Category: Freedom

Monster Inside Me

I would never win an Emmy award for best performance in life. Maybe if I had a different brain, a different attitude, a different heart. Maybe if I didn’t think so much, feel so much, or expect so much. Maybe if I crawled back into the womb, I could find a perfect set of genes. Maybe then I could be what God and everyone else expects of me.

BPD: Borderline Personality Disorder. Where did this monster come from? Was it there with me in the womb? To torment me? To lie to me? To suck every drop of blood from my veins?

Thin-skinned. Wears her heart on her sleeve. Cries at the drop of a hat. These are the labels that I wore, but the message stamped in my brain was “She’s not normal; she’s too fragile; she’s too broken.”

No one in my family was “normal.” My mother was a victim of severe child abuse, compliments of her roller coaster emotions and sudden fits of rage. My dad was a WWII veteran. Traumatized by a never-ending, hellish nightmare, he crawled inside himself, hung up a no trespassing sign, and slammed the door shut.

SLAM! No strong, loving arms to run to. No tender words of comfort. No bandage for my bleeding soul.

Maybe that’s when the monster was born, snarling and growling and bearing its teeth. Maybe that’s when it began gnawing on my brain, ravaging my emotions, and setting my heart on fire. Maybe that’s when it taught me to fear, to believe that the sky is falling and no one can save me from disaster.

BPD is an emotional train wreck. Some days, when I’m pushed to the brink of insanity, I should be put in a straitjacket and locked behind iron bars. Life pushes everyone to the jagged edge at times, but for those of us with BPD, that jagged edge is a super-powered chainsaw operated by a maniac.

BPD hurts. And no one, not even those closest to me, understands the emotional turmoil, the mental chaos, or the bloody battles I fight. And today is one of those days of everything slapping me in the face and setting the raging monster free.

I know its ugly face, its mood swings, its anger and rage, its explosive destruction. I know the piercing pain of the double-edged sword, the confusion in people’s eyes, the look of disapproval on their faces. I know the hammer of guilt and shame, crushing my spirit to smithereens. But I don’t know how to fix it.

So my life has been a series of repeated episodes of anxiety, anger, rage, depression, and hopelessness, trying to live up to my idealistic beliefs and perfectionism. Trying to be the perfect Christian, the perfect everything to everyone, and failing over and over again.

And when a perfectionist’s world comes crashing down, they kick and scream against themselves, against the world, and against God. And that’s where I’ve been for months, boiling in a cauldron of the devil’s stew, crying out to God.

But God is asleep. He doesn’t hear my cries. He doesn’t see the storm. He doesn’t even know that I’m shipwrecked and drowning in the raging sea of hopelessness and despair.

Then, one hellish morning, I cried out to God, “Where are you?” Then, through a flood of tears, I saw His face, I felt His love, and my heart fell apart in His arms. And ever so gently, He revealed to me the truth: the vicious monster ripping my soul to shreds and blinding my eyes is me. The sinful flesh, sitting on God’s throne, recklessly orchestrating my life.

Sin. The root cause of every disease, every conflict, every mental disorder, and everything destructive and rotten to the core hides beneath the fig leaf of denial. And compounding the epidemic, clinical labels are manufactured and slapped on us as if we were jars of pickles lined neatly on a shelf.

Mental disorders are an epidemic today. And they’re real, painful, and crippling. They require expensive medication and long, drawn-out psychiatric sessions. But they never promise a cure. Because beneath it all lies the broken, sinful flesh that only God can fix.

There is a living, breathing monster in all of us, whether or not we have a mental disorder. Because it’s a sin disorder that began with Adam and Eve. And just as they tried hiding their guilt and shame from God, we hide behind the flimsy fig leaves of denial, obsessions, and disorders, stuffing the monster with “junk food” until its fat, ugly self completely takes over our lives.

In my struggle with overwhelming circumstances, the monster became bigger than the God I serve. The pain was unbearable. Unanswered prayers were discouraging, and my heart became a punching bag for my own bloody fists.

The battle of the flesh. The brutal battlefield of spiritual warfare. A war we will never win with our own strength. God is the Commander-in-Chief, the King of kings, and the bleeding, dying, risen Savior of the world. He fought hell’s fury and won.

Changing who we are, our attitudes, our destructive habits, and bad choices is like ripping out our own hearts and expecting to grow new ones. Impossible! But nothing is impossible for God.

Psalm 51:10
Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me.

Fight Like a Warrior!

Again I fall down
The winding stairs of despair
Into the arms of the insatiable monster
Hungrily awaiting me there

Like a vulture he feasts
On bloody wounds with greed
Picking old scabs
And making them bleed

He ravages my soul
He batters my brain
He crushes my heart
And fills it with shame

Enough! shouts the warrior
From deep within
I will not surrender
You will not win!

