Our Family Dog’s Equilibrium Was Thrown Off Balance
Bringing Our Spiritual Identity Into Balance
My eight-year-old daughter had been told time and time again, “When you are standing up, do not hold Fala in your arms as if he were a baby. He will flip out of your arms.”
Fala was our family’s three lb. Yorkie. Hyper, hyper, and more hyper can best describe him. He and my little girl were best buds, and she just couldn’t resist cuddling him and walking around the house with him tucked in her arms. Sure enough, one night on one of their little strolls through the house, he did his hyper flip and on the floor he went – head first. He lay there very still, with his eyes barely open.
As you might expect when things like this happen, the vet’s office had closed for the day, Dad is out of town, and Mom is left to deal with a screaming eight-year-old, and what I thought was a dying dog.
When morning came, off to the vet we went. Once on the vet’s exam table, he established that Fala had a concussion, and it had knocked his equilibrium off balance. For the next three days, this little three lb. Yorkie walked sideways, with his head hung low and, as the saying goes, “dragging his tail behind him.”
As the years passed from this night of trauma, I often thought of it as the state-of-mind I was in for years – head bowed low, staggering from side-to-side down life’s highway. I had no idea who I was or whose I was.
I resembled the story of the woman in the Bible who was bent over for 18 years who came to Jesus for healing. “On a Sabbath Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues, and a woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not straighten up at all. When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, ‘Woman, you are set from your infirmity.’ Then he put his hands on her and immediately she straightened up and praised God” Luke 13:10-13 NIV.
Yes, I was bent low with a poor self-image, and my spiritual identity equilibrium was way out of balance. Obviously, I didn’t flip out of someone’s arms and land on my head to bring on this condition, but I discovered that there was a clear path that had brought me to this point.
· It all started with me being a people pleaser, wanting to keep harmony at all extremes.
· My laid-back temperament added another “bump” on the head.
· I was sick all over with unresolved hurts in my life.
· I was trying to be superwoman: wife, mother, teacher, everything to everyone, yet moving mechanically through those roles.
· And the list goes on.
I came to realize that the enemy’s primary area of attack is our self-image. He does not want us to discover who we are, and his lies hold us in limbo in using the gifts God has placed within us.
One day I called Dr. Jesus who never closes His office to heal my bent over crippled state-of-mind and set me free from the sickness I had carried around for years.
It didn’t happen overnight, because emotional and spiritual healing is a process. Why is it a process and not instantaneous?
My personal belief is that during the process is when we fall into an intimate relationship with Jesus and then our identity of who we are in Him cannot be shaken.
Reflection
Do you sometimes feel as though you are bent low from a poor self-image? The first step toward healing is confessing.
If you answered “yes” to the above question, how did you arrive at this point?
Tell how the woman crippled by a spirit of infirmity in Luke 13 for eighteen years gives you hope.
Goals
Write one goal you can accomplish today (at home, at work, with family, etc.) that will allow you to live out your identity in Christ.
On a Sabbath Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues, and a woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not straighten up at all. When Jesus saw her, He called her forward and said to her, “Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.” Then He put his hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and praised God. (Luke 13:10-113 NIV)