I have always immersed myself in the innermost layers and have had to force myself at times to surface in order to be functional.
But lately, I have struggled to sink into those deeper layers.
I think I am beginning to understand why.
Fear.
I think there is a part of every person that deeply fears those deepest layers in themselves.
To have to delve into the mess of sorts is a nightmare at best.
Those are the places of deepest hurts, longings, betrayals, and all other forms of existential thought.
And something in us enables this sense of fight. To fight off those parts of ourselves.
Fight the feelings associated.
Fight the sense of hopelessness.
Fight myself.
I avoided most places where I had to engage in introspection.
I think because it was going to force me to look at a part of myself that I had no control over…
My brokenness.
My Depravity.
And I hate being anything other than “good”.
Or what I thought “goodness” was.
And I was so tired of wrestling.
So I just lived.
Mundane day to day life.
Wake up.
work.
eat.
sleep.
over.
and over.
and over again.
And I was content for awhile, but it didn’t last long.
You can only run from yourself with yourself for so long.
I was so tired of feeling like I never fit or belonged.
So I sought to force myself into a box and tape my mouth shut.
To keep myself from being myself.
And because I’m a fighter, I fought.
And in order to keep myself in the box, and from breaking out, I avoided most people and things that would force me to look at the being in the box.
I just didn’t fit.
And it was so miserable.
Cramped. Suffocating. Stuffy.
The only way to survive being in the box was to die slowly from the inside out.
And that’s what I did.
Very slowly.
Almost unnoticed.
Until one day, I looked in the mirror and didn’t know myself anymore.
I began doing drastic things to try to break free, but to no avail.
I had forgotten the being that I had trapped in the box.
I had forgotten who I was.
My life was set out for me….
I would become a therapist, get married, have children, continue doing therapy (maybe while teaching on the side), grow old with my husband, and then our children would have children, and then we would be grandparents to those children, and then we would die.
And that was my life. And that was what I was “supposed” to do. Because that would make me happy. And that was what all of my friends were doing, and it was “normal”. And I was taught that if I did not want those things, well then, there was something “abnormal” about me.
Or maybe that I was afraid of commitment,
Or maybe that I didn’t love children,
Or maybe that I wouldn’t understand the fullness of God until I experienced marriage.
The list of reasons why I did’t “fit in the box” was long and exhausting.
And there is NOTHING wrong with those things.
But they become wrong, if they become a box.
And if the object or person does not fit in the box.
Because then, they are not longer living authentically.
They are living in rules, not in love.
I always thought that my lack of “fitting-ness” was disconnecting me from God. That maybe my lack of “fitting-ness” was due to some inner sin or dysfunction that separated me from Him.
But I have found that Jesus aligned himself most with this that “didn’t fit”.
Probably because He didn’t quite fit either.
He didn’t make it in the box that others had set out for who He was going to be and why.
Instead, He contradicted any label that was thrown at Him.
I cringe to imagine what would have happened if the Son of God would have forfeited who He was in order to fit in the box that we (depraved humanity) had set out for Him.
Maybe I should fear the same for myself.
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