First of all I wish to say that
I'm very grateful you should take the time to write to me even though
you
usually are so busy.
I am currently being seen by a
Christian psychiatrist whom I go and see every two weeks or so, but
I have just taken two
tranquillizers because, although I am not really depressed, I am
feeling so
tense.
You wrote in the Tank (about
Jesus):
he
always accepted me and
never laughed at me and never made fun of my social-stupidity and never
teased
me and never put me down, I knew I had my first really safe friend...
Fact is, I went through most of
school being laughed at, ridiculed and made fun of, not just for
my social
stupidity (to use your expression) but also for my clothes - my
mother
never knew that at least decent clothes were a must - or my bad looks -
and as
I am such a sentimental person, the prospect of never being loved by a
woman
wasn't exactly fun.
I was ridiculed
because of my
stature then too—I was very, very short, small, cowardly, and weakly; and easily picked on. We were also somewhat
struggling so during the early years I only got 1 or 2 new sets of
clothes each year, and I always got to pick
them out. I always made bad fashion choices and so became too
embarrassed to
even wear them sometimes! So they sat in the closet and I wore the
previous year’s old
–but plain and not likely to get ‘noticed for ridicule’—clothes.]
Whenever I needed some sympathy
from people,
It only took me ONCE
time to
learn not to try this—I confided to my college roommate about a
recurring dream
of insecurity and he just laughed at me… never spoke of it to anyone
else but
Jesus for 30+ years… Most people are just not gifted at listening—it’s
a waste
of time to seek sympathy from ‘normal’ folks… It’s like asking a
policemen to
bake a wedding cake, or asking an artist to redo your plumbing—they are
just
not equipped for the job, and so you should EXPECT them to deliver a
disaster!
when
I later spoke of the
nightmare I'd been through, they always replied: oh but you were
laughed at
because of your clothes, or of this, or of that, as though explaining
the
reason why I was ill-treated meant I could be freed from the
bitterness,
resent and hatred in me. And as though people, you know, were always
nice,
unless somebody bad like me showed up and then they turned nasty. What
I was
looking was for understanding, not being told that those who had hurt
my
feelings for so long were, after all, right.
But most of the time, the
"explanation" I was given was that I should bear the blame
myself. A lot of good that does when you don't know what to do with the
guilt.
[Several points here
(all of
which I learned—I think—from MY therapist years ago):
1. When they laughed at you for
your clothes, you SHOULD HAVE BEEN ANGRY—both at them and (partially)
at your mom.
There
WAS guilt involved in such an act, but it would not have been yours for wearing
the clothes. They were guilty of harsh, unloving, abusive behavior—and
moral
outrage is legitimate in such cases. Your mom was guilty of not being
sensitive
to your needs as a social being and for inattention to this. Her lack
of help
in this is undoubtedly LESS evil than THEIRS (perhaps due to lack of
skills
HERSELF--see the following Note), but that does NOT exonerate her of
guilt. My therapist made
me list
all the painful things I remember my parents saying to me growing
up (since they never did anything
hurtful to me, it was only the words
which would have affected me) and
MADE ME 'get mad' at them--as a means of healing-through-truth. I did
not want to (I love my folks, and we have a wonderful relationship,
especially now), but I had to be
honest with where the guilt for some specific
things REALLY WAS, he
told me. [Of course, I didn't have to somehow make them into villains,
meanies, abusive, negligent, etc--LOL--it
wasn't
about denying all the good they did and all the support they
gave me. It was only about the few
things that went askew--but which still hurt pretty bad.] The
process
helped tremendously. I have tried to get my kids to do
that about me and their mom,
too--everybody makes mistakes in parenting and everybody needs some
healing-help.
[Note: It is all too
easy to blame parents, caregivers, and friends for wrongs, and this can
in itself be a form of 'blame shifting'. But therapists
(healers-of-hearts) know this to be a deep and serious reality. The
intense bond between parents/elders and kids is meant to be
powerful--for good--and so the occasional mistake (often in the middle
of an angry argument) can likewise have powerful effects. But the guilt
here is a graded one,
and not just good-versus-horrible.
