Shortly after the inauguration of our new president I was watching a story on the news about the Obamas. It was about Michele Obama's Mom moving into the White House with them to help with the kids, and they were talking about their relationship and how close they are. Her brother told a story about how they were raised by their Mom to"feel good about themselves". I found myself standing in my bedroom watching the story with tears streaming down my face.
It reminded me of a friend at my Bible study. We were talking about the negative self-talk that goes on in our heads and she said "I don't do that. My parents taught me that it is not OK to say negative things about yourself, so I never learned to do that." It was the first time in my 46 years of life that I realized that it is possible to be that way. I had assumed that everyone had negative stuff floating around in their head about themselves like I do. To be honest, at first I didn't believe her, but after a while I noticed that she always spoke in a positive way about everyone in her family, somehow she really had been raised to be immune to the infiltration of the negative voices in my head commitee. I was stunned and amazed. I wanted that. The only problem is my commitee took up residence long ago so my challenge is how to evict them after the fact? I have tried but at best I have gotten them to take the occassional mini-break.
Flash forward to this session of Bible study where we are doing a series called beliveing the story. We are studying what God says is true of us. I began to realize that if I could begin to get this stuff,and really believe it, maybe that would be the way to get rid of my committee. So, I have made a commitment to contend for my freedom in this season of my life.
I have to tell you it is not easy, I have found that the more determined I become the louder the negative voices scream at me. I have had some really dark days recently, the kind where I wished I just didn't have to do this anymore, where I want to give up the fight. I am trying to learn to tell someone, anyone, now when I get in that place, my instinct is to get quiet in myself and hide away. I can barely stand to be in my own skin when I am like that and I don't want to subject anyone else to it. It gets worse then. When the darkest parts get exposed they lose some of their power. The storm clouds cannot gather as strongly.
I wish I could say that I had a sudden epiphany or that God reached down and it all became clear and I am leaping in this freedom. Right now, I am doing all I can to stand firm to not lose ground. Everything feels fragile and lie it could fall apart with too strong of a breath. We may lose our business, we probably have to lay off most of our employees this week. What we have poured our lives into and worked so hard for could fail. We may be back to ground zero staring over, yet again. I am so very tired and it becomes easy to see where I have failed all my flaws, fears and issues. I can only look so far ahead and I do not see freedom on the part of the trail that is visible to me now. My faith resides in the creator, not the one who is near, he is too ethereal at the moment.
Sometimes freedom fighters just have to use everything they have not to lose ground.
