“I’ve never met a strong person with an easy past.”

Unknown

In 1 Samuel Chapter 1, there’s a wonderful love story about a woman named Hannah. She’s married to a man by the name of Elkanah. Amid the richness of their Hebrew culture, we’re afforded an intimate look into the complexities of their love and the uniqueness of Hannah’s journey. What intrigued me most is the way many components of Hannah’s story intertwine with aspects of my own life, with beautiful connections between ideas inherent to the process of being processed.

When Hannah marries Elkanah, she knows the Lord has been faithful and generous to her. Elkanah is an honest man in his ways, always fair in his dealings with others, and loves her unconditionally. Like Hannah, many of us want to reciprocate our husband’s love towards us, even amidst the inner turmoil of our flaws being refined by God. During their first year of marriage, Hannah basks in Elkanah’s kindness like a cedar in winter sunshine. Each month she prays and asks the Lord to let this be the one while pursuing motherhood. She can sense the other wives’ harsh jealousy in their withering stares,

Peninnah being one of Elkanah’s wives. Yet every month she’s reminded of the shame and disappointment of being childless; or so she thinks! On the surface, Peninnah’s hateful taunts seem to express her resentment towards receiving an inferior ration of Temple meat. Not so! On deeper reflection, Peninnah’s actions reveal that her greatest longing is for Elkanah to love her the way he loves Hannah.

Although the two women’s processes are different from my own, I saw similar threads of rejection interwoven within my life. On July 16, 1994, I married my second husband and best friend, Michael (“Mike”), a man who was the total opposite of me, yet exactly what I needed to endure the refining process. He penetrated areas of my heart with the skillful precision of a surgeon. Although we began with great guardedness, together we navigated the dilapidated and unchartered areas of distrust. The process helped me to understand the importance of stabilizing areas where I’d previously allowed myself to normalize dysfunction.

We as women often attract what we want as opposed to what we need. Sometimes, in becoming our unique selves, we’re found by those opposite ourselves—those who are willing to navigate the unfiltered version of our transformation. Just as God uses Elkanah and Peninnah, He used Mike to dismantle areas of distrust in my life.

We’re often rigid as it relates to being processed, not seeing a need for our inner pearls to be properly scooped out. As a result, I am asking the thought-provoking question: How transparent is your process against the backdrop of your past life?

When we think of Hannah’s story, we think it merely entails a woman’s love for her husband. This is partly true—but it also shows a woman learning how to navigate and unmask the uniqueness of her flaws. When contending with the pressure of relatability and relevancy, it’s easier to hide behind masks of superficial busyness instead of unmasking and embracing our unique abilities without conformity. Yes! I can relate to that woman. Instead of confronting and unmasking emotions associated with pain, I memorialized the events of my past. Rather than identifying its origin, moving beyond the pain, and forgiving the offenders, I erected memorials. If we’re brutally honest, we tend to self-sabotage for fear of our truth being rejected by others.

We must each be willing to embrace our unique processes, which entails a complete metamorphosis in appearance, character, and circumstance. Its cocoon-like stages require our exchanging Christ’s beauty for our ashes and the removal of our stony hearts towards the former things while spiritually transplanting a heart of flesh to embrace the new thing!

As you embark upon this journey of discovery and renewal, I encourage you to embrace your metamorphosis. There is no right or wrong way; there is only God’s way, which teaches us how to embrace His transformative grace.

KEEPING THE MAIN THING THE MAIN THING

Too often we act out of character when what we believe becomes incapable of yielding the desired result.

In Luke 10:38-42, we see two sisters, Martha and Mary, welcoming Jesus into their home. While Martha becomes preoccupied with the busyness of impression, Mary sits at Jesus’ feet and hears His words. Instead of paying attention to the superficiality of serving, she surrenders herself and gives preference to His words. For real, many of us are Martha! We’re so distracted by wanting to become better for Him that we lose sight of Jesus, the main thing. Reminiscent of Hannah, I allowed self-perception to hinder further development of my character. I hadn’t realized that God always affirms our need for surrender through adverse circumstances. God allowed detours. A detour is something or someone that takes us away from a pre-planned route or expected encounter. Most detours occur when construction is taking place. How we respond inevitably determines how long we linger and block access to the blessing.

