Issues

Once I hit forty, I made annual wellness visits a priority. Yesterday during my checkup, the doctor sat down across from me and after going through my physical health, she asked about my mental health – Do I feel depressed? Do I have any issues? And let me say that I love that she includes mental well-being in her assessment. She was my doctor through the divorce year, the covid years, and all the years in between, since 2013. So I did not even hesitate to say with confidence and a bit of humor, “Oh, I have issues.”

Boy, do I have issues. I’m five years out from divorce. I’ve had walls up to keep me safe. I’ve just recently gotten to a place that I think of letting down the drawbridge one day, but even those thoughts make me panic sometimes because granting access means potential harm. And that is scary stuff.

I don’t ever want to feel not-enough again. I honest to God would rather be alone and content with who I am than dating or married and doubting anything about myself. I know what God says of me and speak those Truths to myself, but roots of rejection run deep and fear festers in those wounds.

And fear, I’d say, is the biggest issue for me. Fear of rejection, fear of pain, fear of loss, fear of the unknown, fear of letting someone close to the kids and them being hurt again, fear of feeling a fool again, fear fear fear.

But, “There’s no fear in love, perfect love casts out fear.” (1 John 4:18) So if I’m going to allow love past the gate, I have to work through these fears, right? But HOW? If I’m not sure that imperfect man can love perfectly, how will I ever get past the fear? That is a question down deep in my soul.

1 John 4:18 has been a favorite of mine since teen years, but I had not looked back at the surrounding verses in some time. Verses 16-19 say, “We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him. By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, we also are in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. We love, because He first loved us.”

I trust the love God has for me. I feel no fear about the surety of His great love. If man remains in God, and God Himself is love, then God’s love is in that man. God’s love in man makes it possible for love to be perfected in him – not that he’ll be perfect, but that he grows to love like God. Confidently and boldly because of Christ in him. And since confidence and boldness are opposite to fear, they can not co-exist, and the perfected love of God in us drives out fear.

Whew. I hope you were able to follow that. The question was, “If I’m not sure that imperfect man can love perfectly, how will I ever get past the fear?” The answer from these verses seems to be that if imperfect man loves a perfect God, then he comes to love like Him. And isn’t that what we want – to sense God in someone so much that the fears are pushed back…to feel safe enough that we let down the drawbridge and maybe start working toward taking walls down and overcoming our issues?

We’ve established that I have issues. I think it’s time for me to re-visit therapy. Maybe start on my side of the wall, chipping away at the things that would hinder perfect love if God ordained it, and letting His love work in me so that I love more and more like Him. Then, even if He never ordains another love for me, at least His love in me will cast out the fears that built my walls.