If you came over from Encouragement for Today, welcome!

Today I shared a time when God led me out of an unhealthy playground. It was the playground of my mind. A place where I fed the thoughts that kept me trapped in unforgiveness or feelings of anger or revenge.

I rarely resolved anything in that playground, but it made me feel better temporarily. I could make that person pay. I could tell them the words that they needed to hear. I could show them my merits, and make them understand my point of view.

Harmless, right?

Except I wasn’t a child anymore. God was growing me into a woman of faith. A strong woman who recognized the possibilities instead of camping out in the impossible. A woman who reached for compassion instead of retaliation.

In The Unburdened Heart, I share that God calls us to take up His poured-out gifts. One of those is to grow up and leave the playground of our mind.

Will it be easy? No way. Especially in the beginning.

But one day you walk by it — that playground, those thoughts, the energy you once devoted to playing in that unhealthy place — and you see it for what it is, and you take God by the hand and dance by it, leaving it behind so you can live fully in today.