It seems I am not alone

Along with having several women comment to my post yesterday about the insecurities and doubts I have about myself, I also read several posts that other women had written about the very same thing. This breaks my heart.

I am discovering about myself lately that I don't invest much into relationships. I want to. I really really want to have relationships with people where we can really get down to the nitty gritty and not have to worry about how we look on the outside but how we look on the inside. I don't do small talk well. It is exhausting to me to try to come up with nice platitudes and put on a fake smile and pretend like everything is perfect when I know it isn't for me and it isn't for you. I don't want to spend our time together only talking about the weather or the kids. Those things are important, but I want to know how you are doing REALLY. Down below the surface, below the outer appearances and the fancy clothes and the make-up. And I think this scares people. We are all so afraid of revealing those demons that we wrestle about ourselves and we need to realize that our friends, our sisters, are dealing with the same thing. We can help each other, but I know I have been hurt, and maybe you have, too, and so we keep it in. This breaks my heart, too.

I have been hurt in my life. I have been hurt by men that matter to me, but also to women that matter to me. I think that we as women tend to be just as hard on other women as we are on ourselves. So I hide from the possibility of getting close to another woman because I fear that if I reveal too much to her, she will not protect it. And I think she is hiding, too.

As women, as wives, and mothers, and sisters, and friends, we need to love each other. And we need to do it well and carefully. If we can just open up to each other, share what we are struggling with personally, spiritually, in our marriage, with our children, we would be able to have relationships that bless our lives tremendously.

Satan wants me to believe that I am the only one who struggles like I do. He doesn't want me to reach out to others for help and to help. He knows that if he can keep us divided, he can conquer. I refuse to let that happen, but I just need other women to agree with me.