BP134
My name is Dalvin. The most remarkable thing about me is that I never let people see me. Not really. Obviously, they see me on the outside as a physical being. They just don’t see me on the inside. Why? For a long time, I didn’t know why. Now that I’m 26, I have had some insight into why I haven’t let others know me. I have come to see my deepest fear. My curse.
I need too much.
What do I mean by that? I’m not entirely sure. What I do know is that I need others more than they need me. That alone disturbs me. To always sense that I am more desperate for relationship than everyone I know makes me feel like I’m too needy. Too weak. Men shouldn’t be weak but independent and strong.
Also, I’m impacted more than others when people disappoint me. I’m hurt when people don’t include me. I feel invisible when someone talks over me during a conversation as if I had not even begun to speak. I feel very awkward when I’m with more than one person at a time. I feel like the third wheel, the odd man out. I usually watch the other people as they talk feeling like I want to insert myself but having no skill to do so. Maybe I allow too long a pause after other people are done talking before I attempt to speak. Others seem to know just the right interval and jump right in.
I just stand there. Maybe, I want them to pursue me.
I believe that no one else needs attention to the degree I do. No one else is hurt as deeply as I am when they aren’t noticed. Worse yet, I believe everyone else always gets noticed. They are worth listening to; they are interesting, visible. I am uniquely different. I am not worthy of attention. I often walk away from people feeling angry at myself for being a nobody and angry with them because they haven’t even acknowledged my existence as another human.
I am so hurt and angry. These emotions drive me into the wilderness of isolation.
What makes it even worse is that I don’t think anyone has even an ounce of awareness of what I am going through. I am all alone. But I don’t want them to know what I’m feeling because if they knew, they would certainly think I’m pathetic and needy. Weak. Immature. Another reason to be dismissed.
I hate being invisible and I hate being seen.
What am I to do? I have a vague awareness that I’ve been hurt so many times that I now expect it to always happen. But when I expect it to always happen, I examine my interactions with people under a high-powered microscope and will always find something that wounds me. Then I retreat. I pull away even as I am standing there with others. Outside, my body is present in the room, but my inner self has withdrawn far away to an isolated, barren tundra because I am angry with them, and I hate myself.
There is no hope because I am inconsequential. I am nothing. I am a mistake and should die.
So, I try to become self-sufficient. I tell myself I don’t need anyone and that my role is to take care of others. This strategy kills two birds with one stone. Not only am I protected from being hurt because I can’t be disappointed if I don’t need anyone, but my unlovable self also will be valued for what I do, namely, helping others, listening to them, becoming their hero. They will love me for the function I provide for them.
It is safe to hide behind a cape and a mask.
The problem with not needing anyone is that I condemn myself for having pride. I’m proud that I don’t need anyone. I’m proud that I’m not weak and needy anymore because I am self-sufficient. I’m proud because I am never vulnerable or weak. And I hate myself for being pridefully above others.
As they say, I’m damned if I do, and damned if I don’t. If I let myself need others, I will be hurt, disappointed, angry, and alone. If I do not let myself need others, I will be hurt, disappointed, sad, and alone. There is no winning for me.
Once you’re easily hurt, there’s no hope for the future. You lose no matter what you do.
Some people heal by moving toward people and experiencing presence and love that helps them to trust a God they cannot see. I am too easily hurt and disillusioned by people, so I cannot begin with them. I discovered that I had to start with God.
It takes pressure off human relationships when I practice being in God’s presence, when I seek His face first. I feel like less is riding on the horizontal relationships. People don’t have to be perfect with me. I can tolerate disappointment from humans if I sense that Jesus is with me in the vertical relationship.
One promise from God’s word has changed my life—not overnight, mind you, but over a period of months. The promise is found in Psalm 27:9ff:
Hear, O LORD, when I cry aloud;
be gracious to me and answer me!
You have said, “Seek my face.”
My heart says to you,
“Your face, LORD, do I seek.”
Hide not your face from me.
Turn not your servant away in anger,
O you who have been my help.
Cast me not off; forsake me not,
O God of my salvation!
For my father and my mother have forsaken me,
but the LORD will take me in.
The primary truth I have taken away from this psalm is to remember that God has taken me in. He sees me. I am always on the inside of His family. Even when I feel on the outside with humans, the Holy Spirit reminds me that since I am in God’s presence—seek My face, He says—I do not have to worry as much if I feel like people with skin on don’t see me. I know that He always sees me.
As I seek God’s face, He doesn’t let me isolate in my prayer closet and be safe with Him. He tells me that I must go and love one another. I must meet with others, forgive them, confess my sins to them, seek them as I would seek God. He reminds me that the purpose of life is not to be safe but to risk loving Him and others.
I still get hurt. Dude, if I could cut that wounded feeling out of me with a scalpel, I would. Short of that, God tells me that He will take me into His presence and hold me until I feel deeply loved.
Armed with that promise—that He will always take me in–I don’t listen to myself when I tell myself to run and hide. No, I talk to myself and remind me that I am loved by Jesus and that He wants me to go and love like He did. More and more, I am trying not to run and hide, hating myself and others. Now whenever I get hurt or feel needy, I run toward others after running toward Him.
Once again, Jesus doesn’t tell me that He will always keep me safe. Instead, He tells me that it isn’t about my safety or me feeling good around others.
He tells me that whenever I walk into a room, I need to find one person to listen to with all my heart. He tells me not to worry about the type of attention I’m getting, but to pursue one person and feel around the rim of his or her soul until I know them better than when I walked into the room. Life is all about seeing and loving others as He sees and loves me.
How good that God’s solution is not to stop feeling hurt, but to hurt for others; to learn how to give instead of to receive; to receive from Jesus first, and then to give to others; to be filled by Him instead of expecting other humans to ultimately fill me.
Fill me Jesus so that I can fill others.
It’s the only way to do relationships. Nothing else works.
I still need, but I seek Him first. I still need from other humans, but when I seek Jesus first, I find that I don’t need other humans to function as my be-all and end-all. I also find that I can be more vulnerable with others because I am already unconditionally loved by Him.
He is my all in all. The secret is to go toward others filled up instead of empty and starving and hypersensitive to every word and deed others give me or don’t give me.
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another ~ 1 John 4:7ff.