Tripping over those Milestones...!

I finally understand why we refer to life as a journey and that the path our lives take is determined by the 'roads' we travel on. Of course there are times when we have no control over which route we take to get to our destinations but very often we do choose our own paths and ultimately we choose our own final destination! However, getting back to the point, my journey has, so far, been a rather boring one, and traveled along dusty little back roads - no super highways of success and high living for me! I can honestly say that my major achievements in life have been more by chance than brilliance, stubborn perseverance than superior skill and stumbling over obstacles rather than conquering mountains!

Just over a week ago I had a birthday and strangely enough I had quite a few people telling me that it was an 'achievement'. I'd never had that said about any of my other birthdays before and, as I had not been seriously ill, I was at a loss to understand why turning Fifty was such a big deal! Admittedly I knew that I was now on the downhill slope towards the pearly gates, and that's not a problem at all, but an achievement? Quite honestly I didn't achieve Fifty, Fifty happened to me! To say it was an achievement is to say that catching a cold is an achievement - not something you set out to do deliberately! No, I'm afraid to say that turning Fifty was another one of those milestones that I tripped over!

Like my High School Graduation.... I passed my subjects, they let me out; Matric Dance (or to the Americans "The Prom") - didn't go; twentieth and thirtieth - don't remember them, fortieth bought a rather screechy breed of parrot. Wedding no 1 - tiny and best forgotten, Wedding no 2 - lots of fun but only about 40 people and nice and quiet - just how I like it!  You see, I prefer the side roads, more scenic, less congestion, safer, and I'm really not worried about potholes slowing me down!

But now that I have tripped over that 50 milestone that just happened to be laying in my path, I find that the road ahead is still as dark as before - no streetlights showing me where I'm going to be going or how long the road will be. So all I can do as I continue travelling along this road (at least I'm on the downhill run now) is pray that wherever God leads me, whether on super highways or dusty dirt roads, if I stumble down potholes, get into fender-benders or face life-threatening danger, I want to live my life, my journey, in such a way, that at all times I bring glory to Him.

Word Bouquets or Seedlings

The biggest battle I have with depression is a war of words. Words that go round and around in my head, as though someone has pressed a repeat button and then glued it down. Words that bring me down, that belittle me and rob me of joy. Words that deny me the freedom to be the wonderful human being that God created me to be.

I have tried so many times to replace those negative words with positive ones. I read all the right motivational books, pray, read my Bible, go for counseling and for a short while I feel great. I plant a bouquet of words in my mind, beautiful and inspiring that I can reflect on for a while. But like all bouquets they soon wither and die and the weeds of negativity sprout up and take their place in my mind.  I have finally realized that to get rid of these words I have to do something more positive than just ‘plant word bouquets’.

So what do I do? How do I go about getting rid of these negative words that bring me down? I am going to have to plant ‘seedlings’! You see, ‘seedlings’ are simple, tiny, beginnings of enormous truths and they have roots. It is these roots that make them so powerful in comparison to the ‘cut flowers’ that have nothing but their beauty which withers and dies after a very short time.   I am, of course, going to have to nurture the ‘seedlings’ and keep on weeding out the negative words – every time they pop up in my head I am going to have to yank them out and replace them with the ‘seedling’ words.  My first ‘seedling words’ are “I am God’s Masterpiece” – Ephesians 2:10 “We are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things He planned for us long ago.”

How about you? Are you ready to accept that you too are God’s masterpiece? That He has created you uniquely and specifically to be just who you are to fulfill His plans and purposes for your life? That His love for you is all consuming and that He does not think any of the negative things about you that you think about yours

Duelling with Depression!

I could launch into a long rant about how insidious depression is and how it affects more people now than ever before, etc., etc., but I am sure that you've all read that before and, anyway, there are far more informed people out there flooding the net with scientific information about depression.  What I can tell you is my own personal experience because I know that better than anyone else, and hopefully, you can take away a glimmer of hope for yourself or someone else from my brief story.

I have been battling depression for more than 20 years, but didn't acknowledge it until recently. I went through a traumatic marriage and divorce and was left on my own with three small boys to care for. I focused everything on them and it was only when they had left school and were spreading their wings that I finally took a look at me - and didn't like what I saw.  

Oh what a beast this depression is!! The lies it tells you! The way it wants to destroy your soul, eat at your joy and ruin your relationships! It causes you to lash out at the people you care about and who care about you. It convinces you that life really is worthless, that, you, in fact, are worthless and that everyone around you will be much better off without you because you are nothing more than a burden to them! 

It lies! And you do not have to let it win! Nor do you have to battle it alone! I went for counselling with my pastor and really came to accept myself - even like myself - in my head and heart. I knew I was God's kid and that He, the Creator of the Universe loved me just as I was ... so why did I still feel so miserable! I finally decided to stop trying to be 'tough' and went to a doctor who explained about seratonin and put me on anti-depressants. My life changed for the better - what an amazing difference!

But I didn't call this piece "duelling" depression for nothing! It's an ongoing battle. I tried weaning myself off my medication - big mistake, very big mistake.......  

