Rejection

Oh that word..... that horrible, horrible word.

Rejection

I am so fearful of this word. For as long as I can remember, I have been terrified of being rejected. I like to be liked, as do many people. 

The only problem with liking to be liked is you can lose bits of pieces of yourself in order to be liked. The pieces of ourselves that we are quick to throw out the window is our imperfections. Sadly, we really can't just throw them out. What we end up doing is we cover them up. We hide them in the darkest corners and pray they won't peek through. 

No matter what we throw onto them, no matter how far we shove them into the corner, they will come out. Especially if we find ourselves in a real intimate relationship. If we are willing to have a real relationship with someone, we have to be willing to expose those dark corners and trust we will be loved for what the other person see's. 

Exposing means risking being rejected. Exposing means someone else could see your imperfection and hate them as much as you do. It's one thing to reject your own imperfections, but it's a whole other ball game if someone else rejects your imperfections. For someone to confirm the horridness of what you see in yourself, the thought of that kind of pain feels almost unbearable. 

But what is rejection wasn't the enemy. What if we looked rejection in the face and said, "I'm not scared of you." What if you put a light in our dark corners and accepted the imperfection for exactly as it is.... imperfection.

Like I mentions in my previous blog, I'm obsessed with other peoples blogs right now. I read this particular one that talk about insecurities and rejections. I LOVE LOVE LOVE some of the things the author had to say about them. I'm going to paste parts of the blog that I just loved but if you want to read the whole article, just click here.

"One thing I have found is that if I continue to only allow “perfect-covered-up-me” to be seen by others, then I will continue to believe that perfection is the only thing that is lovable. It’s difficult to truly know that the gross, messy, ugly parts of me are lovable too when I don’t give anyone the opportunity to see them. Since I believe I am only lovable when I look presentable, I allow beauty and love to be truth about me only when I think it is deserved. I have found, however, that the difficult part is allowing love in when you DON’T think you deserve it, when you don’t want anyone to see."

".....one thing I am learning is that in my willingness to be rejected, others (including myself) get an opportunity to feel accepted. "

Seriously, let that sink in. IF WE ONLY SHOW PERFECTION WE BEGIN TO BELIEVE THE LIE THAT IMPERFECTION IS NOT LOVABLE.

So my question is this, what if we accepted our dark places, what if we accepted rejection? What if we accepted who we are and didn't weigh ourselves based on what others thought of us, or what others think of us? How different would our days look? HOW MUCH MORE FREEING WOULD OUR LIVES BE! Lets kick rejection in the face and take away it's power. 

For really, if we think about it, rejection only has the power we give it.......

I love how she words this, she says, " there is unimaginable power in simply bringing 'the battle' to the light."

I'm not saying we will all be fixed by accepting imperfections. Many of our imperfections are a constant battle. But what I'm coming to find is that the more we hide from our own imperfections, our own insecurities, they are slowing growing and smothering us. they smother out the good and make us feel worthless. I'm not sure about you, but I hate feeling worthless and powerless.

This blog has really inspired me to look deep into my dark corners, see the ugly, messy, corners, and believe that I too can be loved for this imperfection. Then start loving myself, while still knowing I've got some not so pretty parts in me. 

"Here, I stand on the edge of the ledges I've made."

"When the good, God-given heart in you is stirred, it’s almost always for something the world needs anyway. In big and small ways." -Tsh Oxenreider

I love this quote. Tsh wrote it in a blog called What makes you come alive. It's a fantastic and very inspiring blog.  

I've been a little obsessed with blogs recently. I find myself reading one almost everyday. In May, I'll have been out of school for almost a year. It's interesting how school enlightens that intellectual part in a person. Every week, your mind is being challenged to think bigger, broader, to really challenge who you are and what you believe. I had no idea how much this fed me as a person until after I finished. I had become so use to the prompting by professors and classmates to really think about things that I had no idea that I had become dependent on that. I had no idea the importance this placed in my life. To be prompted to think..... really think about things.

