A very good friend of mine wrote the following speech and let our support group read it. I recognize that people, myself included, have reactions to discussions or topics about God and Jesus. God and Jesus are mentioned, as well as some bible verses are quoted; we explain this up front so you can decide whether you want to read it or not.
Barb Mead, the author, has been in therapy for 11 years and has gone through many of the tribulations that many of us are going, or have gone, through and have been in that place where God did not exist for her. She tells me that she has always had a belief system since a small child, but relying on it was not always there, because of her abuse. It was like this underlying support that she didn't know was there or recognize.
It is important that people know how long she has been in therapy and that see attended therapy three times per week. She realizes that many people do not do that and can only go once a week. With all that help over the past 10 years, she explains, I am where I am today.
So, please if this topic is not for you, do not read it.
In the bible Mt: 19:19 it says to love your neighbor as yourself. It also says in 1Corinthians 13:13 “and now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”
Wait, isn’t this suppose to be about isolation and rejection?
Yes it is. I have discovered in my journey through life that all humans on this earth want to be loved. We have a primary need to know we are loved. Not getting love leads to rejection.
I was the youngest of six children - 4 boys and 2 girls. I grew up with an alcoholic father and a schizophrenic mother. I was sexually, physically and emotionally abused by my parents, brothers and other people since a small child. The very people who God gave me to, who were suppose to love and protect me, did not. To complicate the growing up years more, my family also had moments of being a loving, caring family who had Jesus in their lives. Unfortunately, their Jesus was a private matter for them, or at least that is what they claim and so they didn’t talk about it or “walk their talk” so to speak (Unfortunately, though, the dark side still had a hold on me.)
Growing up in this contradictory life was a perfect feeding ground to develop isolation and rejection. My mother went to the mental hospital several times before I was five years old and was gone for a few months each time. These disappearances of her always centered around some huge dramatic event that sent clear messages to me that I was no good and it’s my fault she was sent away. So I learned real quick to spend my time trying desperately to do the right thing. I could never figure out exactly what the right thing was or what I did wrong to receive the bad things they did to me. Not only that, they would tell me that it wasn’t wrong, that everyone did this, so why am I fighting it? It was very confusing and I was always wrong.
To add to this, my mother was always changing the rules. What she wanted me to be like on one day, I would do, but the very next day I was wrong because she changed the rules. I learned to become a chameleon, adapting to my environment quite quickly. My self- esteem was lost. My boundaries of who I was and who others were was non-existing. I so desperately wanted love, acceptance, kindness and to just fit in, that I learned to become invisible or I over-compensated by being nice, or too loud, and an over-achiever or I allowed people to do what they wanted with me. I lost my ability to feel. I took all my feelings and stuffed them inside because I just wasn’t allowed to have them. I had to learn to watch others and I would imitate their emotions for any given situation.
This carried over with my behavior toward teachers, friends and the outside world. I felt that if I don’t do it right, no one would like me. I was constantly changing my behavior to fit to what I thought someone else wanted. I thought that if I was loud enough, that they would be able to hear me and like me. I felt that if I was always nice and did what ever anyone asked that I would be so popular. All that got me was a lot of people who used me for their own purposes. I had no personal boundaries and so saying no, I don’t like that or I don’t want to do that, was never an option that I could choose because I never knew I had a right to have those choices.
I wandered through life trying to overdo and be Miss perfect nice girl and then of course that didn’t really get me anything but disappointment and then I would swing into the tapes that roll in the brain... “I am a bad person, no one likes me, no one will ever love someone like me, I am no good, I deserve to be treated like a piece of garbage and why do I keep trying so hard to be like.” This would then push me over into the bad side of behavior where I would do things that I was very ashamed of, but I felt that was all I deserved, as if that was my lot in life. I looked for the love I so desperately wanted and needed in the only way that I knew how to get it, by allowing males to use my body for their own pleasure. It’s very strange because this was not something that I did all the time. It was like having mood swings, for a while I was Miss Goody two shoes and then for a while I was this “bad” girl. I also was very selective with the males that I chose. I was never very close to anyone particular group in school, but floated around in all of them. So I could behave accordingly to what each group expected without the other groups knowing. I must have been successful because my own sorority sisters still think of me as their token good girl. I mean not one of them would ever offer me any drugs or take me to any pot parties because they didn’t want to corrupt me. They felt bad offering me a drink.
In school, I realized that being in the spotlight by having good grades was too much goodness and having bad grades was being too bad. So I struggled to stay in the middle, so I wouldn’t be noticed. But I craved to be noticed. For someone to look at me and say, “What a nice person she is!”, “I am proud of her”, or “Look at all the wonderful things she does”. So even though I didn’t want to be noticed, I played sports and I tried out for cheerleading in high school and college. I was a class officer too. Now people do notice those people. In fact, you have to be voted to get to those places. But I still didn’t believe that people liked me and I couldn’t explain how I got those things. I felt alone and rejected even by my own peers. I didn’t know how to receive from people. I always felt as if I was all by myself and I didn’t know what it was like to be a part of a group, totally accepted. I think about it now and I was in a lot of groups, but I felt alone. I had that smile on my face, my mask was up and there it was. But it was only a mask with an empty shell behind it.
I was also taught that unwritten rule about not talking or telling and along with that came the message to stop fussing or whining, because there is always someone else on this planet worse off than you. I had no clear view of what it was like to actually get a compliment. It’s not that I didn’t get them - I just believed I didn’t deserve them, or I ignored them, thinking the person who gave it to me really didn’t mean it, so I was deficient in the receiving department.
