Letting go of a try hard life

Try to stop Your love and You would wage a war
Try to take the very thing You gave Your life for
You would come running
Tear down every wall
All the while You’re shouting
“My Love, you’re worth it all”.
God you pursue me with power and glory
Unstoppable Love that never ends
You’re unrelenting with passion and mercy
Unstoppable Love that never ends
You broke into the silence and sang your song of hope
A melody resounding in the deep of my soul
You have come running
You tore down every wall
All the while you’re shouting,
“My Love you’re worth it all”

~Kim Walker Smith, unstoppable love~

Recently Dan and I got to enjoy a small get a way to The North Shore.  There is something about the lake that makes His voice clearer and His love for me more transparent.

From early on in my childhood I became really good at performing.  No I was never in acting and I always dreamed of having a voice but unfortunately I was not blessed in that area.  As long as I can remember I have longed for something more.  Growing up in a broken home can do a lot to a small child.  When I look at it as a whole I believe the two main choices at large are: To follow the brokenness and destructive behavior or break the chains and be everything it was not. 

I was determined not to become broken.

In my barely elementary mind being broken to me looked like my mom.  It screamed despair.  It meant letting people down.  Being too emotional and just flat out not being able to handle life.

I remember as a little girl consistently being around people that looked at my mom as a failure.  She was a constant disappointment to many.

This was my mother, my main provider.  She was who I looked to for safety.  But there was nothing safe about her.  How could I go to her with my feelings if she could not get a grip of her own?

So I began performing.

Feelings just hurt people anyways.  I started building small fortresses around my heart to protect it from the world.

It felt safe.
I could protect myself from experiencing the pain.

As a little girl I loved feeling like I belonged.  Better yet I loved feeling like you liked me and accepted me.  I had a great niche at fixing peoples hurts.  I became a master at carrying my mom through life.  Or so I believed.

I create this image for myself.  Was it healthy? No, but it work well growing up.  The pain of growing up in my addicted home was too hard for me to handle as a girl.  It was a lot easier locking the pain away deep in my heart and focusing on how I could fix others.  People praised me for my smile and they shunned my mom for her frown.  The smile felt so much safer so that is where I made my home.

The very thing that kept me safe as a child was my vice that held me back from Truth into my adult years.

Not only was I performing to close friends and family but I was preforming as I fell at His feet.

It is a vicious cycle.  I perform so you like me more, but not only that I perform because I want to fit this image that seems safe.

I don’t want to be viewed as a failure.

Actually that just is not an option I CAN NOT BE VIEWED AS A FAILURE!!

You see if I showed you the real me then I risk rejection.  I risk being hurt.
If I open up the door to my heart I risk never being able to close it again.

My relationship with Jesus began in my late teen years. 

Oh I loved going to church with my boyfriend {now husband}.

It felt safe.

It was a place I could go and people were inviting.

They were pretty people.  Put together people.

They were everything I was trying to become.

I walked in and I could leave the baggage at the door and nobody knew who I really was.  On the way out I could pick it back up.

This fit this image I wanted for myself.

These people walked in with their smiles and even better they were all doing “good” when you asked!!

Finally a place I could go where there wasn’t dysfunction.  These people had it together.

This only fed into my need to want to perform, especially for God.

I began to develop this belief that my image should look a certain way to fit into the kingdom of believers.

If I performed good enough then He would definitely love me and protect me more.

It looked so different then my home life as a child.

It was safe.

Put together.
Functional.

 As I grew deeper in my faith this image I was creating only left me longing for more. 

My relationship with God started feeling empty.  Some of my relationships began to feel phony and empty as well.

I couldn’t understand because I looked very functional.  In my eyes my life was looking like all the other happy people I imagined as a child.
It looked safe.  When I began taking a look at some of these relationship and my behaviors I began seeing a pattern.  Rather then experiencing a vulnerability that allows us to love in amazing ways I was only experiencing an image driven relationship.   I found myself trying to fix these people or I realized they were only trying to mold me into a person they wanted me to be.  It was not a relationship of realness but one of performance.

