Some Ladies Fightin' Some Stuff

I had the blessed opportunity to speak last night at a class my dear friend Debbie is teaching about the pieces of our minds. I decided to post my talk here. I think I referred to this in more vague terms before on this venue, so some of this is repeat...but i thought it was worth saying again. (Especially since some of you asked to see my blog and I couldn't have the first post about bees be the first thing you saw).

The background is that this class is about the things and voices that rattle around in our minds that ursurp our freedom in Christ. My week (and my struggle) was on the "I am" statements. The women were asked to write out the things they hear in their minds to dicern and divide them and throw some of the stuff away:

"I am overjoyed to be speaking with you today about the journey I went on to get free from myself. In fact, I am even more thrilled that as I tried to recall the awful things I used to think and say about myself I couldn't remember them. I wrote them all out once in an exercise much like you have done, except mine was on a giant neon yellow poster in Debbies kitchen and Tom must have seen it behind the frige and thought "whoa, Lindsey has issues" I had two solid pages of "junk in my drawer" and I couldn't recall any of it. I mean it was a LOOOONG list. So in fear of pulling the garbage back in off the curb and going thru it again and being tempted to take some of it back...(ooh i like that one... i don't want to throw IT out...) I didn't try to hard to recall them, but I did eventually remember the gist of my trauma. And it centered around these themes:

1. Perfectionism. "If I'm not perfect, 'just me' isn't enough."
2. Body Image. "Enough said."
3. Self-Depreciating humor. "If I'm my own worst enemy AND it's funny, no one can hurt me, or have reason not to love me."

Certainly these things sometimes worked for me. Number three probably got me through junior high. Certaintly there are strands of truth woven into our lies. Certainly after I laid these things down... I began to notice these patterns in other people and I could finally see how ugly they really were. I started to think "I wonder if THEY know they don't have to put themselves down, and I wonder if they know how deeply insecure it makes them sound?"

Why did I keep saying this stuff? And it's not even stuff that came out of my mouth very often, but it was the foundation of the things I really believed to be true about myself and the reasons that I wasn't happy. The reasons God wasn't blessing me. The reasons I was single. It soon became clear to me that this was an addiction. I had a conversation once (it was actually Debbie) and she asked me what would happen if I just didn't degrade myself anymore even with humor? What if I just didn't do it anymore? I blurted out quickly (which was such an indicator of my heart...) "If I let this go, I'll be lonlier than I already am" My over-extreme humility (which is actually a twisted form of pride) was my drink and I didnt even know it.

Luckily, even though I had a hard time recalling this old junk, I have this blog. I went back to some of my writings and found a little bit of a reminder about what life was like back then. This was ONLY a year ago for me. Which I hope is an encouragement of how far away this stuff can get rather quickly. This strong hold in my life made up of the mean and destructive things that I used to think about myself and the mis-truths about the world became burdensome to me after I had them identified. I had collectively named this burden and still refer to it as "the sock monkey". This security thing that I needed to survive. I wrote about the war in my mind:

What if I just let it go? This thing that I am carrying. It's no work to carry it really, I mean I can barely exist without it. The crusty old thing I drag around, this little sock monkey with it's mouth all made of zig-zaggy threads and covered in germs that my body has grown immune
to. I have eaten with it, slept with it, showered with it lived with it, vomited on it, cried when people have tried to take it. I have refused to hand it to God when he has asked me to lay it down. It's who I am, it's what makes me "me" and "interesting", right? It's that part of "crazy" that makes good art. It's the extreme humility that forces people to adore you. If you take my monkey, you are asking me to redefine my very "me" that some people happen to like just fine. Self degradation, CAN be funny. I mean c'mon really funny. I am a hilarious specimen of person. I have stories to last a lifetime about what a freak I am. Why ask me to give that up?? If I get screwed over with this spacious cathedral of a body, with the ridiculously solid size 13 feet, at LEAST let me have fun with it the only way I know how?

If I let this go. What can I trust to fill it's place? What if it's not filled right away, how do I deal with that perhaps boring hole? I am not brave enough to deal with that gaping hole. Who wants to trade this in for a "cross" to bear anyway...I'll keep my musty monkey.

This seems somehow like the fight of my life.

I am starting to not want to drag the monkey around. I think, much like my hair styles, that it's
time for me to change. Just see what it would be like, to finally not have it. I imagine it might feel like a person who has been wearing a fanny pack for 29 years and then once it's removed keeps
trying to stick gum wrappers and chap stick in it. It might be time. At twenty-nine, this is the first birthday that I have physically felt, like a clock struck midnight and then it struck me in the face. Struck me physically. I have a shoulder falling out of socket and a two knees that crunch like breakfast cereal when I walk, and maybe it's time not to depend on my athletic ability, my outward appearance, or my debilitating matted sock monkey, to be attractive and worthwhile.

Maybe it wasn't working anyway.

Maybe it's time to trust, REALLY TRUST that my identity in Jesus is REALLY enough.

So...for all the people who love me and desire me to finally see things as they really are. I am attempting to lay my cold weapons down. The ones I have taken up long ago against me. The weapons that I would never wield against anyone else.

So be praying. I don't know how this works. It's been with me longer than
Jesus has."

___

So....I wrote it out. I was honest. It was ugly. Really ugly. Once on paper the sock monkey stared back up at me, caught in the act of trying to own me and I got angry at it. I prayed through it, I gave it to God and I decided that my sock monkey was not fun to be with anymore and infested with lies and harmful satan bacteria and I gave it up.

I'm not trying to sell you a product here, an infomercial where I am giving you the magical before and after shots, it was a process, there were many other failed attempts at leaving these chains behind.

Once I recognized it as the right thing to do, I wasn't even convinced that it was necessary to leave it. It required some trust in God. I wrote about what it was like after the fact:
_________

"Thus, when my heart opened up so very big, and gulped some fresh air.. some emptiness followed... as it often does when you stop running from yourself so hard. So I'm sitting here now, in a little bit of expectancy, hope, and oddly enough some peace.

Just peace.

It's quiet, it's purposeful, and pregnant with possibility, it's as if I've made room for something in my soul by taking out some garbage. The crap out on the curb is rather rotten and... as I see now, not inconsequential.

It's now like I am a beautiful empty apartment waiting to be furnished... or like a canvas that has a beautiful fresh base-coat just waiting for color.

I am reminded that God only wiped the slate clean once with the flood. After that, he said no matter how grave it gets, I will chase you. I will woo you back to me. No matter where you go, what you do, if you are mine and intended for me, I will find you and keep you and redeem you. No matter how broken your bones are, my breath is sufficient to make them dance again."
____

I am happy to tell you that I am a completely different person. I still have things that struggle with now and again and I was very recently made aware of one of the next big ones and I'm intending to tackle that next. I have the success from this "Phase 1" of Lindsey's Redemption to look back on and know that God is to be trusted with my junk.

It's so much better without that sock monkey. People didn't shy away, they came closer.

I no longer required that they fix me, or appease me or tell me my "I" statements weren't true. They recognize me as calmer and more peaceful, less needy to be the center of attention. Way more content with who i am. (At least I think so). They don't even have to laugh anymore.

And. That. Is. Freeing.

God truly, through the power of prayer, redeemed me and let me get my head above water long enough to let life happen to "just me".

Thanks for listening, and PS don't go image searching for sock monkey pictures on the internet. There are life sized anatomically correct ones. Ew. Is there nothing pure left in the world??