Self-Distortions

Sorry I've been gone so long. I've been sicker'n a dog...no offense to my canine friends. Actually I took their advice for dealing with illness and curled up in a warm spot and slept it off...with frequent trips to eradicate the invading enemy...more frequent than I would have liked, but intestinal flues pretty much call the shots when they have you captive. But that is not my topic for today, so hit the rewind button and let's start over.

Distorted sense of self, that's what Brecky is teaching me these days. She is a 100+ lb. Bernese Mountain Dog who pictures herself as a tiny, fragile lap dog. Big boned like a St. Bernard and capable of taking on any dog who approaches her, Brecky hides on the fringes of our pack as we adventure together. No one watches and evaluates the other dogs as carefully as Brecky does, her entire modus operandi is to stay out of the fray, even if the fray is just playful fun. Hypervigilent to the max. Oh she still makes her own fun sniffing and splashing in the water, but never without her apprehensive eye. Some of this is due to the fact that her younger brother, Lio, (also a Bernese Mtn. Dog), has been laid up from elbow surgery (please pray for the not-so-little guy) and she is adventuring without his gregarious support. BUT beyond his absence, it is Brecky's distorted sense of self that limits her experience of shared adventure. She is a big, beautiful girl with huge brown eyes that melt you, framed by Brooke Shield eyebrows that amplify her every emotion as they dance around her face with expression. She should be the belle of our expeditions, but she literally hides in the shadows.


This got me thinking about how I might be distorting my picture of myself...and how you might be. Perhaps old messages are still defining us. Old nicknames that literally nicked and scarred our sense of self? Failures? I've got plenty of those! Fears of rejection? Dreams we finally gave up on, but never put to rest? Body images that don't measure up to plastic surgery specifications? Sometimes we need others to help us see our distortions... which of course requires that we, unlike Brecky, move into the circle of relationships where we can get that feedback. I like to think I am the expert on myself, especially coming from therapist stock, but I definitely have my blind spots... just like the physical spot on my back I just can't stratch on my own! We all have those unreachable areas...and what a joy when someone else gives relief to that irrepressibly itchy terrain.


Hopefully by now, if you've followed this blog, you've figured out that I am a lover of God. A wise friend once told me that if I truly wanted to become like Jesus, I had to "Give all that I know of myself, to all that I know of God." This calls for growth on both of those fronts... growing in my knowledge of myself, and in my knowledge of God. So as I encounter my Brecky-blind-spots, I need to do whatever I can to shed some light on them so I have more genuine "stuff" to give over to God. Not a generic, one fell swoop, "Take it all, Lord," but a piece by piece, gut-wrenchingly honest, "Here's my stinky fish and moldy bread, Lord, multiply it as You will." Only God sees us as we truly are, given that He's the One who strung our beads of DNA in the first place. He not only wants us to see ourselves fully and genuinely as we are, but He wants us to see ourselves as we CAN be as He lives in and through us. Aslan-like...lion-potential!


Brecky needs a dose of this and doggone it, so do I!