Guest Post: Pandora’s Box

Please welcome my friend, Alli, today as she shares some reflections on  the good work God is actively accomplishing in her life.

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It took five years to get to this place. “This place” is where I can come to God, open, vulnerable, all of my prideful walls torn down, standing before Him and being able to implore Him through the only way I know how to reach Him. By calling out, by praying to my Heavenly, perfect Father.

My idols all let me down.The old habits have died, and are being replaced. A new “me” is being created. I’ve died, I am still dying, to my old self. I am putting on love, humility, tenderness, kindness, and growing into the woman God desires me to be.

I think I always knew I’d need to change. But I was afraid, who wouldn’t be? I created this identity, this world, this box. I entrapped myself in it. I’d become the monster living in Pandora’s box. What if it someone opened it? What if I exploded? What if someone drove me the wrong way? What if I got ticked off? I had made this illusion that I needed to be this unpredictable bomb. I thought it was mysterious, and in a savage way, somewhat attractive. It attracted the wrong people, friends that wouldn’t stick closer than a brother, traitors, men that’d trample over me, because hey, they were just as empty and unpredictable. We had a lot in common. I’d become the queen manipulator. Cutting myself gave me my escape. It released pressure, stress, hurt, pain, embarrassment, deep shame. The time I knew I could stop was when it clicked- I realized that when God put Christ on the cross, He too experienced the pressure, the hurt, the pain, physical and emotional, he was betrayed, he was stripped naked, NAKED on the cross, beaten, whipped, he was shamed, and rejected countless times.

My identity was never in the boys I chased. My identity was not in the drinks, or sex-related things, my mistakes, my sins, or my past. Anyone who says different is bs-ing you. That’s the identity I’d let myself have. But not anymore. The choice to have a new identity was all on me. I had the responsibility to change me, not those around me. My only identity, my security blanket, my comfort, my love, my peace, my hope all now are in God, because of His wonderfully perfect, selfless Son. His son gave Himself, and I deserve it not one bit, but by His grace, through His love, I can walk with Him.

Ephesians 3: 11-14 says, “This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him. So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory.”

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, I rejoice so much that I can come to God without paying for my sin. He has forgiven me. He has washed my scarlet sins as white as snow. He has removed my sins as far as the east is from the west. These promises destroyed my Pandora’s box.