he used to show us we need to have more faith in him to provide for our needs.