Guilt (i.e., culpability--not 'psychological shame') IS a bi-polar deal
("Criminal conviction or NOT"), but it is also graded by seriousness in our world
(e.g., Misdemeanor versus Felony, non-capital versus capital crimes).
When applied to individual agents, it can range from malice (very
serious, planning to hurt some one), willful negligence
(knowingly not putting a guard rail up on a roof as a safeguard), incompetence
(making a vow that you cannot fulfill, because you never really had the
authority, means, or 'projections' to be able to fulfill it), and simple ignorance
("I didn'tknow I wasn't allowed to do that, officer?"). But, as our
societies have told us repeatedly 'ignorance of the law is no excuse',
and damage is done ANYWAY--and it is not 'just an accident' when an
underage driver, unaware that they need to be licensed to drive, kill
someone on a road. They are ignorant (and not incompetent, negligent,
or malicious), but someone is still dead because of them. So, when I
speak here about culpability of parents and abusive co-students, there
may be a world of difference between simply not-knowing-the-fashion and
ridiculing someone because they don't wear the fashion...]
2. If your clothes REALLY WERE
BAD (a TOTALLY relative thing, I am sure you know), then there is
nothing wrong
with others ‘disapproving’ of those clothes. All that means is that
THEY think
they are ‘bad’, just as others would think THEIR clothes were ‘bad’,
‘pompous’,
‘overpriced’, ‘gaudy’, ‘ostentatious’, etc. Their evaluation of your
clothes is
not ‘evil’ in itself, but their RIDICULING YOU (anyone) about such
matters is
SINFUL and a legitimate target for moral outrage. Your
‘anger/bitterness’ etc
is PERFECTLY LEGITIMATE toward them (in those acts)—they have acted
immorally in
how they treated you. [Remember, I am not
saying they had to agree with your
clothes, but that their decision/action in RIDICULING YOU was
inappropriate.]
3. I assume you also know that
when someone ridicules another in such a manner, that it is a sign of
INSECURITY, WEAKNESS, and NEED in THEIR OWN lives. The Bully is
insecure INSIDE
and spends ALL his/her life trying to prove TO THEMSELVES(!) that they
are
‘significant’. It is the RIDICULOUR (spelling?) who lives in constant
fear of
being ridiculed THEMSELVES, by those same ‘peers’ with whom they ridiculed you!
Because their lives are so shallow they HAVE TO FOCUS on petty,
external,
conventional things—clothes, fashion, appearances, social
attributes—since they
are uncomfortable with REAL feelings, depths, values.
4. In fact, a great deal of the
time it is just an “act” on their part. They are not really deep enough
to
really MEAN/FEEL real such distaste. They are simply going along with
some
‘ringleader’, and don’t really care that much ABOUT the issue. They are
just
slaves to the group, and will even hurt others (often AGAINST THEIR OWN
conscience—I have learned later) in their HUGE FEAR of not fitting in.
5. But this fear is NOT ADEQUATE
moral grounds to hurt others! And the abuse they give to others like
you and me
is CULPABLE—they are wrong, they are abusive, THEY ARE GUILTY. I may
have been
physically short but that is not ‘evil’. They ridiculed me for
something ‘morally
irrelevant’ and so THEY are EVIL (in that specific action, of course)
6. God “built” the human psyche
to be sensitive to the feedback of others. We are supposed to be
ENCOURAGED to
good works and higher performance, when we receive the PRAISE of
others. It is
a beautiful system—one that is designed to maximize goodness and beauty
and
contribution. Similarly, when we do destructive (to self or community)
actions
and/or attitudes, our peers are supposed to give us negative
feedback—censure,
disapproval, etc. This is designed to teach us what is destructive, and
to give
us social incentive to correct destructive behavior. When we are
praised for
our legitimate contributions (all of us having SOMETHING to contribute
to the
good), our emotional being is built to feel PRIDE (the
good kind—NOT arrogance) and ELATION and
SIGNIFICANCE. When we are censured or corrected for our TRULY
destructive behaviors,
our emotional being is built to feel SHAME or psychological GUILT. If
we did
NOT feel good-pride when ‘approved’, and did NOT feel shame when
‘disapproved’,
then we are NOT HEALTHY! Our emotional life is working CORRECTLY when
our
feelings of SHAME are ‘directly proportional’ to the amount of
DISAPPROVAL the
social system is feeding back to us.
