August 2019 – The Steadfast Heart

Comparison is the thief of joy.
Theodore Roosevelt; 2 Corinthians 10:12

To be honest with you, this is the last place I want to be right now. I don’t consider myself to be especially great at externally processing, but I do find it healing. Words mostly come out as fragmented ideas and unfinished thoughts…that I will later come to realize may not be quite accurate. Thinking out loud is the only real way I know how to get started on my honest thoughts and it allows me to try and try again until what I communicate authentically matches what I feel.

I find it sad just how many of my thoughts are ugly. Even now, they’re not polished or mature, but they’re at the very least sincere. Lately, I am really struggling with comparison, specifically in my work. The hard part with that is this: I know comparison is not a healthy thing, but I wish people could acknowledge with me that it’s a real thing. I have several Bob the Builders in my circle. “Can we fix her? Yes, we can!” When really, if I don’t dig deeper into the shadow side of comparison, I’ll lose out on the opportunity to grow. And to do that, I have to sit in the rubble of my mess for moments longer than what feels comfortable.

If I could simply sit here with you for the next few moments, because sometimes it’s just helpful to know there’s someone here with skin on, I think I can try to get this comparison trap I’m in into words. The problem with comparison is that it’s always a fight to have control of something: control of people’s opinions or ideas about you or control of how you view yourself, whether it be positive or negative. I have a tendency to believe that how people view me is mutually exclusive to how they view other people and it’s simply not true.

Somewhere along the line, I have adopted comparison and control as a defense mechanism to hold onto the favor I have with other people. If I’m more interesting to talk to, produce better work and faster results, am funnier, it feels like I can live to survive another day. If not, my soul feels crushed and I scramble to control more projects, to think of wittier jokes, to have more fascinating content to present in a fight to stay relevant. I’ve never seen a therapist (and probably should), but in the meantime, I like to ask myself questions I think one might ask me if I was sitting in their chaise longue.

If I had to find the root of this, how long would it take me to dig through past hurt? At what point did I believe again and again that who I am at face value isn’t enough? So much of my growing up years were shaped by moments of doubt that even now as an adult, I still battle and I battle with shame. At 26, shouldn’t I know better? And not just know better, but believe and live better? It’s so disheartening to me to wake up and find that I face this kind of thing in the mirror and I have to be convinced that heaven for me will be met with freedom from the “not enough.”

Can I share a story? A story I’m not proud to carry? In middle school, I was the shortest in my class which made school dances awkward, I wore blue, wire-rimmed glasses and hand-me-downs and had a hard time figuring out what lunch table I was welcomed at. Until I found a group of girls a year in that seemed to really get me, I had never fully trusted that I belonged.

Eventually, my tight knit group fell apart. Of the three friends, one made it entirely clear they wanted nothing to do with me, one avoided me and stopped acknowledging when I came in the room, which left me one friend. But only when she was by herself. The Christmas before I lost their favor, I had turned a journal into homemade scrapbook and had gifted it to her and I was so proud of it. Upon accident months later, I read an unexpected entry where she had emotionally journaled, “I wish Natalie had never happened. She ruined everything!”

Years later we came to a place of reconciliation where I was able to get closure from her, but the seed of rejection was planted and took root. I never could feel safe with her again and will never know why I lost my other friends the way I did. Through college, I had two different roommates request not to live with me, one who only made it a semester before requesting a transfer. To me, they weren’t just roommates those years, they were friends I tried to care for. I had invested time into getting to know about their lives and exhausted my energy trying to give what I thought they needed from me. The bottom line turned out to be that I just wasn’t their cup of tea, especially compared to who else they could room with.

And if I can get really raw for one more moment, I have a brother who I miss so incredibly much that I haven’t had more than a bare minimum relationship with in four years and I wonder through the silence if that’s still my fault.

I have come to believe that the full me, to most people, is not worth knowing. Either because I tend to taint what I touch or bring an emotional intensity to the table that brings more weight than what people desire to carry.

And in recent years, comparison has brought somewhat of a comfort to me in such a backwards and self-righteous way, to know that I’m somewhat okay; I’m somewhat wanted. At least I still hold the favor of my boss, when my co-workers don’t seem to care. At least I don’t have that exact financial struggle they do. At least one person agreed with me on the group text on that discussion. I can gauge where I’m at with others when I base it on the unhealthy habit of comparison.

Until I can’t.

Sooner or later I struggle to believe
I still hold the favor I desire so badly
or that I have anything in my life together, let alone one thing
or someone disagrees with me and then it feels like them against me.