In Martha’s case, is the goal serving or being validated through her serving? For Hannah, are Peninnah’s taunts the aim or the indefinite presence of an unfulfilled desire?

As women, we sometimes misinterpret self-inflicted detours as God-refining detours when our desires are flesh-fed and not spirit-led. We’re no different from Martha, Hannah, or Peninnah. Everyone’s longed for something or someone that resembled the perplexities of our heart’s desires. We’ve each endured the shame and disappointment of ill-fated manifestations. Maybe our calamitous encounters in part were from a lack of understanding the purpose of the detour. Unlike God-refining detours, self-directed detours only give visibility to I want what I want. It was this level of misguided focus which catapulted me onto God’s altar and altered me—in the sense of God’s unfailing love seeping into the untouched areas of my life! Just as with Hannah, those areas are so tender for us. And they’ll stay tender to the touch of God until we surrender them and until we relinquish our right, saying, I’m willing to see what I am and confront what I’m not. How can it be? Are we now treasuring in our hearts the contaminants of our past lives? Our unprocessed vulnerabilities? Is it true, Hannah treasures reverberation of Peninnah’s onslaught of insults more than the treasurable promises of God? Is the deluge of her emotions in direct correlation with the treasures of her heart? (Matthew 6:21) Or are the treasures of her heart not in God’s timing but usable for His purpose?

Once married, I stopped allowing the former things to marginalize the uniqueness of my flaws. I married a man who was not irascible by my outbursts of self-truth, but tender and wise when navigating the portals of my unspoken emotions. It catapulted, processing my thinking to another level of maturity. I began seeing what had previously seemed not good enough as enough. I was no longer seeing my flaws from the peripheral view of past circumstances, but from God’s point of view: “fearfully and wonderfully made” in the image of Christ Jesus! (Psalms 139:14) Like Hannah, I, too, considered relinquishing my right to an apology or acknowledgment of the pain. The emptying of inner self-expectations and the illusory perceptions of others was liberating. I’d become clean in areas of thinking once contaminated. The refining process fortified my ability to leave it in the past and to move forward, empowered!

In Hannah’s eyes, Elkanah portrayed a man who made these things possible. Even unmarried, I believe God’s purposed timing is perfect. When our circle of influence encompasses “yes people”—those who agree with everything we say—we become superficial. We can disagree without being disagreeable for the greater good. Surround yourself with people unwilling to marginalize your defeats but who are humble enough to allow you to shine in your seasons of awareness. Some- times, we push away the people sent in those seasons to help pinpoint the uniqueness of our flaws. I believe that was the case with Hannah and with us as women. Ask yourself, Why haven’t I moved from launching to scaling? What hinders us from fully blossoming in our seasons of transformation? Perhaps this hindrance is because we’ve continued to wallow in destinations ill-equipped to allow us to access our God-assigned courses. Contrary to our beliefs, tests (detours) help us discover the inner workings of our self-will towards God’s purposes.

It’s not enough to be in-sync with our God-assigned destiny and not our God-assigned detours. We forget there’s a journey to embracing detours. The problem lies wherein we focus too much on achieving results. How we endure the maturation process determines the effectiveness of our uniqueness and relatability. Each of us wants to be distinguishable, whether upon entering a room or job interview, or in our global presentation, or when we have children or take on the injustices within our society, neighborhood, workplace, or church. Everyone has a distinctiveness regarding themselves. We must realize the only distinguishable characteristic separating us from other women is the distinctiveness of our journey. Our processes differ from each other’s. The distinction is the oil, which is the perfume of God’s presence. Its healing fragrance empowers the individual whose path we’re assigned to cross that day. When seeking employment, what’s our mindset? Is our focus the particularity of the position or the monetary benefits? Although both are important, sometimes the hire is for others to encounter the uniqueness of our flaws. I believe that’s part of the process. I recall while working in the legal field being rejected on many levels. Ironically, God used the uniqueness of my flaws to penetrate and transform the hardest of hearts. Yes, the process prepares us for purpose and destiny, but it also equips us to influence unapologetically!

