“Is she serious? WHY are we so STUCK on this topic?” I thought to myself. My prayer counselor sat in front of me with a concerned look on her face. I was not even sure why we were so focused on this. My brain was telling me to move on, that we were on the wrong track. I was annoyed that she kept pressing this issue. It was such a SIMPLE statement, it could not have possibly been a decision I made that seeped in to every aspect of my being. It was way too easy, way too obvious. My inner healing journey so far had been way more complex, and I just couldn’t wrap my head around this even being an issue. My arms were firmly crossed, but my heart was saying otherwise.
“I’m feeling a little combative on this. I quite honestly don’t understand why we have become so fixated on this. I really don’t think I made the decision that people are always going to let me down. I just kind of wait to see what happens and react from there.” I shrugged my shoulders at her, hoping she’d tell me that it was okay to just drop it.
She didn’t let me though. She asked me questions that prompted me to dig deeper. Questions like “ Do you feel like everyone in your life is bound to let you down and you’re just waiting for it to happen?”. Well duh, because everyone is human, right? And, “do you feel continuously let down? Like there is a sense of worst case scenario just waiting for you?” Um..
And there it was. It was like a light turned on, like the Holy Spirit brought that feeling out from its ugly hiding spot. I broke down, I cried. I realized that since a very young age when my dad walked out and didn’t come back, I had known the feeling of crippling disappointment. It was a LEARNED and REINFORCED feeling by the circumstances of my life from then on out and I had just decided that even though people love me, they are going to disappoint me, going to let me down, they’re going to cast my feelings aside and act selfishly.
There’s truth to the fact that everyone is human and make mistakes, and they could possibly let us down. However, what the Holy Spirit revealed and my prayer counselor taught me, is that there is a difference between having the awareness that humans have the potential to let us down, and just WAITING for it to happen, EXPECTING it from literally, every single person in our lives. Until that moment, I had NO idea that I was living this way. I had NO idea that I lived in fear, caution, and with a wall up around my heart. I was blind to this behavior, even went to great lengths to make it seem like I wasn't this way. If I didn’t expect the best from everyone, then I wouldn’t have to feel the crippling disappointment that had become so familiar, right?
That’s just it though. Living that way doesn’t allow room for one of God’s greatest gifts: hope. Reaping what you sow was never a principle that I paid much attention to, and I think it’s because the enemy wanted me to continue living this way. He didn’t want me to experience true Godly hope, true Godly connection with others. He wanted the worst case scenario in the back of my mind so I couldn’t fully connect with God and with those closest to me. You know what happened with that negative expectation? It became a part of my foundation, what I built my life on. It reared its ugly head in every aspect of my life, every relationship that I held so dear. It became a principle that I reaped, and then I would sow. It was an expectation that became reality, it was allowed to operate.
Now that I seemed to understand it, my prayer counselor asked if I wanted to come out of agreement with it. A process that allows you to call the lie out in the safety of prayer, ask for forgiveness for believing it, and ask God to put it to death so it can no longer operate as the enemy intended. In this case, it was a part of my every being, so I had the privilege of asking God to give me a new truth to replace the lie, and rebuild my foundation. I was able to ask him to restore what had been broken inside, so that I could see the world, and more importantly, the people around me with a heart full of God given hope.
Most importantly, what God taught me that day, the new truth that He gave me to stand on was this: I CAN rely on Him. I may not always get the answer I want, but it will be the answer I need. People may fall short. BUT. If I put my hope and trust in God, the rest will follow.
“We who have run for our very lives to God have every reason to grab the promised hope with both hands and never let go. It’s an unbreakable spiritual lifeline, reaching past all appearances right to the very presence of God where Jesus, running on ahead of us, has taken up his permanent post as high priest for us…” Hebrews 6:18-20 MSG
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