Empty Journals

I have a ton of empty journals. I don't collect them or anything. Some are gifts, some I picked up on sale...I have two that I use regularly-one for devotional and church notes and one for a personal journal and 12-step notes. I look forward to filling them up.

In the past two weeks, I've had an alarming amount of old habits creep up on me. My old gnawing sense of insecurity has bit me hard. Habits that I have long put on hold are seeming essential again...the need to check everyone and everything to make sure they're all okay with me, and a general sense of feeling out of control. I know these are things I will work to keep in check for the rest of my life. That does not send me into despair. What I do not like is the feeling that they creep up so silently, and before I can react they are taking hold of my actions once again. Oh deceiver, you do your work stealthily. I struggle to be quiet and listen to the voice of my Redeemer. I get so lost in the ins and outs of my days that I muffle the sound of His goodness in my ears and heart. Each night when I journal (sometimes a paragraph, sometimes pages), I write this sentence at the end of my writing "I will always ask for help" or "I still pray for help." There are days and times when I can literally feel my lungs filling up with the murky demons and I begin to drown. And honestly, I question whether or not the help will actually come. It seems that when I quiet myself down and get out of my own way that the Spirit has a chance to fall on me.

I'm reading Boundaries in Marriage by Cloud and Townsend. I read it once, four years ago, but it is worth reading again. It is time for me to decide what kind of person I want to be, and to be it. It is also time for me to define who God is in my life and let him be it. I'm so tired of trying to take control of every tiny situation-simply to satisfy my own sense of insecurity. I see it creeping into my relationship with Eleanor, and I simply won't have it. I recently read in Alan Wright's Free Yourself Be Yourself that "My life long oppressor has no hold on my child." (p. 14). This sentence opened me up to a new thought about my sweet baby girl--my demons don't have to be hers. This was a new crack in my armor, opening me up to sweet freedom.

I am not bound by others' thoughts and actions. I am open and real. I am free. I can rest.

Those words feel so very sweet.

I always like the beginning of a new week. It is cleansing to start anew. Great is thy faithfulness.