Why are you mourning for an empty door with nothing behind it?" 

That was what God impressed on my heart as I was mulling over past hurts. Perhaps you reminisce on the things that broke you---the broken heart, the broken home, or broken relationships. So now you are thinking, "How can I move forward? How do I break up with what has broken me?”

When you try to cope with the hurt, you self-medicate with a lot of things. You can go out to the bar to numb the pain, hook up to distract yourself, or binge watch to ignore your feelings. Sometimes it's using validation and affirmation to feel enough.

You must choose what your aid will be: a substance or sustenance? 

Our substance we use to numb ourselves. The thing is, they always leave us feeling a little emptier each time after that one more text, one more hit, or hookup.

Instead, what will it look like to acknowledge and work through your emotion? Remember the flower doesn’t grow until the dirt has been worked through. 

Your sustenance should be found first and foremost in God. God knows not only what you need, but He can give what you need. He knows what needed fixing more than you know yourselves---should you allow Him the space to work in you. 

"For He satisfied the longing soul, and the hungry soul He fills with good things (Ps. 107:9) 

Wholeness is found in Him. Until we learn to sit alone with God for the things we look in other people, we will never learn to walk whole. 

A complete break

When you are trying to change your diet from a sugary diet to a cleaner, whole-grains diet, you will struggle. You will crave for the sugar rush. And it takes a while to change our appetite. The foods we crave may feel good at the moment, but become decisions we regret later.

"We look from other people what we desperately need most from God" 

Just like when we are training to change our cravings, We need to retrain what you’ve been feeding —-that is our flesh—that gave you short-term relief that may harm the future promise God has for you. 

That addiction you kept going back to, you need to learn to cut it off. A clean break is necessary for you to start to heal. You can’t heal with broken bones or old tissues still in place. And when you experience withdrawal to go back to old thoughts or pattern of unhealthy remedies, you need to persist.

If you are looking for love in the wrong areas, you wont find it. You will find, however its cheap substitutes-the counterfeits that claim to satisfy those cravings" 

It may seem good in the moment, then when you fall again, you say, “Why do I still feel incomplete? I shouldn’t have done that.”

The remedy: Look for the real thing. We cannot look for variations of love in casual sex, pornography, flings. the more we feast on bad cravings believing "something is better than nothing", the more our taste will be ill-fitted to what we actually need. That is why we find ourselves more broken. 

And as time goes on, the healthier we become, the more our appetite starts to change. As the wounds start to heal, new tissues are being brought in place.

The old ways of cheap substitutes are no longer attractive to you. As you embrace wholeness, you begin to seperate ways with the old habits that no longer serve you. The bar nights to crave for attention, to be friend with your ex to always have that validation, or the impulsive spending obsessing about outer appearance. 

"The shape of true love isn't a diamond. it is a cross 

- Alicia Bruxvoort 

Believe this: His love is not far and inconsistent. His love doesn’t hide you. His love doesn’t love you only when you are picture perfect. 

Reframing Your Story: From Damsels in Distress to Daughters of Destiny

You cant hold on to shame anymore trying to walk forward. Your perspective have to change; give your story a new meaning, Until you learn to see it not as a mistake, but as a learning, you will never let it go. Reframe the story. Ask yourself, “What is it that you learned?“

For one, look at what you've sacrificed to meet that need. 

Were you needing to be accepted to such an extend you are unwilling to set healthy boundary? Did you fear that it could cost you being abandoned by this person; that's why the boundary wasn't worth it? Would you rather things stay as they are than risk losing what people pleasing is giving you? 

Didn't now you know now better to work on your self-worth and who you allow access to in your life? 

Didn’t now you know what brings truer fulfilment?

Didn’t now you know what is healthy and unhealthy?

"Instead of your shame, you will receive a double portion, 

and instead of your disgrace, you will rejoice in your inheritance. 

And so you will inherit a double portion in your land, 

and ever lasting joy will be yours (Isa 61:7) 

When we thought the path we chose for ourselves is the best, but then we're let down or when the curtain opens and it's nothing but smoke and mirrors,let God repurpose our pain, resurrect our innocence and restore our paths. God is saying, "You don't need to be so hard on yourself to try to redeem your story. It is My part. The burden is not yours" 

God may be allowing that need in me so I will have the motivation to turn my deepest longings to Him. This level to which you broke, may be the thing that make you surrender all the more to God for your breakthrough.

for me also to know i have the authority to change my words. to not let shame has the last words. 

God wants to rewrite the lies we tell ourselves when we 'fail'. When we allow God to work in our hearts, as we heal three things may happen: We remove strongholds and are able to grow in righteousness, we stop putting our faith in this world and put it back in God; and we see ourselves and the path set out in front of us more clearly. 

To breakup with shame, guilt and our 'past of brokeness', we need to relearn to be rooted in our true identity. We can silence the voice of lies when we know who we are and who we are not.

Who we are not 

• You are not lovable

• You are not missing out

• You do not know the best way

If we don't believe our parents have good intention for us or know the right way to solve a problem, we will not trust our parents. In the same way, if we dont believe God is a good Father with good things in store for us, we will not be able to accept the good things HE has waiting for us. 

What makes the lost found, the weary strong, and the exhausted restful is all the same answer---letting Jesus take the wheel. 

Listening to Christ, knowing Christ is crucial to break the strongholds in your life. Only because I choose to immerse myself in the word--knowing how much Jesus loves me, how He sees me precious--that the attraction of finding lesser love dims away. Only when I am so whole and overflowing with Jesus' presence and taste the sweetness of His word, that I stop craving for superficial intimacy from physical loves. 

When you do not yet believe. because you have not seen something better, put your faith in the word of God. 

He said:  "My plans for you is not for harm, but to give you a hope and a future" (Jer 29:11)

Break up with what broke you. Offer your brokenness to God who can redeem it all for His good. And that you may be able to say as Charles Dickens did, "I have been bent and broken, but I hope---into a better shape."

x,

T.W.