Learning to Protect Yourself

Here’s a blog about a lesson I’m currently being taught that really hurts. For me, it’s a 2-part idea. It’s partially about how healthy it is to say no, and how healthy it is to vocalize your needs. 

I’ll start with vocalizing needs, and I’ll start by explaining my prior ideology within it. For pretty much my entire life I’ve viewed myself as less important than others, and to some extent, as being unwanted or annoying. That in and of itself is a problem, but I need to explain more context. I used those mentalities as a reason to withhold the expression of my needs. I saw the world as a place where others got what they wanted or deserved because they had earned it or because they were liked more than me. 

Even in the contexts of family or friendship, I never felt like I had the right to vocalize my opinions because of the potential backlash. I was afraid to upset or inconvenience people by any standard. That goes down to a level of even putting my vote in for what restaurant I want to go to for dinner. If expressing my opinion meant someone else didn’t get the dinner they wanted, then I was hurting them… so I didn’t. 

This bleeds in to my relationships, and oh what a horrible mess that is. I would take steps to make sure that my friend/girlfriend/parent/coworker would be taken care of 100%, but never feel like I had the right to ask for the same thing myself. This would lead me to feel resentful towards that person. In my mind, I would be doing so much for them, but if that was never reciprocated, I would feel unloved. 

But that is so completely unfair to them. Yet somehow I felt like I was doing the right thing because I was making sacrifices for them to be happy. That’s what Jesus did, right?

News flash. Jesus was very particular about who he helped and how he helped them. He was also good at protecting himself. 

This isn’t a linear line of logic, so bear with me. I’m going lack of self-preservation to self-sacrifice, and how Jesus’s model for self-sacrifice applies to both. 

When it came to serving his communities, Jesus did not see and treat 100% of the people he was in proximity with. The popular story of him healing the lame man at the pool of Bethsaida has some interesting context. There were so many people there WHOM HE DID NOT HEAL. He said yes to one man, but he said no to so many others that day. He could have thrown up a “Free Healings” billboard and went to town. That’s what I would have done.

Now, this comparison breaks down on some level because Jesus’s reasoning is different from mine. Maybe Jesus healed that man because he was the only one at that pool who would come to faith and actually spread the gospel. Who knows. 

For me, I’m learning to understand that I’m not a cornucopia for people to come and take from until I don’t have anything left. I can say no to things, and I can ask for help. I can operate in weakness, just like the struggles our biblical forefathers had. There’s a lot more context here, so I may have to do a part 2. But I’m weary. 

 

As always, thank you for your time. God bless you.