Thursday, March 13, 2008

Revelation

Ok, so people called me brave after my last big self-exposing post. I warn you, this is bigger, deeper and uglier. I could barely face it myself, but I feel like I have to deal with it to get beyond it and to keep from passing it on to Jadyn.







I was lying awake the other night wrestling with a gnawing pain in me that I couldn't name. As I began to think on it and allow myself to really feel it, I realized what it could be.

I think I may hate myself. Maybe I always have, as far back as I can remember. I can't think of much I truly like about myself. Even the things I try to see as good are laced with negatives. I second-guess everything I see in me that could have any possible value. I judge myself with the harshest eye, and I see almost everything I have ever done as failing, or at least "not good enough". And most of my life I have been trying to prove to others that I'm worth having around. Ironically, this often winds up having the opposite effect. I act the way I think people want me to act and usually get it wrong. No wonder I'm so tired!

I don't say all this to ask for sympathy or cheering up. I'm not asking for anyone to feel sorry for me or list the good qualities they see in me. And while recent events have put me more in touch with my pain, they are not the true reason for it, or for my "brave" disclosure of it. I'm simply voicing this as a revelation I've had in hopes of getting close to the root of my "illness"; maybe this will ultimately help me get better. Maybe this is the bottom and from now on the direction will be up.

But the coinciding truth to all this is that I have no real understanding of how to turn this around. I don't know how to love myself. All I can do in this moment of ultimate desperation and vulnerability is beg God to heal me, to show me how to get past this, and to help me become who I was meant to be underneath all this yuck.

2 comments:

Jim Baker said...

It sounds like it may be time to put a Sara Groves CD in the player then praying on the questions that are in your mind. I do believe that God is big enough to deal with our problems if we are willing to turn them over to Him and accept what is placed before us to do. Unfortunately, I am often too much like Jonah and avoid the inevitable.

Rencri said...

Amanda,

My prayer for you is that God will help you view yourself through his eyes. You are his dearly loved child, and I ask that he will reveal to you the person he created you to be, perfect in his eyes, standing before him in splendor.

I love you!

Sassy

He will supply all of your needs according to his riches in glory!


I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself, and that the shame of your nakedness will not be revealed; and eye salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see.

Revelation 3:18
New American Standard Bible (©1995)