Taking internal inventory is necessary to moving forward. Having a mind full of good thoughts means you first must evaluate the reality of your thought life as well as what you want your thought life to be. When we talk internal inventory, we have to often look at why we do what we do.
You will often hear people give an onion metaphor. Each layer reveals a new layer. Or let's mix it up and go with my own metaphor - the artichoke. Its work to eat an artichoke but can be fun (if you like them). As you eat the meat of each leaf, you get closer to the heart of the artichoke, which is my favorite part. Its tender and delicious!
That is a lot like life. As we engage in internal inventory, we discover new or deeper parts of how something affected us and why we do what we do.
I have always worked on tackling my own issues because I don't want them to rule over me, but as I do so I discover new layers.
A recent reality tv show I was watching shared about the term "parentified child." I immediately paused the show and began searching articles online and immediately had an emotional moment. The concept behind the term, "parentified child" wasn't new to me, but I hadn't seen some new layers as they were reflected back at me in the articles I read. In my younger years as I peeled away the artichokes leaves of my life, I had a hard time really looking at certain issues without it hurting me, but as I have tackled the pain and how I defined myself along life, I have been able to step back and look at it with more of a clinical perspective and make the adjustments needed. This time it hit a nerve and I was full of emotions. I had to start asking questions. You can do this too.
1. Start with Your Senses - How did you feel? What did you see? Hear? Smell? Taste? Taking a tour through each of your senses can aid you in a full understanding of how a past experience impacted you. It doesn't have to be some massive trauma. Each of us are shaped by the world we walk through and understanding that allows us to see the connections in our current reality. Understanding gives us the tools to recorrect where we need to in our current lives.
My husband makes biscuits and gravy for our church men's group every Friday morning. He always saves me some, but typically, I get them cold or reheated and not fresh from the oven. One morning I was up early and I grabbed a biscuit fresh from the oven and I was transported back to the early elementary years when I lived with my grandpa. We lost him several years ago, and just eating that hot biscuit gave me a moment with him again. We don't often know what sticks with us, until we encounter something similar. Going through your senses helps us to know how we have attached to the memories or moments in our past.
2. Examine the Take-Away - Delving into the "parentified child" opened my eyes to my helping ways. I am a Helper on the Enneagram. I love serving people, and I do it out of the kindness of my heart. I realized that I can go to an unheathly place in helping, when I neglect myself or my family for the sake of helping others. I saw for the first time its roots in this new term.
My mom is a wonderful mom, but we hit some hard road along the way when I was a girl and even though she masterfully cared for us, she often leaned on my as the oldest for emotional support. I saw how I had a gap as a result. Its no judgement on my mom, honestly, if I faced all she did as a single mom, I don't think I could have done half as well as she did, but we are humans after all. I saw my years helping support my mom and sister kept me from checking in on me and learning where those boundary lines should be.
3. Find the Balance - If you are learning from your life and asking the Holy Spirit to guide you as you go, you will find that you have probably walked too far down one side of the road and you must find the balance. Doing the examination isn't unspiritual and its not living in the past, instead its learning from the past so you can move forward without bitterness or baggage. I think most of us have areas we are stuck and these kind of reflections can get us unstuck.
So what does all of this look like for you? I'd love to hear from you. God is good and he is good to guide us through our issues, if we let him. He created us and knows us best, so I find letting him guide is best. Happy Wednesday! Join me next week (also next month) for a whole new theme.
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