7. This means that the SHAME you
feel/felt ‘at their hands’ is a SIGN OF HEALTH, friend. Never forget
that. It is
a sign that “the plumbing is working”. Just as your feeling of elation
at doing
praiseworthy things (to the extent you fear an ‘inflated ego’) is a
SIGN OF
HEALTH, so too is your sense of SHAME at all this disapproval you have
received.
8. But unfortunately, all the
SHAME is actually REFLECTIVE OF is the amount of censure/disapproval
you have
received and NOT of the ‘accuracy’ of
that disapproval!!!!! In other words, constructive
criticism produces (roughly) the same degree of shame as does the same
amount
of FALSE, destructive criticism! Your emotional feedback
mechanism cannot tell the difference between 'accurate' feedback and
'inaccurate'
feedback. So, the fact that you are still overwhelmed with shame is
actually
only a sign of emotional ‘health’—the system works.
9. BUT this means that FALSE
CRITICISM is evil. The fact that SHAME is experienced as unpleasant
(!), means
that those who IMPROPERLY produce such pain, through the administration
of
ridicule and false censure, are VIOLENT and ASSAULTIVE. Your feelings
of shame
are (in much of the case, I suspect) a MEASURE OF THE (moral) GUILT OF
OTHERS!
You think about this, and you will KNOW I am right here, JJ…
10. If you were a REAL criminal,
their censure would be (morally) GOOD—and your Shame would be hopefully
an
incentive for your reformation. But when you are morally good (or
innocent), for others to
abuse the God-given social feedback system is evil. Creating undeserved
feelings of guilt IN YOU, should produce DESERVED feelings of guilt in
THEM
[and sometimes it does, you know—there was ONE GUY shorter than me, and
guess
what I did?!—right, I RIDICULED HIM (remember, those who ridicule
others are
insecure themselves)—and I am STILL haunted in my heart by that memory
TODAY.]
11. Ok, I’ve spent enough on
this, but it applies to much below. The appropriate response on your
part to
those who inappropriately produced shame in you is MORAL OUTRAGE and
JUDGMENT.
Regardless of any good they
ALSO did to you (its like our well-meaning parents, remember), and
regardless of their
motives-of-fear-of-peers, you are SUPPOSED to be (morally) angry with
them. You cannot
take the next step in healing until you learn this TRUTH.
12. Once you understand this,
then two changes can occur: (A) the SHAME you feel about HAVING SHAME
will go
away! You will then see that your feelings of shame are simply a
reflection of
health on your part (you should also note that the New Testament points
out
that people can become so calloused through scarring that they LOSE the
ability
to feel this shame, and therefore LOSE the ability to be corrected for
good by
the society). You can then simply accept your shame as a positive sign that you
are not ‘psychologically/socially’ unresponsive; (B) the ANGER you feel
toward
those who have abused you will now become ‘pure’, and become a sign of
MORAL
trueness. If you are SUPPOSED to feel anger when an innocent is
victimized by
others, then you should feel it when YOU ARE THE VICTIM TOO. And when
you work
through this, you will no longer feel any SHAME over your ANGER! Your
anger
will become ‘justified’ and then you can start work on softening your
anger—but
you cannot get rid of the anger until you RECOGNIZE the ‘truth’ of its
‘message’: it is a moral-emotional response to malice, abuse, and moral
guilt.
If you were NOT angry over such abuse (toward YOU or toward OTHERS),
THEN
something is “WRONG’,
and THEN the “moral plumbing is not working”. See what I
mean?
