Breaking Free

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

Our annual Women's Conference starts next week and we have been having weekly prayer meetings leading up to it.

I missed the first few...transportation issues and then we were out of town...but I was able to go to last night's meeting and was sorry I'd missed the earlier ones.

The conference this year is titled 'She is Brave' and is really about identity.

One lady related a illustration she'd envisioned the week before...of women coming in and old, ragged, disguising clothing falling off into a pile around their feet.

I was reminded of another kind of transformation...the cicada coming out of its shell.


I journaled about it last year as it was the picture I had in my head of what I had to do. That there was another plane for me to move to, but I couldn't get there in the form I was in.. I felt I had to clamber out of the old shell and emerge as something different, something I couldn't even imagine.  It was a challenge I didn't know I could face.

And I'd kinda forgotten that, until last night.

And then I was just a little amazed, because My Sweet Baboo and I had come across a molting cicada on a walk just a few weeks ago.  I happened to have my camera with  me; I posted the photo on Facebook.

Molting takes a lot of energy.  And...here's the deal...those insects can't eat at all during the process.  I remember seeing a nature show dealing with spiders that discussed how much energy it took to molt.    They had a camera on a tarantula as she began the molting process but...she didn't have enough calories in her body and she literally starved to death before she completed it.  She died trapped in the husk of her own body.

It gave me the creeps all around...firstly, spiders just weird me out by themselves, and then the idea of being caught like that made me claustrophobic.

But...there comes a time when the constriction of self...what about me?  what will they think of me? what if they think I'm like THAT?  How do I keep their good opinion?...literally begins to choke, strangle and oppress.

When it's time to shed that skin, it is TIME.  It inhibits growth,  and it's gotta go.  There's no movin' on until it's left behind.

Sure, it's risky.  It's hard.  It takes all available focus and energy.  But if it's delayed too long, it's even harder and more draining.  

It's time to break free and be who God created us to be.

...where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.  And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another...  2 Cor. 3:17b - 18a, ESV