Miss Understood

Growing up I always felt like I struggled with being understood by others. I was raised by immigrant parents and so eating rice and leftover dinner for breakfast, wearing clothes purchased in Chinatown alleys where you could buy 5 shirts for $10 and going to additional ESL classes in school to improve my english became the root of my childhood. Those times sit with me now as precious moments that shaped me as a child. But it didn't feel like that for most of my life. For a long time, it felt like embarrassment and hints of shame hidden deep within me. It aches my heart now writing this to have ever felt embarrassed for being different from the dominant culture I was raised in. Being misunderstood not only affected others and how they saw me, but it also impacted how I saw myself.

Being understood seems to be directly related to identity - our values, beliefs and general way of existing and interacting in the world with others. In order for others to know us, to love us, to understand and see us, it in a way requires us to know ourselves, love ourselves and be able to attend and properly steward ourselves with respect and dignity. I think about feeling misunderstood, especially now as an adult with a new identity with faith and experiencing the same feelings of dissonance, tension and incompatibility in some of my preexisting connections I have with others. What use to make me feel sad, worried and even challenged now seems like a mere training opportunity to become stronger in my faith and gives me the ability to navigate through my own limitations with a different perspective.

The different perspective comes in the form of understanding what it means to stand strong in my identity. That spiritual strength is very similiar to what I imagine it is like with physical strength training and building our spiritual bodies, just like our physical bodies, into peak health and performance. We start off lifting 5 lbs weights and increase to 10 lbs, then 15 lbs, and on and on as we build the physical stamina to build muscle in our bodies. We don't start off lifting weights above our capability because that would be unsafe and problematic in the process of building our physical endurance. Eventually, over time, consistency and practice, we build our way up to weights that we could never imagine ever doing. The same goes with our spiritual practice.

For me personally, my struggle has always related to self-worth, people-pleasing and having a fear of being seen and abandoned. When I began my journey of coming to faith, I did not do it because I wanted to address these issues; however, these issues were challenged and dealt with as I developed my relationship with God. These issues were the by-product of carrying the spiritual weights I was not meant to carry. It is the same as pulling a ligament, tearing a muscle or straining our back when we lift something beyond our capacity physically when we spiritually take on more than we were designed to do at that specific moment.

Being spiritually fit means finding consistency in the spiritual practices that help us grow intentionally. That could be through prayer, worship, reading the bible in the more traditional sense, but also being in nature, doing things that bring us joy and gratitude, enjoying slow, mundane moments of our every day lives. They all count as a spiritual practice. Living this life is a spiritual practice. Breathing is a spiritual practice. That is the beauty of coming to faith and seeing with a new lens - there is a clarity and understanding that reveals how precious and beautiful life really is and for us to never take it for granted.

The spiritual training that God took me through helped me learn more about myself, my spiritual body and how best to take care of it. I learned how to start over, to humble myself to even know how to hold the weight properly before I began training with my spiritual "5 lbs weights" that came in the form of learning how to say sorry, listening to cues of conviction, and lowering myself down so that there could be more room for God to move through me. I learned that unlike physical weights, spiritual weights were limitless in what was possible. God helped me forgive those, including myself, in ways that only would have pointed that it was God through the Holy Spirit who was spotting and encouraging me from behind. God helped me to trust the process when I had spent my whole life trying to control it. God helped me manage my self-worth and identity in something that was strong and secure instead of on sinking sand. There was no end in sight. The possibility to experience God and the miracles He performed in my life seemed to only get deeper and bigger the more I trusted, leaned in and accepted the challenge of dealing with more difficult situations.

It is interesting to experience issues with being misunderstood, and in a way, having my identity questioned as I approach the final few weeks of the launch of my debut book about coming to faith. With additional strain of feeling distanced in relationships I once felt secure in and releasing a book that shares about my journey of finding my identity in God, I see that any challenges that come up now are not ones I need to worry or cry about (although I have done both over the past few days). I can see now that I get the chance to build up to the next level of "spiritual weights" and the feelings of stress, anxiety and even a bit of emotional distress is actually a good sign! I can choose to get stronger or I can choose to stay at the current level of strength I have.

This revelation is not about being more optimistic, positive thinking that manifests what I want. No, it actually is quite opposite. I know deep down that understanding God's purpose and direction is all intentional. I know in my heart, not think in my head, that if I choose to see and accept this as a challenge to grow instead of seeing it as an obstacle and general oppression of my circumstances, that God will provide, take care of, and encourage me to step into the highest expression of human He designed me to become. It is a promise that is made in the Bible according to Isaiah 41:10 ESV, "Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand."

So perhaps being misunderstood my whole life never had to do with others to begin with. Perhaps it had to do with me not understanding who I was from the start. When there is misunderstanding of who we are, our identity - the foundation of what we stand on, is compromised by confusion or given over to a false substitute of what we identify ourselves in, we add to the overall misunderstanding and experience by byproduct of misunderstanding that leads to the lack of alignment in our relationships, work, and general experiences in life. Coming to faith helped me fix my foundation. God led me to know the truth about who I am and what I stand for. What use to hold me captive, the need to be understood and accepted by others, no longer has me on a tight leash. Whether or not people understand me no longer matters because what does matter is what God has to say and he says I am Miss Understood - a woman that understands the assignment in who she is and who she was made to become.

In the debut book of The Starting Point, the topic of identity and becoming divinely transformed through a relationship with God is discussed.

Purposeful Practices:

1. Do you ever feel misunderstood? What are some perceptions, ideas or beliefs about you that you or others might have towards yourself that feel misaligned with who you actually are?

2. Are you comfortable being misunderstood by others? What do you identify in and what helps you stay rooted in your identity when it is challenged?

3. What are activities you engage in that helps build your spiritual strength and stamina? Do you have a spiritual practice, if so, do you find yourself being able to be consistent or intermittent in your daily engagement of your "spiritual reps?"