All of
my adult life, I have longed for a faithful and committed relationship. At first, I know that this longing was
because of the brokenness of my childhood, and my need to be needed by
someone. However, as God has healed and
matured me, much of what I desired and better yet why I desire it has
changed. I know longer see marriage as
the be-all-end-all of adult life. Don’t
get me wrong; I believe in marriage, and I desire to be married. However, I recognize that my desire to be
married does not outweigh my desire for a fruitful ministry and business. I am married to purpose. There is room for one more in that
marriage—but they must be married to purpose too. I believe that one must be called to marriage
as a part of purpose. If my destiny can sustain marriage, then I
would love to marry. If purpose would be
better served if I were single, I am ok with that too. It took about fifteen
years to get to this place…but I am finally here.
What I
have found out in this journey to destiny, is that before I can commit my life
to anyone, I must first be committed to my own personal growth and health. I want more than a relationship; I want
wholeness, and healing. A marriage
partner cannot and really should not be responsible for giving me that. Before I (if ever) marry, I want to be
transformed. I want my mind to be clear,
focused and healthy. I want to be able
to be intimate (not necessarily just sexual), open, respectful, and I want to
love without restriction. To be that I
must do as Paul admonishes in Romans 12:1-2:
I must be transformed by the renewing of my mind.
How do I do this? First, I think I must be
willing to cooperate with what God is doing in my life. I went through about a year of serious
depression in 2009 and 2010. I went to
work, I taught my Sunday School classes, and I worked with the prophetic
teams—but I went home every day, shut the blinds and the doors and I laid in
bed with the covers over my head, praying to die. God had closed some significant doors in my
life, and I was grieving. My grief
lasted much longer than His desire for me to linger there. It was not until I accepted His sovereignty
in my life that I began to see change in my emotional state. When I admitted
that I was ticked with His decision making, God did as David celebrated in
Psalm 40: He lifted me out of the slippery slopes and the miry clay. I don’t suggest that everyone’s depression
can be healed this way, but it worked for me.
Secondly, I have made some vows to
myself and my purpose. I fully understand that my destiny is not on me to
perform; however, I must be active in my own deliverance. After all, faith without works is dead. I want to share with you what I believe my
role is in my transformation process. I
call them The Transformation Declarations:
I will not allow how other people love me determine how I love them. In short, I refuse to take anything
personally—even if it was meant to be
a personal attack. I expect the world to
attack me; that’s their job. However,
the most pain that I have ever experienced has been because I expected to see
love and instead I received evil. Or I
have given love, and received indifference or abuse. I am not so much of a ninny that I think that
people’s behavior can’t hurt me, I just refuse to hold them hostage to the
offense. I have come to realize that on any given day
that anyone can be used as a vessel for good, or a tool for evil. When the enemy of my soul sees me, he does
not see me, per se; he sees either a vessel or a tool—and he means harm for
either one. When someone launches an
offensive attack on me, it honestly has nothing to do with me. It has to do with their brokenness, their
shame, their guilt, and their insecurities.
They have become a tool for the enemy, and they are deceived into
believing that they are out for good.
Consequently, those who are tools for the enemy have no clue that each
offensive attack either exposes a weakness or a strength in me. If it exposes a weakness, hopefully it will
send me back to God to be restored and rebuilt; made stronger for the next
attack. If it exposes a strength; then
God be glorified. Truly, He will use what the enemy meant for bad and turn it
for my good. In either case, I win, because I am afforded the opportunity to
love without agenda, or condition—kind of how Christ loves us.
I don’t have goals to reach, I have changes to make. I really suck at making goals. I am really optimistic, so I tend to make
goals that are unattainable, and even if they are, if I am not careful I will
make the goal an idol, so that if I attain said goal, I am impressed by me; or
if I don’t reach the goal, I am riddled with guilt and shame. Instead, I have committed to trusting God’s
promise over my life and to making daily changes to see that promise come to
pass. Today, I made the change of actually
writing an entry for my blog, and adding an extra half mile to my daily
walk. Changes become habits; goals tend
to become daydreams. I am working
towards a fulfilled life, not a to-do list full of check marks.
I will live in the present.
I have wasted a great deal of time looking at my past, raking through
it, and examining it with great intent.
I have done root-cause analyses on the greater issues and made policy
based on the outcome, and none of it has done a lick of good for me. Neither has staring in to my future,
rehashing prophetic words, and dreaming of the day that will come. How many times have I said to myself, “When
____________ happens, then I will be happy?”
Listen, I believe in learning from past mistakes, and I certainly
believe in having hope for the future, but neither of those activities will
serve me today, and I cannot be a
slave to my box of memories, or my chest full of promises. I must wake up each
day, and deal with the day is it comes, and live life on life’s terms. God is
not interested in my regrets, nor is He interested in my pipe dreams. He expects me to trust His power in my life
TODAY, because that is the only day to which I have access. God obligates himself and no one else to my
future because the work He does in me, will keep being done until I reach my
fullness in Christ.
I want to feel everything and I want to learn how to learn from
it. Yes, I know. Everything? Yes, everything. The truth of the matter is, that I have spent
my entire life medicating with one thing or another. I have used food, drugs, alcohol, sex,
shopping; even my shame became a salve.
I can even say that at one time, church was a medicine. I would go on Sunday and Wednesday, get my “high”;
I would jump and shout, then return to a joyless existence, really just living
for the next service so that I could get my fix. While I don’t relish the pain of a broken dream,
a relationship violated, or a death of someone I love, I do want to be able to
face it head on—straight, no chaser.
Then I want to develop appropriate tools—not mechanisms to deal with my
pain. I want to be able to fully connect
to the people in my life who can help me celebrate and who can also stand watch
for me when I break down. It’s called living life vulnerably, transparently,
and it is the only way to learn real compassion, mercy, and empathy for others.
Finally, I don’t want anyone to
believe that I have developed a set of pat answers to life. I don’t think that I have. It’s more like I am desperate. I am desperate for the abundant life that
Christ promised me, and I can’t have it if I hold on to crazy thoughts, bitter
memories, and fantasy faith. None of those things are the truth. They are compensations and poor assessments
of the character of the God I that I love, serve, and call my friend. That God is a Spirit and must be worshipped
in spirit and truth, and that’s where I want to live too. That’s the place that
God promises that I will live such a full life that when it is finally time for
me to meet Him face-to-face, I won’t inadvertently stumble into the gates. I will slide into them, arms outstretched and
covered in life’s dust, just like a player sliding into home plate should.
