Four days in a row, events occurred freeing me from shackles of opposition to living each day using my full potential of gifts and talents and wisdom.
Day one- a surgeon agreed to operate on me, giving me a new hip and repairing damage that was 55 years old. My mobility would be improved 200%.
Day two - a transcript was freed that had been used to keep me from proving I had taken a certain set of classes that endorsed my professional credentials.
Day three- I was accepted into a degree program to study music composition and English.
Day Four-I signed with an agent to represent a portion of my body of work, out in the world.
I was breathless. I knew how Joseph felt when he was placed in the palace after decades of wrongful imprisonment.
Sixteen weeks later, I am leaning into the execution of my days with these new parameters. With not a clue as to how to live in this new way, with these new freedoms, I take it second by second. A minute, an hour, a day, is too large a chunk of time.
What would you do if a chronic obstacle was removed? What would you do if four obstacles were removed?
What do you do with sudden freedom?
All of my life habits had to change. Previously arranged around compensating for the obstacles,now, daily disciplines need to support the new freedoms.
With a hip that now works and is strong, I learn to stand tall, and walk on my leg in a new, more trusting way.
No longer discredited as someone who is unqualified, it is on me to display the education for which I worked so hard, so many years ago.
What once was just a dream, full development of my love of music and becoming a better writer, is now an item requiring the scheduling of office visits, and classes. and arrangement of time to do justice to the learning process.
The opportunity for my words to reach a wider audience, offer more encouragement to more people, presents a to-do list and a willingness to order my life such that I could engage more relationships with more readers. It made my efforts to do so a collaborative effort where I need to rein in my 'Lone Ranger' and allow myself to have someone else speak for me and my work. Surrender and trust to the nth degree and days filled with hard deadlines and new requests for my highest and best are now de rigueur. Do you notice the shift in tense? The change was immediate. Overnight.
Before the surgery, the doctors were concerned that I had been disabled for so long, unable to walk properly, I would not be able to wrap my brain around walking again. My prehab included accepting immediate change. Indeed, the first words I heard clearly in recovery were 'She's weight bearing'.
Five hours after surgery I stood tall with my feet on the floor and walked fifteen steps. They wrote the number down on the whiteboard. "Fifteen steps". Green marker, as I recall.
After years of professing belief in a God who loved me and wanted the best for me, with no natural circumstances to give evidence of that, I was now in the middle of four different stories, examples, of situations that could only be explained by the existence of a profoundly loving God who had my best at heart. My faith was put to the test, not to get me through, but to move forward in blessing, because it apparently was true. What I believed was true. God loved me, wanted the best for me and had 'plans for good and not for evil.'.
The story of Jacob is about his hip reminding him Who is in charge. I have that. Joseph, after decades of imprisonment, was vindicated regarding unjust accusations because someone noticed he had a gift. Check the next box off. And the last two items, the remaining miraculous opportunities, present me with,once again, as I had in the desert, walking in blind faith that I will be able to hear the Spirit instruct me in the ways of swimming in a larger pond, in a stronger actualization of my gifts and talents than I have ever imagined.
Blessings. We all pray for blessings. But how do you live with blessings? How do you steward blessings?
Gonna be another steep learning curve. "B" stands for breakthrough.
Love,
Deborah
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