Credit Where Credit's Due ...

I recently did something that was pretty painful. The thing itself was necessary (ending a longstanding, but toxic relationship), it was just the way I did it that I sometimes wish I had handled differently.

It made me look at why I do things the way I do, and come to find out - NEWSFLASH - it has something to do with the way I was reared. But thanks be to God, even though my childhood sucked pretty much, I can start over.

I have noticed a pattern in my life - I tend to get into situations where people are emotionally unavailable and abusive - in a kind of velvet glove kind of way. They don't hit me or anything like that - no their abuse is much more subtle. It tends to come off as dismissive - you know, "oh isn't that nice, now get the F*** out of here."

Oh they wouldn't have the fortitude to actually say that. No, it's more nice than that. It usually sounds like "oh, okay, thanks," and then they go and do what they want to and my input is discarded like so much trash. And I guess that's what people do, but where I get hung up is that I try to get approval from these abusers! And why is that?

You got it, mommy and daddy.

Now I don't want to be like the car commercial where the guy with the megaphone is yelling "because daddy never loved me." My parents did the best they could; they just didn't have anything to draw from. So they passed on what they knew - which was toxic waste. And that's why I want to get healed. Because see the insidious thing about abuse is that if you don't get well, you pass it on even if you don't mean to. Even if you say within yourself "I'll never do that !" you end up doing exactly the same thing.

So that's what I am about now. Getting healed. It ain't easy. I find the monster in every corner of my life - situations where I have been acting the same way I learned how to as a kid, but where those reactions don't work any more. It's like the old story of the Tar Baby. The more you hit it, the more you get stuck. But now it's time to get unstuck. Now it's time to be free. And free is much more pleasant than stuck.

I read something one time that said no tyrant ever surrenders territory unless one stronger than him forces him to. Sounds like my life. Sounds like the battle ahead. And I have a role to play in it. But thanks be to God, I am not in this alone. My Liberator is with me, and He will bring it to pass.