The Necessity of Relationship

Teaching online during the pandemic has made me realize there are WAY too any distractions. In the Zoom meetings with my students, I spent more time in tours of houses, being introduced to pets, watching the kids jump on the trampoline, or sneak in game time when they were supposed to be talking with me. I would ask questions to get them to interact with me, and they answered one word, or I was muted, or they were distracted. The relationships were strained as I attempted to connect, and they were too busy talk to each other or doing other things.

Insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. This was insanity embodied. It reminded me of the book A Short Stay In Hell by Stephen L. Peck.

Step Two

Step two states, “Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity”

One of the things that jumped out at me during a meeting this week was I am not able to trust the crazy thinking patterns that got me here. If I was able to do this work alone, I would have done it already. Where I am today is what has come of me doing the work alone.

Yes, it is my work alone to do. No, I don’t do it alone. We work together, and I rely on my God to bring me through it.

He hasn’t left me to go alone. He was already there making the way possible, then He CAME BACK to walk through it with me! Do you hear what I’m saying? HE CAME BACK!

I struggle with feeling like I’m good enough. This is my second marriage, and it is quickly unraveling. I came to believe I’m not a good mom, wife, person. According to others, I take over and control everyone and nobody likes to be around me. I’ve believed that I need to do more, be more, try harder just to be accepted. Just. To be. Accepted. Tolerated. And this from the people who “love me the best”.

Yes, I have believed in God before now. But the God I believed in is a hard God to please. I, who fall short to pleasing the people here, have no chance of pleasing God.

Then I did the work in step two. One of the questions asks to write down the attributes of my Higher Power and how they support me. The follow up question asks what my understanding of Higher Power was before and after.

Challenging the Stereotype

Have you read or watched The Shack by Wm. Paul Young? If not, I highly recommend it — be prepared for tears. In this story, Mac (the main character) meets three people at the shack where his youngest daughter was murdered. It is God the Father (who is a large Black Woman), Jesus Christ (a Middle-Eastern Man), and the Holy Spirit (an Asian Woman). The concept of God is the one I choose to believe in. She listens to rap, dances in the kitchen while She cooks, and brags about Her children of whom She is “particularly fond of”. All of them.

That is the God I believe in. A God who is who I need Him to be in the different stages of my life. Who is “particularly fond of” me as well. Who laughs and dances and sings. One who is full of happiness and life and who craves a relationship with me personally.

This God of mine doesn’t allow those other things to be said about me — not by others and not by myself. My God, who never fails, will restore me to sanity by giving me the vision of who I am. Helping me build healthy boundaries. By taking over the things I tried to control as I give them up.

That takes us into step three.