It happened yesterday. Some decision I didn’t agree with suddenly became a choice with an actual plan by people I love. I did not respond well. I was WAY angrier than the situation called for…I had harsh feelings of betrayal and being conspired against (not lining up with reality). I knew it was aggravated by Satan twisting my mind through old wounds but I couldn’t see it clear and anything I said came out wrong and more hurtful. I felt attacked and defensive WAY more than the situation called for and I asked God to help me see what was really happening in my heart and mind. I am thinking out loud now on paper.
SURPRISE! I actually hate that word. I hate surprises. I have felt for a long time nothing ever good came to me by surprise. I have robbed people who love me from doing things for me because I FEAR surprises with deep dread. As I analyze that I realize it is not really a good way to be in life. Why is that there…why do I always respond so badly to the surprises of life? I asked God for clarity.
NO GOOD SURPISES. As a kid most people long for surprise parties, surprise trips or surprise gifts, I gave up the hope of that before I was in first grade. Surprise – Everybody lines up and gets beaten until somebody confesses to the wrong done against my mom. – I used to get angry at my siblings and feel hatred towards them for doing these bad things to cause the surprise inquisitions. Now I realize often nothing had really been done and I should’ve been angry at my paranoid abusive mother and passive father. Surprise – we’re moving in new and needy children who will inevitably cause more surprise inquisitions due to their evil actions (they weren’t perfect but did they do as much as they got beaten for – or did they just do what they wanted eventually because they were going to get beaten anyways no matter what their performance). Surprise – Your nose is broken and bleeding because your dad hit you because of some verbal offense you didn’t even know what you said. Surprise – you will sit there and eat every drop of your own vomit for daring to get sick. Surprise – a hand comes over a seat and hits you instead of your brother. (I actually found a spot under the third seat of the station wagon and would just hide there so I’d be unreachable and safe). The childhood list is endless – one of constant fear and I’m sure I struggle with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. (Look up the symptoms and It’s like reading my heart)
In adulthood Satan continued the unpleasantness of surprises – I always wondered why God would give these mean surprises to me and assumed I must have done a sin for each bad surprise that came my way. (Satan was never blamed for anything – God did it all because I was bad) Church readily backs this line of thinking always referring me to look for that un-confessed sin in my life. Surprise – you’re attacked in a church business meeting because somebody lied about you. (Satan even lined up a bi-polar preacher to be my boss – talk about continuing the abuse!) Surprise – You’re fired from your job! (They said I was lazy and unfriendly! ) Surprise – You will be publicly humiliated for what teens in the balcony did while you’re in the front row. The list of unpleasant surprises is endless. I cannot even go into any meetings today without knowing what it’s about ahead or my stress level shoots off the charts. I feel like a soldier home from war that dives under the bed when a car backfires because he’s been shot at too many times in combat. I don’t like who I am when surprised so how do I change?
Agreements I have made:
1. Surprises are always bad!
2. Surprises are always because someone was bad.
3. If I am surprised it’s because I am bad or I am betrayed.
Let’s look at the first – surely surprises aren’t always bad…that can’t be reality. God has surely given me good surprises- yet even then I can’t even let God surprise me with something good because I thought he was always one step away from getting me for some mistake I surely must have made to offend his holiness.
TRUTH #1: Romans 8:28 says all things work together for good…. So surprises may not always seem good but will work out for good is a much truer place to live. Example: Losing one $3,500 van in a breakdown so that God could provide a new $30,000 van. I felt very ashamed about how I judged God for taking my van away and punishing me like that with a humiliating surprise breakdown. Now I need to start saying to myself when surprised: God will surely work this together for my good even if parts don’t seem or feel good.
Truth #2: Luke 13 – The tower of Siloam fell killing 18 people – the religious conclusion was they were bad people whom God was punishing. Jesus disagreed. In a world of physical limits where God gives freedom…accidents will happen, machinery will breakdown, traffic jams will happen and money will be lost in many ways. Someone doesn’t need to be bad for a bad thing to occur. Mom’s bi-polar mindset is that all bad things are caused by someone being bad. So she must find and punish the bad doer. What a horror to grow up in a world where time and chance (Eccl. 9:11) are not allowed to occur but where everything is the fault of a bad person or an angry God. That is not Truth.
Truth #3:
A: I can make a bad choice or action but I cannot BE bad. God has given me a new heart and a new Spirit. I am a new creation and that new creation is GOOD. All of the punishment I deserve for my sins was absorbed by Jesus on the cross. God did not save wrath in his back pocket to get me with later. There are natural consequences for sinful choices, but my divine PUNISHMENT has been given to another - Jesus. When I sin I am not acting in consistence with who I am now in Christ but I have not become lost again or become bad.
B: I can be betrayed but not everyone who does me harm is deliberately betraying me. I must be guarded here because of mom’s paranoia we were raised in a betrayed/victim mindset that is not in line with reality. Mom’s first conclusion was – what bad person did this to me?! Everything negative had to have been done on purpose by someone. For years I got mad at whichever sibling was being beaten that day because I couldn’t figure out why they would do that and disturb our family peace. Then my betrayals came – I made Holly (our dog) mean! – I broke the sleeper sofa etc… (usually with Randy Zarolli!) I joke like that sometimes, but deep inside I hate it because I know both are the paranoid fabrications of a delusional and abusive mother. Those events did not happen no matter how much mom says they did. I have to carefully guard my mind and I wonder now how many people who have betrayed me REALLY have. We have been raised to expect chronic betrayal and while it happens at times…it is NOT happening all the time.
TRUTH #4: I was dramatically traumatized by this in my own ways as a kid. I have all carried it to one degree or another into adulthood, my careers and my families. I have reaped the brokenness of others and an evil perpetuated through multiple generations. To all my family – GET HELP! It doesn’t go away and it doesn’t fix itself. Let’s begin to end the robbery and abuse and find the stream of healing for the future. Let’s open up and help each other and not be turned on each other anymore. Let’s find the TRUTH and live in it and be free. God is not like our Father or our Mother and He’s missed us knowing His heart for us all these years.
