One of the biggest things I’m working on right now in life is becoming more God-reliant versus people-reliant. About a year ago, I wrote about moving away from a life of self-reliance, which is where most of my former addictions took me. But to be perfectly honest, I’ve also relied on people far too much as well to make me feel happy and safe. To counteract that, I’ve been spending a lot of time lately walking through a tremendous amount of fears with God alone, because ultimately, I found that people-reliance constantly let me down just like a life of self-reliance did.
When I was growing up, the people I was mostly reliant on were my mother and father. If I got a bad grade, a boo-boo, felt sick, was picked on, or didn’t do so well in some sport, I went to them for reassurance. Rarely did I pray to God for help and guidance.
Throughout my college years, I found various people there too to latch onto for reassurance. Whenever I felt down, alone, did poorly in a class, got in trouble, or was at odds with someone, I’d go to them to help me feel better. Once again, rarely, if ever, did I pray to God for any help and guidance.
Then came all those years I ventured off on my own, post-college. I’d say that for at least those first fifteen years, I’d consistently have a rotating amount of individuals in my life to rely upon when things weren’t going so well. Whether it was a partner, a codependent friend, or even some doctor or practitioner, I’d go to them to help me out of all those moments of depression, anxiety, break-ups, job losses, family deaths, and plenty of other things too, instead of trying to go to God for any help or guidance.
Unfortunately, none of this people-reliance truly helped me in the long run. I became so codependent that time and time again everyone would eventually end up failing to give me the reassurance I most needed, which was just to feel safe. Sadly, I never quite learned how to do that with God from the very earliest moments of my life.
This is why I’m now finding it such a struggle lately to walk through all the fears I’m finding myself trudge through because I’m not going to all those people for reassurance anymore. While I do have a select few that continue to help me on my spiritual path, I’m spending a lot more time now alone on my knees praying and asking for the help I wished I had started doing a long time ago. While I can’t go back in time to change that, I believe I still have a good chunk of my life ahead of me, one where I hope to truly become more God-reliant instead of people-reliant…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson