A critic would sacrifice the entire rose to find fault with the thorn. ~Terri Guillemets
I think God has been trying to draw me back to blogging. I have been feeling this desire for several months back off of Facebook and come back to my sanctuary. I thought of starting another blog but as I read through bits of posts here, I realized my heart is in many of these posts and I am at home. It has been a long while and many things have changed since the last time I posted here. I may make more esthetic changes to this blog eventually—although if you have not been here before, you would probably not know. For now, the simplicity of my original theme is quite comforting in its familiarity.
I had a very rough week emotionally. I learned something that I found both highly disturbing and yet quite enlightening about myself. When someone has said something that makes me feel like I do not meet up to their ideas of how I should be, especially with other people, I still have a tendency to fall apart. It reminded me of the few times I had done this when a manager would give me an evaluation and it was never about my performance of the job itself, but how co-workers perceived me and that I was being asked to fix it.
There was always someone, usually just one or two women, who did not like me for whatever reason and I really did not realize why for a few years until I was working in an entry-level office job with several women where we would process new insurance applications at the regional level. A huge part of our performance for the morning duties was based on speed and when I got comfortable with the job, I would get into a rhythm so that I was processing more new applications correctly than all the other employees there. One was so slow that I would easily do three to four applications to her one and she would make a point to turn back and give me a look as if I should slow down so she would not look so bad. I was her thorn.
So, having been through this with some previous managers, I was a bit better prepared when this manager called me in for my evaluation. Like before, it was not about my work where I was excellent on almost all points, but it was about co-workers' perception of me—as if the woman who disliked me solely because my job performance was at the top of the bell curve was ever going to see me past that? (She was eventually fired for low performance and cheating on her numbers, by the way.) The manager even suggested with whom I should start having lunch! So, that time instead of falling apart because I am an imperfect human being and taking on people's criticisms of how I do not fit with the "in" crowd, I turned the conversation back on my strengths and asked what other duties could I do that would likely get me promoted as soon as there was an opening in a higher level. Fortunately, the extra duty I was given was one I would work alone, and again I excelled to the point that when I was promoted, while people hired before me were not, I had to train two people to do the same duty because one alone could not do it.
I have never believed that I am a perfect person. In fact, quite the opposite was something I struggled with until I was healed and had forgiven those who contributed to my abused childhood. I was always trying to appear "normal" and always feeling I was not. It was an act that I did poorly so I always felt that people could see that I was broken and messed up. I am past that now but still not perfect...I still have thorns.
Yet, the demons know our weakest places. And this almost always happens after I have excelled at something, which was also the case on the first weekend in March when one of my rabbits won the highest titles at the national show and last weekend when my rabbits placed exceeding well in their classes and won four titles. I used to think it was that "fear of success" thing, but I do not fear success, I fear what it does in the hearts of people, including myself. Last Sunday, I was told some things that took me some time to discern what was or if any of it was a conviction from my Lord and what was from His enemy who wishes to tear me down.
My struggle, which I found highly disturbing, was not in what I was told of itself, but how it affected my relationship with God. The hardest part of this week was that when I dropped into the dark places of my emotions so I could not hear my Lord. I could not discern if I were trying to hide from Him because it was a conviction coming from Him or if the enemy was using it to drive a wedge between my Lord and me as that is always his goal. I even felt too unworthy to call upon Him. I felt that I was a disappointment to Him. Probably the thing that bothered me the most was I felt I was a poor witness for Him and, at that point, I began thinking maybe it was time to stop showing. My husband has always said we do this as long as it is fun—when it is no longer fun, we are done, but beyond that is what does God wish for us to do...?
As my emotions finally started to subside and I opened my heart up to hear my Lord, the first thing I heard Him again say..."I am blessing you with rabbits." Well, then we are not done.
Thank You, My Lord, for Your guidance and love for Your imperfect child.
