This will be a series from a conversation that one of my best friends had with my 17 year old son this past week… Gary Tedder is a supporter, father of Ryan Tedder of OneRepublic, but mostly a very faithful brother in the Lord! He gets that it takes a village to raise a kid and he is helping me initiate my son’s – I asked him to write the basis of the conversation down… I added some thoughts as well.
Recovering your identity
We need to recover what we lost in childhood. The recovery process is: collecting all the information you missed out on as a child, so you can conduct yourself responsibly as an adult. Most people are either locked in the past or looking to the future, and therefore missing out on “the now”. Looking in the rear view mirror is a formula for a wreck. The windshield is many times larger than the RVM and that’s where our focus needs to be. We have clarity, field of vision and the ability to read the signs along the way (including the warning signs).
Most people never recover…they just rehearse. They plug in the “pain” cd or dvd every day and that is all they listen to…old recordings, old mistakes, old traumas, old habits, old behavior patterns, old “junk”. 50% of how we conduct ourselves as adults is mapped on our mind, emotions and spirit by the age of 5; 80% by 8 and 95% by 18!
That basically gives us a 5% rudder to affect change. Therefore, most of us experience “arrested development”… that point in our lives when we are traumatized or “frozen emotionally”, by a harmful/hurtful event, a negative pattern or encounter or series of events, i.e.: drugs, divorce, pregnancy, rape or molestation, death of friend or family member, financial, material (possessions) or physical devastation (cancer or chronic illness or disability).
More to come…
I am learning all about this. It is great to begin being aware of these broken patterns and ineffective behaviors, but sometimes it seems like changing them is impossible.
I know that it is going to take a power greater than myself to remap my mind and my heart. Of course, I always wish it would happen a little faster, but I trust that God is always moving me forward as long as I submit to Him.
I’m always reminded of the Sara Groves song
“I’m painting pictures of Egypt, leaving out what it lacks. The future seams so hard and I want to go back. But the places that used to fit me can not hold the things I’ve learned. That road was closed off to me while my back was turned.”
Even when I don’t feel like I have the courage to move into where God is leading me, God had the grace to close the road behind me so that I can only put my hope in Him and grit my teeth and keep going.
When I look at my past, there is always the temptation to live in shame, to allow the circumstances (which are now over) to affect me now in negative ways. But, when I look at Christ, I know God’s love. I know that He has taken even the things Satan meant for evil and used them for my good and His Glory.
Listen to King David in Psalm 51: after the deep realization of his sin and shame, he cries out for redemption and transforms the situation for God’s Glory when he declares, “Then I will teach transgressors Your ways, and sinners will be converted to You.”
Paul uses his shameful past several times to teach God’s Truth and Glorify his Master.
There are not many in the Bible who we do not see their worst, and yet God still loved them, used them, and blessed them for His Glory. Welcome to the story of redemption, your life included.
We are not fatherless, but full of our Father’s love. In darkness, Satan beat you up, trashed your emotions, your identity, and only reminds you of your past, to make you worse. But the Father takes our worst and uses it as an opportunity for teaching us His Way in Love, one that may hurt for a time, but ends with you humbly learning from your past and becoming a better person.
If you’re not humbly looking at your past through God’s perspective, then you’re pridefully standing firm, holding on to something God wants you to let go of.
Underneath our pride are our worst insecurities. That’s why pride will come before the fall, because you’ve built on the wrong foundation.
A paradox: When we are weak, He is strong. God opposes the proud, and gives grace to the humble.
Nothing says it better than the film “Prince of Egypt”, when Moses runs from his shameful confusing past, has lost his identity, and is looking for change. He ends up with the Medianites and Jethro sings a song, “Look at your life through heaven’s eyes”.