Born to be a Child of God.
Growth from the insecurities of my past.
Throughout my life I felt as if I was never truly rooted well in the soil beneath my feet. My early years I didn’t have the confidence to live a secure life. As I matured my confidence started to take hold but it wasn’t given the nutrients needed to soar. As an adult I didn’t even consider how my insecurities were rooted in the soil of my past.
The woman I became is a direct result of my insecurities. Out of lacking confidence from my youth with achievements later in life I started to wear a mask. The mask was my attempt at hiding my flawed self. What initially was a childhood insecurity morphed into something very ugly. Pride.
It wasn’t until my adult years I was able to understand how my insecurities impacted my behaviors. During recovery I started to explore my past. I learned about the resentments I harbored and the bitterness they produced.
Once I revealed and accepted my flaws I could start maturing into the woman God intended.
What do we do after we expose our flaws? We start digging.
Inspecting the roots of our problems.
Exposing our flaws alone will not provide us with the healing we need. We need to establish the roots of our insecurities. Our security doesn’t just come from having our needs met but more importantly nurtured. What was it from my youth that contributed to my adult behaviors?
Our environment and life experiences all contribute to shaping our security and/or insecurities. But it is my upbringing I would like to focus on. I have read that insecurities are made not born. I disagree. My belief is the roots of our insecurities are firmly in place at the time of inception. Over the years we are given the opportunity to nurture them. And when we do not have the proper coping skills our insecurities will flourish into our adult life. Often times masquerading as our flawed self.
Exposing the roots of my problems.
Over the years I held onto resentments and allowed bitterness for my loved ones to grow and consume me. Although I was brought up in an environment where I felt loved, I will share one attribute that contributed to my insecurities. My father.
I would consider my dad a good father. He was present through out my life and loved me unconditionally. But he was not a good husband. He was the male figure in my life who demonstrated how a woman should be treated. I didn’t realize how I resented my own mother for the treatment she endured from my father. And I didn’t realize how the view I had of myself was shaped by his behavior.
It is not my intent to bash my father but to share a link between my insecurities and my roots. At my father’s funeral strangers to my family came to mourn his passing. A couple young women introduced themselves sharing that they never had a relationship with their own father. My father who frequented their restaurant exposed to them what it is like to have a true father figure. They shared how envious they were that my father always spoke highly of me and my two siblings. He was a father who truly loved his children. I believe he loved his wife, but at times had a hard time expressing his emotions. My father was an angry man.
My insecurities are not from the roots of my past but the soil in which they were planted.
When we hold on to the unhealthy resentment which interferes with our relationships it keeps us from achieving peace. If we understand the plight of the person who we blame for our insecurities, then we can offer compassion not resentment.
My father had his own past full of resentments and bitterness. I believe he had not successfully dealt with his own problems and carried them through the entirety of his life. Like myself, my father resorted to alcohol to quell his anxiety. And at times when he wasn’t drinking, but a dry drunk he was abusing prescription drugs. A dry drunk is an individual who identifies they have a problem with alcohol. Instead of working on the roots of the drinking problem simply abstains from consuming, allowing the anger to grow.
As a child I would not have been aware of how his past had impacted his adult life. But by educating myself on his story even after his passing I can release him from my resentment. A couple years ago I came across a shoe box full of letters. Mom-Mom, my father’s mother, kept letters my father wrote to her weekly from age six into his teenage years.
My fathers problems are rooted into the soil of his past.
At the young age of six my father was sent off to boarding school. A school for orphaned or fatherless boys. For the entirety of his childhood all the way to his college years he lived at Girard College, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. During the summer months the boys were given the opportunity to spend time with their families. But my father’s family sent him to camp. He was not raised in a loving, nurtured environment.
He continued his young adult life at Gettysburg College studying English Literature. My father was a writer, while my mother was a Christian educator.
My Mom-Mom was not a bad mother. She like my father was very loving, but I could feel her resentment towards men over the years. When my father was just a new-born, his father either committed suicide or died of an accidental gas poisoning. Because of Mom-Mom’s upbringing and the cultural expectations she wasn’t able to raise her own son. She was shunned by her family and forced to live in boarding homes. Sending my father to Girard College was what she thought was best for her son.
Nurturing the soil from our past.
When my father passed away I was happy because he finally was at peace. As his child over the years I viewed him as a man who suffered his way through life. My father has read the Bible and has attended church on and off throughout his life. He did not appear steadfast in his faith and not representative of a Christian man.
My father did use alcohol to cope with life and he allowed his past to fester within him. To properly heal he needed to take that moral inventory of his past. Opening up the old wounds would have been painful, but a necessary step for healing. Replenishing his soil with the Holy Spirit on a daily basis would have helped him combat his addictions. Providing him a healthy alternative to overcome the pain of his past.
I can continue to trace back the lineage finding fault in past generations. Or simply seek understanding that each individual has had their own personal plight to overcome. Being unaware I do not need to blame him for not finding the solution which could have offered him peace. I can offer him compassion. He married a Christian woman, who remained faithful in a bad marriage. I can decide to break free from my past, finding my own path towards healing.
7 “Even a tree has more hope!
Job 14:7-9 NLT
If it is cut down, it will sprout again
and grow new branches.
8 Though its roots have grown old in the earth
and its stump decays,
9 at the scent of water it will bud
and sprout again like a new seedling.
Four ways to heal a fractured family… https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ya-weekly/2022/03/4-ways-to-heal-fractured-family-relationships-through-the-savior?lang=eng
3 responses to “Insecurities Rooted in the Soil of Our Past”
It really is so important to get the root of who we are now and why we make the choices we do. I pray more believers would take this approach to start healing and truly allowing God in. Great post, Karen!
Thanks Ericka! Through Christ we have the power to break free of the weedy growth that entangles us.
[…] Christian woman who married a man with a lot of baggage. See post for a brief history of my father https://grow-together.blog/2023/03/24/insecurities-rooted-in-the-soil-of-our-past/. My parents had a codependent relationship which leads to an unhealthy […]