Choose Healing: It’s Worth it
After all the cooking and cleaning and eating, I was reflecting today.
Thanksgiving comes with an onslaught of emotions but as I am getting older I’m starting to see the patterns and pivotal moments from my past. Last week would have been my mother’s 73rd birthday. She died 14 years ago and I still think about her everyday. The weight of grief has definitely gotten lighter. But it still stings in November and December, so I have been especially gentle with myself and my expectations. I try to journal through those emotions but I really just didn’t feel like it.
So today after I finished cooking, I took a long bubble bath and spent some time chatting with God…and myself I guess.
I quickly realized that my whole world shifted on Thanksgiving 10 years ago. I had been a relatively compliant preacher’s wife for several years. I was deeply bought into the doctrine of my inferiority thanks to years in the churches of Christ. Of course the rhetoric was softer than that, but the reality was firm. Men lead. Women follow. Men decide. Women obey. Men have authority. Women did not.
So my husband and I took our 2 boys who were 1 and 3 to visit family while i was pregnant with our 3rd son. And to preserve the relationships that are still trying to heal, I won't go into details, but at the end of driving 10 hours with 2 toddlers and having severe back pain that had me at Urgent Care that afternoon, we had to flee to a hotel at 2:30am on Thanksgiving.
As much as I have prayed and wished I could have avoided that night, God showed me today what my journey could have been without it.
Like I said, i had been in a church that regularly diminished the impact of what God could and was doing through women. We were basically taught and encouraged to be codependent.
In fact, most churches are built on the codependency of women.
Codependency is a dysfunctional relationship dynamic where one person assumes the role of “the giver,” sacrificing their own needs and well-being for the sake of the other, “the taker.” The bond in question doesn’t have to be romantic; it can occur just as easily between parent and child, friends, and family members. (Psychology Today)
The term is somewhat outdated as it is often associated with “weakness” and originally was defined in connection to spouses dealing with addictions to substance abuse. A more accurate description is now becoming known as Self-Love Deficient Disorder and it is characterized by an almost obsessive need to make sure someone else is ok even at your own expense.
As a woman in the church of Christ, the more I neglected myself, the more I was praised for being a godly wife. During the years that my husband was a minister, I gained over 100lbs. I had 4 children. I completely ignored my undergrad and graduate-level degrees and homeschooled our children though I was completely overwhelmed. No one ever talked about the extreme burden of homeschooling while still have babies and nursing babies. I was near a breaking point for so many years and no one cared to see it. I rarely shopped for myself as FRUGALITY was more esteemed and godly that self-care.
To some that will seem like no big deal…a necessary part of motherhood, but I will challenge you to consider when a woman SHOULD care about herself if not while in her childbearing years. Who pays the price of an overexhausted, depressed mother?
The children do.
So I often reflect on what my healing years gave to our family. My children were the catalyst for my healing and my desire to give them a better version of me, but it was not an easy journey because of the way that we were conditioned to believe that self-love was the same as being selfish. I was deeply committed to doing what I thought it meant to be a godly wife and mother, so it was UNTHINKABLE to even consider that what I had been taught…the life I had built…was wrong.
I imagine my mother having a chat with God in heaven and saying, “Can you let me deal with her? You know she is stubborn, so it’s gonna have to hit her where her heart is?” Because no matter what I was taught, I did not play about my children!
So God used the toxic behaviors of others to send me a clear and loud message:
“Uwem! Wake the f*** up! Your mother did NOT raise a codependent doormat!”
“God gave these kids to ME because I am the mom they need. And I will not dishonor my mother’s legacy by punkin’ out when they need the fire in me.”
“I will happily burn this house to the ground before my kids EVER feel fear like that.”
And it was smooth sailing from there.
(Insert side eye HERE!)
No.
It was definitely NOT.
But in spite of the tumultuous years that followed, I would not change that moment for the world. What I gained from opening my eyes far outweighed what I lost.
I found me!
We’ll get more into that next time, but that was the beginning of the journey that birthed the #HolyHotHead. That was one of the moments that shook my codependent foundations in that church and showed me that their teaching was not in alignment with God. That moment of family drama and rage awakened the woman capable of creating ALL MADE WELL Recovery.
And I will boldly say…the world needed me to wake the f*** up!!
So what are you called to do? It’s definitely worth finding out!
