Definition of damaged goods: inadequate or impaired. Products that are broken, cracked, scratched, etc.: a person considered no longer desirable or valuable because of something that has happened. This is a person whose reputation is damaged.
Are you damaged goods? Feel like you’re not worthy?
You don’t have to remain that way, regardless of your past, or present.
Was that ever me?
You betcha!
Read on …
Hollow. Pure loneliness. Dark, like a bottomless pit. Ripping in my chest. Piercing my heart. Again, he stays out all night. Overcome by torment. Abandonment accompanies me. Consumed with depression, isolation wraps itself around me. My mind races with wild imaginations of where he has gone, what he is doing, and with whom.
Instead of going to bed to sleep, I am wearing a hole in the couch. Every time a car approaches, I spring like a jack-in-the-box, peeking out the window, hoping he has returned. With every disappointment, my stomach turns into knots. My own sobs mock me until I cry myself to semi-consciousness. Hideous lies will follow after he returns and add to my anguish and emotional decline.
Broken. Flawed. Undone.
That was me back then, dealing with my former (cheating) husband. His words, like rubbing alcohol pouring over fresh wounds, stung! No band-aids healed my emotional pain. No quick fixes. Deeper and deeper I sank into a dark abyss, crushed beyond repair. For several years, that was my pathetic frame of mind. I know now it didn’t have to be that way. So, what was the deal?
I had an overload of abuse: physical, verbal, and emotional. I had low self-esteem and zero self-worth. I believed and accepted a lie about me and my situation. I figured since this was my lot in life, might as well make the best of it. I had witnessed my mom go through a cycle of abuse, but I was obviously blind to my own. I made him mad again … Maybe I deserved it … Talk about co-dependency!
How do you perceive yourself? Have you ever been lied to, beaten down, and trodden upon? Feel like you’ll never come up for air? Are you tired of stumbling around in blindness, things so bleak you can’t even see your own self-worth? Drowning in sorrow, buried in self-pity? Or maybe you feel you’re at the point of no return in trying to please someone else. You compromise your values, your mental state, your resources, and your health!
Stop allowing someone’s negativity or ill-treatment to rob you of your joy and develop a callous heart. Realize you are worthy. You are valued and matter. There’s nothing wrong with being fragile … but let it be like beautiful, fine china. Just know you are not damaged goods, a throwaway, or a faded memory. Don’t be someone’s victim because you listened to their lies and empty promises. I’m living proof that God doesn’t discard what He’s determined to restore.
Get up! Rediscover yourself. Feel your wrist. What is that? A pulse? Then you have a purpose! Allow the Master’s hand to reach down and set you in high places. He’ll wipe the tears and dust the soot from off your heart. If God got me out of the pit, He can get you out, too. It takes a made-up mind. A determination that today is the best day of the rest of your life.
What’s in your hands? What’s in your heart? A dream? A gift? A precious child? You have something worth fighting for. Choose your battles.
If you don’t know my pain, you’ll never understand my praise.
From Heart to Heritage
Reflections From the Heart 