When Dancing stops and prison walls go up

I had a vision of a little girl doing a graceful dance, she looks beautiful and graceful.  Then there was an adult woman chastising the little girl.  The little girl stopped dancing and looked at the woman in dismay.  I was reluctant to blog about this because it is very personal for me.  That adult woman is me and that little girl............................also is me.  Money is an area of life that I've struggled with for many years,  I developed a peculiar, even perverse, relationship with it over the years.  But it wasn't always like that.  When I was a teenager, I never stressed about money and work was never stressful for me.  I worked alot in high school.  Had 2 jobs most of the time and even 3 at times.  I always had money.  The most important thing is that none of this even stressed me out.  Work never bothered me.  In fact I was very happy with work and being able to earn income.  God showed me that I had a sort of dance in that area of my life, when I was young.  The mental picture I had was that of a graceful ballet dancer, she was smiling.  This describes my finances and work life when I was a young girl.  I'll admit that I was different than my peers in this area.  My high school classmates were not working and did not have a source of income.  They were totally reliant on their parents.  For some reason I started earning money very early in life and had alot of favor in this area.  I spent money freely, bought clothes that I wanted, saved, paid for my books for school.  I was at a private school.  God firmly established me, in this area, before I even knew Him.  But because I didn't know Him, a turn of events resulting from a bad decision sent me spiraling into debt, bankruptcy, and a host of other issues.

I've continued to experience problems in the area of money, not really understanding why until now.  Remember the picture of the adult woman chastising the little girl.  Well, I blamed that little girl for the money problems that I experienced.  I blamed how fancy free she was in that area.  I was angry at her because she made a mistake.  I scolded her for working so much and for buying the things she wanted.  I scolded her for being so free with money.  I even scolded her for wanting to give so much, to others, financially.  Well all that scolding created the walls of a prison, that housed me, as an adult woman.  There are certain areas of life where God establishes you so early in life that you are only going to live at extremes in that area.  There is really no middle ground for you, because of God's work in your life.  You either have to stand in reckless freedom or paralyzing caution.  This is not in every area.  We all have those special areas where God has done a special work.  Today I realized that I had been trying to find that middle ground.  I had been failing hopelessly.  It's because there is no middle ground for me in this area.  This is what I heard within me today.  There is no middle ground for me in the area of finances.  I have to choose who I want to be and I have 2 choices:

1.  I can be the person that is obsessive about money and how much is spent
                                                                OR
2.  I can be the person that spends with reckless freedom and works with reckless freedom

There are pros and cons to both of these choices.  I just have to decide which set of "pros & cons" I want to live with.  As I talked with God about my former "younger girl self" I talked about the not so good things about her choices. And God showed me a scripture verse Matthew 13

“The Kingdom of Heaven is like a farmer who planted good seed in his field. ²⁵ But that night as the workers slept, his enemy came and planted weeds among the wheat, then slipped away. ²⁶ When the crop began to grow and produce grain, the weeds also grew.
²⁷ “The farmer’s workers went to him and said, ‘Sir, the field where you planted that good seed is full of weeds! Where did they come from?’
²⁸ “‘An enemy has done this!’ the farmer exclaimed.
“‘Should we pull out the weeds?’ they asked.
²⁹ “‘No,’ he replied, ‘you’ll uproot the wheat if you do.

I was telling God that I wanted to be free like the younger girl I once was, but I didn't want certain bad parts of it.  He showed me that I have to accept the bad with the good.  That if I try to remove the bad, myself, I will end up removing the good as well.  For all these years, that's what I've been trying to do.  Remove the bad, while trying to lay hold of the good. I've done it without success.    


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