Sneak Attack

Psalm 55:12-16

For it was not an enemy that reproached me; then I could have borne it: 

neither was it he that hated me that did magnify himself against me; 

then I would have hid myself from him:  
But it was thou, a man mine equal, my guide, and mine acquaintance. 
We took sweet counsel together, and walked unto the house of God in company. 
Let death seize upon them, and let them go down quick into hell: 

for wickedness is in their dwellings, and among them.

As for me, I will call upon God; 

and the Lord shall save me.

It's no secret to anyone who knows me that David is my favorite hero in the Bible. And a big part of why I love him is because of his transparency when he talked to the Lord. He let go in his prayers in a way that I admit that I still struggle with now. For some reason, I get to a point where I lock up and don't push past where it's comfortable. I allow myself to succumb to tiredness, frustration, unbelief, and lack of focus. And you know what happens? It leaves a door right open to the enemy to just pile it on. But David wasn't scared. He went boldly before the Lord. He didn't care if he looked or sounded like a fool when he did what he did. He knew that the Lord knew his heart, and that what was in his heart was a desire to please God. 

So... I was carrying a weight in my heart that I didn't recognize. I just knew that I was tightly wound, and it was harder to pray and press in the way that I've gotten used to. I had to get yanked around the altar, snotting and crying, repenting, and asking for peace before all of that weight left my chest. My grandmother counseled me after, and she talked about the way that the enemy comes in when you give him room. When you dwell on things so that they take root in your heart and follow you around. When you don't give God the praise but you try to think it through and figure it out for yourself. But... I had heard it all before. In fact, I counsel other people using the same advice! The question is, how do I catch myself before I allow those thoughts to overrun me? I mean, part of it is my personality. I am a sensitive person. I always have been. I feel hard. I love hard. I hurt hard. It takes a looooongggg time for me to move on. Since I was a child. So, Lord, how do I stop it? 

Now don't get me wrong; I've gotten much better since childhood. Instead of me being angry or hurt for 6 months, I might get over it in 2 days. But what happens when, while I'm taking the 2 days, 5 other things come and press on me? And happens when it comes from places I wasn't expecting? 

That's the part that gets me every time. Every single time. It's when the hurtful words or actions come from people I love, trust, and expect to protect me. It's a thought that makes me wary of others, and afraid to show myself because I feel as if their rejection will crush me. But I'm learning. I have to be broken to grow. I have to experience that hurt so that I can learn how to give it to God and move on. If I wrap myself up and keep others from getting in, I'm not living to the potential God has placed in me. 

I realized something recently, and it made me mad. The enemy has been trying to snuff me out. Not just by killing me physically (he tried it), but he has been working to snuff the LIFE, the ESSENCE of me, out of me since I was a child. My entire life, I have been told that I was too sensitive, that I talked too much. I never fully felt accepted ANYWHERE. I felt like I was constantly trying to be something I wasn't, and the moment I stopped the charade, I was criticized. Now, how accurate that viewpoint is, I'm not sure. But I do know that at some point I started believing and living as a shell of myself. I believed that if I let people in, they wouldn't like what they saw and I would really be left alone. 

So when I had my experience at church on Sunday, a couple of interesting things happened before and after. Before service started, I wasn't feeling well, and then something happened that threatened to hang over my head the entire service. But I decided to praise God anyway and shake that thing off. When I laid all my stuff at the altar, and the weights were lifted off me, something else happened that completely threw me. Someone snapped at me, embarrassed me, and really really hurt my feelings. And it was someone who I didn't expect it to come from. And because I had shed my protective covering once again, it hurt. I had to pray, tell the Lord I forgive that person over and over again, and praise Him for my deliverance. 

So I got up this morning, and it dawned on me; the devil does not want me to be myself. Like I said, it seemed like nobody wanted to hear what I had to say. Like nothing that I did was ever good enough. Granted, my family has always been focused on excellence, but somewhere in my mind I started to believe that if I wasn't perfect, I wasn't good enough. And since I'll never be perfect, I'll never be good enough. So even when people praised me, I still felt like it wasn't enough. My accomplishments never felt like accomplishments. I was always out to prove something. And when I did get criticized, it hurt more because it seemed to bring my fears to life. And I dwelled on it, obsessed over it, beat myself up about it long after everyone else had forgotten. All of this because I worked so hard to keep people from finding out how inadequate I was. 

It's crazy to me how God uses things and people to expose the root of the issue. They feel like sneak attacks, and like they come out of nowhere. But they don't. They circle like vultures, and the minute my defenses are down, they swoop in and start picking. But I realize now that I have life. And it's on loan. I have to live my life to please God, and nobody else. If I can remember to keep my focus on Him, and not myself and the people around me, I would do so much better, and feel so much better about myself, consistently. But I'm like Peter. The waves get cray, and I lose it. Just going under. 

I love this Psalm of David because he puts it so succinctly. He was betrayed by people he loved and trusted. He didn't see the attack coming, so he had no time to prepare himself. So he asked the Lord to avenge him, and then he trusted in God to rescue him. I have to learn to be a proactive praiser, and not a reactionary one. Because the devil is working so hard to keep me oppressed, frustrated, and distracted, I have to believe that the harder he works to keep me down, the more God has to have for me. Nobody works that hard to stop something that's not meant to be great. I have to learn, really learn that God is always in control, and that anything that happens to me, He sees, and He's got my back. I will call upon the Lord, and He will save me.