“The fear of humans option disables, trusting in God protects you from that.”
(Proverbs 29:25 MSG)
I have spent the last two years providing around the clock care for a my disabled veteran brother. When the Message compares the crippling concern about the opinions of others to a severe handicap; I can see it. It’s a metaphor I can relate to. Chronic people pleasing can disable us from fully serving and delighting in God.
I have struggled with being a people pleaser my entire life. As a middle child, I believed my role was making my parents happy and keeping the peace. Multiply that times a childhood spent in a parsonage and you have a recipe for full-on approval addiction. Growing up and getting married to a perfectionist/pastor certainly didn’t ease the internal tension as I continually sought validation. It has only been in the past few years that I’ve gained a bit traction in this area. Books like Henry Cloud and Townsend’s Boundaries and Levi Lusko’s I Declare War have impacted my thinking. Hours and hours with an open Bible and an open heart have helped me learn to put God’s opinion of me first. A counselor has carefully walked with me through my decision making process, pointing out my potential pitfalls into people pleasing. Bit by bit, I am confronting my approval addiction and reframing my thinking.
I’m not cured by any means. As an empath and a full-time caregiver, I’ll always be susceptible to relapse. I still wrestle with laying down boundaries and holding to them, even though I now understand their purpose. I am finally making marked progress in the right direction.
“Change isn’t like surgery. Even when you change, the old beliefs aren’t just removed like a worn-out hip or knee and then replaced with better ones. Instead the new beliefs take their place alongside the old ones, and they becomes stronger, they give you a different way to think.”
(Mindset, Dr. Carol S. Dweck)
We shouldn’t be surprised when new thinking takes time to align with old muscles. Those old muscles were formed out of sheer necessity and reputation. We have to intentionally lay the new alongside the old and work to integrate them into one unified way of thinking. It’s uncomfortable, as any kind of physical therapy initially is. But if we’ll stick with it, if we deliberate in recognizing old patterns of thinking and laying these new ones in place, we can change. Our handicap can be overcome.
Be forewarned: Establishing boundaries with others will feel rude at first. Especially when we have spent a life time looking to them to declare our worth. Remember the main message, though. We are laying out holy stakes: claiming our lives as God’s first and that frees us up to focus on what He wants. With healthy boundaries in place, we can focus on an audience of One instead of forever trying to please the people in the cheap seats of our lives. When we tune in to God’s pleasure, the Creator determines the design and function of His creation. We are released from our handicap and we are finally free to run in the direction of His perfect will.
“Obviously, I’m not trying to win the approval of people, but of God. If pleasing people were my goal, I would not be Christ’s servant.”
(Galatians 1:10 NLT)
Lord, help us with the hard work of learning to seek Your approval alone. Speak to our hearts about boundaries. Free us up to focus on Your agenda for our lives. Amen.