His ways are so very different from our own. He takes the unexpected, things that we would never choose on our own, things that are painful, our fears, our weaknesses and uses them bring us exactly what we need. That is exactly what He did when He threw me into a room full of my fear to give me something I didn’t even know I needed.
So, for those of you that don’t know me I am not a "girly" girl. I like “boy” things like cars, guns, fishing, camping, sports… and to top it off I am a total geek. I love sci-fi, comics, video games… you get the picture. Now, when I say “girly” girl or “boy” things, I am not doing so to perpetuate the stereotypes that I wrestled with as a child, rather I am using those “labels” as they were applied to me in my youth to give you a picture of where I’m coming from with this. So to say I didn’t “fit in” well with most girls and that I was “shamed” by some of the boys and girls for being who I was, would be to put it nicely. Then there is the matter of how I think and experience things. I tend to be much more masculine in how I process things.
So, all in all, I have an incredibly hard time relating to women. I'll be honest, they scare me. I jokingly tell people “I’m like a junior high boy that is scared to talk to girls, just for different reasons.”, and though I laugh, it is a very true statement.
Now, I have been told a million times that I just need to “change” the things I like and try to “be like” other women, and I’ll finally “belong”. Let me be really real here for a second… Sure I wanted to “belong”, but not if I couldn’t belong as me. For who I am. Not for someone they think I “should” be. So, after more and more rejection had piled up, I quit trying to please people because I knew I couldn’t ever measure up. I found friends that would accept me for me, people I had common interests with, people I felt comfortable around. It just happened that most of them were guys, which in turn brought me more judgement, shame and rejection from people who didn’t understand that I really was “just friends” with them. They couldn’t see how friendship was all I wanted. What I couldn’t see what that some of them were honestly trying to look out for me. I just felt even more rejected.
So imagine how overwhelmed I was when I decided to finally take the "leap", after being at our church for over 12 years, and start going to our monthly women’s social called “Women Mentoring Women”. Seriously y'all, when I walked into that room I was like "Oh my God, there are so many women... I can't do this."
I know that might sound weird, but that is how it was for me. I was terrified. Chalk it up to bad past experiences and self-esteem issues coupled with just being different than the "norm" and you'll get "why" I totally felt like a fish out of water in a sea of women.
Okay, so that first night was scary. I had to deal with the overwhelming fear of rejection, again. (Which, honestly, I had been avoiding at all costs.) I had NO idea what to say, but I was sure that no matter what I said, it would be the wrong thing. I had no idea if I was dressed "right", which may sound silly, but I had been judged and ridiculed for my “fashion sense”, or lack thereof, many times before. So on and so forth, you get the picture. I know that this might seem like a really small “problem” for many people, but for me it was all I could do to sit through the first night.
The good news was, I survived! And relatively unscathed at that.
Believe me, I was shocked. My survival was due mostly to the incredible women that I ended up sitting with. See, on my way in, I had this plan, there was one person I knew that I felt sort-of comfortable with, so I was hoping I could sit at her table. I figured I would need to ask permission to sit there… I had no idea how these things worked. Clearly. ;)
On my way from the car to the building, while I was trying to work up the courage to even walk in there, let alone ask if I could sit with someone, a divine appointment met me. (Which is just a fancy way of saying God had a plan.) A lady I knew in passing happened to be walking to the building as well. She welcomed me and then I did something completely out of the ordinary for me… I told her this was my “first time”, that I didn’t’ know what to do, and that I was really nervous about this whole “women” thing. I couldn't believe I had just said that! As I began to beat myself up for "talking too much", she responded and her reply surprised me. She told me she could totally relate and invited me to sit at her table. Which as fate, or rather God had planned it, ended up being the table I was originally hoping to sit at! See, God is funny like that. He knows exactly what we need in each circumstance.
The experience was not nearly as painful as I had anticipated, still, I wasn’t sure that I really wanted to go again. Eventually the other shoe would drop, right? Rejection was surely waiting for me at one of those meetings. At least, that was what I believed the “safe bet” outcome would be. Over the next couple weeks, I found so many things “coming up” that just made it unlikely that I would be “able” to go. Convenient, right? ;) *Whew* Totally dodged a bullet there! Am I right?! Yeah, not so much.
My oldest son was asked and happily agreed to be in charge of sound for these lovely little gatherings and I was "stuck" going. *sigh* Clearly God was telling me I wasn’t getting out of this one. At least I knew I wasn’t in this alone, He was with me. You know the saying, “If God brings you to it, He will bring you through it”? That is what I relied on. I approached this whole thing as some long-suffering trial that I would have to trudge through, but at least I knew God would be there to catch me when I fell. No doubt, flat on my face.
You know, it is very true that what we believe is what we receive. What we expect is what we experience. I know that has, rather consistently, been the case in my own life. Yet, God, in all of His crazy-amazing love and kindness, decided to spare me that outcome in this event. He decided to show me something so vastly different than anything I had anticipated, and it all started with two “safe” people that God began my “women’s social” experience with.
After the first couple meetings I was finding that the wisdom shared by the incredible women, who so bravely got up in front of a room full of women to share part of their story (Can you imagine?!), became words I would hold onto in the coming days to build my faith and ultimately the faith of my children. Their words encouraged us in unexpected situations, they gave us hope, and they showed me a better way to walk through uncertainty than I would have chosen myself. God was speaking into my life, into my exact circumstances through these women at these events that I had been unwilling to attend for so long. Instead of expecting the worst, I began wondering what I had missed that would have made a difference in our lives.
{ Fast Forward }
This week was the last “formal” meeting of the year and I was so deeply blessed by it on so many levels. God blessed us greatly both in actual “needs” and “spiritually”. He provided for some needs for our family. He spoke so much of His beautiful truth to my heart. He reached into a place that I have been struggling with and He encouraged me, He gave me hope and He gave me inspiration. He did all of that through these amazing women that I had been so afraid of for far too long. We may have personality differences, different likes, different ways of processing, be different ages, at different stages in life and have different quirks, but we all have something in common. We all struggle. We all have needs. We all have fears. We all face battles. We all have hopes and dreams. We need encouragement. We need each other.
I let fear of judgment and rejection, that had been caused by totally different people, turn into my judgment of how all women would treat me, not based upon their own actions, but completely unjustly based on things done by others. I let the enemy use that fear to keep me from being built up, from forming new relationships, friendships, from wisdom and ultimately from the healing I so desperately needed.
I hope I will never make that mistake again.
I have learned that, more often than not, the very thing we are most afraid of doing is exactly what will bring us the healing we long for.
See, fear does not just keep you from bad, it prevents good.
I had to get out of my own head and out of my own way and let God work, in His beautiful way, in my life so that I could be set free from yet another lie and be able to continue to grow.
Who would have thought that this girl, who was terrified of other women, would be asked, seven months later, and happily volunteer to be a “Mentor Mom”, who leads discussions at her table, for the next year?!
I share all of that to say, don’t ever do yourself/others the disservice of completely discounting something or someone based upon negative experiences in your past. Each person and even each experience can be completely different than you expect and both have the potential to bless your life more than you could ever have imagined.
God’s ways are so very different from our own, but they are so, so much better. <3
Be blessed, y’all.
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