Led

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I wrote last night.  This morning I was ready to write about what else? Myself.  About my confusion regarding how I came to feel so worthless – who made me feel that way – why it was all their fault that I didn’t trust my own judgment anymore – blah bl-blah, bl-blah, blah, blah.  But when I started the computer, I had an update from the blog written by my friend. You know,  that upbeat, God-loving, counterpart at work that I had started to feel was so annoying?  And then when I logged in here – what is the daily prompt?  It’s about self love.  Why do you and what is it that you love about yourself?

Hmmm. . . The stars are aligned, a confluence in the heavens is in full sway.  So instead of blaming – I’m examining – me again.  So I guess that is pride.  Pride drives a lot of things.  And yes, my friend is right – fear and low self-esteem are its side-kicks.  Pride dares us to blame the people we love the most for all of our problems – to see them as less because they question our motives – for the sole purpose of making us feel better – falsely.

I told my husband – during that long talk we had yesterday – that there had to be a difference – a difference between feeling utterly worthless and knowing that there is nothing we can do in our own strength without God.  Simply defined that otherness that I was trying to define – is humility.  The enemy tempts us so often to believe that any good feeling about ourselves is pride – so we nix the good feeling.  But there is such a fine line between the trick of the enemy and the conviction of true wrongfulness.  How do we know the difference?  How do we begin to trust ourselves to know it?

The most loving thing we can do for ourselves is to Trust Him.  Acknowledge that we just really don’t get it – that we are utterly lost. (And I am not even talking about the spiritual mumbo-jumbo definition of lost that is really just a fear tactic.) I mean that true despair that we feel when we are at the bottom of our soulish selves and find hard cold ground – grey darkness – maybe some grit or gravel down there – a mournful wind or a hollow sound.  But it’s pretty quiet down there.  Once you get to that place – there are no voices, no stressful and confusing to-do lists, no pressures of any kind – because they just don’t ring true anymore anyway.  Then – you know – somebody has to lead me out of here – that gravel came from all my failed attempts to climb or dig out of here – and all it has done is make the bottom even worse to land on – again.   And don’t think it’s like the donkey story – the walls are too hard to scrape off enough gravel to step up onto. This requires true intervention from someone with hands big enough to pick me up like a two-year-old, but who makes himself small enough to come, hold me, let me feel his reality.  And then – he waves his hand – the rocks obey, stairs slide out from what was once a solid wall, and he leads me – up and up.  One step at a time.

So – the truth is – I don’t love myself – but I know someone who does.  And I am trying to hear His voice as he tells me the truth.