Ripping pride out by the roots

On a more personal note, I have sat on this revelation for just a little bit deciding and praying about when I should share it, and I feel like this morning was the day for it. This is a very personal revelation, and I am simply sharing as an act of faith that God can, and will, use my testimony to help others. I hope it blesses each of you in our own way and that you receive your own personal revelation from God as well.

It was a beautiful day here in sunny Colorado and I was ready to go outside and enjoy the sunshine. I don’t know if all of you have been on a hammock or not, but they are my new favorite thing. So, I set off to go hangout and swing on the hammock. It was no longer than a couple minutes after I had got all situated on the hammock when I started talking with God and He gave me such a mind-blowing revelation.

He showed me a short vision; it was of a big foot stomping on something on the ground. At first it looked like I was on the ground looking up and was seeing this huge foot coming at me, but then it switched views and I was the foot stomping. It was like I was stomping and squishing something under my foot. I have learned anytime that I receive a word like this from God it is best to go straight to Him and ask Him what He means by it, rather than me trying to decipher it myself. So, I asked God what He was trying to show me with this interesting picture, and He said “pride”. I was kind of taken back and confused by that. Why would I be squishing pride? Also, how do you “squish” pride? Is it even possible to squish pride? I was going in circles with Him trying to figure it out. So, I asked him for further clarification about why He said it was pride. Here’s how He kind of took me in a circle and showed me what He meant.

I got up from the hammock because it was in the shade, and I was getting cold and I walked over to a chair. I moved the chair and faced it backwards pointing away from the sun so that I wouldn’t get sunburned while sitting in it. After I sat down, I felt God say, “just like that”. I was like, what do you mean? And He said, “you squish pride by doing things and seeing things just like that.” And I realized He was referring to me repositioning the chair, so that it was beneficial and helpful for me. I sat and pondered that thought for a minute. It dawned on me that the reason I moved the chair was to help me, protect me and honestly was kind out of safety. So, I kept going down that thought and realized that I have not always had to avoid the sun, actually it’s a very recent thing that I have had to get used to. The reason I must be very aware of the sun now a days is because of the medicine that I am on for my auto immune disease. I have to go into the hospital every month and get an IV infusion of a chemotherapy drug that helps me manage my ulcerative colitis. Well, one of the many side effects of this drug is that it thins my skin and makes me very sensitive to the sunlight, and I break out in horrible hives anywhere the sun has touched me. Which living in Colorado at high altitude has become a bit of a challenge to try and avoid. The first couple of times it happened I would get super frustrated, but I wouldn’t do anything to avoid it or help prevent it from happening again; because I liked the sunshine, why do I need to change? It was so inconvenient. I kept going out in the sun and every time I’d come in and start to see and feel the hives pop up, I’d get upset. I was upset because the medication that I am on for my disease has now caused me to have to reroute and rework my entire life. Like that’s just flat out rude and annoying and I wasn’t having it. You’d think by now that I would start wearing sunscreen or something to help myself out, but I still just did what my normal life was and just go outside and not take any precautions, and every time I’d come back in with more hives. It wasn’t until recently that I decided fine, I guess this thing isn’t going away and I really don’t like living with hives all over, so maybe I’ll try thinking about doing things differently. Like today, I moved my chair around so that I could still enjoy the warmth from the sun and be outside, but not harm myself in the process.

But still the initial thought of, “why do I have to change?” came floating to my mind. Why am I the one that has to watch what I wear? Why do I have to watch what time I can go outside? While everyone else can do whatever they want, with no regards of their health. I didn’t ask for this disease. I didn’t do anything to cause this disease. I didn’t ask for this medication, and I didn’t ask for these life altering side effects. Why am I the one who has to deal with all of this? How come it had to happen to me, and at the peak of my life? Seriously God…… I know, I know I don’t recommend arguing/whining with God, but the good thing is He always listens and never gets mad. So, I hash it out with him and my inner feelings of these thoughts about how life isn’t fair and I’m the only one who has to deal with all this stuff and that I’m sick of being limited on what I can do. And right there, this thought was planted in my mind. Pride. That thought right there was my pride showing itself and I hadn’t caught on to it yet. God drew my attention to it and showed me just how much power those thoughts can have over us.

So, I worked through what this thought was and why it was draining me. I went deeper into that thought and began to realize the root of it. I was upset because I felt limited. I felt like I was being deprived of what everyone else gets to have. I felt like I was weak. Words like….BURDEN… WEAK… LIMITED… FAILURE… RESTRICTED… INCONVENIENCE… started coming to my heart. You’re not as good as everyone else. You have so many things wrong with you. You are too high maintenance. The thoughts just started hitting me deeper and deeper. Why can’t you just be like everyone else? Why do you have to be so cautious? You can’t keep up with everyone else. They almost began to overtake me before God jumped in and rescued me. He held my hand while I processed these crazy new revelations. What kind of crazy thoughts was I thinking? This is insane God… I don’t like this sort of thing, I wanna be done now. But I feel like what He was showing me was that my pride was the root of the problem. Almost every action we take in our life is based on our belief system and our self talk and how we see ourselves, and here I was being confronted with mine.

