This morning I was reflecting on last nights’ meeting with my women’s church group. We call it “crew,” but really, it’s a group of women who get together to get deeper into the messages at church, help one another, learn from one another, and grow together. It’s refreshing to be surrounded by like-minded women who want to advance their mindsets, their faith, and their purpose here on this Earth.
It’s a place where I’ve been practicing vulnerability and breaking out of my own smallness. It’s a place where I’ve intentionally decided to show up and put myself out there in an effort to give back what God has graciously taught me on my own journey. It is my way of intentionally opening my heart. Some of the women are my age, some older, and some younger, but no matter the age we are all at different places in our walk with God. Listening to their stories and their blessings inspire me and I hope that mine do the same for them.
In practicing breaking out of my own smallness, I’ve witnessed my mind running old scripts during these gatherings. I’ll spend some time sharing nuggets of wisdom that I’ve learned or a perspective on a bible verse and then I hear the devil in me say something like, “Will you just stop acting like a know-it-all… like you’re better than everyone else?” Now, here I could shrink down and decide to listen and play small, accept the lie that was crafted in my mind, and not gift others with my knowledge, truth, love, compassion, and inspiration. Instead, I’ve chosen to rise above the voice, speak up and drown it out with love.
I know that when this voice comes up it’s a part of my being replaying hurts from my childhood when girls in junior high school didn’t like me for various reasons. I was never a malicious person and always tried to like and get along with everyone, yet I was a target for certain girls. Looking back, I realize I went to school in a poorer area that bread a poverty mindset. While a lot of the kids grew up together in the projects, I was blessed to live in a single-family home with a pool. I was fairly outgoing and got the lead in the plays put on by the drama club both years. At that time middle school was isolated to 7th and 8th grade. I stood out. Being on the stage gave those individuals who were hurting someone to direct their negative feelings toward and I was it.
If I could point to any period in my life that really taught me to “get in the box” and “not show up” for my own life, this was that time period. Formerly a straight A student in elementary school, I was getting awful grades in middle school because I felt like the better I did, the more I stood out and the more I stood out, the more girls didn’t like me. I was called “stuck up,” heard statements like, “You think you’re all that,” called names like “slut,” etc. At that point in my life, all I wanted was to fit in and be liked and I shrunk down in hopes of getting what I wanted.
I dressed as a boy my freshman and sophomore years of high school because I didn’t want negative attention from girls. I didn’t do any extracurricular activities because that would have put unnecessary attention on me also. Looking back, I wish I had been strong enough and smart enough to realize that most of this hatred was out of jealousy and because they hadn’t found their inner worth yet. Instead, I allowed their negative self-worth to become my own and fell into a pit that took me years to climb out of.
I sought to be liked by boys since I was having such a hard time with girls and that led down a slippery slope. I learned the hard way that boys often don’t become friends with girls unless they want something. I gave them what they wanted, again in hopes of feeling wanted and “liked.” I was lost in the wilderness during this period of my life and didn’t even realize how lost I truly was. My desires to be accepted and liked allowed me to be used. After being hurt by people I’d liked, that I wanted to like me, my heart became really hard. I built that thing up to be like Fort Knox and took on the persona of, “They aren’t using me, I’m using them. I’m a liberated woman… hear me roar.”
I took the hurt I’d received and built up a protective layer that masked the hurt with false toughness, independence, and perfectionism. In my own hurting, I hurt others. I know I hurt some who wanted me to like them, but I was incapable of liking anyone at that time, including myself. I can recognize that those who had hurt me were hurting also. They were just young girls struggling to find their own way at that time. They weren’t “bad people,” just hurting people, broken by life in their own unique way and failing to realize their own worth because of how someone else may have treated them. Untreated/unhealed hurts are a perpetuating cycle… one feels hurt, hurts someone else, that hurt person hurts another and so on and so forth until we’re a broken society full of broken people destroying everything and everyone within our path.
I was so far from who I was created to be at that time. I became incredibly introverted, only becoming friends with those who made the effort to talk to me first. I kept a very small circle because I had some major trust issues. I was this way for years. I am so grateful that I’ve come full circle in my life and that I’m finally getting back to the “me” I used to be before the world buried me with pain. It’s taken some time, but I’m getting there as a result of my decision to work for progress and unbury myself from that which no longer serves me.
I tell this story to point out that much of our inner self talk is not our own. It is a hurt that we hold onto that hasn’t fully healed. Listen to what you are speaking to yourself within your own mind and fact check it. Ask yourself, “Do I really believe this?” “Who has said this about me in the past?” “Why am I still listening to them now?” To be honest, I became witness to the scripts running in my own mind when I started delving deeper and deeper into the Bible and other spiritual teachings. I began to realize that many of the things that I was telling myself were not in alignment with what the church and other spiritual leaders were preaching. It also wasn’t measuring up to what God had showed me through my own experience of who He was. Because I was so determined to build a relationship with God and love God in the way I felt God loved me, I finally decided, “Who am I to deny God’s brilliance in designing me?” It is my birthright to love myself, not because of who I am, but because of who God is. I cannot claim to love God without loving myself… without loving his design… without loving his handiwork in myself and others. I choose love!
What type of things are you telling yourself? Why? Can you pinpoint where the thought came from? What situations in your life may have guided that thought to develop a stronghold? Can you begin to forgive that situation and let go of the hurt from it so that you can heal?