Dear Erika,

Yes, this is your 26 year old self, writing another blog, but in a different format. I wish I could tell you that you’re okay, but let’s be real- once you start writing, it’s because you know you’re not as fine as you play it off to be. The other day you met up with your pastor’s wife, Ruth- ah yess, the one who can look you in the eyes and know you are heavy and burdened with something. And we talked about many things and I broke down (can’t hold it together around her and when God is involved- guards just come down). And after it all, I told myself I wouldn’t write or figure it out, but I think God’s been placing these phrases that I just have to.

Pain changes you.

Something you just realized about yourself- you like to keep pain far away. There are thresholds of pain. Threshold 1: I wouldn’t even call it pain, more so discomfort, discontentment, frustration, stress- these are the easy ones to talk about, easy to bring scripture into, easy to almost handle yourself with ones will power and determination. Figure out the source, figure out the why- game plan with some ways to change and boom! Problem solved. Threshold 2: These hit a little deeper, maybe sourced from upbringing, can recognize it, give me a few days to process, come up with problem solving mechanisms and boom fixed! Then you hit Threshold 3: This is the level of pain, I don’t mention much and keeps me quiet and some would say its where you will find me running my fastest- away from my problems. It’s the threshold where I withdraw, isolate, and can create scenarios and lies in my mind about myself and others without even realizing it. As of recently, unbeknownst to myself, I have been fleeing from my level 3 pain and have finally come to terms with it. I am here and with this one, problem solving is sometimes too painful to even try. This is pain that is out of my control and feels like it hits a brokenness I can’t fix. Brokenness that is rooted in shame more than guilt.

Pain changes you.

So as Ruth and I began talking, I explained this discouragement when I saw some girls from church hanging out at the beach and then had an event the next day for young adult group. I recognized that this was layered- It wasn’t just about not being invited or that my event seemed disregarded, while that played a part, it brought me back to these feelings of unworthiness and back to a core fear: rejection and abandonment.

Pain changes you.

There is a little girl who yearns to be seen and feels like she belongs. A girl who behind the masking of serving, playing with kids, hanging out with a variety of people (and don’t get me wrong, I still value those friendships), school, busyness, sports, music lies a backdrop of words painted : “Am I enough? If I am not, will I get abandoned? Will I get rejected?”

Seeing the girls from church on instagram automatically triggered this thought of “I’m not in the place where it happens”. And I recognize, these are people I could easily get to know and Ruth encouraged me even to put myself out there and ask to be invited next time which I am open to, but at the end of the day I realize there’s also more to it.

Pain changes you.

It brought me back to my Evergreen days when I was in middle school. I remember going to church but never really fitting in. I remember walking to and from church alone and with my head hung down, crying on the way back to the car.

It brought me back to the middle school days, jumping from group to group, as if performing for everyone and being friends with everyone would make me feel better about myself. It didn’t. If anything, putting more effort and not getting the results of this internal satisfaction left me feeling more empty.

It brought me back to the summer of my senior year in college, seeing my roommates and other girls planning and organizing hangouts and maybe being invited once. They assumed I was too busy and studying too much.

It brought me back to watching my college friends hanging out without me even in post-graduate.

It brought me back to when I am in my group project group and trying to maintain a good work life balance, feeling ostracized because school isn’t everything in life to me anymore.

It brought me back to this feeling of being overlooked and disregarded when plans are changed or cancelled and while reasons are valid, still leaves me questioning if this friend really does care?

It’s the sting in friendships I’ve felt at very young age and funny enough, still working through even at 26- the question of doing I belong? Do I matter?

Pain changes you. It changed me. It has led me to see and give a foothold to my insecurities and questioning my worth that has already been won in Christ. It has placed a lens in which all these events, while I know that no one intentionally is hurting me, but I still feel this lack. This void. But a void thatI recognize is far too big and too large for any one friendship or relationship to fill. This I know. But this I still have yet to believe.

As someone who loves to either solve my pain away and logic it out and if I can’t, then I run ( she a runner, she a track star). I asked myself, now what? There were many things that came to mind like reaching out to people from Livingway and not self-isolating, using the Bible to form my thoughts, but something that Ruth said who is also 1 in the enneagram. To know and truly believe you are enough. Not to fight with figuring out what I want from a friendship , church relationships, in a relationship- while there is most definitely a time and a place, right now I feel led to take the back seat and just be. Just be. Simple. Just be and know you are enough. It travels along this idea of “self-love” which seems so worldly but in essence, I find that I confine the gospel to only the deepest parts of me. We know with our minds that we are enough on the deepest level because Christ redeems sin. But I think I find it hard to believe in the less “important areas”, the breadth and vastness of areas that make us whole- that make us, us. Jesus delights in ALL of us, so why shouldn’t we?

And then keeping this in mind. In reference to P Ray’s message, how do you fight for God’s promises in the midst of the giants? 1. Remember 2. Recognize 3. Rest - okay so he didn’t actually say these, but it’s how I will remember it. Remember God’s faithfulness in the past, 2. Recognize God’s goodness presently 3. Rest in the truth that God is with you, in you, and for you. So how do I fight these lies and these deep seated hurts- gratitude and remembrance. Rather than looking to how I can fix myself or fix others to make me feel secure- Man I think I need to remember, recognize, and rest.

There might be something to it- rather than fixing my brokenness, this may be an opportunity for the great physician, the healer of the broken heart, to heal parts of my soul that my logic, efforts, and tactics could never heal.

Pain changes you, but Christ changes everything. And that is something I can bank on.

Sidenote:

Actually, one practical thing I did, I deactivated my instagram because if seeing people on Instragram is causing me to believe lies or view the church body that creates hurt rooted from my past and gives way to thoughts of leaving the church as a solution. Yeah cutting that off is necessary because the church and unity is way more important than a few swipes and taps on the phone that honestly, don’t give much for the amount of time I spend on it anyways.