season my words with truth

I crave helping other people see that there is a different way of living.  A better way.

I want to help people live free.

I want to help people see that the chains they think entangle them are not locked tightly to them, and that they can stand up and freely walk.

Yet, I still struggle with living freely.  Words like "stupid" and "never enough" and "always wrong" berate me - over and over and over, again and again and again.  I speak them out loud and respond in fierce anger, blaming my loved ones - my precious groom, most especially - for what I think [he] does to make me feel these things.  And yet, [he] doesn't.  I do.  The Enemy has a field day.

I never feel good enough, and I think I am always wrong.  Always making mistakes.  So stupid.  I defend myself that I am not stupid, and yet I am - forgetting things, or getting things wrong over and over again.  I shriek - why does this happen?!

I don't doubt God's love for me, and yet I think I have made Him out to be a story-take-fantasy type of God, and that I need to get it right in my head, and that going to Him shouldn't be necessary.  I don't really mean it that way, but I think I act that way.

I know the truths.  I should live the truths.  And yet, I stumble and fall, and flail and wail.  Shame on me.  I should know better.  I do know better.  Haven't I been freed from this already?!  I rationalize my behavior in my mind and cry out to God, Why?!, and instead of listening, I just think it over and over again in my mind.

I want to be free.  I want to live free.  Just as I crave to show others about it.  I know it's there, but I can't seem to break free - completely free - from these horrible jaded-truths that I am never enough...thinking everything is always my fault.

And yet...I think God has allowed it for purpose and I am turning into gratefulness to Him.  Because, I am a representative of imperfection.  Just so my family never thinks otherwise of me, I am allowed to make mistakes (and often), and maybe it's how I respond, or how I am loved, or how much grace still flows to me in spite of my imperfection that shows my family something important.

He brings me to hope.  A part of me is willing to be used in this way.  Let my imperfections be splashed across the sky for someone else to see it's okay to live imperfectly...and yet, I struggle to believe it's okay for me.

My heart knows He allows me to be weak and it's the road to freedom for me.  

Maybe all of this can be an opportunity to minister to others, by the way I live.  As a potter tests a pot by how it sings or thumps, maybe how I sing or thump to my imperfections says more than words alone could ever.  And again, I forget that maybe it's for me, first.

He wants me to receive it for me.

I am not thinking I am the best at anything by any means, at yet I *see* how I still struggle with wanting perfection.  I wish I was better.  I think I should be better.  I long to be like her.

They're lies.  Damn lies.  They knock on my door, uninvited.  There's no purpose in them.

With each breath I breathe in, I ask that He seasons my words with truth, about me.