I have spent a good portion of my life being proud of something that has been quietly hurting the people who love me.
And the really embarrassing part? I thought it was one of my greatest strengths.
My independence.
Actually, let me stop lying to myself before God has to interrupt this entire conversation.
My hyper-independence.
Because independence is knowing I can stand on my own two feet. Hyper-independence is struggling to let someone stand beside me without feeling like I’m somehow losing my balance.
And apparently, God decided this morning was a wonderful time to discuss the difference.
It’s Monday, Lord.
We couldn’t start with something light? Maybe patience? Gratitude? The fruits of the Spirit?
No?
We’re going straight for the childhood trauma?
Wonderful.
I was sitting with Jeremiah 1:6-8 this morning, where God calls Jeremiah and Jeremiah immediately starts explaining why he’s not qualified. He’s too young. He doesn’t know how to speak. He doesn’t believe he’s capable of doing what God has called him to do.
And God essentially tells him to stop defining himself by what he thinks he lacks. He will go where God sends him, speak what God commands, and he doesn’t need to be afraid because God will be with him.
Now, I’ve read this passage before. Plenty of times.
But this morning I started wondering if insecurity doesn’t always look like Jeremiah’s insecurity.
Sometimes it doesn’t sound like, “I’m not capable.”
Sometimes it sounds like, “I’m the only one capable.”
And baby, that one sat me all the way down.
Because what if I’ve been calling myself strong when I’ve actually been scared?
What if I’ve been calling myself responsible when I’ve actually been controlling?
What if I’ve been calling myself independent when I’ve actually been terrified of depending on anybody?
And what if the very thing I’ve been celebrating about myself is the thing other people have been suffering from?
See, I can tell you exactly how my hyper-independence developed.
I didn’t wake up one morning and decide I wanted to become a one-woman emergency management department.
Life taught me.
Loss taught me.
Disappointment taught me.
People leaving taught me.
Having to grow up in circumstances where safety wasn’t always guaranteed taught me.
I learned early that the people you love can disappear. That the people who are supposed to protect you can hurt you. That sometimes you have to figure things out because nobody is coming to figure them out for you.
And when you’ve experienced enough of that, you start making promises to yourself.
I won’t need anybody.
I won’t ask for anything.
I won’t give anybody the opportunity to disappoint me.
I won’t put myself in a position where someone else’s decisions determine whether I’m okay.
And for a while, those promises felt like protection.
They helped me survive.
But here’s what God confronted me with this morning.
Just because something helped me survive doesn’t mean it gets to govern how I live.
Especially when the people in my life today aren’t the people who hurt me yesterday.
Whew.
Because I have spent years being proud of how little I need from people without ever considering what it feels like to love someone who refuses to need you.
Let that sit.
What does it feel like to be married to someone who says she wants partnership but struggles to relinquish responsibility?
What does it feel like to be friends with someone who will show up for you in a heartbeat but has to be practically interrogated before she’ll admit she needs anything herself?
What does it feel like to love someone who keeps telling you she’s fine while quietly resenting the fact that nobody noticed she wasn’t?
And how fair is it to expect people to meet needs I’ve never communicated because I’ve already convinced myself they won’t?
Because apparently, I want people to read my mind, anticipate my needs, respect my boundaries, understand my silence, and somehow know when “I’ve got it” actually means “Please help me.”
Ma’am.
That is not a relationship.
That’s an escape room with no clues.
And I’m standing outside wondering why nobody can find the exit.
This is where something from my notes called the Johari Window really started bothering me.
It’s a framework that helps us understand the difference between what we know about ourselves and what other people know about us.
There’s the open self. What I know about myself and others know too.
There’s the hidden self. What I know about myself but don’t allow others to see.
There’s the unknown self. What neither I nor others have discovered yet.
And then there’s the blind self.
The part of me that other people experience but I cannot see.
And I had to ask myself a question I genuinely didn’t want answered.
What if the way I describe myself isn’t the way other people experience me?
I say I’m capable.
They may experience me as controlling.
I say I’m independent.
They may experience me as emotionally unavailable.
I say I’m just trying to help.
They may experience me as someone who doesn’t trust them to do anything correctly.
I say I’m protecting my peace.
They may experience me as shutting them out.
And I can have the purest intentions in the world, but intentions don’t automatically erase impact.
My hyper-independence is the root.
Other people experience the fruit.
They don’t necessarily see the little girl who learned not to depend on people.
