What do you do?

[anointedteacher]

Feb 21, 2009 13:15:10 GMT -5 vin said:

He may not call. But for the first time in my LIFE I'm not afraid that he won't call. For the first time in my life I'm not saying, "He's not gonna call. He's probably not gonna call". I messed and I apologized with all my heart. And I'm not afraid.

Giants and Nina I was wondering how you guys read my post and came up with Fear and Rejection. I wondered, "How did they get that out of my post? But it was the Holy Ghost, right in line with the theme that He gave our bishop for the month of February. I went from thinking I didn't have any fears to facing my two BIGGEST OF MY WHOLE LIFE.

I feel so much better. It feels so good not to be afraid

One of my great fear was/is rejection.... I missed out on many opportunities including marriage... It all boil down to not loving yourself... How can anyone love you for you, when you don't love yourself.... It may not be your case.... but by reading your post, about the girl who was pretty than you and the way you look and dress, say alot. A mature man want someone he can spend a lifetime with, love and appreication, not barbie. You are one of the most gifted and intelligent person on this BB. You have the ability to write and express yourself in details and a special anointing. I've seen women 200+ pounds, not the world definition of pretty... yet married to a good man and happy and seen Barbies in and out of bad relationship and divorce...

Most men can not handle everything that is going on in a woman life... there are certain things you can not share with a man. One , you afraid he will leave you, how U feel about yourself, not be as pretty as the next person (the man have his own definition of what and who attractived to him). You can not throw an heavy load on a man, that stuff is for God to handle, He the only one that can full in your void, not man.

I know you asked Giant and nina...

also what work with fear of rejection, is fear to fail and pride

[vin]

AT: I appreciate your posts too. I wasn't just asking Giants and Nina. But I've received a lot from them. I know the Holy Ghost used them to minister directly to my need. Let me share something. Nina sent this to me PM and she said it's okay to share it on the post and I'll share my responses too.

[vin]

Okay this is what Nina shared with me.

Hi Sister
I am just answering this way, because there was so much in those few last posts of yours, I had to - literally - recover from it and from the intensity of your pain coming through it....

I hope this helps, and I am praying for you, because the Lord has so much more in store for you...

Quote:
This month our pastor/bishop said that the Lord gave him the theme "Feed Your Faith and Starve Your Fear". I thought to myself, "Hmmm. I can't say that I have any fears right now."

But the Lord let me feel some left shoulder pain, and middle of the back pain and I went to the doctor. I failed the first stress test, which set me up for the nuclear stress test. But half way through the process I realized what was really happening. I had a fear and an anxiety that had been lying really low for most of my life, but especially since watching my mother die in 2006. I had panic attacks/heart palpatations for several weeks after that. I would feel my heart doing in my chest what I saw my mother's heart doing in her chest while she was dying/cardiac arrest. I was talking to my sister about it and she told me it was nothing but panic attacks. She prayed for me and rebuked the enemy. The panic stopped, but I realized a few weeks ago that the anxiety just quieted down. So God let me have some symptoms to send me back to the doctor just so He could uncover my hidden fear. I passed the nuclear stress test with no abnomal anything. My heart is fine, except it had fear in it. (wow, this is for my future book)

- There is a difference between fear and anxiety.

With fear, we usually know what we are afraid of, we can put a name on it. It does not make it have less of an impact on us, but at least we know what we are dealing with, and where to start.
Anxiety comes out of nowhere, and can happen any time, anywhere, for just no reason, and make you feel like you are losing your mind, literally, over nothing that you can think of if, in fact, it was possible to think in the middle of a full fledge panic/anxiety attack..

Giants mentioned facing the fear head on, and it can happen in different ways for each of us, some basics are the same though. Then, we can get crafty and play around it, just ignore it long enough until it is actually repressed, but it is still there, just not formulated openly. So, the anxiety attacks, which are very real with all the physical symptoms that come with them, are just another manifestation of the "unspoken" fear.

