Will You Be Made Whole? (Part 15: Denial)

I hope everyone enjoyed his or her fabulous Thanksgiving. When it comes to this particular blogpost, I know, I know, I’m rather late; I initially started writing this blogpost back in April of this year, but a lot has transpired this year for me, so I cease from procrastinating and finish this much needed blogpost. I don’t know about you, but this year has been a year of change for me. As I think about this year as a whole, there are many people (whether they will admit it or not) living in denial. Have you ever looked at someone and see the beauty of someone, but if you look into their eyes and sometimes listen to their words, you can see and/or hear the pain that they’re trying so hard to keep inside. They know they need to alter their mindset, or make a change on the inside, but they refuse to (and end up doing the same things over and over again expecting different results). Now that’s just one area. Let’s take this up a notch.

As you can see, this blogpost is dealing with the mask of denial. Where we know something is wrong, but we just don’t want to deal with it because it’s too messy, or it’s a matter of “I’ve got this under control,” when the truth is, you don’t! That’s denial. Have you ever been in a relationship when a man who was totally at fault, stepping out of the relationship, cheating, lying to you, and your healing process consists of you attacking them in the following manner, “Where were you? See, this is why I don’t trust you. You don’t respond to my texts when I text you? What! You don’t love me? Your words say one thing, but I just don’t trust you! I called your job, and they told me that you weren’t there. In fact, your friends told me that you skipped work! Give me your passwords to your social media accounts and your phone! Let me see who you’re texting?” And the other person says, “Where’s my privacy? You don’t trust me?” Would you say this is a case of jealousy or trust issues? I’ve never been in this situation before that I just type (thankfully), but I know these situations do happen in real life and on the TV screen. If I were to analyze this, there are issues that both parties have to address. The one doing the attacking is possibly struggling with trust and lack of it that he/she received during the course of their upbringing. The one who was asking, “Where’s my privacy?” actually provided no trust in the relationship for whatever reason. The last thing anyone should do is to not address it only to go through the same thing over and over expecting different results in a different relationship. For the one doing the accusing, it would appear that their heart is troubled (and Jesus said to let not our heart be troubled); for the one accused, there’s some hurt within too where they’re not standing up for themselves. So, because they don’t address the hurt, they’re in essence denying the hurt inside. Dealing with hurts inside requires one to own their process. This is how effective change takes place. This is something I’m working through in my life as I look at some areas where I am damaged, fearful, and feeling bound in certain areas. I have to own my process, and stop denying or procrastinate in making a change about it.

But let’s take the above paragraph another level. Sometimes the person doing the accusing may do this and there was never a violation in the first place. In other words, the accused is actually innocent, but the accuser is so used to being betrayed in the past (from the past – whether it be bad relationships, or upbringing), that now, they’re playing the doctor/nurse and just want to operate on something that doesn’t need surgery at all. So this could possibly be denial of what they’re experiencing in their mind and heart. The way this denial is expressed is very extreme. If you really look closely at the situation, the accuser just wants to be safe and secure. If you deny being truly safe and secure (and you just isolate yourself without God’s Word in your spirit), you can never be whole from this feeling that’s within you.

Think about this, have you ever said, “Are you feeling me?” only to just share your thoughts and describing your feelings. Feeling really requires one word, such as “I feel abandoned. I feel hurt.” Those are examples. When you do that, it actually helps you get in touch with what you are going through. This requires your thoughts to be separated from what you feel. Are you willing to understand your process? When there’s pain inflicted on someone, that pain is felt by the person who’s hurt and the response from the person who they hurt that now the person who did wrong has to bear. The key here is to stop denying the pain you really feel – regardless if it’s someone who’s currently in your life, or someone who’s no longer in your life. Let it go and let God create in you a clean heart. If your heart isn’t clean, the devil will allow you to stay in that hurt, and your heart will continue to bleed and will never heal. This is why I am always conscious of what I say and do to others, because I know that my wrongs don’t affect others, they affect me too. Staying in denial doesn’t hurt just you; it hurts others who are around you. For many, they’ll stay in denial because of the fear of the unknown. You’re not mean to go through this alone, that’s why Jesus said to take His yoke because it’s easy and His burden is light. Your body isn’t built to carry burdens. Carrying them just to have someone to carry is really pride (which the devil thrives on).

