Today was a struggle. A lot of the time I bottle up how I feel. In fact, I deny it, even to myself. So, there are days in my life where my mind can't take the strain of self-denial any longer, and it just lets loose. It was one of those "hide out in an empty classroom and cry for no reason" days. I just feel so much pressure. Pressure to be perfect, to be someone else, to reach this impossible standard. But the problem is that I don't know who's setting this standard. Who is creating such high expectations for me?
It has to be from myself. My mind tells me that it's everyone else pushing me, but then I think about everyone in my life, and all that I recieve is encouragement. Honestly, people are so generous to me. In love, in kindness, in praise. I don't deserve an ounce of it, yet there it is waiting to build me up. Only it doesn't help. All that encouragement? To me, in my warped mind, it feels like empty flattery. Not because they don't mean it but because I simply can't believe it. So, here I am with these wonderful, accepting people in my life, and I still feel such a burden on my heart all of the time.
Tonight, the message was about self-love. Not the conceited, prideful self-love that breeds selfishness but rather, the kind that comes from knowing who you are in God. And I don't think that it's just about knowing in the sense that we often use it. It has to be about much more. It has to be a knowledge that penetrates our very being. I can know what the Bible says. In fact, I could be able to recite it, but is that true knowledge? No, I think real, absolute knowledge is the kind that is transformative. It changes how you think about yourself, your world, and God. So, knowing who you are in God is less about quoting the scriptures and reciting lines and more about an assurance so strong that chains of insecurity and self-hatred are broken.
That said, I clearly don't know who I am. If I did, I would not feel that way that I do. Now, I understand that being assured in God does not promise a life without struggles. There are triggers that can cause even the strongest to stumble. But this is not so simple. I have never experienced the true knowledge of who I am. I know what I'm supposed to believe, but in searching myself, I find nothing but doubt and disbelief.
I cannot remember a time in my life where perfection was not my goal. I grew up in home where there was so much hate and destruction, and I thought that if I could just be perfect then I would deserve to be loved. I felt like all of the things that happened to me were because of some innate deficiency that I could work to get rid of. I tried so hard to be the "good" one. I didn't want to be the one causing all of the pain. I realize now that I could not have caused the dysfunction in which I grew up. I was simply born into it, something I could not change. Yet, despite this realization, that need to be perfect remains. I cannot break the cycle that only seems to break me.
There is this constant war in my mind. I am tormented by everything I am and everything I'm not. Every mistake that I make resounds in my head, and I mean every last one. I torture myself from morning until night when my exhausted mind gives up the struggle. I feel like a failure 100% of the time. For a lot of my life, this torment took me down some difficult roads, and I dealt with it in the wrong ways, ways that only further destroyed an already broken person. In the past months, as I have been changed by God's love and forgiveness, I have struggled less. Yet, today, it caught up to me.
I drown in my self-hatred. Hatred for what I see in the mirror. Hatred for a person who is mean, judgmental, selfish, and spiteful. Hatred for someone who falls so short in everything she does. As I worked at my music today, I felt so worthless. I questioned my place here at all. I felt called to come here to pursue music. I know this, in part, because I would never do something so bold without God's prodding. But now that I'm here, I realize that I am truly nothing. A nobody. And this feeling should make me more reliant on God to fulfill His promises for my life and to guide me through this desert. Instead, it tempts to be angry with God.
There have been many times in my life in which I have been so angry with God that I nearly left Him entirely. Most of these times revolved around how I view myself. I'd shake my fist at the sky and question God. Why would He make me like He did? Doesn't He know what a mistake He made? Doesn't He know how much pain He has caused? Right now, I feel those same questions welling in my throat. "Why, God?" is the cry of my broken heart. But just as I feel myself sinking into that place, I have to jump back and reassess.
I was there today on that edge. Ready to be angry, to question, to wallow. But the service tonight made me think a lot. Again, who has set such high expectations? Who tells me that I have to be perfect? Who says that I am worthless, incapable, and talentless? I do. I say all of those things and more. It's always me. I'm always the problem, not God. What good does it do to turn against the one that never fails me? That never leaves me. That rescues me from danger, even the danger that I am to myself. What I need to to do is turn away from myself. To die to myself, in order to live in God. And honestly, good riddance to that person. It's so exhausting to keep her around.
My prayer today would be that I take my knowledge of God's love for me and let it transform me. That it would create such a change that self-love would be possible in my life. That God's love would soften and break every wall that has kept me from true belief in Him and His word. And just imagine. If I could love myself, perhaps the hardest person on Earth to love, then how much more I could love others. And that is my heart's desire.
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