I'm not saying always, but usually if someone is just throwing it out there for everyone, it's not about doing something to really make things better. There are two main reasons to share difficulties, problems and struggles. The first is to seek help, counsel and encouragement. I need help. I am going through this and I don't know what to do or if I can take much more. What would you do? Will you pray with me and for me? Remind me again how you got through what I am going through, because I feel afraid that I won't make it. We are told to encourage one another and lift each other up, and we can't do that if we do not know when someone needs to be encouraged.
Sometimes we aren't asking for help though because the situation, struggle or difficulty is no longer, or at least not currently, a problem, or we already know the solution and are putting it action. Why talk about it then? Well, we share our experience, strength and hope to help others. Chances are if you struggle with it someone else is or has. It is an act of service to be honest about our struggles so others feel less alone, realize that they are not terminally unique, and find hope in seeing that others have found freedom and victory in the same areas that they are dealing with. But the key to that one is that you can only share experience, strength and hope if all three are there. It is about solution. It doesn't help anyone for me to say I drank and drugged for a quarter of a century and now I don't and haven't in over seven years. That's pride and makes it sound like I did something, right? But that is my experience. Sorta. Of course I can go into a lot more detail about the past and show some pride in how bad I was and how amazing I must be to have even survived. Except I am not amazing to have survived. God did that. And He did the rest too. Sharing our experience isn't an act of service unless we also share our strength (which is the Lord because we have none, or not enough, on our own) and our hope, which is that God loves us, cares for us and will help us.
So, when I share what I going through I try to do it in a way that is more than just whining, attention seeking. I try to be of service by sharing the solution, and that is what I tried to do in yesterday's Moment. But you know sometimes when you're under attack there's more than one front. Even as I listened to the Spirit show me where I was getting off track, how the brain bully is out of line and what to do about it, I put the solution in place and shared it to help others in similar struggles with their inner critic. But to do that I exposed myself, admitted a weakness that causes me shame. I'm not talking about the bullying, but the very things that the brain bully used as an opening to beat me up. The reason I was vulnerable to the brain bully in the first place is because there is an area of sickness, a wound where there is still fear and shame that festers up from time to time. So, as I shored up the defenses and quieted the enemy on one front, I exposed my flank and found myself still under attack.
The wild thing is that I didn't realize it until yesterday evening when I ran into my father while I went to get something for Leah. He saw me barely able to walk and reflected that I was stove up (for those unfamiliar with what stove up means, it's truly is English. You can find out more here). Anyway, when he said that perhaps the work that I had done the day before had not been good for me, I remarked that I had to try, but I can't do it. I realized that as I talked about it, I looked away and felt ashamed, even though I am sure my father wasn't judging me or thinking negatively. He would give me physical restoration and wholeness if he could, but he is not viewing me as less than because I am not as healthy and capable physically as he is or as I was in the past.
I needed that moment of embarrassment and being concerned, though out of fear rather than reality, that my father would think less of me to show me where the battle was not over but still raging. Upon review of my evening I thought back to that moment and realized that it didn't begin with talking to Dad. It started as I shared my struggle. That moment when fear slipped in cloaked in shame and whispered that I ought to worry about what people would think of me. It's still tied to the brain bully. The perceived opinions of others is just another bat the bully uses to beat us with. I saw where I had left myself vulnerable, and therefore left other vulnerable when I shared the solution to the brain bully.
The bondage of people pleasing, or at least of judging my significance through my perceptions of the thoughts, opinions and judgments of others has been a chain that I have fought to be free of off and on (more on than off) for most of my life. I have made a lot of progress on this front over the past eight years or so, but there are still pockets of resistance, and sometimes that's a fight I still lose.
When we live our lives basing our actions and reactions on what others think, or, worse, what they might think, about us, we can never really be who we are. We are trying to be who others want or need us to be, or at least who we think they do. While it's normal to want to fit in and escape being judged outside the standards of acceptable, after all, that's what keeps society from being total chaos, we can not begin to grow towards being who we where created to be as long as we live by someone else's point of view. With one exception, it is so much healthier to live by our own standards and principles and judgments than that of others. The one exception is when the other is Daddy.
Daddy's standards and principles and judgments are so much better than ours, and when we let them determine our actions and reactions, we get so much closer to who we were created to be. Letting my perception of what readers or my father my think of my weakness is not good nor healthy. But there is an opinion outside of my own that is worth seeing myself through. In fact, God's opinion of me is truth and more real than even my own thoughts and feelings.
God doesn't treat us as less than or despise us for our weaknesses. He is strong on our behalf. He doesn't look at us as insignificant or worthless, regardless of our past or our prospective future. He loves us and calls us worthy of a great price, valued and special to Him. Our shortcomings are not a cause for rejection but an avenue for Him to show His love and providence for us.
Sometimes when the inner voice turns on us and we face it down, apply the solution and shut it up because we are not going to listen to ourselves tear ourselves apart, it doesn't stop as much as it changes voices. The brain bully mimics others and begins to speak its lies in the imaginative tones of what others think, feel and say about us. The wound of what we believe about the opinions of others can be deadly, and we need to be careful about exposing ourselves to the blade of people pleasing. But the solution is the same. The truth about who Daddy says we are, who we are in Christ and God's great love for us is more true and carries so much more weight than our perceptions (even when they are accurate) of what people think. If God loves me and accepts me, doesn't that matter more than what I think another person thinks? Sure, you may think me weak and worthless (that's what the brain bully claims you think anyway, but Daddy loves me and determined I was worth dying for. The same is true of you, Dear Reader.
One last thing. You may have notices I said there are three reasons to share our struggles, difficulties and problems but only described two. The third is accountability and unity, Secrets can destroy. If we are married, it's important that our spouse knows what's going on with us and what we are going through. Sharing our day, our struggles and concerns is not merely whining or venting, but it is a way of keeping us as one. It enables us to share our life with the other and take turns being the helpmate as the other shares what they are feeling. And it also keeps us accountable. The accountability is something we all need, and we need that regardless of if we are single or married. Even if we are married and share with our spouse, it is a good idea to have a mentor or spiritual counselor that we share our struggles and fears with who can give us an objective view of our situation and Godly wisdom and direction.
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