Brene Brown says “The opposite of belonging is fitting in”. I can’t remember a time in my life when I wasn’t longing to feel like I belonged. To someone, to something, to feel unconditional love, to feel like I was with people that wanted to be with me.
Yes, my longing for belonging, goes back, way back. I guess most of us probably have one thing or another (or many anothers for some of us) that impact our lives in an extremely significant way. I have had a few major events, maybe we could even call them trauma events, some with a small ‘t’ and some with a big ‘T‘ that have left me with desire to belong.
Before I share any further, I want to acknowledge that I know and understand I do have a very blessed life. God has always had His arms around me even when I didn’t feel like I belonged to anyone or anything else. Always.
I also want to acknowledge that I know there are people that have experienced such horrible things in their lives. Some of those things I can’t even begin to imagine experiencing them or imagine how to get through them or how to live on the other side of them. I am so very sorry if you are reading this and you are one of those people. Please know that nothing I share is to make light of any horrific things that anyone has had to endure.
I am here to share my experiences simply because maybe someone else can relate. Maybe my story can help them. Maybe it can give hope. Maybe it can help someone to see to just hang on a little while longer, because it doesn’t always hurt as bad as it does today. It won’t always hurt this bad. So if you need to hear that message… Take it in. Wrap your arms around that truth. It will NOT always hurt this bad… so hang on sweetie and just take the next step forward. Just do the next right thing. No matter what the past was. No matter what today is. Give tomorrow a chance. Give tomorrow hope for a little more healing. A little less pain. A little at a time. Just take the next baby step. Look in your rearview mirror for a moment, only long enough to acknowledge how far you’ve come then fix your eyes on hope, in front of you.
LIke a lot of us, my longing for belonging goes back to when I was a kid. My family situation was messy. Not traditional at all. Traditional to me is two parents in a home, you as their child, and doing life together. For me, I didn’t even have a one parent home. I am very thankful that I was blessed to live with someone that took care of me when she didn’t have to. She treated me just like one of her own kids, I would suppose. She made sure we were on vacation every year, usually the beach. We went school shopping for new clothes every year before school, I had all the things I needed and most of what I wanted within reason. I am so very thankful for her and her family to take me in when they really didn’t have to. I will always be so very grateful.
This is an example of how God provided for me because my momma was a kid herself trying to find her way in a world where she didn’t have anyone to help her. In a world where she was in a situation that she dealt with the best way she knew how. Today, I know my momma loved me with all she had but when your’e a child you don’t understand those things. When you’re a child, you just want to be wanted. You want to feel loved. You want those normal things that seem to be innate within us and you just don’t have the capability to understand the complexity of what may be your life at that age.
When I got married, my need for a family to belong to was filled with a husband and then two awesome boys. I was a wife, I was a mother. I belonged to this family. It’s the thing I wanted most from the time I was a child. I guess it was such a big deal for me because as a child, I didn’t know my situation was all that different until I started making friends at school and as kids do, the questions began, ‘what does your mom do and what does your dad do and can I spend the night at your house’. All of those questions and activities which are normal. But, I found out I wasn’t normal when I started answering the questions, no, I don’t know who my dad is. Yeah, you can come over but I don’t live with my mom. Then, other people tell you how different you are and you didn’t even know it. Things that were just how they were but I felt such shame and embarrassment. As we all know, kids are not always nice. Sometimes they don’t even realize they aren’t being kind.
This is where it all began. My desire to be liked and accepted. The need I felt to please others because I so wanted to be accepted and liked so I would belong to something, someone. I still remember one of the first conversations I had with a friend as a kid. It’s crazy how those feelings of shame that come over us, we can step right back into them with just one trip down memory lane and the weight of that is almost as real as we remember it on that day.
The enemy, he clouds our minds with so much junk and trash. He takes reality and twists and manipulates it to hurt and destroy us. Whether it be emotionally, spiritually, relationally, or physically.
That shame IS NOT mine to bear. It was simply the facts of my life that I had no choice in. I was simply living in them. But, the enemy has used that shame to cause all kinds of havoc and hell in my life. Especially since the passing of Mark. I put so much of my identify into being his wife and the idea that normal was a husband and wife, family. Gosh there are so many stories, scenarios, and examples of how me not letting God fill this whole in my heart has caused me difficulties over the years since Mark has been gone. How I’ve now let the shame of not having a husband influence me just like I was a kid again and didn’t have a dad. To think about it, it sounds silly. I am sure it probably really sounds silly to folks that cannot relate. But to live it, it’s not silly at all.
It makes me hesitant to meet new people, especially couples in situations like Life Groups or really any social situation where married couples may be. This idea of ’what normal’ is supposed to look like that I had since I was a kid can make you feel less than, simply because of a marital status. And one that I didn’t have a choice in, at that. LOL. I mean, we gotta laugh at some point, right? We have to. I am thankful that I am at the point now where I can laugh though. I have learned how to talk and really have a comfortable conversation with anyone about almost anything. How much money they make or what their title is doesn’t really make too much of an impression on me, but the fact that I am single and they are not… now that, that would put a pause in my step.
About 7 months ago I decided it was time to get myself back into therapy after a sequence of events that really left me in a place where I honestly did not think I was going to be okay. My therapy sessions in the past were really around grief and learning to cope with Mark’s death. Learning how to live my life without him physically here. I know now that there were really so many much deeper things that needed to be addressed as well. I guess I‘ve known that for many years really even before Mark passed, I knew. I am not sure who originally said this but like ‘they’ say, some of us are like onions and we have to be peeled back a layer at a time. In our due time. I do know.. God’s timing is always perfect. I know that truth.
Our belonging has to be rooted in someone timeless, someone that will never let us down, someone that will never walk away. That only person is God. He gives us worth. He makes us enough. He saw us before we were even born. He created us specifically to be us, in our time, to our people, to our lives. That’s Psalm 139, if you want to read it for yourself. Of course, why would I belong to anyone else. I’ve always been with Him. He’s always been with me. He’s never ever left me. He even comes to track me down when I think I am too grown and am going to try and walk on my own a little…lol.. which never works out well. I am His child. And that is something that there is NO shame in.
This weekend I got my newest tattoo, pic is above. Child of God. I just wanted a reminder, right there on my arm, to look down and remember, I am His. I am His. So, I’ve got this life stuff. Me and God have got it! I’ve got new and exciting adventures to come. Just as I am because I am His child. I am His child.
On my way home from the tattoo appointment there was the most fabulous rainbow. Call me a hopeless romantic but I think God placed that in the sky just for me. Yes, I am His child and He promises to always be wIth me. Always. That my friends, is good stuff!!
Much Love ♥️
Michelle
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- Shine: Stepping into the role you were made for by Allison Allen
- Journey to A New Beginning After Loss by Scott Reall
- NIV Life Application Study Bible
- Tyndale NLT Girls Life Application Study Bible
- Breaking Free by Beth Moore
- Entrusted by Beth Moore
- Fervent by Priscilla Shirer
- The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams
- How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
- Rediscovering Israel by Kristi McLelland
- Life After Life by Raymond Moody