‘He must increase, but I must decrease’.~John 3:30
I have coined a concept ‘negative (trait)’ to mean those things people should have in an ideal world, but which they have known lack of due to childhood or difficult life circumstances. Usually I notice when people have negative pride, for example. That is when people have come from situations that ordinarily would not make someone proud (poverty or abuse), but they have picked themselves up by their bootstraps and forged on anyway. After time, this person can begin to overwrite the pride a wealthy or privileged person might have known naturally with a type of pride that was hard-fought and won. As if certain traits are not bad enough, negative traits are even harder to let go of because they are like a scab that covers a nasty wound. To lose a negative trait is painful, but to keep it is constraining and can keep us from living fully; it is good to be healed, and it is possible!
Another example might be negative self-worth. I did not know enough nurturing, and was pretty neglected as a child, and consequently must have developed a lack of self-worth, though it is hard for me to see it in myself. I think I have overcompensated for the neglect I knew by becoming an overachiever. I may unconsciously think, “If I am just better or more successful, or X, maybe then I will be attended to and loved.” If I am always achieving things, then I am ‘worthy’, and then I have hope for a future. It is rather obvious to see that if I stop achieving things due to events out of my control, like God shutting doors, the enemy interfering, or hard things happening in life, it can mean I feel unworthy, and I can lose hope in my life. Hopelessness is a bad feeling, and a bad place to try and exist.
It may or may not be obvious in looking at me to see that this is true (depending on your perspective) because I have achieved a lot, but I have also lost a lot. Most things I had achieved in my life have been painfully sifted away or have failed. I used to be very successful in everything I did or wanted to do. On my own steam I had made many accomplishments most people never even think to try. But sometime around meeting God at the age of 41, the tide began to shift and my ‘luck’ began to run out. I think the truth is that it must have been as I found the true Source of happiness and Light, God began to sift me. And sift me he did. He dumped me and my life into His big grinding mill and I exited the other side fairly unrecognizable. How compassionate that in the years I was shunning Him, He let me achieve. What would have happened to me if I had no hope and not known God? I count the losses I have endured as gain for knowing Jesus and becoming born again, yet it is still hard to break old habits and deep-seated unconscious beliefs one learns from birth about oneself.
Today in church, Levi discussed negative space. How making space in our life by cutting away something can allow you to breathe and have room for something better to manifest itself. This idea can be represented by Escher-type optical illusions. As I puzzled over how this manifested in my life, I realized there is just becoming less of me. He has already cut away extraneous relationships, extra work, and extra volunteering, but instead of feeling like it is easier to breathe, I find that I feel more frustrated and almost…desperate. And I think this stems from this issue I have with action and achievement in my person and how it relates to my feelings of self-worth.
Is it possible I have developed ‘negative self-worth’? Can I not feel worthy unless I am achieving something? Am I lovable just as I am? Maybe I am not lovable as I am to any body else, but I know I am lovable just as I am to God. I am His and I belong to Him. No life circumstance can take that from me. I think I can have hope now without achieving something. I mean, I don’t feel it yet, but it seems to add up: subtracting a negative attribute equals something positive. That is basic math. Taking away negative pride is good. It means you soften your heart to know you don’t always have to be right, but you will still be loved. It must follow that taking away negative self-worth means I am worthy of love, just as I am as a rejected, unwanted, unloved, neglected, and even crazy girl.
Our addictions serve to conceal our negative traits from us. If we don’t see our scabs we look better to ourselves. But addictions are an idol that get between us and God. There is a cure and that is the pure love of God through His Son Jesus. By coming into a relationship with Jesus, we are shown every moment of every day we ARE good enough, because He is in us. We will never be good enough without Him. In fact, we will never even be good without Him. He is the ONLY THING that makes any of us any good.
So if I were to illustrate my current status in Christ, in God, it would be something like the picture above. As God sifts me, who I used to be gets chipped away. Who I used to know falls away. The success I used to have fades away. But the Good News is that He appears in my empty space.
More of You and less of me, Lord. Please.
~Song of Mary~ 