ROOTED RENEGADE

When I came out of trafficking through an arrest, my mind was a wreck. I was always thinking about how I was gonna survive one day at a time. I wasn’t dreaming of the future anymore because I didn’t think I would have one. While I had a small amount of hope left, I was still leery and didn’t trust that anything good could come of what I had been through.

I didn’t trust myself, let alone anyone else. I watched everyone. I wouldn’t put my back to doors and would flinch when people walked behind me. I observed everything and was formulating in my head what I would do if someone approached me to hurt me. I ruminated on all kinds of things and would play scenarios in my head until I found the best outcome.

Most times the scenarios I had imagined never came to pass in any shape or form. But my mind was consumed with keeping me safe, figuring out the next move, knowing all the details I could possibly know, and anything else that would keep me safe.

I didn’t have positive thoughts. I had negative ones. I really didn’t see that I had any chance at recovering all that I had lost. Nor did I see that I would ever have the life I had always wanted. I was trapped in my own mind and it was a train wreck.

It took many years of renewing the mind and a lot of time with Jesus in order to get to a place where I wasn’t always trying to figure out what was next or which shoe was going to drop. Many years.

The renewal of the mind takes daily practice. Our society is so accustomed to only reporting on the negative things that very few know what it’s like to have that glimmer of hope that things will get better one day.

Talk to someone who only speaks in negative long enough and you will want a detox shower afterwards for your mind. And this is where the enemy wants to keep us. Just like the Israelites when they grumbled and complained against God in the wilderness. If he can keep us trapped in negative thought patterns, then we will eventually lose all hope and we certainly won’t have any joy.

Giants are joy suckers. They suck the life right out of a room when they are given free reign. They grab joy and replace it with unhappiness, disdain, sadness, grumbling and complaint. And it is a fight to get joy back.

But…we have a great hope found in the Word. In the book of Nehemiah, he says something profound that I think we often miss. Joy is not anything we come up with. It comes from the Lord. In Nehemiah 8:10, he tells the people that the joy of the Lord is their strength.

Meaning that we only need to look to the Lord and find joy which will in turn strengthen us.  In our human fragility, we need the Lord to meet us each day with His joy. To give us what we cannot obtain on our own. 

Many people search endlessly for joy through the things of this world. And many die not ever knowing the true source of it. 

I believe that when we ask the Lord for His joy and His help renewing our minds, we will find that it is easier than trying to do it alone.

I absolutely would not be sitting here writing this out if it was not for the Lord. I would have stayed in a dark place in my mind if He had not helped me with renewal. When His joy comes, darkness flees. His peace comes and forces negativity to leave.

Each day we have a choice to make on how we want to live it. By choosing to seek the Lord and grab ahold of His joy or by choosing to stay trapped in the schemes of negative thought patterns and cycles. 

It is us that must choose, no matter how hard it is to do so some days.

So, today, what will you choose?

Faythe