Angela’s Story

It was impossible, I decided in high school. Absolutely impossible. I was constantly trying to please the different groups of people in my life like my friends, my boyfriend and my family. I just could not seem to please them all at once, no matter how hard I tried.  I always felt I was letting someone down, and I couldn’t deal with someone not being happy with me. But what could I do about it? It seemed that this was a part of life that I would always have to deal with. I had to play these different roles all the time just to make everyone happy. I resigned myself to the fact that dependable acceptance was unattainable.

All through high school I worried constantly. I would wake up with an ache in the pit of my stomach that would only get worse as the day went on and my level of anxiety increased. I would avoid making decisions because I didn’t want to have to face any consequences of who I might offend. I was paralyzed by fear that the people I cared about would leave me if I said or did something that did not please them. I was often crabby but would not talk about the conflict raging inside my mind. I did not want to say what was really worrying me, for it would have required me to make some hard decisions that I was not willing to make because I would have had to deal with someone not being happy with me. So, I still tried to keep my different groups happy and just deal with the internal turmoil.

I had been a Christian since the age of 3 so I intellectually understood that Jesus took my place, receiving the penalty I should deserve for my sins. But, God’s dependable love and acceptance never really sunk in until I reached the end of my rope in dealing with the impossibility of making everyone happy. My relationship with my high school boyfriend had been rocky but it hit the lowest point my sophomore year of college. I felt I had put in so much effort to make him happy and to make our relationship work that when I still failed at gaining his absolute approval I felt like I had hit rock bottom. If I couldn’t depend on him after all that time and after all that effort, then who could I depend on?

That’s when the simple concepts I was taught in Sunday school years ago came flooding back into my head: Jesus loved me no matter what, and I didn’t have to work to gain his love. He was dependable because God never changes. Human’s opinions and attitudes change, but God is constant. His love is also attainable, unlike what I always felt with people.

It was a freeing experience to realize that I wouldn’t have to work for love, and that I wouldn’t have to wonder whether or not I would be loved or accepted from one day to the next. I did not have to constantly worry. With this in mind, I started to transfer my worth from other people to Jesus. Not to say that this was a smooth process, or one that I have completed, but I do not worry nearly as much as I did then. Jesus’ love made me so much happier. I also started to make those decisions that were hard and changed my life because I knew that the dependable love of Jesus was worth it. I am nowhere near perfect but I get through each day knowing that I can depend on Jesus’ love and acceptance unconditionally.

 

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