27:3 'BETTER'

 July 22^nd 2017… I am zoning in and out of reality that yet another chapter is coming to an end in my life. This chapter had as many episodes that I noticed would culminate to the end of a season. It had been a winter-a cold, dark and restless one at that. I wanted it that way for a bit-to be able to feel everything that came and articulate it all to a God I felt had abandoned me by allowing such treachery to happen to my presumptuous “good self.”

I am shut in a lovely en-suite room, preparing myself to give a grand speech at an invite only event for my exit from the place I called home. My soul however, is restless; there is a tag of war for an unknown release. Whether it was of something or someone, I was yet to find out. This release I would later in life come to find out would be the launching pad to the best days of my life. I knew it was restlessness, but in God’s eyes it was a prompting. A prompting to make room for Him to do His good work first and foremost in me, to be able to change what was on me and what would come through me.

I don’t know what is more painful; knowing that you and a person may never be together, or hoping that maybe things could change between you both and the other person changes their mind. When you place the responsibilities of God in human hands, disappointment is not far off from you. There is an original you that God has a purpose for; to respond to the praises of man so as to maintain a counterfeit of yourself will only bring you an unnecessary and overwhelming burden of worry, anxiety, fear and ultimately confusion of identity.

With an already hardened heart (I am still learning to embrace emotions), there were no tears to shed- just a bleeding heart to expose in the silence and secret of a temporary home before the grand transition. Addison Leitich says this, that “When the will of God crosses the will of man, somebody has to die.” This was the day, I had been fading away little by little but as scripture says, “inwardly I was being renewed day by day. (2 Cor. 4:16)

It was in that moment that I remember looking back over the counterfeit girl that I had begun to disengage from, and converse with the authentic woman that I am (and still becoming) today. I smiled, because I knew what was coming; a new dawn to live out the original persona of who God called me to be.

Today, I think I am falling in love with who God called me to be. Finding out for myself my reflection through God’s eyes has infused a confidence from within that the world cannot take away. It takes time to know, accept, forgive and spend the rest of your grace filled days finding who you are in Christ. It takes even more courage and faith to believe that that is who you really are. God has brought about a growth and maturity in me through knowing Him and other men I allowed to walk into my life. I had had my fair share of winters, seasons that as I write this post, I can never regret. It has taken what I would call a “dangerous” level of guts to accept the wish that I had never met them. But then again, who I am now is grateful that I did. I lost them, but I found me and I figured, what could be more important in life today than that?

This is how I became better;

1.      I forgave myself! I forgave myself over and over again. I still forgive myself to date. If I do not forgive myself, my greatest fan will be gone, and I do not think I can leave without her. I need her. I need me to do me.

2.      I asked God to forgive me, and help me accept His forgiveness. My soul was a hub of bitterness, anger, envy, jealousy all because of the pain I held on to in hope that I’d use it to be a better enemy. It had to go, I had to let it go, and because I wanted it gone, but had no strength to release it, I asked THE ONE who knew all about it, to help me surrender it.

3.      I forgave him; I forgave them; for the untimely unexpected reward of betrayal. For the lies, that surfaces way later when I had dived in too deep mentally and emotionally. For the times I believed those lies, for the things that presented those lies as truths, but ultimately for walking away rather than stepping up. Yes, I forgave them.

That’s how I became better.