"If I soften the blow, they will stay longer"

This is going to be raw. But it will be an attempt to be raw with honesty, humility, and encouragement. 

   Throughout our lives, we go through different seasons of short comings being brought to our attention and we have the choice to press into them or run away from them. Most of the time, I feel like we suppress them or run away from them. That's safe. That's comfortable. That's not having to be exposed or vulnerable. We get to hide behind our masks (no pun intended) a little while longer.

  For most of my life, I have launched head first into my own short comings when they're brought to my attention or have been quick to apologize when I have wronged someone and things usually get better. But the question was raised last night "why do you do that?" and I got really honest with myself and knew that deep down it was because I viewed my self-worth...poorly. That's hard for me to admit because I have always felt like I know myself well, that I love and know who I am and I am confident in who the Lord has created me to be. But when the question was posed, I sat back and tears welled up in my eyes and in that moment I knew, it was time to be honest. So it's story time.

    Throughout my life, especially in my older years, I began to wrestle with the questions of self-worth and why I operated the way I did. Why I so greatly desired to feel wanted/needed and to help fix the issues in other people's lives as they presented them to me. Well, it's because it gave me a sense of self-worth. I felt useful and wanted because for a lot of my childhood and teenage years I felt like I would pour out so much to one person after another to be left high and dry as the friendship peetered out after about 4-6 months. But it was okay because the Lord would bring someone else who was seemingly needy and I had a lot of grace and love to give so I had purpose again. 

   When I got to college, the ball game changed because I always felt like I was juuuuuust on the outside of different friend groups. Like I was wanted/needed to an extent but never in totally. That's not a slam and there are many other things I've had to work on where I had unrealistic expectations but I digress. I desired to be wanted and needed but more than just for a little while. I wanted to be valued. My senior year I got that value and want in a different way. But it ended too. And that was the last time I can remember diving head first into fixing my short comings because maybe just maybe it would bring that person back but no matter the work I had done, it wasn't enough.

   Since then, I have stepped into a pattern of deflecting because I feared that if I mess(ed) up one too many times then my community, my friends, they will leave. So rather than apologizing and accepting where I was wrong and leaving it at that, it has sounded something like "I'm sorry BUT it was unintentional and here's what was going through my head...". And as genuine as I may intend my explanations to defend myself is, it's not taking ownership. It's not being mature. It's me thinking "If I soften the blow by deflecting then maybe they will stick around a little longer". And somewhere in there, it's also revealing that my sense of self-worth has been wounded along the way.

   I'm thankful for friends that have hard conversations with me. That desire for me to grow and remind me that my worth is in Christ (things I know and believe). I think it's easy to tuck things away because to look like all ducks are in a row but actually share that they're not is in fact.... easier. But we are called to share things, to be honest, because maybe someone else feels alone in their struggles but that weight is lifted when we can say "yeah, I struggle with that too... now let's turn it back to Christ". That's where freedom is.

   So I stand before you, not looking for compliments or pity. I don't need those. But humbled, broken, learning, and growing. Redeemed by an unconditionally loving Father who says "Al, you are fearfully and wonderfully made (Ps. 139). And so I begin the journey of walking into that confidence, again accepting and taking ownership where I've been wrong without excuses, and figuring out the other things along the way because I do not have all the answers yet.

Thank you for reading.

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