For so long I was blessed to barely have any limitations on me or my life. At least physical limitations, that is. I was able to play every sport I wanted, and excel at it. I was able to ride any horse I wanted, and excel at it. I was able to take on any challenge or adventure or hobby that I wanted, and I would excel at it. It became who I was. I saw myself as someone who had no limitations. No restrictions. Yah, you see the pride coming out? I can too. I didn’t need to worry about anything for myself. I didn’t need to plan ahead or take into account for much of anything. If I wanted to do it, my body would help me do it, no questions asked. Well… now I feel like I literally hit a restriction every turn I make in my life. When I was trying to go to college I got hit with a life changing disease that literally shattered my spirit. It took everything away from me. It hit my physical body so hard that I could no longer walk by myself, or even take a shower by myself. I couldn’t ride my horses or even take care of them on my own any longer. I couldn’t make meals for myself or even get up for a glass of water for myself, because the disease had taken over my physical body to no end. And to top it all off, the doctors didn’t even know what I had either. I was left feeling so helpless and so limited. I had lost all that I had known for my entire life. I couldn’t play sports anymore, I couldn’t ride horses anymore, I couldn’t go out hiking or be in nature anymore. I felt so lost. I felt so incomplete and incompetent. I felt like such a burden. The one thing I can say I am thankful for is, that I never lost my mind or my faith. Actually, these great trials were what brought me back to my faith and brought me closer to Jesus again. I realized God never left me and He showed me during the hardest time of my entire life that He was always with me and always will be. He also showed me that even if every, single thing gets taken away from me in this life, as I was experiencing; that His love, His mercy, His grace and His presence would never be able to be taken from me. On the days that I laid on the couch wondering if it was my last day here on earth, I would talk with God about everything. All my hopes and dreams that were shattered and I had no idea what I could possibly do now. I wondered how He could still use me, even though my body was pretty much useless. I had no idea who I was anymore, and I had no idea where to find my worth. I always found my worth in my accomplishments and how well I did in the activities I participated in and I always pushed myself to be the best. Not just be the best at one thing, but be the best at everything. And I’d like to think I accomplished almost all my goals, but after losing my health I realized none of that mattered anymore. I can’t do anything without my health.

So, I have been on a journey for six years with many valleys and mountain tops, trying to figure out who I am NOW! All the glory to God that I am finally doing what I love to do every, single day and although my health comes and goes, I now know where I get my strength from and where I get my worth from and where I get my vision from… and it’s my Heavenly Father! He was all I had when I lost it all and He is all I need now that I have all that I ever wanted! But something I realized I have adopted over the course of my life and enduring the trauma I have encountered is; I despise being restricted, or limited on something that I can do. I hate having something else or someone else telling me how far I can go, because I know I serve a good God who can take you higher and farther than you have ever dreamed. This helped me realize that I get extremely angry when I find something in myself that looks or registers as a weakness. I see my weaknesses as restricting me from being able to do and be all that I was created to be. The problem is it’s not that someone else is telling me no, it’s my own body who is telling me no. I’m not fighting someone else; I’m fighting myself. To try and bring this around full circle, I believe God was trying to show me that my pride is the thing telling me I should be ashamed of those weaknesses and or limitations and I should try everything in my power to override them.  

What I just realized is, that is flawed thinking. Maybe what I should be seeing instead of weaknesses or limitations or restrictions is that those are parts of my life that I need to take care of and really help them grow. Now, I’m not much of a gardener, but I do know that if you allow weeds to stay in the garden, they will overtake the whole place and deprive the other plants nutrients and eventually will kill everything. I believe God is trying to show me that my pride needs to be ripped out by the roots. He is revealing to me that pride is a weed, and He is bringing to light all the lies that it has created in my life and that is why I need to squish it out. The reason He is doing this is, so that God can begin to plant His truth and His love in my heart and let His goodness grow into the beauty it was always meant to be! I feel like maybe I should start looking at what I have perceived as weaknesses as actually what makes me uniquely equipped to help the specific people in my life I am called to help. I believe we are all created perfect in God’s sight so instead of beating myself up about all the weaknesses that I believe I have, maybe I should be embracing those parts of myself. Maybe because of all the hardships I have experienced I will be the only person who can help people who have experienced those same hardships in their life. Maybe I have gone through what I have gone through so that I can not only be sympathetic, but also empathetic towards others in those specific areas as well. Maybe I should stop seeing it as an inconvenience that I need to shape my whole life around and see it as an opportunity for God to grow it into something only He can do. I also believe that even if one person is healed or set free or finds God because of my hardships than it has all been worth it! I know God can use your weaknesses, hardships, restrictions, limitations, hurts, trials, and testimony to impact the lives of others, because that is exactly what He has done with me. God is a god who can use every, single thing for His good, but we must be willing to let Him in to rip those weeds out and replace those lies with His truth and then be willing and brave enough to share our testimony and let ourselves be heard for His glory, for it to happen!

I know I can’t be the only one who has and will probably continue to struggle with my pride and my truth in the areas of; expectations, weaknesses, performance, limitations and perfectionism. But I do hope that by me being transparent and sharing my experiences maybe I can help point others to God, because He really is the only one who can help us grow into all that He created us for. I know one thing is for sure, I don’t want to miss out on what God has for me because I am too prideful. I also know the power of our testimony and I believe that is how God reaches people… so this is me stepping out in faith hoping that I can help others find their true self in God as well. I always felt like I have gone through what I have gone through for a reason and I believe it is not to keep it to myself. I hope you all know how deeply loved and truly cherished you are by God and that you can honestly and whole heartedly take anything and everything to Him and you will find peace, wisdom, rest, grace, healing, mercy, freedom and strength from Him!

With much love,

Kaley