I know I have been absent from my blog lately and I apologize. My life went crazy a few weeks ago. Not just a little crazy. A lot crazy. I’ve been reluctant to write because I’m struggling and I don’t want my posts to always be about struggling and pain. Also, I just didn’t have any words. I would sit at the computer and stare at the screen thinking, “I should write about what’s going on,” but no words would come.
On July 10th, we got notice from our landlords that we have to leave in 60 days. They’ve been trying to get us to leave for quite some time. They just finally decided to stop trying to make us want to leave and just kick us out. With a 60 day notice there doesn’t have to be any particular reason and there is no real recourse. We just have to leave.
Initially, I handled the news well. I was even feeling a little excited because I’ve been wanting to move out of this place for so long. It’s too small for us, it’s old and it is falling apart. This is the time for God to step in and provide a new, better place to live. He has to, right?
Now I’m 21 days into the search for a new place, though, and the excitement has given way to fear. We live in the Bay Area of California and the cost of living is one of the highest in the country. The truth is, we don’t have enough income to meet the expense of renting even a 3 bedroom apartment here.
For the past few years, I’ve been praying for a house with a yard for my kids to play in and enough bedrooms that my daughter (who will be starting puberty soon) will not have to share with her brother and her grandmother anymore. I haven’t been asking for a mansion, just a modest three or four bedroom house with a little backyard and room for the kids to play and grow. I’d been trying to dream big and believe that God wants to bless me and give me good gifts. Now, though, I’m wondering if I was wrong to believe that God would do such a thing for me. Now, I’m wondering if I should stop expecting for the best from him and start looking for anything from him.
I want to believe that God is going to use this to bring us a wonderful blessing, but the money just isn’t there to afford a monthly payment for what we need. The way things have been going, I’m afraid that we are going to end up in a smaller place or in a bad neighborhood, or worse yet, living in a cheap motel.
I know that “All things work together…” blah, blah, blah. That doesn’t help me right now. At this moment, I need tangible answers to prayer. I need to see that God has something in the works to take care of this problem because it really is starting to look like he has left us hanging out here all on our own to figure this out.
I’m not supposed to be afraid though. “Faith and fear can’t take up the same space.” I’ve been hearing that a lot lately. I know it’s true, but right now fear has chased my faith away, because I don’t really know that God is going to come through with a great place for us to live. I know we will be taken care of and that all our needs will be met, but I don’t know that God isn’t going to let things get worse before they get better.
I know I’ve talked about this before, but I haven’t figured it out yet, so it keeps coming up. I’ve been taught that in order for God to answer our prayers we have to believe and not doubt.
“Believe. Don’t doubt.”
“God answers our prayers when we believe.”
If God is a god who is going to not answer my prayers or bless my life because I am struggling and I’m scared and confused and angry and feeling desperate, then maybe I don’t want him. I don’t know that I want to serve a god who is limited by my faith at any given moment, because, to be honest, I’m a basket case. My emotions and faith fluctuate all the time. From day to day, from hour to hour, the way I am feeling and how much I am trusting God varies enormously. So, is God up there constantly monitoring the level of my faith in order to see if he can work in my life? Is he going to say, “Oh, you were almost there. I could have answered your prayer, but you had a bad day today and stopped believing that I was going to come through, so we have to start all over again. Better luck next time.”
That doesn’t seem like the character of the loving God that would send his son to die for the sins of people who hadn’t even been born yet so that they could one day be with him. I just can’t believe that it really works that way. I just wish that I could figure out which way it does work.
This situation has revealed to me how many wonderful friends we have and how many people are supporting us and praying for us. It’s really been an amazing blessing. What has been really hard for me, though, is how often I have had to talk about money. As in how much we have (or don’t have). I really don’t like letting people in on what really is going on in our bank account. It’s not a pretty picture and it’s one I’d rather that my friends don’t see. However, I have to tell them what we can afford to pay every month if they are going to be any help in finding something for us.
Every time I do, though, I feel ashamed. Every time I say it out loud, I feel that I am admitting to my failure to provide well for my family, because it reveals once again how hopeless and impossible the situation looks. I know that the amount of money that I have bears no relation to my worth as a person, but it is really hard not to connect the two in this culture, in this time in history. I should not be in this situation. I should be able to do better. Admitting that I can’t is embarrassing and humiliating.
