Speaking From Experience

Mistakes. Do you beat yourself up over each one? Does shame, doubt, and guilt assault you each time that mistake comes up again?

I used to be one of the worst (or is it best?) at beating myself up over mistakes. I'd befriend my pirate allowing it to attack me with guilt and shame. I'd doubt myself. Then I started helping other people who'd made a similar mistake learn how to get through the hardship. My past blunder became the brokenness God used to heal someone else.

Do we become friends with our pirates?

As I began to listen and open myself to helping others from my life lessons, even those difficult experiences caused by circumstance or another person's harmful choices became gifts. I could hold the hand of someone walking through the pain.

Soon the past became a reference file, then an amazing encyclopedia of ways to offer opportunity and choices. The grief I felt at wrong turns has become joy in being a guide through hard terrain. In embracing the lessons of my past, I've found purpose by sharing those lessons.

A few days ago Psalm 51:15 shouted out to me, "Help me to speak and I will praise Your name."

Such a simple, easily memorized verse. Building my speaking career is hard work. I loved that this verse reminds me to go to God for help to speak. Some of my topics can touch on old wounds and hot buttons. But with God's help, I will speak from experience. I hope to help others draw on their experience to soothe and smooth the way into their perfect purpose.

Gem of Wisdom: Opal~Empathy is the ability to understand another person's feelings or difficulty.
Read Proverbs 17:17 and see how it relates :-)

Are you friends with your pirate or is it time to defeat him for good?
Does someone need your past experience to make it through their current one?