Unglued - A Prisoner of My Own Design

I am doing an online Bible study on a book titled Unglued, by Lysa TerKeurst, and this week's chapter really punched me in the gut.  The title was "Prisoners" and basically it was about how we stick labels on ourselves that end up creating an internal prison, causing us to feel trapped by the way we choose to see ourselves, and unable to escape those labels we've put upon ourselves.

At the end of the chapter, I made a list of the labels I have placed on myself.  I wrote it quickly, without a lot of pondering or second-guessing (which, if you know me, was REALLY hard).  Because I have vowed to be transparent in this blog, I will share that list:

lazy
insecure
never finish/follow through
people pleaser
unfocused
no purpose or direction
don't use my gifts
afraid of failure
stuck
not good enough
procrastinator (I just added this one as I was typing the rest of this entry)

Yeah.  That is how I see myself, sadly.  And knowing it hasn't seemed to help me shake those labels, but maybe sharing it, and trying to make some "imperfect progress" toward change, learning from others in the study, and listening to what God has to say about it, can create a shift.  It's never too late.  At least I'm praying it's not.

The memory verse for this chapter is Eph. 2:15 - For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Well, in the interest of transparency, I will tell you that I don't find myself doing any good works, at least not any that I feel were prepared for me by God.  I find myself going to work, coming home, watching TV, looking at Facebook, chatting with my husband or a friend or two, doing chores, going to bed, and starting all over again.  At least most days. Sometimes I have a social activity with friends, I spend time with my kids and grandkids whenever I can, I attend church and sing on our worship team every Sunday.  But I never seem to make time for the things that might actually bring some personal growth, or teach me more about God's plan for me, or anything that might actually further his chiseling me into the person he wants me to be.

Instead, I tell myself I'm too busy, I don't have time, I'll get to it later when I have more time, I'm too tired, blah blah blah.  And of course if you look at my list of labels, all of those things fold into this kind of thinking.  For example, I started this blog in the summer, fully intending to blog regularly.  But I wanted to blog about our summer vacation, and started and restarted that entry multiple times, never happy with what I had written, and so I became stuck and could not seem to write anything.  So I never wrote a blog entry at all beyond the first one.  Until today. 

This is my first, wobbly and very imperfect, step towards following through on something I want to do and feel passionate about.  I love to write, I have aspirations to write a novel, I have a story in my head, but it's not on paper except for an outline, because of several things on the list above - fear of failure, never follow through, not good enough, lazy.  So first, I will try to form a habit of blogging regularly (one incentive there is the Blog Hop, a day of our online study where you can link to your blog post about the week's lesson).  And once that habit is formed, I will move forward, imperfectly, to actually putting my story on the page.  Messy.  Imperfect.  But on the page nonetheless.

I make a promise here that I will be back soon with another post.  Hold me accountable friends.  I need accountability to kick me in the tail and move me forward.