People are worried about us and I don’t want them to be. I don’t want the people I care about to feel sorry for me. I see it in their eye and hear it in their voice, though. They try to encourage me and tell me that everything is going to work out, and I agree with them. I tell them that I know that God is going to take care of us and we’ll find something, and sometimes I believe that, but sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I say the bold faith-filled statements because I’m trying to make them feel better. I don’t want them to know how scared I really am. I want my friends to think that I am strong and I don't want them to know that sometimes I’m barely holding it together.
So, there it is. That’s what’s been going on and why I haven’t written, for anyone who noticed. Please don’t feel sorry for us. Just pray for us. Please pray that God will provide a good place for us to live. Pray that I can have the faith to trust him in the midst of the turmoil. Pray that we can see clearly where he has an open door for us and that we have the strength to walk through to wherever he’s trying to lead us.
In spite of it all. . . In spite of all the doubt and the fear and the insecurity, I want to go where he’s leading. I want to stay in his will because I believe that is the safest place for us to be.
Showing posts with label insecurity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label insecurity. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
The Fear of Friendship
“If you don’t have three to five good friends in your life, I mean women you are really talking to, that needs to be your number one priority right now.”
Those words felt like they hit me hard in the middle of my chest. They came from Sandi Patty, who was speaking to thousands of women from the stage at a Women of Faith Conference in 2009. I was sitting by myself, having been given the ticket by a new coworker who wasn’t able to attend the Friday session. I didn’t have five friends. I didn’t even have three friends.
I had many acquaintances, after all, I go to a large church. But people that I could say I’m “really talking to”? There was only one. And if I’m honest with myself, I don’t know that I was “really” talking to her. She was talking to me, but I didn’t share as much with her as I should have. There was so much I was afraid to let anyone know. I’ve known her for 15 years, and I was still afraid that she would reject me if she knew what a mess my life really was. It was completely unreasonable to believe that, because I don’t do that to other people, but my fear is rarely rational.
When I was a little girl, a friend was someone to play Wonder Woman with, run away from the boys with, and stay up too late at sleepovers with. All you really have to do to be friends with someone is be about the same age and know how to play nice. Occasional fighting over toys aside, making and being friends is uncomplicated.
Over the years, though, something happened. Making friends became scary. Keeping them became hard. I’m not really sure what it was that changed things for me. I’m sure that moving around a lot during my childhood had something to do with it, but many people grow up that way and still manage to keep friends.
I had friends all through my elementary school years, and a best friend in middle school and high school, until my family moved from Oregon to Southern California in the middle of my Junior year. After that, I struggled. There were a few people I would “hang out” with or go see a movie with, but I had a hard time finding anyone that I could really connect with. My college years didn’t produce lasting friendships, either, other than my husband.
After I got married, making friends kind of stopped being a priority. I had this idea that all I really should need was my husband, so I looked to him to fill all my emotional needs. Unfortunately, that didn’t work too well for me. My husband is great, but there are certain things he doesn’t get. Girl things, like hormonal mood swings, chick flicks, decorative towels in the bathroom (as in why they should be there, but you don’t actually use them), or how miserable shopping for a new swimsuit is. He didn’t get that sometimes I needed to just talk things out, even if there wasn’t a way to solve the problem. At the time, I didn’t even know that the reason we had such a hard time communicating about anything serious was because I just needed to talk about it and he would get frustrated that he couldn’t solve the issue for me.
I know that I can talk a problem to death, but the thing is that even if there isn’t a solution, sometimes I can’t relax and accept it until I have expressed all the thoughts running around my head about it. That’s what great girlfriends are for. Husbands can learn to go through this process with us, but it doesn’t come naturally and they usually still struggle with the need to fix the problem.
After we had been married a few years, I tried to make friends with the girlfriends of some of my husband’s friends, but that resulted in a couple of disastrous situations that had me doubting my ability to be friends with other women at all. After that, I did what seems to be my defense mechanism after I have been hurt: I isolated myself. I convinced myself that nobody would want to be friends with me anyway, so I should just stop trying. I had my husband, my mom, my sister and my aunt, and that was all I needed.
The problem with this solution was that it wasn’t a solution at all. It just intensified the depth of my loneliness. It might have been different if my extended family lived near me, but my sister and my aunt were three hours away (in different directions) and my mom was four hours away. That distance makes it hard to meet up for a chat when you need someone to talk to or if just don’t want to face the fitting room at the mall without some moral support.
