I recently started seeing a Christian therapist to help me cope with some of the things our family has been through recently.
The night before my appointment, I cried.
I told Shelby that I felt like a failure because I needed to see a counselor to help me deal with my issues. That somehow going to therapy meant that God wasn’t enough; because if God was enough, then why did I need someone else to help me.
Which is just dumb, because I have friends who are in counseling and I don’t view them as failures or weak. But strangely this is how I view myself.
I find that sometimes I can be much harder on myself than on others. I put more pressure on myself to be strong and just “suck it up”. I don’t give myself enough grace.
It came to a point where I just felt broken and I didn’t want to be broken anymore. I wanted to be whole. I was repeating past thoughts and behaviors that I didn’t want to be held captive to anymore. I wanted to break the cycle and be free.
Sometimes we need other people in our lives to point us to the truth that we can’t see for ourselves.
So, I went, and it’s been good. Challenging, but also a relief to know that I don’t have to carry this burden alone.
One of the assignments that I’ve been given is to make a timeline of the things that have happened to our family over the past few years.
That’s really hard.
I don’t want to relive the past. It makes me cry. It makes me sad. It makes me angry. It brings up old hurts and causes my heart to ache. It reminds me of how things used to be and how they are now.
But strangely, as I wrote out my timeline, I didn’t see it as a list of all the brokenness in my life; instead, I looked at it as a list of accomplishments.
As I read through each event that I had been through, I thought, “You did it. You made it through. You survived this. You overcame that.”
A lot of times we look back at the things we’ve gone through with fear or dread. Maybe even with anger or sadness. Some of the things in our timelines are hard and painful; things you never want to experience again.
But it is also a reminder of God’s faithfulness in how He carries us through those times. How He gives us the strength and courage we need to overcome each obstacle that we face.
It’s also a good reminder, that just as God brought us through those hard times, He will bring us through whatever storm or valley we may be currently facing or will face in the future.
My timeline is not something I am ashamed of; it is wholly a part of who I am today. It’s my reminder that I am an overcomer and there is nothing too big that I cannot accomplish with God on my side.