Please read Part 1, Part 3 , Part 4 , Part 5 , and the Epilogue for context. Thank you.
In my desire to grow in my relationship with God I was encouraged to get connected to a body of other believers. As I started developing my relationship with God through my church life I found myself driven by a familiar performance based acceptance. What I heard taught in church triggered my feelings or inadequacy and fear. Instead of helping me to heal emotionally and spiritually — through a relationship with God — I found myself hearing how I was not measuring up to have a relationship with God.
Instead of learning to rest and trust in my relationship with God I felt driven to do more to feel secure in my relationship with God. Because I rarely felt as though I was able to measure up to what I heard taught in church I felt alienated from both God, other people and myself. Instead of finding freedom from my sense of shame and my fear of abandonment I found myself controlled and driven to prove my worth and value to have a relationship with God.
The unconditional love that I heard talked about seemed to be predicated with stipulations. In the midst of my trying to resolve the double message I developed a love-hate relationship with God.
I continued to be driven — in my attempts to do enough to be enough — until I hit an emotional and spiritual bottom in my life. My emotional / spiritual turmoil helped me to realize that I had to make some changes. Consequently, I realized that I could no longer subject myself to that which was killing me. I realized that I needed to physically, emotionally and spiritually detach myself from churches and other institutions that motivated and controlled through the use of a shame based spirituality.
I realized that I had to physically detach myself from systems that sought to control through the use of a performance driven and shame based spirituality.
Once I made the decision to detach and stop subjecting myself to shame driven messages I began to heal. As I began to heal I slowly stopped fighting against myself. I slowly stopped “spiritualizing” everything that happened in my world. I slowly started to see life in grays instead of only black and whites. I slowly began to understand that I had placed God in a box. I slowly began to understand that I was created to be a human being, not a human doing. I slowly started to realize that I had discarded parts of myself.
I slowly started to understand that there was a difference between guilt and shame. I slowly started to be responsible to myself.
Please read Part 3 for context. Thank you.
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