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This weekend was pretty good. For months the women leaders of The Vine have been planning the Arise womens conference. When I first heard that "Walking in Healing" was going to be one of the topics they were going to cover, I had it already planned out that that one was going to be the first one I was going to hear. For month I had been waiting to hear that message; for them to cover the one topic no one ever talks about. I'll be honest and say that I did have very high expectations. Well anyway, the day finally came today, October 1st. But for that 50 minutes of sitting in my seat not a single one of my needs was met. DEFINITELY not a single expectation. I'm not worried though; because I know the message might have been for someone else, not me.

There was only one thing that I found interesting... not completely TRUE, but interesting. The speaker said (and this is not an exact quote) that if we have boundary issues, to look at our past and see if there was a sign of boundary issues in our family. She said that if we don't respect other people's boundaries it is most likely because someone didn't respect ours. The idea settled in my mind for a few minutes because it kinda made sense to me... but I didn't believe it was completely true. Making sense of things in our minds doesn't always equal truth. To make my reason clearer I would have to confess something which I'm not willing to do publicly, but I will do my best to try to explain...

I think we often come up with too many excuses for our actions. Though it would be so much more freeing to blame my actions on my history with other people, I can't. I am 22. I am my own decision-making-machine by now.

-I think of it as a computer: I once used to share a computer with my family... and that computer had a virus that definitely influenced the way things worked on our computer... But I have my own computer now. What virus was on that computer cannot transfer onto mine. My own actions are what causes my own virus at this point. Though I came from my mother's body, I am not one spirit with her. I am my own (but God's) spirit with my own convictions and consequences. Just because someone crossed my boundaries in the past, it doesn't give me the right or excuse to cross someone else's. Why do we choose to simplify the true complexity of who God created each one of us to be by letting influence dictate our actions?? Our sin caused by the influence of others is no more excusable than our sin caused by the influence of our own desires. Influence simply just hands us another option, but it is up to us to make the decision.

HOWEVER... I do believe that history could be the reason for a lot of fears in our life. For example... I might be horrible at setting boundaries because I'm afraid someone is going to cross them anyway. So not only do I deal with disrespect toward my boundaries, I deal with failure at trying to prevent something that is going to happen anyway... Which for me leads to humiliation. Of course, it's no excuse to have low boundaries, but it's something I still need to learn how to get over.

Or for someone who deals with not being able to trust people because of something someone did to them. It's something that they need to learn how to do. So in cases like these, history becomes more of a hindrance because of fear than it is a decision to "do unto others what they DID do unto you". Fear can hinder us from making decisions... which overall, really, can also turn into a sin; because it can cause disobedience. And disobedience is a sin.

And of course, I also believe that history can influence us to make positive actions. To make this one simple, it's looking at the bad history and using it to motivate you not to repeat any mistakes done by others either in general or done to you. So history can also motivate us to NOT make obvious mistakes.

But no matter the situation, I think we as humans give too much credit to the past and not enough credit to the plans God has for us in the future. History isn't what makes us, God is what makes us. It all just comes down to allowing ourselves to be transformed by God completely. We can't let our past make half of our identity and let God be the other half of our identity. We have to let God be our WHOLE identity- in every action, thought and motivation.

This all makes sense to me... but it doesn't mean it's true. I didn't use one Scripture to back it up. But I say all this to say... I refuse to let MY past be a "reason" for why I sin now and in the future.