That weekend, at the Women of Faith Conference, I heard from at least three of the speakers the message that we need good friends. I started to get the point that God was trying to tell me something. I started praying for friends after that. I also started trying to find ways to connect with other women. It’s been a long, slow process, but I now have a few women in my life that I really trust. God has been faithful in bringing me ladies that are trustworthy and love me in spite of how sort of contradictory I can be.
When I started trying to be open with people, I was really cautious about what I shared and who I shared with. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, because you don’t want to dump all your dirty laundry on someone you don’t know very well and end up with it being spread all over the church (or school, or whatever community you are a part of). But when I found someone I thought I could trust, it was like a flood gate opened. Suddenly all I wanted to do was hold on to this person and tell her all the stuff I had been going through that I hadn’t told anyone before. It was so nice to stop hiding my struggles and my pain that, looking back on it, I think I bombarded her. I thank God that she was strong enough to handle it and not get scared away.
Sometimes, after she and I had stayed out too late at the coffee shop and I had told her more than I intended to say, I would question myself and decide that I needed to stop dumping on her. Then I would kind of clam up for a while because I was afraid of how needy I felt and how needy I feared she thought I was. That didn’t last long, because I desperately needed someone to talk to, so after a while the flood gates would open again. Building a friendship with her was scary for me because I was making myself vulnerable and I knew that if she rejected me, it would really, really hurt. I knew, though, that I had to risk it, because being isolated hurt more.
We’ve been friends now for about four years and we’ve walked together through some tough life events. We’ve gone through job losses, family health scares, crises of faith and parenting challenges. Because of her, I have been relearning what it means to have a friend and how to be a friend. I learned that I can be who I am (not who I think I’m expected to be) and people will still care about me. I learned that I can admit that I’m not a very good housekeeper, and a true friend won’t judge me for it (or at least won‘t say anything about it J ). I’m now developing more new friendships and my confidence in myself and what I have to offer as a friend is growing.
I still have insecurities about it. I worry too much about what other people think about me. I over think relationships and read too much into conversations and off-handed comments sometimes. God has been showing me, though, that who I am, who he created me to be, is just fine, and if anyone decides that they just don’t like me, that’s not my problem. It’s theirs.
I believe that we all need special people in our lives that will hug us when we are hurting, tell us the truth when we need to hear it, encourage us to never give up and celebrate with us in our wonderful moments. We also need to be there for other people for all those same reasons. We need friends, but other people need us to be their friend, too. Other people feel isolated and lonely too. Sometimes, they’ve been there so long, that they are afraid to risk trusting someone not to hurt them.
So, here’s my question to you: Do you have good friends in your life? If your world were to fall apart today and something unthinkable were to happen, do you have someone you can call who will be there to walk through it with you? If not, can you at least begin to think about trying to develop those kind of relationships?
Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor:
If either of them falls down, one can help the other up.
But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up.
Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone?
Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves.
A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.
Ecclesiastes 4:10
Those words felt like they hit me hard in the middle of my chest. They came from Sandi Patty, who was speaking to thousands of women from the stage at a Women of Faith Conference in 2009. I was sitting by myself, having been given the ticket by a new coworker who wasn’t able to attend the Friday session. I didn’t have five friends. I didn’t even have three friends.
I had many acquaintances, after all, I go to a large church. But people that I could say I’m “really talking to”? There was only one. And if I’m honest with myself, I don’t know that I was “really” talking to her. She was talking to me, but I didn’t share as much with her as I should have. There was so much I was afraid to let anyone know. I’ve known her for 15 years, and I was still afraid that she would reject me if she knew what a mess my life really was. It was completely unreasonable to believe that, because I don’t do that to other people, but my fear is rarely rational.
When I was a little girl, a friend was someone to play Wonder Woman with, run away from the boys with, and stay up too late at sleepovers with. All you really have to do to be friends with someone is be about the same age and know how to play nice. Occasional fighting over toys aside, making and being friends is uncomplicated.
Over the years, though, something happened. Making friends became scary. Keeping them became hard. I’m not really sure what it was that changed things for me. I’m sure that moving around a lot during my childhood had something to do with it, but many people grow up that way and still manage to keep friends.
I had friends all through my elementary school years, and a best friend in middle school and high school, until my family moved from Oregon to Southern California in the middle of my Junior year. After that, I struggled. There were a few people I would “hang out” with or go see a movie with, but I had a hard time finding anyone that I could really connect with. My college years didn’t produce lasting friendships, either, other than my husband.
