lies Archives - Trisha Mugo

I wasn’t coincidence I booked the grungiest hotel room in North Dallas. I’m pretty sure the Sovereign God pre-planned the metaphor.

I entered a broken, near suicidal woman and penned the following in my journal.

My heart looks like this shabby hotel room.

Peeling wallpaper. Water-stained ceiling. Roach in the toilet. Curtains as old as me. Pictures one step up from clown art. Only the TV looks like it belongs in this decade. It’s in desperate need of a remodel—just like I am.

I pour my life out and ask God to remake it. Will His Spirit hover over my chaos and confusion, like He once hovered over the depths? With my last bit of faith, I ask Him to remake me and create in me something beautiful.

I ask God to part the sea of anxiety I have been swimming in for months. My mind longs for silence, and I hope for death if only to quiet my anxious thoughts.

I can see myself pull the trigger. I imagine blood soaking the pillows and sheets, flowing along the seams of the mattress. I will wrap my head in a trash bag to stem the mess of blood. Will the bag be much help against a bullet?

Where do I place the gun? At my temple or the roof of my mouth?

When I entered that hotel room, I had forgotten God’s goodness. Fear bullied me. Bitterness and self-pity kept me company day and night.

In the bedside table lay a Gideon Bible. I lifted it out of the drawer and turned toward Psalms. The Psalms of lament were the only Scripture I could stomach. The first passage I read sparked hope.

“The snares of death encompassed me; the pangs of Sheol laid hold of me; I suffered distress and anguish. Then I called on the name of the LORD: ‘O LORD, I pray, deliver my soul!’ Gracious is the LORD, and righteous; our God is merciful” (Psalm 116:3-5 ESV).

The verse hit me like a life preserver strikes a panicked, drowning woman, and I clung to the hope. I willed myself to believe in God’s grace and mercy.

I began to pray that God would remodel me. I didn’t want to live a bitter, angry life. I didn’t want to just plaster a smile on my face at church. I wanted to live from a wellspring of joy.

Right on top of the quilted bedspread, I repented and asked for God to remake me. But how does God remodel our lives?

He usually starts with truth from his Word. When I let that truth seep into my heart, the remodel process began. Like a sledgehammer, it knocked down a structure of lies I had let the enemy construct.

God had to do more demolition work in my heart, but the work He started in that shabby room, he would complete. Not only that, he would lead me to healing through meditating on his Word.

Like balm on cracked lips, his Word infuses healing into our lives. “He sent out his word and healed them, and delivered them from their destruction” (Psalm 107:20 ESV).

I didn’t see a way out and I couldn’t envision hope, but he came and whispered truth to me.

That’s why I can confidently tell you God can lift you out of your pit, whatever your situation. It doesn’t matter if you dug the pit yourself. God can and will rescue you if you’ll let him.

Whether you war against anxiety, depression or another form of lies, Jesus is the door to peace. He is Hope itself.

The reason the Son of God put on flesh and stepped into time, happens to be you and me. The Doctor came to relieve the sick.

If your life is in need of a remodel, don’t settle for anything less than the remaking love of God.

As I awake a tidal wave of anxiety rolls in and pins me to my bed.

I hear the kids downstairs, and that tone of voice means one thing—a fight will ensue. I pull the covers over my head and let the undertow of dread pull me under.

The kitchen needs cleaned. The laundry beast needs tamed. Church responsibilities loom. Is this my life?

I hear my husband break up the fight. The house quiets, but an unseen hand turns up the volume of negativity in my mind, lies amplified.

You’re a failure, the worst mom ever. Loser. Fat. Idiot. Hack. Poser. Socially Inept.

If “hope is a thing with feathers that perches in the soul,” as Emily Dickenson said, then my hope just flew the coop.

But then I hear it, my new war cry. An anthem I sing to myself when I don’t want to face the world outside my covers.

Be brave.

That’s all I say, but the whisper stirs in me courage to quit the bed and put feet to floor. I am brave, I tell myself. No longer a lily-livered girl, God made me strong, confident and full of faith.

I’m learning to speak kind words to myself—the words of God. These truth words don’t come easily. Sometimes they burrow through two tons of lies before they can settle in my mind.

On my darkest days these lies roar to me from my dreams. Singing the brave song helps. Faith quiets the lies like rain clouds part for the sun.

The Bible brims over with songs of courage. Some days I murmur these ancient brave songs to myself.

“Praise the Lord, my soul, and forget not all his benefits— who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases,

who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires

with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s” (Pslam 103: 2-5 NIV).

Abraham knew about bravery. I can see old Abe leaving home when God said so, setting off for destination unknown. I see him stroke his beard and ponder. Does he overanalyze every bend in the road like I tend to?

I didn’t think so a few years ago. I saw Abraham as fearless—so patriarchal and perfect. I realize now perfect, is what I imposed on Abraham—it was the ideal I reached for. Perfect and fearless.

I’m sure Abraham had moments, seasons—maybe even years of doubt.

I can see Abraham having it out with God right there on the road to Canaan, maybe just like the fight I heard from my covers.

God, why are you making me move? Can’t you just tell me where I’m going? Can’t you see what a huge inconvenience this is for me?

Abraham, the father of our faith, probably knew better than anyone how belief and fear can mingle.

Watch him walk toward Mt. Moriah, wood on his back and his Isaac chatting innocently by his side. You think his heart wasn’t pounding out of his chest?

But somehow Abraham learned that faith is not the absence of fear. He learned to dance to the rhythm of his own fearful heart.

Abraham found his own brave song.

Maybe it was the sound of bushes in the wind mixed with the cricket’s song, the first time God appeared to him.

In the middle of crippling fear, faith can arise. It can be as simple as a tune that your heart hums and when all hope has vanished.

What’s your brave song? What tract do you play in your mind to overcome fear?

How God Remodels a Shabby Heart

The Brave Song