I went spiralling right back down to where I'd been before. I felt like I was been tossed around on the rocks of despair and yet there really wasn't anything wrong with my life! To make matters worse my hormones had now decided to get in on the act probably as a result of my approaching 50'hood and hysterectomy last year. Oh! Wow! Anyway, suffice it to say, I am now back on medication - for depression and hormone imbalance and life is slowly starting to return to normal. Richard Bach once wrote "You teach best what you most need to learn" and that is truly the case with me and my self-esteem issues.

Dumping the Garbage!

It is important that we take a step back from ourselves and be critical about our attitude towards ourselves.  Not about our appearance or whatever faults we perceive that we have, but our attitude!

To help yourself do this, I suggest you write out a list of ten of your ‘faults’ and then a list of ten good points.  There is something about writing things down that helps us put things into perspective!  You may battle with the good points at first, not because you don’t have any but because it is so foreign to say something nice about yourself.  Once you have done that, assess the “bad” points and then look at their importance.  For example, being pigeon-toed really doesn’t matter so long as your legs are strong, you can walk, jog, run. Being overweight is not incurable, being short is not a disaster, etc., etc.

If there are problems that are incurable, learn to accept them as being part of what makes you unique and special. We in South Africa are blessed with outstanding athletes who are handicapped. Natalie Du Toit is one fine example of someone who, despite losing her leg in an accident, has gone on to become a top international, olympic swimmer. She didn’t let her handicap cripple her!

Everytime you find yourself being critical about yourself stop!  Just stop immediately and replace that thought with something positive.  Just for fun, ask a friend or family member to write out ten good points about you. In fact – ask as many people as you can! I’m certain that you are thinking that you could write a whole book of bad points, but that would defeat our objective. We are focusing on the good points and I know, that once you have spent enough time focused in a positive way, you will find that most of your bad points are in your head or are not so bad after all.

If you think that the above exercise is vain and will lead to sinful pride, you are wrong. God does not want us to think badly of ourselves and to be crippled by self-hatred and low self-esteem.  In fact, we are told to love others as we love ourselves! We cannot truly love others if we are filled with self loathing. A good self-esteem is not pride, or vanity, rather it is an honest evaluation of who we are – child of God, uniquely designed to fulfill His unique purpose for our lives, a masterpiece of God’s creation. 

Facing The Pain of a low Self-Esteem

Hiding behind a Camera!

Our self-esteem is so vitally important to how we live our lives that we cannot afford to trifle with it. Yet for some reason, we consider it vain and silly to worry about how we feel about ourselves.  Jesus commanded us to “love our neighbours as ourselves”. Well, its pretty obvious that there are very few of us who love ourselves if the wars, racism, crime, violence and general all round selfishness are any mirror of our hearts.  We cannot love others if we don’t love ourselves. 

Getting to the point of self acceptance can, for many, be an uphill battle.  I know, I fought my own battle.  Severe acne for 10 years started my self-loathing talks.  My teen years were horrible for that reason only.  My only problem was my skin and this spilled into everything else in my life. At the age of sixteen I was voted as having the best legs in my high school class. Did it make me feel better? A little, but then the negative thoughts started again. This time these negative thoughts said that the other girls only said that about my legs because my face was so awful and they were just being nice! 

By the time I was 21, I had fallen pregnant (un-married) by a man who was nine years older than I. We married before the baby was born and just two weeks before my 26^th birthday I gave birth to my third son. My marriage was a travesty. Ten months after my youngest son was born, I left home after my husband beat me up and I began divorce proceedings. After the divorce came many years as a single mom, without a cent of child support ever being received.

Why did I marry a man like that? Quite honestly there are multiple answers but I think the main one is that I didn’t like myself and so chose someone who had as little respect for me as I had for myself.  I spent five years in a daze, trying not to see the truth of what was happening in my life because I did not think I deserved any differently.  It was only when the safety of my children was threatened that I had the courage to accept that this was not the way to live and even if I didn’t deserve better, the children certainly did.

After my divorce, with my skin having cleared up during my first pregnancy, I was suddenly 27 and looking great.  My figure was fantastic, I looked amazing! One suitor even compared me favourably to Olivia Newton John!! Did this fact change the negative thoughts about myself? Not at all.  All my energy went into caring for my sons and within ten years I had started gaining weight.  Yet another reason to dislike myself.  The vicious cycle of self hatred had another notch to its belt. Incredibly, even though my skin had completely healed, I still hated it and would not leave the house without make-up on to hide the defects.

It is amazing how we find it so difficult to let go of the things that we hate the most about ourselves and yet the compliments and the good points are totally ignored. Our view of ourselves is so distorted and so often, hidden behind a sunny mask, that even our nearest and dearest would be horrified to learn what we really think about ourselves.

Not all of us go through really bad episodes that cause us to dislike ourselves. In fact, the reason that I mentioned mine is because they indicate how crippling such “small” things can be. For many it is a number of minor events that add up and slowly erode at our self esteem.

