The New

New understanding necessitates new language. Words I rarely used before are becoming favorites – integral parts of my daily vocabulary that take on deeper and broader meaning all the time. The phrases that used to make me cringe now make me grin a big-wide-super-dorky-grin. Song lyrics that used to make me roll my eyes are getting replayed again and again. Scriptures I used to pass over are taking root. Life words are replacing death words; darkness is yielding to light… and it’s coming out in a bajillion different ways.

I’ve decided on a few things: Gratefulness, celebration, peace, and shadowlessness. These things mark me and they are my message. Stepping more into them is a constant adventure. Gratefulness and celebration are the appropriate attitudes for a child of God. I have been given so much, my life is so sweet and so rich, and remembering and expressing this awesome reality is what keeps my heart in the right place for all God is speaking and working in me. Peace and shadowlessness are the Spirit’s outworking in the depths of me. They define everything differently, and fly in the face of old patterns, creating crazy amounts of freedom for me to operate in and out of.

New themes for being me, new words for speaking Truth. New understanding of forever reality – just waiting to be jumped into.

Shadowless and empowered

I am shadowless. I am empowered. These are my words for now, as I embark on a new year. They are not goals, and they have no limits. They are promises, from my God to me, that will stretch and expand as I continue my walk in Grace this year.

I recently got sucked back into Old Living – recognized some things in me that still have heat, still hurt, still haven’t been fully transformed… and it freaked me out. I started catching whiffs of the Old Lauren, of the helplessness, weakness, and neediness, and it rocked my core. Something about that brush with the Old catapulted me into a mode where I was trying to force breakthrough, grasp at clarity, and obliterate unpredictable emotion. I was paralyzed by the fear that if I couldn’t “figure it out”, I would sink back into darkness in my mind and heart.

But I was forgetting all the things I’ve been reading and talking through and learning – about being non-resistant and letting those “heated” issues pass through me. I was forgetting the power of being fully present in the Now, of being the most current version of myself – with all the revelation and new identity I’ve been given – in the midst of any trace of Old I might feel. I was overwhelmed by the taunting familiarity and forgot all about my new reality. A reality of Truth, of Strength, of Peace, of Power.

So I stubbed my toe, got held up on my journey, and had to reorient a bit. And this is what I’ve resurfaced with… shadowless and empowered. The nasty truth is that I still have the tendency to victimize myself, to subject myself to the possible power of old wounds and of symptoms of my dysfunction. And the beautiful redeemed side of that is that I always have a choice to step out of the shadows... and the Power to make it.

Right now I know this much: Some lies and broken places are still enjoying some room in me, for whatever reason. I don’t know why, at the moment, and that’s okay. This means I'll still feel the pull towards defensiveness, fear, and hiding away. But I will fight. Because I have a choice.

And in the face of all of this I will choose Truth, I will choose Life, and I will choose Peace. I won’t be robbed of what God has handed me by the brokenness and dysfunction of the world. I will claim Light and Power, knowing that I have been enabled to walk in fullness and health despite the remnants of the Old that threaten to surface. I will keep taking steps in the direction of fulfillment I’ve been promised, trusting in Grace to be always more than enough.