Keep your heart with all vigilance,…Prov 4:23
At times I feel my own personal insecurities rise to the surface when interacting with those I love the most. For example, if my child starts to do something that my insecurities tell me is unacceptable I can feel myself start to become uncomfortable and want to stop what she’s doing or who she’s becoming because it doesn’t fit the protective narrative that fear created for me.
We all have them, don’t we? The little stories we’ve told ourselves on repeat, over and over, believing if we keep ourselves inside our story and not out of it things will be OK. What do we do though when someone or something interrupts our story? These are our greatest potential moments of discipleship. They are gifts from Jesus Himself to walk away from the old lie we’ve created and walk forward out of bondage and into freedom.
Children, if we have them, have a way of highlighting our weaknesses and blindspots. They are tiny little gifts from God sent to help make us more like Jesus. As long as we don’t try to press them into our protective narrative, but instead allow God to use them to help take us out of it.
That is what I am learning is that if I really want freedom I’ll do it because it will break the chain of generational sin in me and my family. God forbid I continue the narrative and pass that onto my own child. I pray, with each day that I might let go of old lies and stories I’ve believed about the world and myself that are wrong and instead embrace the newness that is mine in Christ shown to me by God’s loving character and grace. Then, I can accept not just myself but those I love the most with deeper joy.
Lord, transform me. I don’t want to be the same old person who holds fast to the wrong narrative. I pray that with each day I would embrace the life you have created. A life of peace, joy and rest. Forgive me when I give into fear and hold fast to things that have the potential to lead my old child into bondage. Lord, free me this day, I pray, in Jesus name, Amen.
Heather Quiroz 