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I am frustrated with the lack of HOPE/motivation that I observe in-- and hear from---many women.  I have taught and counseled Christian women for almost twenty years and I have never heard women more defeated and beaten down.  Why? has been my question for the past few years. 

Women have more ‘things’, time, fewer children, and more opportunities than in previous decades and yet "ashes" (which symbolize mourning/grief) are being worn on too many foreheads---and not as a fashion statement!

In life we can mourn for different reasons: Mordedcai mourned the plot to destroy the Jews.  Daniel mourned over the vision of Jerusalem’s 70 year desolation.  Sometimes we mourn over our own sins... Sometimes over the death of  animals, sometimes over the deaths of people in  our own country and around the world.   Sometimes we mourn over the future.  Sometimes over the death of a loved one. 

In the Bible and in many parts of the Hebrew world today the wearing of sackcloth and ashes is a symbol of grief.  Sackcloth is very irritating to the skin and uncomfortable to wear.  It reminds the person wearing it to grieve.  (I have a linen outfit that I call sackcloth---and it makes me grieve wearing it...so I don’t.)

Ashes were --and are --a reminder that man will die one day and return to the dust of the earth.  To put ashes on the head was, and in many parts of the world still is, a humble symbol of man’s need for God’s mercy.  Those who covered their whole bodies in ashes were saying --without God they would be nothing.

As I was putting material together to teach at a conference the Bible account of Tamar seemed stuck in my heart.  Tamar had a profound part in my choice to STOP---and  CHOOSE-- to be healed from the scars of my childhood of abuse. When my pastor announced before Sunday School that God had woke him up in the middle of the night to change his Sunday School lesson I knew in my heart it was for me.  As I intently listened I found myself in Tamar’s desolation.

I spent 14 years running from God --- keeping so busy FOR GOD I didn’t have time to face myself in a quiet moment.  And I made very sure I had no quiet moments---times in my home without the sounds of music or teaching/preaching tapes, television or radio. I CHOSE to REFUSE to face myself long enough to question the unrest that was just below the surface of my life.  I spent the last four of those years desiring to be used of God, desiring to submit my life to God’s perfect will, desiring to be able to trust Him with Sharon. 

I did not understand the explosive situation that I lived in. It is true:  Regardless of the cause of our problems we will either explode or implode if we do not download ourselves to God. Our downloading/confessing/opening all of our hearts to God enables us to deal with our pent up and often hidden issues of sin and pain. In doing so we can face ourselves in light of the Bible, and let the Word of God---the Balm of Gilead---heal us-- and the Holy Spirit change then change the way that we think, act, and react so that all God teaches us can be understood and used for His glory.

People deal with anger in two ways? 

1. Explode: blowing up (ventilation) Energies released toward others, or towards things.
2. Implode: clamming up (Internalization). Energies released toward self.
3. Download:  Where we can take our hurts and sins to God, ask Him to forgive us, shed the light of His Word on them and heal us from them.

Anger can easily turn to bitterness (which is an acid that eats us from the inside out).  And anger can come from many circumstances: abuse, disappointment, divorce, illness, separation, a wayward child, loss of health, a move---change of environment, grief.....any reason. People must deal with it in one of these three way and two---exploding and imploding-- are sinful.

Like I once did, I see Christians---both men and women wearing sackcloth and ashes---in mourning over what they just KNOW they will
--never be
--never have,
--never experience
--never be able to change 

And their ‘cries’---the tone of their words, their scornful spirits-- are truly haunting.  It is sad to hear because our state of being is our choice. It is just a choice to surrender ourselves to God and repent of our sinful ways---our doubt, fears, hopelessness, anxiety, anger, bitterness --and decide to CHOOSE to believe God and His blessed Word so we can:

walk in the truth....
talk in the truth,
act in the truth of God.

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