Did you identify the fear you have experienced since losing your mother?

Fear of losing a loved one? Even as adults, when we lose a parent - as a friend of mine said to me - we are all orphans... So, in some ways, losing a parent, even as a grown up, gives us an "abandoned baby syndrom", and it does linger, depending on the relationship we had with the person who left...

My "saving grace", personally, has always been the scripture "we did not receive a spirit of fear but of love, power, and of a sound mind". That's how I drew the line between overpowering anxiety and me, and how I claimed a sound mind.

Quote:
But then Giants mentioned fear and now Nina...and at first I thought, why is he talking about fear? And then Nina. So God has allowed me to find someone from 30 years ago. The two of us loved each other as young teens more than anything else. If he bought me a pack of gum I wouldn't share a piece with anybody. We grew so close that my mother met him on the sidewalk one day and asked him not to come over for 3 days because she thought we were getting too close. I remember standing in the door way and watching him drop his head and say "okay", and walked back down the sidewalk to go back home. He would either ride his bike to my house or the bus. He was more than just a couple of blocks away. But he came over every day unless his mom or dad said no. I guess they all thought we were too close. But the damage was done. We thought the sun rose and set on each other.
The last time we talked he told me about when he broke up with me. He said that it was after my mom had gotten married and we had moved....(i remember it was actually before that) Every time he came over, after he had been there for about 10 minutes I would start to cry. He would ask me why I was crying and I would always say that I was afraid that I would lose him. He would say, "But I'm here" And I would just be so afraid that I would lose him. After a while he couldn't take it any more.

I told him why I was afraid. I wasn't pretty. I didn't have long hair. I didn't wear nice clothes. We were the poorest family in the neighborhood. My house was ugly. My mom's bedroom used to be the garage. Our house looked like it was just dropped in the middle of the block. There was a girl named Adrienne Clay who was so pretty. She was the girl I would have been if I could have chosen. He had told me he had met her before. I thought she would be able to take him from me. He was the cutest boy in school. I knew he could have had any girl he wanted. (he said, naah when I told him that) Even my friends had jumped my case one day telling me that I need to dress better and that I wasn't looking nice enough for my man and that if he was theirs they would be looking better for him. This let me know they take him if they could.

He told me "I wasn't looking at any of that. None of that you just said, I wasn't looking at any of that. I was looking at the fact thta you were pretty (he said I was the prettiest girl in school!) you were smart, you were sweet, you were innocent. I wasn't looking at any of that other stuff you just mentioned"
So he loved me for who I was.

- He loved you for who you were.

And you were both very young. You thought about the outside but he did not, you thought about the what, he thought about the who.

That was then, this is now. You both have changed and gone through your own experiences in life. Time has gone by. And now, you still need to take time, time to get re-acquainted, to see how you are the same and how you are different.

For all the regrets that linger, can you discern if the fear is still there? And, if yes, how do you react to the fear this time around? Do you just cry or do you also get angry? If you get angry, what are you angry about, and towards whom are you directing your anger? Yourself? Him? God? All of the above?

It's a new day, a new environment, you have accomplished a lot, you are a child of God, you have fulfilled a dream, you are raising a family, you don't have anything to prove to anybody...

Can you just be happy to have found your friend? To get to know each other again? No strings attached?

Quote:
Nina I don't know when it happened. I don't know what happened to me to make me so afraid I'd never be loved. I let him love me for about 2 years and then I pushed him away with my fear of rejection. I have no idea where it came from. My earliest remembrance of rejection is kindergarten when the other kids wouldn't play with me because I was too tall. They said I looked like I should be in the second or third grade. So they told me to git and they wouldn't play with me. Is that was damaged me so? I don't know. All I know is that Ricky was the love of my life and I have wondered if I hadn't pushed him away that we would have grown up and married each other and still been together today.

