Friday, May 17, 2013
If you need someone to listen
If anyone reads this and wants to get in touch with me for any reason, my email address is hiddeninjesus@gmail.com. God really does love you and He really can and wants to heal you. And I love you, too.
Still here
Since my counselor and I agreed I didn't need counseling on a regular basis anymore (December), a lot has happened. I have had a number of what I have come to consider "God-induced crises." These are events or conflations of events which produce in me critical mass. I sometimes wake up trembling with such fear I am afraid I will have (another) stroke. Or I'll have bursts of uncontrollable anger. Or times of deep depression. In each case I am taken beyond all my own resources and feel helpless, out of control.
I know now God allows these crises to stir up the unbearable conflicts in me caused by one or more lies I still believe--which He wants to heal with truth. When I have feelings way inappropriate to what is happening in my life, I have learned to recognize that God is about to give me more revelation about who I think I am or Who I think He is. I stop and ask Him, "What are You trying to tell me? What is it You want me to learn?"
At those moments, as Scripture commands, I take "every thought captive." Rather than running away from them I turn into the feelings and the scary thoughts behind the feelings and I grab and hang onto them. As they increase in intensity, I let God first identify what I am feeling, then the lie I am believing that is causing those feelings. Then I ask Him to take me back in time to when I first believed this lie. I ask Him to speak truth to that lie so it will have no power over me anymore. Sometimes insight and healing comes instantly. Sometimes the process is lengthy and painful and takes lots of tears. But it always moves me forward toward healthier communication, a healthier worldview. It is always worth it.
One of my recent experiences was realizing that my mother (in those early years) did not love me. From what I have shared in these posts, you probably think I must have realized that before. But because I so much wanted and needed to believe she loved me, because she tried to believe it herself and have me believe it, I had never really put all the evidence together and faced the fact that neither of my parents wanted me.
The pain of that truth was excruciating. I had to let myself feel it out into all its corners and ramifications. But eventually the pain eased and the fact became just a knowing, one of millions of bits of data about my past that I could assimilate. I was then (not before) ready to see how she came to love me, how we became best friends, how the Lord redeemed all that went before. When I had told myself that too soon--"But we had fun together! She supported me in my writing! She was my best friend and biggest fan!"--it was to avoid the truth that my existence in those early years was an imposition on her, kept her from her own goals, and that I knew it instinctively from every angry jerk I felt when she brushed my hair. I couldn't jump to those later truths to justify or cover up the earlier truths. She changed. We all do. Parents of unwanted children can grow up themselves and learn to embrace and delight in them.
I just realize, writing this, that accepting the earlier truth enables me to let go of that bone-deep guilt, that sense of never having been good enough to earn her love, that shame of "something's wrong with me." It wasn't about me. I was just a normal little girl starved for a mother's acceptance, approval, cuddling. I had a God-given need for and right to it! There was nothing wrong with me.
I am still working on letting go of other things--having to take care of myself, not trusting others to be there for me--and letting in the love, acceptance, joy, delight that is all around me, longing for me to open up to it. I'm still in progress. But I'm still here.
I know now God allows these crises to stir up the unbearable conflicts in me caused by one or more lies I still believe--which He wants to heal with truth. When I have feelings way inappropriate to what is happening in my life, I have learned to recognize that God is about to give me more revelation about who I think I am or Who I think He is. I stop and ask Him, "What are You trying to tell me? What is it You want me to learn?"
At those moments, as Scripture commands, I take "every thought captive." Rather than running away from them I turn into the feelings and the scary thoughts behind the feelings and I grab and hang onto them. As they increase in intensity, I let God first identify what I am feeling, then the lie I am believing that is causing those feelings. Then I ask Him to take me back in time to when I first believed this lie. I ask Him to speak truth to that lie so it will have no power over me anymore. Sometimes insight and healing comes instantly. Sometimes the process is lengthy and painful and takes lots of tears. But it always moves me forward toward healthier communication, a healthier worldview. It is always worth it.
One of my recent experiences was realizing that my mother (in those early years) did not love me. From what I have shared in these posts, you probably think I must have realized that before. But because I so much wanted and needed to believe she loved me, because she tried to believe it herself and have me believe it, I had never really put all the evidence together and faced the fact that neither of my parents wanted me.
The pain of that truth was excruciating. I had to let myself feel it out into all its corners and ramifications. But eventually the pain eased and the fact became just a knowing, one of millions of bits of data about my past that I could assimilate. I was then (not before) ready to see how she came to love me, how we became best friends, how the Lord redeemed all that went before. When I had told myself that too soon--"But we had fun together! She supported me in my writing! She was my best friend and biggest fan!"--it was to avoid the truth that my existence in those early years was an imposition on her, kept her from her own goals, and that I knew it instinctively from every angry jerk I felt when she brushed my hair. I couldn't jump to those later truths to justify or cover up the earlier truths. She changed. We all do. Parents of unwanted children can grow up themselves and learn to embrace and delight in them.
I just realize, writing this, that accepting the earlier truth enables me to let go of that bone-deep guilt, that sense of never having been good enough to earn her love, that shame of "something's wrong with me." It wasn't about me. I was just a normal little girl starved for a mother's acceptance, approval, cuddling. I had a God-given need for and right to it! There was nothing wrong with me.
I am still working on letting go of other things--having to take care of myself, not trusting others to be there for me--and letting in the love, acceptance, joy, delight that is all around me, longing for me to open up to it. I'm still in progress. But I'm still here.
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