I love and hate when the lord speaks to me about sin in my life. I love the cleansing process and the fact that He does this to keep me pure, focused and righteous. I know that He corrects me out of the amazing love He has for me. As His child, He only wants what is best for me. Certain behavior in my life is simply not acceptable and needs to be addressed so I can be who He has called me to be. I hate it because it is painful. I hate it because I am forced to look at myself in the mirror and see the ugliness that I try to hard to hide or ignore.
Today is one of those days. My heart is broken over a sin in my life that I have been held captive by for my entire life. I look at it in complete disgust, wishing I could just pluck it out of my life, throw it away and move on. However, this is simply not possible. This sin runs deep and has roots imbedded in every area of my life. It will take lots of prayer and time for me to address every area this sin has invaded in my life. I know that I will have to begin each day on my knees asking God to help me be supernaturally aware of this sin when it attempts to rear its ugly head. I must be on guard even more so now because Satan is sees my awareness of this sin and he is going to work even harder to trigger it in my life.
My sin… I am a control freak. I have always joked about it, but today the joking ended. As I sit broken before the Lord, I see how my desire to control everything in my life has impacted my marriage, my relationship with my daughters, my work, my extended family. This list could easily take up several pages if I continued.
So, how did this all begin? I am just another cookie cut from the mold that was developed in my family many years ago. Every woman in my family has somehow obtained and maintained complete and total control of every aspect of their lives, from husbands to children, careers to the amount of dust on the television. It is a sign of strength and something that was very quietly, almost manipulatively imbedded in the heart of every woman for generations. The really amazing thing is that the previous generations did not pass this trait on intentionally. As each female child was born in this family, they grew up learning from the previous generation. My grandmother learned it from her mother, my mother from my grandmother, and me from my mother. It became what is expected of women in every generation. You must be strong, independent and in control of your life. Not that is a bad thing on its face. It is only bad when your desire to control everyone and everything in your life begins to control you.
Over the past few months I have been more aware of my actions and reactions towards my husband and my daughters. I have blamed it on medication, lack of sleep, poor diet, and any other excuse I could come up with. Deep down I have always known the cause of my actions was more than superficial, it was internal and ugly. However, I refused to face it. After a very brief but eye opening discussion with my husband, I walked away broken and begging God to show me what was going on. I could not understand what was really going on with me, but felt grieved because I was sure there was a sin in my life that was keeping me in this agitated state. After a sleepless night and tear filled morning, God spoke loud and clear about my control issues. I get angry or frustrated with my husband because he doesn’t do or say things the way I think he should. I do the same thing with the girls. As I thought about it more, I realized I do the same thing in every relationship in my life. If someone disagrees with me, does something different than the way I think it should be done, responds different that I feel they should or simply does not conform to what I have set as a standard for them, I get upset, angry and frustrated.
As I sat and thought about what the Lord was showing me, the images of my behavior in certain situations flashed before me. With every scene that played out in my mind, a new set of tears began falling. I was so grieved by this ugly sin in my life that all I could do was cover my face in shame and beg God to forgive me. This is a humble place to be. Yet as I covered my face and cried out the Lord, He immediately started the healing process. He reminded me of His forgiveness and love for me, and that He alone could help me leave this sin in the past. However, I had to make the choice to trust Him and follow His lead. I had to decide if I really wanted this sin out of my life, or if I was going to continue living in bondage to it.
I love how our Heavenly Father is not dictating or controlling of us. He allows us to make our own decisions. Obviously he knows which we should take and leads us to the right decision, yet when we come to the fork in the road, we must make the final decision on our own. Are we going to follow Christ, or remain in bondage to the sin? Are we going to trust Him and know that His will is better for us, or continue in what we have known for so long?
This new journey in my life will be difficult. It is never easy to say goodbye to something you have known your entire life. But, even in the midst of the pain of making the changes and being aware of this sin in my life, I know God has already given me victory. I just have to choose daily to walk in that victory, focused on Him and seeking to bring glory to His name.
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