Here we see Hannah’s character assassinated by Peninnah, who’s unprocessed. Yet while she is being marginalized, God reaches into the deep recesses of her pain. Trusting by faith, she navigates the sometimes unbearable transition from barrenness to uniqueness. We’ve all publicly shaded (criticized or expressed contempt for someone) other people, forgetting times of our own dysfunction and incoherency, often in non-compliant marriages or relationships outside our realm of understanding or acceptable expectations. While married to Mike, I realized my unique processing distanced me from fair-weather friends, which included my exclusion from social family gatherings and even ladies’ nights out. When the main thing isn’t our primary focus, inevitably our surface living accomplishments become our God! For many, our marital, financial, occupational, or even educational statuses become our God, causing us to cast our contempt on other women whose metamorphosis isn’t as complex. Remember, “Faith assures us of things we expect and convinces us of the existence of things we cannot see” (Hebrews 11:1 GW).

SPIRITUALLY SEVERED SCARS

Upon embracing the process, one must become severed from the scars (unhealed soul wounds—un-surrendered trust issues). Between encountering the law firm’s overseer and the reward, I’d become severed from several of my scars. Because of trust issues, I needed severing from the injurious words of people. Unlike surface living, which equates to looking in the mirror but never confronting what lies underneath, confronting our severed scar tissue provokes us to identify, confront, and dismantle the dormancy of emotionalism and legalism.

Christine Kane, A21 campaign founder, said, “You have to deal with your past in order to move into your future. Don’t settle for deliverance when you can be free. If you are going to lay hold of the future God has for you, you have to pay a price. Most of us don’t embrace the pain of emotional or spiritual recovery because there is pain. We have to undergo a process of restoration to have the wounds of our souls healed and to allow Jesus to touch those dark places.” Its truth resonates deeply within the confines of understanding what it means to become spiritually severed. For me, becoming spiritually severed required a willingness to sever ties associated with past scars that had seeped into my life. While having breakfast with Mike at a local eatery, God orchestrated an encounter with a former foe. Its purpose was to strengthen and reveal the depth of how I’d become severed from my scars. Jesus lovingly confronted and touched those untouched, tender places. Allowing the Lord to touch those tender places is overwhelming, but it’s necessary for the journey. Motivational speaker Zig Ziglar said, “Until you release the inner critic, you can’t perform in a manner inconsistent with the way you see yourself.” An unattended scar will always cause you and others to see you from a vacillating place.

Just as many of us have, Hannah endured verbal and emotional abuse. Before Hannah could conceive a son, she had to relinquish the inner critic of its power. God needed to restore functionality to her heart and correct any disfigurement resulting from disqualifying words. I, too, had become disfigured because of other people’s words. It was a Joyce Meyer (Joyce Meyer Ministries) broadcast that helped me realize “hurting people hurt people.” To become severed from my scars, I needed to stop replaying the offenses. Severing from one’s scars is easy. Acknowledging that “comparing yourself to others is an act of violence against your authentic self” is where we’re most challenged (Instagram quote from Iyanla Vanzant, American inspirational speaker, TV reality host, and minister). Because I’d remained attached to the aftermath, what I lived out loud wasn’t always what I believed. I’d remained attached to rejection, to having an absent father, to having a strained relationship with my mother, to the inner-perceived preference between my sisters and I, to a chaotic marriage ending in divorce. So, I erected mental memorials to justify the presence of those scars. I sometimes violated myself through violent acts of criticism and rejection. I was unable to comprehend that the advantage of being purposefully flawed was to empower others to embrace their journeys. Once severed, the Holy Spirit taught me how to live beyond the former places of brokenness (Isaiah 43:18-19). Make no mistake, accessing the places in which the brokenness emanated was simultaneously costly, liberating, and invaluable.

