Last month I asked God to give me a new heart and, as I have frequently admonished, be careful what you pray for.

As I sat in church yesterday, I wrote in my journal (as I so often do) and shared my thoughts and prayers with the Lord. For me, my “journal” is actually a log of letters to God. Each month I have a new theme, and each day I have a new conversation with Him. For August, my theme is the title of a recent post, a true desire of mine so that I can not only see God’s hand working within my life, but so that as I go forward in this journey, I align more with His will. Simply put, I do not want to step into this new season of my life with the pain, distractions, and disappointments of the past. The tears and tears of yesteryears are no longer allowed to accompany me into this next phase. I need to release them… so I asked God for a new heart.

One of the lessons I walked out of July with was that I can no longer bury issues under the rug, praying that by placing them there I would never have to address them (or that I could address them later). I had spent my life delaying pain and disappointment, erroneously thinking that I was avoiding them altogether. No, no. In reality, I was simply putting today’s problems in the hands of tomorrow and expecting a healing to come. Unfortunately, that is not how life works. I was actually stockpiling pain and emotional bills that would eventually need to be paid with the same financial currency that I had when the incident had occurred. (Now, for all of my economists out there, you know that inflation is real and that money loses value over time. You know that if a bill is accruing interest, the bill will be higher tomorrow than it is today, but the money of today is not the same as the money of tomorrow.) With a logic like that, I operated each day from a place of an emotional deficit, continuously going deeper and deeper into a debt that I had not established a plausible way to pay back. The debt was consuming me, and I needed to file for emotional bankruptcy. I needed to be able to start over from a fresh and clean page, but I knew that I could not do that on my own.

Hence, me asking God for a new heart.

Here’s what I know. Over the past year, God has been healing the parts of me that I thought were irreparable. With the start of the ADHD medication almost one year ago, weekly therapy sessions (between my regular therapist, my EMDR therapist, my psychiatrist, and our couple’s counselor), prayer, and intentional self-love activities have started the arduous task of paying off my emotional debts. One day at a time. One session at a time. One task at a time. I have been diligently working to heal the debts that left me unable to move and progress in life. And to be honest, it has not been easy. Like most journeys, it is rewarding, but let me be honest, it is requiring more of me than I ever thought I had to give. At this point, it seems like it would have been easier to deal with the emotions and the issues when they initially arose. And that is what God and my therapists are saying. Nevertheless, having a new heart means letting go of the stress and trauma associated with my old heart, and embracing a new life with the new heart.

Beloved, did you know that eight is the Biblical number for new beginnings? In six days God created the earth; on the seventh He rested because He was finished; but on that eighth day, a new cycle began. Day eight becomes like Day One, and we are free to reset and begin again. We are now in the eighth month of this new year, and it is the perfect time to do just that- start over. My prayer for you today is that whatever emotional, mental, or financial debt that you have been carrying, you would surrender it over to God and ask Him to create in you something new. Allow this new month to be the exact reset that your life needs as you work towards the life that God has planned for you.

Be blessed.