I started writing this July 31 2023

For the last several weeks I’ve been trying to write this blog, so forgive me for the delay in posting please. But this one has been a doozy, even for me. Identity is one that has hit me square in the face, mostly because it can be a daily struggle when I’m not in a good mental place and this hits so close to home. The enemy is the father of lies (John 8:44) (tagging that verse with a page of verses - a resource - a page of verses on Identity in God, as we all need this from time to time and it’s been helpful for me.) I have struggled, continue to struggle and am struggling with maintaining who I am - that is - who God has told me I am and what I know I am not, ie: not allowing the world to define me. 

Identity has been a consistent theme in my priority time lately and reminding myself by claiming who God has called us to be in His identity. It’s been around me everywhere I go. My bestie and I have been in the same Identity space for the last few weeks and we didn’t even know about the other one until about a week ago. I love it when God does that!!! Then in Tremble, our prayer service, God showed up and had a whole service on it, not knowing that my bestie and I have been working on this topic ourselves!!! How’s that for some God magic for you. God works so wonderfully like that to show us who He is and what He thinks of us. 

I’ve been reminded over and over the last few days that fear is a liar. It is our job to remind the enemy that even when it approaches us with its lies that we remind it who we are. The end has already been written friends. When the enemy comes knocking, it’s our training through all these horror movies we’re raised with to get scared of the enemy… “the boogie man”… but yall! Did you forget who wins in the end??? The enemy is actually SCARED OF US!!! Why do we always forget this!!??  And full disclosure… I’m 100% the first offender here to forget that I am a champion here. I can be the # 1 scardy cat of all of us sometimes. LOL

The consistent theme I’m reminded of is I must choose how I will identify: will I identify as sick or will I identify as healed? I cannot be both. Revelation 3:16-17 I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I am going to vomit you out of My mouth. God smacked me in the face with a  harsh truth this week in Tremble. It wasn’t in an ugly condemning way… it was in a child I want to give you what you deserve way, please stop eating your own vomit way…. Proverbs 26:11-12 As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his foolishness. Do you see a man who is wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.

• The Lord reminded me yet again that His stripes have already healed my illness. So why am I continuing to try to identify as a sick person? Why do I identify as a person of lack or want… BY HIS STRIPES, WE ARE HEALED!!!! It’s written. So why do we claim anything other than this truth? Or allow ourselves to believe it. 

• ‘Child, stop reminding me that I paid the price for your healing, just accept my healing for you and live in your healing. don’t go back to the vomit you once ate before. just stay in my healing now’.

• I also hear Him saying ‘Why do you think you can heal yourself? Do not be the fool that tries to eat their own vomit. Do not be wise in your own eyes when my healing is readily available for you’. 

Can anyone out there feel me on this? Sometimes I will have to come to the lord and be healed again and again and again… like running water but it’s for different things, right… like we’ve healed thing one and now thing 2, then 3, then 4… 2 Corinthians 1:10 He has delivered us from such a terrible death, and He will deliver us; we have placed our hope in Him that He will deliver us again. And Paul says not that He can and but that HE WILL… But we have to stop asking God to heal the same thing over and over when you are already walking in your healed body. Accept the healing you have already received that our Jesus has paid the price for, firend!

Oh, but i love that 2 Corinthians verse above… because it beautifully articulates that Jesus will be there for us time after time after time… and we should NEVER BE AFRAID to come to Him for help!!! so why do we question our IDENTIFY over and over? Why do we forget… Rhetorical question of course… The ransom has been paid. Isaiah 53:5 - But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed.

Every time the enemy comes at me, I don’t have to choose to have a defeated attitude. I NEED to choose to believe I am who He - our God - says I am. This reminds of the book of Psalms when David laments when he is in a time of need and seeking God over and over saying, pleading to our God to not forsake him. You have to wonder what kind of torment David was in to think God would forsake him. But you knew that David knew that God was with him. And I also eventually found God in my identity. I am often reminded of who I am. I am the head and not the tail. I am His beloved. His daughter. His pride and joy. The one He called for this day to do His will. To be loved by HIM!!!! I will not accept the enemy’s sickness or blame or shame or lies anymore. I refuse the enemy’s tricks. I choose grace and mercy. I choose my relationship with God. I choose my Father. I choose to believe that I am a daughter of King. I am called by God. I am worthy of all that God has given me and wants for me. I am redeemed. I am meant to His work and worthy to serve Him and His house. I am sanctified and washed by Jesus’ blood! I am meant for good things and good things are meant for me. God wants to and will bless me with all He has and all my heart’s desires because I am chasing after Him like crazy. I am protected. I am loved and deserve love. I deserve the very best because that’s what my Father desires and wants to give me. 