Was it easy? No! Sometimes I wanted to give up, but like Hannah, I realized giving up was not an option. Somewhere in the back of Hannah’s mind, she realized God Himself designed the maturation process. I, too, was looking for step-by-step instructions to achieving the desired results in a less painful manner. You, too? Well, I believe the practicality of these four components will help you become severed from your scars:

1.  IDENTIFY it. Call it by its name. We must understand a scar is an encrustation that grows over a wound during the healing process. A wound is an injury due to emotional divisions resulting in undetected hurts.

2.   CONFRONT it. We confront it by exposing the point of origin. When people hurt us and we don’t forgive their behavior, we’re giving them temporal power over us. We allow them to see us through eyes of inadequacy. Although not predicated upon a physical confrontation, you can confront it mentally or psychologically. Confront it, and don’t spend a lifetime trying to outrun the egregious words or behaviors of others. It’s different if your desire is for the betterment of self and others. But if better conceals and never exposes, maybe it’s because you’ve not confronted the root cause.

3.   DISMANTLE it. We need to dismantle and diffuse it of its power. Once God revealed in prayer, Whenever there’s an extreme mannerism, withdrawal or disdain for someone or something, there’s a deficiency. Because I’d not dismantled or diffused the extremities, multiple unchecked deficiencies were festering. I felt disdain towards being kicked out of the church because of God’s calling on my life. I felt rejected because of my God-given preaching style. The questioning of my femininity insulted the very core of my womanhood. Its implications alluded to God never relegating such anointing, power, and fervency to a woman! For Hannah, it required the dismantling of Peninnah’s unsubstantiated opinions regarding God’s plans for her life. Through this process, I dismantled and diffused every self-erected memorial of its power! UNMASK it. Allow God to touch the tender places. Embrace the process and become detached from the aftermath of the pain. For many, unmasking is a frightening place because it undrapes our excuses, which equate to guarded lies, for not severing ties with yesterday’s pain. These lies are not always towards others, but towards ourselves! Unmasking is a spiritual unveiling of one’s self through God’s eyes. It’s accessing what we’re incapable or unwilling to acknowledge, like the Lord’s unmasking of Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:1-17). Unmasking played a pivotal part in transforming his personality (set of qualities) to personhood (state of being). Before unmasking before others, it’s imperative we allow God to authenticate our daily reveals.

THE COSTLY PROCESS

In 1998, I sensed God’s calling on my life to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ! For one year, God prohibited me from sharing with anyone, including my husband. It’s an incontrovertible truth: God calls and qualifies the unqualified. Clueless to God’s plans, Mike helped me navigate those areas I’d not surrendered to Christ. No doubt you’re thinking, Well, why was it so costly? For me, navigating and becoming emotionally vulnerable and moving from self-taught independence to oneness with my husband was costly. Make no mistake, it’s not for the faint-hearted or the flawless. Only those willing to acknowledge their soul’s character deficits will embrace the journey.

With her frailties perpetually hindering her, Hannah’s emotional disdain towards others impedes her ability to weigh its unfruitfulness. Unsure whether to believe God’s promise of motherhood, Hannah goes to the Temple and lays prostrate before God, humbling herself in His presence and confessing the resentment and contempt she memorialized in her heart towards Peninnah. Hannah truly becomes naked and unashamed before God. She comes to a place of total resolve within herself. The stronghold of bitterness, anger, resentment, unforgiveness, and contempt towards Peninnah dissipates. The familiarity of Hannah’s emotional outpouring is surreal. The costliest part of my processing required acknowledging the prevalence of anger and rage in my life. Becoming free from the mental slavery of self-deprecating thoughts that opposed God’s character was costly. Total liberation in my thought processes taught me how to push beyond resenting the pain and to become grateful for the mercy of God during that season. I became grateful for the grace to live through the costliness of the lesson! Instead of viewing the distraction as an onerous task, I thank God for processing conducive to my uniqueness.

Finally committed to something greater than herself, Hannah embraces God’s ultimate purpose in the beauty of her scars. She’s no longer influenced by her naysayers’ inability to perceive God’s uniqueness of her flaws. It’s true that sometimes change, which equates to a lack of control, provokes fear. Absent reasoning and intellectualism, genuine change will always deflect us away from the approval of others. Although reasoning moves us into the logical, it also moves us away from the will of God. Reasoning is dangerous thinking because it implies we’re smart enough to understand God’s mind without revelation. Really?

