Daring To Believe
by Christina Duncan

I’m now living in my own flat and God is "growing me up" as you would say. I feel very grateful and privileged to be given this chance to live straight and get healthy but I have found it very hard on a feeling level. I’ve also fouled up a number of times, making wrong choices and I’ve had to take the consequences of that which was painful and scary, but it’s a sure way of making sure I don’t want to make those same mistakes again!! I’m living in a way I’d never thought possible. Christ lives life as me quite differently than "I" would have dared and I love it-on the whole, feelings aside, I really enjoy the freedom and the security that God’s always there, never changes, and will never let me down. I don’t always feel secure, but bottom line I know I am secure.

A lot of old fears have simply left me. I would never have considered living alone in a ground flat as I had always been frightened of burglars etc. but here I am, doing it and I haven’t missed a moment’s sleep over my old view. It’s wonderful. Having said that, fear is the main emotion I deal with on a daily basis along with feeling that I’m a wrong kind of person, which gets quite strong if it looks on the outside that "I’ve" screwed up. I’m learning to "dare to believe" that Christ lives life as me-all situations. I’m learning to live on the green light. In the past I wanted to make sure "I" was doing it right before "I" went on the green light. I was living from my fear of screwing up, and eventually "I" did screw up. I’m going ahead and trusting God to stop me and show me when I’ve gone off track.

I hate the old Satan-C and who she is/was as a person. I know I did all I knew to do at the time, but now I know something else and thank God, a day at a time, God is revealing these defects to me and I am able to admit to them, as I now know I am Christ-C and I really want to live from that. I do not always feel that I want to do what is necessary to live from Christ-C believing, as it means giving up a lot, if not all, of my old ideas about myself, and that leaves "me" no excuses for "my" behavior, but bottom line I’m glad to lose them.

So life is good. I know I’ve a long way to go in the "renewing of my mind" and I probably won’t like a lot of it, but at last I’m growing up.
C. D.
Scotland