A New Normal

Right now the wind is blowing in fierce gusts against our house, shaking the trees last desperately clinging leaves and sending them falling and swirling to the waiting earth below. It is overwhelming and beautiful that the same Creator that makes that wind and created those leaves is doing the same thing inside of me, something I have not allowed to happen for what feels like forever. I feel Him there, in the deepest corners and the most forgotten crevices of my heart and it feels scary and painful and SO necessary.

Jesus love me. He LOVES me. He loves ME? It’s a sentence that I write but still do not understand, a concept I don’t think I ever will. Yet as amazing as it is that God loves and forgives me, my idols rob me of the joy that this knowledge should bring. How is it that temporal things can seem bigger or more important than that which is eternal? Especially such small things, even by the world’s standards. Specifically body image, comparison, and insecurity.

In the 11 years I have been a Christian these issues have come up and been “worked through” time and time again. They have never gone away and I have had varying degrees of denial or acceptance of the role that these things play in my life. But they are always there. Lately, the ugliness of these sins have been truly disgusting to me. I am SICK to death of talking about things I have bought, or want to buy, or wish I could buy. I am sick of worrying about what the clothes I am wearing say about me, what people will think of my hair, makeup, nails, shoes, the existence of baby weight or the loss of baby weight, if strangers would look at me and think I was wealthy (yes I have actually had that thought, more often than I would care to admit), if I’m prettier than insert name here, if I’m skinnier that insert name here, if I’m more fashionable than her, I could just go on and on. How often these thoughts captivate my mind I don’t even want to admit to myself. They are a constant dialogue of flesh and sin that plays in my head and I just can’t take it anymore.

I feel like for the first time I understand the consequences of idols. I have always understood the definition of what an idol is but this is different. The Spirit has been talking to me despite the clutter that all this sin has caused in my heart. He has been shouting, actually. For the first time I have a picture of what I have been missing out on because of my constant unrepentant sin. Joy! Joy in the spirit that is real and tangible and isn’t based on circumstances. Joy in serving Him, in seeing the transformation of other’s souls, of having a relationship with Him and feeling his working in life. I am so filled up with other things I have suffocated the joy right out of me. Such a tragic way to spend a life.

The thing is, I do not have the power to change the desires of my heart to the things that matter. I can’t just will myself to not care about my appearance no more than I can will myself to go to sleep and wake up looking like a Victoria Secret model (let’s be honest, I’ve had that wish a time or two). Repentance in this area will be a complete transformation of my mind, my daily activities, the way I spend my money, and even my relationships with the people I care most about. I don’t even really know where to start. Actually I do know,  its also where I finish and where I continually return to day after day as I fight this battle. Jesus. Praying to Him, reading His Word, crying out to him as I struggle to change the way my mind has always worked. Praying that he captures my heart in a way that I fear I have never let Him.


*As I process through all this I already know that I will regret putting this on the internet and that is exactly why I am. Even if no one reads it I will know it s here and transparency is essential to the death of this sin*