Our Posture is Everything

Psalm 51:10 (AMPC) says, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right, preserving, and steadfast spirit within me.”

Psalm 26:2 (NLT) says, “Put me on trial, Lord, and cross-examine me. Test my motives and my heart.”

Our heart posture is everything — it determines the “why” of things we do or don’t do, and the things we say or don’t say. Our heart posture reflects … well everything.

This morning God brought this particular topic to my mind and it caused me to reflect on my past reasons for doing or saying, my actions, my motives … the “why” behind it all. One particular instance was the birth of Miles, I remember deciding within myself and also telling my husband that I wanted to do a natural and unmedicated birth because of my first experience with a medicated birth with Tristan. I mean it wasn’t a bad experience, I just don’t do needles and pain very well. So you see, I said I wanted to have this supernatural birth without medication and I convinced myself pretty well that I could do it. I read a book on it and really started to believe God for it. I said the affirmations, the scriptures, I did all the things.

Let me also say this, nothing about the birth of Miles was ANYTHING like how I pictured it, how I imagined it, and how I EXPECTED it to go. Not only was Miles a week and two days late, but I had to be induced. My water didn’t break and I didn’t contract like I thought I would like I did with Tristan — and even with them breaking my water (which they were unable to break at 100% because of the position Miles was in) things still were going how I wanted them too. So because I was still contracting irregularly, it was then time for the Pitocin and that IMMEDIATELY sped things up!!! And now that I think about it, I didn’t expect that at all, people told me but for whatever reason I could not comprehend it until I was actually experiencing myself. A bit of time passed and I ended up asking for an epidural and from there it was show time. A year and three months later I believe that my heart posture for a supernatural, unmedicated birth was not in the right place - now it was supernatural, but not in the way of the book or what I’ve heard, but God was STILL. VERY. MUCH. PRESENT. in that delivery room, even though my heart posture for the birth of Miles, my why for my birth plan, was not in the right place.

At that time, deep down and the back of my mind, I believed I only wanted that supernatural and unmedicated birth because I had friends who had that experience and were too believing for that, and it did happen for them! So I thought, I could have that same faith and confidence, that I could be a part of that number too. See, that’s where my posture was off because my focus and my why was based on what others were doing and wanting to do. So on January 23rd, in that delivery room God showed up and let me know, “Daughter, this is not what I want for you because your heart posture is truly not in the right place for this.” So much grace and mercy came from my Heavenly Father that day and I didn’t even realize it. I let shame and guilt almost ruin that moment for me because I was beating myself up about not being about to have the birth I thought I wanted — and ain’t that just like God to give us what we NEED, not always what we WANT. But, I beat myself up for the rest of the evening about it, in my mind, and also in an IG reel that made a joke about wanting an unmedicated birth. I thought it was funny on the surface, but deep down, it wasn’t. I was sad and disappointed in myself because I truly felt like a failure.

BUT I WAS NOT A FAILURE, I WAS FAR FROM THAT! I was right where God wanted me, the way everything went was the way God designed it from the very beginning. 😮‍💨

GOD IS REALLY LIKE THAT!!!

There are other times I know that I’ve wanted to do something, or I did it. Times when I’ve said something or wanted to say something, but it was for my own self-interest. My motives were self-serving, they weren’t God-serving. When you’re really rooted in Christ, when you walk with him daily and you have the Holy Spirit dwelling on the inside of you, you’ll find that it gets harder and harder to do things and think you can be satisfied with it when your heart is not in the right place. When your motives and intentions are not pure, it gets harder and harder.

Another instance for me, disciplining our kids. Even before we had children, I had told my husband the way I was disciplined as a child, I knew I didn’t want that for our future children. I was whooped as a kid and that was traumatic for me, so I told myself I would never whoop my children - that is my hand to their bottom. So one day, it was some time last year, Tristan did something and I felt the urge to want to “whoop” him so I did a couple of times, and ALMOST IMMEDIATELY, I felt the Holy Spirit tell me to stop! 🛑 And you want to know why? Because my posture in wanting to discipline Tristan in this manner was not in the right place. Honestly, I didn’t even feel right doing it. It felt slow, and it felt wrong. So from that moment, I felt that I would have to find another route to disciplining Tristan whether that be timeout or taking away toys, no TV, etc. Wanting to see if “whooping” Tristan would have an effect on him, that he would not do whatever he did again, and that I would ultimately find some type of satisfaction from doing it … ALL WRONG.

Again, I thank God, that his spirit dwells on the inside of me. I thank God for the conviction and the opportunity to reflect on my motives. I thank God for the cross-examination, and the testing of my motives and my heart like Psalm 26:2 says.