Today, I remember, and reaffirm, what I first published May 1, 2016.

I’m Deborah, and I have been so blind.

• Blind to what was really going on in my family as I grew up.
• Blind to the roles handed me early in life – roles that, in adulthood, I continued to play.
• Blind to who I am, apart from those assigned roles.
• Blind to whatever the people close to me profoundly denied.
• Blind to the things their behavior revealed, when their words and actions did not match.
• Blind to my own unmet need to be affirmed as a person – and how very unsafe, the places I tried to get that need met.
• Blind to the many, and oh-so-predictable, ways I’ve let others pull my strings.
• Blind to the false responsibility I’ve constantly carried.
• Blind to the false guilt I’ve kept agreeing to take.
• Blind to the difference between religious and godly.
• Blind to anything going on behind a convincing Christian façade.

Years ago now, I began to see. It was marvelous, like a veil lifting, and such an astounding change that I didn’t realize how very much still needed to come into focus.

I didn’t know then how hard it would be to face each new revelation – or how many people in my Christian world would fight to keep me from it. I didn’t know how confusing it would become when people I loved and trusted hated my every movement toward the light.

I didn’t know how much my identity in Christ would be compromised as I tried to go forward with God – and also tried to please people who really mattered to me.

The more the Lord showed me, the more I found myself fighting against the FOG that author Susan Forward first described. A cloud of fear, obligation and guilt swirled just below the surface of my understanding, while a chorus of voices relentlessly shouted, “No! Don’t see that! Don’t go there! Change back!”

I’m Deborah, and I have been so stuck.

Time and again, I’ve taken a few steps forward. Then, lost in the fog, I’ve fallen down and back. Stuck is depressing. Stuck feels hopeless. It keeps you going in circles, while whispering, “There’s no way out.”

Each time I’ve gotten stuck, it’s because I wanted to follow God fully, and I wanted people to understand that’s what I was doing. I wanted them to know I was not wronging them. Rather, I was learning what real love looks like: love for God, love for them. I wanted them to see that. I wanted them to experience it too.

Every time I’ve gotten stuck, I have been trying to do what I cannot: make someone else see. Every time, I’ve tried to avoid acting on what I saw, until they saw it too.

It costs to say, “Though none go with me, I still will follow.” It costs more to do it. It requires “spending and being spent” for people who believe you are doing the opposite.¹

It’s easy to get stuck on that cost, thinking it too high. Yet when we do, we set ourselves up to lose everything.

• We don’t please the people eager to keep us blind and bound. Trying to be loved by those who will not give it, we miss out on real love and real belonging. Wanting to show love to those who will not receive it, we instead do them no good, no good at all.
• We miss out on the life our Lord gave everything to provide for us. We forfeit the fullness of our identity, purpose and joy in him.
• We deeply grieve our God. Regardless what anyone may tell you to the contrary, we do not honor him, we do not show faithfulness to him, by trying to please people determined to keep us from following him.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Lord, for your grace.

As I stumbled around, stuck in the fog – confused as to what was good and what was evil, what was true and what was not – my Lord knew I wanted to see. And he kept showing me what I needed to know to be free.

Embracing what he’s revealed has required a fight every inch of the way. While the Lord has worked – slowly, lovingly, firmly – to strip off blinders I’ve worn for a lifetime, I’ve tried to process the emotions; the anger and sorrow, the guilt of not seeing sooner, the shock of what I now know.

The people whose approval I’ve tried the hardest to gain still withhold it. I deeply feel the grief of it. Yet now I see why validation from certain quarters has mattered so much to me. The lie I’d unwittingly embraced since infancy said: “If they disapprove, I’m worthless. And repulsive.”

Now I see that the ones who taught me to believe that were themselves blind and bound. And at last, I know in my inmost being what I would have told you I knew all along:

I’m created in the image of God and made new in the Lord Jesus. I’m accepted in the Beloved. I am fully me in him. No one’s disapproval cancels that, and the only person who can hinder my living it out is me.

The fog hasn’t completely dispelled. Sometimes, it still gets really thick. But now I recognize what it is and what in me opens the door for confusion to roll in. Now, I can cooperate with God the Spirit to blow the fog away.

By grace, I cling to the Lord as he reveals what is difficult and distressing. I struggle deeply – and yet find courage and rest – when seeing, and speaking up, seem to make things exponentially worse.

Today, he who rose again shows me not to lean on my own understanding as to what lies ahead. He who is light leads me to choose the light – and to say no to what would deter me from it.

In this new forward movement, as I dare to go with God where fear, obligation and guilt forbid, I rediscover hope. I taste joy.

No longer blind, no longer stuck, I’m embracing the light, and pursuing the God who gives it.

I’m Deborah, and I am choosing life.

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Image by Adrian Siea from Pixabay

Footnotes

1. See Paul’s cry to the Corinthian Christians: “I will very gladly spend and be spent for your sake. If I love you more, will you love me less?” (2 Corinthians 12:15 CEB) ↩︎