Why is misunderstanding my stronghold?
I don’t remember why I sat in the first grade classroom through recess. Some sort of infraction, I imagine. I had just come off a year of sexual assault, so I hadn’t recovered, and I’m sure I was rough around the edges. In kindergarten when all the trauma was happening on a daily basis, I had received bad marks for “cooperation” (wow, I can’t believe I remember that), so I probably was still in acting out mode.
Even typing this I’m alarmed at how little the adults in my life were curious. How much they misunderstood me even then. Why did I disobey my kindergarten teacher, me a very compliant student? But the teacher didn’t care to explore the why. My parents didn’t either other than to scold me and remind me to do better. They believed me to be rebellious, never wondering why I suddenly had changed.
So I sat at my desk during first grade recess, desperate to right myself, hoping to get into the good graces in my brand new school. Maybe I thought this was my new start, twenty miles away from all that devastation.
That’s when I noticed the chalkboard, full of messy writing. I know what I’ll do! I’ll help my teacher. I’ll take this time out to erase the board.
Of course in retrospect, I see this as an unwise decision. But in my desperation to be loved, I decided to erase.
And when the teacher returned, she took one look at the erased board and hollered at me. She assumed I was being deviant or sneaky when in actuality, all I wanted to do was help her and gain her approval.
The shame I felt in that moment still reverberates through me today. To be misunderstood so totally is one of my besetting fears. It’s one thing to be called out when you’ve purposefully done something nefarious, but to be yelled at for trying to do a good thing? Devastating.
Why? Because having someone judge a good heart to be bad is its own poison.
There’s nothing you can do in the aftermath. No response you can make that will make an angry person bent on misunderstanding you to believe the truth.
And if you’re a ruminator like me, the spiraling questions follow—what did I do? How can I make this better? Why did I do that? Will I ever be believed?
To this day, I hate it when people assign me mean motives. Hate it. I have learned a lot through these kinds of trials, particularly about the Lord holding my reputation, that it’s not always necessary to run around controlling a narrative or trying to fix a perception. I can rest in the fact that he knows my heart, and he will vindicate me—eventually.
It also causes me to introspect. First about the misunderstood situation. Maybe there is something to what they’re saying. I ask the Lord to search my heart. I talk with safe friends, seeing if they see the other perspective, and I’m in the wrong. I want to be teachable and willing to admit it when I’m wrong.
But it also causes me to think about my own actions in other situations. When have I rushed to unfair conclusions? When have I assigned nefarious intentions to another? When am I operating with blind confirmation bias? Because I know how much it hurts to be misunderstood, I pray that my pain informs the way I treat others because I certainly don’t want to inflict my snap judgment on them.
I walked through another bout of misunderstanding recently, and it did immediately plunge me back to first grade Mary. But I took a deep breath, processed with my husband and friends, asked for prayer, and read Scripture. My friend Candis sent me these words:
Psalm 26
A psalm of David.
1 Declare me innocent, O Lord,
for I have acted with integrity;
I have trusted in the Lord without wavering.
2 Put me on trial, Lord, and cross-examine me.
Test my motives and my heart.
3 For I am always aware of your unfailing love,
and I have lived according to your truth.
4 I do not spend time with liars
or go along with hypocrites.
5 I hate the gatherings of those who do evil,
and I refuse to join in with the wicked.
6 I wash my hands to declare my innocence.
I come to your altar, O Lord,
7 singing a song of thanksgiving
and telling of all your wonders.
8 I love your sanctuary, Lord,
the place where your glorious presence dwells.
9 Don’t let me suffer the fate of sinners.
Don’t condemn me along with murderers.
10 Their hands are dirty with evil schemes,
and they constantly take bribes.
11 But I am not like that; I live with integrity.
So redeem me and show me mercy.
12 Now I stand on solid ground,
and I will publicly praise the Lord.
May those words bring you solace, O misunderstood one!
This touched something really deep in me. That moment in the classroom, trying to do something good and being completely misunderstood, felt so vivid and heartbreaking. You captured that kind of pain so honestly, the kind that lingers far beyond childhood. What you said about someone judging a good heart to be bad being its own kind of poison… that really stayed with me. It’s such a specific kind of hurt, and I don’t think it’s talked about enough. I also really appreciated how you brought it back to the Lord holding your reputation. Letting go of the need to be understood and trusting that He sees clearly is not easy, but it’s freeing. And I love how your pain has made you more thoughtful toward others. Thank you for sharing this so vulnerably. I think a lot of people will feel seen in your words.
I felt all of this. Being misunderstood has been my life as well. Mostly because of the autism but also coming from a life of trauma. I spent so many years masking but also just not understanding why people are why they are.
That most people respond with anger, shaming you, judgment and accusations??? To this day, I am confused by this. I suppose I will never understand it. I will continue though, to teach others why this is a broken approach to building all the best things towards what we want in life.