Who Am I??

Daughter, grand-daughter, great-grand-daughter, niece, cousin, sister, friend, blond haired, blue-eyed, Caucasian, disciple of Jesus Christ, artist, creative, baby-sitter, the one who used to have a trach, nanny, wife, aunt, mother, the one who loves babies, the one who ran a daycare in her home, the one who others prayed for, the one who was a La Leche League leader for 6 years, the one who is a doula, the one who home-schools her children, scrapbooker, the one who owned The Crop n' Craft Room, the one who worked at Kings, the one who co-ordinates the Good Food Box group for Rosthern, the one who attended MPCC, LHAC, Calvary Church, and RAC, youth leader, the one who eats slow, the one who speaks with a strong whisper, the one with no epiglottis muscle or vocal cords, woman of faith!

Over the past 10 years or so it has been impressed on my spirit, this thing of identity. Asking for healing one moment and identifying with the symptoms as a part of who I am in the next. How easy is it to separate myself from something, a trait, a symptom, that others identify me by daily for as long as I can remember. How hard is it to just let go of the things that so easily roll off my lips...

"I speak with a strong whisper, it's not usually a problem"

"It's not laryngitis, it's been like this since I was one, it's permanent"

"My vocal cords are paralysed"

"I don't have an epiglottis muscle"

"I eat slow or I choke"

"I have to chew my food till basically mush or I can't swallow it"

"I have to watch that I don't over do it or I can get sick easily"

"I can't handle more than a coffee or two per week or my body feels it"

"I'm good at listening to my body and what it needs"

"I can get bacterial infections easily due to damaged lungs"

"I have a compromised immune system"
"my immune system is always weaker this time of the month"

....and the list goes on and on (fortunately it is getting shorter :-)

So the question is, how does God see me?  Who has He created me to be?  How do I change what I believe, what I think, what I say and how I feel, about who I am?  How do I "un-wravel" the lies and stop identifying myself by the very things that I want God to change?  How did the disabilities and limitations become woven into who I am in the first place?  How do I get to the place where I only identify myself through the filter of the truth found in God's love letter to me?

I guess if it was easy to release the part of me that identifies with the disabilities, I would have done so years ago and would've been fully healed. 

It would be so easy if the symptoms were cold or flu like, or like a bladder infection, or minor injury....I have gotten better at not taking ownership of any of that stuff (sometimes with the help of a friendly reminder from a friend). Rebuking it right away in the name of Jesus and the symptoms almost always leave the first time. It's funny how faith rises up so easily to claim the healing, that Jesus took stripes to give me, on some things. But then others the war still rages on to keep me captive to those symptoms. 

I have made progress however, I used to fear having a voice and now I long to be able to use it. 

Healing is not something I have to work to earn since it is already provided...I was reading in a devotional book this week and it really summed it up well...

"Romans 10:17 says, "so then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God."  Hearing God's word causes faith to rise up on the inside.  When you release that faith, you get results.  That's why Mark 9:23 says, "All things are possible to him that believe."

God made it easy for you.  He said simply to hear and be healed.  So if you're having trouble believing God for your healing, don't try to work it up.  Go back to the Word and "hear" what He said.  Then just keep on hearing until faith rises up on the inside.  Healing will be  the result!"
~31 Days of Healing by Mark Brazee

I know that God has impressed upon me to spend much time soaking in His word.  I need to make it a priority so God can do what He wants to do through my life.  I know that reading God's word and deciding ahead of time that I will not lower my theology to my level of experience but rather raise my level of experience to the level of God's truth and His promises alone...will produce results, no but's about it!