“Fat, Black and Ugly!” Those were the words she was yelling at me down the middle school hall. I was a 7th grader and she was an 8th grader. She was bigger, stronger and more popular. So when she threw a basketball at me in the gym and it hit me in the head, I did not retaliate. When she yelled these cruel words at me down the hall as I was leaving for the bus, I did not say anything back. Even when other kids looked at me. Even when she repeated her cruel words over and over and they reverberated off the middle school walls. Whoever said “sticks and stones may break your bones but words will never hurt you”, were liars. Every word that girl said and so many others like them played over and over in my mind as the years went on. As I grew older and developed socially, mentally and emotionally, the rejection from bullying would function subconsciously in every decision I made to be accepted. 20+ years later I do not remember that girls’ name, but I surely remember the words she spoke.
We all have those stories. We were bullied or maybe we were the bulliers. I realize now being a full grown adult, kids bully b/c more than likely they are facing some really hard things at home. They are being told they are worthless, they are nothing and so they carry that with them when they enter the school premises. Maybe you weren’t bullied but somewhere along your life journey you accumulated a load of pain brought on by lies told to you. You thought those lies were truth. After all, how could they not be true when the people speaking them over you were stronger, smarter and in some cases your caregivers? I’m finding now that as a 31-year-old there are so many lies I have believed over the years. So many lies that reverberate in my mind brought on by experiences of pain.
I’ve heard it said that every human being is born with 3 basic needs: to be loved, to be accepted and to have purpose. When those needs are not met we become needy. We look and search for our value and acceptance in any and every thing. We become addicted to behaviors and substances such as food, sex and drugs. Or maybe people pleasing and over-achieving. We frantically try to fulfill that void and end up causing more pain. We develop unhealthy relationships full of codependency and fear.
Fear.
That is at the root of these dysfunctional behaviors. You may think you are exempt to the dysfunction, but every single person born after the fall of man was born into it. We were born into sin.
God is revealing the unbalance. The dysfunction. The neediness. And He is revealing the solution. It truly is His perfect love that casts out all fear.
I thought the pain I was experiencing in this season was caused from singleness. I thought it was caused by being single just way too long. I learned the pain was actually being caused from neediness. This unhealthy desire to be dependent on someone or something other than the Most High.
He has removed all of the false dependencies. No more overeating, no more codependent relationships, no more falling to sexual sin. He has broken the strongholds. Freedom reigns and His dominion is being made evident in my being. It is to His glory that this should come about and it is His grace that has led me to overcome the arrows of lies of the wicked one.
He desires truth in the inward parts.
As He exposes and removes the false in His people, we will walk confidently forward in our eternal identities and release His truth and light into our environments. The captives will be set free through His bride. Just as they were set free through the Bridegroom.
Yeshua.
Shalom.
