The Me I Saw

It know it’s been super long… ok, maybe only 4 days, but it seems like SO much longer to me, since I’ve posted last. I wrote this about a month ago and normally I’d go back and tweak things and make them sound pretty, but I’m just gonna give you what I wrote then…

I was so proud of myself and my ministry that I’d never admit that I had a problem. I was not in denial. I knew I had a problem, but I loved my ministries so much that I didn’t want to put them in jeopardy by telling someone what I was struggling with. I didn’t even think I could handle it myself. I expected God to just flip the switch and change my urges to be something I could control.

I would read books and listen to messages and have those ‘mountaintop’ experiences, but I would go home and nothing inside me would change. I’d have the same unhealthy thoughts as before, do the same foolish things. I knew what I was doing wrong, but that didn’t make much of a difference. I couldn’t shake it off me. I feel like a had a genuine desire to not be the person that I was, but I just couldn’t change me as much as I tried. It seemed like sometimes, God hadn’t changed a thing inside of me since the day he saved me.

I saw those around me looking up to me and thinking I’m a great example. I thought, “If you only knew what was really going on inside me, the ‘real’ me. If you knew what that looked like, you wouldn’t have such a high opinion of me.”

Out of this came a lot of self doubt and low self esteem (even though I don’t like to call it that). I felt worthless because I knew the ‘real’ me. I knew the me I was behind closed doors and it scared me. The only problem was that the me I saw wasn’t the me the Christ saw. He saw every bit of me; He saw my hurts, habits, hang-ups, flaws, and thoughts. He saw it all. And the fact that He loved me in spite of all my mess was absolutely incredible to me. I never though that anyone could do that.

I knew if people only knew pieces of me, they’d get a ‘good’ picture of the me, one I wanted them to see. I didn’t always ‘front’ like that, but I got very good a making sure I seeming like an honest, and genuine person, but really, I only let people in so far. Far enough to where they felt like they knew me , but not far enough to show them my foolishness.

I got real good at projecting a certain image and loved the image that I projected. The problem came when I got by myself. I saw the me I had been projecting to everyone all day long and was disappointed with what looked back from the mirror. That lyric in Kirk Franklin’s song “Imagine Me” where he says, “Imagine me loving what I see when the mirror looks at me” spoke volumes to me!

I liked what I saw physically when I looked in the mirror, but if I looked at myself eye to eye, there was something that made me uneasy. I knew I wasn’t fronting for myself and my eyes did, and still do, say it all. There was such a look of disappointment with myself but I didn’t know how to change or do anything different.