From Defect to Builder

I have always been a black and white thinker. Even my name has the word "black" in it. It is a driving factor of my personality that I didn't see for a long time, and then when I saw it, was unable to process it. The people who I looked up to the most said that life is a spectrum of grey, and I could not reconcile this with what Jesus said to the prophet John, "I will spit the lukewarm [not one or the other] from my mouth." (Revelation 3.16)

But after having a manic episode in the summer that resulted in major life decisions that at the time seemed completely reasonable to make without second thought, I began to see the dangers in black and white thinking. I began to challenge my belief system gently, with the reconsideration of my use of words. After meeting an angel in disguise who introduced me to concepts such as mindfulness and nonviolent communication, I started off on my journey to becoming more compassionate to others and to myself. Words like "always" and "danger" I began to second-guess, as they facilitate absolute thinking, and for the sake of this moment, I will not use a thesaurus to make what I say more accurate or palatable, because I am a work in progress.

And really, this leads to my topic. Understanding character shortcomings as character builders.

I have battled with perfectionism, and while I work to move from that impossible (again absolute) standard, I today learn to look at it with compassion. When I began to see the falsity of perfectionism, I noted it down as a shortcoming. I prayed daily to be removed from the character defect of dishonesty, which mostly manifested itself in my life through my attempts to always be free of blame, and never do anything that could entice gossip.

Another example of trying to sort through a character disservice and no longer being okay with avoiding it or petitioning it away, is my most glaring (literally) - anger. Now I can see that having been resentful (fearful), which leads to manipulation to relieve the resentment and then escalating to anger when my methods wouldn't materialize, is not that I am insomuch "self-seeking" (the rotted root that needs to be pulled out), but that I just didn't know how to express my concerns or needs, which led to traits such as perfectionism and anger.

In knowing this now, the world can no longer be just black and white, there is grey threaded throughout these entire "shortcomings".

Despite having hurt myself and others, I can understand and believe in my heart that I was merely using all of the seemingly malfunctioning tools as in truth having been useful tactics in the not-so-distant past to serve as building blocks, transforming me into the person I am today. Someone who is open, transparent, caring, and imperfect. The latter meaning, in my current interpretation, that as much as I try, I will make mistakes and disrespect myself and others from time to time. That's where grace scoops down and brings in the spirit of forgiveness, and where I can start again.

As I look at my daily meditation sheet, written top to bottom with multi-heading listings and the specifics that fall under those terms of what I want to be conscientiously separated from, I no longer understand them as "wrong". They are simply mechanisms that I developed through my formative years, and those traits are not what makes me who I am. (Just as my name doesn't make me who I am).

A year and a half ago I practiced a prayer in a very specific way where I asked God to take the good and the bad of me. I was merely being a good soldier, following instruction and not really thinking much, just marching along. But I realized through a profound spiritual experience directly following the prayer, that if God will take my "bad", then it surely can't be that awful after all. This was truly the beginning of my studies in the art of forgiveness.

Today, my meditation/prayer sheet is no longer acceptable in its current state, but that doesn't devaluate the actions that cause me pain - they simply need to be reformatted so that I may understand and work with them in a more sincere and loving way.

I still believe that there are points of black and white, but they are few and far between. I rather now see not just a world of grey, but a rainbow, and it is beautiful. It is a place where everyone has a space to be safe and loved, and I believe it is God's promise to heal.

Turning Anger into Forgiveness

"You do not understand healing, because of your own fear." (ACIM 2-IV.1.9)

After feeling slighted, I went to the Good Book to see if Solomon had anything to say about these business endeavours that can often go sideways. But a thought came over me: where I believed I was looking for wisdom and comfort, I was really looking to feel vindicated in my aspirations to retaliate; to get even.

And suddenly I realized that isn't the solution. The solution, instead, is to recognize that to some degree, all people are spiritually sick, and need healing and reconciliation - not retribution. I had a moment of clarity where I understood that "correcting" the situation doesn't have to look like mending a broken infrastructure so that I can feel better about its aesthetics, it can mean demolishing it and building a new one, with better quality materials.

Would I not rather help than hurt? After all, when I seek to "correct" someone, it's really only myself I am wounding. One of my favourte adages is, "I drink the poison and expect them to die." This is what resentment and anger does to us - we hit ourselves with the club of righteousness we intended for others.

As with anything worthwhile, it takes practice, trial and error. But today I see that I am not the judge, jury, and executioner that I fancied myself to be. And thank God, because that is a miserable way to live. It is not my instinct to forgive when I am offended - it is to rebuke. But I have found by direct experience and from hearing the stories of others, that self-righteous anger is no good whatever. It often ends up with me, the offended, having to make the amend. And that is truly twisted.

"All healing is essentially the release from fear." (ACIM 2-IV.1.7). And all healing is an act of forgiveness. I do not play a working role in the courtroom that I superimpose myself into where the person who offends me is awaiting sentencing. Rather, Satan is the prosecutor, God is the judge, and I am the accused on trial. I am not the prosecutor of my peers, and when I forgive, I step out of a role that I forced myself into that causes me disturbance.

