I think the past 12 months have been some of the hardest months of my entire life. I have been, and still am, in such spiritual warfare. I wish this was a blogpost about everything I have learned from having {once} struggled...but it's far from that because I am {still} struggling. If anything, I am deeper now than even before in the trenches of learning how to live for Christ and not for man. Such a simple thing to say, yet living that way is my greatest desire and my hardest fight. A simple command from my Father and yet I kick and scream and cry messy tears over the battle of believing that who God says that I am is more important than who YOU say that I am.
Just like every person on this earth, I have been given my own fair share of un-fair things that I have to learn to live with. I am prone to anxiety and depression. Most nights, anxiety steals my sleep, robs my joy and tries to tell me that I'm not good enough for anybody or anything. I have been diagnosed with OCD and struggle daily with the un-wanted condition called Trichotillomania. I have PCOS that causes me to gain weight un-expectantly and causes me to fear infertility. While I recognize that so many people have it way worse than I do, I would be lying to you if I said that these things weren't the hard things in my life... the things satan is so quick to use to tell me that I should throw myself a pity party. That I should actually focus on these things so that I WON'T focus on the things that God has done.
God conquered death and washed me CLEAN of sin but I can't even remember that when I am so focused on gaining 10 pounds. I could be reminding myself of the Gospel story but there isn't enough room in my day because I am reminding myself of what everyone must think of me now that my clothes don't fit. I could be thinking about how God has CALLED ME WORTHY of love and affection but I can't because I am too busy worried about HUMANS thinking that I am anything but. How could I be something that the world is telling me I'm not? I COULD be thinking about all the gifts God has given me here on earth but I CAN'T FOCUS ON ANYTHING BUT MY SORROWS. Why me, Lord? Why do I have to pull my eyelashes out and feel like no-one understands my agony about it? Why do I have to worry all time? Why do I have to be enslaved to mental illness? Why me? Why me?
WHY NOT ME?
I was walking with my mom this morning crying to her about all these things I feel enslaved to. How I just wish so badly that I didn't have all of these problems... how I wish I could be more normal and not have to answer to anxiety and depression and OCD and PCOS every single day. I was pouring myself out to her for the 700th time this year about how I just feel robbed. I was throwing myself another pity party and I wanted her to help me serve cake and ice cream for all my guests. I wanted her to egg it on... to tell me how sorry she was that I had to battle all of this and that it wasn't fair. I so badly wanted my mama to come to my rescue and she did but not how I wanted her to... but exactly how I needed her to. She simply (and pretty firmly I might add) said...
"Madison, why NOT you? Everyone has to live with horrible things. It isn't dodging the horrible things that make you better... it's learning to live WITH them and giving God glory while you do that make you better... I just want you to stop thinking that this is about you. It isn't. It's about God and how you can glorify Him in it. "
At first I was mad. Not shocked because my mom is a bold woman of God... but frustrated that she wasn't giving me what I wanted. But then it finally clicked... and it has continued to click throughout the rest of this Saturday as things haven't gone as I would like them to. I know that I am still in the fight of believing that I am not some victim, BUT at least I now know that I WILL be asking myself a different question every day...
Why NOT me?
These are my things. These are the things that God has and will continue to use to sanctify me. These are the things that I can release to Him and trust that He knows what He is doing.
THESE THINGS are what I can use to know my Father, my Heavenly Daddy MORE.
These are my offerings to him. Will I cling tight to them and wish they would go away... or will I give them up to Him to use as He chooses? I pray that it will be the latter. Will you pray that for me too?
Would you journey with me and pray that I won't focus on pleasing man but rather focus on pleasing God? That I will trust and obey Him? That I would trust that when He says I am enough that I would believe it? And that when He says to trust Him that I just simply... would?
It's true what I said at the beginning of this post, I do struggle with being a slave to what people think about me. BUT Christ died for even that so that I could live in freedom of it... It's time that I started living my true identity out... a slave to GOD alone.
Redeemed. Forgiven. Beautiful. Loved. This is who I am.
Try it with me?
"7 Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. 8 Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 9 But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 10 That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong."
2nd Corinthians 12:7-10
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