Hey everyone!
I hope you are all having a good Wednesday, or Thursday, or whatever day that you are reading this on. I know I am.
I have been doing some journalling today and I wanted to share with you some thoughts I've had based upon something I wrote in my journal; how we perceive what happens to us is an indication of what we are believing...
Trials Perceived
If I say to you the word "perception" what do you immediately think of?
A viewpoint? An angle of vision? Or maybe being forward thinking enough you can accurately interpret events as they are unfolding around you?
Let's do, as I always do, this by looking at a dictionary definition of this term:-
Perception: The ability to see, hear, or become aware of something through the senses.
I like that, "become aware of something through the senses" because isn't that how we interact with our world? Through an ever changing filter of what we are seeing/hearing etc? Yet as we know by now, some of our perceptions can be based off of false data.
Take me, for instance, I could start believing that just because I've never had a girlfriend, that it somehow means that it's never going to happen to me. By measuring myself upon my past failures to find someone mutually compatible, I am effectively letting my past rule over my future.
Don't ask me why I've never had one, I've tried on several occasions and each and every time got my heart squashed flat. But it's funny how even in the deepest of episodes of my battle with depression, my real character comes out and reminds me that I am made for so much more than just to be somebody's boyfriend/husband/father.
You've seen what I've been through on here as I've tried to keep myself as open a book as possible because it's my history. But it's not my destiny, or it doesn't have to be!
You see, when I started to realise that the way I was looking at, or perceiving, what was going on around me, was fundamentally flawed I began tracing things right back to the source where I learned some valuable life-lessons along the way. Namely, that a girl can reject me and I'll still get back up. Sure, this time it took longer for me to get back up because I loved her, I loved her a lot.
I realised that I was made for so much more than fulfilling a vision of a loving boyfriend/husband/father and that is one that follows Christ no matter how hard and how difficult it gets. I just had to learn to let go of her because she was never mine in the first place.
Truth Believed
All throughout this process, I learned that some of the things I had been believing since I was a child were erroneous and downright flawed. Surprise, surprise, this reminded me that I am flawed, deeply flawed. Yet it is not my definition of me that counts, but Christ's.
Slowly, over time, I learned to take great value in each and every one of my flaws because they revealed in me a character that follows after God even when he cannot see where he's going. That's the hard part, walking through life by faith and not by sight, something every Christian is familiar with.
I have told you these things, so that in Me you may have [perfect] peace. In the world you have tribulation and distress and suffering, but be courageous [be confident, be undaunted, be filled with joy]; I have overcome the world.” [My conquest is accomplished, My victory abiding.]
The above scripture, taken from John 16:33 is something that I kept coming back to because it is a double promise from Jesus' own lips; that I will have trials, and that I can be confident in Christ's ability to overcome these trials.
Some of these trials were trials of my own making, which were lessons I had to learn the hard way, as they were a road less travelled by me. Some of them were just experiences sent to refine me into the Christian that God always knew that I would become.
The more time passed, the more I realised that I could change my reaction to what was going on around me, responding instead of reacting to stimuli outside of my control. Man, that's a post I could write all on its own, about control and how the only thing we can control is how we respond to our trials.
I would like to think, as I have maintained in my journal many times, that I responded in the best possible way that I could based upon all the information that was at my disposal at the time. Sure, it led to me leaving church when it arguably might have been better to stay in that kind of environment. But I needed space. I needed time to process what had gone on because a lot of it was outside of my control, yet what I could control, I did.
Final Thought
There's probably more that I could write on this subject so maybe I'll come back to it before Christmas and before I move onto tackling another subject.
Before that, I just want to say that I hope that you are all enjoying your festive holiday build up because I know I am. I will be looking forward to doing my yearly review on here some time in December. As always, you will be able to find out which movies & games have impacted my year as it's been two years, I think, since my last one, so I need to resurrect that review.
Whether you are in a trial right now or have just come out of one, I want you to promise me that you will keep on fighting because it's not over. Not whilst there is still breath in your body, so don't think it is over; it's not!
Peace!
===TLP===
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