Ch. 6: It, Them, They...STOP!

I’m flawed.

I mean that in every sense of the word. In fact, if you asked me, I could name at least ten different flaws in just 8 seconds flat. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s pretty impressive. Something to be proud of? Maybe not. But impressive, nonetheless. I’ll just say, don’t try this at home.

Why couldn’t I look at myself and see myself as uniquely and wonderfully made in God’s image? Why was I so concerned with if she liked me? If he loves me? If they understand me? Why couldn’t I be satisfied with who I was and how God made me? It’s sad, because even with the many insults that others can and will throw towards me daily, I still manage to be even harder on myself than anyone else ever could. That whole “own worst critic” thing, right?

I laid in my bed with all these thoughts swirling in my head. I couldn’t get the thoughts to stop. I kept thinking of all the slights and shade people threw my way, thinking that I wouldn’t notice. Embarrassing and low moments kept replaying in my head like that cut play you see on television. You know the one. Where they play it, rewind it, play it, rewind it and play it again? And all the while you can hear that annoying rewind sound going and going and going…just like the Energizer bunny.

I didn’t know why I couldn’t make these thoughts stop. I kept seeing the snickering faces. I kept feeling the way that I felt in those moments where I wanted to just crawl away and die, but instead I bottled that feeling away. I just kept seeing them over and again. I started crying to God like, “What is this? I want this to stop!”

Tears streamed my face as I started to see what He wanted me to see.

You see the enemy thought that by having these moments replay and torment me that I would drop to a low and dark place as I had in the past. But see, I’m not that girl anymore. I’m stronger than ever before and every last message my pastor had preached over the last month has resonated with me in a major way. I mean, having a full-on altar call at my coffee table. So, I had the extra strength I needed to battle past the torment and come out with the lesson I was supposed to learn.

I was crumbling under the weight!

“The weight of what,” you ask?

My biggest flaw.

That feeling the need to be accepted, liked and validated by others.

I mean, what is that? I have people. Like the kind of people who are my people. My ride-or-dies. The ones who make time for me and drop everything if I need them in the clutch. I have people who genuinely love me and would even take a bullet in the leg for me. I have people. And they should be enough, shouldn’t they? They make me feel whole, complete and understood. So, why is that I still feel this need to have the approval and “like” of sometime-y, inconsistent, not-sure-how-they-feel-about-me people?

Why is that?

Maybe because feeling whole, complete and understood is nowhere near the same as being.

I mean, because it hardly matters how many flaws I’ve come to terms with and accept with open arms. Sure, I wouldn’t even feel right in the morning if these acne scars didn’t wave at me loud and proud from the bathroom mirror each day. And this crooked smile? Well, it’s sort of become my signature. Not to mention these pounds I keep gaining—despite all of my hard work—are starting to look pretty good on my five-foot-nothing frame. But no matter how great I become, or how accepting I am of these many imperfections, there is still this major flaw that I don’t like about myself and I don’t know how to undo it. I can’t put braces on it. I can’t conceal it. There’s no prescription for it. I can’t cover it up. I can’t sweat it off.

I still care.

And that night I sat up crying, it was a wake-up call for me. One, because every now and then you just need a good cry. One of my favorite lines was from this stupid slap-stick comedy (that I’ve never actually watched) “Let’s Go to Prison”. I had only seen this scene from previews that played on tv, but I will never forget the line, “It’s okay to cry. Crying takes the sad out.” And it does that! It also shows strength. If you’re not afraid to cry, then you’re not afraid to deal with the hard stuff: your emotions and ALL that comes with that. This is why I feel that so many people are afraid of therapy. Dealing with the stuff that you just want to stuff away is scary and hard!!

Anyway, I’m digressing.

But point two was because girl…stop caring! Ugh. I’m making myself mad just writing about it.

There I was: a thirty-four-year-old, married mother of three, crying in her bed over what others have said and thought about her. Isn’t this crazy? Don’t you only see the teenagers in tv shows or movies doing this? Well, I guess I’ve got news for you. TV and movies aren’t exactly real life.

But there I was, fragmented! I was crumbling under the weight and expectations of “they”.

I know that you’ve heard the phrase that you need to get delivered from people. Johnathan McReynolds is my buddy. I can hear his song playing now! People!

Do they like it? Did they like it?

What do they think?

Will they support?

Are they really my friends?

What are they saying?

Why did they stop talking to me?

Why did they stop liking my posts?

Why did they look at me like that?

And all this time, I’m just beating myself into this smaller version of myself. Shrinking myself to fit into what “they” think or what I thought they were thinking.

And at this point, I’d had enough!

Who are “they” anyway?!

Certainly not important enough for me to lose peace, sleep, happiness, joy, money, or my dreams over. And they never would be.

So, let me speak to you really quickly. Because by now, you know how I do.

Stop doing it for them!

When you do it for anyone else other than yourself and God, you lose the purpose. When it becomes more about proving yourself to others than proving yourself to God, you’ve missed the mark. When it matters more how many are liking, posting, sharing or following, then who cares what your message is? You certainly don’t when you do it for “they” instead of HIM!

They don’t have a heaven or a hell to put you in.

They can talk about you. They can laugh at you. They can do all of it and more, but at the end of the day, what really matters is what HE feels about you. And that’s real. I’m not just talking to sound good. And it may be cliché. But we’ve learned about those clichés by now!

My pastor talked about submitting; I mean fully submitting to God. (If you need a whole pick-me-up, punch you in the gut, and step on your toes kind of word, then click here. But don’t say I didn’t warn you. This message is not for the faint of heart. Scroll to around 41:00) You see the thing about submitting is that you are allowing yourself to be completely and totally vulnerable to someone else; for them to have their way. Ooh chile. Is that why I haven’t really grown like I’d like? Is that why I still cared so much about what others thought? Why I still had this mouth that I’d like to change and this impatience that I hated so much? It’s gotta be. I needed to submit! And not to others, but to God.

So if you haven’t fully submitted, try it. It’s not something that happens within the hour or so of a preached message. No, not at all. That may just your start. Maybe you’ll find yourself lying in bed like I did. Or maybe it’ll be after a fight with your spouse? Or after an extra trying day at work. Maybe your kids frustrated you to the core or you got some bad news. Whatever it may have been that caused you to take the next step to submitting fully to God, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you did it.

So forget “they”. Leave they for the dictionary and pronouns.

You may be crushed under the weight of what they think, but you will only flourish under submission to God and what He knows about you.

So join me on this new path we’ve forged. It’s not paved. Not many people follow down this way. We may have to chop some trees and shrubbery along the way. But this new path is for those of us whom just want to be free of what others think, say, or do! I know we’ll have our slip-ups, but that’s okay too. Because we won’t give up. And we won’t forget that it’s not about us. It never has been. It never will be.

It’s always all about God!

So forget they and remember HIM!