I Agreed

-As I read "She devoured my tenderness, my sweetness, my gift..." at http://agirloutthere.blogspot.com, I was so struck by how what my friend writes about a recent discovery regarding a specific word curse in her life fits with something I wrote in my own journal earlier this week. So, I decided to post my journal entry. I post because I think that maybe God is doing something collective amongst his beautiful daughters, and maybe it is even bigger than that. I post, I guess, because I want to give God props for creating the true her, the true me, and the true you -

Someone told me that I was not beautiful or worthy of love
And, sadly, I agreed
Someone told me that I needed to stay hardened and protected
And, sadly, I agreed
Someone told me that it’s better this way, because it’s safe
And, sadly, I agreed
I agreed, and I remained unchanged.
I remained less than I was meant to be.

But then I wondered what would happen if I disagreed. What would happen if I refused to accept this as all there is for me? What if I rejected the thoughts but also refused through my actions? What would happen if, even though it didn’t feel like me at first, I chose different paths than the ones I know well? What would happen if I walked in beauty and freedom by making difficult decisions? What would happen if I chose to not be the “me” I have known – the one shaped and distorted by this world full of broken people like myself - in order to find the me that God created?

It has always been the case and will always be the case that I am God’s creation and that he loves and accepts me no matter what. Through this, I have learned to love myself. But I also know that he has more for me, and he longs with great longing to give it to me. I know that God’s ways are not my ways. By clutching my ways with white knuckles, I have no way of grabbing onto what God has for me.

So, I have now taken specific steps to break the power of these "word curses" over my life. I have committed it to prayer in order to allow God to cleanse me from the way these words have bound me. And now, I have decided to daily make the difficult choices to reject the old distortions and related actions in order to discover something new about who I am.

At first, I was overwhelmed by thinking about the everyday courage, self-control, and vulnerability that it would take to carry this out. But now I know that these things do not have to come from me – these are not traits I have to possess. I only need to possess the willingness to give it over to God, allowing him to fill me with what I need for the process that follows. When I do this instead of trying to do it myself, the me that God created – the full me with all of my own personality intact but refined to his glory - shines through. I am beginning to see it. And I realize that I am beautiful, I am worthy of love, and I don’t need to stay hardened to stay safe. Imagine that.