A Declaration of Transformation

 

 

                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.