Do You Fall For This Lie?

Do you find yourself isolated because you believe the lie that you’re not worthy of help? 

A woman I’ll call Milly went through a season of utter yuck. As a woman of faith, she dutifully went to church but didn’t want to bother anyone with her troubles. (sound familiar?) Thinking that she could will her way back to wholeness, she ended up isolating herself.

When asked how she was doing, she said she was fine.But without anyone to speak life into her, she sank deeper and deeper into loneliness and despair.

Then she heard me talk at a retreat about how the enemy needed her to stay on the fringe of community so he would be the only voice in her head. About how trying to do life on your own is not the way God intended us to live.

It was like a light bulb went off in her head.

She realized that she’d been schnookered into believing that she was an imposition. A burden. Unworthy.

What she’d been calling faith was really idolatry. Trying to pull herself up by the bootstraps and press on alone was not only self-sufficiency but had cut God OUT of her life instead of keeping Him in the center of it. 

She made some immediate changes. 

She signed up for a discipleship program, she joined a square dancing club and began having regular lunch dates with friends to build a circle of trusted believers to share her life with. She’s in community and in relationship with Jesus.

Today she really is fine. 

Maybe you’re sitting in church pretending everything is fine.

You have your smile fixed in place. Not too big, as to draw attention to yourself, but not too small so that anyone would feel compelled to engage with you and expose the truth that you are hiding your pain behind a veneer of faith.

You nod and smile that small, perfectly placed smile as you navigate to your seat. Fellow congregants greet you and ask how you are.  “I’m fine,” you say.

But you’re not fine. You’re not fine at all.

Maybe this past season has been a series of painful tragedies. A job loss, a health issue, the death of a good friend, the betrayal of another. 

You long to reignite that burning desire to deepen your relationship and faith with God. But how? Where do you find the support you need in tough seasons? 

One way is to to enter into community of other faith filled women like Milly did. Find other women who get you. Develop relationships where you can be heard and loved as is.

When you try to gut it out on your own, you actually distance yourself from the Source who can help you. God did not intend for you to do life alone, so shake off those lies and find a Bible study or a small group, or a mentor, or a friend to share your life with. 

Prayer: Jesus, I want to know you and be known by you. As I seek you, provide me with safe women who are like minded. Keep me connected to you and to others. Amen.