God has been majorly connecting dots for me this week. While these dots will share my weaknesses, I believe confession is cathartic, and since I can usually write better than speak, here goes....
Dot 1: Sometimes I experience great physical pain.
Dot 2: This pain is not rooted physically, but emotionally.
Dot 3: I have a hard time expressing painful emotions and stress, so my body hurts.
Dot 4: Those painful emotions and stress usually stem from disappointing or hurting people, or even the fear that I have disappointed someone, especially someone I love.
Dot 5: I tend to disappoint people most often because I try to help, relieve, change, or fix someone. I see needs in those around me and want to step in. While it can be positive and Christlike, for me, this is often a misdirected sense of identity. I see myself as a Helper, a Fixer. But I can never do it perfectly. I will go too fast and mess up, or try to help too much where it is not my place to help. I end up needing brokenness around me to make me feel less broken. So I have been horribly guilty of seeking out broken people so that I can fix them. This never works. God chides me "You're trying to do my job. You are trying to fix something only I can fix."So inevitably comes dot 6.
Dot 6: When I find my identity in trying to help, relieve stress, fix, I will mess up greatly. And therefore I will hurt people. They will be disappointed in me, and I will feel my stack of cards falling apart.
The conclusion: Somewhere in life I have picked up a misperception that the greatest weakness in my life is to show weakness. So in that I have taken on a persona that I have to have it all together. Not being satisfied with just this, I have also adhered myself to the lie that I have to hold the ones I love together too. I have to be strong. I have to perform. So then a comment, a look, a phone call, or just more brokenness than I can handle will rip a hole in the well-constructed exterior persona I have created. One semblance of disapproval will drive me mad. My brain will go over every possible way I could have offended, every way I didn't measure up. The pain and stress of it continues to pile up having no outlet to be released, for certainly tears are a clear sign of weakness. So my identity is in question and my body downtrodden, and so I hurt.
The solution:
God is the only one who can hold me and the people I love together. He is the Great Fixer.
I am broken. I will mess up. I will disappoint and hurt people.
My identity is not in my failures.
My identity is not in how well I can cover up my failures.
My identity is not in holding it all together.
My identity is not in holding everyone else all together.
So God can hold me together. He loves me, broken and all.
and if pain is an expression of hurt and stress, it is a bad expression of it. Tears and talking are a lot easier, so when I mess up, when I am stressed, when I disappoint someone I need to let myself feel, cry, talk, pray... honestly. To show weakness is not the greatest weakness, to hide is.
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