The last two weeks have been a real kick in the balls.
It’s why I haven’t written.
It’s why I haven’t podcasted.
It makes me sad.
Honestly, the next two weeks are already forecasting the same way. If I don’t write this tonight, it will never be.
There is a narrative in this space that preaches consistency. To “be relevant” or “grow your audience,” or you name the shoulder-patting optic, you need to post, at the very minimum, once a week.
I have thrown those goals straight into the fire. Mostly because I write with the goal of authenticity and the purpose of opposing the exact social norms that are telling me to prioritize growing my influence over tending to my home. So unapologetically, I have focused solely on my wife, daughter, and myself.
Last week, Jes got the flu and was out for 4-5 days. She was supposed to leave for a leg of travel with her team on Tuesday but had to push her flight to Wednesday. Partially because she still had ick remnants but mainly because all of Monday and Tuesday a bout of food poisoning was brutalizing me. I am talking about bathroom trips every 5 minutes—no fluids in for the first 10 hours and lots of fluids out. I stopped counting after 50 trips and 3 rolls of TP. I had to visit urgent care because my legs cramped running to the bathroom, and my chest and arms cramped trying to wipe… It’s comical. You have to laugh about it. Laugh through the tears. I threw up for the first time in 10 years. Legitimately.
I cleared the eye of that storm by Wednesday morning. My wife got on a 6 AM flight. Beni and I woke up with a cough, sore throat, and runny nose. I have been single dad-ing it up sick with a sick baby since Wed. Praise God, we are on the other end of it.
Jes gets back Tuesday night at 7 p.m. I leave the following day at 7 AM 🥲 for Chicago. Jes leaves Thursday afternoon to go up the mountain for the Young Adults retreat. I land at 7 on Thursday evening and drive straight up the mountain to meet them.
We will be there until Sunday. I leave for Chicago again on Tuesday until Friday.🙃
Here is why I share all of that. I think the enemy often uses expectations as a weapon. There are numerous ways he does this, but in the last two weeks, he utilized two parts blatantly.
One is to levy shame for failing to meet the line of expectations created in good faith.
In my example, I have expectations of myself to write weekly. I love to write. It is good practice to set aside intentional time in my psychotic schedule to do something that is for me. But life has a funny way of being hard sometimes. Shocker. For someone with a brain wired like mine, that is no excuse, and because of that, there is a large window for shame to crawl through.
The second is an attempt to reorder the things that take priority in my life.
My family will always be first. Over all things but especially a blog post that, I have aspirations of creating on a weekly cadence. The achiever-enneagram 3-finds my value in what I do for you-personality type struggles hard with not having a physical representation of value to present to form my worth. Sick wives and daughters, more often than not, require the “be-er” dad and not the “doer” dad.
Im not a good “be-er”. I am working on it.
Are there expectations that you feel in your life that are causing you to miss the “be-er” opportunities for the sake of pridefully being a “doer”?
Are the expectations that you feel even real? Does the person that you feel them from actually hold them? Or are you creating expecations that do not exist and projecting them on yourself for them?
I do that a lot ^^
Do you feel shame for failing to meet a line of perceived expectations? A line that seems to move just out of reach perpetually.
I don’t have answers. I just pose thoughts to stir up some introspection.
Think about it. Better yet, pray about it.
The enemy uses the same tricks.
He does the same thing over and over because he often gets the same results. So why change something that is working?
Until we identify the tricks and counter, he will throw you the same thing repeatedly until you prove you have an answer for it.
I normally don’t write two thoughts. But I mentioned above, it’s been a while since I have written and a lot of 💩 has happened and the Lord has shown me a couple of things I think are worth making note of.
This is also a testimony and celebration of a win in progress.
To super spark notes an almost faith-crushing experience; 8 months back, I heard the Lord tell me I was healed. I assumed that He was referring to my physical body. I stopped taking my medicine. I started telling everyone. Well, 6 weeks later once my body had metabolized fully the synthetic testosterone, I inject in my leg twice weekly 🙃; I had a catastrophic fall-off. Straight off the cliff into the void of complete hormone imbalance.