Since him I have never had anyone to love me....just for me. I married my ex husband because he was a reject like I thought I was. And he mistreated me. So he was more of a reject than I was. I spent 13 years trying to grow and he spent the same amount of time trying to keep me from growing.
- But you did, and God has sustained you, and he is not about to give up on you! You were never a reject, none of us is, and look at you now!

So I find Ricky after all these years. He's telling me about his life and all he's been through. It's like we're old friends. But the moment he says he'll call me back, or he'll call me tomorrow...my immediate thought is, "He's not gonna call". "What if he doesn't call?" "How long should I wait? Maybe I should call him. He's probably not gonna call. Lord I just want somebody to call me sometimes. How come they never call me?"

- Just between you and me, I still don't know why men even bother carrying a phone, they don't use it LOL Countless witnesses to that.
But, that's one thing that you can stop though, that tape that starts playing in your mind as soon as the words "call back" are spoken. Take it one day at a time. It has nothing to do with you, chill, and if he does call, be happy, not grumpy


Quote:
So I guess according to Giants and Nina, and God. He let me find this person I loved so much before, (and was ready to fall in love again) just so He could show me that there is still fear in there. I'm still afraid of rejection. As much as I have grown, I haven't quite grown out of my fear of rejection.



- God does not play games with us. I would just say that in order to have a "healthy" relationship, in this case or any other, for your sake and the one of the other person, it is important to identify the fear factor and get rid of it. Otherwise, the behavior pattern remains the same, with the same effects... So, time for Spring cleaning!

Quote:
I don't know where it started. So how do I fix it? I don't want to lose my friend. I don't want to drive him away again. Right now if I can just keep his friendship, if it never becomes anything else, I will feel like I have the victory. He's the only person who ever loved me FOR ME. I don't want to ever lose that.

- You can start taking steps for yourself in, literally, getting rid of the extra luggage that you have been carrying way too long? Fear is not from God, it's a lie from the devil, no matter how real it may seem to us, and how good we can become at rationalizing it.
It's not being a wimp, there is absolutely nothing too big OR too small for God. Once you acknowledge it, he will guide you and strengthen you in that area. And, since you seem to be able to talk to your friend about those things, maybe you can be open about it to him too.

Because, Vin, I understand that you don't want to sabotage yourself in this situation again. However - and you are the only one who knows that - if you take the time to think objectively about it, there might be some other instances when that same fear just torpidoed some other relationships in your life? So, it's true also what they say that "there is nothing to fear but fear itself". But, if you can bring it into the open and to the light, then it has no power!

Quote:
But I don't know what to do. I wrote him yesterday and told him that I was really hurt because he'd said he would call and didn't. (he was supposed to visit me this weekend but his mom got hospitalized) (I know, I'm a jerk) But I'm not telling the whole story. He had three weeks to contact me and didn't, and when I finally got hold of him he told me he would call me the next day and didn't. Never mentioning the visit we had planned.
But there could be another emergency too.
So now I just feel so bad. All because I was afraid. When I feel the fear I act on it and my actions bring about the very thing I fear.
Right now I just don't want to push him away again. Now that I see what I'm doing wrong, I don't want to ruin our relationship, no matter what it is. If it can only be an occasional email, I want that with him. Because it would mean I didn't push him away with my fears.
I owe him an apology.

- And you owe to yourself to cut yourself some slack too.
Again, this is all about helping clean out all the cobwebs that have been there for too long, learning how to travel light in life by getting rid of the unneeded luggage, and having healthy relationships where you can communicate with the other, no matter who they are. If you do that, you will free up space in your soul for new and fresh things that God has in store for you, just you...
Let me pull a Jessie Jackson maneuver here and invent a word like he does: you need to de-dramatize the situation! I know it is very important for you, so I am not making light of it or of your feelings.

Quote:
The Lord told me a few years ago, "I can't have my woman scared. I need you to be as tenacious as any man. If I see you have a fear of something, I'll keep it in front of you until you no longer fear it, because I can't afford to have you afraid''

He meant that thang didn't He?

Yes, he did, and he does. How bad do you want to be free? Let him do it!