Did you know that faultfinding is a form of denial? What am I talking about, you might ask. This is where you strive to seek the bad/wrong in every person you are entering a relationship with, and the problems with the relationship are on them and not you. You use faultfinding as a weapon as needed so that you can take the nearest exit out of the door. A lot of this faultfinding is hinged on something you’ve experienced in your life. Would you agree or disagree? Think about this one. I know it hurts, but this could actually hinge on self-sabotage (mentioned in Part 12: Restoration of “Self”).

If you have ever justified your denial, you will probably relate to this part right here. If I deny the pain that I experienced in my abuse (like I did during my teen years) and justify it, then I’m really wearing the mask of “everything is fine,” when the truth is, I’m broken, battered and beaten. Sadly, society and some churches want you to have the mask on and stay in denial (without helping you cope with the pain that you have to take to bed with you every night). Denying my abuse and justifying it looks like this, “if you have protected me, then I wouldn’t hate you as much as I do now!” In a relationship, it will look like this, “I am single because the last man I had punched me in the face, talked down to me, cheated on me, wanted to have a threesome, etc.).” If someone violated your trust, you can easily project that on people who didn’t harm you and justify your reason for being extremely jealous. In other words, this justification of your behavior is denying that you have the ultimate responsibility for how you conduct your life – and you’re blaming other people for your actions.” The beauty of God is that He’s not judging you as hard as you are judging yourself. Your behavior is a work, and it’s not the grounds for your salvation. Religion (and the devil) will tell you that your behavior determines your salvation, and that’s a lie! And on that note, don’t deny your true feelings when you’re talking to God, He already knows and He’s not judging you, like man does!

When it comes to sexual abuse, we deny because of the shame that it’s placed on us as well as the pain that was afflicted on us (I will address the root cause of the pain which will be called Church Hurt, so stay tuned). I have met so many people who have denied their pain and I remember having to tell someone, “If you continue to deny your abuse, if a trigger happens and you haven’t dealt with it, you will explode.” Yes, the pain and the hurt you experienced was not your fault, you see the enemy wants you to take on the pain that was inflicted and denial causes you to assume the blame, pain and then you’re on a downward spiral to where it affects you mentally. I’ll be honest; this is something I had to realize. If unresolved pain isn’t resolved, and it’s denied, triggers have a way to cause the pain to be infected. Years ago, I experienced it, and it shook me to the core.

This might be off subject, but it still applies to the denial concept. On a normal scheme of things, if parents are walking with God, the parent loves the child unconditionally – there is nothing the child could do to make the parent stop loving the child. But of course, not every parent walks with God, and the parent puts conditions on the child (if you do this or that, say this or that, that will prove that you love me – otherwise, my love for you is conditionally). When parents walk with God, a child could say I hate their parents, the parents won’t stop loving and/or praying for them. When parents aren’t walking with God and the child says not only do they hate them, or questions why did they allow the abuse to happen to them, the parent will deny and wonder, “what did I do wrong?” and they deny what’s really going on within them. Then everything goes downhill, to include blame shifting (now everyone becomes the source of their own problem). That’s not healthy for anybody, and it’s just pure denial. I pray this paragraphs sets victims of this kind of abuse free (if you had parents who were manipulative – and denying it till the cows come home), and those who are living in pure denial. If you read Part 14: Distorted View of God, when a child is loved conditionally, this love can create a distorted view of God (and when a parent denies or neglects a child, it creates a distorted view of God to the point that their foundation of who God is to them is on shaky, if not stony ground). And when an adult (who is still longing for the approval from the parent, when the parent neglected them) is trying to discover who God is, it’s distorted (which is all a setup by the devil, not God). Refer back to the blogpost from yesterday on this. This paragraph here is really describing denial that indirectly affects you when you weren’t the one who caused it.

So what we have discovered here in this blogpost is that denial can either start with us, or be passed down from generations. Now, the decision has to be made if you want to be free and made whole from the mask of denial.

Blessings,

The Mayne Man

Will You Be Made Whole? (Part 13: The Letter)

Hey Special One,

As you read this, I want to you know that you are beautiful, you are special, and most importantly, you are fearfully and wonderfully made. And for anyone to tell you otherwise, is not telling you the truth, nor is what they say that’s not who you really are the truth. So, let’s shine the light over that lie.

I see the best in you and most importantly, the God that I serve sees the best in you. I don’t know who discounted you or wrote you off during your childhood. Was it your mother, your father, your siblings, your aunts, your uncles, your grandparents, or was it other extended family members to include friends of family? I also don’t know who is currently discounting your true identity or worth right now, is it the man or woman that’s in your life? Is it a co-worker, or a stranger that really doesn’t know who you really are? It may be time to cut those ties, because your associates will either add value to you or devalue you. And I’ll say this, those who discount you, are actually devaluing you.

