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aquatickitten · 17-10-2009, 02:42 AM

in-a-pickle: I was planning on posting this sometime soon anyway, but you just gave me the push I needed to do it right now.

I have this tendency to return to what I'll call my default setting when I'm not paying attention. For me that means cynical and faithless and closed off. My perspective on the world goes back to how it used to be--no one can be trusted, I can't let myself need anything, I can't let myself feel anything--bad or good. And you know how people say that everyone thinks of God as being like their father until they learn better? Well, I go back to that, too. God becomes someone who's just...impossible to please, always angry with me, hateful, mean, prone to flying into unpredictable rages about things I don't notice I've done wrong. And I still want his love and approval more than anything else, but part of me is so convinced that he must think I'm disgusting/dirty/stupid/[fill in your negative adjective here]...I get so terrified he'll say those things, so afraid he'll reject me. At least to my mind, suspecting is still better than knowing it's true, because then I'd have nothing left.

[Does that sound as ridiculous as it actually is? I hope so.

God is nothing like that.]

God's love has always been sort of an impossible thing for me to believe. I've had days where I was so determined to trust God, to let him in, and I'd sit on my bedroom floor shaking and just generally being terrified. I could rarely manage it for more than a few hours at a time, and then after that I'd run so far, so fast that it was hurting things more than it helped. And then there was the SI/ED connection...the more I thought about letting a perfect, holy God inside the walls I'd built up, the more ashamed and dirty I felt. The more I thought about God, the more I felt a need to punish myself because I wasn't good enough.

So...this is one of those things I've been struggling with for years. I became a Christian at 13, on the floor of a hospital room at some unreasonable hour of the night, and it's been nothing but one long battle since then. It gets better and it gets worse, and there have been times I've been badly burned by people I thought I could trust which really didn't help, but...overall, things are getting better. It's not exactly getting easier or less scary, but as time goes by I find myself actually developing just a little bit of trust and faith.

One day a few months ago God gave me a rule. Just one, because even just this one was a lot to believe at that point. The rule was, "You can always ask for help. Always means always."

Quote:

Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said; “one can’t believe impossible things.”

“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

--Alice in Wonderland

It takes practice to believe the impossible. God, for some of us, is one of those impossible things--at least, God as he actually is. So God asked me to start small. Uh, really small. Kind of embarrassingly small. But it's my starting point--I'm allowed to ask for help, because he promised. And maybe I don't have enough faith to believe in all his promises [or even close to], but I think even I can manage to believe just one thing. [Well, I just got my second rule/promise yesterday--but that's for a different post, this one's long enough.] I've been living by this one promise for a few months now, and it really does make a huge difference.

Of course, the first thing I asked for help about was "Please help me believe this, because I don't think I even have enough faith for that. But I want to." God, ever true to his promises, did...or at least, he keeps reminding me of it when I need to be reminded. There have been so many times when everything just gets to be too much and I feel so powerless to change anything. I'll look at myself and see everything I hate, and my first instinct is to hide because surely a holy, perfect God must hate me and be angry at me...surely God would reject me as I am now, and I'm powerless over the horrible things I see in myself and can't change them...

But God keeps reminding me, "Come as you are. You are always allowed to ask for help. Always--even when you think I'm angry at you. Even when you think I hate you. Even when all you can think of is how you've been punished for needing help in the past, for not being good enough, for not being perfect. Always means always, not just when you think you deserve it. I'll never be angry because you can't do something on your own, and I promise to never punish you for asking for help." And that reminder will always come at just the right time to let me push past my fear. I'll suddenly find myself sobbing and saying, "Okay, I'm terrified but you promised and I can't do this alone and I miss you." And sometimes it's a lot less dramatic. I've been learning to ask for help a lot sooner, too. It's okay to need help.

I don't know where you guys are spiritually. I wouldn't be surprised if none of you are as bad at this as I am...Most 5 year olds probably have more faith than I do.

But believing God really does love you, the real you, can be hard and scary [and for some of us that's the understatement of the year]. It's possible, but it takes practice.

So try it. Ask God for one promise to believe--just one. And then hold on to that promise with everything you have, and watch how God uses that tiny bit of faith and makes it grow and starts to change your life.

