What's Wrong With Me?!
Do you believe that who you are, by nature, is not okay? That you are wrong? That you must change parts of your personality in order to be acceptable to God? That you have to watch and filter your every word and move, or else people will see your bad, selfish, horrible nature? Are you always apologizing for yourself (and then people get confused about what you are even apologizing for)? I am a walking container of guilt...often not being able to pinpoint any single event or reason that's causing it. I am filled with guilt, just for who I am (with an eating disorder this is amplified even more). Talk about not being able to get anywhere, those thoughts are debilitating! I might as well be trying to swim across the Atlantic Ocean with legs I decided to cut off, carrying a backpack of textbooks.
Why? I'm trying to get across an ocean and am not getting far, it's taking about an hour to move a few inches, I'm using all of my muscles and heart, fighting with my life, I hate what I am carrying AND it's heavy (guilt), and also I don't have legs anymore, because I cut them off, in attempts to change the part of me that was meant to swim and take me where I'm destined to go. To be less dramatic, I'm tired.
At what point in our lives did we start believing these things about ourselves? What changed from when we were unapologetically present and ourselves? I didn't seem to care when I was a little girl and I would wrestle my brother, when I would speak up when something bothered me, when I would beat my brother's friends in Texas Hold 'em and win their carnival tickets, when I would run around screaming and smiling because it was fun.
2 books I have been reading have taught me what I promise myself for when I have children, that these new messages will be ingrained in their core beliefs about themselves as far as it depends on me.
What books?
Relaxing With God by Andrew Farley
Wolfpack by Abby Wambach
What are they teaching me?
Be unapologetically you.
And You are compatible with God.
Why do we feel the need to change our God-given personalities? Honestly, what is inherently wrong with the way you are...and what makes you believe those things?
You are not sinful or bad by nature. By nature, you are actually compatible with who God is and his personality, he MADE you that way! It doesn't need to be all of God and none of you (you are a human BTW), you don't have to empty yourself of your own personality and become a walking superhero, you were specifically designed to accomplish things through the way you were made. It's too hard to change who you are, you weren't meant to. Why not do great things with your God-given gifts? Don't be afraid to embrace the parts of you that scare you. The nature of a mental illness is to tell you that you are wrong, as a person. The nature of society's view of women is to tell them to calm down, and be less loud, in whatever sense they look at it: body size, voice, presence, advocating, speaking up, emotion, independence, using our talents.
Satan? He powers both.
And we tell ourselves these things too. It's time to change the message. Be loud. Be brave. Be the qualities about you that freak the heck out of you (and sometimes other people too). Be what comes naturally to you - it's natural for a reason (even your body size).
Be resilient, and use your emotions to fuel your drive for changing the world, or your drive to do whatever important goals you are trying to achieve. Doing those things, and accepting that you aren't meant to change yourself - is the first step to changing the picture for everyone else too. You are the way you are. Who you are is right.
I'll meet you on the other side of the Atlantic - with both of my legs. And on a boat, because boats were meant to take us across oceans, the same way God uses us the way he made us and carries us through.