They see the grown woman who struggles to receive help.
They don’t see the years of disappointment that taught me to expect the worst.
They experience the frustration of being treated like they’re going to fail before they’ve even been given a chance.
They don’t see the fear underneath my need to control things.
They experience the control.
And that doesn’t mean my wounds weren’t real.
It means my wounds are no longer affecting only me.
And I need to be honest about that.
Which brings me to Bridesmaids.
Because apparently, I have been Annie Walker on that airplane, and nobody thought to tell me.
Remember when Annie was completely unraveling on the plane, convinced there was a colonial woman on the wing churning butter?
Girl.
At 30,000 feet.
A colonial woman.
CHURNING BUTTER.
And Annie was absolutely committed to what she believed she was seeing.
Meanwhile, everybody else was witnessing a completely different emergency.
Annie herself.
And I started laughing because the more I thought about that scene, the more uncomfortable I became.
Because how many times have I been so convinced that I’m the only person who sees the problem, the only person who knows what needs to happen, the only person who can handle the responsibility, that I completely miss what everybody else is experiencing from me?
I’m over here pointing out the window, demanding somebody acknowledge the colonial woman, and the people who love me are trying to explain that the actual emergency is sitting in my seat.
ME.
I am the emergency.
And if you’ve watched Bridesmaids, you know Annie’s insecurity didn’t begin on that airplane.
Her business had failed. Her romantic life was a mess. Her best friendship was changing. She felt replaced, overlooked, and left behind.
And instead of being honest about how deeply those things were hurting her, she kept unraveling.
Her insecurity affected her relationship with Lillian.
It affected how she treated Helen.
It affected her ability to receive genuine affection from Rhodes.
She was so consumed with everything she believed she was losing that she couldn’t recognize what was still available to her.
And Lord, if that isn’t a picture of what insecurity can do.
Because sometimes I’m so focused on making sure nobody disappoints me that I don’t realize I’m disappointing the people who are genuinely trying to show up.
Sometimes I’m so determined not to need anybody that I make the people who love me feel unnecessary.
Sometimes I’m so busy protecting myself from abandonment that I create the very distance I’m afraid of.
And then I have the audacity to wonder why I feel alone.
Girl.
You have been emotionally escorting everybody off the aircraft.
And the colonial woman is STILL churning butter.
But here’s the part that really convicted me.
Annie wasn’t wrong for being hurt.
Her disappointments were real.
Her insecurities had context.
But her pain didn’t automatically make her behavior healthy.
And neither does mine.
I can be hurting and still be hurting somebody.
I can be afraid and still be unfair.
I can have a legitimate reason for why I struggle with trust and still be responsible for how that struggle affects the people who love me.
My past explains some of my behavior.
It doesn’t excuse all of it.
And I think that’s the part of healing we don’t talk about enough.
We spend so much time identifying who hurt us, what happened to us, and why we became the way we are.
And those conversations matter.
They matter deeply.
But eventually, I have to stop asking only, “Why am I like this?”
And start asking, “What is being affected because I am like this?”
Because the people in my life aren’t just interacting with my intentions.
They’re interacting with my patterns.
And I can’t keep asking God to bless my relationships while refusing to acknowledge the behaviors that make those relationships harder to maintain.
There’s another passage I keep coming back to.
Jeremiah 6:14 describes leaders treating the wounds of God’s people superficially, declaring peace where there was no peace.
The passage is addressing Judah’s spiritual condition and the failure of those responsible for speaking truth.
But the imagery of a wound being treated lightly made me examine myself.
Have I been doing that with my own wounds?
Have I been calling myself healed because I learned how to function?
Because I can show up to work, lead a team, serve in ministry, love my family, manage a household, encourage everybody around me, and still have a part of my heart that panics at the thought of needing someone.
I can be successful and still be insecure.
I can be productive and still be wounded.
I can be surrounded by people who love me and still struggle to let myself be loved.
And maybe the most dangerous thing about my hyper-independence is that it doesn’t always look unhealthy.
Sometimes it looks admirable.
Sometimes it looks like ambition.
Sometimes it looks like leadership.
Sometimes it looks like being the person everybody can count on.
And sometimes it’s just fear wearing a blazer, carrying a planner, and calling itself responsibility.
I know her.
She has excellent time management skills and absolutely terrible vulnerability skills.
And apparently, we need to have a conversation.
Because my notes say something else that hit me.
