The Trap of Never and Always
By Drenda Keesee
Have you ever used these expressions?
“I will never get this right.”
“I will never do anything with my life.”
“I could never do that.”
“I will always be a failure.”
Be careful of words like always and never. They are toxic words! In fact, you should treat them like curse words.
When you look at your husband and say, “You always do this,” or, “You never do this,” you are cursing him. When you say that somebody will always be bad at this, or somebody will never amount to that, you are declaring that over his or her future. Your words set things into motion, and always and never are very strong words to set into motion!
Reality check
If your mind is renewed to toxic thoughts, you are carrying around a big red self-destruct button. You can’t move forward until you decide to think like God thinks and throw out your toxic thoughts.
What is your reality?
Identify the toxic thoughts that could potentially lead you to self-destruction. Write them down. Start with who people told you that you were or who you should be. We often carry those negative labels from our past with us every day, projecting our past hurts onto our future possibilities.
Identity is a huge stumbling point for many. If you feel unworthy, guilty, ugly, incompetent, insecure, anxious, unlovable, or weak, write those toxic mindsets down. And don’t forget mind-sets like wishing you could change your body or that habit of running to the refrigerator when you’re stressed or bored. Anything that does not line up with God’s Word, whether it is big or small, has to go!
Write what God thinks about it next to those items.
Listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit and pray for direction and insight as you identify broken areas in your life.
Ask yourself:
Am I sabotaging my relationships because of something I believe?
Am I projecting my past hurts on my future?
Do I have a self-destructive mindset that is holding me back (gossip, sarcasm, criticalness, perfectionism, fear of failure)?
What is the root of those negative mindsets?
What does God’s Word say about my mind-sets? What are God’s promises concerning those behaviors?
~ Drenda
Are you looking for a good church? Be sure and listen on Saturday evening or catch the 3 services on Sunday for Faith Life Church!
Drenda Keesee’s contagious zeal and humorous personal experiences help make her ministry of spiritual, emotional and relational wholeness one that will bless your life and spark a new fire in your spirit.
A wife of over 30 years and a mother of five children, Drenda has ministered at churches, seminars, and conferences, and through the mediums of television and radio, for more than 20 years.
Her books, The New Vintage Family, Better Than You Think, and She Gets It are available wherever books are sold. In these heartfelt books, Drenda shares her personal journey and the life lessons that have brought her to where she is today, as well as practical answers that all people need to live a joyful life.
Drenda and her husband Gary founded Faith Life Now, a ministry designed to spread the message of freedom in the areas of finances, faith, marriage, and family. Tune in for their weekly messages here. Faith Life Now hosts conferences worldwide, and sponsors both Fixing the Money Thing, which Drenda co-hosts with her husband Gary, and Drenda.
Through their own life experiences, the Keesees have found the principles from God’s Word to be powerful and effective. At one point, Drenda was a young, suicidal feminist with no hope of ever being “good enough” for her own standards of perfection. She never wanted the “inconvenience” of a husband or children, and she was on her own path to success. But the stress of trying to achieve perfection and perform for love left her broken and used. She had success, but it was nothing compared to the pain and loneliness it had also brought.
That’s when God got a hold of her heart. It was there—at her lowest point—that she found the One who accepted and loved her, faults and all. Since that transformation, Drenda has had a passion to reach women who find themselves where she once was.
She married Gary after attending college, and there she found herself in a personal boot camp of sorts. She says, “I cried and told God, ‘I can do anything but be a wife and mother.’” She committed to learning how to do it God’s way. Through the many years of raising their children and struggling to make ends meet, Drenda learned from their mistakes. “I didn’t know how to be a wife and mother, but God saved our marriage, taught us how to parent our children for success, showed us how to have financial success, and then irony of all ironies, He called us to ministry.” It’s truly because of these life experiences that Drenda can now share so many insightful principles for people who are now going through the same struggles.
