This has been a post I have wanted to write for some time…about hiding.
I have a confession to make: I am a total Amazon book junkie. Yes, I buy lots of books on Amazon on a lot of different topics. It feels like Christmas when I get those brown packages. I love opening them up – seeing the brand new books all clean with no bent pages, written marks or abused covers. They will shortly become this in my care if they grab my attention once I start reading. Kind of like the Velveteen Rabbit – you can tell I like a book by the wear and tear it receives.
This is the case with my bible. I adopted the bible I had gotten for a certain someone for a certain important event in my life. It was never or hardly used by this certain someone. I found it, loved the wide margins and the notes at the bottom…and therefore decided to make it mine. Only problem was the certain someone’s name was on the front. No problem..a little masking tape (can you say Macgyver) couldn’t cure.
This is also the case with my newest adoptee – a book by John Townsend – one of the renowned Christian psychologist of the Boundary books – called Hiding from Love. This book is turning out to be another important part of my ongoing healing…bringing out many layers of that “onion” that is peeling away layer by layer.
I could be here forever explaining everything I have picked up from this book…you know I could with the way that I write and process. But my time is short today so I will try to sum it up and tell you how it relates to today’s readings.
Basically, Dr. T starts off with a story about this girl called Jenny. Jenny is 9 years old. Jenny grew up in an idealic home up until this point in Europe. Until one day soldiers of an invading country invade her country, her home. Her father yells for her to run into the familiar forest in the back of their home in order to hide and avoid being captured. The rest of the story unfolds telling us how Jenny, a 9 year old child, learns to grow up quickly in order to survive living by herself. She learns how to hide for safety from the enemy…but also from those her parents send to help her. She learns how to talk to herself as an adult would – critical and judgmental…leading her down the path of being ashamed. She learns how to deal with her loneliness by denying she has any needs at all. She begins to think the reason her parents are no longer there has something to do with her neediness of them…and therefore realizes her god-given needs are bad.
There are so many layers to this beautiful depiction on how we are wounded as children because of trauma that we and others bring on…I cannot get into them all now. Yet, as I have weaved my way through her story and through the principles Dr. T brings out…I have been finding several more of those life commandments I talked about before. You know, those ideas or principles we buy into at some point in our childhood or teenage years. These ideas or principles can be explicitly told to us via others in our lives…or implicitly from others…but I am finding they are mostly ones I developed myself in order to help me survive in this chaotic world…in my chaotic world in the “forest” that I was forced into by the “soldiers” that came for my family. The sad truth is this: many of us hide. Many of us think that if the real us shows up as an adult we will be scolded, abused, demeaned or hushed back into “hiding” again because – unfortunately – this is what those closest to us as a child did to us. We feel the rejection and feel unloved all over again. They most likely didn’t do this out of hatred for us…but out of their own woundedness, out of what was done to them.
(Note: Here’s a great post over at Emerging From Broken. Emotional healing does not depend on)
Yet, this does not erase the fact that they did this to us – and now it is us to us to “fix” what they broke. We somehow have to learn that when we risk ourselves to be vulnerable, when we risk to seek intimacy…we risk being rejected by that person. But that rejection – if it does come – at least tells us where we stand and where the other stands. And that rejection has more to do with them and their own hurts than it has to do with us. I have to learn where I am finding my value: in them and their estimation of me? Or thru God and what he SAYS about me? This is so not an easy process…but again if you dare to go thru it – I promise you will find freedom. And only freedom can bring the love we so desperately need.
How does this relate to today’s reading? One of the questions was this: How is God “for” us different than God “with” us?
To answer this, I will quote straight from the book. The background is principle number 3 in how we form harmful hiding patterns (there are 6 total). #3 states: We make legitimate Needs Bad in the sense that because of what I said above, we learn that when we express any needs or desires – because of the rejection we feel when those needs aren’t accepted and met…we internalize the fact that therefore our needs must show how bad we truly are. Here is what Dr. T says at this point
“This is one reason Jesus validated our neediness. He was overthrowing the pharisaical system that had no toleration for weakness or failure: ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven’ (Matthew 5:3). When Jesus taught that ‘It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick’ (9:12), He affirmed that the needy, not the self-sufficient, are the ones who connect with Him. Therefore, when we express our needs, we move toward connecting with Him and others.”
Did you catch that? Read it again if you need to…but don’t pass over that paragraph.
This, to me at least, is the difference of just have a God that is “for” us…instead of a God that is both “for” and “with” us. He doesn’t just say that He hears your needs…but says He is with you as you walk thru the pain of not having had those needs met…that He is with us as a doctor is with us in the operating room doing the surgery. He is not just looking on from some other room as the surgery is going on…but is right there with us, His hands ready to do the work in order to bring about health. And as I said earlier this year and have been discovering this fall…He often works through others that He places in our lives. Opening up to others is how He often choses to do the “surgery” in our hearts and bring about the healing we so desperately need.
So, I ask you not if you are hiding…. but I ask you this:
