Knowing and seeing God as he really is, (not who i want him to be, but who he really is apart from who i want him to be) is essential to knowing me. often i discover that who i want God to be, is not far off from who he really is. actually, in many ways, he is a better version of who i want him to be.
just as in my own childhood and young adulthood i denied certain parts of me and what i experienced regarding reality and disassociated from the truth and created my own truths or beliefs so that i could keep my parents in the parental role without fearing them or seeing how far off they were from what i really needed them to be for me. i idealized them, out of survival. because if i couldn't trust these people and saw them as less then perfect or strong, who would provide for me? I couldn't do this on my own. when they proved to be less than perfect or strong, i raged because i internalized it as me being the defective one.
as an adult in recovery, i am starting to uncover the truth, and seeing my parents as they really are, not in the lenses i needed to see them through in order to keep them in my idealized parental role. the lens of seeing my parents or other adult authority figures as more ideal than real, is indicative of me being dependent on them for my survival. i needed them to care for me and provide for me, so i had to see them as able and capable, and when there was any discrepancy between what I needed them to be and how they were for me, i took the blame for it. that was the safest route i could take as a dependent child. i can now see they are broken and wounded people who are just as prone to sin and hurting themselves and those closest to them,, just as i am. they are much more like me than i could tolerate before, because of the power differential and dependency needs I legitimately had with them as a child. I needed them to be so much stronger and wiser and able to guide and provide for me and my needs...simply because of the fact that i was unable to do that for myself. i depended on trusting my parents in order to survive, and when they did things that betrayed my trust by not meeting my needs, i filled in the gaps by blaming myself. I would reason that it was somehow my own fault, that i had done something wrong or that there was something wrong with me, and that is why I was feeling pain.
But now, as an adult. I can see the whole picture. I can see my parents for how they were and really are AND I can also start seeing myself as I really am, beginning with how I was as a child. My needs were legitimate and not defective, but my parents were the only people who could provide for those needs. They held that position, but they themselves are imperfect humans, trying to meet the perfect needs of a child, while they themselves as children, went with their own perfect needs unmet by their imperfect parents, who as children themselves had their own perfect needs unmet, because their parents were imperfect...on and on, all the way down to Adam and Eve.
Adam and Eve had perfect needs. They were not defective because of their needs. They were created in likeness of God. They had emotional, spiritual and physical desires that they depended on God to meet. he alone is the perfect parent who can meet the perfect needs of his children perfectly....until sin entered in. Sin entered in through exploiting our perfect desires and distorting ourselves as defective and in need, and that God was not the solution to our problem...the problem that didn't exist...us not like God. It all began with Eve being told two lies, and then given a false solution to a false problem by seeing a false picture of God: a lie about herself; that she was not like God, a lie about God not wanting her to be like God, and the false solution to the false problem: eat the fruit that God said not to eat.
The way I see God is all important. It is not just a peripheral issue. It is central to who i see myself, which gives way to how I see others.
Just like a baby. A baby will look to her mother to absorb her own self. The thousands of times a infant sees her mother's face and how she feels in response to her mother's face, is forming her own identity and how she sees her own self. Her mother is her first mirror. She doesn't even exist yet, outside of her relationship and dance with her mother. The primary way she will learn how to dance with her own self is profoundly wired by the way her mother dances with her in the first few years of life.
God is like the birth mother. The primary caretaker of an infant. The way I see God and how he dances or interacts with me is profoundly impacting the way I see and dance with myself. And the way I perceive, dance and relate with my own self will be replicated in various degrees with those who are closest to me.
My picture of God is all important, for I came from him. His being breathed life into me and I am made in his image, just as a baby is made in the image and likeness of her mother and father. god is the mother and father.
relationships are critical to emotional and spiritual health. the relationship i have with others is directly linked to the kind of relationship i have with the different parts of my own self, and the relationship I have with the different parts of my own self are directly linked to the relationship I have with God and how I see the way He sees me. Jesus is the face of God. no other comes close. any other face would be a reflection more of humans, not of God...the parent. God doesn't want me to settle for less than when I relate with my own self, others, and that's why my picture of God is all important....
What picture of God does your mirror hold? It has one, regardless if you admit it or not, you imitate that all the time. Spiritual grown for me is aligning my mirror to reflect the true God back to me, and that is by staring at Jesus.