The criteria by which western society measures our “value” as a person are, wealth, physical beauty, power, education and youthfulness.  Our advertisements on television, whatever the product, will ultimately appeal in some way to one or more of these so-called “values”.  We judge ourselves relative to the “worth” of others and constantly strive to look like / be like someone else to the point that we lose our own identity.

We need to take a serious look at ourselves, not through our tainted glasses, but with open eyes and an honest heart  but mainly with the realisation that God loves us, He created us exactly as we are, and He did this because He created what PLEASED Him!   

What's Wrong With Me?

So many of us feel that the above question should read – What’s right with me? Feeling this way about ourselves so often starts when we are small children and for each of us it’s a different story, a different event that marked the start of the changes of how we viewed ourselves. Yet when all those stories are looked at, the similarities are frightening.  For many it was a parent or sibling who would tell us we were stupid, ugly, overweight. Our siblings were smarter, little Johnny down the road got better grades. Comparisons would be drawn between ourselves and others by thoughtless, but often well-meaning older family members, teachers, or family friends.  From childhood, for the majority of us, our self esteem gets whittled away. So often it is done by people who really love you and who had absolutely no idea that their words were hurtful.  Then puberty hits and we are the ones with the acne, breasts that are too big or too small, and for guys it’s voices that still squeak whilst others around you have developed a husky, manly baritone! And so the erosion of our self worth continues.  Even when all those adolescent hurdles have been reached and we are now a fully blossomed adult, guess what, we carry those burdens with us.  For some reason, the self deprecating cycle that we have fallen into continues and although no one else may be comparing us to others, society now does it.  Buy this soap and you too can look like the gorgeous woman on the wrapper.  Clothing manufacturer’s have sizes that seem to fit only the models and for the rest of us, its an on-going battle to find something that’s the right length, width, colour, whatever. As we stand struggling in and out of garments in change-rooms filled with distorted mirrors, despair sets in and away we go again, I’m too tall, short, fat, thin. My heads too big, my feet too small, arms too flabby, knees too wobbly yada yada yada!! What never fails to amaze me is how we can listen to all this nonsense from ourselves and not get heartily sick of it.   The fact is, we don’t have to keep listening to it.  We can move on from our childhood hurts and we can come to love ourselves.  Stick with me and I’ll show you how you can live a life of inner freedom and contentment – it’s your choice!

Loving Yourself the way God Intended

Psalm 139 vs 13 – 16
For you created my inmost being;
You knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully
And wonderfully made;
Your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
When I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together
In the depths of the earth,
Your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me
Were written in your book
Before one of them came to be.

One of the hardest things for us to accept is that God loves us just as we are – 100%. He does not attach conditions to his love. He does not say “if you were taller, shorter, cleverer, fatter, thinner, more talented etc., “ then He could love you more! So if God, our Creator, the one who made this beautiful planet and hung the stars in the sky, doesn’t do that, then why do we? Why do we criticize and condemn, judge and belittle ourselves. And if we are doing it to ourselves, we invariably are doing it to others. We may not be as harsh on others as we are on ourselves, but we still do it! If we are doing it to ourselves and others, are we not also doing it to God? Aren’t we, in effect telling God that He messed up! Aren’t we saying “Well God you did a great job on Table Mountain and the Kingfisher and Sandra Bullock, but You really messed up with me! God doesn’t mess up! He does everything perfectly and we, each and every one of us are His perfect creation. We all come with a designer label attached that says: Lovingly crafted by the hands of the Creator”.

We may mess up and ruin ourselves with bad habits and toxic behaviour, but not God. And although God may be unhappy with some of our choices, He still loves us 100%. If you are a parent, you know exactly what I mean! There are times when you could throttle your kids (especially when they are in their teens!) but you still love them.

Now God commands us to love our neighbours as we love ourselves! A very hard command, many of us just take note of the loving our neighbours part of the command and rush around being everyone’s best friend, helping the underprivileged, giving giving giving! But how many of those people pay any attention to themselves. In fact they use it as an excuse to ignore their own health and well being. And the problem is, that these dear people, who are so loving and generous with their time and efforts often become bitter and wonder why they never get any “loving” back! It is simply because they do not love themselves. They feel that if they give of themselves constantly some of that loving generosity will come back to them but they never quite understand the truth in the saying “You teach others to treat you the way you treat yourself.” Or, if these people with such low self esteem are loved and appreciated by others, they don’t see it, or accept it! They feel that people are just being ‘nice’ but are insincere. Because they don’t love themselves they are incapable of accepting love from others.
Please do not misunderstand me, I am not speaking about loving yourself in a narcissistic, self-centered way. That is destructive. What I am talking about is seeing yourself in a Godly way. Accepting yourself as “lovingly, individually crafted.” Taking care of yourself physically, spiritually and emotionally. It means not seeing yourself as insignificant compared to others because they have more talents or are better looking than you. God has created each one of us ON PURPOSE! Which means that, in your uniqueness, He has something for you to do!. As a follower of Christ we are all part of the “Body” of Christ – whether we are the vocal chords or the eardrum, the pinky finger or the foot we are all necessary.