The longing for worthiness

(This is Day 6 in a write 31 days series. Click here for the title page )

Lisa's children brought home several signup sheets for volunteering at school. One for Holiday parties, one for fund raising helpers, one for PTO secretary, one for room parent and one for lunch help, which left her overwhelmed with pressure. Even before she read them and their needs she felt like a failure. She knew there was no way she’d be able to participate. Lisa would need to rely on her mom again, which was becoming embarrassing, as the kids at school thought that grandma was the mom. For once, she’d like to be able to tell her boss that she wasn’t able to come in because she was going to the apple orchard field trip with her kids that day.

Her husband doesn’t help much either with his comments of “you have better things to do with your time than play room mom to a room full of other people’s kids.”  Lisa just didn’t imagine life this way. She always figured she’d work a while then quit to be home with kids. Her husband wanted that too, once upon a time, but then they moved into the city and bought a beautiful townhouse that required two incomes. The man she married changed.

There was never time for a sit down dinner, most nights it’s takeout or frozen meals thrown in the oven. Discontentment and guilt hit her sharp that night as Lisa kissed her kid’s goodnight and they each asked if she was going to make it to the school concert coming up…. on the same night she had a presentation to make.

Dear Uncle Savant,

I hope you are happy with my progress with Lisa. She is full of self-doubts and gaping holes of insecurity.

I took to heart what you said regarding Mary and I have since changed my tactics with the other two as well. 

I am working hard to make Lisa feel like she’s failing at motherhood and urging her to throw herself harder into work because she feels success and satisfaction there. The less she’s at home, the less she will have to feel the pain of failing, the less parenting she will do, and ultimately damaging permanently the relationship with her children and husband. He will drive her to achieve but resent her for not being a better mom and wife. A  no-win situation.

Lisa has scheduled a phone call with her old college friend, Mary, tomorrow. It was truly brilliant of you, Uncle, to assign me these two women. I can work to divide them by their differences rather than unite them under their relationship with our Enemy.

She has yet to seek our Enemy in her distress over her life’s direction and so I will continue to distract her with work and activity. I will encourage her sense of self-pride over her accomplishments, nullifying the Enemy’s hand in any of it.

Without much delay, I will have solidified her self-worth in achievement, which will deal out a crushing blow to the concept of the Enemy’s foolish free gift of grace. She will never feel good enough. She will consistently feel like the more she does or the better she does, the more worthy of love, affection and adoration she will be. She will even begin to assume this is the way to earn her husband’s love. It will be cemented in her mind, then, that our Enemy could only forgive and love her if she performed.

Not long after that demanding grind she will feel helpless and hopeless because, as we both know, she will never be able to “achieve” the love and approval she desires. Men will always fail, as they do. Our Enemy doesn’t require his little creations to do anything but believe and surrender all the works, which is the opposite of the value I am working to place on achieving.

I will endeavor to destroy the self-worth and identity of the other two as well, just as you suggested. They will forget who they are, forget that they have that revolting crown and robe of righteousness our Enemy placed on them for all eternity. I will have them so distracted and tuned into our world that they cannot hear HIM speak a word to them.

Sincerely,

Sepitus