In a bloody pool of injustice
The scapegoat lies slain
Beneath the sins of others
for which it carried the blame

With new resolve I dry my tears
And climb back up the stairs
Out of the oppressive darkness
Anger and despair

If life is a game
I never learned to play
The rules are always changing
And the price is hard to pay

I only know the ways of truth
For which I bear the scars
By those I entrusted my heart and soul
To be silenced and locked behind bars

Bars of guilt shame and regret
For crimes I did not commit
But they were bigger and smarter than I
Thus I was easily tricked

But I’m bigger and much wiser now
And aware of the games people play
And the fighting spirit they tired to kill
Is alive and well today

If you are walking the bloody trail
Of battered forgotten souls
Find the courage from deep within
To fight like a warrior and take back control

For if you don’t you will never win
The battles throughout your life
And will shrivel away in the prison
Of heartache sorrow and strife








































Take Up Your Mat and Walk Like a Boss

So, I’m paralyzed. Been this way since the car accident. I can’t walk. I can’t feed myself, bathe myself, even brush my own teeth. And this Man comes to me and asks, “Do you want to get well?”

And with a big, pearly white-toothed smile I say, “No. I’m good. I like people waiting on me hand and foot. I like using my handicap as a crutch. I like not having to do anything, prove anything, take responsibility for anything. I like people coddling me, making excuses for me, doing everything under the sun for me.

Of course, this ridiculous scenario is just fiction. I’m physically healthy. I can clean my own house, pull weeds from my flowerbeds, even walk around the block a few times.

But the man Jesus approached at the healing pool had been an invalid for thirty-eight years, and Jesus asked him, “Do you want to get well?” (John 5:6) 

Why would Jesus ask such a question? Why would He even think that the man wouldn’t want to be healed? He was at the healing pool, wasn’t he?

As a snotty-nosed kid, and seeing the world through my over-sized rose-tinted glasses, I often wondered about that scripture. Then, when I grew up and those glasses got punched off my face, I saw the world and the people in it differently. I even saw myself differently.

Reality stinks. It rattles our brain and makes us see things about ourselves and others that we’d rather not. Don’t open my eyes, and I won’t have to see how many people use their long-time physical and emotional handicaps to bully and control others. Stick in a pair of earplugs and I won’t have to hear their never-ending moans and groans.

It’s funny how conversations often become a contest of who had the most surgeries or take the most pills or has the worst ailments or suffers the most pain.

Why do people do that?

As kids growing up, my brother and I had rheumatic fever, but Kenny’s was more severe than mine. He was sickly all the time, in and out of the hospital and pumped full of penicillin at the least sign of a cold. He cried a lot. Was coddled and babied a lot. And I felt ignored a lot.

Then, when I was in the third grade, I got deathly sick every day after lunch and laid my head on my desk trying not to throw up all over the floor. Finally, mom and daddy took me to the doctor to discover I had walking pneumonia.

Finally! I was one up on my brother and rubbed it in his face, boasting that I was the sickest, now, and it’s my turn to get all the attention!

But, Kenny wasn’t having it and argued that he was still the sickest. After dragging mom into it, she finally ended the contest by calling it a tie. We were both equally sick.

For many years I expected people to treat me with kid gloves because of my out-of-whack emotional disorders. I relied on others to do things for me that I was afraid of doing myself. I relied on my loved ones to protect and defend me, to be there for me, to boost my confidence, to validate and make excuses for me. And the more I relied on others, the more dependent I became.

Then, hearing my desperate cries at the healing pool one day, Jesus knelt beside me and whispered, “Do you want to get well?”

When the prison doors swung open, I just stood there gazing wide-eyed into the vastness of freedom. It was scary out there without my crutches —- those emotional handicaps I so desperately clung to for so long. The smell of freedom was alluring and sweet, but stepping into it was like jumping out of an airplane without a parachute.

I still rely on the love and support of my family, but I don’t expect them to sit and hold my hand twenty-four hours a day, not that I ever did. I don’t expect them to make up for everything I lost throughout my life. I don’t expect them to coddle and pamper me and agree with every single thing I do or say.

Just as God has set me free, I set others free. I know what it’s like to be bullied by someone else’s handicaps, and I’d rather cry alone in the coldest, darkest cave than to ever do that to the ones I love.

Freedom always comes at a cost, especially if you’ve been enslaved for a long, long time. In order to gain one thing you have to let go of another and another and another, whatever tattered rag you’re clinging to because it feels reliable and safe.

And as crazy as it seems, many people would rather lie around sucking on their emotional pacifiers than get off their pity pot and walk.

I don’t want to be one of those people. I want to get well. I want to be what I was created to be. I want to take up my mat and walk like a boss!

When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, He asked him, “Do you want to get well?” John 5:6