Over the last year I have seen the change take place in my life from frantic moving and doing to more focused and relaxed rhythms of motion, but it has surely been a process. Especially after becoming a mom, I could have easily been described more as a PIN-BALL, forcefully shot from the trigger into the machine. Daily I was bouncing against the walls of my tasks, to-do lists, pleasing lists, and success lists. Eventually I could see that this way of life was hurting me and everyone around me. There was no room for spontaneity, no room for play, no room for romance, no room for interruptions. I was on a mission. My mission was to do good but it was a mission that left me absent hearted and minded of the beautiful world around me. I was living out of a state of “must do” despite all else. So it took time but I eventually learned how to start relaxing but over even more time I realized that my learned behavior of relaxing was still not calming the pinball I felt within me. My outer motions were calming down but I knew I still wasn’t completely free from frantic living because for some reason my inward being was still left feeling distraught and uncomplete. As I was beginning to break the standards I had set for myself to be “successful” (which was a driving force behind all my “doing”) those rules and standards in return began to haunt me. It may have looked like I was changing into that more present, spontaneous, loving, playful, romantic woman, but deep down I knew I really wasn't. The more I separated myself from the frantic doing and my unpresent composure, the more I came face to face with….ME. I was no longer too busy and I was now dreadfully eye to eye with the thoughts and fears I had about myself. In this vulnerable position I could see, by my frantic, robotic, “must-do” way of living there was an uneasiness that I was desperately trying to overcome and there was a reality that deep down I felt worthless.
But my initial response to the need to cover up my uneasiness was not surrender but stubbornness. I think subconsciously I've know since I was young that I couldn't accept this thought of worthlessness. So I've been fighting, by all my “doing” to prove I wasn’t. I would latently fight back with myself saying…”you think I am worthless, well watch this....'I will have the perfect meals fixed for my family, I will spend time with God, I will exercise and be the perfect size, eating the perfect proportion of protein, fat, and carbs in the day, I’ll volunteer at my church, I’ll plan celebrations for my friends, and I’ll even throw in completing a half-marathon while my son is one and my husband lives in another state.' IN YOUR FACE, worthlessness!!!” (sounds a little ridiculous, huh?!)
You see, without really knowing it, I was building up my self-image in an attempt to fight against feeling unworthy. I worked hard everyday to make strides toward achieving who I believed I needed to be and look like in order to be loved and accepted by God, myself, and everyone around me. For reasons I won’t get into now, I believed that I wasn’t as good as everyone else, that I often missed the mark, especially in the areas of living for God. To some of you that know me, you may be thinking that that is crazy talk. In your perspective you’ve seen that I have always lived for the Lord and inspired others to live for Him. But let me tell you this, since childhood, I know now, I have been unconsciously intentionally WORKING REALLY HARD so that you would think that. So you would approve of me. So you would call me a follower of Christ. So I could feel confident that Christ loves me just as much as the next person. I was always trying to prove that I was enough and most of the time I reached my achievements. But then, in the last few years, there came a time where I didn’t meet up to my standards. My self-image was broken down, and I was left with the “truth” I believed that I was unworthy. My self-image was no longer working for me and I was terrified with the person I was left with. Therefore I built more structures, more guidelines to abide by, more rules for myself, more checklists to the perfect self-image, and I became so focused on those things that I became that frantic doer. It worked for awhile until that conviction set in and I knew I had to let it go. I was missing out on those cherish-able things in life that really mattered and I knew I needed to slow down.
So I did but then there I was, once again, facing the very thing I had become frantic to overcome, my “unworthiness”. My actions had changed but I was left unrested because my beliefs did not. I felt trapped between two ways of living: beating unworthiness with spending all my time on things that built my self-made despite the needs of the present world around me or letting go of the unpresent, pin-ball lifestyle and living with the unworthiness.
And then this summer I read something that changed my life. I was reading the book, “Transforming the Inner-Man” By John and Paula Sanford.
I’ve had to learn the hard way that the more “perfect” strive to be the further from it I actually am. In the book the Sanford’s put an end to my battle of self-image, my need to prove WHO I AM in order to be worthy of love, by these simple words….
“A self-image necessarily sets us into self-centered striving---to live up to it and to make sure others see and reward it; we must defend it, build it, and rebuild it, and so on. But a Christian’s identity is a gift, something God builds in us, not having to be seen, rewarded, or defended.True healing comes, then, not by making a broken thing good enough to work, but by delivering us from the power of that broken thing so that it can no longer rule us and be teaching us to trust His righteousness to shine in and through that very thing. Those who heal by restoring the self-image cause people to trust in something repaired in the flesh, merely reshaping their old carnal practices, which sooner or later dooms them to failure, whereas the Lord heals by leaving the broken part right there in place, overcoming it by His nature.”
After reading this I saw that what I thought were my only two options were, in fact, not. I did have another option. It WAS POSSIBLE for me to live relaxed, rested, present, AND worthy. The very thing I was trying to build up was the same thing that God was asking me to lay down. My Self Image! To him none of “my doing” mattered. To him, I was already worthy. To Him, my failures or shortcomings didn’t define my worth. To Him, I didn’t have to do a single thing to receive healing. To Him, I was already healed. But to me, I felt like I had to prove it. To me, I didn’t trust that who I was was enough. To me, I had to build up myself in order to be loved and healed.
Boy did I get this wrong! I was surely set into self-centered striving, to make sure I was recognized as worthy. When all along, my God, has put his stamp of approval on me before I was even formed in my mother’s womb. I began to see that I was whole no matter my schedule, my to-do lists, my achievements, or super-woman cape. The pin-ball was a result of brokenness and desperation, not strength. But the me now can move in the rhythm of grace because my identity is a gift, given to me, and built up in me by God. I have nothing to prove and when I began to lay myself down so I could then pick up a life with Christ, I found my true rest. I'm no longer concerned with what needs to get done or what I can achieve. I am now simply concerned with the desires of God's heart. Even when it's obvious I can be somewhat of a mess, He still calls me perfect to do His will, to love His people, and to shine His light. I move where He leads me now not where my to-do list leads me and I have never been more free! I can wake up every morning believing in the depths within me...that I am loved and I am not perfect, and all of that is okay.
So I’ve decided to kiss my self-image goodbye.
Moving forward with only one aim, to allow God to develop Christ’s-image in me. The holy spirit does not take who we are and make us better and better, He takes who we are and he gently guides us to laying it ALL down so that we can be made completely new.