The mental and physical repurcussions were crippling. I reached depths of depressive states I had never before wondered in to.
I was PISSED at God. I drew this picture.
The idea behind the illistration was essentially to visually represent that I would show up for my quiet time but I did not want to hear what He had to say. Because I heard what He said last time and I listened and look where it took me.
My mindset was this..
I know your voice, I heard You clearly and You lied.
Or
The voice that I have assigned to you is not actually You and I don’t know Your voice at all.
I was questioning His character, or my ability to discern His voice.
Both are terrifying and the timing was impeccable and not coincedence because Jes and I were right in the thick of a season marked by intamacy with the Holy Spirit.
The almost humerous part of this story was that I didn’t take the time to ask the Lord what I was healed of. I just ran with what I in my humanity assumed was the most pressing and realistic to heal in my current circumstance.
I kept the Lord at arms length for months. So much so that I could not hear what He was trying to share with me. He had to share it with my wife.
In all of my bitterness I had failed to see my healing. I had not had a thought around food negatively in months. I hadn’t changed clothes for the sake of feeling gross in them since I could remember. It was so blatent that I had even gone to the point of calling Jes weeping because I had just had a moment of looking the mirror where my first thought was not disgust but of love and appreciation.
The Lord had healed me. He had just healed me of something I had chalked up as forgotten, a part of me, written into my mental framework. He had healed a wound that had been festering for 10 years. And to this day that claim stands.
I did know His voice. His character is true but so is my humanity.
I said that was going to be spark notes. lol. But really are you surprised??
I say that all.
Last week I had a really shitty doctor appointment centered around my hormones. Like Portopotty at a week long country musical festival in July type crap.
Coicendientally I am once again in a season where it feels like the Holy Spirit is speaking directly into my ear.
But here is the testimony and the victory in progress. I recognized the tactic of the enemy from last time. He expects me to run. And I am; only this time I am running right into the arms of the Lord. It doesn’t make my circustance any less stinky. It has not taken me out of the circumstance. But it has changed my percpective on the circumstance. It is different when you are sitting in hurt with the Comforter.
Looking at times when the character of the Lord has been called into question by whispers of the enemy, can you find a common thread or denomantor that can be isolated and identified as a repeated tactic of the enemy?
🙌🏼 Weekly Worship
Fun Fact. This church started as a house church walking distance from the Vanderbilt campus and I would go with friends sometimes to it.
They released a new album last week. I like it a lot.
Go listen to the whole thing. They write a lot about the Holy Spirit. I like that.
💪🏼 Weekly Challenge
This week my challenge is broad. Don’t shy away from introspection. Don’t be afraid to ask the Lord question that involve the way that you think and feel. Looking at yourself is comfortable, scary and daunting because it makes you look at things that you may not particulary want to.
I challenge you to shine a line inward and see if you can seek to understand youself a little more.
🙏🏻Weekly Prayer
My prayer this week is that you would encounter the Holy Spirit in a new way.
For a lot of people the Holy Spirit is a weird thing. He is scary maybe? Or You were raised in a church where He was completely ignored. Or maybe the opposite maybe he was weaponized.
My prayer is that you would allow Him to introduce Himself. There is no one better to teach you about the Holy Spirit than the Holy Spirit.
I pray that you have an ecounter that leaves you needing more. An encounter that makes the term “ fear of the Lord make sense”.
The Fear of the Lord is not shaking and trembling for fear of being smited. It is the fear of doing anything that might cause you to leave the presence of the Lord.
I pray that you would encounter the Spirit in a way that makes you never want to leave.
I hope this week’s edition of the Weekly Weapons Newsletter was beneficial to you in one way or another.
As this thing evolves, I would LOVE feedback or just responses.
You can email me at mitchparsonscreative@gmail.com
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Until next time.
PEACE✌🏻