Letting Go of Hope and Titles

Letting Go of Hope and Titles...

Now before you start to freak out, I am not hopeless or depressed or putting my final manifesto here on my blog/Facebook...

As I've mentioned in the past few posts, I see a Christian therapist to help me with life stuff. It's a really amazing and beautiful outlet and I highly recommend it. It helps me process stress, tough life decisions and helps me call upon my relationship with Jesus to overcome deep fears and abuse from my childhood and upbringing.

These posts usually come as a means to help me to continue to grow and reflect and maybe even in hopes that it helps you reading this.

This week, I sat in the chair balling my eyes out yet again. I've been questioning the term hope over a few of the sessions. Hope to me has always been a word of expectancy, of joy, or the future. Something to put weight in. All those things, the word hope greatly resembles our relationship with Christ but also our "hope" and desires for the future.

One of my biggest "hopes"  is my relationship to improve with my parents/family. I hope they will discover a deep relationship with the Heavenly Father that I desire to know intimately. I hope that they will change. I hope that we will have a better relationship, and I hope that they will learn to love me in the ways that my heart and soul cries for. A few weeks ago, in one of my sessions I began to realize that the hope I had for my father to change was not realistic. That the track record proved to show, the same cycles keep happening. The only change is me and how I react. How do I chose to let things effect me and how to I want to improve?
I sat in the chair describing yet another interaction with my father. Sometimes banter can be fun and witty, but banter with my father and family is unhealthy because it leaves me angry, frustrated, or broken. The banter and what we consider conversation is all I have in relationship with them. In reality as I sat there crying and praying and thinking through things with my therapist and came to realize I don't honestly have much in common with my family. I continue to banter and to accept the "titles" I've been given because it's the only hope that I have. It's the last string of connection to them. That the silence and lack of communication is so deafening to me that I would rather just sit there and argue or go back and forth. In reality the back in forth is so unhealthy and hurtful to me, but I was willing to hold onto the pain in order to feel any sense of relationship and love from them. They've given me titles that I don't deserve or shouldn't fall into: Adult/Parent, Expert, Confidant, Christian, and Judge.

I have had to be the adult and/or parent in relationship with them. Offering the advise that I would give my children sometime. Their behavior is so childish at times, that I have to be the adult voice in a lot of conversation. My parents look to me as an expert in different things and expect me to teach them, show them, and consult them for their own gain. I resent this title because it's my knowledge is often tied together with judgment for right verses wrong and I refuse to offer knowledge on something that I don't see having a good ending or that I don't believe in. Also I am breaking the title of secret keeper. As I work through therapy and open up, I am breaking the lies, secrets, and things that I have held onto for years. It is not  for my mom or dad to share aspects of their relationship with me. Lastly my Christianity has caused me to be have this voice of higher moral authority, and to feel self-righteous. My views of on God, life and the Bible, often cause me to become condemning and judgmental because their actions and words don't match up what I see and know to be true. This is just a summary of these titles for me. But my desire is that I would break the chains of these titles and take on new titles of: Follower, Daughter of the King, Servant, Loved, Cherished, and Faithful.

There is no such thing as forgiveness with no cost. The cost of healing and forgiveness is releasing that hope from my parents and shifting it to my Creator and trusting. All forgiveness requires someone to pay and I have to pay by the sacrifice of relationship with them and pay in the giving up of hope in them. That doesn't mean I love them any less, it just means I am desiring to rid the bitterness, frustrations, and anger and not expecting too much but trusting in God's mighty power to break every chain.

My prayer is that I would break every chain and title because I know that there is power in the name of Jesus...

I pray to just continue to grow in my relationship with God and find closure with those titles and with my family. That I would be okay with the silence, that I would learn to step away from unnecessary conversations. I pray to release the hope and expectancy I desire for and from my family, and just hope in Christ. That I would hope in the work that He is doing in me.

"For you have been my hope, O Sovereign Lord, my confidence since my youth. " -Psalm 71:5

He has a purpose and fulfillment for me. He can HOPE in me. And I pray I fulfill that hope.

My last request is that the Lord help me to protect my heart amidst this process.