My senior year of college, my roommate, Loreen and I had a great plan. We’d sign up for a “triple” by putting down another girl’s name who wasn’t planning on coming back to school the next fall. The plan worked perfectly, and we ended up with two rooms for just the two of us. The first weekend we were at school however, my roomate’s friend visited, and ultimately decided to transfer and ended up living with us in our triple.
It was great for the first quarter of the year. Then we started having issues. My original roommate started getting really messy (leaving garbage around, instead of throwing it away), leaving her clothes lying around, etc… And the two of them started hanging out together all the time. Not to mention, the first roommate began to date a guy she wasn’t sure she was completely interested in (all the guys fell hard for her). ( She’s married to that guy now, and I see all of that time was God’s plan for them.) I was fed up with it all.
Apparently so were my roommates. They sat me down and told me that I was an attention seeker. That everything was about me. That I cried at the drop of a hat, and looked for pity. That they felt I always had to have things my way. And that I was looking for too much attention from the guys. OUCH. Ultimately, I denied it all, and pointed the finger right back at them.
At that point, I unleashed all of the above, and said that I’d try to move out if it were at all possible. By the end of winter break, I had a new room, all to myself. A nice big, clean, solitary room, just the way I liked it. I could do whatever I wanted, be as neat as I wanted, talk on the phone, have visitors. It was great. Probably the best living situation I could have had in college.
I look back on that now, and think, wow, I was a victim. I had such a victim mentality. I’m a little embarrassed by myself. I know I’m a different person from that now. and I can see all the places where I’ve been healed, that prior to healing, I was a victim.
I sought a lot of attention from guys, whether by just being friends with them, or dating them. I was a serial dater in an earlier life. I was a pursuer and a striver. I wanted to make sure I could get and hold a man’s attention in just enough time to tell him I didn’t want it. And I got good at doing that. John Eldridge speaks a lot about father wounds, and how we can’t understand God as Father if our dads were either passive or aggressive (or both). I think my dad was a great dad, even though he did travel ALL the time for work. It was a passivity that occurred out of absence… my mom had to be both mom and dad when he was away. So in some respect, I started looking for attention from men, based out of the wound.
(It’s ok Dad, I’ve worked through all of this, we’re cool… it really had to do with me and God anyway).
And it wasn’t until Scott and I started dating that I stopped being a victim. I stopped blaming everyone else for what was wrong, or wounded in me. Scott wouldn’t let me pass the bill. God wouldn’t let me go through life as an attention seeker. He was jealous of what I was doing. He decided that when Scott and I got together that it was time for me to face some of those wounds, send the lies to hell, and get on… start owning who I was (and am).
I’m in the school of life. I’m learning to receive critisicm and say “thank you,” instead of turning it around to protect myself. Something that Seth spoke about at debrief was that we’re all in school. We can either audit the class or take it for credit. What do I do with my circumstances or tough situations. Do I blame others, get mad, explain things away. Or do I “take the class” and look at myself and see what needs to change, what can I do better, what would Jesus do in this situation? I’ve decided that I’m taking the class.
I look back on that year in college. I think I was auditing life that year. I wonder how life would have looked if I accepted responsibility. If I’d looked at myself and actually saw the detestable things in me.
God’s totally in control. If I’d been taking the class at that point, would Scott and I be together right now? All I have to say is that God’s timing is perfect. When the Holy Spirit gets a hold of you, that’s when change happens. I couldn’t have willed it then. It was only when God placed the prompting to have me look at my wounds, and then heal me from them, that change occurred. And now that I’m really seeking more of the Holy Spirit, I’m excited about critisicm, I’m excited to see how God is going to take me and mold me into His image.
