Today isn’t my birthday, but it’s a new day and a new month. I am celebrating the month just like it was my birthday. I am grateful and have holy anticipation for how God will show up each day this month. And, I love what I get to do….encourage women, help them consider a different perspective, a faith perspective. I am on my way to speak to women at a retreat center in California and preparing for these weekends always leaves me in awe of God and excited about what he wants to do in all of our lives. My life goal is to know Christ and along the way help women live a better story…a story of purpose…a story of love…a story of faith. And as we live unto him our individual stories become a redemption song. Speaking of redemption songs….
I haven’t posted or blogged for awhile. I have been occupied writing a new book that will come out September of this year. The book, looking at the imprints we received as children, specifically daughters, led me down a healing journey that has been both beautiful and has left me awestruck with the reality that healing can happen, at any age, by the working of God’s spirit in places we didn’t even know needed healing.
To share briefly, I’d like to tell you the key things I am learning:
- God has always been with me
- God will always be with me
- God is compassionate and kind
- I can be compassionate and kind towards myself and others too
- There is a smaller version of me that reacts and responds to life in immature or hurt ways
- There is a grown up Spirit filled larger version of me that can learn to live in truth and healing.
This book , It’s Momplicated, hope and healing for imperfect daughters of imperfect mothers, which is a healing journey for women, included writing our stories. Have you ever taken the time to write yours, or parts of yours? So often we dismiss the past and over simplify or over spiritualize the facts by quoting , I am new in Christ, while living like we are not renewed at all.
We are new in Christ. We were changed spiritually when His Holy Spirit came to make residence within us. But what still challenges many of us is the ways we learned to think about life, ourselves and others. For some, lies that are contrary to God’s truth, dictate our emotional life, our soul life. Though renewed in Spirit, we may be living in a soul of a small child that was hurt and reacting to live through those hurts….without ever knowing it.
For me, today is a new day, and there is one specific prayer that has become my daily request. It is right out of Psalms, “Lord, teach me to number my days, that I may gain a heart of wisdom.” Psalm 90:12
I want to finish the race strong, faithful and focused on eternal things.
I wish I could express to you what this past year has meant. There don’t seem to be words. The inner healing that God has done is as tangible to me as a healing of an external wound would be. It wasn’t that way at first, but over the months, I experienced God changing the inner part of me in ways that I can not quantify. But isn’t that just like Jesus, His Spirit works, and we can’t explain it. This healing has affected the way I view other people, the emotional climate of my soul and the way I respond to my day. The healing has changed me from within so that I am less likely to need to respond to life with overeating or over numbing of any kind. Like I said, Only Jesus.
So here’s my prayer today. I am asking God to do the unexplainable in your life. It’s a new month. Make this the month that you get real with God about your emptiness or any ache that you do not talk about with other people. Sit with him each day, even if it’s just 5 minutes. Ask Him to purify your heart and cleanse you from things that are not pleasing to him or are not healthy for you. Expect him to work. He will. Truth is He already is working. His love for you is far greater than you can imagine. May you experience more of his love this beautiful new month of March too.
I am praying the same for me.
We can do this. We can yield our lives to God.
Living up,
Debbie
