Overwhelmed with Joy

Today I'm totally overwhelmed with joy because of the goodness & kindness of the Lord. 😊

Today I'm totally overwhelmed with joy because of the goodness & kindness of the Lord. 😊

This is a follow-up post of my previous post, Leading from the Stop & the testimony of the process to my breakthrough after being unraveled by reading "Another crisis will befall you. It’s not a case of ‘if’, but ‘when’. And when your world seems to come crashing down to an absolute halt, remember three things:

1. You’re not in trouble

2. We believe in you

3. We’re here to help"

in Elias' book, Leading from the Stop, which felt like God was speaking to me directly.

Some more fruit, I've recognised were:

• Apprehension towards men & people in authority.

• Refusal to become a teacher & leader.

• Why can I believe God would come through for others, but not for myself?

Whilst working through my recognition worksheet to get to the root of my inability to receive these statements I had yearned to hear all my life, the Holy Spirit resurfaced many painful memories that I had habitually buried to numb my pain.

When I was 7, we were living on the plot (small holding) in Vanderbijlpark. At the time both mom & dad were barely home & when they were, they were emotionally unavailable. Mom was working at the Holiday Inn, often sleeping out & dad would go straight to the pub after work & get home drunk in the wee hours of the night. Stefan & I would be home alone.

They had a new bed with a built-in radio & a sleep timer. I was afraid of the dark & would hear all kinds of strange noises whilst waiting to fall asleep at night so before I went to bed, I would switch their radio on & set the timer for an hour to drown out the noise. Even the ruffling of the wind would often send shivers down my spine & occasionally, still does.

Since I started school, my brother, Stefan & I were always in the same class, although he was 14 months older than I. In one of our many primary schools we had a maths teacher who would pit us against each other. She would threaten to punish the one with the lowest grades, which of course would always be me because Ouboet was a math whizz. Her punishments were severe. She would often stand behind us whilst we’re working & if we made a mistake, grab us by the hair & twist it.

This experience would come back to haunt me in high school when I was struggling to keep up with the higher-grade maths in Standard 8 because our ex-university tutor teacher got angry & verbally abusive whenever we didn't understand what she explained the first-time round. I eventually stopped asking & then the next year dropped down to standard grade because I just couldn't cope & had vowed never to ask for help or be needy. That failure of course brought with it a great sense of shame.

When I was my first year of high school, I was sitting at my desk doing homework one day when mom got angry at me for something & just came up behind me & slapped me against the head.

Then, one day mom came home & announced that she had decided to ship us off to the German boarding school in Lüneburg, 4 & half hours away from home, supposedly because we were losing our ability to speak the language, not that anyone ever had conversations with us in any language, I might add. One of my biggest struggles to this day, is having those open, honest conversations to translate what’s going on in my heart for people to understand where I’m at & what's going on in my heart. The silence in my life has often been deafening & overwhelming. I felt rejected, abandoned & unwanted most of my life.

This also meant changing schools yet again this being number 5 since I started school just days before I turned 6. Once again, I was the “new kid on the block” trying to fit into an environment that seemed cold & heartless. There was a strict routine & rigid discipline when we stepped out of line. The school, Catholic church & the parsonage were all on the same property as the boarding house. We’d have to be up & ready very early in the morning for Bible study before breakfast, that being the first time in my life except for when I was christened, as a baby that I’d ever set a foot in church.

For the first few months, I would get "home" from school every day to find the contents of my cupboard strewn on the floor by the house mistress because it wasn’t packed neat & tidy enough. I would have to re-pack it before I could go out to play with the other kids but by the time I was done, I’d just resort to sitting alone on my bed, waiting for the next bell to ring in study hour or the next meal or activity since I decided very early in life, that friendships don’t last, so I would just remain on the outside looking in. This would have been where my OCD with neat & tidy started because I decided to “be perfect” and perform just to not get in trouble. The other kids would tease me for having to constantly re-pack my cupboard so I decided if I complied & worked to perfection, I wouldn’t stand out or be seen to be teased for getting it wrong.

When I was about 13, I was molested by a drunk family friend who had come to visit.

