IT'S OKAY TO LOVE YOURSELF

I'm sharing what God did on the weekend, the heart surgery alluded to in the previous blogpost, partly because I need to understand it, and I understand things best when I write them down.  

But I'm hoping that by sharing this very personal and painful part of my healing journey, it just might help someone else.  

My blog is partly my journey of healing and I pray that it will help someone else on their journey as well.    We are all on the journey together, and our shared stories can help others.  

They go from strength to strength;

Each one appears before God in Zion.   Ps 84:7   

When you grow up as the strong one in the dynamics of your family, and you've had a lot of relational responsibility put on you at a young age, way too much, then you learn not to love yourself because that feels wrong and selfish.  And perhaps you get told by one or both emotionally immature parents, that you don't deserve certain basic things like love and acceptance and even food and clothes.   And because you're constantly failing at something you shouldn't have to be doing, you get weighed down by guilt and shame.   

If, as a young child, you hear the words disgusting, useless, ugly, pest, nuisance, undeserving, failure, and others, you internalise them.  You don't question them.   They become your truth, your scaffolding, your foundations, the bolts in your lighthouse.   

Why? 

Because parents were designed to build into their children building blocks for their identity.

And children were designed to believe whatever their parents told them.    It's God's good design, ruined by sin and brokenness.   That's how young children are wired - to absorb and believe.   

And so we DO believe what's said to us and spoken over us, at a young age.      And we build our identity, our worth, our lives on those beliefs.   Then in later years, we find ourselves struggling with shame and guilt and feeling like we don't deserve to be loved, or to love ourselves, to prioritise ourselves or to even sit at His feet and receive.   

We end up in relationships, not just marriage, where we are constantly adapting and bending and ultimately breaking, to keep the other person happy, to keep God happy.   All this to avoid rejection and because we fundamentally believe we are a nuisance and ugly and useless and need to ignore our own needs and strive to meet the needs of others.   And so we try harder - to please God, to appease people.   

And we keep failing and so we get stuck in a cycle of shame, guilt, fear and failure.   

And it's all just crushing us and slowly killing us, and breaking His heart.  

He wants us to live FROM a place of knowing and resting in His love, not striving towards it all the time.   

....................   that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man,  that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height  -   to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge   Ephesians 3:16-19   

On Saturday, I found myself in a pretty dark place.   I'd spent the week wrestling with shame and anger and a lot of pain and I couldn't quite work out what was going on.   I had several friends, including my pastors, praying for me and asking the Lord to show me what was stirring.  

I was once again feeling the urge to walk into a china shop with a baseball bat, so I knew something deep was stirring and the Lord wanted it sorted.   I've lived with suppressed anger for many years so I recognise it well.   

I sat down and wrote my ex-husband a very long and angry letter about how he had intentionally -  and unintentionally -  sculpted me into the person he wanted me to be, that he thought I 'should' be, and judged me for not being.   

I didn't send it.  I had no intention of sending it.   I've had way too many conversations with him over the years on these issues that have not achieved any real understanding or forward movement for either of us.  We were both very broken people, triggering each other's deep wounds, and not letting anyone in to really know us or help us.   We need to heal separately at this point.  

I thought writing that letter would help.  It helped to clarify things and it appeased the anger somewhat.  I tore it up and threw it in the river and let go of the need for his validation.

But that exercise didn't shift things like I thought it would.    

My pastor had asked me several days earlier if i needed to forgive myself for something, if that was part of the anger.   I assured her that it wasn't.   How wrong can you be?   

Another friend suggested I write a letter to myself.   Turns out, that was a much harder exercise.   Turns out I was very angry with myself over many things, mostly failure.   

I tried to write that and felt deep pain, so I stopped.   I still had to function enough to homeschool, attend a funeral and show up for a friend, so I put it on hold for another 24 hours.   

As I started to write that letter the next morning, I realised I was angry with myself for letting him sculpt me into something I wasn't.  I was angry with myself for letting just about everyone significant in my life sculpt me and mold me and manipulate me to one degree or another.   I was angry with myself for being so pathetic and stupid and adaptable.    I wrote myself a very angry letter, tore it up and threw it in the river.   No great relief, yet again.  

