You Are Not Abandoned

Probably the most common trait of BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder) is the disproportionate fear of abandonment.
Now to those of you healthy people, people like me seem unstable and unbalanced to you (and rightly) because of the drastic measures that people like me take to avoid real or imagined abandonment.
To us, however, our extreme behavior makes perfect sense (that is why we are sick). For many people with BPD, one of the things that goes hand in hand with an unstable self image, is the frequent devaluation of self.  Let me put it to you this way; if you believed in the depths of your being that you were unlovable (that you were a waste of everyone else's space, that you had no worth, that your face was a blight of nature, that God      Himself could not bear the sight of you) then you would also know that abandonment was inevitable. Nobody stays with what they don't love. Nobody loves what is not loveable.

"But how in the world could ANYBODY think that about themselves? That your life has no worth! That you have no value as a person!? How could anybody think that about themselves?!"

Well...(wry smile)...that is why they call it a disorder. We are sick. I am sick.
And how do we get that way? There has been a lot of study that suggests that child abuse and neglect is linked to people who develop this disorder. You have to get warped and carefully trained to develop  this emotional core belief about yourself.

So today is Sunday, and that is always a difficult day for me. Because it is a day I set aside to not drown myself in work and think about God. But if I think about God I need to think about my relationship with him.
I need to reaffirm to myself mentally that He is upholding me in existence at this moment. That He created me with LOVE and continues to uphold me in existence. He created by loveable and beautiful and good and with a purpose in mind.  This to me is mind-boggling. And wonderful. And almost too good to be true. Almost too painful to think about.  Thinking about God's love for me not being dependent upon or conditional of anything that I do is mind-blowing!

What is more familiar to me, hence less frightening, is attention-seeking.  Doing good deeds to earn God's love. Wearing beautiful clothing to gain approval from my girlfriends, wearing "modest" clothing to gain "respect" from Christian families, wearing attractive colors to gain attention from men. Praising people so that they will tolerate your presence because you make them feel good about  themselves. Never complaining or criticizing because then they won't like you anymore. Smiling so that you will make other people feel more at ease. Buying people gifts and picking up the tab so that you will not feel like you burdened people by spending time with them. Being "low maintenance" so they will leave you alone if they are mean, and not leave you alone if they are kind.

The idea of someone whose love I could NEVER EARN but who loves me ANYWAY is something very difficult to imagine.  But it is something that I desperately want and need. It is what we all want and need, no matter how healthy, wealthy or wise we are.

Dear Lord,
Please touch us with Your healing hand. Help us to believe that You are always with us. Help us to know that we will never be completely abandoned. Please let me briefly feel a little of Your love so that I will feel a little safer.  Today I resolve again to rest secure in Your love, and to resist to urge to try to gain your love and be dependent on the attention or approval that I get from others. Please help me. Amen.

God bless and keep us all.