Recovering from Job, House and Other Losses

Danita Ogandaga

March 15, 2012

Growing up in our small hometown of Kinston, North Carolina, I was the kid of not one, but two spirit-filled preachers, so it was no random thing to see me walking through the house with hymnal in hand. I remember the times when I would go in the backyard and play church with my stuffed animals, preaching from the scriptures in Proverbs 13:12 that says, Hope deferred (put off or prolonged) is a weariness (a vexation to the mind, an affliction to the soul, a sickness of heart); but when what is desired (that which is prayed for) comes (the answer to prayer that comes – a longing fulfilled), it is a tree of life (a realized source of power, our Savior).

One of the songs that I used to sing was, “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness, I dare not trust the sweetest frame but wholly lean on Jesus’ name.” Thinking back to the days of singing these songs, I must admit that although I had seen the adults in my life endure many “issues of life,” I was sheltered and did not have the slightest clue at the time about what I was reading, but I knew that it was laced in a constant and consistent reminder that God loved me.

Every day there is a news station reporting that employment and housing rates are decreasing in droves. With every glimmer of hope for the job and housing market improving, there seems to be an equal hint of scarcity. In the mix of all these statistics are everyday people living through the impact of joblessness and pushing past an ever-winding sense of hopelessness. Maybe your issue is not a house or a job but maybe it is longing for a baby that has yet to be conceived or the adoption of a second child? I am sure that even as you are reading this article, your mind may wonder back to the experiences in your life where you had high hopes. But what do you do when you hopes are delayed, deferred, and just plain fizzled out?

How do you change the culture of bureaucratic thinking where people believe their best days are behind them? Hope gives us an enormous sense of energy and creativity to keep achieving purpose toward a goal, while deferred hope causes us to literally become weary because we are without peace, vision, and power. Life comes at you fast and it is essential that you are equipped with a response to combat those days when you are faced with roadblocks. There is something greater working in your favor and you are destined to succeed no matter what. When those days hit you hard, combat them with the constant belief that God loves you and will see you through to achieving victory in your life.

Here are ten practical steps you can take daily to build a sure foundation of hope to carry you through the storms you face in life:

Express yourself through writing – Expression is a healer and a motivator to keep going in the toughest intersections of life. I utilize expressive therapy techniques with many clients as a method of releasing defenses and facing truth.
Stay Thankful – Although you may think that this waiting period may not hold any reasons to rejoice, think of every accomplishment that you have achieved in life as a catalyst for greater things in life.
Participate in something greater than yourself – Visions are defined through the process of serving someone else’s vision. It may seem that you may spend so much time volunteering for the local mission or your local church, but you are actually applying pressure on your faith to produce the impossible. Find someone who may be going through a difficult time and encourage them to not quit.
Recite the words a friend has told you back to them – Powerful words should never fall to the ground. We should cherish and bank wisdom as a jewel.
Think of two things you can control and focus your efforts on this – From experience, focusing on the things that we cannot control create deep feelings of disempowerment and chaos. Life is not static; it is instead a brisk walk with a lot of scenery, so release what you cannot control. Surrender it to God.
Schedule time to work on your dream – Taking the time to invest in ourselves is a great motivator. Whether we download a book on how to be a better parent or buy a Julia Child’s cookbook, take the time to invest in your dream and make it a reality in time.
Speak the end from the beginning – The power of confession permits us to fast-forward to the desired end we wish to see manifested in our lives. Sure, obstacles will come and roadblocks may delay our progress, but as we are diligent about the process of confession, we will see those things move like mountains.
Create a dream board – This is a practice that I find myself going back to time and time again. The process of writing the vision and keeping it before you serves as an encouragement in the times when progress may seem slow. Take out a sheet of paper or invest in a piece of poster board and tear through magazines, looking for the items or words that express the goals that you’d like to bring into your life. So often life brings us to the consistent visual that we live in daily, but there is a spiritual world working overtime for us to bring us into our desired end. That is what faith is all about—believing what we cannot see. Lord, help us to believe what we cannot see! A dream does not have to remain a dream, it can be a reality.
Dance! – David was a gentle soul in the Bible who went through a lot of turmoil. Yet he utilized the expression of dance and singing to sing praises to God for deliverance from situations in life. My favorite song is Lee Ann Womack’s “I Hope You Dance.” She reminds us that “Whenever one door closes I hope one more opens, Promise me that you’ll give faith a fighting chance, and when you get the choice to sit it out or dance—I hope you dance.” So I remind you too, my friend, to just dance!
Surrender to God! – Hope comes from God. The act of surrender is the ultimate release of carrying tasks we were simply not designed to carry. Writing this article gave me the realization that, like myself at times, we may find ourselves attempting to be the glue that holds everything together, but even in that we must surrender all of the issues that life brings to the One who can hold it all—God can and he loves us enough to know that we must seek Him and come to Him when we know nothing else. Whether it is fasting, praying, communicating, or eliminating, find a way to surrender those toxic things or those things creating an imbalance in your life over to the One who can handle it….God can!

With Grace,

Danita Solomon Ogandaga

Danita is a social work professional and owner of Productive Public, a professional organizing firm assisting with small-mid level companies with public information management and grant writing. She is the producer of Orphan No More, an international podcast ministry teaching people how to break free from the Orphan Spirit and heal from the traumatic events in their lives utilizing narrative and expressive therapy. Her blog, $0.79 Therapy on danitaogandaga.com features her research and venue creation as a trauma/thanatology doctoral student. Connect with Danita on Facebook, Twitter and via http://www.danitaogandaga.com

Orphan Spirit

Recognizing the Orphan Spirit- Danita Ogandaga

04/08/201204/08/2012 danitaogandaga

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Experiencing loss is inevitable! Our healing rests in how we approach it! There is freedom from the Orphan Spirit! I hope that you will experience additional clarity in your life for recognizing if the Orphan Spirit is an issue that explains the behavior, mindset, or “that thing” that you have been dealing with for many days, months, or years.

