Do you find yourself all dressed up waiting to become someone’s prized possession and the focus of their affection? The imagery of brides are pure and beautiful and are on display waiting to be filled with the will of their future. They are in expectation and free to walk forward and away from the shame of their past. All things have become new. Yet, for many people who have a renewed mindset, there are a million things that are attempting to prevent them from moving foward into the things that give purpose, joy, and peace. They are orphaned and feeling unworthy, stuck, muted, and disconnected from their future. They need to be sparked, affirmed, and reminded that while the world is turning, so are they.
So many people are walking around the world today in an orphaned state disconnected from the very source of life and clinging onto those things which affirm them or give them a false sense of identity. At some point in life, you realize that in the stillness of quiteness, when you are alone and without your friends, or in the shopping malls spending money, or around that circle of people snorting coke, you are and have always belonged to someone and that someone is waiting for you to come home.
Fatherless is at an all time high in the world today and there are many people who are dealing with the residual effects of not having a father figure in their lives. This in part, is preventing them from accepting the true love of the father, Daddy God and being baptized by the love of God. Abandoned, molested, broken, battered, and rejected are the descriptions that come after the names of many and their cycle continues like a broken record playing over and over.
There was a time in my life when I had lost my worth and value not feeling connected to anyone or anything. My orphaned moment came at the point of my parents passing away. Not sure how I was going to survive, I turned to the world to affirm me and give me a sense of belonging. I was choking on a minute by minute basis from negative beliefs about myself wondering how I was gonna be able to continue my performance in the church with my parents being gone and how I was going to be received in the world; a world that I had been sheltered from as a child because I was in the church? From every angle that I could see, I was an orphan living in a state of confusion and unsure how to get connected to some source, the source that could take the pain away and move me forward from my frozen state of hurt.
What is an orphan?
1. a child who has lost both parents through death, or, less commonly, one parent.
2. a young animal that has been deserted by or has lost its mother.
3. a person or thing that is without protective affiliation, sponsorship, etc.: The committee is an orphan of the previous administration.
Remember the orphan named Annie? She was in a racheet state living in an orphanage and instantly took a leadership role against her wretched caretaker, Ms. Hannigan. Over the course of time, Annie gets adopted by Daddy Warbucks and is taken to live with him. She is exposed to a brand new life. How many of us, once we are exposed to a brand new life, mindset, perspective, and peace resort back to a former mindset wanting to re-wrap ourselves in the chains and barbed wires of our past? Constantly searching for validity in the purse or the shoes or the man to affirm us when we know those things or people have no power to do so. Their affirmation lasts but a minute and then their attention shifts to the box full of people who are standing in the line of affirmation to be stamped with a seal of approval.
God does not work like that. In fact, he states in Jeremiah 1:5 that “Before you were formed in your mother’s womb, I knew you and approved of you!” That is good news, so no matter where we go or what we do, there is nothing that we can do that will take us out of God’s love for us.
Remember the woman at the well? It is a timeless story of a woman in the Bible who has been the victim of circumstance. She was involved in a revolving door romances and connected to men who belonged to another woman. Not having an identity or connection of belonging to someone; she availed her self to become someone’s night dream- then wet dream- an experience that can promise no dreams or hopes for the future. The woman at the well, in the midst of all the handprints and guilty actions came face to face with Jesus Christ and was instantly affirmed and identified as His own. In the very moment in a twinkling of an eye, she was changed and forgiven, free from the barbed wire that confined her and released from the shame of her past. What a love.
Just as births occur daily, orphans are created daily and Daddy God is the only one that can help free you from this debilitating mindset. Let him in.
Danita Ogandaga, MSW 