Self-Discovery: a time of healing and restoration pt. 2

If you had asked me at the beginning of the year what I’d been learning I wouldn’t be able to tell you. Only after many conversations have I begun realizing the difference in perspective and thoughts in how I think now versus then.

Healing: the process of making or becoming sound or healthy again.

If you asked me now “What have you been learning recently?” I could tell you my thoughts. And I think this question is an important one to always be asking. What have you been learning, how have you been challenged, and how are you being pushed? It can be a hard question to answer, but a good one to be asked. As a year comes to a close we always look back and see what we gained from the year, but it’s important to remember as we live in the moment to try and understand our circumstances, and how we are growing from them in that season.

For me, this year has been a season of healing and restoration. I talked a bit previously about how I feel like I am being restored to who I was and who I should be. But what do I mean by healing? I think we are always healing from something. The circumstances of life create many parts that we are trying to get over and move on from, and for me, this transition of an emerging adult has been the mindset I had before living at home and now that I have moved out. There’s still a lot I’m working on, and trying to get better at slowing down and learning to fully depend on God, but this process is step by step.

One of the things I’ve realized He’s been teaching me here while living alone is that I have so much more freedom than I thought I had. Before living alone, I had so many pressures from those around me–loved ones, peers, and colleagues. I was struggling under mental pressure because I was working so hard and had little to no time to be able to rest and address the things I was facing. And in those times I was struggling it was hard to reach out. I knew people cared for me, and I had people who would say call and I will be there….but when you are hurting it’s hard to reach out when you know those people are in a busy season, have a lot going on in their lives, live in a different time zone, and when you finally are brave enough to call they can’t help you then. In those moments I would often see that I would want to reach out, want to seek help, but when I was truly in a moment I needed someone they couldn’t be there for me, and by the time I saw them when we were both free I would feel ok and not want to dwell on it too long. So instead of ever getting addressed the problems just got ignored.

I grew up the oldest child and had a lot of support from my loved ones, but I also had a lot of pressure because of that. I was trapped in a certain mindset for so many things because there wasn’t freedom. I took on many things without realizing it and didn’t know how to lighten the load. Talking amongst some of my friends, a common theme of “I don’t know how to balance life at home” continued to come up. It wasn’t that we had awful childhoods, but we all had things we struggled with, and for everyone, it was a struggle to balance the role of adult and child at the same time. We were no longer children, yet we lived under our parents. For some, especially myself, the roles felt no different. I still lived under the rules and impressions taught to me when I was young, and never learned how to grow and adapt as I got older. Moving out, I no longer had the rules of others or the watching eyes of people as I tried to figure out life. I could grow and adapt to the rules that were now guidelines in an ever-new and evolving world. Living at home can be a safe place, and a refuge, and it can also hold a lot of stress and tension, no matter the living situation. Yet even after living alone for a year, I can still see how I am struggling with balancing my thoughts and the mindset of rules given to me when I was living at home. There was no transition from child to adult, and I think when you live at home it is hard for both the parent and the child to learn how to begin that transition because many things are assumed, and never spoken. That fear to do right or wrong based on rules soon becomes a barrier instead of a guideline for life.

Perhaps the saying “distance makes the heart grow fonder” is true in a situation like this. Because now that I have space and a place to process when it comes to conversations with those back home I’m able to see things so much differently than before. Where both sides have different views now than from the past, and that is something I’m grateful to notice now because I think it shows healthy growth. Before I would have felt too trapped to be able to notice the freedoms I now have and seeing the me from the past vs. the me from now I’m happy to see that so much has changed and that as time has passed it’s brought healthy healing after a season of burn out.