 But God told Samuel, “Looks aren’t everything. Don’t be impressed with his looks and stature. I’ve already eliminated him. God judges persons differently than humans do. Men and women look at the face; God looks into the heart.”
~ 1 Samuel 16:7 ~

Sometimes the best thing we can do in our relating to others is give them our heart.  The beautiful parts and the broken too, letting go of the image we have created for ourselves and allowing each other to be real.

We've become what everyone else wants us to be... yet the best gift we could bring the world is being people god created us to be.  ~Freeway~

You see I fell into this trap of thinking in order for Jesus to love me and view me as something more than a failure I had to look a certain way and definitely say ALL the right things.  Ugh what a crappy trap to find yourself in!!

Not only is this completely FALSE, but it keeps us from experiencing the AMAZING and endless love He has for us.

I felt empty because I was only giving Him fractions of who I was. 
I was giving Him and my friends what I thought they wanted to see instead of just simply offering them me.

I came to a point in my life where my image began to fail me. 
Not only that but your image began to fail me too.  I idolized so many "functional" looking people.  But I began to see the parts of them that they kept locked away.  I began to see truth.  The truth that we all are broken.  Even the people that walk around church with their slapped on smiles and obnoxious laugh.  Nobody escapes it.  

Our hiding started from the beginning.  

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.  But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” 

He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”
 ~Genesis 3:8-10~

I was doing a great job trying to hide these areas from God.  But He wasn't fooled.  I definitely had myself fooled and I believed I was doing a good job at fooling you.

The fortress that I built around my heart years prior was beginning to crumble and I couldn't keep the gate that held the pain in shut anymore.

The truth is I was only bringing Him the safe places of my heart. 

The areas that looked good.

The areas that would be accepted without rejection.

I wasn’t creating vulnerable relationships with my closest loved ones because I couldn’t risk rejection.  My image was at stake.  If they knew I wasn’t as put together as they assumed would they accept me? Would He accept me?

Why is it so easy to look at someone and forget they are also flawed?

I watched a video podcast recently and they said something that struck my heart.  It went something like this……

{People are more concerned about the glory and praise from people than from God.  It is so easy to become addicted to approval.  We take out the fear of God and we elevated man.  What would happen if we looked for God for approval instead of man’s approval?}

We can live for human approval, in fact many of us do.  But when we begin to elevate it above His approval and love for us we tread deep waters.

Until I began to love the parts of my heart that in my eyes were damaged and unusable I wasn’t able to grasp what love looked like.

Love isn’t about performance.

Love knows that nothing ABSOLUTELY nothing can separate us from the love of Christ.

When we think those areas are too big for God we limit His power to heal our brokenness. 

Are you treading in deep waters trying to maintain an image that is exhausting you? 

Maybe just maybe what you need is to sink down just enough to finally surrender. 

And just when you feel like you can’t continue on without rescue you feel Him reach down and pull you into His arms and whisper, “I have been waiting for you to finally surrender so I can give you back a life where you can live free.  Living free from an image driven love and standing firm in a GRACE filled love.”

There are days I find myself weaving in and out of preforming for Him.  But then I am reminded that He loves the imperfect.  He delights in who I am EVERY part of who I am.  I fight the urge daily but I chose to surrender every time because there is so much freedom in knowing I am loved just as I am. These days I grab my baggage and I run, run into His arms and I release knowing full well that His intentions are SO good.

The Lord your God is with you,
the Mighty Warrior who saves.

He will take great delight in you;
in his love he will no longer rebuke you,
but will rejoice over you with singing.”

                ~Zephaniah 3:17~

He wants us to live free my friend. 

So free I shall live.

Not seeking after my approval or yours but seeking after the His. 

Seeking truth, grace and mercy.

Yearning to grasp His great love for this broken beautiful mess He calls Nicole.

Live free with me my friend.

Leap into His arms look into His eyes and tell Him who want to be and what you wanted your life to look like but listen long enough for Him to tell you who you are…..

Friends we are all broken don’t let any of us fool you.  

Jesus thank you for the way you love me.  Help me to understand your love for me better.  Remind me to let go of this image driven love and grab onto You.  Teach me to walk with you so when I fall into the traps of preforming I am reminded of who I am in You……

So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us? And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God’s chosen? Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ’s love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture: They kill us in cold blood because they hate you.
We’re sitting ducks; they pick us off one by one. None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I’m absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.

                ~Romans 8:35-39~