I said in the last post I was going to share a part of my journey to self-awareness with you so here it goes… I was at a Young Life camp for three week in Colorado as a staff spouse, meaning my husband was working and the kids and I got to come along for the ride. It is a pretty sweet deal, but this particular assignment the Lord had a lot in store for me. He was going to have me hit my wall and force my world upside down.
I will forgo stating all the particulars of the stress I left back in Tennessee, but as I saw our time at camp was coming to an end, and that I would be returning home to my normal harried life I became very anxious. I felt like I had so many balls in the air I couldn’t keep them up and I was going to be buried under them.
This was a huge step in my self- awareness journey. I had no option but to start paying attention to what was going on inside of me because I didn’t want life to continue as it was. This season is when I started setting the phone alarms to remember to ask myself ‘What am I feeling and why?’ as I mentioned in the previous post. What I noticed was a lot of bitterness and resentfulness, and to be honest it got worse before it got better.
One of my favorite lines from my counselor is, “Follow the misery and make a rule.” I had a lot of misery. I allowed my bitterness and resentfulness to become my teachers, showing me where I needed to place healthy boundaries. I had to quit pointing the finger at other people and situations for my misery and misfortune. I was the one who didn’t slow down enough to evaluate if I should say ‘yes,’ ‘no,’ or ask for help. I am the one who was over-functioning for practically everyone in my life and all in the name of Jesus of course. (Over-functioning is when you do things for others they could and should do for themselves.)
I am on a journey of taking ownership of my life, embracing my god-given limits, and falling in love with who the Lord has made me to be. But I by no means get it right every day and neither will you. It is actually a daily battle, even a moment by moment battle of taking off masks and false-selves so we can live into the fullness of life we were created for. This is a life long journey. We are not ever going to ‘arrive’ while we inhabit this earth. While some days this is frustrating to my perfectionistic bones, I have come to find great freedom and grace in embracing the journey.
If you choose to pay attention to what is going on inside of you, you will find different things than I did. Your work will be different than mine, but it is all holy work. What thoughts or fears are holding you back from sitting down with the Lord and confessing you want to know Him better and yourself better? Why not set an alarm on your phone for 3 times throughout the day so you can ask yourself, ‘What am I feeling and why?’ Dare to jump on this journey. The Lord doesn’t always work how we expect but He never fails us!
The Road We Are On 