Breaking down the walls

I've had quite a few of you give feedback to Sunday's post - thank you for your honesty and vulnerability.


In all likelihood, we all have at least one story about how another woman has betrayed us or wounded our hearts. And when those wounds come like a knife through your back and you sit there holding your blood seeping into your hands with nothing else to do, your bloody fingers find the bricks. And you think to yourself, "What in the world can I do to prevent this pain again?" And the only solution you come up with is to stay away from all women. You generalize, telling yourself, "It will always end this way. My hopes for the friend I'm starving for are destroyed. I should give up now so at least I won't have to feel this ever again." And you use the bricks and the mortar and your wall gets higher and higher until they can see you but they can't touch you or hurt you . . . or love you.


It's comfortable behind your wall for a while. Safe. Quiet. Peaceful. Controlled.


But then you realize that the price you've paid for all of those things is loneliness. It's too quiet and too controlled. And you suddenly realize you're still starving, still craving a friend, still longing for someone who understands you and truly listens. Someone who will hold you when you cry and respect you the next day. Someone who laughs with you and at you and through you. Someone who you can bare your soul to and know she won't tell another living being on two feet. Someone who will go the distance of life and still be there when you're at your worst, when you don't feel like trying to fight in this life anymore, when your butt sags, and when you have a bad hair day or even a bad hair year.


And you might even pull down a few of those bricks and reach your hand out and let yourself be touched again. But at the first glimpse of her imperfection or even a hint of misunderstanding you pull it back behind your wall again and replace the bricks that had been saved close-by for this very occasion.


I've been there. I've lived behind my wall for years at a time, and if I'm completely honest, it's still there, in part. And though I haven't quite thrown the bricks away yet, I'm learning to live life vulnerable. I don't know how else to explain it, but that I couldn't stay there. I'm an optimist by nature, and I think one day I realized Jesus had more for me.


Another friend began her demolition at about the same time I did. She observed that women sized up one another when they walked in a room even more than men did. And then they compared themselves to the other women in the room and basically either tore themselves apart or ripped into other women mentally based mostly on physical appearance. And tell me you've never done that. Yeah, I didn't think you could. She theorized that much of our problems with relation to one another stem from our own insecurities and with trying to compare and compete. She said it and we both saw the other's light flash in our eyes. The problem began to materialize in our sight and we hated it so much that we vowed to do whatever it took to strangle it.

For a few years I really worked on that. On learning how to be myself. On refusing to let my mind compare my weaknesses with another woman's strengths. On rejoicing in the woman God made me to be and worshipping Him for His ability to create such uniqueness in every person. Because on the days I hated myself I heard Him cry, "How can you walk in such rebellion as to call something I have created and have treasured 'trash'?" And that absolutely broke me.

"You made all the delicate and inner parts of my body
and knit me together in my mother's womb.
Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex!
Your workmanship is marvelous - how well I know it.
You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion,
as I was woven together in the dark of the womb.
You saw me before I was born.
Every day of my life was recorded in your book.
Every moment was laid out
before a single day had passed.
How precious are your thoughts about me, O God.
They cannot be numbered!
I can't even count them;
they outnumber the grains of sand!
And when I wake up,
You are still with me!" -Psalm 139: 13-18 (NLT)


Jesus began breaking down my walls, but I realized that I had to take up the sledge hammer too, and receive the love He had for me, and the love He wanted to give me through other women.

If the first step to breaking down your wall is learning to treasure yourself the way God does, how can you begin to do that today? If you already learned to be okay with you without comparing yourself to other women or competing with them, how did you go about doing that?

More to come soon . . .