This blog is one that is most dear to my heart, most dear to my story! This blog is the explanation of a turning point not only on the Race, but in my life. From bondage to freedom, from an orphaned mindset to the mindset of a daughter, and ultimately from feeling unloved to knowing I am most loved! So here is an open invitation to my wounds, my brokenness, and my heart. All the crap, beauty, ugliness, lies, growth and it all! This is why I signed up for the Race, to due to myself. I pray that when I return home, I will holistically be a different person-I already am so different from month one. I feel in my spirit He has a completely new canvas for me, new legs for running in freedom and a new heart of love to share with the world.
Let me tell you something, this journey is hard. It’s harder than I thought, but because of His strength I am being stripped away of me so that His beauty may shine brighter still. Not because He wasn’t working before but because for 7 years of my life I have never fully owned the freedom He granted me, walked in the beauty He always had, and have clung to too many lies.
So when asking to die to myself, for Him to kill anything not pleasing to Him, for Him to bring the depths of His soul to the surface of mine- I never expected such a quick answer. It came like a hurricane- the physical dying off of pieces of me. My eating disorders of past, now gone; and the remnants of its presence, lost in a recent weight loss that needed to happen. The spiritual dying off me; from believing lies to denouncing them in His name. No more lies of judgement from my peers, no more lies being projected onto people, no more lies of not being wanted, no more lies of ugliness, no more letting lies of old cling to me. I don’t have to be a people pleaser, perfectionist, or fearful of what people think of me. Spiritually He is ripping these away and reminding me to rest and rest in Him. Resting and knowing He is God is one of the greatest strengths He gives us.
In a vision the other night at worship, He gave me a picture of a clothes rack. On the clothes wrack, He had four pegs and on the pegs four articles. 1) A scarf, 2) A hat, 3) a crown, and 4) a shirt. The scarf represented me always people pleasing or feeling the need to. God wants this to die and is killing it. The hat symbolizes the fear I have of what people think, and God also is killing this. He wants it to die. The crown symbolizes perfectionism and how He really wants this to die. And lastly, the shirt represents the lies I have put back on year after year and He wants this to be tossed farther than the east is from the west. This is the largest lie He wants to kill; my own lies.
These four things are dying inside of me. These are several of the prayers I have been praying: GOD HAS BEEN FAITHFUL TO ANSWER because His love desires to be the love that lives always in me. I want to look more like CHRIST everyday and that requires dying daily to myself…it just so happens that right now, He is freeing me from the things that have for so long entangled me. 1) Lord, lay me down, all I am so that I may take up Your heart as my cross. 2) Lord, anything displeasing to you and not moving forward your kingdom, kill it and allow all of You to invade. 3) Anything that hides your beauty in me, rip away the veil and expose the beauty. The beauty so hidden within, expels all of it to radiate out of the shadows and into the light. Take my thoughts and make them your forever. 4) Lord, less of me and more of You!
These are just a few examples of some of the prayers and I have been continuing to pray. He is answering and answering with His beauty. I am dying, literally to myself and I feel it. But as I am dying in the best of ways, He is making room for more and lightening me. He is showing me my beauty, my worth, and how all that I have held over the years- it’s time to release. I released it all and its time to walk with everything new He has 🙂
