Outgrowing your labels.

Another blog on the smart phone...God likes to place things on my heart away from a computer I guess.
I wasn't sure if I should even go through with this blog when God laid it on my heart this week. It's extremely personal, vulnerable, and it will most likely step on a few toes.
But God confirmed in my heart, " if you never step on a few toes, you're most likely not going against the crowd to do anything worth while."
I feel anxious writing this, but God knows who needs this blog.
This is for you. Yes, you.
About two weeks ago marked the three year "anniversary" of the worst time in my entire life.
I had screwed up. Big time. I lost trust. I lost friends. I lost hope. I lost myself. I lost faith.
I had no idea where to go or who to turn to that wouldn't turn around and talk about what a failure I was two seconds later. I wasnt even 19 yet. I was a lost, broken, scared little girl. Am I minimizing the huge choice i had made and blaming the other party? No. I know I'm just as responsible as any. But, I do see now, I was a child. A very lost and hurting child.
Probably stepped on a few toes right there.
I didn't always see it that way, because I wasn't treated like a little girl. I had known this place my entire life. I sang on the stage there at four years old, been on every kids play cast, gone to every youth function, excelled in every fine arts category. I had a lot of friends. I was well known.
I thought I had the world there and the people there would hold me up no matter what.
On that day, my world came crashing down and my former labels were ripped off and replaced with horrible labels I never thought would fit someone like me.
Some labels were given to me by my old friends, by people my parents called friends, by people that never really knew me at all...even some by people who were meant to embrace me as family.
Imagine if you woke up tomorrow and the majority of everyone you trusted and loved cut you off.
Treated you like a stranger.
Passed you in a hallway, looked you in the eyes, and turned the other way.
You have become the untouchable.
You don't understand. These people were your friends. A few short months ago they hugged your neck and embraced you like a brother!
You failed, but you didn't think you were a failure...until now.
You know the saying that if you hear something long enough, you start to believe it?
It's true.
I had looked at a huge scarlet A on my chest so long...I grew into it.
It became a part of me.
And three years later, I was still sewing that huge,annoying,disgusting,big fat A on my chest every single day.
People didn't have to do it for me anymore, I grew into all the labels people slapped onto my heart.
I remember running into one of my best friends a few months after it had happened. They looked me in the eyes...and walked away.
My heart broke into a million pieces. My gut writhed in pain.
I was trying to keep it together for my sisters wedding the next day. But how could I walk down the aisle knowing that crowd of people that used to look upon me with love and respect would be penetrating me with judging stares?
That was a rough day. I wish I could go back for my sister and wear a genuine smile, walk down the aisle, and smile in the faces of those who rejected me...and not with the fake smile I wore for so long, but a huge "God has loved me and shown me grace and wiped away all my transgressions! Forget you!" smile.
That's the smile I wear now. It fits me.
I've outgrown those labels.
I've outgrown those stares of disapproval.
I've outgrown those rejections.
I've outgrown that smile.
I've grown into purity,
I've grown into shamelessness.
I've grown into keeping my head high and my smile wide.
I'm still the untouchable, but in a "God chose me, picked me up, and there's nothing you can do to me to knock me down" way.
It took me three years to outgrow my labels of
"that girl"
"slut"
"HOME-WRECKER"
"victim"
Don't let it take so long for you to let God rip all your labels off and replace them with
"child of God"
"pure"
"righteous"
"new"
Recently I got 2 Cor. 5:17 tattooed permanently on me.
"anyone who is joined with Christ is a new creation. The old is gone, the new has come!"
Wow. Wow. Wow.
God laid this verse on my heart during my fast.
No, He didn't just lay it there, He engraved it there.
Deeply, He engraved it on my heart.
It penetrated my spirit forever.
To think, I, Britney, am a new creation!
The old is gone.
The labels are gone!
The past is gone!
The pain is gone!
That Britney that wouldn't even lift her head to look at you in the eyes is gone.
The new Britney will look at you square in the face, tell you about her past and how God graciously and mercifully lifted her out of the muck of shame and raised her up as a witness.
She will tell you she's a sinner.
She messes up.
And that God called her to missions.
God uses the foolish things of the world to confuse the wise.
And how I'm actually showing my face, much less screaming my screw-up from the roof tops is probably confusing a lot of people.
I have experienced the grace that surpasses all others.
I have been refined by fire.
I have been unchained.
If a man was in prison for his entire life, had never seen the light of day, and then one day was given a free pass to go and roam the streets...
I'm sure he'd act a little bizarre to people that didn't know his story.
That he had been locked up for SO long...
He might dance, sing, kiss the earth.
That's who I am right now.
I've been locked up and I haven't been able to see the Light for so long.
I'm acting a little bizarre.
Im stepping on toes.
I'm ripping off my label.
I'm flipping off the devil.
I am a new creation.
I am a new creation.
I AM A NEW CREATION!

