self-protection.

On the bus ride home from Awaken 2012, I created a 30-minute testimony/sermon in my head on self-protection. I realized that: 1) God was doing something incredibly deep in this area of my life 2) I create sermons in my head? and 3) I want to blog. Although what I have to say isn’t exactly mind-blowing and not even fully developed, I figured that getting it down is not a bad thing. As a result, “hidden” has emerged. (Hidden was the name of my old blog.) Kind of cheesy, I know. But, before I give you my self-protection sermon, I need to explain “hidden.” Feathers and arrows are God’s love signs to me. Feathers represent his refuge and protection of me, hidden in his wings and feathers (Psalm 91:4). As for arrows, I’ve gotten a prophetic word that I am an arrow. Thank you, Allison McBrayer! It really has stuck with me though, and one day I’ll make a post of all the intricacies of the prophetic word. However, as a polished arrow, I am hidden in the shadow of God’s hand (Isaiah 49:2). Hence, “hidden” is what this is called, but knowing myself, I will probably change it a lot. (Look at that, it's already changed.) Anyways, here it goes…

My definition of self-protection is the manipulation of circumstance or perception to avoid hurt, pain, and rejection driven by a distrust in God. Self-protection is incubated. It’s not a sudden development because it is the walls we build brick by brick made of the clay from the past. The clay from the past is our sins and the sins of men against us: rejection, false identity, lies that took root, etc. And the mortar (the stuff that holds bricks together in a wall) is fear, bitterness, and unforgiveness. 

My journey with Jesus through my self-protection has been beautifully hard. Wow. Hated. it. And loved it at the same time. It starts at the beginning though. I didn’t grow up in a home that loved Jesus. Until I was in first grade, I was raised by and lived with my grandparents. I saw my parents on the weekends. In my grandparents’ home, I experienced my first taste of the life the enemy had planned for me. Innocence was robbed from me, and after my grandma died and I moved in with my parents, a seed of fear budded in my little heart. I feared everything and felt utterly unprotected. For the first month of first grade, I literally cried every day when my dad left me at school. Eventually, I learned to stop crying, and instead, I grew an independent spirit that I am now trying to diminish. (Side note: I still cry a lot just not when my parents leave me at school. Ha.) This independent spirit pulled me up by my bootstraps and said, “Sarah, you have to protect yourself. You have to teach people how to love you. You have to teach people how to value you. Don’t let people in until they prove themselves trustworthy.”

In elementary and middle school, I didn’t ask many questions. I simply wanted to appease my parents and fit in. It was not until high school that that wasn’t enough anymore. My parents forced me to go to private Christian school. I went with three girls from my middle school, who were just as broken and lost as I was. From the get-go, I wanted nothing to do with Jesus and his Christians. I rebelled my freshman year a lot, but God, he doesn’t give up. After a series of events, my friends got kicked out. I was left alone and at rock-bottom. I needed Jesus. I heard the gospel for the first time at a chapel and sincerely gave my life to him. I loved Jesus a lot, but the reality of the cross had yet hit me. I knew who he was, but I had no idea who he said I was.

Even though I knew Jesus, the question mark on my chest led me to a season of complete and utter brokenness. Preface, I love my mom. These past couple of weeks, I have this deep love and compassion for her. She is broken, so broken, and I believe that God is continuing to pursue the heck out of her. Her responses stem from a place of deep hurt and pain, and she loved me the best she knew how. With that said, she viewed my newfound love for Jesus as utter betrayal to her and how she raised me. I faced constant degradation, and my identity was crushed. I was also dating. Another story, but not good for my identity either. I was in a dark place, and brick by brick I built my walls.

But God, he is good. The summer after my junior year, I met Lena Elizabeth Waters, now known as Lena Satterlee. For the first time, someone told me who I was in Jesus, that I had victory, that I was made for more. Somehow, I ended up at Baylor and in Lena’s Lifegroup, where I got discipled and experience the freedom and power of the God. My life got radically transformed, as I learned my identity in Jesus and his truth. I experienced the family of God. Before, I had never seen people love Jesus the way I see them love Jesus in my community now. I got so, so free! However, it wasn’t until this past year that I realized what self-protection was and that I have self-protection issues. Ha. 

I love that song by James Mark. “The boundary lines have fallen for me in good places…” I’m singing it now. But I picture a huge plot of land, and God saying, “This is part of me that I have set aside for you and only you.” And then I picture my walls of self-protection making up this tiny, rectangular settlement in the middle of the huge plot of land. I picture myself in the middle of that brick settlement. We build our own boundary lines, and ultimately gip ourselves of intimacy and abundance with God. We let avoiding pain, hurt, and rejection become more important than getting more of Jesus. The walls of self-protection keep us from the fullness of what God has and says, “I trust my flesh more than the Spirit of God.” We gip ourselves of community as well because again we trust who we are and our feelings more than the Spirit of God inside others.

Examples of self-protection in my own life are really silly. God has been revealing them to me a lot lately. For a long time, I convinced myself that I didn’t like talking in front of big groups. What a joke. I just didn’t want to face the rejection of someone never asking me to lead or to speak. Another way I self-protect is by avoiding all situations where I could be rejected or hurt. That is a little broader, but recently, my parents have separated. I detached myself from the situation entirely for a time. Thinking that if I didn’t hear or think about it, it wouldn’t affect me. Yeah, right. Also, if I got a corporate word, I wouldn’t share it with Carl Gulley, the college pastor, because I didn’t want to face the rejection of not being asked to share it with the group. Here’s one of the more twisted ones: with certain people, I learned to hide parts of who I really was because they had been rejected in the past. I took what my mom, my ex-boyfriend from high school and other people had said in my past and chose to operate out of a false identity. I hid my true sense of humor and my weird quirks and my emotional side because I didn’t want who I really was to be rejected. I thought that if a facade of who I was was rejected, it wouldn’t hurt as bad.

Avoiding the pain had somewhere along the way become my idol. My self-protection was driven by bitterness and unforgiveness. Eventually, when I let go of those things… which was quite recently I might add. It was like a fog had been lifted. The mortar of my walls of self-protection no longer had hold. And the walls started coming down. I am still in the process of deconstructing my walls, but I am realizing that God is good and trustworthy. I am learning to trust God, but despite what I feel, God has already shown himself trustworthy on the cross! Instead of laying the sins of men on the body of Jesus, I used them as bricks for my walls. But praise God that he is for us knowing him and his unfailing love.

We, as a people, must realize that God is our protector. And the pain and hurt isn’t even the worse thing. Absence from God and a lack of intimacy with God are the worse things. When the solution to our pain becomes our ultimate goal, we take our eyes off the prize, Jesus himself. It’s not until we realize that Jesus is all that we need and want that the walls of self-protection come down. When they come down, we get to experience the abundance and intimacy of God (the beautiful plot of land). We not only get to land, but we get to explore the boundary lines he made. We are not orphans. We will not choose to live as such because when we say yes to Jesus, we are adopted as children of God and admitted as members of the family of God. We do not need to protect ourselves. We don’t need to make sure we get what’s “ours.” God is faithful and trustworthy.

That’s all I have right now.

-Sarah