UNGLUED CHAPTER 3

PRISONER

After reading Chapter 3, I was thinking this is about me! WeLL except the story about the woman going to prison. But the part about the writer’s closet was a mess. THAT IS ME….and my bedroom, and by bathrooms, and my laundry room and my kitchen… Well you get the picture. Echoes in my mind of my mother telling me as a child, “You are messy, Just look at your room”. Then as I got older when we would come over to my house it would 95% of the time be “untidy”. “Lisa, how can you make such a mess when it is only you. I didn’t raise you like this”. But then she would say “When you do straighten up, you do a great job”. She always joyed my decorating idea I would do.  Even now, going to my old home, looks like, as my mother would say “ a tornado went through it”. I would ask myself, “did you leave this house like this”? I have labeled myself as a messy housekeeper and even a hoarder!!! I know I am NOT THAT bad but that kind of thinking is in my head.

We can become a prisoner to the labels we give ourselves. Think of the labels you have given yourself. Are these labels keeping you from proving it to be wrong?  Sisters, we need to tear that “label off” right now.

Yes it may hurt some, just like tape on our skin. Be need to look beyond those label we give ourselves, or even others may give us. I have been on the receiving end of being labeled by others. Although some I knew were untrue, some I would have to look deep inside to see if there was a hint of truth. After a while, I would move on, take those baby step forward of that imperfect progress to get beyond of those feelings of hurt. Sometimes those baby steps were easy while others were/are difficult.

I reflect on them now and considering that God was working on me, chisling me. If we keep wearing those labels, we can’t move on and do what God has in stored for each one of us. Like the story Lysa was talking about the famous statue “David”.  How many people worked on that statue before it became the finished process? People stopped. It was unfinished for years. Before Michelangelo, those people just “gave up” on finishing. Maybe they labeled themselves saying “I can’t finish this”. It took a young man in his twenties with energy and vison to finish this masterpiece. (not to say us middle-aged women don’t have energy and vision). He didn’t give up. He keeping going forward, step by step, until it was done.

We can do the same thing. Don’t let labels hold us back. Don’t let labels make us give up thinking it can’t be done.  We are God’s workmanship. Chose to view the circumstances of your labels as a CALL TO ACTION, NOT a call to beat yourself up.

REMEMBER

“ Just because you closet is a mess, doesn’t make you a messy person. YOU are a child of God with a messy closet”