I can remember waking up to the smell of sweet blueberry muffins early one Saturday morning. As I flipped my fluffy pink eye mask off of my eyes, the warm rays of the sun peeped through my sheer cotton candy curtains. My room was every little girl’s dream. The bed with curtains hanging over the top, pink walls, big flat screen tv, and a huge double door walk-in closet. This was the dream and a dream was all it was. This is where I would find myself as a kid, sitting in our section eight home,staring at the blank walls, lost in this fantasy world I thought was perfect. It’s like I would always imagine myself somewhere better. It was so bad that I would sometimes wish God gave me different parents. Parents that would have actually married each other, worked good jobs, and stayed together. But just like God asked Adam and Eve in the garden. Who told you that you were naked? Who told you that you were poor, or that your parents were not enough?
I didn’t understand that as a young girl growing up in Memphis that I was already under attack. At that point in life, I would always daydream to escape my reality because I didn’t believe my reality was enough. I didn’t think I was truly loved by God because we were poor. I wondered why my mom went to church, cried and prayed to God. I couldn’t understand as a kid. I can remember wondering why so many people in the church seemed poor other than the pastor. What could God have possibly been doing if all of His children lacked? I was so disappointed to the point where I looked into rich people to see what they believed because our God couldn’t have been enough.
I never had as much as the other kids and that’s where the enemy started to whisper in my young ears. I would go to school and see all the other children with perms and new shoes. This made me secretly compare myself to them. The enemy was in my ear before I hit puberty, convincing me that I wasn’t enough. In fifth grade, I went home to my mom and told her that I wanted a perm because the way God created me was no longer enough. I also started shaving my legs because apparently having hairy legs in elementary school was not the wave.
I slowly tried to change everything about myself, so I could feel that I was enough. I didn’t even want someone with an ugly car dropping me off at school, because I didn’t want the other kids knowing I was poor.
When I felt like I wasn’t enough, I would escape. Escaping for me meant daydreaming about a life where I imagined everything to be perfect. One day I got so sick of escaping in my mind that I decided to start writing in a journal about my problems. Anytime my mom or anyone would upset me, I would have a field day in my journal expressing my anger. In that journal, I found an escape. Somehow, the journal was helping me overcome anger and also live out lifestyles I thought I wanted through stories I would write.
However, journaling didn’t help me escape the feeling of not being enough because this feeling traveled with me through high school. It didn’t stop there, it followed me into adulthood to the point where I bought my one year old Jordans. The reason I cared so much was because I was appeasing the broken little girl inside of me. This not only reveals the seed to my overspending issue, but it also shows why I had a problem with shopping.
I wondered why I spent my money on so much dumb stuff once I had it and realized that it’s because I need to heal the little girl inside of me that thought her worth was determined by her wardrobe. I would buy everything that I thought would make me feel fulfilled, but none of it did anything but collect dust. Everything we struggle with starts with a seed.
In the church setting, when we speak of seed it mainly refers to money or good things. However, all seeds are not good seeds.After doing some research on seeds, an easy way to determine bad seeds is to test them in water. How they react to the water determines if they are good or bad. So, you want to test a seed in your life, test it by using the living water.
There are many seeds that were planted in us when we were younger and we have to address them head on in order to heal. So take some time in your journal and write down some seeds that were planted in you as a child.
Another seed that was planted in me when I was younger is fear of abandonment. Growing up, my dad was my best friend in my head. He lied to me a lot, but I excused his inconsistency because I loved him. I can remember this one time he told me he would pick me up from my moms house around a certain time of the night. So, I excitedly packed my bag. My mom kind of warned me not to get too excited because deep down inside, I think she knew that he had lied again. But, I didn’t want to give up on him. Hours went by and I called him for a status update. Around ten o’clock, he said that he was still coming. More hours passed. It was three in the morning. My mom had made me get in the bed, I called my dad again and this time no answer. I called until a dispatcher picked up and I cried to her about how I just wanted to go with my dad. Needless to say, he never came. He would do this so often that every time he did come, I wasn’t ready because I no longer trusted his word. Then some time after that, I remember crying on the phone to my dad about the lifestyle he was living. I cried and told him to quit because he might end up dead or in jail. He told me that he knows and he will change it. A couple months later, he was in jail not for a little time but twenty years was his sentence. This didn’t make me sad, it made me angry because he lied again.
This is where my trust issues started. This is why in relationships I would ask my partner to do something, then I end up doing it before they get the opportunity to because I don’t trust them to follow through. This is why it took me so long to trust God. My earthly father lied to me repeatedly and then abandoned me. Unknowingly, this hardened my heart. I convinced myself that no one was permanent and eventually everyone would leave. So, in every situation I would choose to struggle alone than to ask anyone for help.
I can remember being so sick of my family being poor, that I would try to use magic tricks to make paper turn into money. As silly as it sounds, I would find anything online to figure out ways to make money. I was tired of being without. I hated that my mom had to struggle and depend on others to help her. I believe that being poor caused me to resent my mom. Not only did I start to resent her, but I also started to resent God. As a kid, I just couldn’t wrap my head around why God would allow his people to struggle, but I was a child so I saw as a child. It bothered me so much in my head, that I started to look into devil worshiping. I wasn’t even a teenager yet. I just heard about the celebrities and how the devil gave them everything they wanted, but they had to sell their soul. As a kid, I thought well I can’t see my soul, so I can trick them and take the money. As if I could sign a contract with my fingers crossed. This was a spirit. This was a deceitful spirit that tried to take me out as a kid. So much so that I put a blade to my wrist but I didn’t have the strength to do anything. I just wanted attention.
Growing up as the child in the middle, you don’t get a lot of attention. I got attention by achieving goals. If I made straight As, I got attention. If I did something brag worthy, I got attention. So, in these tiny triumphs, I became a people pleaser.
Nothing is harder than always thinking about what everyone else has to say about you. It’s non-stop thoughts flying through your brain at one time, not allowing you to rest. This is where my overthinking started. This is where I instilled in me that I wasn’t enough unless I was doing good at something.
Can I tell you something?
You are enough just as you are. Without the achievements, without the marriage, without the children, and without the business. You are enough. You are loved by the King of kings. He chose you. Everything about you before the world was able to imprint pain into your story, He chose you.
As I am now walking in purpose. God is telling me not to worry about what others think of you. So, my now word is to post the video and don’t go back to check the likes and comments. For me, this is hard because I’m healing from people pleasing. So, what I’m doing until I can learn to not care is post the video and delete the app, post the blog post and delete the app. In 1 Corinthians 4, Paul said it didn’t matter what people thought of him because he was walking in his purpose.
It’s time to look through our lives and find the seeds. We are done living unhealed, and walking around carrying weights that are not ours to carry. Get out your journal and start writing. Before you start, pray that the Holy Spirit reveals to you things from your past that shaped you into who you are today. Once you have these things, write them down. Then read over them, find out what these things instilled in you and give these things to God. If you can’t discern the spirits that are behind these things, pray about them and allow the Holy Spirit to reveal them to you.
Prayer to uproot all bad seeds that were planted in our lives.
Father, I ask that you help us uproot the seeds that were planted into our lives that are not from you. I ask that you reveal to us the things that we have experienced, that have caused us to become bitter, depressed, and every other fruit that did not come from you. I ask that when you reveal these things to us, we are able to give them to you, so that you can heal our hearts. In Jesus name we pray, amen.
Bible Brat 
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