“You don’t kill a giant while tiptoeing around it.”
And I realized I’ve been tiptoeing around my insecurity because I didn’t want to acknowledge that it existed.
I’ve called it discernment.
I’ve called it wisdom.
I’ve called it boundaries.
I’ve called it maturity.
And sometimes it genuinely was those things.
But sometimes it was fear.
Fear that if I let somebody help me, they’ll eventually hold it over my head.
Fear that if I depend on someone, they’ll disappoint me.
Fear that if I communicate a need, I’ll be rejected.
Fear that if I stop being useful, I’ll stop being valuable.
And that last one?
That one goes deep.
Because somewhere along the way, I started confusing being needed with being loved.
If I can fix it, solve it, carry it, provide it, organize it, anticipate it, or make it easier for everybody else, then I have a place.
I have value.
I matter.
But what happens when I don’t have anything to offer?
What happens when I’m tired?
What happens when I’m the one who needs something?
What happens when I can’t be the strong one?
Do I still believe I’m worthy of being loved?
Or have I built an entire identity around making sure nobody ever has to carry me?
And I wonder how much of my hyper-independence is really rooted in the belief that needing someone makes me a burden.
Because I don’t think I’ve always been afraid of people refusing to help me.
Sometimes I’ve been afraid of discovering that I needed help in the first place.
And that is a different kind of insecurity.
One that doesn’t just affect how I see myself.
It affects how I receive love.
Especially in my marriage.
Because friendship is key to marriage.
And friendship requires mutuality.
It requires allowing someone to know me beyond what I can accomplish.
It requires honesty when I’m struggling.
It requires communication before resentment.
It requires allowing my husband to be my partner instead of making him compete with the version of me that learned to survive alone.
And I have to ask myself something.
Have I been asking for partnership while still operating like a one-person organization?
Have I been expecting consideration while making decisions without inviting someone else into the conversation?
Have I been asking to feel supported while automatically rejecting support because it doesn’t look exactly how I would’ve done it?
Because somebody doing something differently doesn’t automatically mean they’re doing it wrong.
And someone needing clarification doesn’t automatically mean they don’t care.
Sometimes people genuinely want to help.
But I have to give them room.
And no, that doesn’t mean abandoning discernment or pretending everyone is trustworthy.
Some boundaries are necessary.
Some people have demonstrated that they aren’t safe.
And wisdom absolutely matters.
But I cannot use the existence of unsafe people as justification to treat every person who loves me like a potential threat.
I cannot make today’s relationships stand trial for yesterday’s offenses.
And I cannot expect people to feel close to me when I keep holding them at arm’s length.
Then I started thinking about Moses.
In Exodus 17:12, when Moses’ hands grew tired during Israel’s battle with Amalek, Aaron and Hur supported his hands.
Moses was leading.
Moses was called.
Moses had an assignment.
And Moses still needed help.
His calling didn’t eliminate his limitations.
And his limitations didn’t disqualify his calling.
So why have I convinced myself that needing support somehow diminishes my strength?
Why do I believe that if God has called me to something, I should be able to carry it without anybody else?
Even Jesus invited His disciples to remain with Him and keep watch in Gethsemane.
So where did I get the idea that spiritual maturity means emotional isolation?
Because it certainly wasn’t from Scripture.
And maybe part of my problem is that I’ve created assignments God never gave me.
The assignment to keep everybody happy.
The assignment to anticipate every disappointment.
The assignment to make sure nothing ever goes wrong.
The assignment to never need more than someone is willing to give.
The assignment to be so prepared that I never have to depend on anyone.
And then I wonder why I’m exhausted.
Girl, because you’re working overtime at a job God never hired you for.
My notes say, “Sometimes I can’t walk in God’s calling because I created my own.”
And I had to sit with that.
Because if I spend all my energy maintaining control, how much room am I leaving for obedience?
If I’m constantly trying to guarantee the outcome, am I actually trusting God?
Or am I trusting my ability to prevent disappointment?
And here’s another uncomfortable question.
How many times have I prayed for God to send help while rejecting it because it came through somebody else?
Because I wanted relief.
But I wanted relief without vulnerability.
I wanted support without surrendering control.
I wanted partnership without having to depend on anyone.
I wanted intimacy without exposure.
And I wanted trust without risk.
And while healthy trust absolutely requires wisdom and discernment, I cannot expect meaningful relationships to develop without ever allowing myself to be known.
Then there’s Abraham.