Over the years, I became a master of packing everything all into perfectly tidy little heaps & that obsession eventually morphed into packing my kitchen cupboards, tins all having to face the same way, same with cups. It even surfaced when packing up for a move. By the time I was 18, I had packing boxes down to such a skill that you could fall with a crockery box without having anything break. I kid you not, but by that time I stopped counting at 30 house moves excluding the stints to boarding school. Looking back now, I realise that I’ve done the same packing in boxes with my emotions.

For decades I would get annoyed inwardly when Clive, the kids & the domestic worker couldn’t keep the kitchen cupboards neat & tidy until I finally just gave up on it. Today I see that same need for having it all tidy in my boys, especially my eldest, who was subjected to my OCD for longer. I kind of eased off a bit when Misha was born because he was like a whirlwind & there just wasn’t any way I could keep up the tidy little boxes, because he’d throw things out of the cupboards just to climb in there.

Every so often when I was upset, I would go on a cleaning spree to suppress the anger with perfection in the home. Jesse once told me they were afraid of me when I was angry, although I don’t remember ever lashing out at them when they were little but I did start to loose control after moving to New Zealand. When I had my breakdown in 2018, I flopped & swung the other way so now I’m struggling to keep things neat & tidy.

I'm not sure exactly what drove my striving for perfection with schoolwork. I always worked hard for good grades (80%+) but never received any acknowledgement from mom or dad. Even teachers would constantly remark that "I could do better than that.". I suspect it was my vow to prove myself good enough & worthy. I'm reminded of a day in high school when I asked to attend athletic meet, after I got second place in hurdles but mom said no because I didn't get first place.

In April 1996, there was my 40-year old spinster office manager, Prue, who was very angry because I was pregnant 6 weeks into my new job I admitting we weren't planning having children yet during my job interview. However, 4 weeks later I found out I was pregnant right after getting back from unpaid leave for a wedding in Cape Town. One week later I left the office unattended due to being hospitalised for 3 days because of an ectopic pregnancy, whilst she & the Regional Manager attended the RGM.

After losing my baby, she told me to "get over it because 6 weeks pregnant wasn't even pregnant". That's when my high functioning depression started to crack. I ended up on anti-depressants & the more I tried to be perfect & not make mistakes the more I set myself up for failure. This was when the imposter syndrome was solidified in my heart. Her attitude as well as the lack of support from family & friends were the reason why 3 subsequent pregnancies & miscarriages remained unannounced & ungrieved.

For some obscure reason, Prue didn't like me, although my boss, Trevor did and for the next few months I couldn't do anything right in her eyes. One evening Clive got home from work & found me on the floor, crying my heart out because of her treatment that day. He phoned her but that didn't end well & resulted in even more bullying & pressure to perform. By the time I found out in early November that I was pregnant again, she had finally convinced Trevor to start disciplinary action upon which Clive instructed me to resign because, he wasn't going to allow the work stress to endanger my pregnancy.

In my last job as IT & Office Administrator, as a half day employee I was constantly taking work home, because over the years as people left, my boss refused to replace them & I ended up picking up the slack. So many times, he would tell me to do something without giving the parameters & then when I completed the job, he would criticise what was wrong with it. The stress was affecting my health & he would often hover behind me criticising everything I was doing, even though in the 5 years I was doing the job I have proven to be right with what I was doing so many times. To this very day, having someone hover over my shoulder whilst I work brings up a tension that makes it hard for me to focus on the task at hand. After I left he employed 3 full-time employees to do the jobs I was doing in half a day.

During the course of my childhood I judged:

• mom & dad for not having time for me & caring about me

• mom for being unfaithful & critical

• mom & dad for being cold, distant, unloving, emotionally absent & misrepresenting God

• anger as violent & scary

• men as abusive

• men can’t be trusted

• men as unsafe

• I can’t be trusted

• caregivers won’t protect me

• people in authority are mean & can't be trusted

• drunkards are violent & abusive

• That leadership came with collateral damage of people being wounded as leaders progressed up the ladder of success. If that’s leadership, I didn't want it.

• Wounding others as failure.