Now that I'm aware of how important it is for me to be challenged, I've been reading many blogs. I've really enjoyed it and realized how much I really enjoy to think about things. I've also discovered that this is a healthy habit for me. I'm very much of a thinker. I'm constantly thinking about something all the time... Actually, I'm typically thinking about multiple things all the time. This is a good thing, but it can also be a bad thing. If I'm not careful, my mind wonders to places that are not good.... like the future. I've come to learn that I'm HORRIBLE about thinking about the future. My mind has become so consumed with worrying about what the future holds for me, that I've come to overlook so many good things that are in the present. I've made it a challenge to really discipline my mind to be more present focus. I want to take in each day as it is handed to me. I want to stop worrying about what the next day, week, or month is going to have in store for me. I want to really take in each minute and appreciate the fact that I will never get that minute or hour back. 


Being present also requires that I trust God more. I have now read TWO completely different blogs from two different people talking about trust. BOTH blogs gave the exact story of a mans encounter with Mother Teresa. One is called Ruthless Trust and another is called The Day I Stopped Asking God for Clarity. Great reads! Not to mention, my dear friend sent me a text of her morning devotion talking about staying present.

God really likes to make sure I REALLY get things. So he tells me the same thing, through multiple people, in multiple ways. That way, I don't second guess myself. He knows I'm bad about that.

So here I go..... I'm on a whole new journey. I'm taking life by the horns and I'm driving my way through.... blindfolded. I am terrified, I am worried, I am skeptical, I am so many things at this point. But its different from anything I have done before. I typically try to control things in my life and make what I want happen, but not this time. No, I ended up hurting myself and others in that process. I will not let that happen again. I'm keeping my eyes on the prize, my eyes on the goal and praying I'm better off on the other side. 

My City

I built a city once, it was a beautiful city.

This city was unlike any other city, for it was protected by high walls and built on dreams.

Many people heard of this city and all it's splendor.

It was the talk of many towns of how protected it was and the freedom it was built on.

Oh my city, how it's beauty shined.

There was music in the streets night and day, the sounds of laughter could be heard from miles away.

And oh the walls, their protection shined with colors.

People would look to the walls and smile, for their city was protected, there was nothing to fear.

My city, My city, how you shined.

You were everything I could have wanted, everything I could have dreamed.

The dreams you were built on were marvelous, they radiated my town.

But cities cannot survive on dreams, no, for dreams do not provide solid ground.

I'll never forget the day, it is a day to never forget.

I remember staring at the high wall, the wall I knew would protect.

I stared as my feet sank in the ground, 

For a city cannot survive on dreams and dreams alone.

As my city fell, my walls stood high.

For it was not enemies my city had to fear, it was I.

For I had built my city on dreams and every fool knows,

A city cannot not survive on dreams alone.

"I've got two hands and one beating heart. I'm going to be alright"

Wow!

That's all I really know to say right now.

I am in total amazement and a little embarrassed.

I'm in amazement and how big God is and how he really sees the bigger picture. Then I'm embarrassed at my 'know it all' attitude and small minded ness of who God is.

It was back in 2011 that I decided to start writing blogs. I was very hesitant about it at first because I really don't believe I'm a good writer, still don't believe it. But despite my hesitations, I decided it would be a thing to try out for a bit.... Just to see what it would be like.

I stayed pretty consistent for a few years, then life got in the way and I slowly stopped.

I didn't have any expectations when I started. I mostly did it to jot down a few of my thoughts. Little did I know that what I've written would help me 2-3 years down the road. I was reading an entry from 2 years ago called Sit Down. Relax. Enjoy the Moment. I was blown away how what I wrote is exactly what I needed to hear right now.

It's just really cool how God communicates with us sometimes. It's also really cool how He knows exactly how our lives are going to play out, he knows the choices we're going to make, and he can use something small, as a blog, to help.

I'm in good hands.

Beautiful Oops!

