Consider - when you stop crying for yourself and the pain of yesterday, what will you do with that energy? Who will you be after you take back your yesterdays?
-- Dr. Linda H. Hollies, “Taking Back My Yesterdays”

Yesterday’s stuff hurt.

Yesterday’s stuff caused deep gashes, raw blisters, and left terrible scars. It planted deep and firm roots of doubt, confusion, mistrust, loss, emptiness, and fear, and made you choose a lot differently than you believe you would have otherwise chosen under different circumstances. Most days, you can’t maneuver past the stuff or what’s become ingrained as a result of the stuff; some days, it’s just as fresh as the first blow. Today, yesterday’s stuff still hurts.

But, by the grace of God, the angels, and the ancestors, you’ve committed to the faithful examination and study of your stuff. You’ve agreed with your Self to unearth and release the stronghold upholding all the stuff. You’ve even sought qualified, professional assistance to talk you through it and possibly medicate the symptoms so you could feel your way through it. Though the stuff is excruciatingly painful to look at and think about, you do it and dig in because you want deliverance.

So, then, what will deliverance look like for you? After you’ve rummaged around and scoured through your stuff then come out on the other side, how will you look? How will you feel? What will you do?

Will you rejoice and start a new life? Will you be like the Israelites, who, free from the control and cruelty of the Egyptians, sang praises to God for His delivery of relief and mercy upon them? Will you be like the enslaved in 1885 Galveston, Texas who, when they finally received the word of their freedom, filled with emotion and danced in unreserved jubilation? Will you be like the Civil Rights leaders, who, upon hearing about equal rights and voting rights legislation, took to the streets to shout and demand acknowledgement of those changes then fought to the death to keep them?

Or, will you receive your deliverance from your stuff, then, shortly thereafter, replace it with new stuff – like paying off your debts then getting new credit cards and ending up back in the same sorry situation again? Is that what you’ll do?

Or, have you known and lived with your stuff so long that to act and think differently is alien, even blasphemous to your weary spirit so you cling to the very things that got you and kept you in yesterday’s stuff – like one fresh from years of prison feeling so overwhelmed by life on the outside, he/she commits a crime to go back to what’s familiar and comfortable? Are you going back to jail?

Consider what life will be once you’ve been delivered. Consider who you will be. Consider whether you can you handle that and consider whether you’re really ready. What will you do? Who will you be?

Sadiqqa © 2007