Bonus Blogs – Page 5 – REACHING HURTING WOMEN MINISTRIES

Do you feel like no one sees or hears you? People seem to look right through you like you’re not even there?

I’m the invisible middle child born into a dysfunctional alcoholic home, with a handicapped brother four years older and a sister three years younger. Life was unpredictable between daddy’s drinking binges. So to stay out of trouble I usually played alone with my invisible friends: Seebie Crewble and Campbell Mingle. Since I was invisible why not have invisible friends too.

Invisibility brought a drive to act out for attention. This was common for me as a child, as a teenager and even as mid-life adult. It’s easy to see how sex addiction played right into this…dressing provocatively, using shocking language, telling inappropriate stories. As my sexual addiction increased my behavior became more extreme and risky.

The desperate acts we stoop to for love and attention is scary. Over time there was no amount of human attention that could fill the empty whole in my heart. There wasn’t enough affection to keep me from feeling invisible. The spiral continued downward to near self-destruction.

We teach others how to treat us. Because of our lack of self-worth, fear of rejection or simply not wanting to deal with things, we purposely avoid sharing our feelings with others and we don’t stand up for ourselves. By doing that, we teach others that our feelings don’t matter, that we don’t matter. This in turn causes them to not see us other times when we really want to be noticed.

As wives and mothers we often feel invisible, lost in all our family doings and goings. We work hard to clean the house and cook a nice dinner hoping someone will notice how beautiful everything looks or how delicious the food tastes. Then resentment sets in and we begin to feel used and abused.

It all comes down to the heart. Where is my heart focused? If I’m loving and respecting myself like God tells me to, I will stand up for myself, push through the fear of rejection and share my feelings. If my heart motivation is right I will do all my tasks for Him, trusting He will reward me in good time.

The most important One who sees me is God, I’m always visible to Him. It’s a constant challenge — to keep an audience of One. After all, it is because of Him that I am alive and free today. I should do everything for His glory not my own.

Work willingly at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people.Remember that the Lord will give you an inheritance as your reward, and that the Master you are serving is Christ. ~ Colossians #:23-24 New Living Translation (NLT)

Do you feel invisible today? Maybe you can relate to the woman in this excellent skit by Nicole Johnson: http://youtu.be/9YU0aNAHXP0

For the last four weeks we’ve been focusing on learning to love and respect ourselves, make healing choices for our lives and preparing to make amends to those we’ve harmed. We’re going to wrap up this month by consolidating all these topics into one area that is definitely connected to all the above…

…hiding behind masks.

As the child of an alcoholic father and a co-dependent mother I grew up to become an approval addicted people-pleaser with a very low self-esteem. My adolescent friends were all very bright students; always reading books I’d never heard of, talking about philosophy and involved with intellectual and artistic endeavors. Books weren’t really read in my home, much less having conversations about them.

Constantly comparing myself to others while feeling totally unworthy, I looked for love and validation in all the wrong ways. I found it easy to slide behind a mask to be what I thought others wanted me to be in any environment whether at home, school or church.

We wear masks because we’ve never figured out who we are or we’re afraid others won’t accept us when they do. Either way, once we’re form fitted for our life mask it’s difficult to remove.

What does your mask look like? What does it say about who you really are?

- Ms. Self-Sufficient: I don’t need anyone
- Ms. Happy Go Lucky: not a care in the world
- Ms. Unteachable: the know-it-all
- Ms.Too Busy: the important person
- Ms. Barbie Doll: the sexy girl
- Ms. Country Club: the socialite

Our culture and even the church make it very difficult for us to not wear masks. No one really wants to see other people’s pain. We can watch the evening news for that. So it’s just easier to put on the “happy” face and sweep our troubles under the rug where even we don’t have to see them. The dangers of wearing masks is we start to believe the facade; we forget who we really are.

Are some masks alright? Must we remove all our masks?

The masks we need to remove are those that cause us to present a dishonest appearance to others. To do that we must start by being honest with ourselves; assessing how we are putting ourselves out there for others. Be willing to risk possible rejection by sharing our life and our struggles.

Sure not every person or even every situation calls for such transparency. But wearing a superficial mask all the time can prevent us from developing genuine relationships. We deny others the opportunity to encourage or be encouraged by us. Prayerfully we can ask God to put people in our path that can help us find our true selves, to press through the fear of rejection, open up and be real about our life today.

There’s freedom in honesty; it brings strong, long lasting relationships. The Christian Community should be the one place where we can remove our masks and be accepted for who we really are. But that’s not always the case. In fact, we are often judged more critically in church. With God’s help, we can courageously remove our prideful masks, stop trying to be the perfect “saint” and allow the world to see we are really not that different. It can allow us to show God’s power working in our lives.