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This, Is Not That!

by Shannon Heiden  
1/22/2011 / Devotionals

So I went down to the potter's house, and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him. (Jeremiah 18:3 NIV)

Beautiful One, have you ever been through a crisis, an event or even a series of events that have changed your life forever? Do you know what it is to wake up one day and realize that you are not the same person you were yesterday, and upon that realization, it becomes the most frightening day of your existence.

What makes this a frightening reality is that you don't know quite how to define yourself anymore. Everything you used to be, all that you knew is changed. You go through moments in your daily life that when faced with certain situations, you are quite aware that you are not the same anymore. It's as if an innocence of optimism is gone. Maybe you've become aware of just how guarded you are, and trust, well that verb just doesn't knock on your door anymore. And even if it did, you probably wouldn't open it.

There are certain things that happen in life that blindside us. We start out one way, only to find we have landed somewhere completely opposite than expected.

What do you do when your heart has been broken, when everything you tried so hard to achieve has been obliterated? What do you do, when you realize that nothing can ever be the same anymore, as hard as you may try, that shoe just doesn't fit.

Now you have to start from ground zero. At ground zero you have to rummage through a mountain of a mess just to find yourself. Only this time, your starting with the firsthand knowledge of just how cruel and unfair life can become. Now, we are in an even more difficult position, because the knowledge of the pain we've experienced are the glasses in which we view our future.

What are we to do? It's an honest question and what makes it even more difficult to answer is the fact that most of the time we don't even really know how we ever got into this position. And ,if we don't know that, then how can we effectively figure our way out?

Beautiful One, life happens. Sometimes life is filled with challenges, and trials of magnitude proportions. Things happen and, sometimes the things that happen are so wounding, and hard to overcome, that we feel like we're drowning.

Sometimes we're in the toilet, barely keeping our head above the dirty water. It is in these moments that we have come to the end of ourselves. We may not have planned it, or even fully participated in our languishing, nevertheless we are there. We are at the end of the rope. But, being at the end only means one thing. We get to start something new. Now, we can begin again.

But how?

Today, right at this moment, we can die to all that we knew, and if we let all that happened die, if we let go of all that junk, we can be sure that God almighty himself, will re-build us up, better, faster, stronger, wiser and yes, happier than before.

When we know how life can turn on us, when we have experienced that dark cloud that doesn't pass, we actually have to be extra careful in our tomorrows to not bring it alongside us. Just because something happened before, doesn't mean it will happen again. Could it? Certainly. There are no guarantees in life, does anyone want that, absolutely not. But, when we have walked through a painful event, it does change us.

Our awareness changes us.

The key is to find out the ways in which you yourself have altered and examine if they are beneficial to you, or destructive forces working against you. Pain, is not our enemy, the fear of facing it is.

I continually tell my children, the greatest tragedy of their lives is not what has happened to them. The greatest tragedy is sitting back, and doing nothing to turn it around and making it work for them.

Beautiful One, what has happened to you that needs to be examined? What event has altered you? Face it, experience it, tell the truth about it, then, let it go. Let it die. For if we don't, if we allow our circumstances to define us, if we put on our spectacles everyday, and see life through a jaded lens, we will always compare people and places to the pain. We have to make a conscious choice to tell ourselves: This is not that!

Consider this, your life is glob of clay. The Bible tells us that we are clay in the Potters hand. God has never taken the clay and thrown it away when it didn't form the way He desired. Instead, He sits back down at the wheel, discards the parts of it that aren't working, and He diligently and carefully, reshapes it. Our Potter doesn't need any of the pieces that are lost. He takes what is left over, and forms it into something lovely.

If this is how our Potter works, and since we are his children, how much more should we learn by his example? How much power do we posses to rebuild the ruins of our life? And, in case you forgot, we do have power. Wonder working power within ourselves to do this very thing!

So, today let's let go of that rope. Letting go, will only free up our hands to grab the new one that has been waiting all along!

Beautiful One, just believe, and remember: This, is not that!

Shannon Heiden
[email protected]
changingonelifereachingmany.typepad.com

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