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Giving Myself
Permission
Putting Fear and Doubt
in Their Place
Pennie Murray
Copyright © 2014 by GMP Publishing
Includes bibliographical references
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-1150-7
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the author.
Unless otherwise indicated, Scriptures are taken from the Life Application Study Bible, New International Version®. Copyright© 1973, 1978, 1984 by the International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012945924
GMP Publishing, Little Elm, TX
Dedication
To my wonderful children, Ilyce and LeAlec, who have been forgiving enough to allow me to grow up, and loving enough to endure the process. Thanks to you, I learned to give myself permission so that I could become all God created me to be.
I love you more than life!
Acknowledgements
It can come across as an expected cliché to say, “First giving honor to God…,” because everyone says it. However, you really don’t know my entire backstory, and I can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve stood at the gates of Hell and God’s mercy snatched me back!”
It is for these reasons and so many others that I too acknowledge God. Despite how raggedy my life became at times, God always insisted that I had a greater purpose. And I thank Him for His patience during my “Jonah Experience.”
I lovingly acknowledge my mother and my four sisters: Iris, Arzella, Sheila, and Bridgett, my nieces and nephews, and my best friend, who like me, have struggled with giving themselves permission to live and breathe in the power of their intended purpose and unique identity. May the eternal wisdom and love of God overtake you!
A million thanks to the many friends, professors, colleagues, and acquaintances that incessantly encouraged me to follow through with this project! You believed in me and encouraged me to have courage when I doubted myself the most.
I also acknowledge my adversaries — those who made it their goal to keep me bogged down with dumb stuff. While you meant it for harm, God used it for my highest good. It is through the tearful paths of my journey that I learned to give myself permission.
Special thanks to my editor, Yolanda Harris. I appreciate your willingness to allow God to infuse the spirit of your lessons of self-permission throughout the pages of this book. I value you.
Finally, to my literary angel Nichole Bazemore who provided the finishing touches of this work. Your spirit of self-permission ensured that the spirit of this book was honored and shined through every punctuation mark and grammar check. You are a diamond.
Introduction
“The quality of your life does not depend on others. It depends on the quality of the choices you make and, most importantly, the accuracy of the information upon which your choices are based.”
~Christine DeLorey, Creative Numerology
Have you ever told someone about a goal you wanted to pursue, or a lifelong desire you hoped to fulfill, and then followed the statement with a “BUT” or an “IF ONLY?” If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard someone (including myself) rationalize why their plans haven’t yet materialized, I would be rich!
Let’s be honest. The reasons we give for failing to achieve our goals are seldom the real issues preventing us from success. The truth is, if all these so called obstacles — lack of money, support, time, or opportunities — were removed, we would simply come up with something else to justify our unconscious, but accepted limitations. In other words, the reason we sometimes experience the shallow end of life is we don’t give ourselves permission to do anything else.
The mere fact that you’re holding this book right now means you have reached a point in life where you’ve grown tired of spinning around in the same circle. After all the falling down and getting-back-up-again routines, you may be at a point where you’re just sitting in the circle contemplating what to do next — if anything. Perhaps you have lost faith in your dream, or possibly yourself. One thing is for certain — to end the vicious and discouraging cycle of defeat, something has to change!
When I first made the agreement with God to write this book, many of my colleagues advised me to stick with the popular formula of encouraging life change through positive affirmation. They told me people wouldn’t want to face their issues and flaws openly, so to prevent that from happening I just needed to frame everything in a positive light.
While their intentions were honorable, I find that sometimes the positive affirmation method stops short of unearthing the “what” and “why” answers we need most. Determined to avoid hooks, gimmicks, and flowery rhetoric, I set out to do something rarely done these days — simply tell the truth. I am a firm believer that if a person is aware of the obstacles he or she is up against, their actions will be more purpose driven, and they’ll be better able to achieve the desired outcome.
Although saying positive affirmations can have a tremendous impact in a person’s life, I find that applying this concept to unresolved emotional baggage isn’t as effective. It’s more like trying to cover up hideous dark shaded wallpaper with bright paint. First, it will take a lot of paint to cover up that dark and dingy wallpaper. Secondly, after awhile, the dark and dingy bleeds through, creating ghostly shadows of the very thing the person is trying to hide. Sooner or later, the ugly wall — tattered and masked — is revealed.
If we were to apply this analogy to some of the more complex issues of our lives there would be a myriad of options from which to choose. Here are a few examples of what I mean. We could:
Patch the problem.
We could just keep adding paint until the wall “appears” to look better, but we all know that looks can be deceiving. Patching the problem is when we use elaborate excuses or aggrandize our problems in an attempt to cover up the things we want to hide. We’ve all done it, and by now we should all realize it doesn’t work. Sadly, we try anyway.
Delay the problem.
Of course, we could watch the wallpaper continue to peel, keep promising ourselves that we’ll fix it someday, or in most cases just learn to live with it “as is.” Attempting to ignore or put things off until a better time is often what happens when our problems appear too big or impossible to resolve, and we doubt our ability to achieve the outcome we want. Delaying the problem is the easiest and most popular
