A while ago I wrote this post Dear Chihuahua of Fear.
Please read it and then come back here to finish the story.
Let me just be Melinda with you since I can’t be Frank. (That’s not my name.) Lately, the Chihuahua has been a raging lunatic growing daily in unbelievable proportions. He now looks like this:
Born For This
Out in the yard, mocking me while chewing on the leftovers of my dreams, my confidence, and my mind. I was driven to depression, deep depression, the kind that you have to make yourself get out of the bed, take a shower, and get help from community for. The kind I had to change my medication over so I saw life worth living and not thinking as Job, “It would have been better that I had not been born.” What was I thinking. I mean hadn’t I been born for this.
I kept speaking the scripture that says, “Do not rejoice over me my enemy. When I fall I will arise. When I sit in darkness the Lord will be a light to me.” (Micah 7:8) I prayed. I cried. I slept. I disconnected from people. I cried some more. I sought God day and night. I gave the sacrifice of praise in a whisper until I could sing again. Over and over again. From my bed. From my floor face down. From the fetal position. You get the point.
I looked out the doors, and the windows, and cried out to God to help me overcome my fears.
Voice
See, He wants me to use my full voice in any capacity and avenue where the door is open to me. However, it may hurt some people I love. It has hurt me when I trusted an abuser in my life again, and she threatened me with repercussions of using my full voice.
I got so angry that she would do that. How could she? I said, I just want to be a voice to tell others it is okay to use your voice. I just want others to know what God can do, and that when all is hopeless in the world there is a Greater One to place expectation in.
So I launched this blog to tell my enemy, one who is not flesh and blood, to back off. I am going to use my voice despite the threats, despite the panic attacks, despite who might reject me and call me a liar. Despite the fact that I have to be separated from those I have always only wanted unconditional love from. Despite the knocking knees and the pain. Despite what people think.
Forgiveness
I have chosen to forgive them. I can’t spend any more time being their warden. I learned that forgiveness is a great deal of things, but there is a list of what forgiveness is not. It is a choice. It is not necessarily reconciliation with someone who continues to abuse you. It is praying for them. It is not saying what they did was not wrong. But that’s another post for another day.
A Change in Diet
My fear has been using my full voice, but my bigger fear is that I won’t use it before I leave this place and walk in freedom. That others will not be set free and encouraged to run, not walk, to Jesus for healing and restoration.
So I stand at the door knees knocking throwing out bones for the wolf to chew on. Biblical bones of truth. Those from the Lamb of God.
A long time ago I named my overactive conscious Barkley after the Sesame Street dog. Barkley loves to take lies and bound around my mind like it’s another day in the neighborhood. I learned some new tricks and now I am making sure he gets the Word of God to chew on as well. Here is more than a taste of God’s goodness…
- Psalm 27:1-3 NIV,
1 The Lord is my light and my salvation—
whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life—
of whom shall I be afraid?
2 When the wicked advance against me
to devour[a] me,
it is my enemies and my foes
who will stumble and fall.
3 Though an army besiege me,
my heart will not fear;
though war break out against me,
even then I will be confident.
- Isaiah 54:17 NIV
17 no weapon forged against you will prevail,
and you will refute every tongue that accuses you.
This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord,
and this is their vindication from me,”
declares the Lord.
- Romans 8:31 NIV
31 What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?
- Mark 1:3 NIV
3 “a voice of one calling in the wilderness,
‘Prepare the way for the Lord,
make straight paths for him.’”[a] ,
- Isaiah 40:3 NIV
3 A voice of one calling:
“In the wilderness prepare
the way for the Lord[a];
make straight in the desert
a highway for our God.
- Mark 16:15 NIV
15 He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.
Another Samaritan Woman 