Removing the Residue

"Forget the former things, do not dwell on the past.  See, I am doing a new thing!
​Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? 
I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland."
Isaiah 43:18,19

If you're reading this today, you can relate to trauma and the impact of negative situations in your life.  The level of degrees may vary, but everyone has been through something.  Physical pain, loss, financial hardship, difficult relationships, abuse, dysfunction, unresolved issues, grief, failure, betrayal, depression and so many other "broken things".  We go through STUFF and when we get to the other side, we tend to carry a film of past residue in our thoughts, our hearts and our bodies.  

In his 2014 book "The Body Keeps Score", Bessel van der Kolk, MD talks about how trauma is remembered by our bodies even if we aren't aware of it.  Trauma impacts the brain and causes our nervous system to be on high alert, constantly ready to face the next threat.  Even if you've determined with your mind that you are safe, the body remembers and holds on to that past trauma...until you heal.  

Then, there is the other side of emotional and mental trauma that gives you a high tolerance threshold for toxic behavior.  Childhood often grooms people to continue cycles of dysfunction and without even knowing, you translate tolerance into endurance.  You adopt a mindset of "I can handle this", "I'm patient, committed and able to endure."  All the while, you are actually giving a trauma response to a continuing cycle of toxicity.  

Anxiety, fear, numbness, the inability to be vulnerable, fight, flight, low expectations, hopelessness, bad habits, attachment issues and lack of vision for anything good ahead....all of these things settle in and become a part of the stain from the last season.  Unknowingly, we approach a new season with an old mindset.  We see something new but we expect something old.  We anticipate the worst.  We prepare for disaster.  We carry old habits into new positions.  We procrastinate.  We put hope on the back burner and try to navigate a new land with old coping mechanisms and dusty ways of thinking.  If we are not intentional and aware, the residue becomes the shaky foundation for the "new".  

Isaiah 43 says, "Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past."  The word "DWELL" means to be fully present in a place, to live or stay as a permanent resident; to live or continue in a given condition or state.  For so many of us, our physical positions change but our minds, bodies and souls continue to be fully present in a past place.  Anxiety continues to ravage our minds.  Fear holds us back from successes.  Pain grips our hearts and keeps us from opening to new opportunities.  The lies of bondage continue to lead the way in a new land and before you know it, you smell like smoke.  You may not "look like what you've been through", but you sound like it!

I'm reminded of Lot's wife who looked back...we often consider this only as it relates to longing for sin, but what if we look deeper at it and consider how so many of us "look back", holding on to the dwelling place of trauma.  I can see Lot's wife considering all who she was leaving behind, maybe trying to minimize the disaster of what was about to ensue.  She had attachments, not just to behaviors but to people, places and things.  She had habits and ways of living and now, she was challenged to leave it all behind.  The significance of her turning into a pillar of salt is deep...she stopped moving and was ultimately destroyed.  She was being called into the new, outside of her comfort zone.  She was needing to walk away from some people and places but because she desired to "dwell" in that place...that place was PRESERVED in her and she was destroyed.  

Some of us have been being called into the "new" for some time now.  Long before the ball dropped in Times Square, there has been a ticking in your spirit to move into the new thing.  But the desert and wasteland has been stuck in your rear view mirror...you can't imagine streams bursting forth because you have settled into desert thinking.  You've learned to survive on little.  You've accepted low expectations and fear of failure as the norm.  Dysfunction has become the way you navigate but that is residue, my friend.  What has failed OR succeeded in the past season is just that...PAST.  God is calling us into something that we have yet to fully experience.  If failure has become your norm, shake that thinking off by the power of Jesus and expect that a shift has already taken place.  If anxiety has been steering your forward movement, remember that fear is not your portion but rather love, power and a sound mind.  Loss is not your expectation but recompense and restoration are indeed yours.  Increase and promise are your inheritance but you must reject the residue and be cleansed from the stench of Egypt.  

My dear sisters, the enemy is cunning.  He is highly deceptive and manipulation is his forte.  Hear me when I say this...he will CONVINCE you to reside in the place of residue.  He will entice you with the familiar.  But you cannot afford to be preserved in that place.  Promise is waiting just up ahead.  Whatever your residue is, I encourage you to take time to sit with it, identify it and then renounce it...give it a resting place, let go and move on.  What God is about to do in your life is astounding and the only thing that will hold you back is YOU.  

I love you, as always, and I pray God's very best for you as you find a new place to DWELL in this season.  

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Psalm 91- A New Place to Dwell

1 Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High
    will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.[a]
2 I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress,
    my God, in whom I trust.”
3 Surely he will save you
    from the fowler’s snare
    and from the deadly pestilence.
4 He will cover you with his feathers,
    and under his wings you will find refuge;
    his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.
5 You will not fear the terror of night,
    nor the arrow that flies by day,
6 nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness,
    nor the plague that destroys at midday.
7 A thousand may fall at your side,
    ten thousand at your right hand,
    but it will not come near you.
8 You will only observe with your eyes
    and see the punishment of the wicked.
9 If you say, “The Lord is my refuge,”
    and you make the Most High your dwelling,
10 no harm will overtake you,
    no disaster will come near your tent.
11 For he will command his angels concerning you
    to guard you in all your ways;
12 they will lift you up in their hands,
    so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.
13 You will tread on the lion and the cobra;
    you will trample the great lion and the serpent.
14 “Because he[b] loves me,” says the Lord, “I will rescue him;
    I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name.
15 He will call on me, and I will answer him;
    I will be with him in trouble,
    I will deliver him and honor him.
16 With long life I will satisfy him
    and show him my salvation.”