Soul Healing

Recently, I have been reading a book called Soul Healing by Tammy Smith. It's a pretty popular book about examining past hurts in your life and taking responsibility for self pity we possess because of these, and instead asking God for healing. This aligns a lot with a series called "Twelve Steps: An Invitation to Wholeness" that my church has been working through. Not so surprisingly, I just recently saw "Inside Out", a movie that talks about how our "core memories" shape us, because we base our entire personalities off of our experiences. 

The whole time I've been reading Soul Healing, I've been praying for God to show me my earliest hurts. The author, Tammy Smith, encourages the reader to pray and ask God to reveal these "vats" as she calls them that weren't filled during childhood. The whole time she was discussing childhood wounds, either of commission or omission, I was struggling to see where these played into my life. My mother and father loved me very well throughout my childhood, and were both very present. They frequently told me how special I was, how proud they were of my accomplishments, and that they loved me. I believed them, I had no reason not to. 

My whole life prior to being a Christian, and even into my early-adulthood after I accepted Jesus into my heart, I had struggled with being boy crazy. I remember having crushes on boys in a really intense way, and into my early-adulthood, it manifested in my longing for a very intimate romantic relationship. I was praying over my childhood, hoping to find the "vat" that wasn't filled that lead to this boy-obsession that caused many of my hurts throughout my life. It wasn't until I gave up this escapade to dive into my childhood that I finally found the answer. 

Before I reveal the point of this post, I have to say how funny it is that my life so often coordinates to what I am teaching my kids in counseling. Recently, with all of my kids who deal with depression, I have been teaching them that their thoughts, beliefs, and actions are all connected. I tell them that their thoughts form their beliefs about themselves. These thoughts can be external from another source, or from their own minds. Our beliefs are what deeply shape us. They are our "core" so to speak. Then we act out of those beliefs. So, of course, in my reading of Soul Healing, my watching of Inside Out, and my quest through the Twelve Steps series, I began examining my core beliefs. 

I began working backwards. What am I most insecure about? Relationships. With who? Friends, and significant others. What do I most believe? That they don't want me. Why? Because they could find someone else who is better. Why? Because I am second best. 

This. Is what I had been searching for. 

I began to examine my life. Where did I learn this? Surely not from my parents. They both loved me so well. My friends throughout childhood valued me, told me I was good at things, and pursued my friendship like it was worth something. It had to have come from something else. And then it came to me. My first romantic relationship. 

It happened when I was a freshmen in high school. It was so classic it makes me want to throw up. But maybe that's why I loved it so much in the first place. He was an older guy, and I was a nobody freshmen girl. He asked me to homecoming, and then we started going out on dates. He was one of those disgustingly romantic guys, who loved going for ice cream, dancing in the rain, taking long walks, and watching chick flicks. 

It was good for a while, and I fell into something I thought was love really fast. We enjoyed each other's company, and everything looked great. Then it started getting really emotionally twisted. He started giving me these "notes" that were really more like really really long love letters. They were always super adorable, but also sad. They would talk about how he loved a lot of things about me, but he always made it sound like we couldn't actually be together. This confused me. If he loved all these things about me, why not just be together forever, happily ever after? The last letter he wrote me actually said the capital L word. He said, "I love you". And I believed him. I can still remember the wording of his last line. "I wish we could just sit under a tree somewhere, with your head on my chest. But the truth is, it's not that easy." No further explanation. That was it. 

Looking back, what the hell. Like for real? You were 16 years old. Who are you? Who says that? I digress. 

Two days after he wrote this letter, I opened up my Facebook page to find that he was in a relationship with another girl. Facebook official. She was his same age. Super adorable. They had pictures together everywhere. I was flabbergasted. What had happened? What was wrong with me? I was second best. 

To add insult to injury, a couple weeks later, when my 14 year old mind was still trying to comprehend what happened, I got on AIM chat. (What a wonderful thing of the past). This guy's good friend messaged me. It wasn't abnormal, he was dating one of my friends at the time, so we chatted occasionally. Very normal conversation, and then he brought up my failed relationship. I didn't really have anything to say, other than that I was confused. He decided to do me a favor and told me that it wasn't confusing at all. He said, "if you want me to be honest, you're not the prettiest girl in school." 

Great! Now I'm second best, and ugly. Awesome. Thanks guys. 

As much as I don't want to believe it, these two events so closely linked together, deeply shaped my life. A few weeks after that, I began struggling with an eating disorder. I would starve myself at school and barely eat breakfast. All on top of running 50 miles a week for cross country. Definitely unhealthy for a girl who is 5'7" to be 115 lbs. At the time, I had no idea where this came from. I knew it was wrong, but I knew I wanted to be skinny, and I HAD to be skinnier if I wanted boys to like me. I also started wearing make up. Because no guy was going to like my ginger lashes. 

The escapades I had with boys in high school were only the beginning. My relationship with Christ kept me from sleeping around, but it's very true to say I was emotionally sleeping around. I continued to give more and more of myself away to whoever looked in my direction. Tammy Smith in Soul Healing says that when a need of ours isn't filled, we continue to look for it, as if our soul says to us "hang in there! you're gonna find it eventually!" 

Even the healthy relationships that I had I sabotaged, because I was afraid for them to find out the truth about me, that I really am second best.

Needless to say, this belief propelled me into a series of unhealthy relationships in college, a few that sent me into a deep depression. I've blogged about this before, but seriously, I THANK JESUS for my depression. Because without it, I wouldn't have been able to deeply think beyond what the men in my life thought of me, and actually see what I thought of myself. I found that I didn't actually like myself. And this needed to change. Once I accepted that, my life got better. 

Jesus commands us to love our neighbor as ourself, and we can't love people very well if we don't love ourselves at all right? 

Even as I entered my senior year of college and began to love myself, I didn't realize I still held this belief that i am second best. 

Marriage is really hard, but one of the hardest things about my relationship with Jayk has been that he will love me no matter WHAT I do, no matter WHAT I say. And that I am his absolute FAVORITE person. I know him, so I believe it when he tells me that. But it almost hurts me because it rattles everything that I have believed for so long. But now it's time to start changing that. I'm not going to let myself believe that anymore. 

It says in Ephesians that Jesus intentioned us for good works before he even created the world. That's pretty intentional. He values us so much. Who am I to selfishly not accept this gift: to know that I am special. And in His eyes, I'm not second best? Here goes nothing, my plunge into deeper healing, deeper belief, and deeper love for self. Thank you Jesus for true soul healing.