Quote:
Okay. I had deleted his number from my phone last night because I felt I needed to. I needed to stop calling him and the best way to do that, for me, was to delete his number. If he calls we'll talk. I remember when he first gave me his number I thought, "I wish he hadn't done that". Cause I know I have issues. So now it's gone and since I didn't know it by heart, I can't keep calling. I have to face the fear of rejection and see if he'll really call.

- You have to face the fear of rejection whether he calls you or not! Him calling is not going to be the sign. The light is on you now, so allow the Holy Spirit to do his work in you, be open to it, and reclaim you peace and joy...

Quote:
But I did send him an email apologizing to him. If you guys want to see it I'll post it here. No pride. God has revealed this thing to me and I want it fixed. I want it right. I want to be healed and WHOLE. I don't want to feel like damaged goods anymore.

AMEN! See, you got it! And he gives us beauty for ashes!

Quote:
I just wanted to share it here because it's one thing for another woman to tell you, "if he don't call it's his loss!". But I don't want to go through life blaming men for my issues. I want to know what's wrong with ME. Because it seems to me that I'M the one losing!

- If you are willing to surrender to Him, it will manifest.

Man I tell y'all all my business. When I become famous y'all gonna have a lot of dirt on me. . That's alright. At least I'll be FREE.

Praise time!!!!!
Love ya'
Nina

[vin]

- There is a difference between fear and anxiety.

With fear, we usually know what we are afraid of, we can put a name on it. It does not make it have less of an impact on us, but at least we know what we are dealing with, and where to start.
Anxiety comes out of nowhere, and can happen any time, anywhere, for just no reason, and make you feel like you are losing your mind, literally, over nothing that you can think of if, in fact, it was possible to think in the middle of a full fledge panic/anxiety attack..

Giants mentioned facing the fear head on, and it can happen in different ways for each of us, some basics are the same though. Then, we can get crafty and play around it, just ignore it long enough until it is actually repressed, but it is still there, just not formulated openly. So, the anxiety attacks, which are very real with all the physical symptoms that come with them, are just another manifestation of the "unspoken" fear.

Did you identify the fear you have experienced since losing your mother?

Fear of losing a loved one? Even as adults, when we lose a parent - as a friend of mine said to me - we are all orphans... So, in some ways, losing a parent, even as a grown up, gives us an "abandoned baby syndrom", and it does linger, depending on the relationship we had with the person who left...

My "saving grace", personally, has always been the scripture "we did not receive a spirit of fear but of love, power, and of a sound mind". That's how I drew the line between overpowering anxiety and me, and how I claimed a sound mind.

I hadn't thought about there being a difference between fear and anxiety but as you explain it, that's exactly right. The anxiety attacks were from repressed fear. Before my mom died, for almost a whole year I was having the same panic attacks/palpatations because my supervisor and lead were on me like flies on doo doo. I thought they were trying to get me fired and I was afraid to lose my job. I'm a single mom with two little people to take care of. No college degree and I knew i was making decent money. So one day I said to myself, "I can't lose this job. This job is all I have!"

And immediately God spoke to me and said, "This job is NOT all you have. I'M all you have". And then He asked me the question, "When did you let that fear in?"

So my panic attacks weren't from them harassing me, though they were. My panic attacks were from my fear of being unemployed with no degree and a single mom. So you're right. The two are different, though they can work hand in hand.

Did you identify the fear you have experienced since losing your mother?

Yes I did. I was afraid of dying like she did. I was afraid that what happened to her would happen to me. She had her thyroid taken. So did I. She was diabetic, then my blood sugar began to elevate. I was afraid. So afraid that I would have symptoms. But this wasn't the first time.

Years ago a nephew drowned at 19, then my brother in law, a powerful preacher died. That's when I had my first panic attacks. I had my husband driving me to the emergency room while I shook and cried uncontrollably. They gave me an ekg, the whole nine. Everything was normal. But I did have carpal tunnel, which gave me the pains up my left arm and shoulder.
Nobody diagnosed me with panic attacks. They just sent me home and said I was okay. Nobody asked me any questions.

