Month: February 2018

This is a Prison of my Own Doing

I bought the lie this meme states: there is no healing from emotional abuse.

I’ve actually allowed this lie to dictate most of my life. The problem with living this lie, is that it creates more lies and infiltrates even more of your life, including your health.

There CAN BE healing from emotional abuse, but just like overcoming an addiction, it’s a choice.

The challenge, though, is you will have to break free from the bondage this emotional abuse has created and you have endured.

Is it easy? No

Is it possible? Yes

But you have to do some very hard work.

Another challenge is realizing that many times we like living in our own prison of our own doing. What do I mean?

The abuse is no longer there, but we act like it’s an ongoing thing. We have to change our mindset. We have to be willing to walk out of the prison into the free world. We have to be willing to say, no more does this define me or define my tomorrow.

We also have to learn that just because someone says something with a certain tone or uses a certain phrase, and it triggers a response from a time when the abuse happened, it isn’t necessarily emotional abuse, nor intended to be abusive, it just is just something that happened.

Are these real responses and do they need to be dealt with? Yes, but as you are healing you have a choice! I have a choice!

The problem is we have bought the lie that we don’t have a choice and there is no healing from emotional abuse.

Puking up prayers

Monday night everything was going along just fine.  I had made dinner for Rob and me.

We sat in our chairs in the living room eating, talking about our day and what the week looked like.

When we were finished, I took the dishes to the kitchen.  Put away the leftovers. Cleaned up the kitchen. Then returned to my chair to continue in our nightly routine.

By 8pm my stomach was turning and dinner was not setting well with me.  I explained to Rob that I wasn’t feeling well and I was going to go lay down.

As I was lying in bed, holding my stomach. At this point I was wishing I was in labor, because then at least there would be a great reward at the end, but no, my stomach was churning and churning with no end in sight.  I cried out for Rob to get me the heating pad.  His response was one for the textbooks, “This won’t end well.”

I did not care, the heat felt marvelous.

“Hey Rob can you get me a bucket, just in case?”

As I laid there in the most excruciating pain I had had in a VERY VERY long time, I found myself praying.  No scratch that, begging and pleading to God to allow me to throw up, then at least I would feel better.

My stomach would churn some more and with every pain, I would cry out in desperation to God to allow me to just throw up.

By 9pm my prayer was answered and I will spare you the gory details of my next few hours.

After I was back from the dead, I was scrolling on Facebook and I came upon a post that caught my attention. John-Pat Fuller said

Word #1 DESPERATE

Then he went on to ask

HOW DESPERATE AM I?

ENOUGH TO REALLY PRAY?

 

These two questions have troubled and taunted me all week.  You see on Monday night I was so desperate, that I was crying out so desperately for God to intervene. He did and I was ever so grateful.  But why do I not pray daily, in desperation for God to answer?
Only I can answer that and I have been personally working on how I pray.

Here is the rest of John-Pat’s post:

What can actually be accomplished of spiritual value without prayer?
Is it possible that I have been trying to live my life still too much in my own strength?
Am I DESPERATE enough to want the Holy Spirit to teach me how to live out all of God’s commandments?
Do I Hunger and thirst for righteousness, or do I just hunger to have the desires of my flesh fulfilled?
Just how DESPERATE am I for an intimate relationship with God, to know His will and His way, and to walk in the Spirit?
Have I faced up to this truth, that only my amount of DESPERATION will determine the amount of His blessing on my life?
How do you answer the above questions?
Are you DESPERATE for His presence in a new and living way in your life?

 

My prayer is that we will become a people that will desperately seek His face.

Seek His truth.

Seek His answers for our lives.