Scriptures: Philippians 4:13, Philippians 4:6

Releasing the Why

A Story

On the evening of September 24, 1942, Dr. Viktor Frankl kissed his wife on the forehead as they both prepared to go to bed. It was a tender, familiar gesture—one that had been repeated hundreds of times during their marriage. Like many of us, he drifted to sleep while running through his mental to-do list for the next day. Little did he know, his life would be irreversibly changed within a few short hours. In the wee hours of the morning of September 25, 1942, the Nazi army rushed into his home and forced him and his family to leave in nothing but their pajamas in the brutal cold of winter.

Dr. Frankl was immediately separated from his family. During the first few weeks of his imprisonment he was starved, beaten, and forced to walk for miles from one concentration camp to another, completely naked. To help him never forget how close he was to death, the Nazi guards gave him the task of removing dead bodies from the camp or shoveling the charred remains and ashes out of the gas chambers. His three years in concentration camps were marked by daily uncertainty whether he would live to the next morning. 

His mind drifted back to the warmth of his bed and the beauty of his wife and children in an effort to build a sense of sanity in the midst of indescribable carnage and chaos. He had no idea that everyone he loved, his parents, brother, children, and wife were all dead; some from the inhumane conditions of their concentration camps and others from the flame of gas ovens.

One day, while sitting alone and naked on the cement floor of his small cell, Dr. Frankl became aware of what he later called “the last of human freedoms.” His Nazi captors could control his body, kill his friends and family, and make him do the most unthinkable acts for their pure entertainment, but Frankl discovered that in the midst of it all he still retained the power to choose how to be affected by it. 

In reflecting on his time in Nazi captivity, Dr. Frankl said, “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” The power to choose how we respond is a power that can never be taken; it can only be yielded

Our Lesson

Unimaginable. The thought of what Dr. Frankl endured is simply unimaginable. He lost everything. Every loved one. Every possession. Every sense of control or power over his life and body. Yet, he discovered in the midst of deep evil and cruelty that everything could be taken from him except his power to choose how he let it affect him. The strength of character it takes to arrive at such an awareness is not only powerful, but it is deeply instructive for us all.

Attempting to answer the question “why did this happen to me” requires taking a set of facts, then filtering them through layers of personal interpretation. My personal struggle toward freedom from my past has been so difficult because the way we answer our “why” determines how we see our role in the “what.” The Bible tells us “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me,” but you can’t put this principle into practice until you move from a place of powerlessness to a position of power. The hard truth is that “why” something happened doesn’t change “what” happened. And “what” happened only has the power you give it to control you. Like Dr. Frankl, our challenge is to develop the ability to look at what happened to us and choose how we respond to it going forward.  

Phillippians 4:6 is one of my favorite scriptures and says, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” Many people skip over what I believe to be the most important, life-giving part of this scripture; the part that teaches us how to activate the power we need to combat anxiety, fear and anger. Gratitude. This scripture tells us to not be anxious, but instead, to pray and seek God for what we need… with thanksgiving. As I grew into adulthood, my life began to change and the toxic hold my past had on me began to weaken when I started going to God in prayer and thanking Him for the good in my life in spite of my pain. When I became intentionally and acutely aware of the goodness of God in my life, the “whys” of my past started to become less and less relevant to me. Gratefulness shifts our focus from the ashes of our past to the beauty of our present. 

Work

Take out a paper and pen, or open your notes app on your phone, and write out everything you are grateful for in your life; the big and seemingly small. Use that list as a visual reminder every morning that the goodness of God is operating in your life.

Pray

Lord, I have so much to be grateful for despite the past disappointments and pain I’ve experienced. Thank you for giving me beauty in my life and helping me to focus on what I have, not what I lack. Amen.

Scripture: 2 Timothy 1:7

From Fear to Freedom

A Story

Vern was just eighteen when she gave birth to a baby girl and she moved away shortly afterward. The little girl spent the first six years of her life in rural, segregated Mississippi with a grandmother who beat her regularly. Although she was brilliant and had learned to read before the age of three, she was regularly punished for anything her grandmother didn’t like. One time, when the young girl went to the well to get some water for the house, she became intrigued by the water and began to play in it with her fingers. Her grandmother saw it and beat her so badly that the girl bled from the welts on her back. When she put on her dress for church, the welts bled through the dress and her grandmother beat her again for getting blood on the dress. 

She left her grandmother at six to move to Milwaukee with her mother, but while there the woman in charge of the house her mother lived in made the girl sleep on the porch. And at nine years old, she was raped. She continued to be abused between the ages of ten and fourteen, when she found out she was pregnant. Two weeks after she gave birth, the baby died. In that baby’s life she had built hope for a new life of her own, and when it died, her hope for the future died, too. But that summer she took an acting class for the first time and she allowed the pain, turmoil and emotion of her life to emerge on stage. She began to feel a cathartic purge as the thoughts and feelings she had kept trapped on the inside of her were finally forced to the outside.

