I AM WOMAN, PART 1

Revealing your feeling is the beginning of healing.

“When I kept silent, my bones wasted away….Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity…and you forgave the guilt of my sin.”

Psalm 32:5

A verse in the Bible says, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”

I love that in my Bible, the last part of that verse has an exclamation point after it, meaning, THE NEW HAS COME! 

I am indeed a new creation in Christ!  I am now incredibly different from what I used to be.  Perhaps it is more accurate to say that the way I am now is the genuine me, as opposed to the false me I was living before. 

Years ago, I appeared to be okay. 

I was a functioning person.  I handled all my responsibilities and did the things expected of me.  But on the inside, I was a mess—I was very fearful, terrified of rejection, easily hurt, and extremely angry.  I didn’t know why all those feelings were there, but I didn’t realize you could feel any other way.  I believed everyone struggled with rage and fear—they were just better at hiding it than I was.

I’ve written in previous posts about how God worked in my life to heal me from alcoholism.  (Slippery Thoughts Part 1; Slippery Thoughts Part 2; and Slippery Thoughts Part 3.) Once I stopped drinking, all the feelings I was trying to hide rose to the surface and had to be dealt with.  That’s when God stepped in and helped me discover the root of these feelings, and many changes occurred in me.  But He wasn’t through with me.  There was more to come.

God was helping me to face every hurtful thing from my past that had kept me from being all I was created to be, the genuine me. 

That time of my life was a season of deep healing for me.  Through loving friends, careful counseling, and powerful times of prayer, God revealed layers of hurt, going deeper until every root was exposed.  I recalled memories of sexual abuse when I was a little girl, leaving me with deep roots of fear and shame.  But deeper still came something hindering me and causing me great pain.  And that was self-hatred.  I had no feeling of worth or value. 

Most devastating of all, I hated myself as a woman, a female.  In fact, I hated all women and all female or feminine things.  I know that sounds very strong, but deep within me was the feeling that women were of no actual worth, no value, that they were to be despised.  Part of that was how I was raised—women in my family of origin were not valued and cherished—they were put down and humiliated, easily dismissed.  The other part came from the fear and shame of being sexually abused.

So I learned to hate or despise women, including myself. 

Not that I got along any better with men; men terrified me.  I never really felt safe with anyone.

I lived a woman’s role while trying not to be a woman.  I was a wife and mother.  I had two sons and was very glad I didn’t have a daughter because I didn’t think I knew how to be a mother to a little girl.  I tried to avoid all things female and feminine.  My clothes and the décor of our home tended to be dark, plain, no character. 

I knew someone who was strongly and securely feminine, and I used to dread visiting her home.  It was cozy and filled with lovely, feminine touches.  My husband pointed out that I would always be critical of her home after visiting there, and he wondered why I disliked it so much.  I didn’t realize I was coming across like that, but he was right when I thought about it.  Her home was oozing with femininity, and I couldn’t stand it.

Saddest of all, I confess to you that I was thrilled when I needed to have a complete hysterectomy.  The very organs that made me female, I was happy to be rid of.  Please understand that just as I didn’t realize the truth about my drinking, I also didn’t know the truth about hating myself as a woman.  There’s a word for it—misogyny, the hatred of women, and all things relating to women.

Then I had several unusual experiences. 

The first was one night, just as I was falling asleep and was in like a twilight sleep, I heard a voice say, “You are female.”  I came fully awake, stunned at what I just heard.  I woke my husband and told him, “Guess what?  I just heard a voice say, “You are female!”  My sleepy husband looked confused and said, “Well, what did you think you were?”  And suddenly, it hit me.  I replied, “Nothing.  I’m nothing.”

Next, I was listening to a psychologist on a radio program, and he said he’d never met any woman who was pleased with the size of her breasts.  Well, he never met me!  I never thought about my breasts, let alone care about what size they were.  Then this psychologist asked, “What kind of woman is your mother?”  That stumped me.  I realized I had never thought of my mother as a woman.  She was just my mother.

The last thing—and all these things happened in quick succession—was a vivid dream I had.  In it, I was eight months pregnant.  I knew it was a girl, and I was ecstatic!  My two young sons were with me in this dream, and I looked down on them with great love, but I was elated that now I would have a girl!

What was happening?  Why all these thoughts about women?  Being that I had a dream that I was 8 months pregnant, was God trying to tell me that something was about to begin?

Not long after that, I attended a conference where one of the topics was misogyny.

During the talk, as they described someone who hates women and all things relating to women, I realized they were describing me!  I abruptly came face to face with my self-hatred.  How could this be?  I was a woman—how could I hate what I was? 

My heart was broken, and I felt grief-stricken.  God had shown me a profound, hidden truth about myself.  How could I despise myself, whom a loving God had created, blessed, and declared good?  Did I know better than God?  That is pride, and God calls pride a sin.

I confessed my sins of pride and self-hatred right there and asked God to forgive me.  I instantly felt flooded with His forgiving love and heard Him speak right to my heart, “Jean, I have always loved you.  I have never despised you.  You are good, and I love you just the way you are.”

Those were words my heart had always longed to hear.  I felt as if I had been set free, as if a massive hindrance in my life was suddenly gone, and the path of life was clear for me to travel.

Next time I will tell you of the astonishing transformation that took place in my life following that revelation. 

The changes didn’t happen overnight.  Once I stopped hating myself, it took a little while for God to re-orient my thinking.  I’ll tell you all about it next week!