There are things I hate, I end up doing.
Things I wanna do, I just don’t do.
Lord it seems so sad, why am I so bad?
When in my heart, I only wanna be like you?
~ Keith Green
When a Psalmist sings, their perspective and circumstances frame temporal misery as truth. It’s not really how it needs to be, it’s just how it feels right now.
This Psalmist despaired over the family ridden Christmas season. Everywhere else, there is such freedom, such noticeable change due to significant healing. But, there… I became this person, entirely unrecognizable. It was terrifying and excruciating. I was surrounded by people but entirely disconnected, and emotionally void. I’ve never felt like I fit into the rhythm of my family of origin, and leaving behind a theology they still share hasn’t contributed to family unity. The first year, there were arguments which have now been replaced by subtly nuanced overtly pointed statements I choose not to go to war over in front of my children. For a few years now I had thought that I was just raw from the trauma of recent years; feeling single and grieving lost friendships due to theological shifts. But that feeling is as old, it seems, as life itself, that distance and lack of connection. And knowing who I am in the Great I Am seems to do little to keep the void from swallowing me up, and I find myself retreating to the cocoon of my home across town.
It’s ridiculous, I’ve never been so well in my life, and yet, here I am, fetal position, leaking out of every orifice, and wondering why it’s not enough to have made the effort to heal, affirmed my existence according to God’s opinion of me, gotten the outside perspective of wise friends and counsellors on my healing journey. I know that what is swirling around the inside of my skull is not flowing out of the Mind of Christ, and yet I cannot stop it.
Why am I so prickly around my family? I love them. We’ve worked through as much baggage as we can without them changing their world view. They’ve told me they love me. Very practically supported me in my journey as a single again parent. I’m ok for a little while. When the topic is light, and mostly about the kids, and then… I feel myself go sullen, as though I am closed off. Numb. I become an observer. It’s palpable. I’m not bitter, I just seem to have found the valve to shut off my natural flow. A headache ensues and I wish to retreat into sleep. Every time. I even wake up perfectly well and optimistic, and then I shrivel. I could lie and say my extrovert got tired, but really, this is the version of me my family saw the most growing up, and they saw it enough that if I was happy, I was called plastic and they were sure it wouldn’t last. So quite possibly, my psyche is protecting itself.
I’m quite secure really. Everywhere but here. So what’s the issue. I’ve always been this way here. I suppose I could abandon ship and stay on the surface with these people, and let every family gathering send me to bed. I have enough tools to cope. But, that’s not optimum. And besides, is it ok to lose perspective on your identity with the one group of people who loves you the most? That was putting it nicely. I felt ostracized, alone, and entirely rejected. My understanding of myself was replaced with a black hole of nothingness.
Let’s be clear. I believe in healing. I believe in using personality typing quizzes. I believe in the use of affirmations. All of these things have made a tangible difference. What was becoming immensely clear was not that my family was refusing to see me as I had come to know myself, but that I was incapable of being her there. I was still acting out of a wound. I was scared. I was treating them like the enemy, not because they ever were, or because that was who I am… but because a fear of rejection seeded into my soul as a tiny baby inside my mother, vamping on her anxious emotion, long since repented of on a cognitive level, had pressed override on my default setting and my personality went into hiding. I couldn’t be myself, because I wasn’t securely aware of my own specific make up. My blueprint, my design - if only I could unearth that… But no one was there to ask about myself at that untouched stage. A person is a bit like an archaeological dig. We are revealed bit by bit, often in backwards layers. But what if we could ask what we were when we were a spark in the Maker’s imagination? Carefully designed and declared good. Would there be peace, in seeing, or finding that niche?
Who am I specifically? Why was I placed in that family? If we were all functioning out of the full glory of our being, what would my role be? How would my personality flow effortlessly into the spiritual unity of that first community? If only I had a way to see…
And then, light dispelled the gloom of the void. And I made a choice to consult the one who was there, and has given me all I need for life and godliness. I took a trip into the mind of Christ, and let silence facilitate presence. And I got to meet myself. Strange and wonderful. Pictures of butterflies and trees, explanations and understanding, peace bred of confidence from personal revelation. My understanding was no longer hypothetical, it was specific, and I saw myself before life and time made its mark. I really do belong here. And I am beautifully placed whether others find my giftings practically useful or not. That thought is like a key to peace, really, because being a person who has only acted out of her wounds, which tends to close a person off from true intimacy, I lived isolated from my family my whole life. The same resources put into me, which they needed, were also denied them. Consequently, they may never enjoy the full function of them unless their wounds are allowed to heal. Moreover, there is nothing to be gained by trying to be seen. I will be visible when those around me are ready. Until them, I am only pushing on painfully inflamed wounds, my good intentions creating their hell.
Subsequent to this freeing experience, I heard Kay Fairchild talk about “knowing thyself” in the context of turning within and embracing one’s true identity in the Christ mind. I would take it one more intimate step. Ask to see yourself in your original blueprint. Because if you are the manifestation of His many pleasant and perfect thoughts of you, it’s quite possible that embracing yourself as you were designed in a specific, non abstract sense could be the most healing experience you will ever have. Human trauma locks us away in a prison of our own making. It steals joy and freedom faster than any other experience. Walls of self protection come ready made and our prickly parts come out, pushing loved ones away when we need them. Many of the things the Maker showed me in the silence were things close friends have tried to tell me they see, but I could only ever half heartedly agree. But how do we argue with the one who dreamed us into being?
So, if there are things I hate, I end up doing, and things I want to do, I just don’t do. If I see myself as bad trying to be the good I know I am… Maybe it’s time to know myself well enough to go back to the factory setting. The default of Love expressed with my specific bent. The default of joyful, uninhibited, safe union with my Maker. To be divorced from the lies I have taken through life with me and experience the perfect marriage of my tangible being with my very real but intangible source, so that in me, the Christ might be manifest, and I might not so much bring him glory, as reflect that which he bestowed on me when He Called me Good. And, to happily sink myself into the community of His Body at Large. For we are not all hands or feet, some are hearts and guts, and knees and ankles, and hips. We are One, just as He and the Father are One. Togetherish in our at-oneness. Settled deep into the collective consciousness and mind of Christ. I am healed. I am also known. And seen. And designed flawlessly. Breathtaking. And now I know why drawing flowers and leafy trees, and pink butterflies has always made me feel centred. The Light was trying to get through! Ask Him. Don’t you want to know?