“Where Do You Find Your Empowerment?” - A Guest Post By Tammy Trayer

Ok...  I have to admit for 9 years of my life I gained a lot of my empowerment from my 883 Custom Harley Davidson with the forward controls and the flat handle bars, BUT we all progress through life and gain insight right?

My  motorcycle was a guilt gift from my ex-husband a month before he left myself and my two children to his girlfriend of two years.  The unexpected event and new knowledge was quite the blow, but the motorcycle became the best FREE therapy and empowerment a wounded soul could ask for!  My adventures on my motorcycle were empowering to me in that I was totally free while riding and able to not only see, but I was able to take in God's beauty with all my senses and my time with God was so deep and so EMPOWERING! 

I grew up being the tom boy, but I am a mixed bag in that I also programmed computers for 10 years in the professional world wearing stilleto heels and dress clothes.  So you may not be able to relate to my first mentioned example of the motorcycle, but I am sure many of you can relate to the power a special outfit renders you, right?  Or for you men out there, maybe the new power tool!

Sadly, we look for empowerment through material objects and the acceptance of our peers!  I am guilty of both in my life, BUT I have found a different form of empowerment.  This empowerment I have known all my life, but I feel as though I have progressively found more and more strength in it over the last 12 years.  My motorcycle was just the beginning for me, in opening my eyes to what God has to offer us and how he alone can empower us greater than any material object or person on this earth!

We all want to fit in and suffer from peer pressure, but at an early age I realized that wanting to fit in meant that more times than not I was expected to act just like my peers.  I didn’t always like what I saw in my peers and I didn’t want to act like them - it went against what my heart was telling me was right. 

So, to this day, I have many friend's to which all belong to very diverse groups - I get along with everyone, BUT I do not need the acceptance of being just like them.  God made each of us unique in our own way and I never quite understood why people struggle wanting to be like someone else.   If you struggle with this, I encourage you to be happy with who you are - God made you to be special just as you are!

The devil is always trying to get into each of us, wanting us to find empowerment in the wrong things, materials things and anything other than God.  He can really make life a struggle for us unless we are willing to seek God more and see through his smoke and mirrors!

I have seen God's rich hand and blessings on things in my life.  He has brought me through times in my life that I honestly did not think I would get through.  Although my Harley did empower me in ways maybe it shouldn't have, it also offered me the best free therapy a girl could ever ask for because for 9 years it took me and God to some of the most beautiful places on the planet where I could spend such amazing and quality time with our creator.  Not only was I spending quality time with him, my motorcycle allowed me to feel the freshness of an area - not just see it...  I could feel, hear, smell, see, taste and sometimes even wear his beauties...  Those 9 years were a time that I felt blessed to feel that incredible touch of our God and relish how close it has brought me to him!

Now, without my Harley, I live in the wilderness of Idaho with my family and I find great peace and empowerment in my surroundings where I know God is holding my right hand and again taking me to amazing places. 

I encourage you today, if you are gaining empowerment from the material things of today, take a walk in a park or in the woods - spend quality time with your children and really pay attention to their uniqueness and qualities that only God could have given them - go on a date with your husband and regain the quality in your marriage that God blessed you with.  Spend more quiet time with God and see how as you spend more time with him, he will show you SO much more.  Find your empowerment in God and God alone and what ever you do, don't take not a second of your day for granted!

Ephesians 3:16 (NLT) - “I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit.”

For additional inspiration, visit http://TrayerWilderness.com.

Tammy Trayer is a lover of God, wife to the cowboy of her dreams, blessed to be a mom, web designer, and writer. She’s a butcher, a baker, a soap and candle maker, a huntress, a homesteader, a wilderness survivalist, an autism advocate, a gardener, a canner, an apprentice apiary, an embracer of dreams, a lover of traditional and primitive skills, and an off-grid simple living girl. Visit Tammy Trayer at http://TrayerWilderness.com.