Quiet Healing

I've gone quiet, I know. 

For some it may be disconcerting to not hear from me. It might cause concern and wonder. It's ok.

This thing that is happening, these changes...they're subtle. Quiet. There aren't revelations with much fanfare. It seems like a time for silence. Like when you are working hard at something you're not necessarily good at, but you can get it, if you just focus. 

We fall silent when we're working hardest. 

And I'm working very hard. 

There is a pattern of thinking that I have fallen into my whole life. It's a product of the fall...as all things like this are.

I've always been a negative, critical person. Ok, maybe not always but my whole adult life for sure. There is something about life going in the complete opposite direction of your expectations that can cause this. It's kind of like a sickness you can't shake.

It's no good being negative and critical of the people around you. I learned this a while ago and managed to stifle it, keeping those thoughts to myself, for the most part. 

But I didn't think anything about the constant stream of negative thoughts against myself. I thought it was normal to find yourself lacking, to generally not like yourself. These negative, demeaning thoughts have been running in the background of my mind for years. Sometimes louder, sometimes quiet, but always there. Always telling me that I would never, ever be good enough. 

Some of you may know what that's like. Some of you may be appalled.

It's a sinister self-harm...this emotional abuse that you think is normal. The perpetrator and the victim are one and the same, so who is to blame? 

I would still be right there, in my awful circle of hate I created for myself, if it weren't for the work of the Lord through some people who love me deeply and could see what I was doing. And they told me to stop. 

It's almost like I didn't know it was happening until somebody said "hey, don't you see that you're sawing your own arm off? Doesn't that hurt?"

Love your neighbor as yourself, he says. So often we focus on what it means to love our neighbor, taking for granted that we already know how to love ourselves. But some of us don't know how to love ourselves at all. How can I possibly love my neighbor well if I'm abusive to myself?

So, I'm learning. I don't always get it right. But my learning looks like investing in myself. I'm running. (I know, me, running?!) I'm running for me. Because I should take care of myself by pushing myself. I'm sleeping...and what I mean is I'm intentionally making sure that I sleep. Because it's not right for me to run on fumes. My bedtime is guarded now, because I'm important enough for it to be. I'm not pressuring myself to be who I think others think I should be. That sentence is ridiculous, but it's been my reality for a long time. And I'm not doing it anymore. 

There are other things that I'm learning to do. And God is giving me this beautiful quiet space to learn it. It is full of his mercy and grace, this place in time he created for me.

I'm the best I've been in a long time. And that is saying a lot. 

He is so faithful to me. His love for me has never wavered, even when I am full of self-loathing. He looks at me and calls me beautiful, when I feel least worthy of the word. 

If you are caught in a cycle of self-abuse, whatever that looks like...please stop. I know it's hard. But doesn't it hurt? 

He is ready to bind up your wounds and to teach you a new way. It won't be perfect at first, but he is patient. He has your whole life to teach you. It's worth it.

For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake, and I am still with you.

Psalm 139:13-18

Scale

I am a frequent scale user.

I'm not really talking about the scale to check my weight, although yeah, I use that more than maybe I should.

And I'm not talking about the scales at work, where we gently lift and set down babies. And then do it again when we don't like the number.

No, the scale I use is abstract, but much more dangerous.

I like to call it realism. It sounds better. It doesn't bite so hard, when you call it realism. People can get behind realistic...people don't like words like negative or critical. So, yeah....realistic.

The truth is that this realism comes directly from the fear that resides deep within me. 

I constantly measure and weigh everything in my life. Holding it up to examine it...is it good? Where are the cracks? How can this improve? How will this fail?

Whether it's my own soul, or a friendship, or an actual gift, I am constantly in doubt of it's goodness. Because what if it breaks?

So I get my scale out...on one side I place the good gift I'm given, and on the other side I place what I think it should be, or what I see that others have on facebook, or just something I saw on TV once.

And then I see the scales tip. In a very realistic direction. And I'm disappointed with the gift. Or I see how it can fail and I get so afraid because now it's just a waiting game till it breaks.

I cannot accept good gifts for what they are because I'm so fearful they'll break that I won't pick it up and embrace it.

This verse was made for people like me:

Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him! Matthew 7:9-11

He had to put that in there because of people like me. Because I doubt that God is good, or that he would be good to me, or that the gift is as good as he says it is.

And all that is is a lack of understanding exactly what a good gift the cross is. Because if I understood that, then I would open my arms to whatever he's giving me and call it good and right. I would hand my scales in and let him break them with his unmeasurable goodness.

Despite the fact that I have not understood how to not find his gifts lacking, he continued to pour them out on me. If that's not a good and perfect God, what is? 

He's teaching me. Patiently and slowly, he's teaching me that I can accept his gifts and that he is overwhelmingly good. I don't have to live in this fear.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 

Ephesians 2:4-9