This week, by far, has been the longest week! Maybe the fact that I've worked 10-12 hour days the past few days might have something to do with it. Not only have I worked long days, but Tuesday at work was by far one of the most stressful/ bad days I have encountered in a long time.

When it rain it pours right?

Thankfully, it's Thursday now. I'm one and a half days away from having a little bit of a weekend. I'm looking forward to have a "social" run in a half marathon with Shelly on Sunday. Typically for me, all my runs are social but I get to label this one as an official social run because Shelly won't be competing with herself on this one! Hahaha! Welcome to my way of running Shelly :)

I really have had so much on my mind over the past few weeks. I'm glad I started writing again. It's amazing how writing my thoughts down really helps me process. I'm a verbal processor anyways, so typically I will talk my way through my thoughts, but there has been so much that talking hasn't been enough. On top of talking and writing blogs again, I'm also journaling and painting just to try and get everything out!

It really was like Pandora's box was opened in me and with one tap, all these emotions exploded inside of me.

I remember the day, almost to the exact time when I just shut down. This has happened once before, it was when I was working as an in home counselor. I'm an extremely empathetic person and when I get around many intense emotions or if I start feeling intense emotions I'll just shut down. I just reach a point where I don't want to feel that much heart break. So instead of allowing myself to feel the heart break and just break down myself, I repress whatever I'm feeling.

This shut down mode is by far the longest one I've had. It lasted close to 8 months. So for over 8 months, any sadness, anger, or hurt I felt, I just pushed it away rather than dealing with it. The thing about pushed away emotions is that they never really leave. They're just hidden, waiting to resurface.

There are consequences to repressing emotions. You find yourself doing things that normally you would never do. You lose respect for yourself and what normally you would have had the strength to say no to, you don't have the ability to do it. I'm not too surprised by this, because if you think about it, repressing emotions takes a whole lot of energy. You're left with very little energy to use self control.

So here I am, all 8 months of emotions exploding out of me. I have been tempted many times to repress it all back. Telling myself that it will all fix itself, just put it back in the box but I know this is a lie. It will not fix itself in the box. If I put it back in the box, I'm denying my emotions, thoughts, and feelings which is leading me back into denial, which leads me into deceit, which leads me into living a lie. THAT IS NOT ME AND I REFUSE TO LIVE A LIE.

At first, I was not happy about all this. I was mad at myself and really felt I had let myself and God down. Then a children's book that I read with Ella came into my mind. It's called Beautiful OOPS! It's a book showing how you can take a mistake that you might make when drawing, painting, etc and turn it into something beautiful, different, or creative. The same goes for my mistakes and screw ups. Even though what might look like a disaster can really be turned into something just as beautiful as what you initially started out with.

I'm mean, think about it. Some of the most beautiful poems, songs, paintings, books, etc came from people exploding with emotions. Not just one type of emotion, but all emotions.

Out of all I'm having to face, I'm confident in 2 particular things that I know about myself that will help me through. 1. I always looks for the good in all situations 2. When I set my mind to something, there is nothing that will hold me back from accomplishing it.

"God is in the business of blowing your mind"

I recently read an article that has spoken so much truth over my life recently. I'll post the link at the bottom of this blog, but the very last sentence of the article is the title of this post, "God is in the business of blowing your mind."

I'm not sure about you but that phrase pumps me up. It pumped me up the moment I read it. I was all like, "Heck yeah! Blow my mind God! Let's do it!"

Ha! How does the phrase go, "Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it."

Oh, God's been blowing my mind lately. He's been blowing it up so much that I didn't sleep through a whole night for almost 3 weeks. 

I mentioned in my last post that I had been awaken recently, awakened to many things in my life I had been avoiding. When God woke me up, he REALLY woke me up. I had NO IDEA that I had gone into auto pilot mode and was just going with the flow of things. I had gotten so caught up in the flow, I realized that I had lost pieces of myself. 

"But wait..." my arrogant self began to protest, "you're a counselor.... you're suppose to stay in tune with yourself, stay in check....." Well self, you really can't do it all can you. (Excuse me while I step off my high horse).

