28 Getting Rid of the Gorilla #2

There is a desire within each of us, in the deep center of ourselves that we call our HEART.  We were born with it, it is never completely satisfied, and it never dies.  We are often unaware of it, but it is always awake.  It is the human desire for LOVE.  Every person on this earth yearns to LOVE, to be LOVED, to know LOVE.

You must listen to the deep themes of your own life story.  In most of us the desire for LOVE has often been distorted or buried, but if you look at your own life with honest and gentle eyes, you can discern it in yourself as deep seeking of connectedness, healing, creation and joy.  This is your true identity; it is who you really are and what you exist for.

It is possible to run away from the desire of LOVE for years, even decades, at a time, but we cannot eradicate it entirely.  It keeps touching us in little glimpses and hints in our dreams, our hopes, our unguarded moments.  We may go to sleep, but our desire for LOVE does not.  It is who we are.

What You Believe About Your Heart Was Handed To You By Others

Our life is a story.  There are many scenes, large and small, and many “firsts.”  Your first step; your first word; your first day of school.  There is your first best friend; your first recital; your first date; your first love; your first kiss; your first heartbreak.  If you stop and think of it, your HEART has lived through quite a story thus far.  And over the course of that story your HEART has learned many things.  Some of what you learned is true; much of it is not.  Not when it comes to the core questions about your HEART.

Is your HEART good?  Does your HEART really matter?  What has life taught you about that?  

27 Getting Rid of the Gorilla #1

Everyone has a story to tell.  No one’s will be boring or not worth it.  Everyone searches for who they are.  Everyone goes through hard moments.  We may feel alone, but we’re not.  Most people will have more memories than you can imagine. Good and bad.  Most of the strongest people I know aren’t even 18 yet.  We all have a story to tell forever, but if you end up a victim or survivor in the end, that’s up to you.  

GETTING RID OF THE

GORILLA

The only future you will give yourself to is the one you believe can happen.

Certain people have an extraordinary ability to overcome difficulties, obstacles, and even failure.  The key, is it seems, is that how they relate to failure is dramatically different from those who tend to be overwhelmed and paralyzed by their failures.  The optimistic never see failure as personal, permanent, or all-embracing, but others are constricted, paralyzed, or controlled  by failures.

You are going to face a lot of failure, difficulty, and obstacles.  You’re going to be informed by the world around you that you cannot accomplish what you are setting out to do or become the person you long to become.

If you have lived your life running away, this is not who you are any longer.  Where once we ran from problems, failures, hardship, danger and challenges, we are now among those who thrive in the midst of them.

You recognize that the greatness within you can only emerge if you are willing to face your greatest challenges.

Are you ready for a war?

Do you want freedom?

What will you do without FREEDOM?    

We have reached the moment where we, too, must find our courage and rise up to recover our HEARTS and fight for the HEARTS of others.

 What will we bring to others if our HEARTS are empty?

This whole journey starts from where you are to where ever you are going. 

 No shortcuts.

26 Message of the Wounded Heart #3

How a father relates to his daughter has an enormous effect on her soul—for good or for evil.  Numerous studies have shown that women who report a close and caring relationship with their fathers, who received assurance, enjoyment, and approval from them during childhood, suffer less from eating disorders or depression and “developed a strong sense of personal identity and positive self-esteem.”

Mothers in particular have the opportunity to offer encouragement to their daughters by treasuring their daughters unique beauty.

What was your childhood like?  What lessons did you learn as a little girl?  What did your parents want from you?  Were you delighted in?  Did you know to the core of your being that you were loved, special, worth protecting, and wanted?

The passive wounds are not as obvious.  Passive wounds give a blow that is harder to define, because it didn’t come as a blow; it came as an absence.  Words unspoken, affection withheld . . .they are subtle, they often go unrecognized as wounds.

Example:

“Not receiving any blessing from your father is an injury . . . Not seeing your father when you are small, never being with him, having a remote father, an absent father, a workaholic father, is an injury.

Some fathers give a wound merely by their silence, they are present, yet absent to their children. The silence is deafening.

Example of how a passive father wounds the heart:

Debbie’s father had an affair when she was young.  He was not a violent man.  There was nothing abusive about him.  In fact, he was kind to her mother, as he was to Debbie and her sister.  They shared Sunday dinners, went to church together.  Only, he chose another woman.

“I guess she wasn’t enough to keep him.”  Debbie said about her mother.  Then she paused and said, “I guess we weren’t enough to keep him.”  Affairs and divorces strike at a woman’s worst fear—abandonment.  They wound, not just the mothers, but the daughters as well.  The wound is sometimes hard to identify because the transgression seemed to be against his wife.  But what does the girl learn?

What made it confusing was that in many ways, he was a good man.  The message that settled in her heart as a teenage girl was:

You’d better do more than she did or you won’t keep your man.

After this came a young man who pursued Debbie, and then left for no apparent reason.  Why is she always trying to “improve” herself?  Debbie is always looking for something to work on.  Prayer, exercise, financial responsibility, a new hair color, more discipline.  Why is she trying so hard?  Doesn’t she know how amazing she is?  What makes her search so frustrating is that she doesn’t know what is wrong with her.  She simply fears that somehow she is not enough.

Abusive Fathers

The horror that abusive fathers inflict on their sons and daughters, wounds their souls to their very core.  It breaks their hearts, ushers in shame, embarrassment and a host of defensive strategies that shut down their hearts.

Most people minimize the wound.  You either . . .

Deny it outright: deny that it happened, deny that it hurt, and certainly deny that it's shaping the way you live today.

Leave it in the past.

Minimize the impact of the wound.

"Yes it was awful, but I deserved it."

"But what he said was true about me."

Take on a victim mentality and let the wound define you.

I think by now you have some idea of the impact your wound has your heart.  Much of our life ends up being shaped by it, in one way or another.  We take a wound, and with it comes a message, a lie about us.