When I Feel Like a Nuisance

I write this post in tears.

Not because it’s particularly profound but because the persistence of what I’m feeling has not let me go for as long as I’ve had language for my emotions.

In whatever sort of relationship I’ve maintained in my life, the eventual feeling that I’m a nuisance usually makes its way into my heart and out of my mouth. When I’m lonely and desire to protect myself from my insecure tendencies, I warn others of this innate sense of being a bother.

The affirmation that I believe every child needs and deserves was not spared for me. My parents told me when they were proud of me. Hugged me. Tickled me. Laughed with me. Provided necessary feedback.

My friends and mentors have all named my strengths and shown grace for my weaknesses. My existence has not been one of receiving constant critique and rebuke for my shortcomings.

So, why is it that the gift of kind community I’ve been offered for most of my life, which I’ve learned is not present in every child’s upbringing, hasn’t managed to send my internal sense that I’m a nuisance into oblivion?

I haven’t read enough psychological data on this issue to share an informed answer. But one theory I do have is that our loneliness and worry that we are burdening others with our presence indicates that our reliance on others’ compassion for us cannot quell our sense of being annoying. Our validation cannot come by any external source; it must come from within.

So much of my theological training and pursuit of divine friendship has scoffed at internal validation, self-compassion, and empathy. Christian faith communities that long to exult in a God whose justifying work comes to us through grace, but stress doctrines of inherent sin and total depravity, tend to increase the psychological damage experienced by those who long to see themselves as more than marred image-bearers.

I believe our imagination to become the saintly priesthood we’ve been called to be will not come about through daily anxiety over how much sin we’ve committed and how bothersome we are to people. What a crummy but all too common-pattern of existence! Rather, it’s in our capacity and stamina to over and again receive the song of Belovedness God sings over us each day.

Salvation by grace through faith in Jesus is not a formula meant to deny us the gift of self-compassion and validation. Nor is it how we avoid self-reflection when our insecurities of being a nuisance become the center of our relational engagement. Our embrace of God’s unconditional and undeniable love for us can grow our inner sense of worth and confidence to relate to others. God’s love is a balm that can prevent our experiences of joy from only occurring when people say to us the things we want to hear about ourselves, especially those we admire the most.

The work of healing that inner self will always be hard for me. There’s almost a safety I get when I feel I can project onto others my continual awareness of what I socially or spiritually lack. But, slowly, as I come before God in prayer to hear God’s song resound from within, I’m sifting those habits of unassured identity out from my rhythms of worship and communal living.

May God continue to strengthen the hearts of those of us whose sense of self is crushed by the weight of feeling like a nuisance. And may we be lavished with friendships that do occasionally voice to us (with care) the affirmations that empower us and remind us of our belovedness without there being an expectation for those friendships to be the places from which we find the source of our belovedness.

May we find it in God who lives in us.

Luh y’all big time,

Ru. :)

Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash