breaking free.

i have read velvet elvis more than once. ok more than twice. every time i read it, i learn something new. i dive into a part of it that i read over the first and third time. i read a sentence differently than i did the second time. i feel something new with every page.

in one chapter rob bell is talking about when he pretty much was a low as he could go. he was sitting in a closet. he describes his experience with such desperation and emotion, his words come alive and embody your soul.


without pain, we dont change.

sometimes you have to hit rock bottom, in order to get back up. when you lose everything and you get to that point of desperation, you try to grab onto anything you can that might can pull you out and save you from the terrible real-life nightmare you are living through. we want to be rescued, so we look to people to fix us. to piece us back together. make us better. when they cant, we blame them. if a person could fix us, we wouldnt have any reason to ask God to help us. rob bell sums it up perfectly...


if i didnt change, i was not going to make it.
it was in that abyss that i broke & got help... because it's only hit bottom & are desperate enough that things start to get better.

just because we decide to change & let our wounds be healed, doesnt mean all suffering ceases and we get the easy way out. a great deal of pain comes with restoration. we have to be broken of the old in order to get become the new. sometimes God has to beat it out of us. when we let go of everything weighting us down on the bottom of the ocean floor, we are cut loose, slowly floating to the top so we can breathe again.

and a new journey began, one that has been very, very painful. and very, very freeing.

we begin to take baby steps. learning how to crawl. then walk. eventually running. we have to learn to love ourselves. love God. love others. in these things we will find happiness and peace.

we understand peace to be the absence of conflict.

we have a distorted view of what inner peace is.
peace.
shalom.
the presence of the goodness of God. it's the presence of wholeness, completeness.
we are not made up of flaws. cracks. things we lack.
our focus sits idle on pessimism... hindering hope and paralyzing our hearts and mind.

there is the ongoing need to return to the cross to be reminded of our brokenness and dependence on God. the point of the cross isnt forgiveness. forgiveness leads to something much bigger: restoration.


we are broken by the only one who can repair us.
we were saved.
bought.
claimed.
by grace.

it is one thing to be forgiven; it is another thing to become more and more and more and more the person God made you to be.

in order to do that we have to break free of guilt. disobedience. selfishness. all the sin that hinders us from being "that" person. when we do not fully give ourselves to God and live just as he intended for us, it is as if he is giving us a beautiful picture he has painted and we splatter mud all across it. we break God's heart over and over, throwing his pictures in the mud, yet he always repaints is for us.



for Jesus to heal my soul, i had to stare my junk right in the face. it will be there until it is hunted down and identified and dealt with. running is prolonging. wherever you go, there you are. i have learned that the deeper you go, the more painful it gets. we have to be willing to drag up everything.

that is by far the most emotionally draining process i have ever had to go through. you have to erase people. emotions. memories. thoughts. impulses. it is as if you are in an emotional rehab trying to detox yourself of all of the junk that consumed you and turned you into the junkie that you are. hanging on by a thread. we become physically and emotionally exhausted trying to be who other people want us to be, instead of who we were created to be.


whe happens is our lives become so heavily oriented around the expectations of others that we become more and more like them and les and less like ourselves.

we are not in control. we have to stop living in the past. look and move forward. leave the old. step into the new. trust. listen. be the beautiful masterpiece that God has painted for us.

but i am not defined by what i am not. and understanding this truth is a huge part of becoming whole. i had to stop living in reaction and start letting a vision for what lies ahead pull me forward.