Avoiding the Train Wreck

Have you ever known someone who was just a train wreck when it came to relationships? Perhaps they were constantly leaving behind broken friendships and moving on to find new ones because conflict seemed to follow them wherever they went. Have YOU ever found that friend after friend seemed to leave you disappointed?Last week I proposed that you must be at peace with the Lord and with yourself in order to have healthy relationships with others. If you are constantly thinking poorly of yourself, it will cause you to have great insecurity in your relationships. You will unintentionally begin to look to others to fill a void that they cannot fill. When they don’t fill the gap, you can become disillusioned. We must remember that another human being cannot be at peace for you.You will never regret taking time to evaluate the question: Am I at peace with myself?Do you struggle when it comes to feeling good about who you are? I wrote an entire Bible study on this topic because many women fall victim to the lies of the enemy and the lies of our culture. Often we don’t have a peace about who we are because we are measuring ourselves against some perfect woman that does not even exist.We can beat ourselves up thinking that we aren’t smart enough, pretty enough, organized enough, etc. We can believe the whispers of the enemy that everyone else has their act together, and we are the only one struggling to be a wife, or a mom, or a student, or a friend. The results of allowing this type of thinking to go unchallenged is that we can both become insecure and isolate ourselves from others.If you find something familiar in this description, may I suggest 4 ways to victory:1. Identify where you find your valueMost frequently, we find our value in a position – our role as a mom or a wife – or in our looks. You can often identify where you are finding your worth by your areas of strength or by the things you compare yourself to most often. The single woman who is consumed with finding her husband is not even a wife yet, but she makes the mistake of thinking she will be more valuable if she can become one. The woman who is only at peace if she is being affirmed will end up always trying to please or being performance-driven.2. Reverse the trendOnce you identify where you are finding your worth, now you can proactively change your patterns. Awareness is half the battle. Ask the Lord to show you the folly in finding worth in a title, a standard of living, or someone’s perception of you.3. Get connectedAs Christians, we need each other. When we realize we are fellow strugglers, then we can begin to normalize our shortcomings and take steps to change our patterns of thinking. Not just any type of connection will help. You need to seek out women who are willing to be authentic and vulnerable about their struggles.4. Get out of your own wayYou are not the judge. Stop trying to grade yourself and rest in the fact that the Lord, the only one called to judge, loves you for who you are. His view is the only one that matters – not yours and not anyone else’s! Be at peace with yourself because the One who created you knows your worth.I’d love to hear where you are in the journey and what has helped you to have victory along the way!