Here is the start to what God is teaching me this month :
As my friend and fellow squadmmate, Ashli Blackwell has explained in her blog, it is so incredibly easy to write about updates, but writing blogs are quite difficult.
I will proceed to tell you why, blogs are intimate, they tell about the inmost ways God is changing you. To change you must FULLY reveal the shape and disease of your heart. Which is hard enough to admit to yourself, to God,and your teammates. Then after this comes, the responsibility of not allowing that disease to kill you. Revealing is a scary part in this process but not the toughest part. The toughest part is to fight that disease within.
Once the disease is diagnosed you begin to search out what your options are to stay alive. I think it is comparable to having cancer. When you find out you have cancer the options are not easy, and the most common solution is to go through chemo therapy. I have never been diagnosed with cancer and have not gone through chemo therapy, but I have heard and read stories of some who have. From what i have read Chemo is NOT easy, it is painful, uncomfortable, lonely, makes you sick constantly, and quite frankly you don't feel like yourself. But is worth going through, at a chance of life.
First choice:
A common mistake I find myself continually making is that when I reveal the state of my heart I automatically think I have been fixed, from now on it will be a cake walk , doctors visits are no longer needed , I am healed healthy and ready to go. God continually reminds me of the daily check ups I need. Yes he has healed me but this healing does not come without side effects. Just like the side effects of chemo , are the side effects of dying to the flesh. It is NOT easy, it IS uncomfortable, at times painful, lonely and takes time getting used to the new you .
The current disease in my life is fear. The fear of rejection from my teammates, and my fellow squadmates. This fear has had many negative effects in my life, and has spread for I have not caught, revealed, and started treating it quick enough. Like cancer the slower it takes you to diagnose your heart the more it spreads and the deadlier and more painful it is. Fear has tried to destroy relationships, and has kept me from doing all the work God has called me to do . It has drastically and negatively changed the posture of my heart and has created envy,jealousy, selfishness, pride, conceit and idolatry,
There are two ways you can react to this diagnosis:
First choice:
One way is allowing yourself to be a victim and being overcome by this disease. This is the choice I had made . I had been rejected and had allow myself to feel sorry for me, and had gotten others to feel sorry for me as well. With this choice you don't get better, you allow darkness to creep in on many areas of your life, you start to compare and start to feel helpless and needy , which negatively effects those around you start to make those around you.
The second choice:
You admit and acknowledge your disease, then the " chemo therapy " begins, its uncomfortable, its painful, you might loose hair in the process, but its worth the risk of all the above , because its the only way to true life. You begin to see the richness of life, and are no longer stuck in state of depression and helplessness. In this place of vulnerability your darkest places begin to come into the light and others begin to love the sickness out of you the way that Jesus has always wanted to. Opening yourself up first to the doctor and then to others allows the necessary change to begin to take place. You begin to walk out of your disease.
More to come on the update of my treatment ready , to be cancer free baby !!
Written With much love!
