In the last few months, our GIFT project has been very busy working with a number of people who needed help making a fresh start. Most of them have escaped from abusive relationships and need help in setting up a new home from scratch. As well as all of the practical needs, we also offer friendship and emotional support, and this can often be a much bigger need that takes a lot longer to work through.
When we go through upheavals in our lives (a relationship break up, redundancy, long-term illness, a bereavement, etc) our mental and emotional wellbeing takes a battering. We can feel disconnected, like we don’t belong anywhere, feel like a failure, feel like we are worthless. Our identity is wrapped up in that relationship, job, our health, and we can struggle to know who we are when they are taken away.
At times like this we can find ourselves focussing on our flaws, failings, doubts and fears… and we need people around us who will encourage us, reassure us, help us get back on our feet, and remind us that we belong… that we are worthy.
A common human need is for a deep sense that we are worthy of love and belonging, and that need is what can sometimes lead us into (and keep us in) toxic relationships. Our self-worth gets tied up in the approval of a partner, employer, or friends, and they use that to manipulate us. An unhealthy focus on our imperfections and fears reinforces that need to seek approval and value from outside ourselves, and we can feel stuck in a whirlpool that sucks us down.
In her book, The Gifts of Imperfection, Brené Brown encourages people to pursue “wholehearted living,” a posture of resilience and compassion that begins with the conviction that “yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn’t change the truth that I am also brave and worthy of love and belonging.”
And that’s hard to do on our own, especially when we have been, or are going through, difficult times... and that’s why we need loving friends and family around us that will remind us that we are worthy.
Early in his ministry, Jesus went into the synagogue in Nazareth and read aloud from the book of the prophet Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” And he declared to the people present that this prophecy was being fulfilled in him.
Then he went out and set people free from blindness, leprosy, paralysis and more. These people were outcasts in society, considered unworthy of belonging, but his actions and his teaching spoke volumes that they were included, that they were loved, that they were worthy. They were worthy not because of anything they’d done or not done, they were loved and included just as they were with all their flaws, imperfections, doubts and fears.
We all need to be reminded of that frequently… no matter what’s happened in our lives, no matter what we have done or not done, no matter our doubts and fears, we need to hear that we are loved, that we belong, that we are worthy.
The Living Well course explores these things, and we were hoping to run it in June, but because of diary clashes, we have had to put it back to September. However, the course is available online, so please do get in touch if you’d like to know more.
My prayer for us all, especially when we face challenges in life, is that we’d find people who will keep reminding us that we are worthy of love and belonging, until we come to know that for ourselves.
Rev Barry Jackson