Jesus tells us “If anyone wants to come after Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Me.” What He is speaking to is the old false-self, the dysfunctional shadow-self of us that must be denied daily, hourly, moment-by-moment. These are the old patterns of living, the mindset developed to survive mentally and emotionally. The dysfunctional relational ways we developed, we learned, saw modeled, and how we were trained through the developmental stages of life.
There comes a point when healing/growth stops being only about understanding what happened to you and begins asking you to examine the life you are still living. Becoming aware of our relational dysfunction and lack of emotional regulation skills is foundational for real and lasting change. And both require new skillsets and abilities that we can learn no matter how long we’ve lived it. It’s not easy, in fact it might be the hardest thing any of us will ever do. But it is profound change and it is worth all the effort, intentionality, and tenacity it takes to live a new way. The way, the truth, and the life of freedom He offers.
It is this idea He speaks to when He says we must be “born again” – like a little child. It is the process of unlearning – unlearning the ways that don’t work and learning the ways that do!
You may read all the relevant books, write in journals, take long walks, practice gratitude, improve your sleep, and become more aware of the patterns that shaped you. You may learn the language of boundaries, emotional safety, self-respect, and personal growth. You may understand exactly why you became the person who lacks healthy boundaries, over explains, over gives, stays too long, forgives too quickly, and keeps functioning while quietly falling apart.
This is often because healing cannot fully take root in a life that continues demanding the same abandonment of your true-self that created the pain in the first place. You cannot keep silencing your needs and expect to feel deeply connected to yourself. You cannot remain available to everyone and wonder why you have nothing left for your own life. You cannot repeatedly say yes while feeling no inside and expect self-trust to grow. You cannot spend every day performing a version of yourself that feels acceptable to others, then hope a few hours of reflection will repair the damage.
Healing is not only something you do privately. It is also reflected in what you continue allowing publicly.
At some point, your life must begin changing in ways that support the person you are trying to become, your true-self – mature, whole, fully alive and free in Him!
