Command Central | Previous Challenge Entry

how it works

TITLE: Command Central | Previous Challenge Entry
By Yvonne Leigh
09/16/10
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I’m in my car; licking my wounds as usual. These days, the car is what passes for a prayer closet. “That’s just great! It’s typical of a man to expect the impossible. Where does he think I’m going to manufacture the money to pay that bill?” Prompting the outrage is a hot coal of anger and a personal perception of low self-worth. I rant on, “I’m just going to have to find a way to pay what I don’t have the money for, or I’ll have to face the music for not finding it. You’d think by now I’d be used to the criticism and could blow it off.”

Consolingly, the reply comes, “You know, girl, there has to be another way to live. Surely other women are not living in emotional slavery like you are.”

Spoke I, in my chin set mode, “I’m a Christian and I refuse to think about another way. So, we’ll close that subject now.”

Talking to myself has always been like a visit with a best friend, and I can say what I think. The tears start and I’ve got to pull over to blow a runny nose. I hope nobody I know sees me talking to myself as they pass me. Every day is like this, as if I was on some macabre roller coaster in a horror movie; anger and hurt, hurt and anger. I’d just like to get off the thing.

Holding on to the train of thought in the conversation, I agree and retort in the same breath; “I do know what you’re saying, though; I go into another woman’s house and she’s got shopping bags full of new curtains and a matching table cloth. She’ll put that over her new dining room table. Her house smells like new carpet and fresh paint; and she doesn’t have to bring home a paycheck. I wonder how it would feel to be able to do that, but that does not mean I’d ever consider bailing out of my commitment. I probably wouldn’t want her problems, either.”

I’m in one of those funks that my son used to call, “twinking out.” You know what I’m talking about; there’s a real conversation going on inside and you look like you’ve beamed yourself up to another world. I have no business driving in this frame of mind.

In her little apartment in my heart, wearing the scars of emotional abuse, Self has spent the majority of my life curled up in a fetal position. However, today she stands tall because I have built her up by praying in the Holy Ghost. We talk on occasion when the pressure builds, like today, but to get the answers that produce good results, I turn from Self to the indwelling Holy Spirit. Now would be a good time to do that.

Trying not to switch from natural conversation to King James English, I ask him to tell me how to handle this latest hot potato. I assume that he heard what it was when I loaded it off on Self. How simple his reply, “ Tell him you don’t have the money for the bill and if he wants it paid, he’ll have to give you the money.”

My question is, “What do I say when he asks why I don’t have the money?”

Quick as a dash, he answers, “Because you never gave it to me.”

What a difference in the two! My desire is to run away from the problem; Self locks in on it, and even comes up with a plan; but the Holy Spirit gently lobs the problem back over the net to the other side.

I can turn this rolling prayer closet around and go back home. It’s time to start supper and I’m prepared for the encounter that’s sure to come.

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