The Lies We Believe

The most fearsome sight you will ever behold is a female INTJ while she is PMSing.

Seriously. I intimidate myself sometimes.

And while I am in the dark and twisty place of PMSing INTJ-ness (a truly terrifying place, to be sure), I believe a lot of lies about myself and others. Things I know to be true in the Light, I begin to question in the sudden Darkness.

Or, you know, the throes of hormonal mood swings.

Here are 3 Lies I’ve believed this week:

1. I Am Fat.
2. I Am Undesirable.
3. I Hate Everyone.

I Am Fat.

It’s true that I weighed in at 132 this morning, which is 7 lbs heavier than I would like to be, but I always weigh about 4 lbs more on the days leading up to my period (sorry, guys. Deal with it or stop reading). At 5’4″, even with this extra monthly tonnage, I am still well within the healthy weight range for my age, gender and height.

I just FELT fat because, besides it being “that time of the month” resulting in bloating and clothes not fitting right, my hormones have been all out of whack, which increases my sensitivity and insecurities.

I read a book a few years ago by Beth Moore called “So Long, Insecurity.” I HIGHLY recommend it to all women everywhere. This means you, girlfriend. I consider myself a fairly confident woman, but she helped me identify some blind spots for myself (e.g. perfectionism as a form of insecurity) as well as the root causes of some of those insecurities.

Beth writes of battling our insecurities, “We’re going to have to let truth scream louder to our souls than the lies that have infected us.”

I Am Undesirable.

In addition to feeling fat, I felt generally undesirable this week. Besides perfectionism, I also struggle with the fear of rejection. And Bryan has been distant this week. We had our first major fight on Sunday, and on Monday, he took this other girl Jenn out for a steak dinner for her birthday. Umm… what?!

Not only was I horrified that he was taking another woman out 1:1 for a steak dinner, but ironically, I had been craving a nice, juicy steak all weekend (you know, period-induced anemia that has my body craving iron – i.e. red meat). It’s true that Bryan freely volunteered this information of going out with Jenn, and he reassured me that he was doing it out of obligation because she’d taken him out for a steak dinner for his birthday a few months back, but I was still upset – I think, understandably so. But fortunately, I was able to rein in my inner Grumpy Cat/Angry Unikitty (apparently my spirit animal is a cat of some sort…?). Ever-perceptive Bryan is hopefully none the wiser about the Green-eyed Jaguar poised to pounce out of his jealous maybe-almost-kind-of-girlfriend.

Beth writes about this particular struggle, “We need a place we can go when, as much as we loathe it, we are needy and hysterical… I need someone who will love me when I hate myself… As if the battle isn’t hard enough, we sabotage ourselves, submerging ourselves with self-condemnation… How often do we think to ourselves, I should be handling this better?”

I Hate Everyone.

Yep. I feel this way most of the time, monthly period or not. People suck. They constantly disappoint me. I try to lower my expectations of humanity, but I fail. I want better for people than they want for themselves, and that makes me sad. I don’t want to have to lower my expectations of humanity. I want people to step up to the plate and be the amazing men and women they are capable of being.

The truth is, I don’t hate everyone. Or even most people. In fact, my problem isn’t that I care too little but that I care too much! The opposite of love is not hate; it’s apathy. I’m not a robot or a cold-hearted, calculating villain. I’m a tender-hearted young woman bleeding out for the world to be better than it is.

Beth writes of herself, “I feel everything. My joys are huge, and so are my sorrows. If I’m mad, I’m really mad, and if I’m despondent, I wonder how on earth I’ll go on… God gave me this tender heart, and though I want to give up my chronic insecurity, I really do want to hang on to my heart. I like to feel. When I don’t feel something, it’s like being dead.

“Each heart knows its own bitterness (Prov 14:10). The more intense the pain, the more it feels like nobody understands… Your personality and history shapes your response, just as my own unique background affects mine… For me, this is one profound reason that God, omniscient and omnipresent, has been the vital element in my healing. During particularly lonely or frustrating times, [we feel] that nobody else gets it. But He gets it better than we do. So many times He has shown me where I was coming from instead of the other way around.”

When I believe the Lies of the Darkness, I want to remember to set my eyes on the Truth of the omniscient, omnipotent Father of Lights who sees me as I am, remembers that I am dust, and Loves me.

Authentically Aurora