The Heartbreak Of Humility

Humility is never a fun lesson. I think that at least with patience, we understand what we are getting ourselves into when we pray for it. But humility, I am not sure anyone actually ever prays for humility, instead, I think its always drawn from the prayers of others for us who either think or know we need it.

Sadly and too often, it can be those who are closest to us.

Hopefully, these prayers for humility don’t go unnoticed. That is at least until there’s no more grace to be had by the one who’s offering the prayers. If their cry is to not give up on them, I hope it echoes in response, don’t give up on me.

I struggle with fear of abandonment. It’s awful. And quite frankly, only when I last found myself with face firmly planted against the wall did my eyes finally open up to this reality. It was mortifying to look back and see the wake of my actions over the course of my life and the complete devastation my fear of abandonment had caused.

Recently, I wrote about an unnamed person in my life who has had an incredibly difficult struggle with addiction. If I am honest, it has both been the most difficult season in my life as well as the most heartbreaking season of my life. The fear, denial, manipulation, deceit, the [fill in the blank]. It has ripped me to pieces to the point where as I picked up the pieces, those too, were ripped into pieces.

But that’s where it stops. I have my part to play in this too. Sadly, its taken a long hard road to get here.

As one who struggles with abandonment, it’s hard to detach. Its hard to separate the person from the disease, or their addiction. What happens instead is that every time the person falls backwards on to their addiction, I feel abandoned. It breaks me to a core I never knew existed.

What it does is it leads me to a place where often times, I react versus respond.

Recently, I began reading a book called The Journey from Abandonment to Healing by Susan Anderson. It is, in my opinion, the definitive book on abandonment. I am not even done with reading the book and it has already brought so much understanding and breakthrough to my life. It has also brought me much conviction too.

In this, I have begun to identify my emotions. As one who suffers with this, often times, you are plagued with irrational thoughts or you just plain overthink things.

My goodness, I must be awful to live with.

Just understanding this more and beginning to see myself through a different set of lenses quite frankly makes me ill to my stomach. It shatters me that I could be so proactively reactive all because I “think” someone is going to abandon me. Or that someone has abandoned me.

And this, this brings me to a place where humility arrives on the scene.

How I can be at the end of my rope with someone who is struggling so hard with addiction and depression and not first look to my own struggles. If anything is going to help that situation, it sure isn’t going to be me within my own cycle of recidivism.

Now for certain, addiction is serious business. But when coupled with one who struggles with abandonment, can you say hello to codependency?

Today I’m turning the corner from what has been one of the worst week’s of my life. Today I am learning to trust. Today I don’t want to return to yesterday.

Today, I just want grace for my part. I just want to give grace for their’s too.

Today, I just want a new start. (to make things better)

Before its too late.

Photograph of me by @hoopla68 on Instagram