Psst! My Color… Yes You!
The mind is never asleep! It’s a constant engagement platform.
What you entertain is what stays. What you don’t give a thought to, never finds a nest or soil to germinate.
For a while, I’ve been dealing with certain thoughts and each time I give into it, I come back a few hours later a wet puppy, crying. I’d mentally beat myself up; you can do better! But I thought you had this figured out? I thought you’d conquered and won this battle a long time ago? Yet here we are, back at square one!
My saving grace and fall back scripture,
Because the righteous falls seven times, and he rises, and the wicked is overthrown by evil. Prov 24:16
For the believer, it’s never about how many times you fall, but getting back up and running your race to the finish line. He never promised an easy way out. Life on a daily is a constant battle. So your best bet when you fall down is to rise up and keep fighting!
One morning I woke up a wet puppy again crying out “Lord how much longer do I have to deal with this? Help me, I believe I’ve come to the end of myself.”
There I stood by the sink, early hours of the morning doing the dishes. I gazed at the clear blue sky and the mountain far ahead. I’d made that my favorite meditation spot.
The reason why you keep loosing this battle is because you keep engaging it, you’re attentive to it.
I love going to local markets to shop. It’s a habit formed from childhood. My mum would make us clutch tightly to her hands whenever we went shopping. The colors and style used by these traders to stack and arrange their wares was something I found fascinating. The noise, the hustle and bustle were entertaining to me.
As I grew older and went shopping on my own, I no longer found those experiences thrilling as before. The ones I found most irritating were the traders who cat-called you.
My color!
While stretching out their hands to pull you into their stalls. Some would go as far as barricading you just so you’d give up and check out what they had. Sometimes it worked, most times, a waste of precious time.
Between both strategies, what I couldn’t endure was the “touching” aspect. My hands automatically slapped anyone’s hands who tried to touch me. How dare you use those filthy coarse hands with untrimmed dirt-filled fingers to touch me! Touching made me feel contaminated!
Then the cat-calling, Phew! Some would persist even after you’ve walked past them. It reminded me of a red light district! Could we at least act decently in the market place?
Psst! My color! Fine sister! I like this your specs! (I like your glasses). Sister I dey greet o! Why you go spoil your neck with this thing na? (referring to my tattoos).
Your best bet is to walk ignorantly past them. Pay no heed, not for a second. I got used to it knowing they would never change. It was a tradition handed down from one generation to another. I got accustomed to silencing their voices in my head whenever I walked through that lane.
Now that’s how you deal with those thoughts! The same way you slap their hands off of you is the same way I expect you to handle that thought! You don’t hear their voices anymore because you’ve stopped paying attention to them. Your mind no longer engages the “calling out”! That’s how you deal with it!
Wow!!!! Was all I could say. The Holy Spirit WAS and IS that near! If only you’d silence the noise around you and listen. He’d tell you what to do and how to wage your battles. Sometimes He doesn’t take these challenges away because He has equipped you with what to fight with, you just never listened and looked in the direction He was pointing.
“The weapons of our warfare are not physical [weapons of flesh and blood]. Our weapons are divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying sophisticated arguments and every exalted and proud thing that sets itself up against the [true] knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought and purpose captive to the obedience of Christ, being ready to punish every act of disobedience, when your own obedience [as a church] is complete.”
2 Corinthians 10:4–6 AMP
