fresh starts

"The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit." - proverbs 18:21

It's been a while since I've been here.

Sometimes I need to remind myself that I can have a fresh start.  That the less-than-awesome things I feel are less than what I was made for.  That Christ did not come so that I could be plagued by homesickness, a longing for what once was, sadness, anxiety, or worry.  Those are a handful of things that I've been feeling lately.

I've been struggling, friends.  It's a whole new way of struggling.  Since my medicine, I've been really challenged.  Some days are easy and other days are really hard.  It's hard to adjust to a new you, but that's what I feel like I'm doing.  Like learning to walk again, I see the whole world differently, which is equal parts exhausting, challenging, awesome, and so, so cool.  I don't see my relationships, my Jesus, my problems, myself, my job, or my responsibilities through a lens of worry and clenching and tense muscles and hard grips.  Rather, I can be calm about things.  It's a strange season I'm in.

I've always been a believer in the power of words.  I think that words are what make the world go 'round.  They have the power to heal and to hurt and to help and to heighten.  Recently, my heart has begun to beat even more for words.

Let's see if I can adequately explain this - the words we declare are the words we shall see to pass.  By that, I mean that if we say we are happy, we can begin to believe that we are.  And if we say we are sad, we can believe that, too.  And if we say we are heartbroken, we can stay in that season.  If we say we are overcomers because of what Christ has done, we, too, along with Him, can overcome.

I mean this in an emotional sense.  Not that I can declare that tomorrow, all sickness will end, and on October 21st, 2014, the whole world will be healed.  But there is power in declaring things over ourselves.

Especially things that we already know to be true from the Lord.  That sounds a little silly sometimes, but I've seen my life changed by my proclamations that the Lord will fight for me.  I know those things, but I foolishly forget them.  When I can chant it over myself, I can remember it.  When we repeat the truths of the character of God to ourselves, we can begin to really believe them.

Imagine if we took God at His word.  If we actually trusted in the words that He claims about Himself.  

Over the last month or so, I've seen a lot of deliverance in my life.  I think that the Lord has always been delivering me from seasons and hard things and bad things, but lately, the promise that He really will deliver me has become my heartbeat.  Oh, what a glorious thought it is to know that I just believe in all that He will do and He will do it.  

I've seen Him deliver me from anxiety that I didn't realize was as bad as it was until I got help.  I've seen Him deliver me from the all-consuming doubt that He can do what He says He will, that He is good like He says He is, and that He is for me and has my best in mind, even when He takes things from me.  I've seen Him deliver me from some depression that I didn't know I had, but have since felt the chains lifted off.  I've seen Him deliver me from boys that are doing less than following Jesus' will.  I've seen Him deliver me from seasons of chaos into still waters.

I trust and believe that the Lord is good.  And sometimes, that takes a lot of chanting, but I'm here to chant and rant and declare it because I need it.  I need that truth in my heart.  So if standing on chairs to yell it until I believe it works, so be it.  Here I stand.

I'm not sure I made much sense here, but, like learning to walk again, blogging is a newer thing for me since my medicine.  Here's to all that will come - the good seasons and the bad.