As a former extrovert, in an extroverted career, I worked tirelessly to help people. I felt an obligation and a compulsion to meet the needs of those God placed in my path. Some events led to an abrupt exit from that career, which piggybacked on the abrupt end to life-long relationships. My world was flipped turned upside down.
The brokenness and destruction surrounding these events and losses led to an isolated journey and desperate desire for healing. Aside from the depression and grief I was inevitably experiencing, there was a foundational need to change more than just my career. My home was in shambles—a direct representation of my internal state.
With every invitation for coffee, lunch, a visit— due to my seemingly new freedom from the day job—I cringed. I cringed at the thought of social obligations. I felt as if this time alone was imperative, and I needed every second of it. I began to believe that I was allergic to people and that I was simply hiding from the world. But what was happening and is still happening is a transformation.
In these days where I am sitting alone, I am searching for something I have never been able to find. As I sit with God, prayerfully engaging in His word and spirit, reading and consuming all that I can to grow, I am healing. Slowly.
I am coming to realize that I am not allergic to people. I am allergic to the situations that trigger my shame and obligation. These silent and often dark moments have allowed me the opportunity to evaluate the destruction my constant desire to save people, help people, fill their needs emotional and physical, has had on my spirit and those I love the most.
This may sound extreme given a lack of knowledge or backstory. But in an honest look at myself, I realized that the shame, guilt, and unworthiness bestowed upon me as a small child has persisted and motivated my every thought and action. I NEEDED to help people. I NEEDED to feel like a good person. I NEEDED to do enough, care enough, to finally absolve myself of the shame that permeated my very existence.
And with the separation of constant service as a bandaid, I began to feel intense anxiety toward situations that I knew would trigger this guilt, obligation, and shame. Without a backdrop of trauma, one might not understand why merely turning down an invitation or juggling the fragile emotions of others feels impossible. Here’s why. When confronted with these feelings, I disappear. A magic trick I acquired at an early age to avoid attack and numb my own feelings in order to remain safe externally and internally.
This trick served me well as a youth. But as a wife and mother to three glorious children, it’s catastrophic. I am finally connecting my triggers with my coping mechanisms, and my coping mechanisms with the loss my children and husband experience as a result. They lose me. And not because I want to fail them. Because my brain perceives these situations as dangerous —because they were — and my current autonomical response is self-preservation.
In this season, I am grateful to be here. Sitting at the feet of Christ humbly asking for transformation. Focusing my energy and attention to freeing my spirit from bondage and toward repairing the relationships and tending to the needs of these sweet children who have already lost much. To breaking the cycles of hurt plaguing generations of my family. Giving them all of the love and attention they genuinely deserve just as a child.
I eagerly await the time when I can emerge, healed in spirit and home to serve God outside of these walls. When this happens, I will not be serving to fill a hole inside myself. I will be serving as a Christian filled to the brim with grace.
After spending so much of my time worrying myself with the demands of the world around me, I have finally found my place. I was Martha. Now I am blessed to have the chance to be Mary. It’s not easy to stop the internal obsession of busy, seeking validation through my acts and contributions. It’s quite counterintuitive. I’m wired to be a Martha.
Waging war against the strongholds of generational trauma is exhausting, but so was the weight of carrying them. Changing the world is God’s job. Placing myself in position and doing the work to allow God to heal my spirit, is mine. Breaking the painful patterns of generational trauma in order for my children to rise into the world as strong Christians, my job.
Sometimes, we are called to be still. In my stillness, He is working. And I am so grateful.