After I got married, making friends kind of stopped being a priority. I had this idea that all I really should need was my husband, so I looked to him to fill all my emotional needs. Unfortunately, that didn’t work too well for me. My husband is great, but there are certain things he doesn’t get. Girl things, like hormonal mood swings, chick flicks, decorative towels in the bathroom (as in why they should be there, but you don’t actually use them), or how miserable shopping for a new swimsuit is. He didn’t get that sometimes I needed to just talk things out, even if there wasn’t a way to solve the problem. At the time, I didn’t even know that the reason we had such a hard time communicating about anything serious was because I just needed to talk about it and he would get frustrated that he couldn’t solve the issue for me.
I know that I can talk a problem to death, but the thing is that even if there isn’t a solution, sometimes I can’t relax and accept it until I have expressed all the thoughts running around my head about it. That’s what great girlfriends are for. Husbands can learn to go through this process with us, but it doesn’t come naturally and they usually still struggle with the need to fix the problem.
After we had been married a few years, I tried to make friends with the girlfriends of some of my husband’s friends, but that resulted in a couple of disastrous situations that had me doubting my ability to be friends with other women at all. After that, I did what seems to be my defense mechanism after I have been hurt: I isolated myself. I convinced myself that nobody would want to be friends with me anyway, so I should just stop trying. I had my husband, my mom, my sister and my aunt, and that was all I needed.
The problem with this solution was that it wasn’t a solution at all. It just intensified the depth of my loneliness. It might have been different if my extended family lived near me, but my sister and my aunt were three hours away (in different directions) and my mom was four hours away. That distance makes it hard to meet up for a chat when you need someone to talk to or if just don’t want to face the fitting room at the mall without some moral support.
That weekend, at the Women of Faith Conference, I heard from at least three of the speakers the message that we need good friends. I started to get the point that God was trying to tell me something. I started praying for friends after that. I also started trying to find ways to connect with other women. It’s been a long, slow process, but I now have a few women in my life that I really trust. God has been faithful in bringing me ladies that are trustworthy and love me in spite of how sort of contradictory I can be.
When I started trying to be open with people, I was really cautious about what I shared and who I shared with. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, because you don’t want to dump all your dirty laundry on someone you don’t know very well and end up with it being spread all over the church (or school, or whatever community you are a part of). But when I found someone I thought I could trust, it was like a flood gate opened. Suddenly all I wanted to do was hold on to this person and tell her all the stuff I had been going through that I hadn’t told anyone before. It was so nice to stop hiding my struggles and my pain that, looking back on it, I think I bombarded her. I thank God that she was strong enough to handle it and not get scared away.
Sometimes, after she and I had stayed out too late at the coffee shop and I had told her more than I intended to say, I would question myself and decide that I needed to stop dumping on her. Then I would kind of clam up for a while because I was afraid of how needy I felt and how needy I feared she thought I was. That didn’t last long, because I desperately needed someone to talk to, so after a while the flood gates would open again. Building a friendship with her was scary for me because I was making myself vulnerable and I knew that if she rejected me, it would really, really hurt. I knew, though, that I had to risk it, because being isolated hurt more.
We’ve been friends now for about four years and we’ve walked together through some tough life events. We’ve gone through job losses, family health scares, crises of faith and parenting challenges. Because of her, I have been relearning what it means to have a friend and how to be a friend. I learned that I can be who I am (not who I think I’m expected to be) and people will still care about me. I learned that I can admit that I’m not a very good housekeeper, and a true friend won’t judge me for it (or at least won‘t say anything about it J ). I’m now developing more new friendships and my confidence in myself and what I have to offer as a friend is growing.
I still have insecurities about it. I worry too much about what other people think about me. I over think relationships and read too much into conversations and off-handed comments sometimes. God has been showing me, though, that who I am, who he created me to be, is just fine, and if anyone decides that they just don’t like me, that’s not my problem. It’s theirs.
I believe that we all need special people in our lives that will hug us when we are hurting, tell us the truth when we need to hear it, encourage us to never give up and celebrate with us in our wonderful moments. We also need to be there for other people for all those same reasons. We need friends, but other people need us to be their friend, too. Other people feel isolated and lonely too. Sometimes, they’ve been there so long, that they are afraid to risk trusting someone not to hurt them.
So, here’s my question to you: Do you have good friends in your life? If your world were to fall apart today and something unthinkable were to happen, do you have someone you can call who will be there to walk through it with you? If not, can you at least begin to think about trying to develop those kind of relationships?
Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor:
If either of them falls down, one can help the other up.
But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up.
Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone?
Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves.
A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.
Ecclesiastes 4:10
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