Is Your Light Dim?

Everyone is telling you nowadays that you have to learn how to shine bright. “Don’t lose your shine baby!” “Don’t let them take away your shine, girl! I think the message is that we are supposed to shine. But, sometimes we don’t shine. Sometimes we haven’t shined in so long that we forgot what shining felt like. You know what I’m talking about. Those times when you felt like you didn’t have a care in the world and you still cared deeply about stuff. That enthusiasm for life that greeted you in the morning, excited and ready to start the adventure. All of those fun things you used to think about, that you could not wait to try out. Then things began to change. Was it the increased responsibility? Was it just the chore of living at times? Was it that you got older and a little more cynical, a little more above questioning, a little more stuck in your own perception of what is versus what could be? Maybe it’s not so much how did you get there, but did you get there. Are you there now? Did any of the former sound a chord in your heart? Well, you are in the right place. Is your light dim?

All of the above is going to happen to all of us at some point in our lives. All of us. There’s no condemnation in arriving there. You just weren’t aware of what was happening to you day by day. The fight was going on, but you weren’t in it for one reason or another. But now you are feeling the wounds of the fight and the lack of energy that accompanies it. You aren’t going to figure this thing out overnight. But, you can take some solace in the fact that you have become aware of your own dulled shine. You may as well own it because feelings don’t lie, well not for very long anyway. In owning it, not blaming other people or circumstances, you have an opportunity to do something about it. The best place to start is in the moment called now. This may surprise you to hear, but one place we humans tend to go awry is in trying to live in future moments or languish in past moments. We leave the time zone and in doing so, we heap pressures and cares on our shoulders we were never meant to carry. You were carefully designed to do a day at a time. (Matthew 6:34) Your shoulders were designed to manage the day. Win the day! Overcome the day! But, if you rashly fill your mind today with the cares of tomorrow, you will get overloaded. You will start to buckle under the weight. It will all sort of pile on together until you find yourself a shell of your former self. The shine you are seeking is still there. You began life with it. Your light is dim because it got crowded out by the multitude of cares and fears that assaulted your mind. You thought you were being responsible in considering them, but the fears took root. But, the good news is you only have to live one day at a time. Stop trying to live tomorrow or next Friday or Christmas. Live the day you are in and make it your best day. Don’t waste it wishing it was Saturday. Plan for Saturday, live today. The other stuff, give it to God. You can’t do anything about it anyway, can you? Try that for a few days and notice your increase in luminance. Get your light out of the shadows.

It’s not that you aren’t shining anymore as much as it’s something is dimming your shine. Somebody or something has got you living in the shadows. There’s some darkness you are dragging around with you like your favorite sweater. It just feels normal. But, it’s far from normal. It’s your new normal lowered to a dim 25 watts. I mean you can’t let yourself feel happy because if you do something is going to get you. I can assure you the evil behind what happened to you has already done all it can to screw you up and can only go as far as you permit. It requires your cooperation. It needs you to persist in bad habits of thought until they become your default thinking. Somebody turned back your power level. You have to get more clear about what is light and what is darkness. Fear thoughts, worry thoughts, entertaining doubts, expecting negative outcomes are all darkness… They. Are. Darkness. You can’t spend all day hiding out in the dark and expect the light to suddenly shine. The light shines when you get that stuff out of your mind. You have to refuse it. Do you really think that by not thinking about your fears it will encourage them to come to pass? Does all of that anxious concern and anxiety ever take you to the solution? You know better. Where it takes you is to the hamster wheel where you can go and get a mental workout and never actually go anywhere. And worse, you not only don’t arrive at any solutions, you end up the worse for it. Energy depleted. Enthusiasm gone. Light dimmed. It is not how life is. It is not the result of being an adult. And, it is not just being realistic. It is negative energy, called evil, darkness, misery holding sway in your head. Your light stopped shining or I should say got dimmer because of what you have been feeding your mind. Because of what YOU have been feeding YOUR mind! That’s not life. It is distorted life. It is negative life ruled by those forces that ever exist only to oppose God. You want your shine back? Stop allowing access to the darkness.

Don’t spend another day in the shadows. Let your light shine like it is supposed to do. Quit hiding it under a bushel. No! You have one life to figure out and you are not getting any younger. You can’t live future days, only today. Invest in the day. Live the day. Enjoy the day! The things you have to solve today, solve (with God’s help) and be satisfied in the day. Maybe your only victory is to live the day not thinking about what might get you. Take the W. Tomorrow, get another one. Banish all fear whenever and however it appears. Ban it from your mental field of view. Stop trying to figure it out. You can’t figure it out because it was never real to begin with. It’s False Evidence Appearing Real and it will suck your life from you. Find the light. Walk in the light. Stay there. When it gets dark, as it necessarily must, find the light again. You can win the day man! You can overcome in the day woman. You owe it to yourself and the rest of us to get back to shining. We need your light. Is your light dim? Maybe, but it is not a permanent condition. Shine baby, shine!

Just some good thoughts…