That fear has been there from childhood. The Lord recently told me where it came from. When He told me I thought it was over, but I had to be reminded that with me, He first reveals it, then He heals it. He wants me to know what He's healing. It's a part of my ministry. I HAVE to tell everything.

- He loved you for who you were.

And you were both very young. You thought about the outside but he did not, you thought about the what, he thought about the who.

That was then, this is now. You both have changed and gone through your own experiences in life. Time has gone by. And now, you still need to take time, time to get re-acquainted, to see how you are the same and how you are different.

Yes. And that was the good thing. We talked like old friends catching up. He told me as much about himself as he could get out. I didn't get to talk much. But I liked that he was open and not hiding stuff. He wanted me to know about his life. It felt like we were getting to know each other again for the first time. We were remembering things as we talked. He said that there were things I would do or say, and he was say to himself, "I remember that". But at the same time he was trying to hear my voice from years ago. He was trying to hear me in me. I could hear him....He's just older.

We have some things in common like the music we DON'T like. He's a tougher parent that I am. I actually like that. And other things. But for the most part I've just enjoyed talking to him.

For all the regrets that linger, can you discern if the fear is still there? And, if yes, how do you react to the fear this time around? Do you just cry or do you also get angry? If you get angry, what are you angry about, and towards whom are you directing your anger? Yourself? Him? God? All of the above?

The fear was still there. I reacted like the victim, kinda blaming him and everybody else who never loved me. Kinda blaming God for letting this keep happening to me. And that blaming made me do stuff that makes people walk away. Nobody wants to deal with it and they shouldn't. It's why I left my ex husband. He was killing me. I've prayed so many times, "Lord please don't let me do to anybody what he did to me. Please don't let there be any residue of that in me. Please get it out. I don't want you to send me somebody and then I run them away".

Can you just be happy to have found your friend? To get to know each other again? No strings attached?

Yes, I am happy to have found him and to get to know him again. I'll be honest and say I'm working on the strings. I want to be married, so I recognize that as something I have to work on continually.

- Just between you and me, I still don't know why men even bother carrying a phone, they don't use it LOL Countless witnesses to that.

See I needed that. He did say that he doesn't understand how some people just talk on the phone all the time. He just recently got a cell phone because his daughter talked him into it. He got the cheap one that doesn't work out of state.

But, that's one thing that you can stop though, that tape that starts playing in your mind as soon as the words "call back" are spoken. Take it one day at a time. It has nothing to do with you, chill, and if he does call, be happy, not grumpy

Yes Ma'am.

- God does not play games with us. I would just say that in order to have a "healthy" relationship, in this case or any other, for your sake and the one of the other person, it is important to identify the fear factor and get rid of it. Otherwise, the behavior pattern remains the same, with the same effects... So, time for Spring cleaning!

That's been my problem. The pattern, the cycle. Even though I've identified it and feel much better, I do see that this is something I'm gonna have to work on. I'm going to have to teach myself new behaviors.

- You have to face the fear of rejection whether he calls you or not! Him calling is not going to be the sign. The light is on you now, so allow the Holy Spirit to do his work in you, be open to it, and reclaim you peace and joy...

That's right. The fear has nothing to do with him calling. It was there before he showed up. Whew.

- You can start taking steps for yourself in, literally, getting rid of the extra luggage that you have been carrying way too long? Fear is not from God, it's a lie from the devil, no matter how real it may seem to us, and how good we can become at rationalizing it.
It's not being a wimp, there is absolutely nothing too big OR too small for God. Once you acknowledge it, he will guide you and strengthen you in that area. And, since you seem to be able to talk to your friend about those things, maybe you can be open about it to him too.

I really want to. He's shared with me things that I would have thought he would have kept quiet. So maybe I'll be able to share more of this with him.