Genesis 22 tells us about Abraham’s obedience when God tested him concerning Isaac. Abraham bound Isaac and laid him on the altar before God stopped him and provided a ram.
That passage isn’t an instruction for me to sacrifice people or abandon responsibility.
But it does make me examine what I’ve been holding so tightly that surrender feels impossible.
And for me, one of those things is control.
Because I can tell God I surrender my need to control everything at 6:00 in the morning and have picked it right back up by 9:17.
Especially if somebody loads the dishwasher incorrectly.
And yes, I know there are multiple ways to load a dishwasher.
I simply happen to believe one of them is better.
See?
We’re working on it.
But that’s the thing about surrender.
It isn’t just a beautiful prayer.
It’s a decision I have to practice.
When someone offers help and my first instinct is to decline.
When someone asks what’s wrong and I want to say nothing.
When someone handles a situation differently and I feel the urge to take over.
When I have a need and my pride starts preparing a closing argument for why I shouldn’t express it.
That’s where the altar is for me.
Not just in what I’m willing to say I surrender.
But in what I’m willing to stop picking back up.
And I think the most heartbreaking realization this morning is that the little girl in me learned to be independent because she didn’t always have another choice.
She learned to be strong because life demanded it.
She learned to anticipate disappointment because disappointment had become familiar.
She learned to protect herself because protection wasn’t always guaranteed.
And I don’t want to shame her for that.
She did what she knew how to do.
But I also cannot allow her fear to make every decision for the woman I am today.
I cannot keep handing the people who love me the consequences of experiences they had nothing to do with.
I cannot keep calling distance safety.
I cannot keep calling control peace.
I cannot keep calling isolation independence.
And I cannot keep asking God to heal the fruit while refusing to let Him touch the root.
Because my hyper-independence may have protected me once.
But now it’s interfering with some of the very things I’ve been praying for.
Connection.
Partnership.
Friendship.
Rest.
The freedom to be loved without having to prove I’m useful.
The freedom to need someone without feeling ashamed.
The freedom to say, “I can’t do this alone,” without believing I’ve somehow failed.
And perhaps that’s what God is teaching me.
Not how to become less capable.
But how to stop making my capability my identity.
Not how to trust everybody.
But how to stop punishing trustworthy people for the actions of untrustworthy ones.
Not how to become dependent on others for my worth.
But how to recognize that receiving love is not weakness.
And not how to forget what happened to me.
But how to stop allowing what happened to me to determine everything that happens through me.
Because I don’t want to be the woman who can survive anything but struggles to receive everything God is trying to give her.
I don’t want to be so proud of never needing help that I miss the beauty of being supported.
I don’t want to be so committed to protecting myself that the people who love me only ever get access to the guarded version of me.
And I certainly don’t want to keep being Annie Walker, pointing out the airplane window, convinced everybody else is missing the problem, while the real issue is sitting right there in my seat.
So this morning, I’m asking God to help me see myself clearly.
Not just the version of me I understand.
Not just the version of me I present.
But the version of me other people experience.
The blind spots.
The defensiveness.
The control.
The places where fear has been making decisions and calling itself wisdom.
And I’m asking Him to give me the humility to listen when someone tells me how my behavior affects them.
Without immediately explaining why I am the way I am.
Without turning every conversation into a defense of my intentions.
Without making my pain the final word.
Because I can acknowledge what happened to me and still take responsibility for what happens through me.
I can honor my survival without worshiping my survival strategies.
I can be strong without being unreachable.
I can be capable without being controlling.
I can be independent without being isolated.
And I can let someone love me without treating their presence like a threat to my ability to stand on my own.
So God, don’t just show me the fruit.
Show me the root.
And when You show it to me, give me the courage to stop defending it simply because I understand how it got there.
Because the truth is, my hyper-independence may have started as a response to what other people did to me, but healing requires me to take responsibility for what it’s now doing through me.
And if I’m going to keep asking God for healthier relationships, I have to be willing to become a healthier participant in them.
Not perfect.
Not suddenly fearless.
Not dependent on everybody.
Just honest enough to recognize that sometimes the greatest threat to the connection I’m praying for is the protection I’ve refused to put down.
And as for that colonial woman on the wing?
Maybe it’s time I stopped pointing at everybody else’s problems long enough to recognize that I’ve been the one churning the butter.
Because I can’t keep feeding the people I love yesterday’s fear and expecting today’s relationships to taste like peace.