The New Normal

The bright morning sun seeps through the blinds as I awake, and the first word I hear is “dysfunction”. So, I rise and begin to ponder on the word. Dys-function; “dys” means bad or difficult, and “function” means the purpose or reason.

As I began to define exactly what God was speaking to me on, I realized that dysfunction is when we are weakened or damaged in the purpose of our lives.

I realized that God wasn’t just telling me to rise up with my same schedule and same sight for life, but to look deeper and see the dysfunction all around me.

The damage of my perspective that at times would keep me from truly being free.

The dysfunction where every relationship had to have a form of control and/or abuse. The dysfunction where drinking alcohol was a normal thing and getting drunk on weekends with friends was the only way to have fun. The dysfunction that if a guy liked me and made me his girlfriend, then I had to have sex with him. The dysfunction that it’s the norm to live together before marriage or have kids and not be married.

This was a dysfunctional mindset that I once lived in, but the reality is we all live in a form of dysfunction but don’t realize it, because it’s our normal.

Is it normal for your parents to put their hands on you?

Is it normal for you to hear a man call a woman a bad name and it doesn’t phase you?

Is it normal for every relationship to lead to sex before marriage?

Is it normal for you to get drunk even when you plan not to?

I hope you see that God wants to take His daughters from an abnormal belief system to a normal belief system based off of Him. Have you ever had a bad toothache and, when sitting in the pain of a toothache, you remember how it was before you had it. How your mouth felt fine, and how you once felt normal. This abnormal pain is now taking over your day and thoughts. It begins to interfere with your work and makes a once joyous day filled with aches and pains.

When the pain subsides and the ache is gone, you feel normal again. You can go about your day, you can smile and function without the pain of it. Many of us are living with an inward ache of dysfunction and we just want to be normal again.

We want to love again, sing again, and be all that we are called to be. And the only way we can do that is by acknowledging the aches and pains that lay under the surface but show up in our daily lives.

Dysfunction must stop with you, when you decide that rape is no longer allowed in your bloodline, that alcohol abuse or physical abuse is no longer allowed in your bloodline. That depression, anxiety, or self-harming practices are no longer allowed in your bloodline. You must rise higher than the dysfunction you've been living under all these years.

God desires His Daughter's to be free. That morning when the word dysfunction was so boldly presented to me, I didn't understand at the time, but God needed me to look at the dysfunction, and instead of calling it normal, call it abnormal. Call it out for what it is. It's not of God, nor sent by God. The acts, views, and behaviors was dysfunctional and can no longer be my normal. I must experience a new normal.

That is how you make a change. Decide that dysfunction stops with you!