Counseling is the best thing that ever happened to me.
You don’t think that when you first go. You think counseling
is for people who have gone through a divorce or been abused. Broken people. You
feel ashamed or embarrassed that you need it. And then you realize that you are
broken. We’re all broken—only some of us just aren’t aware of it yet. And those
of us that are—we may choose to go to counseling. And it makes us see our
brokenness even more. But it also helps us see that it’s okay to be broken. It’s
okay because we weren’t meant to be perfect or to fix ourselves or to make
others perfect or fix themselves. It’s okay to limp along, because, well—there’s
God—and He’s not afraid of our brokenness. He rather likes it when we
acknowledge our weakness because it puts things right. We get to be us; and He
gets to be Him. And the state of things gets to be made a bit righter.
After I waded through some of the anger and tears, I was
prompted to ask the question what in my
own wounding made me vulnerable? There are things that Aaron and the farm
did that were inexcusable. They were wrong. They grieve the heart of God. They
hurt a lot of people. They hurt me. But in breathing spaces betweens layers of
forgiveness I’m finally seeing my portion of the mess. In my own weakness I
allowed myself to be put in positions where I was open to being taken advantage
of. And that is mine to own.
Default coping mechanisms, she calls them. I’ve spent years
digging down to my youngest memories, finding the vows I made, the lies I
believed that have shaped my heart in a crooked fashion. This is a familiar
process to me. And the Lord has come and healed those wounds. The pain of them
ebbs away. And so I thought I was safe. I thought when I opened my heart to
Aaron it was a sign of healing—the walls of self-protection were coming down. I
was ready to be vulnerable, to not do everything on my own. Yes, but what I
didn’t understand was that those default coping mechanisms were still ingrained
in my thinking, the way I functioned, the way I derived my worth. The
behavioral habits weren’t broken. And unwittingly I picked them back up and
shouldered on.
My default coping strategies: Having a hero mentality. Being a protector, achiever, trying to please
the unpleasable. Deriving my identity from performance-based worth. Over-responsible.
Becoming busy with service and sacrifice. Editing myself out of the picture and
acting as if others needs are more important than my own. Creating order out of
chaos. Hiding my true self. Lacking boundaries.
Now I see how I showed up at a ministry that took away my
personal boundaries from day one, but I still placed myself under their
authority and buckled down to make it work. I loved a man, and in loving him
served and sacrificed beyond what was healthy; I edited parts of myself out in
order to please him; I tried to protect and save him from things that were not
mine to protect and save. And so I made decisions with my heart and my finances
that were not wise.
With this new knowledge comes incredible relief. Answers to
the baffling questions of how did I get
to this place? Yet it also brings fresh grief. Was this long, painful road
the only way to make me see? I thought I was so mature and wise, and instead I
am brought low by looking into the face of my own brokenness. I understand so
little, have less to offer than I once thought. I am in such need of a savior.
It also leaves me feeling lost. All these ways I thought I
was in service to the gospel, and my own striving was more at play than I
realized. As I begin to set aside these default ways of coping, I look around
and wonder, what is left? With these I derived my worth, my purpose. With these
I set the course of my life. With these I learned to express my love of the
Lord. I sought to please Him, to love Him with my sacrifice. In laying it
aside, I am like a newborn again, asking such elementary questions—What is the
gospel? What is it really? What does it mean to give my life to it? What is
church? What is it really? How do I love Him? What in the world do I do with my
life? For the first time I do not know. I am a soul in limbo, wandering through
a desert. I know what is not, but not yet what should be. I wait. I find rest
and I am wearied. In my mornings I know joy and in my evenings I know sorrow. Or
sometimes in reverse. I become self-aware. I write down question after question
after question. And the answers come as more questions.
