A New Me

I have ventured out into the world a few times over the last couple of weeks and it has been interesting to watch myself stumble around. I don't know where I fit anymore. The things that I enjoyed in the past, no longer interest me, and for the first time I realized, that I am not who I used to be.

  

(please feel free to save, print, copy, and share the picture to retrain your brain in what God says about you)

I really didn't think about how a new normal would result in a new Sharon. From the beginning of my cancer diagnosis, I have always said that I wanted to be better on the other side, but I suppose I didn't know the magnitude of what that would be. 

God has been teaching me to retrain my brain to think differently about many things, but the hardest one has been my perception of myself. I had believed lies about myself and those lies had affected my life as if they were true. 

I made decisions based on those lies, my actions reflected what I believed about myself, and the lies affected my relationships with my family and friends in ways I didn't even understand.

Learning to believe what God says about me has required renewing my mind in the scriptures which tells me who God says that I am. Then, it has taken a conscious effort to retrain my brain to believe His word over the lies that have defined me.

It has always been easier for me to believe a negative about myself over a positive. I've heard it said that it takes ten positives to strike out one negative. So, it has been hard work to instill the positive truth of what God says about me. I am a new creation, adequate in Christ, totally forgiven, accepted, and loved. I am of great value and worth, unique, chosen, complete, and precious in His sight, just to name a few. 

And, believing these truths, has taught me to encourage my children about who God says they are as well. It is no longer just my loving perception of them but the foundational truth of scripture that solidifies the facts of who they are. It has changed the way we have conversations and made me more aware of the words they say about themselves.  

So, the truest thing about me is what God says; not what I think or do, not what others think or say, but only what God says, and that has created a new me.