Okay

Alright guys, can we chat about that hypothetical girl again?  Let’s do.

She had kind of a rough go as a kid.  Maybe not the roughest go ever, but it certainly wasn’t awesome.  There was some abuse and some manipulation.  And she was a pretty perceptive kid.   And something that happens sometimes (I think, I mean I don’t know for sure, maybe) to pretty perceptive kids who get asked to do things they don’t want to do and then forced or abused is- they learn to figure out what people want and give it to them before they get hurt.  Sometimes they guess what a person wants before that person even knows what they want.  Sometimes they spend lots of their life trying not to get hurt and giving out things they shouldn’t because that’s how they’ve survived.  Sometimes they guess wrong about people and sometimes they don’t, but mostly these pretty perceptive people pleasers are running around exhausting themselves with big giant smiles on their faces because they’re just glad they’re not getting abused.

And sometimes- people come along who don’t want anything from them and flip their world upside down.  I’m not saying at all that she’s, ah forget it, I’ve never had anyone like me for me.  I have plenty of Amazing Friends who have helped me grow in this area, even a few men.  It has certainly been helpful to have awesome, caring, loving people encircle me and not only not ask anything of me, but give Love to me.  But then That Awful Thing and a few other Terrible Things happened a few months ago, and along with a few of my basic human functions, like eating, breathing and speaking, my trust in men went down the drain.

Fast forward almost nine months and I’m getting better, free-er and all that jazz.  But still, guys kinda freak me out.  Seriously, like- I’m super good at playing cool but internally I get nauseous when males look at or stand near me.  And I’m not even talking about aggressive guys hitting on me, I mean like, men at church, friends, husbands of friends- tie my stomach in knots when they get within two feet or require eye contact.  But going through life with a stomach ache whenever some perfectly kind man is trying to be nice to me seems unnecessary, so I pray and I ask for prayer and I sit still with my queasy stomach and make myself make eye contact.  And I laugh. A lot. Because I feel so ridiculous for being nervous about nothing.  And all of that is pretty helpful until…  (and crap, now I’m crying)

All of that is pretty helpful until there are a couple of guys, men I guess, who want to talk more than just in passing, they care.  Well, one of them is the husband of one of my New Friends and he likes me and he cares.  And one is not anyone’s husband and he really likes me and really cares.   And they don’t want anything from me.  Nothing.  And not knowing what they want starts to suffocate me.  And it turns my stomach and gives me headaches.  Because if I can’t figure it out, I might get hurt.

But then these men keep not wanting anything and not hurting me.  And I talk to a couple of friends and they don’t coddle me like they have before, like I hoped they might. They tell me to push past it and they pray for me.  Because God is doing something.  And just because it’s uncomfortable,(hell, it’s not uncomfortable, it’s really freaking painful at times), doesn’t mean it’s bad.  So I do push past it over and over, (though not without whining).  And I start laughing to laugh instead of laughing at how awful I feel.

And the sweetest thing happens- God starts dropping little promises in my ear like breadcrumbs down a path to healing.  He starts telling me secrets about me and about what’s going to happen.  And His promises, little though they might be, keep on coming true.  And I keep trusting and it’s all gravy for the most part.  But then the one guy, the one who really likes me, he wants to love me.  And it makes me want to run the opposite direction on that path.

My little-girl/teenage/twenty-eight-year-old self is SCREAMING at me “Nothing good has ever happened when a man loved you”  And though part of me knows that is not the truth, it shakes me to the core.  But God.  Right? Yeah.  But God and a couple of my Amazing Friends assure me that it would be an even worse idea to not silence it.  Goodness.  I struggle to get out of my own head for a day and it’s completely exhausting.  I can’t even begin to explain how hard I fight myself, and God sometimes.  I might be tiny, but I wrestle like nobody’s business.

Ugh, the struggle, I hate it but I know it, and sometimes I love it.  So I spend an entire day and night struggling with my little-girl/teenage/twenty-eight-year-old self and God.  And at the end of that twenty-four hour period, God asks me to stop fighting.  He says He loves me and that I can fight Him about other things, but He wants me to stop fighting Him about this and start to trust.  And I ask Him what the hell I’m supposed to do with all of my fear about Guy Who Wants to Love Me and God says to tell him.  Yeah.  This is how that went “Umm, no. He is the one I’m scared of, I’m not giving him all of this. Don’t you get that that’s the deal, I’m not giving the person that I am scared of all of my fears.” And then God was like “Kid, trust me. Look at all the promises I have kept so far.”

So I did, trust and tell. And then Guy Who Wants to Love Me listened carefully and asked what I needed, and quietly held me for a little while.  And it was good.  Because it was one more Promise come true.  So I am still on this path, skipping here and there, smiling a lot more,  and pretty excited about where it’s leading me.

Annnnd Big! Enormous! Giant! Huge! shout-out to the lovely, wonderful, insightful, wise, caring and understanding friends who have not coddled me but gently pushed me, held my hands and prayed.  And Uber- Big! Enormous! Giant! Huge! shout-out to New Friends Husband Who Cares.

Annnnd Guy Who Wants to Love Me- Okay.