Summer thoughts

This summer has been a summer of learning. Once again I find myself being challenged to once again apply things that I learned once again. Challenges to overcome and to work on healing. Healing seems to be a funny thing. Something that needs to allowed in and to be brought into places where nothing before has been allowed. What can be harder than to allow something, even with the knowledge and belief that it is something that is good and necessary, into those secret places? This is a huge step in humility and vulnerability.
Last summer is when I started to really let people into those protected places. Realizing that I had come to a place in my journey of faith that I could no longer deal with alone and that I needed help to sort threw things. Needing to find a healthy way to deal with things and over come barriers that have been protecting me and now were holding be back from being the women that God had created me to be. Only by God’s grace and strength was I able and willing to open up a very hurting and venerable place to a near stranger and to close friends in attempt to find help and discovered an unfathomable freedom.
Learning things in my life that are protection that needs to be brought down is very trying. It is like a safety blanket that one cuddles for years. Each rip, tear and stain has meaning and comfort seeped into it. But hanging on to that ratty old thing, even though it has served you well, is much more detrimental than if one was to get rid of if and move on to something bigger and better. But hiding it and keeping is rather embarrassing to admit to. Sometimes we don’t even know that it is at the bottom of the box of stuff we have been lugging around, stinking up everything. It was time for me to dig deep, find that grossness and allow it to be purified in the light. Threw that revealing, receiving freedom from it.
That freedom is something that I have found that I need to constantly be reminded of. I have indeed received freedom and that I need not live in fear of those blankets and secret places. But the temptation to return to those ‘safe’ places of seeming control can be overwhelming sometimes. It is only by asking the Lord for strength to remain in him and him in me, that I am able to be in the light and freedom. I have so much more to learn and to grow through, but I am resolved that I will keep on in the race to the light and to the life abundant. I am not alone and I do not need to protect myself, because there is no safer place than in the arms of the Lord.