The Stick of Self-Loathing

Similar to a jockey riding a race horse in the Kentucky Derby, whipping the horse's rump to make it perform better, I have found that self-loathing is the stick I use to beat myself when I fail. This is the stick I use to spur myself on to a better course of action, to a better performance.






"What a failure you are!"                                        "You are disgusting."

                          "You are so fat."                                                   "You are a hopeless disappointment."

"Geeze. Gross."                           "You're pathetic."


Words that I would never speak to a living soul, I breathe into my own heart.

And I didn't even realize that I was doing it.

Until now.


The truth is, self-loathing does motivate, but it does not do so for long. It can only motivate while I am beating myself with it mercilessly. Once the beating stops, so does the motivation. This sort of thought process slaps the face of my Creator, for it speaks lies and curses to the very core of who I am -- words that He would never speak to me or over me, words that He does not agree with. This is definitely not the life that He's told me is mine -- a life of freedom, beauty, light, health and love. The life of self-loathing is one of darkness, shame, guilt, and hatred -- and this is not what He chose for me. This is not why He suffered the cross. This is not His best for me.

I have just come to hear these words (that I have been speaking to myself my entire life) over the past few weeks. Like molten lava below the crust of my life, this destructive force begins to pour from below the surface whenever a failure of mine cracks the surface of my I've-got-it-together crust. And with it, this lava brings destruction and death.

A few recent incidents began to crack the hardened crust of my life, allowing this fiery hatred to pour forth into my consciousness.


I got my first speeding ticket EVER. (I'm thirty-five.)

I popped a tire on my van when I hit a curb from taking the corner too fast.

I gained a clothes-are-getting-too-tight amount of weight.



I began see words like "failure" and "disgusting" and "gross" and "horrendous" and "shameful" erupt into my mind. These words -- while so familiar -- were now discordant with the truth He has been revealing to my heart over the past months and years. "Where did these come from?" I wondered. Ah, sweetheart, He said, they have been there all along. But they have played well with the melody of your previous life -- that you were not loved, not good enough, not delighted in. Now that you know that this old melody is not your true heart's song, these curses you have spoken over yourself for years in order to perform better -- these don't sound right with the new melody I've given you, do they?

In His grace, the Lord has chosen now as the time for me to begin to face some of my self-loathing. He has chosen now as the time to begin the process of healing and freedom. He has chosen now to begin to re-train my thinking and to breathe His truth into my thinking about myself.

And He used my recent failings so that He could bring this to my attention.

You see, as long as I am "succeeding" at controlling myself and my environment -- as long as there are no "cracks" in the crust of my life -- the self-loathing just simmers deeply below the surface. There is no need to pull out my "beating stick" because I'm doing all right. But when I fail . . . well, watch out. Here comes the lava which I will quickly fashion into a stick. And here we go again with the beating.

But I'm at a loss. If beating myself into the right course of action is not how I'm supposed to respond to failure in order to bring about change, then what in the world is this process supposed to look? God doesn't want me to over-eat, to get speeding tickets, to continue to replace tires. Does He?

I know that success cannot be a "willful success" -- one that I achieve by myself, by my extremely heroic efforts, by my sheer will-power. I've seen all to clearly that such "success" does not last. It is the self-help epidemic with a nice cloak of prayer-y Christianity, but it is still all flesh. It is still a program doomed for failure, as all self-help programs are. Truly, if I believe that my flesh has been crucified with Christ, then any sort of self-improvement project is nothing more than dressing up a corpse, putting on some makeup and perfume and fancy clothes -- but perfume can't cover up that stench for long, and  soon my failure resurfaces. And so does my self-loathing, bubbling up from below. And out come the stick. And here we go again.

My true success is not "success" at all -- a better word for it is freedom. And freedom doesn't come through control. It only comes when I release control, when I agree that my best efforts are are not going to cut it and that they are, in fact, sin -- that they are willful attempts to fix what I cannot fix, to control what I cannot control, to heal what I cannot heal. These efforts are once again trusting in me -- a fallen and impotent god.



I'd never seen this before. I guess I thought that I was helping Him by handling what I deemed "the small stuff" -- like my eating and driving habits.

But I can't even control those.


Sheesh.


As the Lord has been revealing the fierce and scalding lava of self-loathing in me, my response has been two-fold. Ironically, my first response was . . . that's right -- self-loathing. I really wanted to pull out my stick and beat myself for failing again. But He gently removed that stick from my hand and did not allow me to use it on myself. And so I was just left with sorrow -- a deep-seated grief that I have been hating so fiercely a girl that He loves and delights in so desperately. How it must stab His heart each time I curse myself and speak lies to motivate myself.

And yet up until this point in time, I knew no other way. I had no other options. As a scared little girl who greatly feared disapproval, I did the best I could to avoid it. Sweet little Courtney knew "performing better" as the only way to escape the painful  disapproval that came with failure.

But little Courtney does not deserve to be hated, too. She needs to be embraced as much as grown-up Courtney needs to be embraced.

And so, together, we walk toward Him -- the One who loves us deeply, with all our wounds and fears and pain. We see Him with His arms open, a smile on His face and love in His eyes. As we reach Him, He embraces us fully, speaking words of grace and healing. I am able to thank sweet, little Courtney for doing the best she could with what she had. I embrace her. And in that embrace, a new freedom is born -- one that is born of love, not fear. Behind us, He drives a cross into the ground, and then He takes our hands and walks us away from this point. No more.

I no longer need the stick of self-loathing to motivate better performance. The curses I have spoken in the past are no longer needed. The cross dealt with the sin. From here forward, I am free. Will the lies, curses, and self-loathing still surface? Sure. Right now, they are still habit. But you can bet He's going to be pretty quick to point them out. And then I can ask that He replace them with His words of truth.

My freedom comes when I admit the truth that I am out of control, that I'm scared and fearful, that I don't know how to change without self-loathing. My freedom comes when I confess that I have tried to fix myself and that I have failed miserably.

My freedom comes when I invite Him into my mess, when I ask for His light to shine in the darkness of this area of self-loathing that has been bubbling viciously below the surface of my life.  My freedom comes in dragging this from the darkness and into the light.


My freedom comes in that I will be walking this area, too, with Him.

True freedom. It's not the absence of failure. True freedom is walking each moment, my hand in His, believing the truth He speaks about me and about Himself. This is true freedom.



And this is why He came.



Oh, my Love, walk me toward freedom and emotional health in this area, too. Thank you for loving me fully, for delighting in me completely amidst my mess. Thank you for getting me to this place of seeing my sin. Let's walk forward from here.