Okay…that’s a
foundation… let’s
go on to the next set of comments…
When I turned 17 I had a school
psychologist who was so terrible. I was once told I would make a
brilliant
counselor, I am not surprised. I learnt from her mistakes. You see,
whenever I
told her about a conflict I'd had with someone, not necessarily so that
she
would declare me innocent and those I'd had the conflict with guilty,
but just
to know whether somebody understanding was listening, she automatically
explained to me I was in the wrong, and the people I was opposed to
were right.
There were no shades of gray, the idea of shared responsibility never
occurred
to her. She always had an explanation or justification for the people
who
hadn't been nice to me, whereas she always rejected what I could say in
my own
defense (well, believe it or not even though that was 17 years ago I
still
think of this woman daily).
These people have
SUCH power to
scar us—I have several similar stories myself. Scenes you play over and
over in
your head—and I just now lift them up to Jesus as I am re-enacting the
scene
and comment on how inappropriate, misguided, or sad such behavior
toward me
was… I am looking forward to losing those memories in heaven, with the
new
body.
By now I must have had you
yawning, shall I continue with my story?
For my greatest sorrow I fell
madly in love with a girl who, to me, was the embodiment of femininity
- she
had beauty, both in her looks and in her ability to create it - she
could draw
quite well, something which I'd never been able to do. When she thought
highly
or poorly of a work of art, she could argue her point and I revered
her
ability to judge and express her opinion (I had a feeling that the
world or
notion of beauty was, in fact, alien to me, being ugly as I was). Fact
was, she
very often teased me, put me down and made fun of me. I know she would
never
agree of it but she delighted in using her power over me by giving me
wisecracks it sometimes took me months or even years to recover from.
And I
thought of her as a highly moral person, which made things worse
because I
refused to see she was doing me harm.
I must complement you
on your
bravery, friend. I would NEVER have interacted with such a person,
knowing the
POWER TO HURT me. These people sought me out, because I was smart—and
they
could ‘use’ that brainpower for their ends—but I knew better than to
trust
them, or even daydream about being in their ‘social circles’…
One thing she told me was that I
thought of everybody else as stupid, which encouraged me in turn to
think of
MYSELF as stupid.
I think this is
standard among
the (intellectually?) gifted. I know it was for some of my kids and
certainly for me, but the
logic is VERY destructive. The way the argument goes is like this:
a. From
a practical, truthful standpoint, I/we probably ARE
smarter than those around us (that is just a sociometric, IQ-test
fact). So
that is no big deal or surprise.
b.
However, since we feel ‘inferior’ SOCIALLY to those
‘well-adjusted, popular, socially successful, and well-dressed people’
(!),
then this fact MUST IMPLY that our INTELLECTUAL smartness is IRRELEVANT
and
UNIMPORTANT, relative to their ‘social smartness’.
c. This
leads us to conclude that our MENTAL smartness
DOESN’T COUNT as far as TRUE SUCCESS and TRUE SMARTNESS goes. And that,
therefore, the only stupidity that COUNTS is ‘social stupidity’—of
which we
seem to have PLENTY!
d. So
mental smarts are demeaned/denigrated/trivialized (no
source of pride there, I guess, since intellectual achievement merely
MOCKS
US!—“you are a failure at being accepted by people, so your
intellectual
achievement in quantum physics or literature only PROVES that you have
to ‘run
away’ from social reality because of failure…loser!”), and we assume
that the ONLY
IMPORTANT MEASURE of ‘smarts’ is HOW WELL WE FIT IN WITH THOSE WHO
RIDICULE
OTHERS INAPPROPRIATELY (!!!!!!).]
I also had a major problem: from
the age of thirteen on I developed the evil tendency of feeling like
exposing
myself; which I actually did. I lived on the second floor of my
building and,
just to get a kick out of it, I once exposed myself from my window
sill,
thinking I wasn't seen. I was. In fact, I heard people comment on it
many
times. You might think I hallucinated this, but I didn't. Some people
jokingly
referred to it in my very presence when I was at school.
