Where Are You Going?

By Brandy Grillo

Have you ever tracked yourself? It's a question I heard a while ago. Hearing it I think, “I’m always with myself.” Why do I need to track me? C’mon, really, me? Who knows me better than me? Funny how God works because now I’m in a season where that question has become a journey about discovering who I am.  I noticed I actually couldn’t answer the tracking question. I had no depth to who I was.  And yet, at the same time, I had many  answers but none felt right. No one answer really gave a full definition, it only defined a part of me.  I noticed I had certain roots that were producing bad fruit. I couldn’t figure out why. So, guess what I had to do? Yep, track myself as silly as that sounds. Let me tell you it has been better than a Netflix series. I am here to invite you to take a moment to breathe, find yourself, and ask, where am I?  I like putting my name in the question just to give it an extra kick. It would sound more like, where are you Brandy? Try it. Ask yourself the question and insert your name. Stay in the moment for just a moment. Do you know where you are going and where you are right now? 

Are you in a tough situation?

Are you feeling defeated?

Are you tired?

Are you hiding?

Are you happy at this moment?

Are you refreshed?

Are you grounded?

Are you feeling victorious?

Are you spiritually covered? 

How many days have gone by where your mind was in a wonderland of its own and you can't even remember the day to its fullest? All you know is that you made it through the day. You jumped through whatever rabbit holes existed, leaped over hurdles, chased the rainbow. Nope, no gold at the end. But you did make it to the end of another day. 

How many days have gone by since you had the best time of your life? The mood was exactly your vibe. Remembering your laughter that filled your soul still makes you chuckle. You were able to be fully present in the moment. You danced to the rhythm of happiness while remembering the simple things that always make you smile. The peace that is unexplainable helped carry you from place to place. You were being you at that moment. The day ends with nothing else to add besides gratitude. When we add up our day’s experiences, what was the outcome?  Were there more days that added to you or more that subtracted from you?  In other words, did you make the most out of the day or did you allow the day to take over? Just by examining a day, you can discover a lot about yourself. Discoveries like, where you mostly hang out, or where you repeat the same words, or where thoughts come into play, or where decisions are made, or where the story you tell yourself is either a victory or a defeat. In other words, WHERE YOU GO, THERE YOU ARE. 

The thing about introspective questions is that once you get an answer, more questions pop up. The list can go on and on asking the simplest to the hardest questions about yourself. It’s an invitation to go and explore, to go on a journey within, to figure out things you can’t see, only what you feel. They trigger emotions. They spark interest. They hurt. They reveal. They help you to dig to get to that root. They uncover what type of fruit has been produced. As I was researching, the holy spirit nudged me to look into the story about the Garden of Eden. The very beginning of creation. God asked Adam, “ Where are you?”. Oooh, look at that!  It’s already been asked from the beginning. So why did God ask what he already knew? Let’s be clear, he asked “ Where are you?” not because he didn’t know, but to show Adam directly that he was no longer in God’s presence because Adam had turned away from him. Sin had taken over. We all know sin will always take you farther than you want to go and keep you longer than you want to stay.  Adam’s sin led him to feel ashamed and eventually that led him to hide from God.  Which we all know, it’s impossible to hide from God. That game of hide and seek you will never win. No matter how good you are. So why do we hide from God? Why do we leave his covering and stray away from his presence? The very presence we all need to continue pressing into. 

Maybe the answers are found where we go. As we can see by example, Adam’s sin led him to feel shame then led him to hide. So, in tracking Adam, we know for sure where he went there he was. Let’s flip the character around and put yourself in Adam’s place. This week, was there a sin committed? Did you say something wrong or do something wrong? How does it make you feel? What emotion is being connected to the action that took place? Where is it leading you? Are you bringing this to God or are you hiding? There is no perfection.  Of course, we will have issues that are small, big, and in-between in our life we are not proud of. It’s important to be aware of how we are handling, dealing with, and reacting to life. How we react determines our next step which leads to the next step and to the next and on you go. What is that next move? Are we going in the direction to heal or are we headed into more destruction? As we know, God found Adam exactly where Adam was. Remember, WHERE YOU GO, THERE YOU ARE. 

To be clear, we are not tracking physical journeys - we are tracking our mental journey. As humans, we first go to that place in our heads before we ever reach the physical destination. As proof of this statement, maybe you can relate to this situation.  Have you desired to eat something that in your mind is the best, most tastiest thing ever? You go there, try it, and yeah, it’s just not as good as you expected it to be. Another situation might be when we continue to stay in places that God never told us to go to and the longer we stay the harder it becomes to leave. Mentally, you don’t have the strength. You start to believe what the dark shows you is truth and forget what the light redeems.  A majority of us are in circumstances that we allow to surround us and dictate to us who we will be due to what circumstance we are in. What we need is to be confident in who we are so our environment doesn’t dictate who we will be. The truth is most of us try every other human resource besides the fruit of the spirit.  Are you starting to see how important this question is to our Creator?  We should be aware and ready to answer. Has God been asking you the same question he asked Adam? If he is, it's because he wants to give us an opportunity to own up to our disobedience. He wants us to face the sin and bring our worries, our burdens, our pain to his feet. Then we will know exactly where we are.  We are brave. We are covered. We are with our king.

“He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings, you will find refuge; his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart” Psalm 91:4. 

As you are coming to the end of this blog, I encourage you to start taking inventory of where you have been and where you are going. That journey will start with the NOW and the PRESENT. Where is your mind headed because soon your feet are going to follow? Remember, the enemy never takes a day off. Satan has no vacation days and he works overtime. Like Paul said, “Be alert, be aware, and be wise.” And, as Joyce Meyer says, “wisdom is to do now what you will be happy with later.” I do believe when we start to be more aware of where we go, then we get to know who we are. I believe having this conversation with God is just as important. Remember, He sees everything, even when we are walking away. As daughters and sons are we following in the footsteps led by God or are we following in the steps of deception from the enemy.  

“But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him”. Jeremiah 17:7