New International Version
Then Jesus said to them, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.” And they were amazed at him. Mark 12:17
It’s a bit personal and not what I usually do on this blog, but we’re in melt down time around this house lately and I need somewhere to put all this angst, so I’m talking to you, Dear Readers.
All my life I’ve fed my ego on being the good girl, the teacher’s pet, the good daughter. I don’t know what it was that made me so very determined and from such a young age and for such a long time that if I was just GOOD ENOUGH then everything else would be okay. I think the root of it comes from a deep and lasting feeling of unworthiness. I remember being very very young, maybe six or seven or even younger and hearing some adult tell me how much I should be appreciative of how good I had it, and they told me of kids who didn’t have it good. I knew lots of kids like that anyhow, who had rough little tough lives. Anyhow, I don’t remember who was talking to me or even more specifically what they said, but I remember getting very scared and feeling very much like they were right. I had a great, cushy, lovely, even idyllic life as a child, and I couldn’t figure out why I had that kind of life and kids around me had lives so different as to look terrifying to me.
And from then on, I built myself a nice personal mythology of sorts. This idea that I could make the world better, make people happier, by being a good girl was then reinforced my whole life by people who only thought they were doing the natural and right thing of positively reinforcing the good behavior they saw in me. But for me, for some reason, it became a perverted thing. It became a bit of me trying to think I was in control, trying to compete with God.
You see, for me, it meant if I could just be good enough, perfect enough, behave in the right way, I could fix people, I could make them happy, and I could RULE THE WORLD BWAHAHAHAHA… okay, not that last part, but you get it.
I’ve realized many times that this isn’t right, and as an objective, mostly sane person I have been trying to work my way back to realizing and living like I know it isn’t good, or true, or right. I have asked for forgiveness for it many times. But in the squirrelly way of the workings of a modern human brain, I can’t just blow down the wall of the room where I keep the bat-nut crazy butt part of me that still believes this. I have to remove it brick by brick, and it’s a lot of taking one brick down and finding two jumped up in its place. Still, I’m working on it.
For me, I think one major obstacle to this has been that I still live with my mother. She and my little sister who is disabled. I joined a siblings of disabled people’s group once and talked to some people on there about how desperately responsible I always felt and how awful it was to feel trapped in a life you didn’t choose. At the time, I wasn’t yet married and I despaired of ever meeting anyone who could be good to me, a partner for my life, and understand my commitment to my little sister. After hearing about a lot of failed marriages where people thought they’d met that person or married a person just to escape the responsibility they felt for their disabled siblings, I left the group with an even more despairing heart.
Well, I met the man a few years later, after so much praying and even resigning myself to living with my mother, her husband, and my sister for the rest of my life. I had myself convinced that taking care of April and never asking for or really seeking anything my heart wanted (a husband, a partner for life who would put my well being first, a child, oh a child!) was what God wanted of me. I paid close attention to all those verses about being a servant and I thought I was doing that.
I was so wrong. The part of me that God had planted the dream of a family in kept creeping back open. And finally, I asked. I truly prayed with an open heart and I put myself out there into the world in a way I hadn’t before, believing that this time if God didn’t send me someone, He really never meant to. I might have even been challenging Him. And He sent me my Stephen, and we had our Alice, and things have been so good. There’s a little piece of my heart now that is blooming and bright and like a springtime window opened into a dusty room that had been closed for a very long winter.
And it isn’t that I don’t love my sister or my mother, but these new things, this little bit of an open heart, has led to so much more. My husband and I have started studying books and the Bible and seeking God’s plan for us, and asking Him to put us solidly on His path for our lives, and changes have started. They’re painful. Parts of me that haven’t breathed in the light for a long time are having a hard time facing all this bright sunny day stuff.
I am having a hard time giving back to Caesar what is Caesar’s. Or, in this case, giving back to my Mother what was always my Mother’s: her child. April Ann is not my child. I love her more as a sister than I ever dared think I would, but it is a relief to be able to slowly start accepting that she is not my responsibility. Not in the way I had myself believing before. Not to the exclusion of any of my own dreams and happiness. And not solely. I truly felt for many years that if I didn’t look out for April’s best interest, maybe no one would. And it isn’t anyone else’s fault that I thought that way, it’s the fault of my own danged, oversized, ridiculous ego and idea of myself. It is my own sin that let me think that way. I am so so repentant of that.
The funniest part of all of this is that I also realized I have long felt responsible for my own mother. I’ve kind of realized that in small ways for a long time, but to really think on it now, it’s appalling. How did I let my own mind make such a crass and stupid role reversal? It wasn’t her fault, that’s certain. One thing I am responsible for is my own self and my own thinking, so it’s my fault. I let this happen. And now, even though it’s painful in some ways, I’ve got to let the healing and changing back and better thinking happen.
I have to let it be that I am only responsible for me. There’s no other way. I can’t keep killing myself trying to do and be the impossible, and it only takes me farther from God because it is blasphemous, horrid thinking that leads me to believe I can do things without Him. I am nothing, no thing at all, without Him. And I am only any thing because He has called me so. I am His child, and I am loved, and that should be enough for my ego.
I am letting it all go, and letting God be responsible for His children, without my interference.
Will you pray with me?
Lord, I know I have sinned. I know I have too often put my own importance above You. I know I have not turned to you when I should have, I know I have too often thought I could go it alone. I see now that I was building myself up, but it was tearing You down and not allowing your presence in my life. Please, Lord, work in me. Make me wholly and truly Your vessel. Give me a clean heart, and heal my broken ways, Father, and allow me to realize that any time I feel the need to fix, to falsely cheer, to claim responsibility for things I can not, I need to instead turn to You. I give it all to You tonight, Father, and I pray You forgive me my sins and help me to establish new and healthy ways of being. I Thank You because I know that in your timelessness You have already brought me victory over this battle within. I Thank You that you have given me the clear view of where to put my feet to stay on Your path. I am so grateful that You are working within me in this way, stretching me and making me to step out in Faith, knowing that hurts are temporary, but my relationship with You is the only eternal thing. I am grateful that I can fail in front of you, Lord, and You only love me for it. The only truly unconditional love is from You, God, and I need to stop thinking I can manufacture it myself. I Thank You for teaching me that, and for healing me from my intrusive, enabling, egotistical habits. In Jesus’ Holy Name, Amen.
A Grateful Wife's Prayers 