Sometimes I don’t trust people just because I don’t know what they think. I don’t know what anyone really thinks, but I look back on my childhood, and I’ve eavesdropped a ton. It was almost ingrained in me to eavesdrop because I needed to be prepared for what traumas were coming. More times than I could count, I overheard someone saying something terrible about me that they couldn’t say to me. Combined with moving before resolution and people walking out of my life without explanation… It made me feel like everyone has something against me and they just don’t want to tell me.

I realize there’s a habit I’ve formed. When I consider what someone might think of me… I assume the worst about myself to protect myself.

I’m not a victim. I am, however, a messy minded person. My entire life was built upon fear and lies. Fear drove me… but lies… These lies would creep in, burrow in my mind, and call it home. These lies… they owned me.

I’ve been collecting the lies I’ve believed for so long, one by one, and giving them a chance to stand in the light. I want to know the truth. I want to know every dirty dark thing you hate about me… I want people to be brutally honest with me. But… I also want someone to love me knowing every tiny horrible thing about me. The only way I know how to find that is by screaming out to the world in hopes that the response is less than horrible.

When I was little, people would tell me deep, dark, and crazy things. People told me their secrets and I was too young to really understand it. So, as women in my life told me about rape, molestation, and traumatic experiences in their lives… I was also watching my mom go through these things… and I was personally going through these things.

The first lie? This is just the way it is and there’s nothing I can do about it.

Can you imagine being a child and believing that sex was just something men did to you – no big deal? I was fully committed to the belief that in order to even be appreciated, I need to give them my body. I honestly, and I hate to admit this, believed that if I didn’t give away my body, there was nothing else worth loving. Without sex, I was just an overly emotional, confused, effed up little girl with nothing to look forward to.

The second lie? I was just born into not deserving… It doesn’t matter what my heart wants for the people around me. It doesn’t matter that I will silently bend over backward to serve someone with love. It doesn’t matter how smart I get, talented I am, nice, caring, hardworking… I’ll never deserve better anyway. But I sure did work hard to try to deserve things. In fact, when I got things I knew I didn’t deserve, I treated it like temporary teasers to what normal people get.

Every hurt, every pain… that’s just life. I can’t stop life. So, I embraced that dark place. I embraced it and held it deep inside of me. So, when they found razor blades in my locker at work and my coworker noticed scabs on my wrist… instead of seeking real help, I believed no one understood and moved those scabs to a place totally unseen by the world. Instead of healing, I just found a better way to hide.

Next lie… No one could ever actually know me… the complete package.

I still notice myself sitting silently among strangers… watching them. I observe how they respond, what they believe, and how they speak. I observe their body language. I look for signs of things unseen. I try to get to know a person without uttering a single word. Then I speak… once I think I know how to be around said people, suddenly, I can filter what I don’t believe they’d appreciate about me from what they will.

I don’t give them a chance to know me entirely. If anyone knew me entirely… they’d walk away. At least, that’s another lie I’ve embraced. If anyone took the time to know all the crazy… the darkness… the light… the good things and the bad… if they knew everything, I’d be too intense to even be around. So, I walk muffled and stuffed into whatever sized box seems appropriate for the time.

I use the word intense… because it’s literally been used to describe me. I’m intense… doesn’t sound appealing, really.

But here is a truth I’ve come to know and understand… what the world and all of these people think… doesn’t matter. I can change myself, my choices, my circumstances. I can be happy. Deserving love and things is not something you need to be born into, it’s something adequately and openly available… we just have to give it a chance.

I think about the woman at the well a lot. If you don’t know about it… it’s about a woman, who in my opinion, I thoroughly relate to.

There are so many things that make that encounter she had so important to consider, but what I got from it the most was this… He saw her for who she was deep inside… That’s what mattered. Everything else from that day forward, it was her choice. She could choose change, freedom, healing… or she could remain in the state she was in, alone, ashamed, and unwelcomed.

When I had an encounter with God, it truly changed me… because His love is real in such a way that I don’t need to hide who I am anymore. I don’t need to pretend to be perfect. I don’t need to filter my crazy. With Him… I can have giant debates and arguments and conversations (I never win by the way) and still… He loves me. In fact, He isn’t fed up and ready to walk away because I’m too intense.

He cups my face in His hands, like the loving Father He is and tells me that how I feel is me tormenting me… That He loves me and doesn’t care how crazy or neurotic I feel, because He sees me. It’s an honor to know Him, to keep getting to know Him, and to be so very loved by Him.

The lies start melting away the moment you catch even a glimpse of what He sees in you.