Now… I may not get all these things I just listed… let’s be candid about that… sometimes the world sneaks in there and the enemy tries to have a heyday with whatever it’s on about today. But I don’t blame God for it. Just like God doesn’t shame me or blame me when I do wrong. I identify that the enemy is running a muck and I rebuke the enemy, I tell the it where to go and I do whatever I can to move on. Just because the enemy TRIES to cause havoc doesn’t mean it will win. It doesn’t have power over us. We seem to forget this fact and we become afraid of what we don’t know. Just like we don’t know the enemy, it doesn’t know us, and it doesn’t know the infinite power of God!!! Yall… I have been told this I’d bet 50 times over the last year, so I’m gonna put this in bold and all caps. STOP GIVNG THE ENEMY MORE CREDIT AND ASSUMING IT HAS MORE POWER THAN IT DOES. The enemy is a chump, and we need to call a spade a spade here. Sure there are times it may not be something simple and if I need do, I’m going to get help to deal with that piece of warfare. But I don’t blame God, because God doesn’t blame me. But I go to God first and ask for help to do what God needs me to do and not blame God for everything that goes wrong. Sometimes the enemy just be trippin yall. And sometimes we make mistakes and that’s ok. Let’s just pick up our pieces and put on some clean drawl’s and get moving… ain’t nobody got time for that mess, you know!!!! We all make mistakes and we all fall short. But this is not God’s fault. And sometimes it’s not even yours. 

So. I’ll go back to what I started with… What do you want to identify with? Health or sickness? Wealth or being behind all the time? The Head or the tail? Being beaten down all the time or being the one empowering others to try and try again? 

Someone told me a long time ago who told me we just take nuggets as we go of those we meet. We are not meant to make one set of friends and keep them forever, people will indeed come and go in our lives some for a time and some for a season, some may be for ever. Even some of us have family we do not hold tight to. But this mentor told me you have to take all the good nuggets you find from people to try to make yourself better as you go on your way. I loved this advice and tried to instill it in my kids. This can also be very dangerous because If you are taking nuggets that are not based in a solid rock foundation, you are going to build yourself up on a sinking sand. 

As I’m going through this recovery, I have heard the Lord tell me ‘I have had to break you to rebuild you. You built your foundation on sand and I’m rebuilding your foundation on My solid rock. You did good works, but there were not done with Me. You will now start to do my work with Me, for Me through Me, for ME. You are built on MY firm rock for which I stand.” There is more here but that’s for another blog… :) 

Do you see what the Lord is saying here? He is showing me part of my identity, where I can find my beginning. As I begin to look at what do I do for work, my work is to be for Him, through Him, with Him… so if my work is through Him I need to find my identity in Him because work and Identify are NOT the same. Or in my marriage… I start at the beginning with HIM. I can’t be a good wife if I’m not looking to the Lord first to fill me up so I have something to pour out to my husband. 

When I am not operating from a place of God first from my marriage or ESPECIALLY with work, I start performing. I start doing whatever it is that I think they want me to do and then almost immediately, the anxiety starts kicking in. It starts becoming a ‘am I good enough, am I earning their love’, ‘am I earning the money’ situation and that almost immediately takes me to my “Sick” place where I started this blog of do I identify as sick or do I identify as healed. Because my identity is cannot be found in PERFORMANCE!!!! This is how anxiety took over my life and crippled me. This is how I almost died, quite literally. I performed myself almost to death and started believing I was worthless because that’s what the world said I was. I got covid on top of this and it was by far the worst point in my life, ever. This is where the Lord sought me and found me. This is where the Lord left the 99 and came for the 1. 

I can’t identify with a sick long covid person if I want to identify as the head of the body of Christ and not the tail. He tells me repeatedly I am the Head and not the tail. - Deut 28:13 - The LORD will make you the head and not the tail, and you shall only go up and not down, if you obey the commandments of the LORD your God, which I command you today, being careful to do them.

Let’s also be candid about the rest of this… I still see doctors, I am in the Long Covid unit with Vanderbilt - SHOUT OUT TO THIS TEAM!!!! They have helped me tremendously. But there was help they could give me to a point where I could not find complete healing until I started submitting to God. Just plain and simple. We want to also recognize there is absolutely a need for the medical intervention, too. God created doctors and medicine for a reason friends!!! Let’s use this gift and skill. But let’s also recognize that there are medical miracles that sometimes only God can explain. 

If you are struggling with this or something similar, here are a couple of things I found useful which may help you, too. 

• Identify the item you are struggling with now. It’s almost always going to be a lie the enemy has sold you… 

• Claim the truth to this lie, if you are dealing with anxiety, find scripture that claims the truth to anxiety. If it’s anger, the truth to anger, and so on… 

• Find your support team, I got a couple of people I started praying with and asked to pray for me

• I had my medical team I worked with and told them I also was working with my church, they supported me and vise versa

• I had my husband, a therapist, psychologist, psychiatrist, 2 pastors and my best friend… in total I think 7 different people/groups at one point in total I am working with to help my mental health. No joke. But I ensured they all knew about each other and worked in tandem. If you’d like to know my team and get references, please contact me, I’m happy to share!

Yall, it takes a village! But your life is more important than worrying about what people think or if you’re being a burden. You can’t be hindered by this, your life is too important!!! Sorry, NOT SORRY. I asked permission, I got on peoples calendars, I did my very best to ensure I wasn’t a burden but I just couldn’t care about that any more. I finally wanted to live again. So say something. Do something. But nothing changes if nothing changes!!!!! So gather your village, get medical intervention if you feel comfortable but you must reach out. And don’t feel bad. People will tell you if they don’t have time. Promise :)