Knowing Myself

I have started a pastoral counselling course. The first session was last Saturday and the second session will be the day after tomorrow. At the first session, the trainer talked about the importance of self-knowledge and self-acceptance as the first step in beginning to counsel others. She asked us how many of us would rate ourselves as 6 or higher out of 10 in terms of self-knowledge. Unsurprisingly, there were a number of us who felt we had journeyed in terms of self-knowledge. Unsurprising because everyone there had been nominated by their churches to be pastoral counsellors so I suppose a level of maturity was to be expected. Of course there was no one who could claim a 10 out of 10 - for who has perfect knowledge of us but God? Most of us were at 6 or 7.

The trainer then asked us how we had learnt things about ourselves. It was interesting to think about this. For me I would say, God revealed aspects of myself to me in 4 ways - through personality tests (like Myers-Briggs), through books like an interesting book on temperaments, through scripture and most important of all, through honest friends. I think it was the honest friends He gave me who were the most instrumental in showing me my weaknesses and in prodding me to look to God to change.

It is because of my personal experience, I think, that I find it difficult to accept when people say _ "this is me; I cannot change; This is just the way I am". I have seen and experienced the change God has wrought in me and I know that I have changed. God has taken hard bits of me and broken and moulded me in sometimes painful ways to make me a "new creation" in Him. And I thank God for that. As I look back and remember who I used to be, I am often ashamed. And I thank God for WY and MF who did not mince their words and did not spare my feelings but showed me when I was arrogant, when I was wallowing in self-pity, when I was being judgemental, when I was bad-tempered and when I was allowing myself to be an insufferable martyr. I was so so angry then but I am so thankful now because I realise it took a lot of courage and a lot of love for them to be able to speak such hard truths to me.

And yesterday at CYAN cell group, I realised there was a 5th way - God also used the really painful periods of my life to change me and draw me closer to Him as well. It seems paradoxical and weird, but when I think about it I realise that it is the hard times that God uses to change me because it is only during hard times that I am listening to Him! When things go well, more often than not, I am busy chasing my toys. But when I get to a point when I don't know what to do, and who to turn to, that is when I seek His face and when I am most receptive to His voice.

My most recent experience is a case in point. My illness has finally brought me to a point when I can trust God in hard circumstances. This was an aspect of my spiritual life that I struggled with because I tend to do things on my own steam and I love to have things my own way. Sometimes, I think I treated God like a rubber stamp of authority asking Him to endorse decisions I had already made instead of really listening to His will. But the experience of being ill taught me my own real helplessness. On my own will I could not even close my eye; I could not drink from a cup. I could do nothing about the situation except to wait for healing in God's time. And I learnt in those 5 days to let go. It was hard but there was nothing else I could do but pray and wait. Yes I felt ashamed and self conscious; yes I was frustrated and spent hours searching on the internet for cures, vitamins, facial exercises.... anything that I could do to improve my situation. But there was nothing to do but wait. And that period has changed a lot of my perspective about life. I find it easier to wait, easier to live with ambiguity, easier to trust that things will turn out ok and even if they didn't, to believe that I will be ok.