Right after our birth, the doctors clean us up, check our vitals, then put us in a box – and wheel us to the nursery. As we grow, we are constantly put into boxes. Bassinettes, cribs, then a toddler bed with railings – a partial box. We are defined largely by what our parents and loved ones say about us. Their words, their tone, they shape us. A person can say you are beautiful but if they say it sarcastically, it’s the tone that stays with you, not the words. If a person says, “You are just like your daddy!” with contempt, it is the contempt that shapes how you feel about yourself and about your father. If a person touches you inappropriately as a child, that shame and violation put you in a box and it shapes how you feel about yourself. You may feel ashamed of yourself, you may grow to dislike yourself, your body, and not even want to identify with your gender. Or, you may become completely shame-less and flaunt yourself, your body, and your gender identity ALL over the place.
For all these things said and done that shape us, it is rare that people use God’s word to shape. See, my God made me but a little lower than the angels, and my God knew me before I was in my mother’s womb and my God loved me SO much that He gave His very own Son in exchange for me. Some days I feel so dreaded. I have to remind myself that I am not to call what God pronounced clean common. There are days that I cannot seem to shake the things I’ve done wrong both pre-Christ and after. And then I realized something very important. If I believe God made me and if I believe He is infinite and capable of all things and if I believe He can create something from literally NOTHING, how in the world can I limit myself to this little itty bitty box that someone first put me in 28 years ago? I am not just Baby Kenner amongst a bunch of Baby Smiths and Johnsons…no, I am one who God knew intimately before I even existed in the natural. The I Am made me, so how can I only be this little finite thing? I believe that if God made me, then by virtue of the source, I am capable of more than I could wrap my human brain around. As a woman, I have the ability to help bring forth life, both naturally as well as spiritually. He gave man the ability to multiply, to create. And Paul walked with God so closely that he even had the ability to make something out of nothing. Taking a handkerchief from his own body!
Paul said that if there be sinners among him, that he was chief. Yet God called him out of his sin into His glory. Paul did not live in a box and in my opinion, the Lord never intended for us to be there. It was man that first put you in a box and at the end of our lives here on earth, it is man that puts us in another. But where there Holy Spirit resides, I believe there are no boundaries except those we put on ourselves. At least for me, I can honestly say that often me, my flesh, is my biggest barrier to the Father. Not circumstance, not attack…me. And that is the hard thing to face. However, if you can, then you can begin to address the problem…you. Once we get out of our own way, I believe that there is so much waiting. So, as I write this, I am trying to get out of my own way. I am trying to have the courage to let God define me and not worry about anyone else. I cannot worry about whether I will be ridiculed or considered pretentious for stepping out. I trust that if I am out of bounds, since God loves me and I love Him, He will correct me. He will rein me in. If we could wrap our heads around the fact that our Father will catch us even where our natural fathers may have let us fall…we would truly know what it is to be FREE and to be at peace.
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