• Prue as mean & heartless

• My judgments didn't stay in tidy little boxes but morphed & mutated to all people in authority that are meant to love, nurture, lead, guide & protect me

When we judge others, we doom ourselves to do those very things & hence I became like what I judged:

• As a post-abortion baby, I was incubated in fear & I judged the world as unsafe.

• I stopped being a daughter even before birth & shut mom & dad out before they could even try to love me or make amends for the oh no I heard in the womb

• I refused to trust

• I refused relationship

• I threw myself away because I felt I wasn't worth anything

• Kept people at a distance & shut them out

• I became cold, distant & emotionally absent towards Clive & our boys

• My boys were afraid of me when my suppressed anger erupted & even though showered them with love & affection, I was emotionally absent for them & didn't know how to have deep conversations

Because of my bitter root judgments, I came to expect that:

• Rejection & abandonment is part of life

• Caregivers won’t protect me

• Men will abuse me

• I must perform to be worthy

• Leaders are verbally abusive & uncaring

• Everyone will blame & criticise me

• Nobody will believe me

• Nobody will help me

• I will always be alone

I tried to 'protect my heart with the inner vows:

• I must protect myself

• I must prove myself worthy

• I won’t show them I’m vulnerable

• I’ll be strong

• I won’t trust

• I won’t cry

• I’ll defend myself

• I’ll take care of myself

• I won’t depend on anybody

• I won’t need anybody

• I’ll be FINE!

• I won't get angry

I kept these vows in place with were the habitual ways of:

• Hardening my heart

• Isolation

• Independence

• Rejecting others before they could reject me

• Self-sabotage

• Dissociation

I came to believe the LIES that

• I’m a mistake

• I shouldn't be here

• I'm bad & dirty

• I can’t do anything right

• Everything’s my fault

• I can’t be trusted

• I’m worthless

• I’m a coward for not standing up for myself

• Molestation is not rape, thus not sexual abuse.

• Others may have been abused because I remained silent.

• It’s not so bad, others have it worse

• I have to help myself

I used:

• Anxious eating

• Performance

• People pleasing

• Workaholism

• Perfectionism

• Peace keeping

• Busyness

• Burying memories

• Numbing pain

• Numb scrolling

rather than seeking comfort & protection with the Lord, to medicate & numb my pain.

I opened the door to the force of darkness through my sin when I came into agreement with spirit of death through performance, self-hatred as well as believing the lies that I was a mistake & I shouldn't be here.

Due to all the wounding caused by parents, teachers, caregivers, bosses & leaders I judged, came to expect, vowed & came to believe the LIES that I'm to blame for everything that's wrong, nobody believes in me & nobody would help me.

I spent my life captive between the fear of failure & the fear of success. Life experiences had taught me that success came at cost of people being trampled on, side-lined & wounded. That to me spelled failure.

I had judged carers, authority & leaders as uncaring, cruel & heartless & decided if that's what leadership looked like, I didn’t want it.

Judgements, expectations, inner vows & foundational lies make parts of our heart inaccessible to God's healing touch.

It took a few weeks to dig deeper to get to the roots, but by Friday morning, I was beyond myself with the weight & shame of my sinful responses. I desperately needed someone to hear my confessions & repentance so I could break free from the captivity & couldn't bear the thought of having to wait for a prayer minister to be available to help me pray through it all.

Scripture teaches us to "Therefore, confess your sins to one another [your false steps, your offenses], and pray for one another, that you may be healed and restored. The heartfelt and persistent prayer of a righteous man (believer) is able to accomplish much [when put into action and made effective by God—it is dynamic and can have tremendous power]." James 5:16 AMP

I was due to meet Elias & dashed into the office early because I was desperate to have someone hear my confessions. Fortunately he was willing to help me pray through the confession & repentance of my sinful responses to all trauma caused by abusers, caregivers, teachers, authority, bosses & leaders in general.

The joy & freedom that came with dismantling this stronghold is phenomenal.💃🎶

I met friend for lunch & celebrated this breakthrough, then rounded an awesome day off with girls's night out at City Impact's Flourish evening.

God is so good!