You know what’s amazing about what you think and remember? That they can be your greatest asset or your greatest opponent. You can not get rid of the memories but you can take them captive. A captive is submissive to the captor. If your captor is self pity. Then it will capture every memory that gives itself strength. If the captor is anger it will seek out and gather every memory that upsets you. Sadness, depression, etc. Who’s your captor today?
This captor becomes the leg that your imagination stands on. So, if your captor is anger, then you’re imagining the next thing that is said and done will make you angry. Therefore, anger builds into rage. If your captor is sadness, then your imagination then becomes a self sustaining vehicle of grief, self pity and depression. One in which you ultimately feel like a back seat driver, all the while it careens through a thunderstorm over mountainous terrain.
What if though, we allowed joy to be our captor. Joy or happiness or zen or whatever you choose to call it, when powering your imagination allows you to dream. Dream big and full and be filled w/ love. Where the confidence oozes from your pores thickening the skin to ward off the bad thoughts that try to invade. The bad ones never go away, but you can choose to take them captive and run them through the checklist of your soul. That’s that emotional checklist that we unconciously go through when something happens to us that is out of our control. When we are faced with oppression or simply opposition we begin to ask ourselves questions and answer them. Questions such as, am i enough, why is this happening, what if I can’t do this, what if it doesn’t work, etc. The same questions will be answered by your captor. Who’s your captor today?
A good question to take through the day is “Is it well w/ my soul?”.
When it comes to matters of the soul, there’s a whole world going on inside you. Whether or not you pay attention to them is simply a matter of choice. A matter of perception. Hindsight is 20/20 and I realize the determining factor between most of my life victories and losses simply lives in the perception. I’m not downplaying the effects of sadness and emotional sickness that suddenly comes out of nowhere like a waterfall flowing into a rapid. One in which it feels like one moment you’re standing on the shore watching and in a split second you’re somehow right in the middle fighting to keep your head above water. What if you stopped fighting it? I remember when I went white water rafting and in the instructional piece they said “don’t fight the water, let it take you and you will come out down the river, ALIVE!” Fighting these waters only leaves your muscles, mind, and soul fatigued. But we keep fighting right? Avoiding the internal battle is a fight all it’s own. Interestingly enough, your main fighter is your captor. Who is your captor in that moment?
There are times when each of these captors have their place. Your emotions are a good thing, especially the bad ones. Like sadness, uncontrollably weeping and wailing has it’s place. Crying is good because you’re eliminating toxins from your soul. Just like our body can build up w/ toxins and then sickness and disease set in, the soul works the same way. We think we are letting things go and forgiving and “moving on” until we realize that we hadn’t fully. We will fast and diet and purge our bodies, but what about our souls? We will exercise and stretch and bend our bodies but what about our souls? Our souls need everything our body does. Fast food can be harmful to your body and “fast food” is just as harmful to your soul. Fast fixes to your body can be harmful in the long run because your body didn’t do the actual work to take the weight off, it doesn’t know how to continue to do the work to keep it off. “Fast fixes” to your soul, like addiction for example, can be harmful because your soul didn’t do the actual work to work through and expel the trauma and pain from your soul, it doesn’t know how to continue to do the work to keep it out. These toxins have to come out to make room. I remember that for years I kept pleading w/ God for things and it’s like His response was always the same. “Where do you want ME to put it”? I stood behind statements like “if you do this then it’ll be easier to do that” and that was applicable to so many facets of my life. It wasn’t true then and it’s not true now. You didn’t get these things deposited in your soul by happenstance. It took work of some kind, even if you’re not aware of it. In the same way, there’s no method to purge it w/o work. The only way out of the pain is to go through it. The greater the trauma, the more painful the voyage. The more difficult the journey, the greater the triumph.
Acknowledge the captor of today and find a way to work w/ it. It is apart of who you are and it speaks the language of your soul. Sometimes it’s the only part of us that knows the way forward. The way to the door where these “toxins can be released. You’ll be able to answer the question quicker and more profoundly of “is it well w/ your soul?”. In that, will come the answer that you long to hear. But one of the most important things is that after the toxins are gone you’ll have room for what you so desperately crave.
Love
Be strong and courageous. Be very strong and very courageous. Be encouraged. Everything you need for the journey into your soul is already inside of you.
