I am an avoidant personality. Looking back on my life, I guess I always have been. I was probably born this way. It was probably genetic exacerbated by my upbringing and surroundings. I think that everything in my life was a set up to make my condition worse. But who set me up? I assume that it was Satan. It sounds like the old saying, ‘The devil made me do it.” While I don’t advocate taking things to this extreme and blaming every little thing on the Devil, it would seem that he is to blame for a lot.
I am a logically and technically minded person. I am always looking for reasons. Reasons why things happened, or did not happen. I don’t believe in coincidence. I look at my life like a huge jigsaw puzzle. All the pieces just have to fit together.
I could write a novel on all the things that have happened to me in my life that have seemed to be this set up. In fact, I am considering just that. I can see it all fairly clearly. At least as clear as anyone trapped in a physical body can. It seems that my life was written before I was even born. Of course God says this in His word. But did Satan know my life as well?
Perhaps he knew the potential and arranged things in my life to derail me from what God intended. At least this is my theory. When I was a child, I was full of fear. I remember cowering in the corner when no one was home afraid to even move until they got home.
Over the years, I have come a long way in over coming being an Avoidant. But its still there. Now, I can go to the mall and now be overwhelmed by the numbers of people there. I can be in groups of people and survive. Socialization for me is still very clumsy, but I manage as best I can.
I take a vitamin supplement that seems to help. They are expensive, but I would pay most any amount to feel some relief from my social ineptness. Now, I have enrolled in College. I start in the fall. I am scared. Even when I attended Youth With a Mission, I was an outcast. (YWAM is one of, if not the largest, Christian Missions organization in the world) I did not participate any more than I had too. I kept a low profile and never really did plug in as I should have.
I think of it much like any other fear. I refuse to let my fears master me. I will face them as best I can. So, off to college I go. I only hope and pray that God will help me in this. I need to be fully delivered from being an Avoidant. However, I have also thought of it like a thorn in my side. Paul had a thorn in his side that God refused to remove. We dont know what this thorn was, but it may have been something like this. God refused to remove it because he wanted Paul to stay dependent on him. If it was not for this thorn, Paul might start thinking that he was preaching out of his own strength.
God says that when we are weak, He is strong. What better weakness for a Pastor than to be an Avoidant Personality?