Whoever told you that you need to be the talk of the town and that you need to just be popular – just to get attention – is lying to you. I know your childhood wasn’t picture perfect, and neither was mine. May I encourage you right now and tell you that you are not your past. You are not what your abuser said that you are. You can be free, healed and whole. I know you have dreams, aspirations and goals. May I say that you may not be mentally ready for some of them just yet? There is a growing process that has to take place, and it starts with being comfortable in your own skin. So, you must ask yourself, do you love you? When you look in the mirror when you’re by yourself, what do you see? Do you see your past, your pain, your shortcomings, or possibly your mistakes? If you do, do you believe that you can learn from them, grow from them so you can eventually declare what was mentioned in the first paragraph that truly is your identity? No man, woman or other human being will ever love you unconditionally than God. And let me say that you don’t have to compete with others for your attention; you are beautiful just as you are. I see the pain when I look at you, and I know that you are doing all you can to masquerade it, but there are consequences if you’re not careful.

Whoever told you that you need to be a certain shape or size just so you can be attractive, is lying to you. Whoever told you that love has to hurt is lying to you. I know you are strong, and I don’t deny it, and when I look at you, I see the pain and the tears that you are holding on to because of the situations you’ve put yourself in. I know you are fearful of the next step in your life. Just know that fear paralyzes, and faith sets you free. You are more than what people say they are and you don’t have to live up to other people’s expectations. That old saying, “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” is a lie from the pit of hell! Words have the power to hurt or heal. And you are not the negative words that clearly devalue who you really are. The people who talk down to you are people that are trying to build themselves up at your expense. Let them go, as they will do what they can to destroy you with their words. May I encourage you right now and tell you that you are not your past. You are not what your abuser said that you are. I know you are carrying a weight (not physical weight, I’m talking about weight of fears, hurt, shame, etc.), which is actually a burden, but our human bodies aren’t built to carry that weight. You can be free, healed and whole. I know you have dreams, aspirations and goals. Write down who you really want to be and desire to have in your life. So, you must ask yourself, do you love you? When you look in the mirror when you’re by yourself, what do you see? Do you see your past, your pain, your shortcomings, or possibly your mistakes? If you do, do you believe that you can learn from them, grow from them so you can eventually declare what was mentioned in the first paragraph that truly is your identity? No man, woman or other human being will ever love you unconditionally than God. And let me say that you don’t have to compete with others for your attention; you are beautiful just as you are. Once you divorce yourself from the opinions of others, you enter another dimension.

Just know my special one, you are uniquely gifted, and there is no one like you. Despite what you’re going through physically, mentally, emotionally, financially, and spiritually, God loves you and He is not punishing you. He has nothing but love for you, and I do too. May His peace surpass all of your understanding, and know that you can be free, healed and whole from everything that you’ve been through in your life. He can give you beauty for the ashes that you’ve accumulated in your life and He can restore your broken self-worth/self-identity if you will let Him.

Blessings,

The Mayne Man

Will You Be Made Whole? (Part 12: Restoration of "Self")

When you think about “self,” is the first thing that comes to mind is the concept of “me, myself, and I.” How many of you believe that for your life, it’s all about “me, myself, and I and forget about everybody else?” Well, that’s what I want to talk about in this post, the concept of “self,” and the restoration of “self.”

There are so many words that can go after the word “self.” What comes to mind are as follows:

Self-Esteem

Self-Preservation

Self-Control

Self-Centered

Self-Image

Self-Defeat

Self-Justification

Self-Identity

Self-Worth

Self-Love

Self-Mutilate

Self-Serving

Self-Hate

Self-Destruction

Self-Sabotage

Those are just some words, and there are many more that I didn’t mention. Self isn’t arbitrarily a bad thing, but it can be if you rely on “self” more than you do God to the point of making your “self” an idol. The late Stephen Covey talked about a centered life, and one area was “self-centered.” A self-centered life in his book 7 Habits of Highly Effective people consisted of the following:

Self-centeredness is probably the most common center out of the other centers (money, family, spouse, church, work, pleasure, friend/enemy, etc.) and it’s obvious form is “selfishness,” which violates the values of many people. When you are self-centered, you accept and never give (in other words, “what’s in it for me,” “if it feels good.”). Your security is constantly changing, and you view the world by how decisions, events or how circumstances will affect you. In fact, your ability to act is limited to your own resources.

According to Stephen Covey, self-centeredness also breeds self-justification and self-interest. Before I forget, the two types of self that I really want to focus on for this blogpost are “self-worth” and “self-sabotage.”

If you look at Numbers 13, it’s a familiar story; it’s the story of Moses sending spies to survey the land. Ten of the twelve said that they couldn’t do take the land, even though God said it was given to them. Only two heeded the word of God. Now, here’s the interesting part (especially in the last two verses – 32 and 33): So they gave the Israelites a bad report about the land which they had spied out, saying, “The land through which we went, in spying it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants. And all the people that we saw in it are men of great stature. 33 There we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak are part of the Nephilim); and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.”

Did you notice something? Their enemies rarely can detect spies and what the spies did was cause the nation to take their side (with the exception of Joshua and Caleb).  They said, “We were like grasshoppers.” They discounted themselves out and saw themselves a way that their enemies may not have seen them. Have you ever known people (or have you even done it yourself) to discount themselves before others when they probably weren’t thinking that way about them? Using myself as an example, “I may think that a particular woman may not like me because I’m so unusual. So I don’t even introduce myself, when the truth may be that she really likes me.” I missed an opportunity due to self-sabotage because of low self-worth. That’s what the children of Israel did. They sabotaged their own success.

Don’t self-sabotage your self-worth because of somebody else. People will hate you whether you do/say something or whether you don’t do/say something. In short, people will hate you just because. This message here is to not be defeated from the start due to a low self-esteem (self-worth).

May I use a gruesome example: A woman is in a marriage with a man who claimed he loved her but physically and emotionally abuses her. During the course of the marriage, he wants her to worship him, talk to nobody by him, and is extremely jealous of her to the point that she has to look down at the ground whenever they are in the public eye. You can tell right there that this woman’s self-worth is destroyed and possibly her view of God may be skewed as well. When this happens, it’s easy to start self-sabotaging yourself to thinking, “this is what God wants from me, to suffer and stay in the marriage till death do we part.” It’s also easy to start thinking this abnormal life is normal. Even if she gets out, she will do whatever she can to gain control over everything around her (especially her life), and fears any loss of control due to what she experienced. Do I understand the rationale behind it? Yes. Does her life need to be repaired? Absolutely. Will it be difficult for her to go through the process and will she really want to go through the process? It will be difficult, and will do everything possibly in many cases to avoid the process. When this situation happens, it will be easy to mistaken what’s God when it really is self because of the control component. In other words, whatever good happens may sometimes be God, and every bad thing we blame God for it, especially when it doesn’t go the way we want it to go.

So, how do we restore self-worth to stop self-sabotage? It’s a great question, and here are some things to help along the way. If you are someone who believes in God (or even if your view of God is skewed because of traumatic events), your self-worth can actually be improved when you understand God’s principles for what they really are (in other words, read it as if you were a little child – and do what you can to throw away every teaching that was legalistic and condemning). When you become engrossed in His principles, it will improve your self-worth. Let me give you some examples from His Word that confirm who you are:

• You are a fellow heir to a divine inheritance among the saints (Ephesians 1:18)
• You are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood (1 Peter 2:9)
• You are crucified with Christ, nevertheless you live, and the life you now live, you live by faith (Galatians 2:20)

Another way to improve your self-worth is to serve others, like mentor a child who’s coming up in this crazy world. So, I close with two questions to consider:

1. What can you do to serve others? When you give, you actually open yourself up to so many blessings to you (please, don’t do this just for the blessings, let it really come from your heart).
2. What are areas in your life where your pride needs to be swallowed (when I say pride, I’m referring to the concept of, “I’m a self-made man; I’m a self-made woman and I got here by myself”)? Of course that’s not true, we all received help at some point. What are some areas where you need to humble yourself? Remember, pride comes before destruction, and before the Lord, we must humble ourselves. He does know what’s best for us, and He’s the only one who can restore your “Self-identity!”

Will you let Him do that? He wants to restore your “self” into what He originally designed for you. He wants to place blessings and not cursing on you (in fact, it’s our “self” that cause them to come, not Him). The enemy wants you to “self-sabotage,” which cause “self-defeat!” Jesus wants to restore the “self-esteem” and “self-worth” that was destroyed by the enemy.

Blessings.

The Mayne Man