17-10-2009, 02:42 AM	#3154
aquatickitten Join Date: Jun 2007 Location: USAmerica I am currently:	in-a-pickle: I was planning on posting this sometime soon anyway, but you just gave me the push I needed to do it right now. I have this tendency to return to what I'll call my default setting when I'm not paying attention. For me that means cynical and faithless and closed off. My perspective on the world goes back to how it used to be--no one can be trusted, I can't let myself need anything, I can't let myself feel anything--bad or good. And you know how people say that everyone thinks of God as being like their father until they learn better? Well, I go back to that, too. God becomes someone who's just...impossible to please, always angry with me, hateful, mean, prone to flying into unpredictable rages about things I don't notice I've done wrong. And I still want his love and approval more than anything else, but part of me is so convinced that he must think I'm disgusting/dirty/stupid/[fill in your negative adjective here]...I get so terrified he'll say those things, so afraid he'll reject me. At least to my mind, suspecting is still better than knowing it's true, because then I'd have nothing left. [Does that sound as ridiculous as it actually is? I hope so. God is nothing like that.] God's love has always been sort of an impossible thing for me to believe. I've had days where I was so determined to trust God, to let him in, and I'd sit on my bedroom floor shaking and just generally being terrified. I could rarely manage it for more than a few hours at a time, and then after that I'd run so far, so fast that it was hurting things more than it helped. And then there was the SI/ED connection...the more I thought about letting a perfect, holy God inside the walls I'd built up, the more ashamed and dirty I felt. The more I thought about God, the more I felt a need to punish myself because I wasn't good enough. So...this is one of those things I've been struggling with for years. I became a Christian at 13, on the floor of a hospital room at some unreasonable hour of the night, and it's been nothing but one long battle since then. It gets better and it gets worse, and there have been times I've been badly burned by people I thought I could trust which really didn't help, but...overall, things are getting better. It's not exactly getting easier or less scary, but as time goes by I find myself actually developing just a little bit of trust and faith. One day a few months ago God gave me a rule. Just one, because even just this one was a lot to believe at that point. The rule was, "You can always ask for help. Always means always." Quote: Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said; “one can’t believe impossible things.” “I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” --Alice in Wonderland It takes practice to believe the impossible. God, for some of us, is one of those impossible things--at least, God as he actually is. So God asked me to start small. Uh, really small. Kind of embarrassingly small. But it's my starting point--I'm allowed to ask for help, because he promised. And maybe I don't have enough faith to believe in all his promises [or even close to], but I think even I can manage to believe just one thing. [Well, I just got my second rule/promise yesterday--but that's for a different post, this one's long enough.] I've been living by this one promise for a few months now, and it really does make a huge difference. Of course, the first thing I asked for help about was "Please help me believe this, because I don't think I even have enough faith for that. But I want to." God, ever true to his promises, did...or at least, he keeps reminding me of it when I need to be reminded. There have been so many times when everything just gets to be too much and I feel so powerless to change anything. I'll look at myself and see everything I hate, and my first instinct is to hide because surely a holy, perfect God must hate me and be angry at me...surely God would reject me as I am now, and I'm powerless over the horrible things I see in myself and can't change them... But God keeps reminding me, "Come as you are. You are always allowed to ask for help. Always--even when you think I'm angry at you. Even when you think I hate you. Even when all you can think of is how you've been punished for needing help in the past, for not being good enough, for not being perfect. Always means always, not just when you think you deserve it. I'll never be angry because you can't do something on your own, and I promise to never punish you for asking for help." And that reminder will always come at just the right time to let me push past my fear. I'll suddenly find myself sobbing and saying, "Okay, I'm terrified but you promised and I can't do this alone and I miss you." And sometimes it's a lot less dramatic. I've been learning to ask for help a lot sooner, too. It's okay to need help. I don't know where you guys are spiritually. I wouldn't be surprised if none of you are as bad at this as I am...Most 5 year olds probably have more faith than I do. But believing God really does love you, the real you, can be hard and scary [and for some of us that's the understatement of the year]. It's possible, but it takes practice. So try it. Ask God for one promise to believe--just one. And then hold on to that promise with everything you have, and watch how God uses that tiny bit of faith and makes it grow and starts to change your life.