Transform: I Can

My mantra up until yesterday (when I first realized I had this mantra) was “I can’t.”

I can’t write.

I can’t get healthier.

I just can’t do this anymore.  God, why do you push me on to do these things I just can’t do?

Somewhere between my heart and the scribbles in my journal and the intervention of the Holy Spirit, I realized that “I can’t” is just an easy excuse.  “I can’t” means I don’t have to and it would be easier to give up and stay the way I am.  Because status quo can be easier than change, especially for me.

Yet my creative heart yearns for something more…and there’s that part of me, too.  These two selves war within me and I am trapped.

I thought about my mom, who is hooked up to a dialysis machine every night because her kidneys don’t work anymore.  She will spend the rest of her life on dialysis.  I see her life fading because she can’t walk very well.  When she falls, she needs someone to help her up.

When I fell, she was the one who used to help me up.

When she says “I can’t walk up a flight of stairs,” it’s true.  But the thing about my mom is, that she’ll try to walk up those stairs anyway.

So I’m starting with my “I can’t” statements.  There are some things I truly cannot do, but there are others I’m just hiding behind because I’m afraid.  What if…I can?

I can write.  I’m doing it right now.  No one said it has to be good, right?

I can get healthier.  I lost 80 pounds in 2015 and I intend to lose at least 80 more.

I can do this because I don’t have to do it alone.  I have a God who never, ever, ever, ever leaves me and who covers me with His extraordinary love.

Circumstances require us to change and change to push us to transform into someone we never knew we could become—the kind of person that God wants us (wants me) to be.