And it’s when I’m left feeling so small, that I reach for my white flag.

Because not knowing the true joy means I can’t fully know Jesus and what he hopes for my life. Feeling threatened by someone else’s existence diminishes experiencing His fullness. I have a lot of fear that I’ll be phased out of my job because I can’t control the favor I hold with others. There’s always someone who’s wiser, wittier, or a better fit.

It’s incredibly shallow to be saddened by the way the attention gets shifted from me to someone else and that has probably been the hardest thing to rally from out of everything. To lose attention at times feels like I’m not worth being known or not as distinctive or exceptional. But I know that there is more for me than this kind of emptiness and feeling like I’m filled with shortcomings.

The message series I’ve been listening to is called, “Poured Out” based on the book of Psalm. Why is it easier sometimes to admit failures and backwards thinking to people than the One who wrote my very own manual? Why does it take so much and so long to finally surrender?

I’m praying that after I leave here I can keep pouring this out to Him, that I’ll find more comfort and fulfillment in His presence than I do my own feelings and what I think I can control. Will you pray that I can do that? So often what I know doesn’t connect with what I do in the ways my own heart needs it to.

If comparison is the thief of joy,
may you and I cling to the King who put all fear to death
by conquering the grave
so that we may believe His truth
that we are enough
and that we are wanted at His table.
He’s even saved us our very own seats.

Take care & take heart,
Natalie

One of my favorite videos on the internet is by Trey Kennedy called “Do Less, God Bless“. I fall over laughing every time he references people going to the unnecessary extremes in life that need to do a whole lot less. It’s side-stitching funny to me and “do less” has become a strong phrase in my vocabulary any time I catch people taking things to the extreme.

The irony is that I’m the one that needs to do less. I’m not sure what the main cause of me going into panic mode this week has been, but I feel frantic from a million little things. Not in an anxious way, but more in a desperate-to-control-what-I-can’t kind of way. My feelings are deafening to me and my mouth has yet to figure out what my brain already knows: no amount of talking about what I can’t change is going to solve that very thing.

And yet, here I am. A close family friend who is a licensed therapist told me when I was a middle schooler that I take on feelings three to five times more intensely than the average person. While it was a shocking statement to me, it’s served me well over the years to understand that I at times can be in my own stratosphere of pain, disappointment, frustration, excitement, confusion and every feeling in between. And while it at times it can be comforting to have an explanation for the depth of my emotions, it’s isolating all in the same breath.

But I’m grateful for words. I’m grateful for a second chance at sorting through the magnitude of my feelings that seem to take up rent in my chest while I think out loud on paper. The funny thing about emotions for me is that they always seem to be urgent and don’t stay silent for very long, not usually anyway. To remain quiet for me is to deny authenticity, but to vocalize myself is to be at risk of my heart not landing with safe people who can help steward the weight.

Do you ever get done reflecting on your day, only to conclude that you just weren’t that impressive? I’m forever indebted to the people that take the time to listen to me every time the pendulum swings to the other extreme, but for days especially like today where I just seemed to spew how I felt about people or how situations made me feel threatened and panicked…I would love to do a whole lot less. My massive need to verbally process how things feel can turn into a persuasive speech in a matter of seconds and change the trajectory of how others view the people or situations I feel so fiercely about. I’m very aware of how I need to be slow to speak and quicker to steady my heart so I can actively listen.

So tonight, after a long week of wrestling with the change I consistently resist, my prayer is to get to a posture of doing less, of controlling less, amidst the impossible of feeling less. One of my recurring, subconscious thoughts is that people who have the ability to suppress their feelings are strong, and I am not. I wonder if some people suppress what they feel to avoid exposure to pain and disappointment. I’m just not that good.

I’m pausing on that thought to redirect to the question: What if strength is actually the ability to feel your feelings, but ultimately surrender them to the One who is stronger?

My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.
2 Corinthians 12:9, New Living Translation

One of the fights of my life will always be between controlling my circumstances so that I can recorrect inadequate feelings I desperately try to avoid — and — surrendering control by sitting in the rubble to purposely, longingly sit closer to the feet of Jesus.

My final question for heaven tonight as I watch the sun set is, “If God designed me to hold so much passion and so many sensitivities, what beautiful picture did he have in mind for me in the way that I steward them?” C.S. Lewis used to say that, “Pain is God’s megaphone.” In my life, I want to be so near to him that he only needs to whisper to me.

May we lead lives that hear the loving whispers of Jesus
as His grace perfects our weaknesses
and fortifies our character.

Take care & take heart,
Natalie