These are the words that I am hearing ringing inside my head these past couple of weeks. It is the voice of my mother, hands on hips and eyes huge with anger and through clenched teeth “who do you think you are!” It is not a question, but a statement. I hear it now as I sit in my quiet time getting ready to write today’s blog. I was working on a piece I wrote last April, but these words keep getting in my way. I cannot get past them.

I can’t remember why she used that phrase, but she did often. I can see her and I can remember the emotions that I felt as she was telling me this. It is the emotion that I am feeling now. FEAR! I am not sure if she used it to put me back in my place after I was being disrespectful, or if it was because I was bold enough to do something new. I feel that both were true. My mother frowned upon doing anything that required risk, which was just about everything. Is that why that phrase is echoing in my head? Is it because I am presumptuous enough to think that I can sit here and write? That I would have anything important to say? Why am I putting on that label and why am I allowing it to cloud my creativity? I can hear her voice and it’s trying to put me in my place and I feel the shame. I feel it because I know people like that, people with egos so big there is little room for anyone else. Is that what this is, my ego wanting to be known? And now, all of this feels cheapened and I am ashamed. My words have gone into hiding and I can’t find anything to say and I have lost something very special.

Why at such a time as this, do I have the audacity to think I am this writer? To be known and to be heard when my whole life I tried to be invisible? That phrase kept me invisible. When I heard it, I knew that I was to go back in hiding and I did. I know fear has a way of robbing you of what you love to do most. Is that really fear talking? Has fear taken on the image of my mother?

I believe it has, and I need to be brave. I need to coax my words back to center stage. I have lost sight of why I write. I started writing to help release pent-up emotions in away that I can control them versus them controlling me. Right now I am telling fear that it is not in control. There is nothing wrong with boldness! There is a difference between sharing and self-aggrandizement. Am I trying to convince the world that I am special and need to be admired? Or to share a lesson learned in the quiet time of a Saturday morning?

The lesson is that I am trying to free myself from those labels that have been given to me (whether intentional or not) to keep me invisible. As I type these words I can feel the anger at those who labeled me. It rises like bile in my throat ready to fill this page with how I was wronged. The victim in me screams to be heard. But in the hush of an early Saturday morning sunrise, I can feel the Spirit take my chin and turn it slightly to look at things from a different angle. And here is the lesson that is being poured into me today. I drink it in and it quenches my thirst as well as drowns out that nagging voice I had all week. The lesson is simple – “everything can be turned to good”. And then I feel the words being set free from their hiding place, rushing to find their place on the page. It is because you were made to want to feel invisible that you now communicate this way – in the quiet alone time you allow yourself to feel and express your creativity – it is one of the things that brought you to “a time like this”. It is what made you who you are and when you see it from that angle, you can forgive and move from the path of victim to the one of victory.

Who am I? I am victorious!