Changing My Perspective

"Has the pain of your past ever made it hard for you to believe God's promises and plans for your future?  What do you sense he wants to change in your perspective?"

I found this topic to be the most challenging for me.  That's why I'm choosing to tackle it.  I'm tired of avoiding the things that are uncomfortable to me.  I would like to try to face them head on.  So here goes....(gulp)

The pain of my past has absolutely made it hard for me to believe God's promises.  Most of my life has been lived in captivity to my past.  Even when I'm ignoring my past, my decisions and reactions in life tend to get directed by the very past that I'm trying to ignore.

Like many of you, I come from a broken home.  More accurately, it was never whole to begin with.  I was raised by my maternal grandmother.  I called her Mama because in my heart she was.  In my early years I loved her with a fearless abandon.  She was my entire world.  My mother left me with my "Mama" when I was six months old.  My father denied me altogether.  I wasn't a new life to be celebrated, rather I was the product of an affair.  My mother was married to another man and my father was engaged to another woman.  Based on all the whispers, I grew up believing that I was something to be ashamed of.  I didn't even know what my father looked like.  I felt unwanted and unloved by the people that mattered most.  My feelings of worthlessness would later be reinforced by my grandmother's struggle with alcoholism.  So began the pattern of me trying to be "good enough" to keep her sober.  It was painful to watch her repeatedly hospitalized because of her disease.  I was always afraid that she was going to die and leave me like everyone else had.  Besides that, my grandmother was not a happy drinker.  The man she lived with was also an alcoholic, but he was my protector.  I called him granddaddy and he always protected me from the worst of my grandmother's drunken rages.  We spent countless hours sitting in his old Ford truck listening to 8 tracks and hiding out.  He never said very much.  We just stayed there until the storm blew over.  Unfortunately, my sole protector passed away when I was nine.  I always believed alcohol would take my grandmother from me, but it was my granddaddy that was snatched away by his addiction much too soon. I never knew what I had in him until years after he was gone.  Without his protection my life became much more difficult.  It would get even worse before it got better.

I was sexually abused by my aunt's husband when I was twelve years old.  He was the best dad I never had until his betrayal.  My love and trust for him made the betrayal all the more painful.  Rather than receiving the support I needed from my family, I received the blame instead.  Even my grandmother joined the mob, which was excruciatingly painful for me.  Many hurtful things were said and nothing was done to help me.  In my pain I even went so far as to cut my arm from top to bottom with a razor blade.  I went to my grandmother to show her what I'd done and to tell her that I needed help.  That was my outward cry.  She said she'd get me some.  She never did and it was never mentioned again.  These memories are just the highlights of what it was like growing up in my family.  There were lots of other things that caused my heart to ache besides.  Sadly, I wasn't the only girl in my family to suffer from sexual abuse.  It felt like my family was a magnet for this sort of thing.  Yet no one was ever held responsible.

All of these happenings certainly caused me to doubt God's promises.  Even now I carry around a ton of baggage.  I know that Jesus was with me through it all.  I even knew that then.  I know how great he is.  It's myself that I have trouble believing in.  I wish I could honestly say that I have overcome all of it and am completely ready to embrace God's plan for my life, but I can't make that claim quite yet.  I'm still working through it.  I'm still trying to figure out why I do the things I do and feel the way I feel.  On the outside my life looks normal.  I'm usually able to convince others that it is, unless they try to get too close to me.  I'm very guarded and I work very hard to keep people from getting too close.  I can only handle surface level relationships.  Though I am the decision maker for my own course in life, I haven't really chosen it.  My fears have kept me from believing that I even have a choice.  My insecurities have led to poor decisions, many regrets, and even more shame.  If I were to be completely honest, which I rarely am regarding my real emotions, my life can feel extremely lonely and empty at times.  I am truly blessed to have a husband and son but I know they are not all I need.  The good news is that I can feel Jesus urging me forward to a better way of living.  At my own pace he is providing me with the courage to face my past so that I might begin to live my purposed life.  He has shown me things about my past that are helping me heal.  For example, I now understand that the thoughts and attitudes of my family were muddled by substance abuse and alcoholism.  Their words weren't reliable or grounded in truth of any kind.  Their words were not a reflection of Jesus' love for me or of my worth.  God did not allow those terrible things to happen, but he did hold me close through my darkest nights.  Every night I'd imagine him there in my room, holding me tightly, as I drifted off to sleep on a tear soaked pillow.  I'm an old pro at asking him to help me through in a general sense, but I've never trusted him enough to ask for his help when it comes to leading a full life with purpose.  Tonight I can't help wondering why this has been the case for so long.  Perhaps I think he's done enough just by getting me through.  If I ask for anything more, will he get tired of me too?  In answer to this doubt I sense him telling me that he didn't carry me through all of the storms so that I might simply survive.  I hear his call towards a higher purpose and I feel like Gideon did when the Lord called on him.  I am terrified, but I am also hopeful.  I now recognize the voice that tells me I'm not worth anything as the voice of the enemy.  The most important thing that God is revealing to me is that I need to keep myself surrounded by his love and his words.  I need every tool I can carry to fight that misleading voice whenever and wherever it arises.  I pray that Jesus will continue to reveal his truths to me and that he'll continue to uncover the lies that I have believed for too long.