God promises, “a new thing shall spring forth; shall you not know it?” (Isaiah 43:19). The appearance of change requires a willingness to confront, expose, and de-mask all self-gratifying behavior. But its appearance is not always without the occasional approval or rejection of others.

We see such an example in scripture when a Hebrew daydreamer named Joseph is introduced. His journey through unprecedented terrains sets the tone for an uncompromised pursuit of God’s new thing. He refuses to allow the temporal appeasement of others to distract him from incubating God’s plan! His life epitomizes the costliness of attaining God’s new thing for your life. He is God-gifted and his father’s favorite, but tolerated and tormented by his brothers, thrown into a pit, and sold into slavery, then horrifically accused of rape and incarcerated on trumped-up charges. God uses him to interpret the dreams of his fellow inmates, Pharaoh’s chief butler and baker. Yet, upon the chief butler’s discharge from prison, Joseph is forgotten about for two years! Surely, we can agree Joseph’s life serves as a prime example of the costliness of being uniquely flawed!

For many of us, when we think of Joseph, we think of him as a hero. He is the second most powerful man in Egypt who saved his family and people from starvation and famine. Seldom is his brother’s jealousy or murderous plot seen in direct correlation with his God-given dreams.

His process required a relatable and distinctive refining of his unique abilities. In Chapter 37 of Genesis, Joseph is seventeen years old when God reveals his gifting. His immaturity needs to come into alignment with his purpose. Similar to Joseph, I, too, encountered many things in order to access my unique ability on the earth. We can see the sovereignty of God’s hand navigating Joseph with great fervor through lengthy periods of maturation. I, too, recall having had to endure the loneliness of the backside of the mountain and God’s chastening at the cleft’s entrance en route to the costly anointing awaiting me on the mountaintop.

Although costly, I held onto God’s promise that whatever I sowed in tears, I’d reap in joy (Psalms 126:5-6). There were nights I questioned God. I asked Him, Is this what you’ve called me to be because this hurts? To which He responds, Did you ever stop to think you’re not supposed to fit into the norm? Like Hannah, the uniqueness of my flaws prevented me from conforming to the normalcy of another’s uniqueness. No longer would the threatening power of my past deny me access to my future. I love how Joseph unflinchingly expects the fulfillment of his God-given dreams, regardless of his circumstances. The detailed stages of his maturation highlight the costliness of developing one’s character before accessing one’s purpose. I learned God develops the integrity of our character through the uniqueness of our flaws. For me, there was no book, seminar, spiritual mother, conference, workshop, retreat, or class. So, I became relentless in my pursuit. I panted habitually for deep dependence on the Holy Spirit to lead and guide me into all truths (John 16:13).

I’d ask God to explain the lesson, and He’d reply, What’s your real desire? Am I your heart’s desire? What happens when God doesn’t brief us on the outcome? Can we walk by faith and endure the process absent an explanation? Here Hannah enters the Temple and bows down in a state of inexpressible brokenness. Her silently mouthed prayer catches the eyes of the temple priest, Eli. At first glance he assumes the unfathomable—this woman’s drunk! Deliriously lulled in her pain, she is erroneously perceived due to one man’s limited knowledge about her state of mind. She responds, “No sir, I’m not a drunken woman, but a desperate woman in prayer before the Lord!” (1 Samuel 1:12-18). Who hasn’t experienced being falsely perceived by others? But God wants to liberate us from the falsities of another’s trajectory concerning our uniqueness.

The costliness entails our allowing God to rid us of that person who others think we are or should be. It showcases who we are in Christ while vehemently becoming unattached from the aftermath of our pain. He desires for His validation to be more important than the fleeting affirmations of others. God’s plans and purposes didn’t fully materialize until He freed me from the erroneous trajectories of people.

