end to self-imposed suffering

When you go to the doctor to get diagnosed and hopefully cured of a malady, they ask for a family history. They want to know about cancer and chronic diseases, but there is a whole layer of family history that is left out when just genetics is taken into consideration. What about all the behaviours, mentalities, attitudes, and perceptions that are ingrained into our family histories? If we could say something about that part of ourselves- the mental anguishes, the emotional afflictions, the times of terror - and if we could share these things without fear of judgment or pity, I think it would go far to our overall well being. Unfortunately, we don't live in a society where mental disease and emotional dysfunction is taken as seriously as fever and blood clots.

My family history is filled with heart disease, diabetes, and cancer - all of which are terrible, devastating to the physical body, but it is the story of my families emotional and mental instability that I think leaves the greater scar. This scar is ugly and cuts right through my families middle. No one in my family is untouched by it. The inability to be truly honest, the erratic actions, the outbursts of rage, the addictive behaviours, the lack of personal responsibility, the perpetual banner of self-loathing - these are what destroy.

I can eat broccoli and stay away from white bread. I can exercise everyday and walk 20000 steps but it doesn't change that at the core of my families history and my own lies pain, fear, and mistrust. That can't be washed away with any detergent made by man or any pill the pharmacy can fill.

"Everything happens for a reason." It's an overused cliche; sometimes it seems like wisdom and at other times is salt in our wounds...

In the last week, there has been a slight shift in my thoughts but oh what a shift. There is a story of C.S. Lewis getting on the bus an atheist but getting off a believer, the point being that his personal conversion was quite with no fanfare to mark it. My conversion this week has been just as quite. I've realized something about myself and about God.

The greatest problem I face is my inability to believe that I am worthy - worthy of love, worthy of sacrifice, worthy of someones effort, affection, time - that I am worthy of life itself. That's the truth. I tear up writing that and reading it. At the root of my heart is blackness like a soil, but it is a soil from which nothing good can grow.

On Monday I was listening to some Christian music and as the words of truth and light played forth, I was overwhelmed for the first time in a long long time that Jesus (the eternal Son, the sinless lamb, the man of whom there was no deceit) willingly lived and suffered and died for me - FOR ME. For so long I had no trouble believing that Jesus existed and that he died but the most important part, the part that changes a heart, gives birth to new life, was missing. Jesus died FOR ME. Unworthy, insignificant, imperfect, deeply flawed - ME. Jesus died for me. And in that moment of realization, of accepting this significant truth, it is Him who was magnified not me. My worth as I had seen it dissolved away as my life became tied to His.

To be the geek I am, in Lord of the Rings, Aragon is told, "Put aside the ranger; become who you were born to be." I think all of us need to see the many facets of our family histories (a painful and devastating exercise) not so we can cast a finger of blame elsewhere but so we can see just how great the darkness is from hence God called out Light. xo

"For God, who said, “Let there be light in the darkness,” has made this light shine in our hearts so we could know the glory of God that is seen in the face of Jesus Christ." 2 Corinthians 4:6