Writing challenge – week 6 – How are you doing?

Okey, let’s be honest. I think most of us are pretty good at holding up masks in front of other people. Way too many times I’m an expert at it. I’ve worked on it quite a lot the last years and, by God’s grace, I’m much better at not doing it now than I was earlier in life. But sometimes the masks are still there. The last months I’ve been pretty good at holding up my masks, but I’m tired of it. So let’s be honest.

The last six-months haven’t been the easiest ones in my life. I’ve been really tired, in many different ways. I’ve felt really weak. A lot of times I’ve felt lonely. For example I’ve have to do with the grief after a relatives event of death, the aftermaths of not taking good care of myself for a long time and a lot of changes in life (I’m not really best friend with transition periods). It’s been hard, and, a lot of days, it still is. But the last weeks, when I’ve felt like a whole lot have been shaking in my life – God has shown me, by His grace, that He’s still there. Even when I’m struggling to spend time with Him. Even when I’m angry at Him. Even when life’s hard. God is still there. He’s still good. I just need His grace to be able to see that.

No, I don’t think it’s healthy to tell everyone everything that’s going on in our lives or everything about how we’re doing. I do think that it’s wise to choose which people we keep close. But I do think we can be a little bit more honest to each other. I want to be able to say; “It’s not my best day!” or “It could be better!” instead of “I’m totally fine!” when someone asks me how I’m doing and the honest answer is that I’m not fine. And I want to make sure I have a few people that I allow myself to be close to and to talk to when life is hard. I’m way too bad at making sure to talk to the ones close to me when I’m not fine, but I hope I’ll get better at it, because we sure are better off together than on our own.

No, not everything is bad in my life and I’m not writing this because I want people to feel sorry for me. I don’t want that and there are lots of good things in my life too. I’m very grateful for my God, friends, family, church and work. God is doing a lot in me right now (and have been doing a lot during these months) and it’s, sometimes, hard but very beautiful. I’m so looking forward to see how the work He’s doing in me right now will look like when it’s complete. I’m sure it’ll be so very good. There are a lot of good things in life and lots to be grateful for. But that doesn’t mean we can’t be honest with life being both good and hard.

I don’t know how you are doing today or in this season of your life. Maybe you’re doing better than ever. Maybe it’s the hardest season in your life yet. Regardless of how you’re doing, I hope you know that it’s okey to be fine, but it’s also okey to not be fine. It’s okey to laugh, but it’s also okey to cry. It’s okey to tell people how you’re doing. It’s more than okey to tell God how you’re doing. I hope that you know that you’re not alone regardless of how life looks like. I hope you know that there’s always hope and that life won’t always be the way it is right now.  I hope you know that God is good through it all. I sure have a hard time remembering this myself, but let’s help each other to remember, because we sure can’t do this life on our own. Maybe together is the only way to take another step forward.

Writing challenge – week 4 – Break lies by encouraging!

Have you ever felt like you were becoming smaller because of what someone said about you? Have you ever heard someone say something about you that you, in the beginning, knew wasn’t true, but after a while you started to act like they were true because the same words were repeated time and time again? Or have you ever felt like some words that someone told you made you come a little bit more alive, because they were breaking lies about you that you believed for a long time?

I don’t know how words have affected you, but I know that in my own life, all of this has happened. In my life words have both killed a part of me, but also made a part of me that once was dead come alive. I really do think that words have the power to do that. To kill and destroy. But also to bring life and healing. I’m not the only one to believe this to be true. In the Bible we can read; ”Words kill, words give life; they’re either poison or fruit – you choose.”

• “I’m not enough.”
• “I can’t do this.”
• “I’m too much.”
• “I’m not beautiful.”
• “I’m alone and no one REALLY wants to be my friend.”
• “What Jesus did on the cross is for everyone else. I’m too much of a mess for Him to forgive me.”

These are some of the lies I’ve believed. It’s so easy to believe in the lies of this world. Especially since many of them have been in our minds for a long time. Maybe we started to believe in them when we lost a friend, when someone was just joking with us (but we didn’t agree with it being funny), when we were going through a difficult time in our lives or simply because we live in a world that is full of lies. No matter how the lies came into our minds and how long they have been there, I think that most of us can agree with that they often are so real that we almost could touch them.

One of the hardest things about this might be that it’s not always that we fight against the lies we believe in. Sometimes it’s easier and more comfortable to believe in lies than in the truth. But most of the time, I think, the problem isn’t that we don’t want to fight against the lies. Often the problem is that we have believed in them for such a long time that we have started to believe it to be the truth.