Truthfully, I've never had the intention to think I'm better than anyone. But when you find yourself in a place where you neglect the imperfection in yourself, your about equal to an arrogant fool. 

Funny how wonderful denial is. To deny your issues, to deny your faults, to deny the fact that you are a  dysfunctional human being. I already find myself wanting to crawl back into the ignorant hole I came out of. For the saying that ignorance is bliss, could never be more true. 

I'll openly admit, as a christian, it's not very welcomed to say you're unhappy. I mean, scripture talks about how you are to give thanks to God in all things. So when you find yourself or a friend in a place of unhappiness, it's a natural reactions to want to prove to them that in reality, they have no reason to be unhappy. Therefore, pouring guilt and shame onto the honesty that is coming from this persons mouth. Which is worse, to confess we're not happy or to cover up our unhappiness with the guilt and shame that we have no reason to feel that way? I have seen time and time again in my own life and others what shame and guilt does to change your behavior. I'll go ahead and give you a spoiler alert.... IT DOESN'T DO A DAMN THING. If anything, it will just make you fall harder and deeper back into that behavior and make your shame and guilt an even heavier burden to carry and creating a DEEPER space between you and God. Which brings me to the definition of sin..... Sin is what comes between us and God right? So if we are attacking our sin with guilt and shame, aren't we really just creating a bigger space between us and God? Fighting sin with sin doesn't do us any good. We are just tightening our chains, binding ourselves deeper into a downward cycle.

Now don't get me wrong, wallowing in our unhappiness doesn't do us any good either. The point I want to make is that I think it is good and it's healthy to confess when we're unhappy. It's good to confess it. And if we are the person people choose to confess this too, it's good to meet that person right there, in that honesty of where they admit they are, and to love them. Sometimes the best kind of love you can give anyone is an open ear and a closed mouth. TRUTH! 

"But I will not condone sin" you might say. Yeah, I hear ya. I love how Jude 1:23, The Message translation words it, "Be tender with sinners, but not soft on sin. The sin itself stinks to high heaven." I think that says it all.

After we confess, allow God to be who He is, and lead you to the root of your unhappiness. He will happily do it..... when he knows we're ready. 

God knew I was ready. He knew I was ready to get out of my auto pilot mode and to embrace the roots of dissatisfaction in my life. He also wanted me to embrace the roots of hurt and to find healing and forgiveness. When you're in the line of work I'm in, you tend to down play your own issues for there's always someone walking in and telling you a much worse scenario. But the reality is that we live in a world where sin is very much alive. And if sin is alive, you will find hurt and pain. We all have hurt and we all have pain. It may look different, have different shapes and sizes, but we all have it. 

I think of my many nurse friends when I think of hurt. I hear stories about different types of patients they encounter and different types of problems people come to doctors for. The thing about their job is this, no matter how insignificant one persons problem is in comparison to another, they treat each with the exact same caution and care. I can't help but believe this is what God does for us. No matter what we've experience, no matter the size of our wounds, God wants to heal us just as much as he wants to heal the person with the "bigger" wound. Hurt is hurt, everyone deserves healing. 

I love what this lady says about in this blog about healing.
 "Don’t imagine that the trauma of your childhood has been left in the past. It simmers under the surface. And it will surprise you at how suddenly it can boil up or suck you under. The work of healing those hard places might involve reading books or finding counseling. (Don’t be too afraid or too ashamed to ask for help.)"

Ignorance might seem blissful, but it's a lie. Hurt that we do not deal with will always be under the surface, making it's way to the top. It spits it's way out here and there. And if we're not careful, the hurt that spits out will expel onto someone else, creating hurt in them.

I do believe God is in the business of blowing minds. It might not be the kind of mind blowing we initially thought it would be but I'm standing firm on my belief that it is GOOD. Nothing, nothing but goodness comes from Him. 

http://www.relevantmagazine.com/life/whole-life/20-things-i-wish-id-known-my-late-twenties

P.S. Be fore warned, many more blog post might be coming my way. I got out of habit of writing them but with all that I have going on in my mind, this is the best outlet for the time being. I hope you'll sit back and enjoy this roller coaster with me.