Fast: Week 1

We've all fasted before.
 When I was a kid I just did it because I was told to.
When I was in ministry school I did it because I was told to.
When my church did it last year I lasted for 1 week.
A fast isn't a fast unless you personally feel God is asking you to do it.
God will tell you what to give up.
This isnt a diet.
In fact, many of the fasts God tells me to do don't even involve food.
Last week in prayer, God asked me to embark on a fast, or what I call a spiritual walk with God.
He specifically told me to "Simplify Britney."
I have so far given up Facebook, Twitter, and the internet in general when it's not required for school.
That seemed like a lot to me. I was constantly on facebook, checking people's status' and if they liked mine.
Facebook gives some sort of strange social high that I now see as highly unhealthy.
Then, God asked me to fast secular music...which was one I argued with Him on.
I run constantly, and the majority of the music I run to is upbeat and secular to keep me going and keep me going fast.
God told me not all secular music is unhealthy, but some of the trash I was feeding my spirit without even realizing it was TOXIC.
I would have songs to run to and not really listen to the words, just run to the beat. But, just like He said, I knew every word to those songs unknowingly...and it was complete garbage I was feeding into my spirit.
It's hard not listening to secular radio stations when the only Christian ones are highly cheesy and quite frankly the music is LAME.
 Am I allowed to say that?
When did becoming a Christian mean you lose your real sense of humor? Corny crap.
I feel cut off at this point in my fast. I keep asking God, "When is this going to be over? Am I done yet?"
I feel God won't release me from this fast until I finally go with it, and stop complaining about it every day.
Each week I feel it will get better, and I'll go through a different emotion. It seems contradictory that a fast would make someone feel lonely and depressed...but it's true. When you're so used to being socially active constantly through out the day and then you're suddenly cut off, you feel left out and lost.
I was used to posting my thoughts and what I was doing and where I was at and who with constantly. Who is listening to my thoughts NOW? Who am I going to tell what I'm doing?!
God said, "Now you're forced to tell ME your thoughts."
So here I am, writing in a red leather journal to my God that I can not see...all my intimate thoughts.
Many times I would be doing my own thing and God would tug on my heart and urge me to go somewhere private and journal to Him.
This first week me and God are having a rough time. I'm lonely and I feel so apart from the world right now.
I've grumbled and cried a lot about how annoyed I am that I feel this way and I dont understand why He would ask me to give up all this stuff if it was going to make me feel WORSE than before I started fasting.
Sometimes God wants you cut off, because that's the only way He can get your attention and just have YOU.
When all you have is Him, and the only person you have to vent to is God, your eyes are opened to a lot of what's wrong with you.
Tough love, right?
But necessary.
When I express my problems and complaints to God instead of Facebook or my friends, often times I realize how petty and ridiculous I really do sound.
And instead of "likes" or "comments," God will tell me to be quiet and show me that I am not reacting in wisdom.
I'm not through with week one of my fast just yet, but I've already learned so much about myself and God has pointed out many things in my heart that are not right.
God showed me that often times I am lazy in my work. I do not do my job to the best of my ability. Even when I have to clean a toilet, I should do it to the best of my ability.
I should do everything, no matter how small, with excellence.
Each day I ask God to show me something that day that I need to improve on.
He doesn't take it easy on me either. He has been very thorough in showing me what my heart really looks like.
It's a serious mess. It's been holding on to so much bitterness. It judges more than loves.
I've had to apologize to people God told me to...when I didn't understand, because in my mind THEY were the ones that should be apologizing to ME!
I will pray for an enemy in the morning that I havent seen in 4 years and I'll see them at the grocery store 2 hours later.
Talk about divine appointment.
These first few weeks I know will be rough. God is getting all the junk out slowly and painfully...and I'm fighting the whole way.
I'm going through the fire of refinement before God can polish me.
He's melting away all the gross stuff that's been piled on that I've grown to be comfortable in.
I have become desensitized to my own sin.
What a dangerous place to be for a Christian...wow.
As long as my sin wasnt as bad as "his or her" sin...I was okay in my mind.
Why God chose this specific time in life to do this fast, I don't know.
He does.
Yesterday I went for a run in the woods. I felt like an idiot, running and crying. I just felt so dissected from everyone.
Finally, God stopped me. I leaned against a tree and God wrapped His arms around me.
I felt the first hint of peace since I started my fast.
I looked up in the trees and I was reminded of the little girl I had grown so close to in Caracas so many summers ago.
I could still hear her laugh when I tried to make myself swallow the fruit she handed me off that foreign tree.
My porcelain fingers intwined with her dark ones...skipping with my hair frizzy and no make up on. I didnt care.
I scuffed my running shoes along in the dirt, remembering how dirty I would be by the end of the day after playing with the children in the orphanage all day.
In 2008 at the ministry school I attended, I was awoken one night late with a vivid and confusing dream. I remember telling matt about it the next morning...still in a trance. I saw myself standing in the dry dirt, curls messy and thrown into a braid, holding the hand of a small dark skinned child...just beaming with joy. In the dream I never said anything, I just stood there smiling and holding this boys hand.
I didn't understand. And I never had the dream again.
What did this mean?
Why did God stop me on my run for these memories?
I sat in the dirt in the woods yesterday, getting all my clothes wet.
I prayed.
I begged God if this was it.
Was He calling me to missions?
God then reminded me of the calling to missions he placed on my life at such a young age, so long ago.
"Have you forgotten the dream I placed on your heart as a child?"
I had not forgotten. I had neglected it.
I was afraid. I'm the kind of girl that avoids airplanes and holds onto the door handle with a death grip when anyone else is driving.
I like being in control.
Surely God would not call a girl so full of fear and full of the need for control to give up home and familiarity for missions.
He would.
He did.
God called me to Caracas for the summer of 2013. This is no short trip. God has called me for the entire summer.
I'm afraid if I go God will call me to missions permanently.
I'm afraid if God called me to do missions in my first week of fasting, what other crazy stuff is He going to ask me to do as this continues?
It's week one.
I'm lonely. I'm afraid. I'm called.