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Dear X, You don't own me

Who or what owns you that shouldn't?  You know what I'm talking about.  What shame from your past do you let own you?  What rage do you let control you?  What pain do you hold on to and allow to color your interactions with life? 

I heard a interesting fact the other day about our brains.  We have "old" brain and "new" brain.  The "old" brain is located in the back and it is where all of our emotions and feelings are stored.  Our "new" brain is in the middle and it is the processing center for events, situations, circumstances, etc that we have happen on a daily basis.  When something happens that triggers an emotion or memory from our past our "old" brain comes in to our "new" brain and takes over.  Here's the REALLY interesting thing about our "old" brain.  It has NO sense of time.  None.  Zilch.  Zip.  Nada.  Whatever the emotion or feeling is about an event in your past is as fresh as it was now as the day it happened then.  So when our "old" brain takes over it is doing so with an emotion or feeling that is fresh even if 20 years have passed!  Starting to make sense?  Bet you can think of something that happened 20 years ago that if certain people or situations occur NOW that are similar you respond to them as you would have or did 20 years ago.  Yeah, I bet I'm right aren't I?  I do it.  Once I heard that fact so many things about my responses to current events and people made SO much sense!! 

This song kind of describes the process I just did but in a much more pleasurable way to listen to!  Pain, anger, shame are all to eager to dictate our responses and we have to make a determined choice to not allow them to control us NOW.  We have to choose to keep them in the past and look at the present with truth rather than with feeling.  2 Corinthians 10:5 says that we should take every thought captive and submit it to Christ so we can get truth from him and sift out the feelings we are tempted to respond with.  Once I started really thinking about this I have been tested in some really interesting ways and it's good because I am learning and growing as I make choices to not let my "old" brain control me, own me any longer. 

So.  What's owning you?  Let it go.  Make the choice to respond according to the present and not with the past! 

Disciple's DL about Dear X
Dear X, You don't own me

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