Intimacy has always been a difficult thing for me.
I used to tell my parents, “I don’t have any friends”. What I meant was, “I don’t have any intimate relationships”.
“Opening up” was never the problem. Until recently, most people could tell you most things about me.
Being married has helped, I have to practice intimacy everyday.
But, intimacy with GOD has, since coming into a relationship with Christ, been what gives me confidence to share myself with others.
What happens when that suffers? Everything suffers.
Sometimes GOD brings you to points in your relationship with Him that feel bad, but they are quite useful. Until now, I had been looking at intimacy with GOD all wrong. I’d made it the same process that I undergo with people.
But GOD isn’t a person. He’s GOD. Part of Him is a person, but that is a theological discussion for another day.
You don’t draw closer to GOD the same way you draw closer to people. Yes, in practice, spending time in scriptures, praying, learning about GOD, these are all things that help the process and are loosely relate-able to creating intimacy with people.
There is a fundamental difference that I kept tripping on, however.
GOD already knows everything about me.
He knows the good and the bad, the hurts and the joys, He knows how I suck and how I don’t. These are things that people generally find out over time. But GOD, He already knows.
The “getting to know you” portion of creating intimacy was missing on my side. I kept doing things to “get to know” GOD, but felt as if I had nothing to give. So, shame crept in.
You are nothing but disappointment anyway. If you took the time to recognize the ugly things inside yourself before GOD He would dismiss you outright.
Of course that isn’t true, but I believed it enough to begin to cloister off sections of myself. Hide them like diseased lepers with bits of face falling off because they may offend GOD.
I didn’t just start hiding from GOD though, I started hiding from everyone. Because if GOD wasn’t allowed to see, NO ONE WAS.
I became unavailable, distracted, hung up on unimportant emotional details because they were easier than facing the truth.
I was starting to hate myself again. After all that hard work to stop, I was beginning again. Or had I even stopped?
I had no relationship with myself. Out of tune with my own needs and feelings it was useless to act like I had anything I could scrounge up to offer anyone, even my husband.
All my relationship with GOD needed was a reminder. GOD loves me and that is what gives me worth. Not what I do or do not do. Not what I have to bring or offer. But that the GOD of the Universe sees me, knows all about me, and chooses to love me is what gives ALL of me worth, even the horrific things.
Not all of me is pretty but all of me is LOVED. There is no use to hide from GOD what He loves.
REMEMBER THE LOVE OF GOD
SEEK THE TRUTH OF GOD
Christ, Christianity, Faith, God, healing, intimacy, Jesus, Life, love, recovery, relationships, Trauma
I see your self-talk resembles mine! You speak a timely reminder to me today, sweet friend.