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!