So what happened to Hannah? She abandoned the shame and disappointment of her seasonal barrenness and endured the process while believing God’s perfect and acceptable will would manifest in her life (Romans 12:2). He knew precisely where she was (the self-imagined unfixable place) and His thoughts and plans for her life (Jeremiah 29:11). Ever been in an unfixable place, a place where the fallibility of your humanness becomes magnified? It’s here in His heightened presence God teaches us how to cease from worshipping the issue and how to worship God through the inexplicable peace of Jesus Christ. If change is an act and worship is a choice, whatever’s magnified inevitably will manifest within our lives (John 4:24).

We may not want to hear it, but hardships are part of the processing. The pleasantries of an abundant life are accessible when we access the will of God for our lives. Like Jesus experienced, it requires a tearing apart, a leakage, and a ripping open of one’s will. The processing affords me the privilege of authentically accessing another woman’s sacred space—the unspoken space where our commonness collides and unutterable emotions are released through tears. I’m empowered daily to encounter the beauty of flawed women who don’t know the preciousness of their uniqueness. I am not deterred by their guardedness or their attempts to keep me at bay because they don’t want their tender parts touched or highlighted.

Once upon a time, I, too, guarded myself until God Himself touched and exposed the severity of those areas through the personhood of the Holy Spirit. There were areas I couldn’t fathom allowing anyone to access. They were painstakingly raw, yet the tenderness of God penetrated each crevice with an indelible ease, diminishing its hold to a drunken whisper within my soul! There’s a quote from Sarah Young’s devotional, Jesus Calling, that epitomizes the gifting of affliction. Referring to Psalms 119:71, it says, “Hardships are part of the journey, too. Jesus meets them ever so carefully and in just the right dosage with a tenderness you can hardly imagine, so do not recoil from afflictions, since they are among God’s most favored gifts.” It’s one thing to pursue purpose, but it’s another to become equipped through adversity. Upon realizing my God-assigned afflictions corresponded with the uniqueness of my flaws, I became breathtakingly humbled! How so? Because now I’d become sensitive towards others treading unchartered territories in pursuit of accessing their uniqueness.

It’s disheartening to see the inundation of acts of violence against women on social media. Our television programming has reached an all-time-low. Absent from our viewing are women being shown as lionesses of influence and women created in the image of a Holy God. Instead, the images reveal victim-minded or inferior-postured creatures. Yes, it’s a travesty! The solution begins with us calling for a ceasefire in the character assassination of other women. And fortifying the ineffable presence of one another’s uniqueness! I’m unapologetic about accessing the uniqueness of other women’s lives, women who’ll embrace the processes of annihilating the aftermath of their pain. I believe the refining process is God’s way of securing us from being found where they left us!

AUTHENTICATION OF THE FLAW

Despite scorn, ridicule, and the rebuking of an uncomprehending priest, Hannah refuses to believe her challenge was permanent. And in God’s time, He rewards her with a son, and they called him Samuel (1 Samuel 1:19:20). She keeps her promise to dedicate her son to the service of the Lord. For some, that might appear too high a price. But the relinquishment yields an ineffable dividend in the prophet Samuel’s life. God likens no other to the role he plays in the life of King David. And his influence outlives him as he gives great impetus to the prophetic men of his day.

We see a similar relinquishment in the life of Joseph, a daydreamer whose gift of interpreting dreams accounts for him being sold into slavery by his brothers (Genesis 37:1-28). Remembering the betrayal of his family members during his process costs him much. When falsely accused of raping Potiphar’s wife, he is imprisoned. During his incarceration, he interprets the dreams of Pharaoh’s chief butler and chief baker (Genesis 37:7-20). Joseph has every reason to think God has forgotten about him until his gifts made room for him (Proverbs 18:16). Although the cost of authenticating his flaws seems unfathomable, his accommodations are depictive of divine orchestration. Unlike Joseph, his fellow inmates are high-ranking officials within the King of Egypt’s cabinet.

