232. How bout that

 

It's funny when you work so hard your entire life to do the right things and they still turn out wrong. I remember the first time my reputation was hurt. When people saw me for a version of myself that I wasn't. I remember how that hurt and how small I felt, knowing that no matter what I said or did, people would think something about me that was against my character. I turned into a perfectionist, into someone who couldn't do wrong because she would get told about it if she did, and there is nothing worse than being told what a horrible person you are when in your heart you're not.  It's funny how certain people or situations can bring out versions of us that we didn't know existed that we use to cope with our surroundings. Like going to dinner with an old friend can bring up old memories. 

Yet here I stand a grown woman with threats being made at me because of a decision to file for divorce. A decision I did not take lightly. A decision that has me outside of the church, outside of who I thought I would be and standing here with Jesus asking where He is taking me next. 

I remember being in 8th grade and a rumor going around about me that was not true at all, but the circumstances and me being in a certain place with certain people led to me missing a week of school crying every day. I remember growing up and saying that I would never let that happen again. 

Yet here I am with that same feeling of people slandering my name. People who know 60-80% of the story but not the whole picture. But it feels so different now. Because this time I am standing next to Jesus, a man that made himself of no reputation and said those without sin cast the first stone...

I am blessed that He fights my battles for me. I am blessed that I don't have to care about my reputation. I am blessed by restoration, by hope and by a future that the Lord has planned. I pray that each and every person that I have met along the way is blessed beyond measure also. Because when people say things when they are hurt, they do so to purposefully hurt other people. That is the work of none other than the enemy himself. The goal is always restoration to Christ and repentance. Repentance being what I practice daily in my walk. Am I perfect, far from it. But will I ever feel the need to point out the flaws of others to exert myself as superior, no. That's not the character of the Lord, nor of myself. So while I could go on with my side of the story, I don't need to.

Do we blame a plant for dying in a certain environment? Or do we change how it was tended to and what it was being fed?

I remember Kathryn Kuhlman saying she could take you to that place and show you where it was that she died. For the longest time I thought that I died the day the Lord got me down and I took the noose off of my neck back in December 2018. But now I know that wasn't it. Not by a long shot.

I remember my encounter with the Lord and the tears of PURE JOY when I realized that this was THE moment. THE moment with JESUS that people remember for their entire lives. I died on April 7th 2024, I can take you to the place that it happened. It was in my car, in a Walmart parking lot on a late morning/early afternoon. I will never be the same. 

Because though the Lord saved me from myself that day in 2018, On April 7th 2024, He saved me from my flesh, from my soul and from every demon left entangled within it. I died to the church and it's ways. I died to religion and the rules the Lord came to break. I died to my thinking and to my addictions. I died to my image and to what people thought of me. I died to the minister that I tried so hard to be. I died to striving, I died to being fake to maintain something that was falling apart behind the scenes including myself and my need for sanity. And I am truly free.

The Lord will always fight my battles for me. Today, in death, its much easier to let Him than I ever thought possible. 

I pray each and every one of you will have that encounter, to know where and when you died and to be able to have the testimony of an encounter with the Lord that forever changed your lives. 

He is chasing down His bride, restoring all things and I want nothing but that, for everyone. Especially those that hurt me. Be blessed in Jesus name.