I then started to recognise that what I was actually wrestling with was shame.    That's been a recurring theme in my life.   Like anger, I've hung onto shame, internalised it, and it's caused me much pain, but it has also been one of my major leaning posts.   Not a good one.   But still, very familiar and somewhat useful and predictable and manageable.    

It's hard to give up the familiar leaning posts that you have learnt to lean on in the absence of love and acceptance and predictability.    When you've learnt to lean on shame and anger, which are both strong emotions, then 'soft' emotions like love and acceptance feel unsafe and unstable.    But love - unconditional love and acceptance and validation - are powerful things to build your identity and worth on.   It's just that they feel 'soft' and shaky when you've only known the 'nice' stuff that turns out to be unpredictable and has no real substance.

Anger and shame and being strong and stoic is up to you.  It makes you feel powerful and in control.  Leaning on love is leaning on something else, someone else, outside of you, and that feels terrifying and pathetic.    I think having emotionally immature and unpredictable parents sets you up for feeling unsafe with real love because you're not sure it's going to last very long.   Because it often didn't, especially when they were under strain.  

So, I'm learning to lean.  He's been saying that to me for years.  I guess part of learning to lean is for Him to knock out from under you what you're already leaning on.   Duh!!   While that might seem straightforward in theory, it is incredibly painful to go back to what you were leaning on and believing,  and allow Him to remove it and replace it.    And when you haven't yet learned how to walk in the new, it's very disorienting.  

That's what happened on Saturday.  I had done the letter writing, tried to sort through the thoughts in my head, and I was going around in circles.   He actually wouldn't let me work it out.  When I had finally had enough of toughing it out and trying to work it out, He suggested strongly I ring my pastor for a  chat.   I had to decide if I was going to sit and pray with her without actually understanding it all or knowing what would happen - that unpredictability again, taking a risk, not being in control.   

That felt incredibly unsafe.   Not because she is an unsafe person.  It's taken two-plus years to build a trusting relationship with her and not because of her lack of character, but because it takes time to build trust when you've learnt you can't trust.  And it's taken that long to build trust with Him.   But it still feels risky, even now.   

Her opening prayer, 'Lord, let Kath know she's safe here with You and with me'.   She knew.   

Then she started asking impertinent questions and making statements that created strong reactions in me.  I found myself digging in and screaming, silently of course, 'No, I can't forgive myself and I can't accept that I deserve to be loved.    Just nope.'  

I quietly said, 'Nope'

Why not?

"I don't know.   It's just wrong.    I don't deserve it."

And around and around we went, not really getting anywhere.   

Then the Lord reminded me of the picture of the small, broken walls He had showed me last week.   He had reminded me of some of Beth Moore's teaching about how abuse and rejection break down the walls of your personhood and your worth.    I shared that picture with Carolyn.   She started probing a bit deeper.   

And  as she did, the Lord ripped open a wound that had been there for over 50 years.  It was His time to  heal it, but I had to let Him touch it.   He didn't tell me that would happen.  I knew it was something deep, but He didn't say what.  I just knew He was going deep and it was going to hurt.   Carolyn is a very capable, gentle and loving surgeon's assistant, and I'm incredibly grateful to the Lord for her.   

The conversation went something like this: 

So how old are you at the time of these broken walls?

Mmm, maybe three or four or five? 

Who and what broke down those walls?  

Mum.  Her words.  Her disgust towards me.

What were the words?   

I couldn't speak those words out.   I wanted so badly to just get up and run away.   I was in so much pain as I was taken back to that time and place, over 50 years ago, like it was yesterday.   But I knew those words would now just scream louder and louder in my head even if I left that room, and then I would be alone with them.   They could no longer be silenced or drowned out.   That callus had been ripped off.    And I could hear and see in raw detail the words that had been the foundational building blocks of my identity.

They were now spinning very fast in my head and I was in a world of pain.   

disgusting

useless

a damn nuisance

pest

dirty

ugly

frustrating

not worth feeding

not buying you pretty clothes

Carolyn asked me again to give voice to those words, which I thought would just confirm them and cement them.

