Fear to Fight

Tonight, I read my first blog post on here. It was actually reflective of my anonymous blog I wrote called “Crooked Self”. Now this was a short lived blog for about 6 months during my weight loss journey back in 2011. I kept it anonymous because I feared judgement and ridicule from my family and friends. So it allowed me to freely write without worry.

What’s great about it though is that I titled one my posts “Reality Check”. This post was about living in a “fantasy world”. Back then I was so untouched with reality and those around me, I lost touch with who I was and who God made me to be. I was secluded in this world because I was afraid of this world.

Fear ate me alive. I was afraid of failing, afraid of trying out for things, afraid of not making that part, afraid of judgement, afraid of dying, afraid someone or something was going to happen if I failed. I was even afraid to sleep when I was little because I was afraid of what might happen.

Being that fearful handicaps you. It drives you away from things and drives you away from reality. In 2001, I became majorly depressed and suicidal for the first time. I wanted to end my life because of some “boy” on the internet, mind you I had been a depressed state for a few years due to other reasons, but this “boy” set me over the edge. My life according to my definition was not worthy of living.

However, I wrote about it before I did it. I used to write poetry back in the day, so I wrote a poem called “My last Poem” or “My last Song”, I don’t remember exactly. Anyway, it was a poem about suicide and a poem about how life was not worth living. I was too fearful to talk to others so I let my words do the talking.

Fear strikes you down and holds you back. Fear is the reason, most of us don’t accomplish much. I let fear dictate who I was and my dreams. I ultimately let the enemy steal me away from God’s hope. He put blinders on me and pulled me away from where I could’ve been.

But my could’ve been wasn’t where God wanted me. My could’ve been was where God had me. You see I can sit back and wonder what might have been, but that’s not my story. My story is broken, full of fear, and darkness but my story also has forgiveness, grace, hope, and redemption. I wouldn’t be the person I am today. I wouldn’t be still peeling back the layers of my insecurities and knocking down the walls of my fears and doubts.

God created a beautiful story in me. A story I get to share to everyone around me. A story I get use to help some of the teenagers around me and help those who are fighting what I faced. And there are people out there who have stories that will help me get through the next challenge I’m up against.

We all face a past but your past can either dictate your future by constantly reliving it or you can move on from it and let God use it to help those around you.

Fear doesn’t define my everyday life anymore. The only fear I really have in my life is a healthy fear of God. I am still learning life little by little and I’m still learning a lot about myself even at my age. I might be different. I might be a little weird, but what’s most important is that I am me. I am striving to become the woman God called me to be. I have a calling on my life to live for God and to serve Jesus.

No matter where you are in life, I pray that you let down the fears that holds you back. I pray you walk the walk God has for you. I pray that you overcome whatever past you might have. I pray that life brings you joy, peace, and happiness. I pray blessings over you. God has amazing things in store for everyone of us if we just surrender to his will, we just have to give up trying to fight our past to give ourselves a future.

Digging Out the Hurt

So often times we go through life and we beat ourselves down putting “standards”, burdens, our past, our failure all on top of us and we bury the very person God designed us to be.

All of these things we are not suppose to even carry let alone have it bury us so down that we we lose all sight of hope. We begin to believe our shortfalls our what defines us, our failures are the only thing people see, and that life is pointless because no one sees you, hears you, understands you, or even loves you. So we turn to outside sources to fill the void, to make us feel something or even make us feel nothing. It can be anything, that gives us that feeling. We find it somewhere. It allows us not to feel invincible or hurt for a small window of time.

These are only temporary solutions that will not last. They will only bury us further and further down and it starts a cycle of needing that “high” because it feels that void. Some will lose their life fighting a battle against things they never were meant to battle let alone battle alone. This void we feel is found in God. , people often refer to it as “The God size hole in your heart” and how we fill it determine how we go through our life, day by day, step by step.

Hope, grace, and freedom can be found regardless how bad the situation or past may be.

