The Great Pretender

Morning Everyone,

I don’t know if it’s summer that’s doing it or what but my schedule is all out of wack. I’ve been going to bed way too late and therefore getting up later in the mornings. I’m learning to ignore the alarm clock. The result is less writing time. Today I’m easily an hour behind putting fingers to keys. I think I must be in some kind of rebellion mode or something because I’m not exercising either – very little stretching, no walking (for exercise), and just a general nonchalant attitude about everything in general.

I think a part of it is frustration with change or rather the lack of it. Sure, I’ve been changing the outward stuff, my diet, my exercise and writing habits but what’s the big deal when the inside isn’t changing? Why bother feeling good on the outside when there are things that are off limits to change?

I am sick and tired of working on the inside all the time. I don’t want to be so broken, why should I be broken now after all these years? Why should I even care about it when nobody else seems to? Most people don’t even bother trying to change they just plug along pushing things down and never talking about them or dealing with them. That’s certainly easier.

Perhaps the Platters said it best:

Oh yes, I'm the great pretender Pretending I'm doing well
My need is such I pretend too much I'm lonely but no one can tell

Oh yes, I'm the great pretender Adrift in a world of my own
I play the game but to my real shame You've left me to dream all alone

Too real is this feeling of make-believe
Too real when I feel what my heart can't conceal

Oh yes, I'm the great pretender
Just laughing and gay like a clown
I seem to be what I'm not you see
I'm wearing my heart like a crown

My problem is I’m tired of pretending. I’ve been tired of it for a long time. I’m tired of pretending that the church is powerful. I’m so sick to death of its impotent words. I’m sick of the promises of hope for the binding of the broken hearted without the binding taking place.

I guess I’m seeing the depth of the fall too clearly these days. I’ve come to realize that we are going to have to all wear name tags in the next life because we won’t be recognizable by the way we act. To be honest I don’t know what will be left of me once my dysfunction is taken away.

I spent the first thirty years of my life pretending that everything was ok when it wasn’t. After twenty years of striving to uncover and unveil the truth some days it feels like it’s all been a waste of time. But I know in my heart it hasn’t been. Even as I write this, I am beginning to recognize that there has been a subtle change in direction that has taken me off course the last few months. I’ve turned my desire to get better into a desire to help others get better and that is where the frustration comes from. I can’t make anyone else better. I can’t save anybody. I can’t even save myself but I can do what I need to do to humble myself before my God and trust that he will take care of me.

I can’t fix my wife or my kids or my parents or my cousins or my dog or my cat. I can’t fix anybody. And that’s what I’ve started trying to do lately. It’s an old habit that seemed to come natural for me as a kid: sacrificing my life to make other people’s lives better. I know that sounds really altruistic and everything but the truth is – it is nothing more than slow suicide. That was what drove me to recovery in the first place.

You see there is a huge difference between wanting to minister to others and wanting to be their savior or their God for that matter. The first is a good thing. The second is a recipe for disaster. I am the master of disaster when it comes having a savior complex.

So now it’s back to square one for me: Remembering what I need to do to take care of myself. I must do that because if I don’t I will destroy the lives of everyone I love in the name of saving them and lose myself in the process. Their salvation, not just in a spiritual sense but in every other kind of way, isn’t my problem. It’s God’s problem.

I’m amazed at just how well the scripture reveals my heart to me. When it calls me to love my neighbor as I love myself it continually calls me back to the thing which I do the worst and that is loving myself, keeping the commandments toward myself. If I don’t do those things I can’t love my neighbor or my wife or my kids or my parents or my God. The great pretender can’t face the truth. The great pretender can’t stop trying to be God to everybody else. The great pretender refuses to walk in love while all the while spouting pontifications about love.

Perhaps it is the Staple Singers I need to be listening to instead of the Platters and learn to respect myself cause “If you don’t respect yourself ain’t nobody gonna give a good cahoot. Respect yourself.

Learning to love myself so I don’t hate my neighbor and my God,

Brad

cosmoyada.com