God came to set the captive free and that means you! He wants the very best for us and does not want to see his children absent from experiencing love, even though we may not have received that love from our natural mother or father. How we approach the things in life that we lose will make the difference in our ability to take hold of the healing that God is offering to us.

Culture and society are readily waiting to help you to identify yourself and employ you on the neverending treadmill of adopting culture that is swift and everchanging. God wants us our of the rat race and into the Kingdom of His love.

The Orphan Spirit is defined as anything in this life that has been present in your life for some time in which you find a deep attachment to or a bond that is deep seated. Once that attachment is broken, you develop a mindset in which you do not believe that life can exist without that “thing” or person in your life. The orphan spirit can be debilitating because it causes you to develop the extreme of becoming a hermit and enclosed within yourself or caught up in a cycle of people pleasing where you can not rest or enjoy life; in essence, you are always looking for something whether that be love or things to fill a void.

Recognizing the Orphan Spirit can assist us in beginning the stages of healing; it all starts with:

Fully recognizing or accepting that the orphan spirit has become a stronghold in your life.
Ask God for revelation of the truth of His word to assist you in breaking those strongholds.
Forgive, Forgive, Forgive and let yourself and those persons in your life who harmed you to go so you can walk into your wealthy place of freedom and serenity in receiving the unconditional love of God.
Open yourself up to the life that God has purposed you to live. He has called us to rest and to enjoy life to the fullest!

Doing these things will assist you in breaking free from this deafning stronghold and walking into all that God has for you!

Loved to love,

Danita Ogandaga, MSW

@Copyrighted 2012

Relationships

The Front Porch: The Waiting Room by Danita Ogandaga

03/26/201203/26/2012 danitaogandaga

Front porches are so quaint and serve as a beautiful introduction to a home. I like to think of front porches as a waiting room of sort. Some overflowing with rocking chairs and plants and some bear with a single chair. I am sure that many people have had an awesome experience in life while sitting on the porch. For those friends of mine that may be from various sections of the world, the porch is defined as a structure attached to the exterior of a building often forming a covered entrance. The definition is solid but does no justice for the cultural symbolism that a porch holds for the American and their front porch. The porch fosters an amazing connection between nature and land, safety and security, the level of control one has between the world and the domain of his or her home.

Formation of Community- Growing up on Desmond Street in Kinston, North Carolina was an amazing experience. To the left of my street would be the Koonce, Dillahunt, and Platt families and to the right of me would be the Rhem, King, and Smith families. Whether the weather was cold or hot, you could be sure that at some point of the day, you would have a member of those family members sitting on that porch. Before I could even walk, my mother and my father would always encourage me to greet my neighbors when coming out of the house and getting into the car. The idea of offering a greeting was a sign of respect and reverence for the neighbors who assisted in creating community on my street.

Porches have been creating venues for socialization for many years which has lead to the formation of community. I remember the farmers coming into town stopping on my street and watching my mom go to the porch to purchase her vegetables and fruits. There were times when my father would give the payment for our life insurance policy to the agent….on the porch. We would venture off of our porch and walk to the porch of our new neighbors who moved into the community. The porch was the holding space that fostered much opportunity to building lasting friendships; building familiarity beyond the sidewalk and not yet achieving the intimacy of entering the house. It was overall, a healthy balance of a new beginning.

Nurturing the Psychiatric Core- My parents were ministers, so I was a PK (Preacher’s Kid) two times over. Still, I witnessed several occasions where my parents would counsel married couples, engaged couples, and family issues on the porch. The furniture on the porch got a lot of wear and tear from our family as we would use the porch as a common ground to air the issues were facing as a family in addition to celebrating the positive moments like birthdays, holidays, and other events.

Families use the porch as a common ground to resolve issues about which kid knocked the hose over and how it would be resolved. The porch was a civil arena where people could come with no reservations to establish a non-threatening environment for creative resolutions to making everything better. Bringing the neighborhood and the community together and provoking opportunities to invoke awareness and prompt care, the porches of the world, whether public or private, are a waiting room for change.

This weekend, my family and I were engaged in our weekend activities which included the following, to name a few:

Visiting family members for Tally to play with her cousins
Taking a trip to our International Farmer’s Market
Business meetings with clients
Courting at our local cafe
Walking a trail at our local park
Checking out or returning books at our local library

In the midst of doing all of this traveling and back and forth, while out visiting our Aunt and Uncle in the northern part of Georgia, we realized that while attempting to get to their home early, we were locked out and did not want to wait in the car. So instead of complaining, we just took the time to take the funny pictures, get in sneezing matches due to the pollen affects, sing our favorite songs, and just look into each other’s eyes and just be……one, with each other. It was such an awesome experience to be able to take the time to star gaze into each other’s eyes…..that was until we realized that the door was open and our Aunt and Uncle had entered the house from the rear and had been waiting for us to come in for about twenty minutes! It was hilarious, but the time we spent on that pollen- filled porch was priceless!

Enjoy your family; enjoy your porch!

Tag: peace

Deferred Hope is Not Hope-less

Deferred Hope is Not Hope-less

Recognizing the Orphan Spirit- Danita Ogandaga