Hope is found in God. Hope is the last thing we hold on to and the first twinkle we see in our road to healing. Hope is found everywhere. Hope can be found in a smile of a little kids face, or a cry of a baby. It can be a friend reaching out to you, or a mentor to tell you to hold on, it can be just someone finally getting you to see that hope isn’t lost, hope is just buried inside.

Grace is found when we surrender it ALL. It’s confessing every sin and every time you hear and feel the voice of God in conviction and you turn the other cheek. It allowing God into the areas of our life that we keep private in a dark closet in the basement, it’s allowing God in to everything he already knows but confessing it with our lips and on our knees in repentance.

Freedom is found after laying everything down at the foot of the cross. After putting EVERYTHING and surrendering EVERYTHING to God. It’s letting go of the control we think we have in our lives and giving the keys to God. It’s putting Gods hand back on your shoulder and allowing God to lead you. It’s the feeling of a heavy weight coming off your chest. It’s the first breathe of air after feeling trapped for so long.

Life isn’t about the temporary. It’s about the eternal. We either live a life trying to figure out which way to go or we live a life surrendered to God, prayerfully connected, confessing when we need to confess and staying in tuned to the frequency of God.

We all are buried to some extent. It just depends on how we try to unbury ourselves that determines the future God has in store.

Baltimore’s Hope

Baltimore, you hurt my soul. The one thing I have learned over these past few months is that it doesn’t cost a thing to make a difference in someone’s life. It doesn’t cost a thing to tell someone you are cheering for them. It doesn’t cost a thing to tell someone you believe in them. It doesn’t cost a thing to tell someone there is hope. It doesn’t cost a thing to tell someone about the love God has for them. It doesn’t cost a thing to pray for or with them. But we don’t.

 

We don’t go out in the inner city and tell those kids we are there for them. We don’t go out and tell those kids who had no choice in the situation they are in to tell them there is hope. We don’t go out and encourage them and show them the love God has for them. We don’t do it. Why?

 

We believe it’s someone else’s job. God appointed special people for it. But let me tell you, do you know how much Baltimore would be different if we put down our pride and took up our cross and followed him into where he cries out? If we laid down our lives to better those around us.

 

There are lost people everywhere, all around us. But my heart breaks for those kids in the city most of them are unaware what they are even going through. Their normal is our nightmare. Yet we expect their outcome to be the same as ours.

 

You have no idea what they go through. I haven’t even gotten past the surface and all I want to do is cry out to God and ask why. There is hope. We are the hope. We are the ones God called to love this city. Love cannot be poured out if it is not poured in. We can make a difference. You can make a difference.

 

I love my church because we have a ministry in East Baltimore. We have the light of Jesus shinning. But they can’t change the city by themselves. They can’t share the gospel with every kid in the city. But He doesn’t just call his church to his kids, he calls you and me to give hope and to show love to these kids. He calls all of us. If we all put the plow to the ground we can give hope and show love to these kids and start to show them a better a future just by taking time out of our schedule, embracing them and encouraging them. 

Hopeless

I grew up in a not-so-well-off neighborhood. I grew up in a trailor at the end of a dead end street. Most people would assume that I was “trailor-trash” or rather “white-trash”, or maybe just  a “Redneck”.  Regardless that was my life. I grew up with country music, NASCAR, and ____ (anything else that would fit the sterotype).  I grew up in proverty. I grew up not knowing what was for dinner and even if the oven was working that day. My mom played it off as so we did not know. I grew up with male figures in my life who were not there and if they were treated the women as beneath them and treated them more as slaves. I grew up with a mom who loved me with all her heart, and had battle wounds to show it. I grew up with three other siblings battling the same things as I did, we were battling trying to find ourselves in a mist of utter confusion and chaos. 
The kicker in all this, I also grew up in a racist strickened family, both my mothers and my fathers side.  Ones who confess themselves as Christians, but refuse to worship with, to work with and even associate themselves with a person of a different color skin. I grew up with people telling me that I should not move off the sidewalk and I should stand my path if a black person walked by. I was to never go out of my way for them, never. I was even told “horror” stories of things that happened in my parents or their friends past so that I would be scared not to hang out with or associate with the black community. As a child I believed and listened to them. But as blinders of childhood began to ware off my life changed.  There are many whose lives were just like mine.

