Reality

When something said or done to us (particularly in our childhood) is unkind or painful, our reaction may cause us to believe lies about ourselves that are not based on reality. Our personality may also  predispose us to these tendencies. For instance, my husband and siblings attended the same school as me but were not affected by the rules and regulations in the same way I was.

The devil then uses these lies we believe, and emotional and spiritual damage is caused.

Inner Critic

A few years ago, because of much stress in my life and a possible medical diagnosis that didn’t look good, I was “out for the count.” In order to get better, for two years I really worked on my physical health. It helped immensely, but I realized I still had something unresolved. I had an inner critic that would not leave me alone.

Work of Grace

Self-help suggests using affirmations to help bring self-worth, but that does not work for me. Jonathan Morris says, “Simply replacing lies with truths (even biblical truths) can help someone establish a semblance of stability in his or her life, and it’s a necessary step toward full mind renewal, but when there’s deep-seated damage, knowing the truth is rarely enough to achieve the full renewal of the mind and healing of the heart. God needs to step in and work a miracle of grace.”

That brings me a whole lot of peace.

I haven’t written for about three weeks, and that is because I was feeling stuck. I am coming full circle as I look at my issues and think my way through something I was reading and how it applies to my life.

Many years ago, I developed the habit of reading self-help books. Self-help is built from the premise of being disciplined, changing one’s thought patterns, and executing willpower—in other words, a whole lot of work. As I’ve written before, that has never been helpful for me. Every time I try harder, I end up with obsessive thoughts and feel like I have failed.

Powerless

I also have not been happy with a method that does not seem to have any depth. I was looking for something similar to self-help with a believer’s perspective. Lately, I came upon a book called, God Wants You to Be Happy…From Self-Help to God’s Help. It seemed to be what I was looking for. It talks about some people just being stuck with the self-help method. They feel powerless even after turning their lives over to God’s grace. And that has been me.

On a post several weeks ago, I mentioned having an encounter            with God’s grace. My deliverance from unhealthy guilt was life-changing and has been lasting. However, fleshing out the grace of God in my self-worth has been challenging, to say the least. Jonathan Morris says, “This blockage feels like powerlessness over negative thought and behavior patterns.”

He also says, “Chances are you don’t think much about the devil and his action in your life, and that’s probably a healthy choice.” But, “if we ignore the devil’s ability to influence our minds and wreak serious havoc on them, we will always be missing an important factor in the equation of emotional and spiritual healing. He is actively working to sow doubt and confusion. The devil’s lies do damage!”

I want to follow up with this in the next posts as I work my way along.

GUILT

At school I was taught the same principles and values as my parents taught, but somehow the school’s teaching led me to think of God as someone who was out to punish me. Being a sensitive girl, this led to an unhealthy guilt. Interspersed through all the good times I had as a kid were these nagging feelings in the back of my mind.

Even as I reached adulthood and beyond, I never got over my guilt issues. They haunted me, sometimes worse than others, as when our eldest son was unwell from birth and died a year later. In my mind, I thought perhaps I was being punished for something I had done wrong.

Finally, when our two living sons were seven and five years of age, my life crumbled to the ground. The tipping point to what had now become anxiety and depression was a tragedy that took place in our small town. All the emotions came in full force, and I could not rise above it.

But I realized that I needed to find my way out of this and couldn’t rely on anyone else to fix my problems. I needed to find my own answers, began to look at my symptoms, read and did research on what could be wrong with me, and found that obsessive thinking was actually an imbalance. Along this journey, I received help in the form of medication. As the days went by, we became cautiously optimistic that I was recovering.

GRACE

I came to discover that the right kind of guilt brings about positive change, not rumination over past wrongs. God was not standing over me with a whip, ready to punish me for something. Instead, he was extending me grace and I have not questioned this fact since that time.

When a person thinks obsessively, they try over and over to think their way out of a problem, when, in fact, the opposite actually brings relief and normal thought patterns.

Letting go and letting the medication do its work brought the relief I needed.