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Marilyn Cullum, Grace for the Journey, Prairie Grove, AR (2025)

A Licensed Professional Counselor since 1995, Marilyn has served in numerous capacities within the Counseling field: Licensed Counselor, Clinic Supervisor, Clinic Director, Clinic Co-Founder, Coordinator of Clinical Services, Writer, Teacher, and Speaker/Presenter. " Marilyn Cullum, Licensed Professional Counselor", is a private counseling practice offering a wide range of therapeutic services wit

h particular focus on Anxiety, Depression, Grief, Relational problems and Self-Image issues for all ages. As a Certified Life Purpose Coach Marilyn is passionate about lifelong personal and professional development, helping others to recognize and overcome challenges that hinder personal growth and make their dreams a reality, by providing skills and strategies that encourage, energize and empower. Marilyn is also a writer and speaker whose presentations include such topics as "Who Painted Your Portrait?", Time Management for Sissies", "Play Therapy for Parents", "This LIttle Light of Mine- Finding Your Way Without Headlights", "Hidden Blessings: Living Gratefully" and "At Our Core- The Hidden Thoughts That Shape Our Lives". In addition she has also developed a seminar based on her unique counseling model, "Parenting Through Divorce", that focuses on the greatest challenge divorcing parents face- how to be apart without tearing their children apart, and that is structured on parental commitment to putting their child's emotional needs and protection first when divorce is imminent. Marilyn's presentations have been shared on college and church campuses, at professional seminars, to women and couples groups, and are available for retreat settings. For further information about any of these services please contact Marilyn at mcullumlpc@hotmail.com.

06/14/2024

I had a recent conversation with a friend who was plagued by persistent negative thoughts, and I wanted to share part of that conversation, in case it can speak to you too!
Think of your random thoughts as a bird, flitting through your mind. It has invaded your space, but you do not have to let it NEST there! You have the choice to embrace it or to reject it. Thoughts find their way to us through such a myriad of sources-movies, books, conversations, posts, suggestions, memories, fears, wounds, often showing up without any invitation. If it is offensive, hurtful or conveying an unwelcome message remember you are not at its mercy! You didn’t invite it so you don’t have to entertain it! You can reject it completely, refuse to own it, and then dismiss it, much like you would a random ad you didn’t request and are not interested in! Just be intentional about what you allow space for in your thoughts. Shoo bird! 🐦‍⬛

(Of course, if there is an obsessive or anxious disorder diagnosis involved, or if that bird just won’t budge you may need a little more professional help.)

05/26/2024

(This post is Part 2 to yesterday’s post.)

Have you ever pictured the l***r after Jesus healed him, or Lazarus the day after walking out of that tomb? I always imagined them leaping for joy, riding on a cloud of pure exhilaration forever after. Euphoria! But I’m picturing it a little differently now. Yes, I was flooded with such relief as I shared with my family the amazing news I shared with you in yesterday’s post. But I was basically shell shocked, and, in the days that followed, pretty subdued. No leaping for me. I just couldn’t make sense of it all. And, honestly, the main thing I was feeling was guilt. GUILT. It was heavy and confusing, and something I could’ve never imagined feeling in that moment of rescue. But my mind kept going to the 2 dozen “warrior babies” I have followed for over a year on social media. Babies I “adopted” after our precious friends and their little Warren fought his fight with cancer with such courage. Little ones whose lives are consumed with hospitals and needles, surgeries and pain, and yet, courage and smiles. Whose precious families fight relentlessly for their care and comfort, all while living in constant and indescribable fear and heartache. Those little ones’ names are on my refrigerator and they are in my prayers constantly, as I, along with so many, plead for a miracle on their behalf. While I have never met them, they are babies of my heart, and THEY were on my heart, as I wrestled with my own rescue.

If you follow this Grace page you are aware that for at least 20 years I have written my prayer “conversations” to God in journals and have found them to be one of the greatest faith tools I have ever discovered. I emphasize that they are “conversations” because over the years I have recognized how God takes my raw honesty, whether hurting or praising, humbled or ranting, shaking with fear or cocky with confidence, and, as I write, He slowly changes the tone of the entry, until my heart is more aligned with His. It’s a pretty incredible thing to reread, and to recognize HIS Voice in MY handwriting sometimes. I don’t mean to be presumptuous, but He truly does meet us exactly where we are, and leads us where we need to go if we can just recognize His Voice!

So I found myself in my prayer journal the morning after my incredible rescue. And I was sharing my guilt with God, reminding him how I have been praying for these babies who are struggling to live, and that He knows I would give my life for any one of them without hesitation. And then I wrote these words “so why was my prayer for healing answered and not theirs? Why?”

And this is where it gets weird, so bear with me! As soon as I wrote this question I “heard” these words in my thoughts- “it wasn’t your prayer, it was hers.” I just sat in stunned silence. What? What does that even mean? Not mine, but whose? All I knew was that that was not my thought! Those were not my words! What was God telling me?

As I struggled with that puzzle I was humbled like never before to realize that my miracle wasn’t really FOR ME! It was for someone else who desperately needed to be reminded that her prayers were heard, that they mattered, and that she could trust her Father. Not a genie-God Who grants our every wish, but our God Who still moves mountains when it is according to His plan. God Who calls His people to pray and Who reminds us that He has the power to answer in miraculous ways. God Who uses our witness to give someone else hope.

I have to confess that I still have moments when guilt tries to steal my joy,but those moments are less frequent now, because I realize that I was just a small piece in somebody else’s rescue story!!