At one stage during my studies I
was offered the opportunity to study abroad. I signed up for the
exchange program, as I wished to escape from the evil reputation my
deed and my
strange behaviours had given me. Then things went worse. I still wasn't
rid of
my tendency, which I was all the more ashamed of as I had already given
my life
over to Christ. I was trying hard not to lose my virginity, and when I
consider
that I had "unlawful" sex several times in my life afterwards,
because I was in such sexual misery, I think I should have fornicated
only once
to realize that sex wasn't the mountain I made of it. Once what
happened was
that I masturbated too close to my window in my student residence in
Berlin and I know I was seen doing that, because several days
afterwards
I could see four students laughingly imitating my gestures and my
expression of
deep grief and shame.
I don’t know much
about the
‘psychology of exhibitionism’, but my first reaction to this is that it
was a
relatively low-harm attempt on
your part to assert yourself. Given what you
have told me about the past—and given what my similar experiences
produced in
me, attitude-wise—it makes perfect sense to me that you MUST HAVE HAD
to find SOME way to ‘hit
back’ at the world. Since exposure is apparently considered
‘morally/legally
evil’ (you can be arrested for it) and ‘violent’ (forcing yourself upon
the
world, when it does NOT want to see your private parts), I can see how
exposing
yourself and getting away with it would be an act of self-assertion, an
act
that tries to say “I am NOT powerless and insignificant”—“I can do
something
with power over those/that which overpowers me”. Something like that. I
personally knew a
person in a neighboring high school who felt very powerless against the
teachers, whom he
had to ‘please’ to keep out of trouble. He got all his approval from
the
teachers, because none of students liked him (according to him), so he
was always trying to
manipulate the teachers for approval for his self-image needs. One
particular teacher
was apparently abusive (verbally), and he could only barely keep out of
trouble with her. He sneaked
into the high school one weekend and urinated in her desk, over all her
pens/pencils. The urine dried over the weekend, but the student had a
secret, morbid
delight and sense of power-strike-back whenever he saw her pickup the
pens/pencils which had HIS urine on them! It's a little like the
troubled/ignored adolescent who 'makes trouble' JUST TO get the
attention of her parents.
When I mentioned this to doctors
years afterwards, or when I told my pastor one year after it took place
(I'd
been living in shock so I wasn't able to open my mouth about it for one
year),
they all agreed that my guilt had made me see these things,
That looks like evasion on their part—if
they really believed that, then they should have started working on the
“WHY”—what
caused you to hallucinate,
etc.? If your current shrink believes that, then
he should be digging deep into the causes of such delirium, and
not just
‘documenting it’ like that!]
but I really wonder how I could
have hallucinated all those things. There were elements which were just
too
precise. In fact, I'm still planning to go back to Germany because I am
so sure
I didn't imagine all that I saw and I am confident some people will
remember
me. To make things even worse I had other strange behaviours, such as
picking
my nose all the time to cite only one and I could see people
mimicking my
habits to one another and laughing about it. And of course, I had
visited a
Pentecostal church in America the year before and the pastor had given
me one
of his books in which he advocated saying Hallelujah whenever you felt
oppressed and so I did - and I couldn't go into a bar without hearing
people
ridiculing this - now Hallelujah is the same word in my language, of
course.
I am not sure what to
think
about their diagnosis of this as being hallucinatory. I would assume
that your
sensitive memory might have ‘embellished’ or ‘heightened the drama’ a
little
(mine does), but I agree with you that a COMPLETE fabrication might be
going
too far. I WOULD EXPECT however—having closely known people with
Paranoid Delusional tendencies for decades—that you would have over-interpreted SOME of the data.
But this wouldn’t
make the WHOLE event(s) illusion/delusions.
But the nose-picking
thing
reminds me: often the only mannerisms which get picked up for mimicking
are
repetitive behaviors, flowing
from Obsessive/Compulsive behaviors. But since I
have a background with OCD, and KNOW FIRSTHAND of its relationship to
insecurity, this would make sense if it were present in your case.
Almost ALL the
exceptionally
gifted (mentally) individuals I know are wounded. They developed their
intelligence for ‘defense’ and for ‘survival’. They had to be able to
predict
where the next ‘attack’ or ‘hit’ or ‘barb’ was coming from. So we
developed
great mental abilities to forecast, to scan the environment (my
hyper-vigilance, for example), to engineer risk out, to create
‘safe
spaces’ where we could NOT BE SURPRISED by ‘Incoming!’, to have control
over
everything within a 10m radius (smile).
