Qualities of a Spirit filled life

[Elder-Shawn Denise Briscoe]

Galatians 5:22-23

There was a time period of my life that I had a spirit of anger. The thing is I did not know this; all my life I had been excellent at keeping my feelings to myself. Because of this without realizing it because I never lashed out at people; I was not rude; I did not speak harm to other; I developed an internal cooking pot. I had a knack at sarcasm; I'm told that my sense of humor is dry so for the most part the only people who got what I was saying were those who thought they knew me well or those who also have a dry sense of humor. I never took up drinking and drugging to make me forget about the pain and the irritability others caused me. I just kept it all locked up inside. As I continued to grow older and after years of doing this; my body began to turn on me; I began to black out and caused harm first to a person who I was closest to. Then I began to fight back when anyone would put their hands on me for harm; it did not matter if there were times when I looked the worse for it. Then I began to lash out at my kids for stupid things. After awhile I began to succumb to a couple of nervous breakdowns. Then I found out that I was my body’s worse enemy because holding all that hurt and pain inside which created an atmosphere for anger had begun to destroy me internally.

I made up my mind while in the hospital that my husband was no longer my husband and began to divorce him in my heart. Once that was complete; when I was strong enough to file for the divorce, I did and never looked back.

I moved over 50 miles away from my native home to get away from everything and everyone thinking that this will heal me and help me get away from the stress of life. It did not; I had another stroke after I had to send my daughter back to my native home to live with her dad. After several months I grew stronger in health. A new emotion that I had not felt since I was a wee lass crept in and I could not shake it. Its ugly name is loneliness and it drowned me; I became desperate for life. So as I was bobbing beneath my pain, I felt a hand which pulled me up. I married this individual and in less than a year; I found myself in jail. Yes, you read it right in jail, during this marriage I had another stroke, lost my sight and discovered that this person was being unfaithful to his vows to me and to me. The anger inside of me took its toll; I beat up the mistress and my husband. The anger within me was so unmerciful that each blow landed and placed the women in the hospital. The police and attorneys were baffled at how could someone who is mending from a stroke and blind could do the damage to a man and woman in the manner in which I had. While in jail; GOD said to me finally I have you were you can’t be distracted. It’s just you and me; you now know that you’ve got anger issues and you made a bad choice. Read about the fruit of the Spirit; I did, I took my weak, pain filled, blind self to my cell, locked the door, knelt down and asked GOD to forgive me. I also said that at that very moment I forgive each and every person who hurt me unmercifully; if I could remember their names, I said their names; if I could not remember their names, I remembered what was done to me and said the person or people who did this and that to me, I forgive them. The last person I forgave in that prayer was my husband and his mistress and it was then and there that literally I began to feel the pain in my back, shoulders, arms, neck go away. It was so noticeable that I was flexing looking for the pressure; I got up to my feet and noticed that it did not take me long to stand up. I felt like I weighed 120 lbs again (I was far from it) that’s just how light I felt. Then I began to see myself floating as a feather that is no longer attached to a bird. Once I got over the shock of how my natural body was; I began to notice that finally in all my years of salvation; I'm noticing that Love was present; real Love. What better place to try this out than in jail. Those inmates always knew there was something about me; because they kept saying to me, “you don’t belong in here, you need to get out”. They would always address me as Mrs., and my sir name. I read Galatians 5:22-23 again and when I did GOD said that the spirit of anger is gone and that HE had replaced it with HIS Spirit. HIS Spirit will bring forth Faithfulness, Gentleness, Goodness, Joy, Kindness, Love, Patience, Peace and Self-Control. It did; it has and it is still active to this day. It’s been nine years since GOD’s Fruit began to manifest in my life. I wake up with purpose to show my faithfulness to HIM by helping others and doing whatever HE desires of me. With purpose I show gentleness and goodness with others in how I speak with them verbally, by the written word or my body language. With purpose I am filled with HIS abundant joy that spills over into the lives of others. With purpose I look for ways that I can show kindness. I can’t help loving others even those who appear not to be very loving. I have found that in these nine years, I am more patient when standing in lines or when I drive. My life, when it begins to shake; I'm filled with the peace of GOD knowing that HE will not allow anything or anyone to overtake me; I may just have to stop; stand/sit and wait for HIM to let me know it’s okay. Though I know that I'm victorious in all; I must admit there are something's that I still do that I need to adhere to self-control in. Like eating late in the evening; past 6:00pm or not wanting to repeat myself once I’ve said something. However, there are so many other aspects of my life that others and my-self can see that self-control has taken control. This is not a race to where we see who finishes first. Besides, each day is a clean slate for me to try to do better than the day before.