We were both poor. We were poor not just in the finance department but  poor in love, in spirit, in community, in faith and even hope. I felt like I could not better myself because I was born into a definition. I felt like I could amount to nothing because that’s all I was. I failed a grade and got put in special education classes because I felt unworthy, dumb, ignorant, beaten, and depressed. I did not do well in school because I didn’t think my life mattered. 

There are so many people who go through this, regardless of the color skin. We have people in Baltimore who are told they will not succeed because of where they were born. We have people who think they are defined by their social economic status, race, neighborhood, their family, all of which they were born into. Listen, it doesn’t matter where you come from.

God is the only one who has the right to define you because He the only one who knows everything about you. He loves you, He cares about you. He even came down in human form to die  and suffer for your sins on a cross. 

It doesn’t matter your background or race, we all sin and Jesus still died for you and your sins. His blood covers both our sins. We must confess our sins and repent them. We also must put our hope and our faith in Jesus. Let not this world define us. Because this world is not our home.

I will stand with and defend any person who believes in, has hope in, and their faith is in Christ our Lord. I will also defend and stand with the hopeless because I was there. I will also stand and defend any person who is struggling to make ends meet, to feed their families, because I was there. I am here to stand with anyone who is lost.

Straggler

Are you a straggler? I was. 

Everyone knows the Old Testament stories of the parting of the seas.  But what people don’t know, is there were people who were full of fear, full of anxiety. They didn’t expect God to move for them. They were the stragglers.

I used to sit the side lines of life and waiting for God to call my name that it was my turn. I saw God moving abundantly in other people’s lives. I never felt good enough. I never felt that God was going to move in my life.  That I was unworthy of God. I stopped belittling myself. I stop thinking that I wasn’t worthy. Because I am.

So are you. You are worthy of everything. If you see God moving in others life, stop filling yourself with fear. It is written in Deuteronomy‬ ‭31‬:‭6‬ – “Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the Lord your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you.”  God will never foresake you. If he can move in other people’s lives, He can move in yours.

God will and can move through you.  But it is up to you. You are either full of fear of God not coming through, maybe because He did not come through in the past. If you want something, does not mean God wants you to have it or to do it.  Don’t take your past and try to say God did not come through, because He has. He has always been there, and He will continue to be there, He will not abandon you.  

So it is up to you to decide if you are going to be the straggler or will you have enough confindence in the Lord, will you have enough faith in the Heavenly Father to trust that He knows what He is doing. Let go of control. Stop holding up the walls you refuse to let down and breaks the chains of your past and trust in the Lord. 

Don’t be the straggler awaiting for something to happen. Be the faithful one and walk with the Lord not by fear but by confindence. 

Have a little Hope

Hope. What is it exactly. Do we have it? Do you have it? If we do not have hope are we searching for it in the right place?

In America we tend to put our hope in our “next big thing”. We are hoping that this next thing will solve or fix our problems. Whether it be a relationship, marriage, a child.  It could  also be a new job, money, it could be anything that we are banking our hope on to find happiness. 

However, when these material things, these none permanent, perishable things are no longer, what do we do?Typically we focus on the thing to come in our lives. Yes, this could provide a lite bit of happiness, but it will perish and the happiness will just be for a season. This then becomes a never ending cycle, always looking and hoping toward the next thing to come our way. What we don’t realize is, is we have been hoping and banking on the wrong thing this entire time. 

God is hope. He is our rock, He is our foundation. If we put our faith just on the surface of the soil, we will only last so long. Puting our hope in meaningless things to fix our problems, will just break us on a daily basis. That hope will not last, BUT God makes hope last. He gives us an eternal hope, a hope that will no break, it will never disappoint. He provided this through His son, Jesus Christ.

We must anchor our hope in the Rock. In Jesus because without him, we are simply nothing. But with Him we are free. We are covered by grace and God’s mercy .