But this was created from insecurity—the lack of safety in our
lives,
our constant sense of ‘threat’ from others/world/authorities.
I remember in
graduate
school/seminary, our Psychology and Counseling professor went through
the
characteristics of the basic personality types, one of which is
Obsessive/Compulsive—which
most of the men in that class of 200 were! One of the more amazing
characteristics was that WE ACTUALLY LIKE TO FEEL GUILTY—THAT
WE HAVE
DONE SOMETHING VERY WRONG or
that we have MESSED SOMETHING UP VERY
BADLY. He
(Dr. Minirth, of Minirth-Meyer clinics, book with characteristics is
“Love is a
Choice”, I believe) pointed out that, for the OCD who feels
INSIGNIFICANT and
that therefore nothing they do REALLY MATTERS, the feeling/belief that
they
HAVE DONE SOMETHING wrong, MEANS that they ARE SIGNIFICANT and that
they DO
MAKE A DIFFERENCE (in a sick way!). As he put it, “Anybody that can do
THAT
much damage MUST be important!” … Now, I do not believe that explains
ALL of
our guilt feelings, but I began to wonder about that over the next
twenty
years—and I believe much of it was true. I DO feel ‘significant’ when I
feel
that I have “REALLY IMPACTED something negatively”, whereas I might NOT
“feel”
significant when I do something GOOD. (Since I can sometimes ‘explain
away’ the
good, by pointing out that its “just something mental”, and NOT
something
“socially approved” –chuckle)
=========== [I have
to stop here…
I have been working on this 4 hours and need to take a break… you
should have a
LOT to think, pray, meditate over in the above, friend…I will try to
finish the
rest of this early next week—I hope it helps some, dear friend—but
remember, “I
AM NOT A COUNSELOR!”============
.................................................................................
d. So mental smarts are demeaned/denigrated/trivialized (no source of pride there, I guess, since intellectual achievement merely MOCKS US!—"you are a failure at being accepted by people, so your intellectual achievement in quantum physics or literature only PROVES that you have to ‘run away’ from social reality because of failure…"), and we assume that the ONLY IMPORTANT MEASURE of ‘smarts’ is HOW WELL WE FIT IN WITH THOSE WHO RIDICULE OTHERS INAPPROPRIATELY (!!!!!!).]
"The nightmare lasted several
months. By then, I had lost whatever self-esteem I had.
Please read on.
There were several stages to my
self-esteem going down the drains.
I don’t
understand—WHEN did you
EVER have self-esteem (to lose it)??? Your descriptions of your early
days
(e.g., with the clothes, etc) were not days of ‘self-esteem’? I NEVER
had any
days of ‘self-esteem’ to come ‘down from’. I just moved to more self-ridicule
as the extent of my dysfunction became more and more apparent (often it
was
revealed to me by our Lord, to actually protect me from over-extending
myself
into areas that were good, but which would have been bad
FOR ME.
I assumed that, since ‘healthy people (of which there are NONE, I have
subsequently discovered) did X and Y and Z, that God wanted His
redeemed child
(me) to do X and Y and Z… And so I tried and failed, and ‘normalcy’
eventually
became a ‘false god’ to me. Instead of celebrating who I was and
instead of
delighting in and exploiting my KNOWN gifts and talents, I lusted after
the
mediocrity of those ‘normal, healthy’ people around me. And He was NOT
PLEASED
with my wastage of such gifting! He wanted me to be an Olympic-class
specialist,
soaring above the waves of normalcy, ‘playing my drum for Him’ in the
way ONLY
I COULD—and there I was, trying to ‘fit in’, ‘be social’, do ‘team
activities’.
He wanted ME in the ivory tower, researching, reading, answering
obscure-but-torturous questions for peace-seeking minds. He didn’t want
me at
church-socials, doing hospital
visitation, or being a deacon… He made me (and YOU) for some special
fine-grained task, JJ, and when you find that ONE THING, your heart
will soar…
give up on ‘fitting in’, set your heart on ‘better things’—on serving
Him with
your unique gifts, with your experiences in this pain-filled journey of
yours,
with your God-given love for your field!
