I grew up in a very legalistic church culture that leaned heavily into - pulling up your bootstraps and just grinding out the jagged road of Christian living. It was a life of walking on eggshells combined with a creepy candy coating of constant guilt and shame. By the time I hit high school, I knew I could never live up to those standards. I remember telling God that, “I’m sorry, but I’m never going to be good enough to be loved and accepted by you or the church…” From there, I made a conscience decision to walk away from it all. This slowly grew into unadulterated atheism by the time I was 18.
I had asked myself, "Why live a life of guilt and shame centered around never being enough?" I already had enough of that nonsense from my home life and years of abuse I had lived through. I can recall cussing at God about how he abandoned me during my childhood suffering and bemoaning how I didn’t deserve any of that. Obviously, I wasn’t a very rationally thinking atheist to be having such conversations with a deity that I didn’t believe in. It’s funny to think about that whilst looking back.
A few years later I was ambushed by God‘s love prior to fully surrendering my life to him as an adult. That was September of 1994. I wish that was where my story turned around, basking in how I then lived a holy and peaceful life from that point forward. But that’s not the case. I was on fire for the first couple of years, even answering the call to pastoral ministry several times. This led to street ministry and preaching from the pulpit. As a result, I was fed a steady diet of encouragement to go deeper into ministry, but I was far too broken from my childhood to do any of that. When my first marriage fell apart, I returned to the bitterness & anger towards God. (My story is such the rollercoaster, and I won’t bore you with all the gory details, but let’s just say by the time I came out of my second divorce, I was fully aware that God was real and present, but he just seemingly didn’t care specifically for JR.) In summary, I was tired of pulling up my bootstraps and sucking up the massive abandonment and pain I was feeling.
And at this point in my life, I also didn’t believe God cared about my past suffering. Therefore, I believed he stood next to me every day, observing me being cold and detached from it all. I felt utterly alone and once again abandoned. During this period of my life, I was self-medicating in ways I’m too ashamed to even talk about. I can recall fantasizing about suicide in order to finally confront God face-to-face! I wanted to know why I'd deserved this life of torture and abuse. This life that had so scarred me as an adult. I was convinced that I was unlovable, therefore I chose to live my life one day at a time but in deep levels of depression and self-hatred. All the while, I had a smile on my face, but deep under that was a hurt and abused little kid staring back at me in the mirror saying, “Is this all there is to this world…?”
Then I had a complete breakdown that forced me into counseling / a super helpful Christian 12-step program. Nonetheless, during these years of self-abuse and depression, the only prayer I could muster up was, “God, don’t give up on me… I know there has to be something better in this world!" The Lord had to allow me to hit rock bottom in order to have a firm foundation to springboard off of. What I discovered - through some very good counseling and recovery work - was that Jesus had been right there with me during my abuse and sorrow. He was standing next to me, weeping with me, but my pain had me so blinded of this, that all I could hear was the enemy’s lies of self-condemnation.
Ultimately, when you rob a child of their innocence, they don’t hate their abusers as much as they question what’s wrong with themselves. Yet, that hate usually comes later when we’re / they're mature enough to understand what has happened to them. But in those terrible moments, shame and self-condemnation seemingly became imprinted on my DNA. No one in the churches I attended at that time had any idea how to help me. I was like a wild boar driven by my carnal instincts destroying everything within my path. This unidentified pain I was carrying was a trauma reaction. I had PTSD and didn’t even know it until crippling panic attacks began to surface.
Eventually, I connected with people and programs that successfully identified my pain and could help me respectfully unravel all of it. From there, my life truly started to move in a better direction. In recovery we say, “Sobriety delivers what addiction promised…” This is so true! Once I stopped blaming God for everything and matured enough to be able to let go of the unforgiveness that was metastasizing within my heart, the healing truly began to take root. Part of that forgiveness work was forgiving myself for a long list of hurt that I had caused to people and family around me. As a result, my amends process was very hard to execute and very uncomfortable, but it was entirely necessary. It didn’t happen overnight. Instead, it took years, and the growth therein was slow going. But at this point - even after my third divorce - I had found peace and harmony in my life like I'd never experienced prior.
This brought me to understanding the character of God beneath the umbrella of his grace and mercy. And not once have I had to "walk out my faith with tightened-up bootstraps". Instead, I have agency with a heart of tenderness toward myself and those around me. It's important to know that I’m a huge personality, and stress sometimes does get the best of me. But now, I don’t internalize my failures. Instead, I lay them at the foot of the cross, allowing Christ’s forgiveness to flow over me. I'm not at all ashamed to simply brush myself off, stand up, raise my head high and move forward with my life. Failure is very much a part of my life, but now it doesn’t drag me into a pit of depression. Instead, it creates an opportunity to grow and learn from my mistakes as I live my life in victory because of what Jesus did on the cross.
JR is finally at peace with being broken, because now he understands that we’re all broken, and no one is getting it right all the time. Inside that wisdom is the freedom to live above guilt and shame in order to walk proud under God's grace. Polishing my bootstraps only gave me blisters. But letting go and trusting in God's goodness is where I discovered true freedom and satisfaction within my life.
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