Loves wins when I obey God and stop contesting my peers. That doesn't mean that I need to go back to a corroding design, but it does mean that I heal through the will of forgiveness, which is complete freedom from the bondage that I only place myself in when I think I am right.

What I Deserve

"Taking credit where credit is due shouldn't make us feel guilty any more than taking a paycheck at the end of a hard week. We deserve what we have earned." - Believing in Myself: Daily Meditations for Healing and Building Self-Esteem

I have been reflecting on the word "deserve" the past few months. For years that word agitated me, and when people would talk about deserving something I would think, "Says who?" But today I see that my aversion to "deserving" good things is not only a result of having low self-esteem, it ultimately was a result of false humility. I was adamant that credit was to be given to God alone.

My real "ah-ha" moment came a couple of weeks ago when I realized that I actually do like the word "deserve". In fact, I loved it, and I used it quite often - to demean myself. I deserved to fail, I deserved to be lonely,  I deserved a low-paying job...The redeeming moment being when I realized I was unbalanced. And in so maybe I can in fact "deserve" to be loved, prosperous, and contributive. Now I know that I can recognize what I have earned, and still thank God for working through me to lead to success, and a huge part of this is having an improved self-image as I feel more connected to being human and less invested in the fallacy of perfectionism.

It wasn't until I commenced to loosen myself of puritanical black-white-thinking that I began to see I wasn't really as wretched as I identified myself to be, and that discrediting myself wasn't really glorifying God or acting humble, it was just self-loathing that was keeping me away from constructive goals and healthy people.

In a world of fast satisfaction and detached disposal, I had a phony sense of righteousness, rebuffing myself of any good thing while still mindlessly consuming at whim. And when someone would show me approval or appreciation, I shied away in apprehension of being convinced I would simply let that person down on the next dreaded occasion.

It might take a while to reverse the patterning of self-deprecation and deprivation, but I can see now that yes, of course I do deserve my paycheck, so if I can translate that understanding into earning other good things that I work toward, I can graciously accept love, promotion, and rest.

Ultimately I had been mistaking the word "deserve" with "entitled", along with not really understanding the challenges that come with low self-esteem, guilt, self-hatred, and trauma. Because to recognize those setbacks takes just as much work as the setups for the rewards in life, and I was doing neither. I was judging a book by its cover and judging others on the perceived audacity they exerted with their warrant for a life beyond simply surviving. It was an insane cycle I suffered through.

So what do I deserve? I deserve my spiritual paycheck - which is my allowance from God. That includes the respect of myself and of others, love, compassion, companionship, friendship, to be heard, to be seen, to be appreciated, and to establish and maintain boundaries.

Today I understand my limitations. I understand I will not get everything I want as fast as I want it and that working diligently might not always bear the fruit I want. And this is where trusting in God and His will for me comes into play. I also understand that living in humility isn't a verdict to underachievement in some superficial excuse to be "relatable". Humility is about respecting my shortcomings, honouring my restrictions, and taking pride in everything that I do, no matter how mundane.

Not as the World Gives

"Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid." (John 14.27, ESV)

I've been meditating on what it means to a Christian to have peace, and the answer that I received is to have the forgiveness of God. Something that does not give me peace, is when I am held in contempt for either decisions or for mistakes that I have made. As I recognize the major players in my life who have made it clear they don't want me around, I feel sadness and rejection. In this pain I asked God how I reconcile the irreconcilable. Why does Jesus say time and again, "Do not worry", and yet I do? And then I was led to the foot of the cross.

A piece of the problem I experience regularly is not quite fitting in to an identity where I feel that I can rest, no matter the discipline. Even in the Christian community, I can't get a foothold. It is a constant battle of "the right side", and I don't fit the mold no matter what denomination I turn to (which is partly why I started my Facebook page, Wisdom in Christ Ministries). 

One particular group that I have been blocked from on two fronts, but who I can still access through more public means such as channels and pages, talks about us as Christians not having to perform works to be saved, that good works is a result of, not a way to, salvation. It seems like a nice idea, but I felt something was missing. The example of seeing Jesus on the cross and saying to him, "Well, I can see you're suffering for me, but here I've done this and this and this, just in case I'm not actually covered." didn't seem a sufficient point. 

What I came to believe in my mediation is that Jesus suffering on the cross doesn't mean that I am cleared on the earthly plane, it means that I am forgiven by God. Furthermore, that I don't need to exert my will to be forgiven, the same way the reformed Christians assert grace by trying to comprehend and then negate works, favouring only faith. I now understand Jesus on the cross to mean forgiveness in the most complete sense, so that I CAN have his peace even when I can't get forgiveness from others. 

I can't control other people, but I can change the way I feel about myself. Perfectionism is a characteristic of dishonesty, which is the real offense. If I can't be absolved by this world's standards, I know unequivocally now that I can be by God's standards. My heart and my will can change, and the actions that follow can be the real works that demonstrate God's peace working through me. 

c/o anniebananie13, redbubble