I have low-esteem,
but only when
I think about it! And I am SO BUSY doing my calling, this ‘fun and
TOTALLY
absorbing’ ministry that I don’t have any TIME to think about how
pathetic I am
as a ‘normal’ person! (chuckle)
Some say “to get your
mind off
yourself, put it on others”, but its actually slightly different: “to
get your
mind off yourself, put it on applying your gift for the benefit of
others”… the focus is on the TASK, the MINISTRY, the TALENTS USED…but
all aimed
at the benefit of others, and not the ‘glorification of the self’.
Believe me, I am
ALWAYS conscious
when God blesses my writing of a Tank article of HOW GOOD I WILL LOOK
to the
reader-world. Makes me sick, actually. The world will think it is ME
GLENN who is so
‘gifted’, but God and I both know that my gifting is so USELESS without
His
fire in me, without His goal-in-front-of-me. I am ‘wasted genius’
without my
walk with Him, and without Him ‘energizing me’ to focus and train my
gifts upon the writing. Ok, but I digress…
For once I was unable to master
German quickly, which really put me down because prior to this I had
always
thought of myself as someone rather gifted for languages - I had
mastered a lot
of French in just one school year on top of my English studies, and the
lecturer couldn't believe I had picked the accent so well.
Actually, you are
smart enough
to know this is probably a timing issue. I can master ANY conceptual
subject
matter, except those that God says ‘not yet’ on! I actually use the
difficulty
(to me) of a task as an indication of if God wants me to do it
AT THAT
TIME. He might want it later, and so I don’t give up on it—I just file
it under
the ‘not yet’. It’s like Paul in Acts, when he tried to go into a
couple of
different places, and the Spirit would not let him go. Instead of Paul
‘taking
it personally as failure’ AS YOU AND I MIGHT/WOULD, he just interpreted
it as a
‘not yet’ and went on to the next task, until God DID bless it.
Of course, when we
are
depressed, we LIKE to interpret failure as ‘personal’, since it
reinforces our
brilliant diagnosis of our pathetic-ness! (smile). We feel ‘cognitively
comfortable’ when we feel we have failed, and so it’s sort of like a
‘comfort
zone’ for us. It is joy that makes us ‘nervous’ and ‘fun’
that
‘scares us’ and ‘peace’ that makes us fear we have overlooked
some
unseen disaster right under our feet, about to explode (embarrassing us
before
the WHOLE WORLD!).
Then there were key areas for me
such as music in which I received put downs from various people.
When my ex-wife - which whom I
enjoy a nice relationship now - went away with my child, I ended up in
a
psychiatric hospital and then was dubbed a persecutive delirious
person. They
judged that I had just imagined all that I had seen, and that it was my
guilt
that made me see people laughing at me, imitating my gestures and so
on. I am
so sure that this was not the case that I am planning to go back to
Berlin because I am so sure some people will remember me. There were
times when people
I didn't know called me by my first name, or by my last name. But the
psychiatrists, just as my pastor, thought it was all delirium and
refused
to consider what truth there might have been. On top of that, they
didn't
realize that a) being told it was just hallucinations after all made
things worse
for me - how could I trust my senses then - and b) even someone who had
"thought" those things and believed they were true, whether they were
or not, had been shattered inside. They gave me high doses of
neuroleptics to
cure me from visions I'd never had. I never got rid of the devastation.
Remember,
everybody—even those
‘pretty’ and ‘popular’ people—have the ‘mix problem’ too… They complain
(often
in secret, or to their most honest friends) that they are too dumb, too
plain,
too dependent on the crowd, too weak-willed, too conformist, too
shallow, etc…
and they are ALL unhappy because they have not discovered their true
gifts-from-God.
You might answer me that the
main thing is that Jesus accepts me such as I am, yes but something in
me
doesn't accept me and it looks as if it's my super-ego that drags me in
the
mud.