Another thing that might be even harder about this is that the lies often make us become less than who we actually are created to be. That it limits our ability to be ourselves. That has been a big problem in my life a lot of times. For example when I’ve believed that “I’m too much of a mess for Jesus to forgive me”, it’s been hindering me from drawing close to Him. Or when I’ve believed that “no one wants to be my friend”, it’s made me isolated instead of reaching out to people.

Okey, so we believe in lies? Now what? Is that all? Are we stuck in lies? No, my friend. The good thing is that we can help each other in this. We can speak life and truth over each other. We can help each other to be who we actually are created to be, by breaking those lies. We can’t do the work of breaking the root of those lies. Only God can do that. But we can help each other one step closer the truth about who we are. We can encourage each other.

When someone says; “I can’t do this!”, help them believe that nothing is impossible. When someone thinks that no one cares, tell them; “I care!” When someone doesn’t believe they’re beautiful let them know that they are. When someone believes they are too broken or too much of a mess, let them know that we all are broken, that we all are a mess but that Jesus is more than enough for our brokenness.

We all believe some lies and we don’t always see it. We don’t always know how to fight against the lies. But we can fight for each other. We can help each other to believe in the truth. We can help each other become more of ourselves. Your words can change things. Your words can kill and destroy. Your words can bring life and healing. There are way too many lies in this world already. We don’t need to be the ones bringing even more lies to this place. Let us instead be the ones who encourages.

Writing challenge – 1. God redeems, so don’t give up on relationships.

Friends who are fighting. People that are leaving. Relationships that are broken.

A lot of times connections with other people hurt and sometimes it seems like relationships are just making us become a mess. I think you know how it is to get hurt by other people and how hurtful it can be when people are leaving. I sure do. When I was eight years old, my grandma died. During the same year I also lost several friends. After these events I became really shy and isolated myself a lot from other people. I never seemed to fit in. I almost didn’t have any friends (and towards the only one who still tried to be my friend, I wasn’t a good friend back since I was so broken).

But then my Jesus came into my life. I started to go to church again and became a part of the youth group. He gave me friends again. He started connecting me with several people who today are like family to me. He started to turn my life around when I chose Him and let me tell you – He sure makes all things new! He’s the Redeemer of everything. Even relationships.

I know it can be scary with relationships. You’re not the only one who thinks that it is. I remember one time, maybe five years ago, when I was in church and I was standing in the back of the church hall. One person was sitting in the front of the room and I really wanted to go and talk with this person, but I was so afraid of it, so I was standing and just looking for several minutes before I finally did it. Today this person is a dear friend of mine. God’s grace is so much bigger than all of our fears.

During the last year, I’ve been going to a bible school. This year has really been showing me even more that God often uses friendships to heal us. He’s been giving me several really precious friendships during the last couple of years and during the last year He’s so clearly showed me that He uses the body of Christ to heal and redeem us. It’s been so refreshing to, in another way than before, be surrounded by people who love you, care for you and see you during both good and bad times this year. I think that He often uses the things that we’re wounded by to make us whole again. So for example if you’ve got wounded through a relationship, He might use another good relationship to heal you.

The enemy will always try to hold us back from getting close to people, because relationships are one of God’s ways to strengthen us. The enemy still has a tendency to try to get me to believe in his lies about the relationships that I have. But you know what? God is bigger than those lies. So much bigger! So please, don’t give up on relationships. God works out everything for His glory and when we seek Him, He will give us the desires of our hearts. He created friendships to be such a beautiful gift and it sure is. People are so worth getting to know and to invest time in. And you, my friend, are so worth of having good relationships.

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Denna text är min första av fyra i en skrivutmaning som jag deltar i under de kommande veckorna. Här kan ni läsa mer om utmaningen om ni vill; http://www.spuronlove.com/lets-write-together-writing-challenge/

Om temat på utmaningen skriver Renee, som håller i den, bland annat; “The theme will be: things you need your tribe to know OR things that make life better /…/ We will be writing about our core values, about things we truly believe, lessons we want to share with others, or about ways we live our lives that we believe others would benefit from.”

Gå gärna in och läs inläggen som de andra deltagarna i utmaningen har skrivit också och passa på att uppmuntra dem! Här är länkarna;

https://beautifullybroken61.wordpress.com/2017/09/11/freedom/

http://www.iamsarahmichal.com/2017/09/05/not-open-not-closed/

http://www.spuronlove.com/things-i-need-my-kids-to-know-before-i-die-call-people-up/

 

Så vad ska du göra denna veckan för att investera i dina relationer? Människor är så värda att investera i, så ge inte upp om relationer, även när det gör ont eller är läskigt! Gud helar och upprättar. Han vill ge dig goda relationer!

Hoppas ni har en fin vecka!