After many minutes of staring out the window, gritting my teeth, tears in my eyes, and Carolyn quietly praying, I was able to voice them.   And as I did, they lost their power over me. They floated off into space and I saw them for the lies that they were.   These words were the very fabric of my thinking about ME.   It's not what I believed about others, just about me.    There was healing in voicing those lies as just that - lies.   

But He wasn't finished.   

Carolyn quietly said to me,

What was your name back then?  

I can't say that name!

Why not?  

I hate that name!

Why do you hate that name so much? 

Because that person is unlovable.   It's actually not possible to love that person.   

Why not? 

She is disgusting.  

For you to heal, you need to love that person.  You need to forgive that person for all her 'failures' as you see them.   You need to TELL that person that she is lovable, that she deserves to be loved, that you love her, and you will start loving her, because she's a part of who you are today.    You need to speak that out.  

So she started suggesting different variations of my current name and finally hit on the one I was called back then. 

Once again, I was back at staring out the window, silent, tears welling again and in my head screaming, "I am not that name!!     Nope, nope, just nope."

She sat and prayed quietly, and I sat and screamed silently.   

Eventually she said, 

Could I come and give Kathy a hug?   Would that be okay?  

This whole time she had only been sitting a couple of feet away, but now she just moved over and held that little girl, the little girl who was 'unlovable' and crushed beneath the weight of her mother's words and her tone of disgust and rejection.  

And something in me just broke under the weight of real love and acceptance.    

Right there, in the presence of unconditional love, from Him, through Carolyn's touch (something Mum never did in love) God healed what has been broken for a very long time.  

I was finally able to cry properly, and let go of that disgust and the pain of rejection.   

Then more words from Carolyn.  

Tell Kathy you love her.    Tell her you forgive her.   

That was still tough, still felt wrong but I now knew it wasn't wrong, it just felt wrong.    Feelings don't go away quickly, even in the light of the truth.  

I struggled with that but I did it, slowly and painfully.

And she prayed healing into those raw and broken places in my soul.      And we just sat in the Lord's presence for a few minutes as He did what He only knows how to do.   I was raw but I knew He had healed me.  I'm still raw and still trying to understand it, but something has shifted.

So here we are.  I will still be referred to as Kath, because that's the name I prefer.   But Kathy needs loving and to be cared for and cherished.    I can do that, with His help.    And perhaps as she heals, Kath can get healed as well - body and soul.

Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers.    3 John 1:2 

Potentially, this changes how I look after myself, how I interact with others that I feel threatened by, how I receive love from others, how I stand up and say what needs saying without fearing rejection, the boundaries I put up in my relationships, how I find comfort, how I perceive my identity and my personality with all its quirks and strengths and weaknesses.   I say potentially because I'm now free to believe different things, to choose not to be offended or defensive or accept the lies of the enemy, free to make different choices for myself.    They are still my choices to make but I'm now free to make them.  

It changes everything, slowly, and surely, step by step.     

And He leads us, step by step, as we start to walk strong where we have stumbled.  

The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, and He delights in his way.

Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down;

For the Lord upholds him with His hand.  Psalm 37:23,24

He also brought me up out of a horrible pit,

Out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock,

And established my steps.  Psalm 40:2  

Real love is much more powerful than anger and shame and stoicism.    Real love is solid and has substance.  But real love has to be experienced consistently to feel right and solid.   

It takes time and faithfulness and choosing to believe for it to become your new reality.    I need to walk it out, daily, and make choices based on His truth about me.   He is building this lighthouse with new bricks, on a new foundation, a solid one of His truth, with the bolts in the right place this time.

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He is patient.   He is gentle.   He invites us to continually come and surrender.    It's the favourite word of my good friend, Heidi, and we come back to it often in our conversations.    I'm learning that surrender is a process, a continual, intentional choice - our response to His invitation to be transformed by Him.  

And with that comes the empowering to live life in His grace, not our own strength.  

"Come to Me, all you who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.     Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am  gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.      For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”   Matt 11:28-30   

   

You hold my every moment

You calm my raging seas

You walk with me through fire

And heal all my disease

I trust in You, Lord, I trust in You

I believe You're my Healer

I believe You are all I need

I believe

And I believe You're my portion

I believe You're more than enough for me

Jesus You're all I need