Although her healing did not happen immediately, she discovered over years that giving voice to her pain was the first step toward healing from it. And her voice has become a source of healing, hope and inspiration to millions. The baby girl who was originally named Orpah, but was called Oprah due to mispronunciation, has become one of the most recognized names in the world. And yet, behind the celebrity, wealth, power and influence is a woman who had to discover the power to rise from her past. A woman like you. A woman like me. 

Our Lesson

The hurtful things that happen to us, no matter how long ago they may have been, create mile-markers in our life that are difficult to escape because our life becomes defined by what happened “before” and “after” the event. And for some of us, the things that happened become part of our identity. We view ourselves through their lens and begin to believe we are nothing more than they say we are. But at the heart of these thoughts is a fear that we were somehow complicit in what happened. And that can be paralyzing.

Although we tend to use the words guilt and shame interchangeably, they are actually entirely different. We feel guilty about something we did and its impact on the people we care about. We can even feel guilty about things we didn’t even do, simply because of its impact on the people we care about. Shame, on the other hand, is entirely different. Shame doesn’t just cause us to feel guilty about what happened; shame assumes the responsibility for what happened and attributes it to our identity. Brene Brown defines this by saying, “Guilt says I made a mistake; shame says I am a mistake.” There are things in our past that we aren’t proud of, but if we allow those things to define who we are, we will begin to live in a state of shame.

As a survivor of childhood physical and sexual abuse, I blamed myself for what I suffered for many years of my life, but as I’ve grown through my walk with God, I began to realize that the things that happened to me created a broken identity where I saw myself as worthless. It was only when I began to see myself through the filter of God’s Word that I realized I was made for so much more than just surviving. I was made to thrive and flourish. And you are, too. Even when uncertainty is the only thing you’re certain of, there is hope and an opportunity to thrive through God. Uncertainty can breed fear and fear can change the way we show up in the world. But, the Bible lets us know that God hasn’t given us a spirit of fear and, instead, gives us power, love and a sound mind.

 Pray

Lord, I’m ready to release myself from the fear I’ve allowed to lead my life and decisions for too long. I am not what happened to me. I am a victor through the redeeming power of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Scriptures: Romans 8:1-2

Never Beyond Repair

A Story

Marian Hatcher had a corporate job in finance and was married with five children in her thirties when the pain from her past began to interrupt her promising future. She had been molested as a child and her outward success simply masked an internal brokenness that stayed with her. Her husband started to beat her and, feeling she had nowhere to turn, she turned to drugs. Crack cocaine specifically. “Crack cocaine brought me to my knees…That drug became the love of my life and told me it was OK to leave my children.”

She began to sell her body in order to keep up with her insatiable need to get high in order to escape the pain that was waiting for her in reality. She eventually started working for pimps, so she could stay high and drunk without having to face the fact that she left her family. She was missing for almost two years before she was arrested and sent to Cook County Jail. And it was then that her sobriety forced her to come face to face with a past she had been avoiding her entire life.

The judge sentenced her to three to seven years in prison, but instead she ended up serving four months in an area women’s drug treatment program. It was there where she was given the tools needed to dig into her soul and dredge up the shame that she had been covering up through multiple marriages, drugs, and prostitution. After doing the hard work of uncovering her pain and making peace with her past, she realized she had a calling that was bigger than herself. Her pain had purpose. 

She began working with the County Sheriff to shift the way they pursued trafficking victims, helping change their philosophy from going after the women who sell sex to going after the people who buy it. Her work didn’t stop there, Hatcher teamed up with justice officials at the national level to begin speaking out and educating people about the issue of human trafficking across the U.S and, in 2017, she became one of only twenty individuals to receive the Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award from President Obama in recognition of her tireless work and impact.

In recounting the arrest that catalyzed the change in her life’s trajectory, she said “Angels with handcuffs brought me to Cook County Jail.” A woman who had numbed herself with drugs and alcohol to escape her pain was now using her story to help others escape their own.

Our Lesson

The pain we keep trapped inside of ourselves doesn’t stay buried; it seeps out of us through our decisions and relationships. I can’t tell you how many unwise decisions I can look back on and see unresolved hurt compelling my thoughts to choose wrongly. I am sad to say that I’ve had, both, platonic and romantic relationships that were simply the fruit of unresolved hurt stirring my emotions to give too much of myself when it wasn’t safe to do so. Simply because I wanted to be wanted by someone… anyone. The wrong one. Perhaps you can relate to this. 

