And... Rebuild

When I started writing this I was sitting in my uni room hiding under a blanket with the sun shinning through my window, knowing I should leave this spot. I hadn't got any work done. My stomach was twisted in knots. My knees feel like they could collapse at any moment when I stood. I couldn't write more than one sentence without being lost in my mind again. This is what it is to wrestle. This is what it is to let God rebuild. 

A lot of my time in therapy was spent challenging thoughts. To say I was a nightmare is an understatement, and it was undoubtedly as infuriating for everyone else as it was for me. Week in, week out, we would go through the same battles and same thought arguments.

Core belief: I am not good enough.

F: Well what evidence says that it is true that you aren't good enough?

Me: I didn't get a red blazer (academic honours) in school.

F: Would getting a red blazer have made you kinder, friendlier, funnier?

Me: No, but that's not the point.

*Insert argument about the stupid red blazer going around in a circle*

Me: I wasn't made a prefect. Didn't get selected as a peer mentor. Only did three AS Levels.

*Same argument, different source*

I was an absolute nightmare and I seriously, seriously owe these people a big one for dealing with me. I have never found thought challenging easy. The thing is my self was so adjusted to the mould I had created around it that it became a self-fulfilling prophecy that shaped everything. For me, this meant I never saw myself as being worthy. As a result, why would I even consider myself as being worthy of being saved? Why did I deserve to like myself, or not scrutinise myself for every mistake? Why would I deserve to be treated any better, by anyone? It never made any sense to me. Self-sabotage, seelf-sabotage, self-sabotage.

Time and time again I face this same battle. I don't deserve to be doing better than I once was. I don't deserve those nice things. I don't deserve anything. Mix that with a strong sense of empathy and compassion for a suffering world and you have the disaster that is myself. I look around me and see suffering, so how can I laugh when there is so much pain? How can I let myself eat when others need this more? What can validate my selfishness in such a broken world?

Day in, day out, I am having to remind myself that destroying myself will not fix anyone else. There's no point smashing the windows of a sanctuary to help someone in when there's a door they could walk through if they so wished. Having a sanctuary is pointless if I destroy it.

I've found that through the years I have been plastering over all of the cracks in my very damaged little being. Temporarily getting me through, enough to stop the thoughts being constant, but not enough to make them stop altogether. I simply never believed that that was possible. When you are subject to years of treatment and medication and hospitals, it becomes an accepted degree of 'get by' and 'do better', but not necessarily to be better. 

A year ago, God picked me up out of the depths of the pit I was submerged in. Over the following months my entire world was changed; able to actually sit in church, to talk in youth groups, to live in a different country and not freak out going to Tesco on my own. Over the past few weeks though, it got wobbly. I was looking around asking and pleading, 'where did all of that progress go? Have I done something wrong? Am I being punished?'

It's still there. No I haven't done something wrong (well...). No, I'm not being punished; that's not how GRACE works. 

My favourite C.S.Lewis quote has been a major source of comfort through this and I wholeheartedly agree with it;

'Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.'

Paul in Philippians 1:6 tells us that, 

'And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.'

What does this mean? It means He is not going to leave you in the muddle. He is not going to do a Cowboy Builders trick on you and leave you as you are, half-broken, half-reshaped. How you are today is not how you will end up. Isn't that glorious? He is working on, through, and for you. So for me right now, God seems to be going through the rubble of damage my life has accumulated. It is painful. Walls are being taken down, that unhealthily old candle I cannot bear to get rid of is being chucked out, childhood secrets being rummaged through. 

Do you want to know the best part of this? God does not simply throw us to the side whilst He does it. Every day He draws us closer and closer, holding us tight, calling for our trust. Every single day He is working. Every day a little bit more is rebuilt and reshaped. On each of those days, He is carrying us. God knows it will hurt, Christ didn't endure such suffering on the Cross for no reason, nor was He rejected by many without purpose. 

Let God rebuild. 

Take care,