Have you ever had an experience where something that seemed innocent, ended up tipping you over the edge, making you realize things were worse than you thought? My friend Gina shares a story that is so easy to relate to…
Getting a dog drove me to get counseling.
It was a combination of too-young-puppy+traveling husband+homeschooled children+living in the 12th floor of an apartment building that all led quickly from “I’m not sure about this dog ownership gig” to “I am a seething cauldron of rage.”
When I took a millisecond to consider why – why was I so angry with this dog and my kids and my husband and myself – I knew that the root issue was failure. I was failing on all fronts. I was failing as a dog trainer and as a homeschool mom. I was failing to keep my house in order, failing to keep my routines, failing to connect well with friends. Basically, I couldn’t see anything I was doing well and it killed me.
My abhorrence of failure was not new information. In fact, I had spent years working through this issue. But here it was again, like an old boyfriend hoping to reconnect after you thought you’d made it clear it was over.
Over the course of the next few months, I sought counseling for my hatred of failure, but I didn’t talk about it with many other people. Because intertwined with my failure was shame, and on top of the shame was contempt.
I had contempt for finding myself back in a place I thought I had left behind. Contempt for not being able to find the faith to just believe and move on. Contempt for not being able to shake this idol and live freely.
In the past few months, my old boyfriend’s been visiting again, and he’s changed his strategy. This time, he’s accompanied not by anger but an anxiety that strangles me. What if I fail? What if my whole world comes crumbling down, despite all my best efforts to hold it together? Worst of all, what if (God have mercy) people see me fall? In the words of George McFly, “What if they don’t like me? What if they say I’m no good? I don’t think I can handle that kind of rejection.”
My old boyfriend’s wingman is contempt, once again. Haven’t we been around this before, where I let success have a stranglehold on my heart, rather than resting in God’s love? What’s wrong with me that I just can’t seem to shake this guy? I know the destructive effects of contempt on a heart. So on top of the contempt for my fear of failure, I have contempt for the fact that I have contempt for myself. How’s that for a crazy maker?
But recently I found hope and encouragement in this quote from Richard Rohr, “The spiritual path is never a straight line, but a back and forth journey that ever-deepens the conscious relationship of being chosen, of being a beloved, of Someone loving me more than I love myself, of Someone who is more me than I am myself.”
The spiritual walk is not linear. I will always struggle not to make success my idol. I know that God will have to keep bringing me back to this lesson, in an ever deepening awareness of the depth to which it holds my heart, along with the greater reality that He holds me even tighter. He has no contempt for me in needing to revisit this lesson. He saw from the beginning the path I would need to take to learn it. He knew it would be time after time, layer after layer, on a path to full redemption.
I am not in this place again by accident. God has brought me here, in His grace and mercy, to show me afresh where true freedom lies. He is patient with me, willing to leave me in places that are wildly uncomfortable, until I have learned what He wants me to learn this go around.
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Bio: Gina Butz has served in full time ministry for over 20 years. She and her husband planned to spend three or four of those years overseas, but stayed for 13 instead. They are currently raising two third culture kids and an imported dog in the exotic land of Orlando, Florida, where they serve in global leadership for Cru. She blogs about her journey at www.ginabutz.com and you can follow her on twitter @gina_butz
