For too long, I believed it. Those words I heard, “I can’t handle you,” sent me into hiding. I was too much. Too sensitive. Too emotional. So I closed the door on those parts, and chose striving, performing, achieving.
To be loved, I thought I had to be perfect. If I was myself, I was too much.
When an unexpected time of rejection and pain landed hard, I turned to Jesus with my big feelings, pleading with Him to help me sort through and pull apart the lies. And it turned out those big and deep feelings, which felt wrong for so long, created capacity for me to sit with my grief. I could hold it out for Him and not run away. I could face it with Him and not be afraid.
It was through the very way He created me, to feel things big and deeply, that I was able to begin again. He used the very parts of me that I labelled “wrong” and “weak” to make me whole.
My willingness to feel held a key to my ability to heal.
Have others made you feel wrong for how you approach and respond to life?
Have you compared yourself to others, wishing you had a different personality?
Have you belittled and discounted and rejected who you are at your core?
Have you, too, been hiding?
Friend, those who made you feel small don’t get to define you. They don’t get to label your heart. They don’t get to name your weaknesses. He created each of us to feel and think and respond to life in the very way we naturally do. How you are wired isn’t wrong. You are a masterpiece, and He delights in you.
He is the One who gets a say.
He is the One who tells you who you are.
He is the One who names you.
“He brought me out into a broad place; he rescued me, because he delighted in me” (Psalm 18:19).
