I only have one more chapter left in Captivating, but I must break my initial condition of not commenting on the book before I finish it- again. I’ve done it at least once, if not twice (I don’t remember now). Just goes to show that God’s plan and my plan for things rarely line up.
In the chapter I read today, Stasi mentioned an exercise she did at a women’s retreat of seeking out lies she had believed throughout her life. This is something I have also done before so I wasn’t overly moved by it. Oops. Anyway, what caught my attention was that the women sought out to name these lies and their owners in the context of spiritual warfare.
I had never done that before.
Here, I will put my plug that I know little to nothing about spiritual warfare, and that the topic makes me (and many others, I’m sure) slightly, if not extremely, uncomfortable. I can’t say I have doubt about its existence, but I definitely don’t like to think about it because I’m not sure what to do about it. So I overlook it.
Today had to be different, though. Between reading this chapter in Captivating and listening to an album a friend referred to me called Dear Wormwood, both at the same time, I knew that God was trying to tell me something.
Ironic after I wrote the other day about how God speaks to us.
[Side note- the album Dear Wormwood is by the group The Oh Hellos. The songs are all inspired by C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters. I only started listening to them today, but you should check them out here: http://www.theohhellos.com/]
I’m going to just be straight and vulnerable with all of you about what I discovered today. It took about 30 seconds of meditation to uncover one of the biggest, most influential lies in my life. It is the lie that I am (and always have been) behind, and that I will never catch up to or attain what my peers have accomplished. I’m missing something they all have.
I had a rush of memories starting from kindergarten. Story time. First day of kindergarten, little Arianna shows up and sees a color by number at her desk. Excited (because what 6 year old doesn’t love coloring?), she starts filling in the white
paces with the appropriate colors, only to have the boy next to her say, “You’re doing it wrong. You’re only supposed to color this part of the page.”Devastated. Rule-abiding Arianna has already messed up and it’s only the first day of school.
Now- this is the important part. The teacher comes by and corrects the boy, affirming what Arianna had been doing, yet she cannot shake the feeling that she is wrong and she is missing something crucial that the other kids have.
It seems like a funny story, and it probably is, but if I’m totally honest- even now, when I think back to that memory, I still experience this terrible feeling. Maybe I’m ridiculous. Maybe I’m broken. Other people would have moved past this.
What am I missing?
And the cycle continues.
Much of my life has been a continuous struggle to reach the impossibly high standards my perception has equated with my peers. It’s been a life of being hyperaware of what the people around me are doing, and making sure I am at least as good- and working really hard to cover up the fact that I am very clearly missing whatever everyone else has to make them better. It’s working hard to make it look like I have everything together, otherwise people will realize that I’m missing “what it takes.” And it’s a constant mental battle of seeing this flaw and convincing yourself to “get over it.”
I’m trying my best to describe this feeling in writing. Maybe you’ve felt it before. It’s the fear that you are not enough, mixed with the shame of trying to compare yourself to others when that isn’t Biblical and “just be happy with the way the Lord made you.”
It’s the idea that either something is missing, or something is wrong with me because I have the constant fear that I am missing something. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve argued myself crazy trying to convince myself that I shouldn’t feel inadequate because God doesn’t make mistakes.
And it had never occurred to me that those ideas could be coming from something else, and were not the result of a defect in my character.
So…what does it take to seriously consider this possibility? And what does it mean to believe in spiritual warfare?
When I reflect on times that were the hardest for me to love myself, I realize that these unhealthy thoughts of “you don’t have it” led to literal internal battles where I was warring against myself. A soul divided, if you will. And is this not something that the Enemy of our loving God would want? To turn us against ourselves internally, so we fight and defeat ourselves?
It takes a lot of faith to believe this. Probably more faith than believing God exists. I’m not sure I have that level of faith yet. What I do know is that I felt something click inside of me when I thought of “my” lie in the context of spiritual warfare, and that for the first time in a long time, I felt my heart and mind united in God and in love.
I can’t quantify this. I didn’t see the Devil and get his picture. The Devil didn’t send me hate mail that I have piled up to show you. I have no proof. When you boil it down, it comes down to a hunch, or a feeling I had this morning.
I do have a record of my thought process over the past month where God has led me through an exploration of emotions and feelings, and where He has validated them to me in my life. And now here I am, realizing I am one of those crazy people whose testimony involves something beyond the explainable. I am one of those people whose stories make me uncomfortable when I hear them.
Not sure if I like that.
I don’t really have a conclusion here, except to say that this journey took a turn for the massively unexpected, and that if you decide I haven’t gone off the deep end and you keep reading my posts, be ready for more posts unpacking whatever happened during this one.