Several weeks ago I quit the small bible study I was involved with because I didn’t relate to the married people in it. I blogged about that decision, a decision I made with grief but with a desire to protect myself from more pain. I felt that my life was painful enough without adding […]
via Learning normal, prayer as a help to healing — Dreams of a better world blog
*My note – I’ve reblogged this post from Katie of the Dreams of a Better World blog because it holds so many lessons I’m also learning about keeping my personal life personal. I found I wore my worries on my face and would tell people things I was worried about as, I hoped, a way to lesson my anxiety. Now I know to put a natural smile on my face and afford myself a position of dignity and self-respect. This had an added benefit in that I became less anxious when out in public and dealing with others.
Prairie Crossroads 
Thank you for re-blogging this~ I Thessalonians 4: 11-12 tells us to make it our ambition to lead a quiet and peaceable life earning the respect of people around us. After so many decades of chaos induced from abusers, a peaceful life wasn’t within my reach. But, thank God for redemption and God’s power to create in us those things we can’t reach on our own. Part of a peaceful life for me is learning how do project normal and not respond publicly to trauma in a way that will give people an excuse to mistreat me. We can get triggered but God can help us with a steady, mature response. I still fail at this, but I see real progress and it is encouraging to know other people are on this journey toward “normal” (quiet peaceable) too
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I find even those who aren’t narcissists or sociopaths can be a bit of a pickle these days. I believe we’re in the days to begin to see what the Bible describes as the generation that is lacking in natural affection, growing cold, and more and more fierce. All the more I think we need to learn to not give others something to use against us. I find some people are attracted to the misfortune and awkwardness of others like sharks smelling blood.
I truly believe that those in Christ are going to feel the viciousness of others. I like the reminder you made that we are to be a peaceable with as many as we can. As we have gone through, and even now sometimes go through, enough with those who are truly cruel, it’s a kindness to ourselves to have as many pleasant relationships as we can, even if they’re just pleasant surface acquaintances. Perhaps we can even consider it as something that we’ve denied ourselves of through fear and anxiety, and that it’s a good thing to finally have that in our lives now. Anyway, your post was inspirational.
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In response to your note Prarie Girl, I know exactly what you mean, but why, is such a burden placed on us, to what comes naturally to others? If that makes any sense.
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I don’t know. One guess could be that some of us are so needing to be seen or related to by another that we don’t pace out a new relationship in a slower way. Or sometimes it’s not regulating emotions in a more beneficial way. I’m taking guesses out of when I’ve over shared, intentionally or unintentionally. But even these guesses don’t quite answer it for me, so again, I don’t know.
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I like your note on this reblog, Prairie Girl. I have done the same thing: overshared, and shared too much too soon, with the result that some people came after me like sharks smelling blood in the water.
What a great gift it is to learn, like you and Katie said, that we can have pleasant, surface relationships with people. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing!
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That’s it exactly, that it doesn’t have to be all or nothing! You put it in the best concise way. Blessings to you, Linda Lee.
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Aww, thank you. Blessings to you, too, dear sister in Christ.
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YES!! Oh, yes. And, I regret it. I still hurt over some of those things. But, I have to breathe and let it go. It happened, it is done, and now I know to better guard my heart.
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Yes, it really is a situation of guarding our hearts, of not setting ourselves up for rejection by giving too much to those who perhaps we shouldn’t be giving so much to. We get older and wiser in these things, I think. 🙂
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Guarding your heart… I believe Proverbs 4:23 talks about that.
Yes, I just looked it up on BibleGateway.com:
Proverbs 4:23 Amplified Bible, Classic Edition (AMPC)
23 Keep and guard your heart with all vigilance and above all that you guard, for out of it flow the springs of life.
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Proverbs 13:12(KJV):
Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life.
Spring of life…tree of life…
It seems the condition our hearts are central to the well-being of our lives. Guarding it above anything else we guard seems to be of the utmost importance. Thanks for the Proverbs verse!
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And, I was just pondering casting our pearls before swine: Matthew 7:6 Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.
Even our broken pieces are pearls in His eyes, because the beauty that comes out of those broken pieces when His light shines on them is astounding! 🙂
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So true, and wonderfully put.
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In the spring of 2003, a few weeks before my 50th birthday, I finally reached the end of myself and stopped running from God after years of going my own way. (It’s astonishing to me now that He would even want me back, after all my rebelling. But I could feel in my heart that the Lord Jesus welcomed my return with great joy!)
A few days later I went on a solo cross-country road trip, primarily to get away from a very bad and very addictive relationship. When I was about 2,000 miles away, the guy I was running from started blowing up my phone, begging me to come back.
I was staying in a motel in a city where I did not know anyone. I had turned my phone off and gone to sleep. In my sleep, I dreamed that God was speaking to me. In my dream, He said three times: “Keep and guard your heart above all that you guard. Keep and guard your heart above all that you guard. Keep and guard your heart above all that you guard.”
When I woke up, I turned on my phone and got the message that my voicemail box was full. Before listening to my messages, I searched through my Bible until I found the scripture I had dreamed, Proverbs 4:23.
The day happened to be April 24, 2003. I remember thinking “I wonder why God didn’t give me this dream yesterday, on April 23, when the date would have matched the chapter and verse of this Proverb?” Then I realized how silly I was being, and I thanked God for the dream and asked Him to help me guard my heart.
Every time I had let this guy back into my life, during our almost two years of a very toxic on again, off again relationship, as soon as he became verbally abusive and threatening, which he always did, I would get physically sick. I would come down with a bad sinus infection or a flu or bronchitis or pneumonia or something, every single time.
Not only was the relationship bad for me spiritually, emotionally, and mentally, it was killing me physically. I already knew that was happening, and here was the scripture to explain WHY it was happening: when we fail to guard our heart above all that we guard, we destroy our health, “…for out of it (the heart) flow the rivers of life.”
When I finally let go of that sick and sinful relationship, my health quickly improved until it was the best my health had been in years. And I am still very healthy, thirteen years later!
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Wow, what an amazing story! I’m so glad you told it to me. I do wonder at times if my health issues aren’t due to a lifetime of heartache. My CFS sometimes feels to me like the my life energy is being sucked out of me. BUT I am hopeful in that you found yourself loved by a good man after 50, and I of course hope for that myself one day.
I love that God said that to you in your dream. I think I should pay extra attention to that as well. He said to guard it above anything else we’d guard, and I realize that I would prevent someone walking into my house sooner than let someone walk on my heart. It’s supposed to be the other way around. I’m going to think on this verse tonight.
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👏Nice
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Thank you. 🙂
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So welcome❤
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