Most super-egos are
deluded
anyway (smile). They pretend to be ‘righteous’ and ‘superior’ but they
are
nothing more than ‘guesses’ as to what the society wants! They are as
insecure
as the bullies in the school yard. You do need to mediate on Christ’s
acceptance of you, but you should MAKE SURE you think about WHAT THAT
means. It
does NOT mean that He ‘tolerates your pathetic self’(!), but rather
that He
looks at you as one brimming with potential. According to scripture, He
looks
at us through the eyes/perspective of a Bridegroom looking at a Bride!
I have
looked at a bride through those eyes myself, in my past, and I know
exactly
what that means: warmth, a huge belief in what that person can become
and can
produce in fruit in the future, and yet a perfect understanding of
their
limitations. That is the way Jesus looks at us, friend. He delights in
us, He
knows our ‘flies’ and ‘weaknesses’, He knows our limitations, but He
also knows
the potential we have—given our ‘installed talents’—for the future, in
a life
lived in ‘marriage to Him’. Think about this image of the Bridegroom
and
Bride—there is no dishonesty in His assessment, but there is no
pessimism
either! He is optimistic about us, friend! And, since I KNOW that He
knows me
better than I know myself (and certainly better than my counselors and
pastors of the
past have known me!), I think I can trust His judgment about my
potential (in fellowship with
him of course ‘apart from Me you can do nothing’—John 15.5). It
is okay
to be honest with you/Him about your failures, faults, weaknesses,
etc—that is
just being honest—but DON’T BE DISHONEST about your gifts, potential,
past
successes (however small they seem now), and DON’T BE DISHONEST about
the
relative ‘weights’ of each of these. You weaknesses should keep you
from pride
over your strengths; your strengths should keep you from
despair/pessimism over
your failures. Only the truth (of the balance, the mix, the good AND
bad) will
‘set you free’.
And don’t throw a
‘pity party’
for yourself (remember, this is a constant temptation of the
Obsessive—remember,
it makes us feel important), because you think your Weaknesses are SO
MUCH MORE
weaker, than your STRENGTHS are ‘strong’. You have NO WAY to judge such
things,
and the ‘relative weights’ can be easily changed through personal
growth,
spiritual development, and even practical training.
I have no right to access to my (medical)
file and negative judgment reigns supreme in me. I tend to think that
accepting
gratefully that I have aptitudes is sinful, because it might lead to an
inflated ego.
I think I just talked
about
honesty above, but one other point: the fact that you are ‘worried
about’ getting
an inflated ego, IS A SIGN OF HEALTH, and EVIDENCE that you would NOT!
Your
heart for humility is the best reason for believing that your honesty
would NOT
lead to arrogance. You—like me and everyone else, for that matter—WILL
GET an inflated ego EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE. But, if you continue
developing your
relationship with Jesus, continue in reading as much of the
New Testament as you
can daily, then you will find that the Spirit in our lives will make
this a
‘self-correcting system’. Eventually, your heart will make you question
your
‘ego’, and you will confess and respond in honest ‘self-dethroning’.
You will
feel guilt over this for a season, of course (shows the plumbing is
working),but
at some point you will have to be honest AGAIN, and recognize that
Jesus saw
all of that BUT
STILL is telling you ‘to get back up, and let’s get back on the
road again, together, friend’…
So here I am, with abilities
that really exist and that have been praised over the years, but with
the fear
of not using them right, which made me lose my job in the educational
system.
Hopefully some of the
material
above will help you distinguish between ‘honesty’ and ‘dishonesty’ on
your
gifts, and help you develop them under His transformation of your heart
Let's face it, professionally
wise I am a failure, I am 34 already and my work history is next to nil.
By the time I was 34,
I had run a small self-started business into the ground, and forced 6
people into
joblessness!…smile]
I have said the most relevant
things I could say. I was as sincere as could be.
I think I really need your help,
prayers and advice.
.......................................................................
He wrote a quick,
initial response:
He wrote back later
(to me and other prayer partners), having made some progress and
having gotten some encouraging feedback: