"I used to live my life tangled by the things you think You'd pour the words you'd say were love And my soul would take that poison drink Love doesn't come free When the song that you sing Is selfish motivation Like I'm your puppet on a string..." © Copyright 2008 NJM All Rights Reserved. I knew a girl who lived this...infact, truth be told, all of us can identify with this if we were to be nakedly honest from our souls. This girl was born into a family and for various reasons , she was harbored, manipulated and controlled. Her life was lived by the expectations and definitions placed her by others around her. By the time she was in her mid 20's, she didn't even know who she really was. Among friends and family, she'd wait for everyone else to put in their two cents and then she'd quietly agree with "the flow". She became accustomed to laziness in areas that required self motivation because no one expected anything from her on her own. Her life resembled only what was dictated to her by way of "chore lists" or the unhealthy standards passed on and learned from early childhood. And all of this came to her under the guise of love and protection. Sadly, those who had been "feeding" her, didn't even recognize the damage they had done. I think about how we are born into our human lives, full of brokeness. Life's circumstances along the way take such a toll on our spirit, mind and body. We long to fill the voids and cracks and somehow this world teaches us to look in all the wrong places. Some turn to drugs, drinking, sex...some never go to those extremes but rather stay locked in the vicious cycles of unhealthy relationships with people...everything from friends to dating to our own blood family. We learn to expect, depend on, and define ourselves by all of these people and experiences. We've drawn our identity from them. And one day, God speaks to our spirit, and we take a step, one single solitary step, on our own two feet and we meet up with a rise of emotional controversy. Sometimes internally, sometimes externally with others and sometimes both. If we're willing to look beyond the emotional turbulence and seek real truth, we'll find that God's called us to be so much more than just a product of our environment. We're not robots or clones or puppets on strings and we weren't created for those positions either. We weren't created to fill each other's deepest needs or to never cut the umbilical cords of unhealthy family relationships. We're called to a deep relationship with Jesus-to immerse ourselves in the boudless love, health and truth of His heart. This is the purpose of our life. Everything changes when we choose out of our own free will to connect to that reality. Galatians 5:1 says that Jesus has set us free for the purpose of the benefits of freedom. We are to stand fast in that truth and freedom so that we do not fall back into the bondage of old and unhealthy ways of living and thinking. What is this freedom-? It is the freedom from condemnation, freedom from control and manipulation and abuse-freedom from all of the things grown within us that tell us that we must live according to false expectations for our lives filled with explanations, defending, owing, fearing, false guilt apologies, etc. It is only Jesus who knows all of the intimate details of our lives, the hurt, the damage, the lies we tell ourselves, our heart's true intentions. It is to Him that we can entrust all of these details to be looked at, carried through the fires of His transformation (Romans 12:2) and discover who God created us to be. It is a lifelong process of continually allowing Him the permission to mold us into who He intended. Anything less is a reckless oversight on our part of His divine purpose. -Natty