Isn’t it incredible the lengths He is willing to go to, the people He will use, to remind His children of His Incredible, faithful Love? How I pray that whoever she is, she has found her faith restored, and recognizes, like never before, just how much she matters to our miraculous Father!

He knows our name.
He hears our hearts.
And He answers prayers.
You can trust me on that! ❤️

05/25/2024

Having been a little absent from this page, I want to catch you up on the roller coaster of emotions I have experienced in April 2024, emotions that are difficult to navigate, and even more difficult to explain.

In early April, after a fairly routine series of wellness tests I was told that I had an aortic aneurysm. Talk about taking the wind out of your sails! It was described to be on the ascending crook of my aorta, 4 cm, and having “a tail”. My doctor, not particularly disturbed which gave me comfort, noted that traditionally they are slow to grow and that we would be diligent about checking it every 3-6 months. I asked her if it could have been caused by that horrific fall and consequent surgery I had in Oct. but she did not seem to see a connection. So I left her office a little stunned (as any unexpected revelation about our health will cause) but calm. That calm did not last long!

I began to hear from medical professional friends who were anything but calm as they pointed out that the aneurysm COULD NOT have been present last October at the time of my surgery (on my compromised AORTA and surrounding area). They stressed that, because my injury was so rare (not one of the top 11 trauma surgeons gathered across the Memphis area had ever seen this injury much less operated on it, and because the surgery was being documented for medical journals)they would have never proceeded if an aneurysm had been present.

If this theory was right, my problems were much much more serious than I could have imagined. It would mean the aneurysm was not a typical slow growing problem, but rather, what would be considered a “fast bleeder” and that would change everything! Research noted that open heart surgery is indicated if an aortic aneurysm grows more than 1 cm in a YEAR, because a rupture is fatal. If this aneurysm had not existed at the time of surgery and had grown to 4 cm in only 6 months, I was suddenly being warned to “not move”! Don’t bend to load the dishwasher, don’t stretch to reach a shelf, don’t take a hot bath, don’t pick up anything weighing over 2 lbs, don’t exert yourself in ANY way until….. Until what? And that is where I was for over a week as we tried to determine if this thing was a recent development. A nurse friend poured over the 380 page medical record of my Oct. surgery and found no indication that there had ever been any concern about an aneurysm. But the only way to know for sure would be for Walt and I to go back to the Memphis trauma hospital where my surgery occurred and insist on some answers.

The next day we were back at the Regional One ER in Memphis, where I was finally admitted and assigned a doctor who contacted a surgeon on my original trauma team and further testing began. Soon I would have my answer- either the aneurysm had been present at my surgery and was, therefore, a slow bleed like most, or was recent and fast bleeding and would require immediate attention.

Hours later the doctor came in with the results: there was NO aneurysm, nor any sign that there ever had been!! I couldn’t grasp what she was saying! I could only cry, while asking her how that could be possible. She said she had “no answers.” She assured me that they had the absolute state of the art testing for aneurysms, full body as well as concentrating specifically on the area where the aneurysm had been documented, but there was NOTHING there! While she acknowledged that the original testing report in Fayetteville had been very detailed, both in size and shape of the aneurysm, as well as in location, she was adamant that there was no aneurysm, but had no explanation. She also noted that other unrelated details were the same on both tests, so there had not been a case of me having gotten the wrong original test.

As I left in a daze, a nurse who had been with me that day threw her arms around me as I left the hospital, crying as she held me, and saying “oh my goodness, you have been given a miracle!” I can’t tell you what I felt in those moments, just that I left that hospital in complete shock. Her final statement was “I can’t explain it”. Period.

Seriously, how do you process a miracle?
This would not be the end of my roller coaster of emotions, but writing this has brought them to the surface, and I am, again, at a loss for words. So I am pausing for today to regroup before sharing the rest of this story with you tomorrow.
Blessings!

04/01/2024

Hope you had a beautiful Easter celebration! Wanted to share with you such an honest and wise post from a precious friend, Tori Gaskin.
……………

“And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, He has risen.”-Luke 24:5-6

When I heard this at church this morning, I could easily put myself in their shoes-the women who went looking for Jesus. He told them He would rise, yet they still went looking for Him in a tomb. I can only imagine they were feeling overwhelmed with emotions including doubt, sadness and worry.
How often are we guilty of doubting God and His plan for us, despite what we know He has promised us and what we know to be true of Him? I still worry despite how I’ve seen Him move, despite how deeply I know He cares for me, my family, friends and every single person He created.
I strive daily to believe. To believe He will fully heal me, to believe He is always with us, to believe He has the absolute best plans for each of us (even if those include suffering along the way) and in my heart of hearts I fully believe-but how often have I still “looked for the living among the dead” so to speak instead of just trusting what God says to be true-in the moment and always?

“Lord I believe; help my unbelief!”-Mark 9:24

Happy Easter everyone! 🫶🏼

01/17/2024

A new year brings new opportunities to be grateful. To be appreciative of the multitude of sometimes tiny gifts scattered throughout our day. It’s not that they are not present, it’s that they are missed in our focus on expectations. Our measuring stick is so often what life “should” look like, but wearing those glasses limits our ability to see the beauty of what IS. So today I challenge myself to be ever watchful for the tiniest of things to be thankful for. To let go of the “shoulds” and celebrate the “is”! Keep a journal handy and jot down every tiny gift in your day and you’ll soon have a tired hand and an exploding heart! I guarantee you!
May 2024 be our year of gratitude!

We will find what we look for.

“Whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, think on these things!”Phil. 4:8

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