Reflections and Refractions: Part 1: Satisfaction

So I'm done with the project.  Sounds like a sudden "THE END" after a long period of silence and then an abrupt stop.  But as I lay on my bed listening to the chorus of crickets, the lonesome meow of my cat, and the chatter of family below, I honestly can't help but think to myself, No, this is only the beginning.

My period between leaving the project and today has been pretty dull and quiet to say the least.  There haven't nearly been as many people I have been able to talk to here, which is fine, because the environment is prime for reflection and processing, but it also takes a little bit of adjustment. (Not that that should be hard for me...smh).

Here's what I have to say about my reflections this far: (1) I am never satisfied. (2) I do best in community. (3) My mind has been greatly opened to the error of my ways and I am learning from them. (4) I am now bittersweet. And (5) there must be a way I can "do thou likewise".  To explain everything will take about 5 posts, but I've got time!  Three weeks or so to be exact so, I pray you'll bear with me.

1.) Brittany is never satisfied.  I have discovered that no matter where I go or what I do, I am somehow unfulfilled.  I have realized that I can go across the world and back, see the wonders of the world and stand on top of mountains, be alone or live with people who love you back, or spend my life in a place of luxury. Yet, in spite of everything, even if I search the entire world, I will not find the desires of my heart until my heart embodies what I desire.

I had a long talk with my parents about the challenges of the project and my life for the past year in general.  I 'fessed up to to them that my biggest struggle this past year is that I always feel lonely and then when someone reaches out, I opt to be a loner.  My parents, confused and concerned, were fully attentive as I told them about what OCBP taught me about myself and how this behavior was rooted in the fact that I had been running away from pain and potentially painful things since I've been a little girl. Some examples of such things I've been running away from is:

1. My lack of competition and avoidance of such things as games, competitive sports, and leading debates (in my major, I listen to them.  Not engage in them.)
2. I avoid confrontation at all costs.  
3. I avoid things such as hot, sunny beaches that could potentially burn my feet and cause peeling and blisters on my skin ( not to mention the salt water that will ruin my hair!)
4. My first decisions when I face a problem are to escape to my piano or sleep...or just space out. 
5. I also avoid very deep and meaningful relationships as a precaution to getting hurt in the future by someone I love or as a precaution to me hurting that person I love and care for...
• This leads to two very unfortunate things: 
1. Relationships with some people could be closer but they are not because I have kept this invisible but very tangible wall up between us. 
2. Not trusting everyone I am around (especially myself), and internally running from them at the first sign of danger. 

So you see where this leads?  It leads to unhappiness and dissatisfaction in everything I do, because I have been too afraid to take risks and see how things turn out.  It also has led to me estranging myself from God.  Katie Black, my discipler, pointed something out to me about myself that cut me to the core of my soul. She said, "Brittany, I notice that you know that God loves you unconditionally.  But do you love yourself unconditionally?" When I could not answer, she proposed, "Maybe you believe that God loves you for who you are, but you don't.  Maybe you love yourself under conditions, when you've done good.  But then, when you mess up, you kill yourself over it.  You punish yourself more than what is required to pay the debt of your sin, when Jesus already did that for you."

And there it is.  For the past, 18-odd years, I've driven myself as a slave.  Whipped myself.  Slain myself.  Internally cut myself to punish myself for all the wrongdoing and the potential harm I could do to my fellow loved ones.  Knowing that I was sinful, that I could potentially become a "rampant monster" to those I love, I kept myself "in line", most of my childhood.  I played the "good girl", was the most obedient, got great grades (ie: nothing lower than a B), tried to make my parents proud, tried to be a star-person and avoid messing up at all costs.

Last semester, (you can even read my blog post titled "Empty" to see for yourself), I was threadbare and worn out.  I no longer wanted accolades.  I no longer wanted awards. I just wanted to feel loved and accepted for being myself.  I knew I was, but I didn't feel that way.  Even at OCBP, I wanted to feel part of the community, but, to be honest, there were many times when I didn't feel that I was, and it wasn't anyone's fault but my own.  I felt alone and like a loner many times because I had managed to lock myself into a tall tower guarded by my own dragon, that no one but Jesus could slay.

And so, with Brittany as the slave driver, Brittany will never be satisfied.  I know this person very well.  I can count a few times when this person has come out in the open.  One of which, she nearly killed her dog because she was so frustrated with him.  This is the person, I meet with daily and she has had me cowering in a corner of my heart, shaking visibly for fear that I will displease her.  Not wanting her to be seen in the open, I have managed to make her take her wrath out on me. Not on others.  But here I am, broken, afraid, and alone.

Sitting in the car today, I heard God talk to me with a very gentle question.  "How will you find what you want on the outside, if you have never exposed yourself or even imagined what it would look like on the inside?"  In this case, it was community for me.  I had lived nearly all my life feeling like I was always on the outside or never really fully a part of a group.  Even my with my family.  But fear does that to us.  It starves us of our imaginations and acknowledging our desires.  I'm the person C.S. Lewis was talking about in his book, The Weight of Glory, "We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea."


And there you have it...  God continued to speak to me to day.  "Brittany, how can you have and live in community if you never ask me to be a part of it with you? If you can't realize that communities are not about the individual but the whole?  If you haven't realized that everything you desire, you have, and I have given it to you, but you have never received my gift..."  

And so as of late, today, I've been quiet and asking myself, "How can I be satisfied?  How can I learn to love myself again and not brutally torture myself when I mess up? How can I allow God to heal me of the wounds I've cut into my own soul, when I know that the person who has hurt me so deeply is alive and well?  If I kill her, wouldn't I be unwhole?  Incomplete?  Dead?"


To this, God's quiet answers are two-fold: "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me" (Matthew 16:24), and "come to me all who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28).  I know that by myself, I cannot carry my cross ( this sinful nature that I hold), but by God's Grace, He gives me the ability to come to Him and freely choose to deny myself, bring my problems before Him, sit at His feet and allow Him to take over my heart, so that one day, if I mess up again, it will no longer be my wrathful face before me, but God's gracious look of patience, forgiveness, and joy that will push me forward toward the prize.  That is: AN ETERNITY WHEN ME AND EVERYONE ELSE WILL BE FIXED AND TOGETHER AND...SATISFIED!!!!