When life is in a terrible rut, things lack color and everything has a hint of sorrow. When I have felt this way, I've had virtually zero motivation to do anything about it. I feel powerless, inept and downright worthless. I ask God to "change my stars" in certain aspects - acknowledging he no doubt has a plan and a purpose for which I must trust in him. I ask him to equip me with an ability to make things better and sincerely believe in that hope. But at some point, I even stop doing that - distancing myself from him and perhaps rejecting his love in the process.

Hope Requires you to let go of Your Past Baggage

...to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. ~ Ephesians :22-24

I have examined so many parts of my life, looking for sources of discontent. In one of my more recent darkened seasons, it wasn't isolated to my job, my home life or any one area - it was all of them. But of course, problems in those areas were amplified due to this feeling of no hope. I thought maybe I simply had an inability to focus. So I read books and articles about learning to refine personal focus. But that was still a bit off target. To cope, with the arrival of each New Year, I draft statements of affirmation and I read it daily throughout the year as a means to mentally arouse hope within myself. They included commands to be or do actions or steps where I felt my life was lacking, such as "Be Bold" or "Stand Tall." Each year is different depending upon my life at the point in time, but they all end with the phrase, "God is on your side, no matter what." After a couple of years of doing this, I submitted. I knew there was an inevitable conclusion I had known all along but avoided. God had placed the vision for 1Glories upon my heart. So, I finally started pursuing it with a more intentionality. Slowly, hope returned and the haze over my life began to lift. The sun finally started to shine and there was more color sprinkling into my personal world of blah. And that's why this Joyce Meyer post from 2011 struck me so intensely when I stumbled across it one morning. In it, she says,

God is always doing something new. We need to use our gift of spiritual discernment to follow His plan and stop following our own thoughts and feelings. Glance at your circumstance and stare at Jesus. He’s the Author and Finisher of our faith. (added emphasis is from yours truly)

As I was coming to this understanding, I took in an amazing read about procrastination. It helped me understand there were several events of my life where I had experienced unresolved shame. I had not dealt with them or even acknowledged them. But as events in my life later unfolded, certain happenings became triggers for firing painful bullets of shame from my past right to my head and heart. And with each shot, the color in my life was slowly withdrawn until I had reached a very sad and desperate point in my life. Just having acknowledged those shameful events and labeling them as shameful has granted me a renewed and more hopeful perspective with an ability to grow personally and spiritually. Have I completely put them behind me? Probably not, but I have a better grasp upon why I am so impacted by similar things that suddenly occur and have a better ability to deal with them as they happen rather than allow them to pierce or cripple my soul. Combine that with the fact that I am now working toward a God driven vision, I have no doubt the colors in my life will one day return to their full power. As Meyer states so well...

If you want to see change happen in your life, you’ve got to get a vision that goes beyond what you've already seen and experienced.

Note: This post originally appeared on July 17, 2012 and was edited on April 28, 2015.