5/15/2015

This Does Not Define Me

 

Many of you know that I have grief in my testimony.  Three years ago, I lost my both my husband and my father within days of each other.  Most people who live with grief, at one point or another, wonder if this is what will define them.  I think like most, when I go somewhere, I wonder; do people see me for me, or do they see me as the woman who had that “horrible thing” happen to her?  A lot of the time I feel like that woman. Lost in the darkness of grief, and sadness.  Calling myself by the name of “widow” or “lost” or “grief stricken”, or “stuck”, or even “alone.”

 

What are you stuck in?  What name do you call yourself?  I think if we are honest with ourselves, we all have names that we call our self,  that if we let them, would define us.  But God is greater than any of these negative things, and with the help of the Holy Spirit, we too are more than the trials and seasons that life holds for us. 

 

I think about Naomi, in the book of Ruth.  She lost her husband, and both of her sons in a foreign land.  When she returned home, all of the ladies were happy to see her, and said, “Is this Naomi who left here so long ago?”  But she told them not to call her by her name, but to call her “Mara” which means “bitter”.  She let bitterness, even for a short time, define her because of her Grief.

 

All of us have trials and hard times in life that can make us bitter, and define how we see ourselves.  Or we can let God use our times of trials as a time of healing and growth.  It says in Romans 8:28 And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. (NASB)

 

My trials have become battle scars, but that is all that they are, scars.  Scars do not define the person, but they do give the person character. 

 

Are there wounds that you are holding onto that need to heal?  Are there scars that you have that are defining you instead of giving you character?  Are you still holding on to bitterness in your life that is defining you, when God is calling you by a different name?  Is there something you need to let God work in you to make you whole?Patty Nicholas