First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won’t. Habit is persistence in practice.”

— Octavia Butler

I watched a movie last night.

It wasn’t one that intentionally glorified the Lord.

It wasn’t a movie that I would’ve told people I watched because the old me was terrified and controlled by all of the opinions of the Sanhedrin of Facebook.

I’m so profoundly joyful to be free from the bondage of what other people think of me after 29 long, agonizing, mentally taxing, and physically burdening years of yoking myself to peoples opinions of me.

I watched a movie last night that didn’t intentionally glorify the Lord but – you see- it actually did.

See God can make the ugliest most hate filled fowl mouthed creations and make them beautiful. I know because He did it for me.

But you see, even though this reckless hellion met Jesus, and cleaned up her act, Jesus didn’t touch my insecurities. Jesus didn’t heal my depression. Or my wounds from years of trauma and abuse.

My outlook was a joyous one now and I was full of hope but my huge gaping keloid scars were not instantaneously sanctified to a prim-and-proper-Mary-Poppins-esque being.

See Jesus didn’t touch those areas, not because He didn’t want to. Not because he isn’t sovereign. But because I had NO IDEA how to let Him. He always desired to heal those innermost sensitive areas of my life that I locked up and threw away the key to. But in His extreme gentleman-like nature, He will not touch things you don’t give to Him. That is not consensual. I could ask that He free me but if I was held captive only in my mind- much like a grown horse tied to a cinder block- then I was the only one who needed to do anything- not Him. I just had to apply what He had already done at the cross.

And as He loved me through even more mess. As I watched my best friend – my grandmother die from two hours away- hopelessly- and as I lost my child in my womb three days later. As I watched my husband grieve silently and blow after blow at life we didn’t know how to process, we just piled it all on top of the cinderblock we were chained to – until what we once could move and didn’t realize it, we now couldn’t possibly move on our own.

I watched our marriage go down the drain. I watched our children grow resentful. I watched us fall from grace and be humiliated by the thought of the gossip from my own family and others and from the thought of the opinions of people.

See, I lived in a facade. On the outside we had it all. We were everything everyone wanted to be. But on the inside we were prisoners in our own minds. Prisoners to each other. Prisoners to others. Prisoners to our own nasty judgmental negative thoughts. Prisoners to lenders because we bought into the lie of having more things means you’re more successful in life.

I watched everything be seemingly ruined – and as the dust settled on our heap of rubble we tearfully pushed the pile to the feet of Jesus and asked him to do something – anything with it. Salvage what you can. You can have it all. And from that moment forward we watched Him smile as He picked up the pieces to our broken life and He molded them back together in a restoration that was even more beautiful than the original piece ever could’ve been.

And to top it all off last night, as I’m layin in bed, I watch a movie- that didn’t intentionally glorify the Lord, but it spoke to my spirit. And in this movie- although sprinkled with the colorful language from my former life- I saw Jesus reaching out to me and telling me that the last remnants of the judgmental mindset that I had on me were not of anyone else but the enemy in my mind. And as I realize that and trash them as they come, my life will be so much more revitalized, joyful, beneficial. HEALTHY. SANCTIFIED.

You see I’ve brought two more children in this world since we miscarried our McKenzie and lost my sweet grandmother. I never thought it would take 6 years to overcome all of this, But my natural body had not stopped being depressed. When you’re grieving, you form Habits. And so that even when you’re not depressed anymore you become so used to those habits that it becomes a part of your life. And it spreads like wild fire. Those habits become your children’s habits. Your husbands habits. And before long you’re begging your family to go camping when they just want to veg out in their free time and you realize you’ve been a slave in nowhere else but in your own mind.

And as I learned what God had to say about me in His word, inch by inch I no longer saw the former ideas of myself as correct. You see, once The Creator of The Universe defines you, no one else’s definition of you seems to really add up. Not even your own. So piece by piece I cut and pasted His words on my heart, over the huge scars, over the pain, over the hurt, over the gaping holes and black rotten negativity. And piece by piece He allowed me to help with restoring my own heart, that I had given to Him in hopes of the Master Artist being able to salvage pieces of my own work. Instead He made something totally new- totally better- totally breathtaking. A true trash-from-treasure masterpiece. More beautiful than anything I’ve ever seen. He restored our life.

And so I watched a movie last night that ended up being a magnet pulling out the last fibers of negativity in my life and even though it wasn’t meant to be religious or glorify the Lord I am so thankful Jesus is able to speak through any medium He chooses that he chose a movie closely resembling my former self to speak right to my new self and elevate me closer to him all the more.

The moral of the story? There are several. But I’ll let The Master Artist reveal in your heart the overarching theme here. Because in life, as in art, everyone interprets the subject matter differently. And that is to be celebrated- not condemned.