Because, Vin, I understand that you don't want to sabotage yourself in this situation again. However - and you are the only one who knows that - if you take the time to think objectively about it, there might be some other instances when that same fear just torpidoed some other relationships in your life? So, it's true also what they say that "there is nothing to fear but fear itself". But, if you can bring it into the open and to the light, then it has no power!

Some other instances? Girl, EVERY OTHER INSTANCE. I'm telling you I've screwed them ALL UP. lol.

I DO need to DE-DRAMATIZE the situation. It's true. Being like this makes you come across like a drama queen.

[vin]

I'm determined to do better. I'm tired of God not being able to trust me in this area. Having to keep me on lockdown with men because I'm trippin. Time to grow up. Put on my big girl panties and move on to another level of maturity. and a huzzman. ;D

[And Such Were Some Of You]

Hi Vin,

One of the things that I am reading is that you seem to be placing your happiness in the hands of another - that will always lead to pain, hurt and disappointment. The joy of the Lord is your strength. People may abandon you but you will ALWAYS be loved by God; His love is perfect and perfect love casts out all fear.

I also suffered from rejection, fear, and esteem issues. I lost many relationships and friendships as a result. I would love to say that upon salvation my problems were just erased but it was then, as Giants stated that I had to "face the fear head on". It worked because I now had the "know how" to deal with the pressures - or sin as they should rightly be called. I had to really allow the Holy Spirit to continue his sanctification process. I began to prophesy to myself each and every day. I don't mean just saying words but I prophesied Scripture over myself. I posted it on my mirrors, carried them in my pocketbook, on my computer at work etc. I had to renew the mind. I tore down all the strongholds by applying the Word of God. The strongholds were all those things and thoughts that went against the truth and promises of God. I had to apply those scriptures in order to walk in freedom. When testing time comes, as Jesus said to the devil, I also say, "It is written....."

The past is real however it does not have to define us unless we allow it to. My PAST is just that - something that is no longer. I continue to strive to live my life as Christ would have me to.

You, also, can no longer allow your past to define you. The only thing that should define you is what the Word of God says about you. You are a child of the Most High - nothing missing and nothing broken!

[vin]

Feb 22, 2009 9:12:26 GMT -5 And Such Were Some Of You said:

Hi Vin,

I also suffered from rejection, fear, and esteem issues. I lost many relationships and friendships as a result. I would love to say that upon salvation my problems were just erased but it was then, as Giants stated that I had to "face the fear head on". It worked because I now had the "know how" to deal with the pressures - or sin as they should rightly be called. I had to really allow the Holy Spirit to continue his sanctification process. I began to prophesy to myself each and every day. I don't mean just saying words but I prophesied Scripture over myself. I posted it on my mirrors, carried them in my pocketbook, on my computer at work etc. I had to renew the mind. I tore down all the strongholds by applying the Word of God. The strongholds were all those things and thoughts that went against the truth and promises of God. I had to apply those scriptures in order to walk in freedom. When testing time comes, as Jesus said to the devil, I also say, "It is written....."

I realized yesterday that this is something that I'm going to have to work through. I learned some things yesterday. I was enlightened. I felt so much better about the situation. But I also felt those old thought lingering, waiting for an opening to get back in and hurt me some more. But now I know how to apply the scriptures. Now I understand that the scriptures about fear and trust and resting in God DO apply to this, because God used people to help me to see that this was nothing but fear. It was being kinda quite, talking kinda soft. But it was eating away at my happiness and my peace, my life and pretty much any relationship I was trying to have, on any level.


I can tell by you all's responses that you are responding "prayerfully". That means a lot. Because this has been such a problem for me that I don't need the same ole same ole sayings. I don't need to hear what I've always heard or hear people say what they've always heard. Those things don't help. And I needed/need help. So I thank you and thank God for you you guys, giving me some things to think about, CONFESS and pray about. Now I know better how to go to God with it. I know better how to use the scriptures on it. And I knew how to apolozie to my friend.