People need to know they are loved and cared about. As they travel through this life, if they keep getting rejected, the only road they can take is isolation. I did not trust people, especially women. My main role model was not exactly a safe one. I thought that people did not like me and I would spend hours analyzing why or how come. Of course, it was my own tapes in my own brain that was keeping me there. You might have some of those tapes too. You know the ones that go---- “How can you do something so stupid?” “That was a dumb thing to say - no wonder people don’t talk to you.” “They don’t really want you here?” No wonder people leave you, you don’t deserve to be loved by anyone. or the big one that we always tell ourselves.......boy if people really knew who I was, they would never like me or be my friend”. It was if I had some unwritten code that I didn’t deserve to have people like me.
When I became an adult, I was no longer in an environment where sexual and physical abuse was going on. Even though I was married to a man who emotionally abused me, I really had no reason to continue to isolate myself. But the behavior continued because I married someone who would always keep me in that off balanced state. You would think that one would know better and not do that, but unfortunately, we are human and one will go with what they are most comfortable with. I didn’t know what it was like to have anyone love me unconditionally, or to cherish me, or to nurture me. I never had those things. So to find someone who would give me that, I probably would have rejected it as wondering what they wanted from me. So I married into what was comfortable and familiar to me.
I continued to feel as if all people rejected me because my husband told me they did. I believed that people pretended to like me. I couldn’t see anything good that I did. Even thought I was constantly spinning my wheels to bend over backwards for everyone, to be extra nice to people - I always felt like it was not real, that I was artificial. I felt that all the people I came into contact with were just patronizing me and if I wasn’t there it would save them time and effort that they wasted on me... After all, can’t they see that I was just trash and not worth wasting their time on.
This continued feeling of being rejected made me withdraw to some extent and isolate myself. My husband helped in that manner by not welcoming any of my friends into our home by making them feel uncomfortable. I didn’t realize that their not coming over anymore was about him, I thought it was that they didn’t like me anymore. So I withdrew even more into a world of no feelings and did my best to be invisible. I honestly did not think anyone would listen or want to be around me.
I got help from two sources. One was God and the other therapy. God put all the right people at the right time in to my life to help me heal. Isa. 41:9 I took you from the ends of the earth, from the farthest corners I called you. I said, “you are my servant’, I have chosen you and have not rejected you. God helped me to look differently at things. He gave people to help me to see that it was possible to not be rejected. I learned to look at things differently. Instead of thinking that I was always wrong and couldn’t do anything right - I began to see that maybe some of those ideas were false. Maybe it was possible that a person treating me in a mean tone had nothing to do with me at all. Maybe it was possible that it was about that person and not me. Maybe it was possible to have the courage to ask the person if the anger was toward me. Maybe it was also possible to ask why?
I began to question people and found out many surprises. I didn’t need to isolate. In fact, sometimes it was possible for me to lend an ear and help the other person by just being there for them. I couldn’t do this before because I was hastily running away to isolate.
I discovered that sometimes the things that made me feel rejected were not that at all. Having the courage to speak up and risk be open and honest, was allowing me to begin to trust other people. I discovered that many of us make statements that are not intended to reject people but some people receive it as rejection. By learning to be open and speak up in truth and ask --- I have learned that it is possible that all these years people actually have been trying to reach me and I just couldn’t see it in my woundedness. And yet God says 1 Peter 2:4 As you come to him, the living stone - rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him --- you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. The desires of my heart was to be close to Him and to have a personal relationship with Him. God has always been there waiting for me to see him. He has sent so many people into my life to help break down my wall of isolation that I in my blindness mistook for more rejection. He has been running after me for such a long time. When I finally stopped, stood still, and looked through his eyes, I could see Jesus running to get me. That I am valued by Him and I am worthy to be one of his lambs. That is a possibility for all of us here in this room to consider too.
God healed me enough so that when my husband walked out on me after 30 years of marriage, I could survive. That devastated me, it hurt tremendously. I had to learn that his rejecting me was more about him than about me. My changing and learning to trust others was more than he could stand. He could no longer control me the way he wanted to without my questioning him why. He couldn’t accept the relationship I was developing with God. So he left. Through that horrible loss and rejection, I gained strength, courage, and discovered that I was a person. I was someone who could have feelings, I could make choices, and I could become the person God wanted me to be.
I discovered that people are just people. If you give them a chance to see the real you, the one who is vulnerable and willing to risk, to reach a hand out and grab on to someone else, that they will be there. And if they are not, the loss is theirs and not yours. It does not define who you are. I discovered that I love to help people and be nice to them. I do it now, not to get anything back, but just because it makes me feel good inside my heart. It makes me feel ten feet tall sometimes. I also learned that helping others is a responsibility to yourself. You don’t do it 24/7, because if you do, you will lose you and then you will be helping no one.
I am learning about women. They scare me still. Well not all women. I am learning to trust them. That their is a common bond that we all share. We are sisters. I am learning to give them a chance to respond to me and for me to be open and to receive compliments from them and that it is OK, there is no hidden agenda to their doing that. I don’t have to be isolated and alone. I can reach out and there will be someone there. It has been a slow process. To trust people with those things that you think people will judge you for. You discover that they don’t judge you at all for the actions of what ever your loved ones have done. They accept you for just being you. I know that doesn’t mean that every single person you meet is going to be your new best friend. It’s not like that. But I believe it is more like loving your neighbor as yourself.
I don’t have this perfected yet. God is still working with me. I still get wounded by people and feel rejected and sometimes I will isolate. But you know, Jesus comes running to find me and always brings me back. My times of isolation get shorter and shorter each time. I guess it is because I can see Jesus a little more clearly and I see him running to look for me. Just like he is running looking for all of you.
You may write to Barb at bgodschild2@earthlink.net.