Initiate, Engage, Go into the emotion...

...much to the whole point of why my blog is named what it is. See, going through the wall is much more difficult than going around, or over, or even under for that matter. A wall typically will have several layers of who knows what within its structure...much like me, I am a person with many layers to me that I have attained over the years. Some of these layer protect me, some hide me, some show me the passive way out of a situation and some even show me how to stay in until I can get what i want. Now please understand, that is a lifetime of sin built up in those layers that I so wish were not there. They are so hard to even identify and then once identify to tear down seems near impossible, but it is possible, God is doing this in my own life as i speak. More about these layers and all later, just to get to a point...the Wall. Going at the wall, we have to face all of those ugly things we see inside us, the things from our past that we may still be ashamed about, the things that still hurt and we thought we had dealt with it, the things that we thought we forgave people for, but not really, you get the point I think. These things mount up on us like a wave from a Tsunami because really dealing with those things creates a sort of wound again, but let me say, that wound is just being re-opened, it is not fresh and it has been there all along.

All this to say,I write this to some degree for a friend, Julie, a great friend of mine that I love reading her blogs because of her real to life depiction of what is really going on inside of her. I commend her for that and thank her for the inspiration to start my own. You can find her link on this page under A Fond Affection, check it out and you will see what I mean. Anyway, in some past conversations and in a few post of blogs we have discussed to some length the whole need for approval thing that so many struggle with. Really its much more than that, but we'll leave it at that for now. We were both at a friend's house last weekend watching basketball with a bunch of friends and she was in the kitchen with some other girlfriends of hers talking, seemed to be an intense conversation and usually I just keep on pressing by those, but I stopped and listened for a minute and was not told to leave so I engaged with these ladies as to what they were talking about. There seemed to be a good bit of frustration and confusion all at the same time, and in the midst of that, each girl at that setting seemed to look as if they were alone. This was kind of sad to me to just see this, not in a pity way sad, but sad to the heart, that they too are feeling what I have and still do feel at times depending on the circumstance. Once I had a good feel of the conversation, I interjected a comment that i wanted all of them to hear. I told them that they are not alone in how they feel, and to just look around that setting in itself and they could see that, but added more to this when I told them that men too struggle with this, well at least the men that would even confess it or reveal it in the first place...and granted, it takes a lotta, well, we'll say chicken nuggets to get a guy to fess up a vulnerability like that, but it can and has been done.

My thoughts on this as I too have been directly dealing with this same type of struggle for some time now and am beginning to see how God is working in that...Our Lord, God - He loves each and every one of us. He desires His best for each of us, and He has given us the greatest gift of all through the death of His son, Jesus Christ. No, this does not just make it easier, I know. But a reminder that never hurts! Getting down to the depths of why is it that we desire approval, or like to be in control of things, or to know what the future holds for us, or why we may or may not get asked to do certain things, or why you always see some groups of friends together but then wonder why your not with that group....you get the picture I hope...getting down to the root of all of this by my guess would be somewhat different for each person searching to find out. It is more than shallow I promise, and likely reaches way back to childhood or later. Things that happen in our lives over time has unconsciously reminded us of those things and hence our response mechanism was to learn how to work through it with as little pain, trouble, confrontation, embarrassment, or whatever it would be, just so that we would not have to feel it all over again. This is where today, once you see where your tendency to do that is recognized, start taking notice and then stopping yourself to see it clearly. Identify what that emotion is. Was it anger, was is sadness, was it jealousy, what was it? This to me is one of the most important elements of ever moving forward through that wall, cause you're not going around it, okay? Well, it's getting very late, I've gotta be up in just 4 hours and 18 minutes, so i will try to put part II up tomorrow sometime....stay tuned.