You look over your shoulder and see a trail of past decisions and relationships that you aren’t proud of. Yet, at the core of those mistakes was the hope that you would find the comfort, security, and validation you needed. That car you bought in an effort to impress people, but you couldn’t afford, got repossessed. That woman you gave your heart to despite the red flags that she wasn’t going to be faithful. The old boyfriend you reconnected with on social media because you and your husband have been getting into arguments. 

As you read this I want to offer you the truth that, no matter what you’ve done as a result of your past pain and no matter how much shame you have carried because of it, you are never beyond repair. In Christ Jesus we have immediate and direct access to redemption power; the power to write a new story.

Work

Take this time to get before God and receive His grace by verbally confessing the ways your pain may have directed your decisions and relationships against His perfect will. Be completely honest because he already knows everything you’ve done. This exercise is for your benefit; to finally admit where you need God’s help.

Pray

Lord, I ask you to repair the broken parts of my heart that have compelled me to make unwise decisions. I want to live a life that pleases you, in public and in private. Amen.

Scriptures: Joshua 1:8, 2 Corinthians 10:2

Run Your Own Race

A Story

Thomas Jakes spent his teen years caring for his ailing father while working in the local industries in South Charleston, West Virginia. He felt a call to the ministry, so he enrolled in classes at West Virginia State University, but soon dropped out. He took a job at a local factory and started preaching around town occasionally. He married in the summer of 1982 and was invited to pastor a small church with just ten members that same year. The church was in disrepair and he made little money, but he set aside what he could from his factory salary to fix it up. The church grew over the next few years, but despite the growth, he still couldn’t afford to buy the nice suits and shoes other pastors wore. He had so little money that he often wore the same suit everywhere he went, a practice that earned him the nickname “One-Suit-Jakes.”

Although he smiled at the jokes on the outside, they hurt him deeply. He had big dreams and an incredible gift for preaching, but the voices in his life and mind spoke against what he felt in his heart.  He tried to laugh off people’s mean-spirited comments, but they pierced his soul in a deeply painful way, making him wonder, “Am I really meant to do this?” From everything he could see, success looked like something that alluded him when compared to others. But, one day, while sitting in feelings of complete discouragement and defeat, he determined to never again allow what he saw on the outside of himself to distract him from what he knew God placed on the inside of him.

He completed BA and MA degrees in 1990, the same year he felt God leading him to move his church to Charleston, West Virginia. Then, in 1995 he completed a Doctor of Ministry in Religious Studies, changing his title from Pastor Thomas Jakes to Dr. Thomas Jakes. In May 1996, the “one suit preacher” who had endured the ridicule and jokes of so many moved his family and fifty other families from his church in West Virginia to Dallas, Texas, where he purchased a church building and renamed it The Potters House. The man now known around the world as Bishop T.D. Jakes had gone from a ten-member church with holes in the roof in 1982 to thirty years later leading a congregation of 30,000 people with a global ministry that touches the far corners of the earth.

Of his journey, Bishop Jakes said, “The acorn contains the entire oak tree, but you can’t see the future oak tree from looking at the present acorn. I had to learn to value the acorn that was inside of me, even when other oak trees laughed at me. That which we are to become is already within us. We just don’t see it yet.”

Our Lesson

Rising from the pain that lies behind us requires focusing on the purpose that lies within us. Think about all of the people in your life that you compare yourself to as a measuring stick for your worth: that sibling who got married first, despite being younger, that coworker who always comes into the office looking flawless when you’re just trying to not show up with your baby’s spit up on your shirt, that college roommate who just won an election to the Office of Governor when you were the student body president, but now process payroll for a doctor’s office. Write their names down on a piece of paper, or in the notes app on your phone, along with a narrative about the part of your identity that you have been comparing to them and why. Then, out loud one by one, surrender your insecurities to God and ask God to help you focus on yourself in order to discover the truth that you are enough. 

In the case of the younger sibling who got married while you remain single while everyone questions you, this could look like the following:

“Lord, I love my sister. And I want the best for her. But seeing her happy and building a life with her husband makes me feel like something is wrong with me for me to still be single. It feels like everyone else believes something is wrong with me, too, because they keep asking me when I’m getting married like it’s my decision. Father, help me to release myself from the expectations that have created the disappointment I’m battling with. Help me enjoy watching my sister’s happiness as much as I would enjoy sharing in it. I accept that I am enough as I am. May your grace cover my desires so that I can focus on the purpose and plan you have for me and me only. Amen.”

Work

Set aside time to seek God daily for freedom in the area of comparison. With every post we see on social media, with every awards show on television, with every feature story on the cover of your favorite magazine, there is going to be the temptation to view your life through the lives of others, but when you begin to hear the thoughts ramping up in your mind saying “why can’t I do that,” surrender them to God with gratitude for who you are and the purpose you have.

Pray

Lord, you created me on purpose with purpose. Help me to stay focused on my purpose every day. Amen.