freedom

Hello my friends! I know it has been quite a while and I have been M.I.A. I missed you! I haven’t forgotten about you all out there! So much has happened and I will give you all the updates. I have been also missing in action on my social media platforms as well. Thank you all for the messages, inboxes, and emails asking where I have been. I have read them all. I’m thankful for you and that you look forward to my blogs and posts. It means so much to me. I will be very transparent with you about what has been happening in my world. Everyone knows I am purpose driven. Well maybe some of you. It brings me great joy when I am fulfilling my purpose. I love helping, encouraging, motivating, uplifting, and inspiring. It is second nature to me and I start doing it without even realizing it. Some may get annoyed when I do especially if all they really wanted was to vent. You don’t always want to be encouraged. I get it! Therefore, I have had to learn how not to do that because I am not perfect. I’m still growing and developing. I even had to ask friends and loved ones to let me know before they start that all they want to do is to vent. I can’t always read minds. Lol!

I am the person who naturally wants to say yes to everyone who comes and need me. I will go out of my way to help even if it means changing my schedule or even pushing my body beyond what it needs to do. A friend often tells me I do that to a fault and gets annoyed at me for not making others aware of what I’m dealing or tending to with myself. Well a few months ago, God brought some of these things to the forefront. He told me to rest. I haven’t worked a 9 to 5 since I was diagnosed with brain cancer. I thought I had had too much time of rest, but He showed me that I wasn’t resting at all. I am often told that I am the busiest single person with no full time job they know. I was being pulled on emotionally, spiritually, physically, and other ways too. I was answering every phone call even when I knew that it was going to require more of me. I was carrying so much and I realized I pushed myself to the back burner. I wasn’t taking care of myself. It is important to have people in your circle that loves you enough to check in with you to see how you are doing in spite of the smile on your face and when the smile is gone.
I learned how to push myself and not give so much attention to the things I am going through. God wanted me to address these things. I had to tend to me. He reminded of my call, purpose, and assignment. If I didn’t start tending to me more, I wasn’t going to fulfill my destiny. That was all I had to hear. I want nothing more, but to fulfill my purpose and complete the assignment of my life. I don’t want God not to be able to use me because I am not taking care of myself.

You know when you get on the airplane and they start going through safety procedures. The steward or stewardess tells you in case of emergency, place the oxygen mask on before you help the next person. What good would you be to someone if you died in the middle of helping them? Well, that is the visual I was given. He told me loud and clear “Tara, put the oxygen mask on you first.” I had to take a break for God to pour into me. I had to tend to some matters of the heart and making sure I was really healed and healing. I had to learn how to really rest and how to be okay with saying NO. He told me “Saying YES to everyone is sometimes saying NO to you”. That is a SELAH! Just think about that statement. We often say yes to everyone except ourselves. People don’t always realize when they are pulling on you nor do they realize that they aren’t the only person doing so. I have learned to say yes to Tara more and how to allow God to take care of me in every area. I learned how to protect my peace more and stay in my “happy place”. I was also spending too much time on my phone and social media without even realizing I was scrolling. Some of us can’t even go a church service without accessing Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter. I am not referring to sharing the message or broadcasting. We spend all day doing that and give God the crumbs of our time. Yet, we want Him to fulfill our every desire. That is another topic for another day. With all that being said, I’m ready now more than ever to fulfill the things that my hands has been assigned to accomplish! I’M BACK

♥ Tara S. Middleton

Beyond Bondage

If I took a virtual poll right now, how many of you would choose freedom over being locked up in prison? Let me be the first to raise my hand! I think that majority of us would choose to be free right? You are probably thinking “Tara, who wouldn’t?” This seems like it would be an easy decision. Those who are behind those prison walls would probably give anything to be on the other side. A couple of weeks ago I had a vision and it left me a little puzzled for a moment. I was shown a prison cell. There was a woman sitting on a bench with ankle cuffs and handcuffs. The officer opened the door of the cell. He came in and removed the ankle cuffs and then the handcuffs. He walked out leaving the door to the cell wide open. She stayed right there and didn’t get up once she was set free. I couldn’t quite understand why someone would be sitting in prison and they are already free. There are so many of us who are in this same position of the lady from my vision.

God has set us free from bondage of addictions, relationships, hindering mindsets, abuse, etc. Yet some of us are like the woman sitting behind the cell free and don’t even know freedom has already been granted. We are holding ourselves in bondage of things that God has already released from our lives. In some cases, many have asked to be free. Many nights of crying ourselves to sleep because all we can think about is what lies beyond this place of confinement. Some are all cried out and living silently in pain. Hearts are aching to experience happiness beyond the bondage. Now that we have been given the liberty to get up and walk out, we are stuck sitting on the bench. Fear has come, and we don’t think there’s going to be a better life outside these walls. There is so much beyond the bondage, but you must first receive the freedom. If all you can visualize is doom and defeat, you will never be free. You must see life beyond bondage.

Maybe some of us found the courage to walk out. We took the steps and realized that there is a new-found freedom. Now we are out of prison, but we think that life outside of what we are used to is so hard. We are used to being bound emotionally, physically and psychologically that we struggle accepting the newness. This is a trick of the enemy to get you stuck in prison, so you don’t walk into the greatness that your lies ahead of you. You start to think that it was better being in prison then being free. You forget the bad things about prison that caused you to cry out for something better and thinking there must be more to life than this.  My heart aches for us that are deceived to believe prison is so much better than being liberated. It may be new and may even hurt sometimes when we are separating from relationships. It is only temporary. It will get better and you will be able to thank God for the freedom. Your mindset must be renewed with this new freedom or you will still be stuck in the prison of your mind. Listen do not sell yourself short. You are worth more than what you are accepting.

 
Then some has walk right back into the doors of the prison cell and close the door ourselves. Yes, we think that prison cell is our home and that’s the place that brings us peace because it turned into our normal. You start investing more into this place of bondage hoping to yield happiness. You are practically decorating the cell, so you can tell yourself it’s not that bad. Underneath all of that, remember it is still prison. It doesn’t matter how pretty you make it seem in your mind. There isn’t beauty in bondage. I know it seems hard for any of you to think that any of these images can be you. I was once that woman on the bench inside the prison. I was so used to the heartache, pain, and even numbness that came along with it. I struggled with moving past that to walk into a place where I could truly live. Oh, I thought, that I was living because of what I labeled as good moments. I had no clue that I was slowly dying, and life was being sucked from me. Think about prison. When a person goes in, their life stops at that moment until they are released. You aren’t truly living in bondage. There is so much life, joy, peace, happiness, prosperity, and healing beyond bondage.

8VuHmXo
I ask you to please search where you are currently. Are you sitting in prison after God has released you? Are you out of prison, but now you are aching to be back in the walls of confinement? Have you returned to prison and locked yourself back inside to what God has released from you? Are out of prison and enjoying your freedom, walking in your purpose, and truly enjoying the life God has for you?