Is there a Giant in your pocket?

Is there a person, a habit, a problem, or maybe a situation in your life, that seems bigger than you? Stronger than you? More powerful than you? Overwhelming to you?

Do you really believe that it’s your lot in life to have a giant sitting on you, settling itself right dead center in your life . . . controlling you and your world with fear?

And just what would you do with your life if you were free of this giant?

Would you, maybe, go and find another giant to take its place?

Is having this giant in your life actually serving you in some, albeit negative, way?

Has having this giant in your life kept you from developing some aspect of your Self?

Have you been hiding behind your giant? (Note that I’m calling this your giant.)

You do realize that this is your giant—right?

The strengths that we assign to our giants are a reflection of our own perceived incapabilities and weaknesses. The power that we perceive our giants have over us correlates directly with the lack of powerlessness we perceive in ourselves.

Did, perhaps, your giant seek you out because you seemed to need it to define your life for you?

Or did you, maybe, seek out your giant as something/someone you could hide behind while shying away from the daunting work of growing up and moving forward?

Do you think, if you were to begin to exhibit certain different behaviors, your giant would begin to lose its power over its area of your life?

Do you think things would change if you began to shift your focus from your giant’s strengths to your own capabilities? Reckoning with, not your giant’s power, but your own perceived lack of power?

Excerpt from From Trouble to High Places: Meditations for Women Who are So Ready to Cross the Bridges that Lead to Joy! Copyright 2009 Esther Davis-Thompson

Believing High

Sometimes when something is wrong in our life, there is no other way to make our crooked places straight than to start walking right into the middle of the mess. Stop focusing on all the things that went wrong before now and start looking forward . . . walking forward . . . toward the way that we want things to be.

How often do we stop ourselves from taking steps in the direction of our good because we have this image in our minds of what people walking toward their good look like? Are you stopping yourself from taking a step forward because you’re afraid you’ll bomb out? Because you think you don’t have the right clothes?  Because someone might find out that you live in the wrong part of town? Because you doubt your ability to take step C after you have taken steps A and B? How often do we think up reasons why we can’t leave trouble and head for our High Places?

Some of us are living in situations so precarious that we’re hanging on to our sanity by a thin string of insanity! So, how do you get out of an insane situation? By using insane Faith! Faith that makes no logical sense at all. By believing so High that it makes no sense at all. By believing that what you need will appear because you believe you are doing what God would like to see you doing. By stepping out with foot in mid-air to do the thing that’s in your heart to do, that which you’ve been waiting and wishing and hoping and praying to do . . . one day.

 Decide that today you have just run out of excuses not to take the first step toward it. And start believing.

The money you need to do the thing you need to do will come. Believe.

The help you need will come. Believe it.

Start believing that you are not a pitiful child of God waiting for a miracle but a Queen in the Spirit standing up and doing what needs to be done to walk forward, heading for your High Places.

Excerpt from Raising Up Queens: Loving Our Daughters Loud and Strong, Innisfree Press, Inc., 2000. Copyright Esther Davis-Thompson.

Are You Truly Ready to Move Forward?

You’re human and you will get tired.

At times, peace will seem to fly away from you at the speed of light . . . and frustration about how long it’s taking for your change to come will seem to underscore your every thought.

So, go ahead . . . tell your God how tired you are.

Tell God all about the unfairness of the trial you’ve been walking through.

Tell God all about your frustration, and the accompanying vexation.

Tell your Creator how broken and twisted-up you feel.

Cry about it.

Pray about it.

And then expect to heal.

Don’t be offended when God’s healing flies right up into the face of your deepest anguish.

Love & Light,
Esther

Who Do You Think You Are?

You are who you think you are. 

You are as worthy of receiving good love as you think you are. 

You are as capable of creating, developing and actualizing your visions as you think you are.

So, who have you been thinking you are? Ms. Hopeful? Ms. Capable? Ms. Pitiful? Ms. Sad? Ms. Fearful? Ms. Doubtful? Ms. Faithful? Ms. Courage?

And, what is it that you want?

New health?

New strength?

New love?

New peace?

New faith?

A new home?

A new job?

A new life?

You’ve probably been thinking that the Trouble in your life was caused by the choices you’ve made or the family you have. Or maybe you think you’re in Trouble because of a certain relationship, or your weight, your looks, your money situation, your responsibilities, your job, or some past experience. But the truth is, what keeps you bound to your address in Trouble is whatever thoughts you’ve been having about these issues.

Whenever you find yourself residing in Trouble, you can believe that your low beliefs about yourself are what’s to blame. Changing those beliefs will unlock the doors you’ve been pounding on.

When we believe High we seek differently. When we believe High we ask differently, and we find ourselves listening more to the mysteries of Spirit than to the din of daily life—we are divinely enabled to see obscure and improbable possibilities. When we believe High, our minds go off seeking hidden things and, astonishingly, discover treasures lurking in the oddest of places . . . and in the most unlikely people.

From Trouble to High Places: Meditations For women Who Are So Ready to Cross the Bridges That Lead to Joy! Copyright 2010 Esther Davis-Thompson

Do you believe that there are High Places with your name on them?

How often have you been brought to the edge of an opportunity . . . only to back away when it was time to leap forward?

How many times have you swallowed your truth because you feared that the consequences of being that honest . . . that telling—about how you really felt or what you really wanted to do—would be less than bearable for someone, or for yourself?

How often have you accepted defeat, before you even entered the race, because you doubted your own ability to succeed and doubted God’s ability to be a sufficiently powerful partner? 

Have you ever found yourself living out what someone else thought your life should be about . . . and not what you suspected/knew it should be about?

Have you had a certain dream simmering on the back burner of your life for so long that all the flavor and passion seems to have simmered out of it?

Have you secretly forbidden yourself to dream new dreams?

When we don’t believe that we are entitled to a better life . . . we don’t believe High. When we don’t believe High for ourselves we wind up crafting all kinds of self-sabotaging behaviors that create barriers and, logically, keep us in Trouble.

My references to our having “High Places” comes from Habakkuk 3:19: “God will give us hinds’ feet and set us upon our High Places.” (The hind being a deer-like animal that can conquer even the most treacherous mountain terrain.) And there are two things to note here: The first is that God will give us hinds’ feet—meaning that this state of power and wisdom, grace and well-being, is a gift, not something earned. It has to come from God . . . through the spirit-woman inside us.

This state of spiritual empowerment is not something we can manufacture or create for ourselves, it is something we have to ask God for, and then expect to receive. 

The second thing we need to note: this scripture says that after God has given us (through the tests and trials of our life-experiences?) this bounding and rebounding power of a hind, we will be set upon our High Places. Therefore, it seems that it’s the use of our hinds’ feet that will transport us to this new land of mountain-top experiences.

From struggling through our days . . . to striding like Queens, blazing new pathways by faith and high-belief . . .

From Trouble . . . to High Places.

Perhaps, only a woman who has been excruciatingly low could ever yearn enough to reach that High.

Do you think God doesn’t know that?