Some Things I Have Learned About Myself Lately

As you all know I have been in a real funk the last few months. It has been the worst spiritual funk I have been in. I have fought more with my husband in the past few months than I have in the last 10 years since we have been “restored“.

But I think I am finally coming out of it.

Not because anything has changed much, but because I am realizing some things about myself that have needed changing for a while.

This book that I happen to be reading at the moment is really helping me to see myself in a new light. I have been trying to formulate in my brain how to say what I want to say so that it comes out right, but it still doesn’t make a lot of sense to me either! I guess it is not supposed to make much sense and that I am just supposed to trust this new found “thing”. It is freeing and yet one of the most scariest things I have ever been through since accepting Christ as my Savior.

I have learned that I am

~judgemental

~addicted to approval

~people pleaser

~quick to jump to conclusions

~control freak

~seriously prideful

I have always been those things and thought that at one point I had laid them down, but have just recently realized that I am STILL dealing with all of those things. It frustrates me that I have to return to all of these things and peel off new layers. This process hurts worse than anything I have been through.

Then to top it off, I have come to realize that going to church has become an idol to me. I did not realize this just until this week. My husband has been dealing with this for a while and finally came to terms with it. I was freaking out because we weren’t going to church anywhere. I could just picture God up there with His arms crossed, glaring at me for not gracing the church with my presence each week. On Sunday, I would get upset if we didn’t go because I felt like I would get punished if I wasn’t there. Then when we would go, I would pride myself on being “at church”–and yet, the whole time I was there, my mind was elsewhere. “What am I gonna serve for lunch?”, “I wonder if we will go out to eat?”, “I need to clean the house.”. Get my drift?

I have finally come to grips with the fact that God is not going to smite me down if I don’t go to church on Sundays. That does not mean I love Him any less. In fact, He is teaching me more and more how to love Him just like I am. Being a people pleaser, I have also realized that I have been trying to “people please” God which is totally ridiculous, but that is what I have been doing. Everything that I do for the church or things that I do, I have been doing them so that God would be pleased with me. It took this book to make me realize that is such a false notion. There is nothing I need to “do” to make God love me. I have already done the ONLY thing He required of me and that was to accept His son as my Savior.

I will walk with Him every day, but I no longer am feeling the need to “do-do-do” and learn how to just “be” while He teaches me to trust Him. This feeling is so weird for me because everything that I have been learning about church is completely changing and it is seriously rocking my world and turning everything in  me upside down.

Like I said before–it is very freeing, and yet scary all at the same time. Just being able to be me and me alone without worrying what everyone else thinks has just raised my mood level so much. I don’t feel so guilty for not going and doing things lately. I am enjoying this week this new found “freedom”.

So my suggestion is that if you are dealing with these feelings as well, check your motives. Why are you doing them? Once you answer that question, you will feel more alive than you have in a long time–once you let those feelings go.