Today is a good day. When I was 1st diagnosed with Avoidance, I had a lot of bad days. Its important to know and admit where you have been so that you can praise God you are not there anymore, give God the glory for it, learn from the past and have a better future.
For example, I know why things happened in my life. I know because I can look back at them and see patterns and reasons for the mess. I know the traps I fell into back then, so now I can see how to avoid them. Because of my past, I can now have a better future.
We often want to run from our past. We look at our past and just want to forget it ever happened. We see the pain and want to wipe it clean like a dry erase board. We want to pretend that it never happened.
The problem with this is that if you do not recognize the mistakes of the past, and learn from them, you will likely make the very same mistakes in the future. Our past is there for a reason. Everyone has made mistakes. We are human. We mess up. Thats life. We all sin and fall short of the Glory of God.
Everyone leaves out no one.
I mess us, you mess up, your Pastor messes up, the president of the US messes up (some would say that he messes up more than most), your favorite actor or actress messes up. Even Billy Graham messes up.
Show me someone that does not make mistakes and I will show you someone that never does anything!
The point is that there is no such thing as a perfect person. I know you have all heard this before, but do you really believe it?
We live in a society where its just not cool to let your guard down and show your weakness and vulnerability. Men especially are not suppose to show weakness. Men have to be strong no matter what and have to always be cool and hold it together. (On a side note, I think this pressure to always be perfect is why men dont live as long as women)
Pastors are especially guilty of this. Many Pastors are put in high pedestals and are thought to be perfect and without sin. I think many Pastors enjoy this image and even encourage it.
We need to admit our weaknesses. When you are weak, God can be strong in you.
2 Corinthians 12:9
We need to look at our past and learn from it. The Bible is a great example of this. There are lots and lots of examples in the Bible of people that were not perfect and messed up. Even David, the man after Gods own heart (Acts 12:22) messed up. Not only did he mess up, he messed up very badly.
King David saw Bathsheba and decided that he wanted her. Bathsheba was married. Not only did David take her as his own, he had Bathsheba's husband killed so he could have her.
The point of this story, and all the others in the Bible, is that we all mess up. Even Jesus own Disciples messed up. These people learned from their mistakes, repented of them, and made their future better because of their failures.
I also love to use a more modern day (Sort of) analogy for this. Its from an episode of Star Trek Next Generation. Captain Picar had a run in with The Q. Q asked Picard if he regretted anything from his past. Picard said that he regretted a fight that he got into, so Q sent him back to his past so he could change it.
Picard avoided getting into the fight. Then Q sent him back to the present. Because Picard did not get into the fight, in the present he was no longer captain. You see, that fight, even though it was a mistake, was when Picard learned courage and to stand up for himself.
As a result of him not learning this, he no longer had the courage and ability to be a captain. The lesson here is simple but profound.
Don't ignore your past. Don't run from it. Don't pretend it did not happen. Instead, embrace your past and learn from it. If you go puling on the strings of your past, you might just unravel something that God was trying to build you up into the person that he needs you to be.
God can, and did use your past mistakes, to mold you and make you into the person you are today. The disclaimer here is not to let the past rule you either. Dont get angry over the past and let things bother you about it.
We see this all over the Bible. Joseph had a lot of really bad things happen to him. But God was using these things to mold him into the person that he needed him to be and also to get him into the place he needed him to be. If Joseph had said no, and tried to get out of those nasty things that happened to him, he might have never gotten to the place beside Pharaoh and been able to feed his people and save the Egyptians from starvation.
I remember way back when I was 1st diagnosed. I was in the Air Force. That was almost 35 years ago. Up until then, I was called a loner, a hermit, and worse. Most of the kids in high school thought I was gay because I didnt play sports, didnt like girls and I didnt work on cars.
The not liking girls part was fear of the opposite sex. I did not work on cars or play sports mostly due to fear of rejection and not thinking I could do it. Since then, I have filed Bankruptcy, had cars repoed, lost a house to foreclosure, lots more jobs than I can count and more.
I dont see any of this to seek pity or say woe is me. There was a time when I did. There was a time, when I let my past dictate my future. I had a poor past, so I decided that because of it, I was never going to be used of God or be any value to my family, myself, or the world.
Then I made the decision to not let that happen. Yes, it is a conscience decision to do this. Now I am a Pastor and a dad. I also run a non-profit ministry called Needs Met. God let me go through all these things so I could learn what it was like. I can empathize with those that are going through these things because I went through them.
I also have Avoidance so that I can know what others that have Avoidance are going through and try to help them. The point to all this is not Not Give Up. The more struggles you are going through, the more God can use you. Satan would not bother throwing all these things at you if God did not have a great purpose for your life.
The more Satan is working to destroy you, the more that you have great value in the Kingdom of God and he has great plans for you!
This is my log of my issues with living to Avoidant Personality Disorder. My hope is that in writing this, it will help myself and perhaps others that are also struggling with this disorder and others like it. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1tyKSgW-IeaK851gvIjjthije0kOwg3tZxVqKXSC1xXg/viewform I am trying to get more information on this disorder so that we can find commonalities. Perhaps if we can learn more about this, we can figure out how to combat it and get better lives for us all.
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