Voices

Last night I was walking past some housing projects downtown on my way to a church event. I was behind a woman and her daughter who were headed back to their apartment with some Chinese Take-Out. I’m not sure what the daughter had done, if anything at all, to make the mother so angry, but the closer I got to them (I walk New York kind of fast…) I heard the mother spitting out the most bitter angry words I have heard in a long time. “You are SO stupid!” “Why are you walking behind me?” “Stop walking so slow or I will punch you in your face!” The woman’s words dripped with pain, bitterness and hate. My heart broke for the daughter who looked to be no more than 9 years old. I wanted desperately to pull the young girl aside, look her straight in the face and tell her those were lies! A loving God who had great plans in store for her future made her. He made her with a plan and purpose in mind. To be free and lead others to freedom. That is His plan for every woman.

As I prayed this morning for that woman and her daughter to find freedom I thought of the voices I have heard in my life from those dream takers around me. Thankfully, not from my own mother, but I’m sure all of us can remember words of failure and defeat that were spoken to us or over us at one point in our past. I bet we can remember these memories with clear distinction. I go back to the day when I sat in 8th grade Science and took out my Cover Girl compact of pressed powder to apply lip gloss. All of the sudden I heard my science teacher yell at me in front of the whole class. “Put away your make-up! That sure isn’t going to help you in life so stop wasting your time!” The room got quiet and I said defiantly “ YES it is! I am going to be a model!” She laughed at me and her voice dripped with sarcasm as she rolled her eyes.“ Yea right Trinity. Sure.” A friend brought up the incident recently. She reminded me that I was doing now exactly what I told that teacher I dreamed of doing. Yes, I’m grateful I didn’t listen to that teacher. I’m also glad that I didn’t give up when all those agents I met with when I was younger said I wasn’t “model material” and I wasn’t in a place to succeed in the industry. I’m glad I didn’t listen. I’m so glad. It's not that God has plans for each of us to be a fashion model, but we all have dreams placed in us. God given desires that sometimes won't go away if there is a calling on our life. We all model something. Let us model courage. Let us model humility and unconditional love. Don't ever try to take someone else's dream or allow them to take yours...

Are there any words that you have played over in your mind and have allowed to influence any decisions or thought process? Please know and be reminded that WE choose who we listen to in our life. There is always going to be someone giving us his or her opinion until the day we breathe our last. It is up to us to choose whom to listen to and choose wisely.

Here are some truths from my maker (and yours) that I cling to daily:

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares the LORD” –Jeremiah 29:11-14

“For nothing is impossible with God." -Luke 1:37

“The LORD himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged." –Deuteronomy 31:8

“For you created my inmost being; 
you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, 
I know that full well. 
My frame was not hidden from you 
when I was made in the secret place, 
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; 
all the days ordained for me were written in your book 
before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts, God! 
 How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, 
they would outnumber the grains of sand— 
when I awake, I am still with you. “–Psalm 139:13-18

If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifies. Who is he that condemns? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. -Romans 8:31b-34