Because “the Lord was with Joseph and showed him mercy” they promote him to a supervisory position. Amid the authentication process, he’s afforded an opportunity to interpret the dreams of Pharaoh’s chief butler and baker. Unfortunately, his interpretation of the chief baker’s dream is to his demise. He tells the chief butler that within three days, Pharaoh will restore him to his butlership (Genesis 40:12- 13). Once he finishes interpreting the chief butler’s dream, he steps in God’s way. He says, “But remember me when it is well with you, and please show kindness to me; make mention of me to Pharaoh and get me out of this house” (Genesis 40:14). But Genesis 41:1 reveals, the “chief butler did not remember Joseph, but forgot him and did not recall his association for another two years.”

Sometimes the things we’re furiously in pursuit of become delayed because of wrong motives or because of un-surrendered areas. Ecclesiastes 5:3 NIV says, “For a dream comes about with much business and painful effort, and a fool’s voice with many words.” To the naked eye, the chief butler seems selfish in his forgetfulness. But God is using him to perfect certain areas of immaturity in Joseph’s life. Has God ever used you to launch another’s vision or to support a similar desire in someone else’s life while believing they’d reciprocate the same in your season of prosperity? Have you ever felt like everybody else is walking in their God-season of influence and promise? The authentication process engrained upon my heart is that “God is not slack concerning His promises” to us (2 Peter 3:9). And absolutely, “His strength is made perfect in our weaknesses” (2 Corinthians 12:9). I truly believe it’s because God doesn’t want us to think we, or anyone else, navigated the process. Or that anyone else influenced the transformation more than Himself.

Once God made the character adjustments, within twenty-four hours the chief cupbearer’s memory becomes supernaturally restored (Genesis 41:9-13). Joseph’s final processing demands a change of clothes after he is summoned to the royal palace to interpret Pharaoh’s dreams. Why? After he became Egypt’s governor, God had to remove the stigma associated with the unfruitfulness of his flaws (Genesis 41:14-24). There were seasons when the processing exposed heartbreaking truths about myself and others within my sphere of influence. Although we are multifaceted and multidimensional, the processing will always sequester anything or anyone that hinders an authentic representation of truth.

It’s important to remember that detours prime us for the destiny awaiting the matured versions of ourselves. The vastness of the detours I experienced to prepare me to arrive mature seemed mind-blowing. I recall asking God, Do I need more processing? It appeared we’d never move the ministry out of our basement. People laughed at us. They looked at our ministry as a fluke because it was in our home. Although their comments were hurtful, I trusted God. Believing if I “wait for it...it will surely come. It will not tarry” (Habakkuk 2:3). Even with a viable presence on five radio stations, the authentication process stretched my faith and my resolve to stay faithful to the promises of God. I believe it infused a steadfastness that would inspire others beyond themselves. In God’s next-level timing, He always prunes the unprofitable areas whose incubation period is long overdue. God loved me so much He wasn’t willing to unveil what He hadn’t authenticated!

Because it’s up close and personal, no one else can navigate you through the process but God Himself! Do you have a part in the overall process? Absolutely! Your part is knowing you’re not unreachable. It’s knowing that right where you are, the power of God is always per- perfected in weakness. He loves the beauty of your unashamed dependence and neediness of Him. When embraced, we see our distractions as prospective lifters, as God-designed detours that enable us to view life from God’s perspective and not ours.

God knows you’re nervous about embracing and navigating the process. For a moment, take your eyes off yourself and fix them on Christ Jesus. I don’t know where I’d be if He hadn’t endured the process of the Cross! Do you know where you’d be without the processor of love?

Now, instead of moving to the next chapter, take a moment and reflect upon what you’ve read. Nestle in your sacred secret place and share your deepest thoughts with God in the Empowering Reflection section. Intimately ruminate upon what’s needed to bring about God’s open-handed healing in those areas. Don’t hurry to leave His presence before moving on to the next chapter, for each reflection brings you unapologetically closer to pursuing the uniqueness of your flaws!

EMPOWERING REFLECTION

 The space provided below is not for show! But a sacred time of reflection, before the One Who knows it all—the Almighty God. So, please sit in your truth and be honest with yourself! Allow God’s unfailing love to capture your unspoken truths, setting you free to hear anew His truth about you. Remember, these reflections are an intimate conversation between you and God! Now let’s unpack it.