Accept my feelings

5.12.11

I'll be honest, it did hurt me a little, but I have to realize that only me and God know about our relationship and you were only posing questions to make me think. Despite some legalism in my relationship with Christ, I truly believe that I have had moments in my life where I was completely in sync with God. And it hurt that you questioned it. And I sort of worked some things out in my brain while writing back to you, so you don't have to read it all if you don't want to. The important thing is that I wrote them and that I understand them. 

Here's the thing. I have spent the majority of my life suppressing bad emotions. I have never ever been angry. I have never questioned my relationship with God, I have only tried my best to make everybody happy while I just hurt and hide my true feelings. I never really realized that I did that. I just thought that was who I was. I was just this person who liked to serve people. That was my love language...acts of service. But something triggered this realization (I think it was my mom's surgery) and I realized that I was only doing these things for people because it was what I thought I was supposed to do. I felt this extreme guilt when I did not do these things. And I would rather do these things than feel that guilt. And it was good to do these things. Acts of service is not a bad thing. I just was constantly doing them so that I wouldn't feel so guilty or so that I could feel better about myself or to appease someone else. That is not right. So now I am trying to not do things when I feel guilty. If that means that I don't do things that I used to then it is ok. I need to learn to be ok with a little guilt and try to move past it. Only then will I be able to do things for the right reasons. 

These feelings that I am having towards God and my mom and others, I need to feel them. I need to accept them and be ok with feeling them. Anger is not a bad emotion. Accepting and dealing with them are the only ways that I can get over them. And I think that these emotions are the key to why I am the way I am. They are why I have felt so bad about myself my entire life. They are way I feel like I am not good enough. So it is extremely important that I learn to understand them and deal with them in the right ways or I will just continue to be like this. 

I know you don't like to hear that I am angry with God or that I don't trust Him. You want to help me repair my relationship. But maybe that is not what I need right now. Maybe I just need to be ok with my relationship as it is. I have to deal with it. I don't need to try and make it right just because it is not a good way to be. The old me would have done that. The old me would have gotten out her Bible and read and prayed and do everything that she thought would have helped to repair that relationship. But maybe I need to go through this. Maybe I need to be angry and in turn learn what it is to really know grace. And do things for God because I love Him, not because I feel like I should do them. I need to stop doing things just to appease people and make myself feel less guilty. That is a pattern I need to stop. I need to be ok feeling a little uncomfortable. I need to be ok with these emotions and the way that I am right now. It is so important that I accept who I am at this point in my life, because I really have never accepted myself as I am. 

I have been thinking a lot about the tornadoes and what it means that we were spared. Every area around us was hit. That tornado that devastated Ringgold was heading straight for us. God spared us. We never even lost power. It is amazing. God is trying to show me that he is trustworthy despite what he allowed happen to me. He helped me to be able to go to work everyday and stop having such a hard time. It is like He is saying....look...here I am. I am saving you. I know that these things are miracles and I am so thankful for these things. But I don't feel connected to any of these big gestures. I am not a big gestures kind of girl. God hurt me so personally and so deeply that no amount of big gestures are going to repair my heart. I still hurt. I still cry. Like I said before, my heart is broken. And I still can't trust him with it. It is too personal and too fragile. There is a wall around my heart right now. And no amount of sermons on trust and devotions on grace are going to help those walls to come down. I don't know what will cause those walls to fall. I don't know what will cause me to love and trust again. I wish I knew. But that is many many steps ahead right now. Right now I just need to accept this is how I feel and deal with it, feel it, and be a little uncomfortable.