The Root of the Problem

THE ROOT OF THE PROBLEM

Yesterday, I shared that I had been searching for an outward solution to an inward issue. Today, it’s time to confront that issue head-on—the real problem: what’s happening on the inside.

Even writing that feels painful. It's one thing to admit that I was the problem—but facing the buried pain, unhealed wounds, and emotional damage built up over years? That’s a much heavier lift.

For a long time, I truly believed I was okay. As long as I didn’t think about the past or revisit painful memories, I assumed they were healed. Gone. Buried.

I was wrong.

Healing didn’t begin until I started paying attention to the emotions that would unexpectedly surface. When I followed those emotions to their source, I discovered that their roots ran far deeper than I had ever realized.

THE FIRST SEED OF UNWORTHINESS

The first time I remember feeling unworthy, I was just three years old.

That seed was planted by my paternal grandmother—my stepfather’s mother. My sister and I stayed with her while my mom recovered from an illness. She never accepted me as her granddaughter. I was simply my mother’s child—nothing more.

I was a dark-skinned, chubby little girl with a pudgy nose. My sister, on the other hand, was fair-skinned and her biological granddaughter. The contrast mattered to her. She looked at me and told me I was black, ugly, fat, and would never amount to anything. She made me feel like an outsider in her home while pouring affection on my sister.

Imagine being three years old and trying to process the idea that you were made wrong.

That seed didn't just sit in the soil—it grew with me. It was nurtured by cruel children at school and reinforced by a society in the 1970s that didn’t celebrate girls who looked like me.

My mother tried to plant different seeds—seeds of love, beauty, worth. She told me I was valued and beautiful. But her efforts had to compete with deeply rooted weeds of unworthiness. And as anyone with a garden knows, weeds can choke out even the most lovingly planted flowers.

THE WAR IN THE GARDEN

This battle—the one between weeds and the fruits of the Spirit—is no easy fight. Weeds have to be pulled out by the root. And roots? They go deep.

They’re designed to anchor, to stabilize us through the storms of life. But if our anchor isn’t God—if we don’t understand that His Spirit is meant to ground us—we risk letting the wrong roots take hold.

So how do you pull out a root that keeps whispering, “You’re ugly”?How do you stop comparing yourself to others?How do you move through life without feeling like everyone is silently judging you?

I built tools to cope—some healthy, some not.

I craved male attention, believing that if a boy liked me, I must be worth something.I smoked weed and snuck drinks behind my mom’s back—because when you’re high and having fun, no one cares what you look like.I overachieved in school. If I wasn’t pretty, at least I could be smart. Maybe that would be enough.

But really, I was just masking the mess in my garden. Covering the stench of the fertilizer with false achievements, distractions, and temporary highs.

THE TRUTH ABOUT FERTILIZER

We’re all made from the soil. And just like soil, we absorb whatever is planted in us. Whether good or bad—it grows.

And yes, even the mess has a purpose.

Fertilizer is, at its core, waste. Poop. Or more bluntly—shit.

It’s raw and unpleasant, but it's necessary for growth. Life’s mess—grief, trials, disappointment, shame—can nourish something deep within us. That mess can produce resilience. It can prepare the ground for something beautiful to bloom.

It’s said we overcome by the word of our testimony. And often, it’s the mess that gives birth to the testimony.