I was driving my children around in the van the other day thinking about how different.a person I am than I was 5 years ago.

I feel extremely grateful to the Lord for this. And before I get into this story, I need to make it clear underpinning every twist and turn of the last 5 years was the divine hand of God leading me one way or the other, His voice providing encouragement and correction the whole way. The last thing I want is for you to read my words and then undertake the impossible task of fixing yourself. I do not believe in self-healing, self-fixing, self-transformation anymore.

If the responsibility of my change for the good were to be categorized into percentages, it remains a mystery to me what percentage of responsibility was God’s or mine for the change. I know that the parts of my story where I was completely broken are the parts where I saw the work of God the most and experienced the mystery of partnership with Him.

The truth is that God has actually given me choice. I can participate or I can decline to participate. I have as much choice as He has. He chooses, from the love that is inside of Him, to love me and keep winning me over, to keep gaining in me within the bounds of my free will.

In the summer of 2017, the year before I met and married my husband, I realized something about myself that I decided needed to change. I was an angry and resentful person underneath the smiles and laughter of a 25 year old, and I didn’t want to be angry anymore.

My siblings were either married or engaged, and I was still living at my parents’ house, doing the exact same thing I’d been doing since I was 18.

I was also riding the waves of chaos that were coming my way, believing I was a victim to the whims and dramas of my loved ones. A friend told me that summer that I “didn’t have to be a doormat”, and it was a REVELATION! I can only say that God arranged the timing I heard those simple, obvious words. As self-centered a young adult as I was, the ironic truth is that I was extremely self-negligent.

I was angry because, from my perspective, all of the difficulties I endured were the fault of someone else, of fate, or of God. It hadn’t even crossed my mind that I had any choice in the matter.

The summer of 2017, on the shore of the most sacred water hole in California (if you’ve been to Royal Gorge with NC Campus Life, you know what I’m talking about), I prayed a prayer God is still answering in abundance.

Lord, I don’t want to be so angry anymore. I’ll say “yes” to the things You want me to do that I’m afraid of if only you will heal me.

And that’s what I did, and that’s what He did.

With the hindsight of 5 years, I am seeing this journey as one in which the Lord is teaching me how to love and value myself the way that He loves and values me.

I needed to value myself enough to cry out for a change, to accept that enough is enough. I needed to value myself enough to do what I said I was going to do because although I knew it would hurt, it was more important that I changed.

I needed to take a leap of faith to tear myself away from the comfort of self-protection, self-sabotage, and flawed but familiar patterns that were keeping me anxious, angry, and alone. And I needed to crumble under the weight of it all until I was no longer deluding myself that I was strong, independent, and basically Wonder Woman.

This is why I have reached a point where I call BS on most of the trendy self-care, self-love, and self-confidence messages aimed at mothers. Do you want to care about yourself truly? Just stop trying to be the bad ass mom. Seriously. Face your limitations and embrace yourself as the Lord embraces you, just as you are.

You are hurting yourself, and you are actually proving to yourself that you DON’T care about yourself. It’s the opposite of self-care, self-love, and self-confidence. Do you want to love yourself? Be brutally honest with yourself and accept that you have problems and need help.

To sum it up, I think I just grew up in the last 5 years. I’m more honest with myself because I have learned the hard way that the consequences of neglecting the truth are FAR more painful than the discomfort of a temporarily wounded ego. I could have been a more giving person, a more loving person, a less selfish person years ago if I had just chosen to befriend the Truth instead of comfort.