Internal Rivalry

If nature was the litmus test for raising the child up as it should go, all of us would know our worth as the spiritual beings God created us to be.  We lost sight of who we were naturally, through the lack of healthy nurture, so we sabotage good things and push away inner-healing because hope has been deferred.  It’s better to learn the right way than to un-learn the wrong way but unfortunately what is ingrained early on, lasts. When we finally realize that what we were taught isn’t working anymore, parts of us surface in hopes of laying down their burdens, and it can happen one at a time or in tandem with multiple parts linked to similar memories.  You see, our suffering is most impactful when we don’t have words to explain our emotions which become “parts” of our personality. They fear erupting the frozen inner child who has been exiled and work overtime with bad behavior to keep us from knowing our true identity.  Unfortunately but fortunately, God created us for deep connection so when love and acceptance isn’t primal, parts of us go searching for it at all costs, sometimes to the point of idolatry.  With enough pursuit of anything that we lacked as children, we will accept a counterfeit. Some will look for a surrogate family in church, affiliations or friends, but eventually, the emotions which drive belonging and community will cause dis-connection because dormant pain wears all of our relationships down.  The unspoken sins of the fathers that are felt but indescribable, discerned but held in our subconscious, become the legacy burdens that play out generation after generation.  It is the need to give back those roles inside ourselves to ancestors who have gone before us, so then our internal systems will calibrate to the natural instincts we were born to cultivate.  If everything in our life goes back to the fundamental establishment of who we really are, than anything that twisted up our insides due to pain, can be re-nurtured.  That is why labeling people as their behavior or harping on sin, will never change them.  Re-learning to love and accept oneself comes with the belief that change is possible. It is possible to re-wire your brain pathways and completely change your personality by getting back to who you were always meant to be.

Everyone has an internal family system waiting to let go of beliefs and lies that promote sibling rivalry between its parts. Arguments inside your system stem from polarized viewpoints on a subject much like a brother and sister conflicting with each other in the outside world. For every disconnect in relationship there is a part of you that holds onto that rift and goes into protection mode so you don’t re-live it.  The unspoken judgments you make about yourself or others outwardly, are compartmentalized to parts that continue to rival inwardly. The hurt you experienced, imprints on your brain and established an expectation for its repeat.  A response might be to stop talking to your sister which manages the rejection, but a reaction to gossip about her could arise from a guilt part who cut things off. Rather than scolding yourself for sin, God wants to unburden the sting of it one protective part at a time because only He knows when it started, where it embedded in your body and spirit and why you cope that way.  This is the importance of allowing our brains to function as God planned, and heal thyself.  Our inner most being is where Holy Spirit resides and it is capable of immense transformation when we learn that parts of us destroy connection in our everyday routine because they think they have to. Those parts perform on our behalf when we don’t live up to the expectations of our household and we have to cope with disappointing parents who have their own issues with their parents.  An absentee father is a big deal, he could have been present but emotionally unattached.  Or he could have been your abuser which shaded all relationships thereafter because trust in SELF was disconnected and the parts who helped during the assault, overpower your actions from that point on.  Patterns of action that continuously react to that original trauma have historically anchored themselves for survival. For who and what we couldn’t control in our childhoods, parts of us have fought back and aided us through forming either cautionary or self-defeating behavior.  But God calls us to abundant life.  There is more.  There is always more.  The parts of yourself that you judge and dislike really were created to help you when you were powerless and pained.  Now is the opportunity to get to know their stories in order to set them free.

How we protect ourselves through coping behaviors is a direct result of the distance we have between those in authority and our heavenly Father, yet we still have the ability to learn a new love language.  We can look at the pain of the past through a curious lens and find out that we naturally want to be healed.  God isn’t angry, inconsistent, disappointed, aloof, or harsh just because your earthly one was. The ultimate revelation is that God in heaven would be known as a loving parent to you, without the distortion of parts who label you, criticize you, or remain exiled deep within your internal system. He has never left you nor forsaken you, and neither have the parts of you who picked up the broken pieces of your SELF, especially those you dislike. With intention and curiosity, all parts can become who they are called to be, while you get back to who you were always meant to be.

Psalm 68:5 says, “He puts us into families”.  Where we have been surrounded by others but still feel lonely, our internal family system can become our own best advocate. Our internal family is a system of phenomenal intrigue and personal connection without our acknowledgement of it, but every part of it wants to be known.  All the ways in which we protect ourselves from repeated suffering, have exhausted themselves and desire to get rid of the responsibility that plagues them. Our inner children want to be released from the cyclical patterns and fears that caught and suspended them in time so that you are free to relate to the essence of your true SELF.  The prison that your emotional parts have been trapped in, will take on the new role of understanding, it’s a promise. God wants to repair the broken down walls with healed up parts who no longer react and respond like your parents or anyone else in your ancestral line, no longer prisoners in a negatively nurturing system, but a naturally loving one. An exchange of a lackluster love life with yourself is your right as you trust that everything you need is already inside of you, and they long to be one big understanding family.