Hello everyone and Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas with family and friends!
Why the serious if not seemingly morbid title to start the year on this January 1st, 2020? I thought perhaps if people understood at the beginning of this new year what benefits they reap from healing as well as what they reap from not healing, we would be off to a great start for 2020. Please hear my heart. I don’t want “death” in any form to come to anyone. I want life and blessing for everyone who reads my blogs and books. I have found though that I must get real and honest about the things I have learned so that you don’t repeat my mistakes. Let us begin.
I want to do a quick recap of where I’ve come from. I have covered this in other blogs in more detail so please feel free to check those out on my website’s blog page. I spent from the age of 14 to the age of 43 bound up in lies I’d believed, lies upon lies upon lies. I had a tangled, mangled, poisonous mess in my heart for 29 years! These lies influenced who I befriended, who I dated and ultimately who I married. They led to food and spending addictions that lasted from the age 24 to age 42. I gained a lot of weight off and on and I lost a lot of money for almost 20 years. They led me into an abusive marriage – predators look for people who have deep heart issues they can take advantage of for their own selfish gain. I am not saying I was responsible for my late husband’s choice to abuse me. I am saying that because of lies I believed, I didn’t think I could do better than him. After he died, more lies piled on top of lies about love, acceptance, and being good enough – on top of the lies along these same lines from my youth. My heart was a mess, I was a mess. On top of this I was grieving. Yet, it was in this time of grief that God began to do a mighty work in me. He began to raise me from “the dead” and bring me back to life so to speak. How did this happen you ask? I chose to let him heal me; it was as simple as that. I chose to let him go to the places I refused to see and would not let others see; deep in the recesses of my heart. I chose to do the hard work of looking at my own heart and beliefs. I chose to let him show me what was there, no matter how much it hurt or how hard it was to accept. I made the hard choice to heal and because of that I am alive in every way now, not just physically; but mentally, spiritually and emotionally! I am really alive, and I have more joy than you know! I have purpose beyond belief, a purpose that is tangible! I now know without any doubt, whose and who I am!
You may be asking what does all this have to do with healing and death? Good question. The short answer is death ensues without healing because things or people that don’t heal begin to decay. We choose death in many ways when we make the choice not to heal. We kill ourselves emotionally, spiritually, mentally and even physically. We can also kill other things like relationships, job opportunities, family ties, etc. I have never seen someone who did not heal actually prosper in any way that was valuable to them. Now let me stop here and say that someone’s choice to heal or not heal is theirs alone. They are not responsible for the choices of other people, including the people who hurt them. I will also say that some relationships can’t be reconciled even if you do choose to heal, because the unrepentance of others destroys any attempt to reconcile. We are not responsible for other people’s repentance or lack thereof. Do you see what I’m getting at? We get to choose! We get to choose to heal or we get to choose not to, in choosing not to, we die a little every day. We get to choose not to be someone’s victim. We can choose to be a victor. I will paraphrase what my pastor has said before: “Allowing others or circumstances to determine your path in life is a victim mindset. Your life is not determined by their actions or words. Your life is determined by your choices.” I would further add your choices are determined by whether you choose to heal or not.
As we start this new year, I hope you will choose healing. I hope you will choose a victor mindset over a victim mindset. I hope you will choose life over death. I hope you will choose not to be sidelined by other’s actions or words toward you. I hope you will choose to let Jesus show you who you really are – an identity that no one can take from you – not even those who have wronged you. Choose well! Happy New Year! Love, Elizabeth