Thankful Thursday

This week, our October Thankful Thursday hostess, Lynn, wrote about our freedom in Christ and asks the question, "What victories has Christ given you?"


This an interesting question.  Since I have been a Christian since I was 14, there have been many victories in my life.  Too many to choose from, so I picked the first one that came to mind.

Many years ago, I had a problem with bad memories.  As a child of an alcoholic father, I had seen (and heard) many ugly things.  A couple of years before I left home to get married, my father was delivered from alcoholism by the power of the Holy Spirit.  He never could get free on his own but when he turned his life over to God, the desire for alcohol left him immediately and he never touched it again. (God doesn't always deliver instantaneously, sometimes deliverance is gradual.  I'm thankful in this case, though, that it was!)

We had a couple of great years together and then I moved away to get married. After all the changes in my life became the new norm for me, I began to get a little homesick and started thinking about home.  Thinking about home and my loved ones also made me think about the "good old days" and then, the "not-so-good old days."  I don't know why, but somehow I started to dwell on the bad stuff.  It might have had something to do with being around a relative that loved to point out my dad's faults.

I began to focus on feeling it wasn't fair that I had had a dysfunctional childhood when all I ever wanted to be was "normal."  (I see now that nearly all families have some dysfunction to them ... if not now, then later in life! What IS normal anyway?) Of course, the devil is the only one that wanted to come to my pity parties, but he loved to come and bring new thoughts about the old days.

I am so thankful that one day God put this thought in me, "If you don't quit worrying about what happened in the past and holding it against your father, you will ruin the happy times you could be having now that he is trying to live right."

I immediately recognized the truth of this and I was smart enough to ask for help!  I asked God to take away the bad memories everytime one tried to sneak into my mind. And He did!  It took awhile, and sometimes I had to ask for help several times a day, but He did.  I can honestly say that after that time I really never thought about the bad things in our family's past.  In fact, if someone brings something up, I really have to concentrate to have any remembrance of the event.

"Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ" 2 Corinthians 10:5

I'm thankful that He will help when we ask!  He really did help me with my thought life - all I had to do was bring each thought to Him and ask Him to take care of it.


 
To read other thankful hearts, visit Lynn at Spiritually Unequal Marriage.