"Oh I am lost and found"

"What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us? Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else? Who then will condemn us? No one—for Christ Jesus died for us and was raised to life for us, and he is sitting in the place of honor at God’s right hand, pleading for us. Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us. And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord."(Romans 8:31, 32, 34, 35, 37-39 NLT)

I am so blessed and so encouraged by these verses recently. There comes a time, when you find yourself in a place of brokenness.

To wake up and have to face some realities in your life is tough. Especially when you had been doing everything in your power to ignore or cover up reality. It's really easy to do, until you become exposed and all you have left to do is sit and look at what all the ignoring and covering up has done.

It's like walking into your house one day to a horrid smell. You have suspicions that you have mold in your house, but instead of looking for the mold and getting rid of it, you clean everything you can see, spray febreeze, light candles, anything and everything to cover up the stench. You work so hard at it that you eventually convince yourself that it's gone. Truthfully, in your mind it is. You've become immune to the smell.

You then decide you're going to sell the house. You're shopping for realtor's and a few have even walked in and never said a word about the stench. Then, an honest realtor walks in and smells the stench. Instead of ignoring it and not saying anything they say, "Uh, something smells really bad in here. I think you might have mold in your house. I really want to help you sell this house but we honestly can't until you fix the mold problem." BAM! Denial is over, you are forced to face the fact that something is wrong and you're gonna have to put the time and energy into fixing it.
When you've been ignoring the problem for so long, it makes it hard to face reality. As much as it hurts and as much time as it's going to take, facing problems and fixing them is going to get you where you need to be.


So here you are, denial is over, you've have come to terms with the fact that mold is in your house somewhere. Then the hunt begins. The smartest place to look first is somewhere where water has access to right? So you look under your kitchen sink and it's worse than you thought. MOLD IS EVERYWHERE. It's all under the sink, it's in your cabinets, it's in your walls, it's under your floors. What happens at this point? You're pissed! "What the hell was I thinking?! Why didn't I just look under the sink in the first place?! Why didn't I address the problem when I first smelled it? Now I have to redo my WHOLE kitchen. Good job self."



The anger continues on and off as you begin the process of tearing down your cabinets. As your cleaning everything out to redo your kitchen, you run into appliances that have been handed down to you. You want to keep them, these appliances have meaning behind them, it's more than just an appliance to you now. But because of your denial, the mold has moved onto the appliance and it unrepairable. Anger has turned into sadness at this point. Your heart is broken because you know you'll have to throw the appliance away. Yeah, it's just an appliance, you can buy another, maybe a better one, but the person who gave this to you, who trusted you to keep it is going to be hurt. Tears fall harder.


Now here you are. You can't even recognize your kitchen at this point. There are holes, piles of broken pieces. But yet, in the midst of the clutter and chaos, an overwhelming sense of peace comes over you. As you stare into the mess, you notice your eyes begin to water and unexpectedly, a huge smile crosses your face. The smile is brought by one simply amazing thought, "The mold is GONE."


The world is completely changed at this point, because even though you had to lose some special things along the way, you know you're going to be able to have a newer and better kitchen. You can walk into your home without fear of a band stench or fear of other people knowing about the stench. You don't constantly have to spray things in your home to cover the smell. A vision comes into your head of a peace and comfort that doubled.... no, tripled.... what you had before. Even though there is still a huge mess to begin cleaning up, planning, and remodeling to be done, you realize that for the first time in years, you have a sense of hope. Beautiful, beautiful hope.


I love the verse I posted at the beginning because it reminds me that no matter what I do, no matter how deep my denial was, no matter how big of a mess I have made, Jesus is STILL advocating for me, and he will NOT with hold his love or the goodness he has in store for me. I'm so lucky to have a love this big in my life!