We are going to talk about emotional shoplifting today. 

I would say that emotional shoplifting is closely related to unbelief. 

There's that scripture in Mark 9.24, which says, Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief. 

For some reason, that hits a note with me, my unbelief. 

I think those are the dark parts of us that don't have light yet. 

They are begging us to shine some light in those dark corners of our unbelief. 

Emotional shoplifting is a lack of belief. 

It's a lack of belief in how loved you are, how belonged you are, and how known you are. 

We spend a lot of time searching out who I am and who I am to you and you and you. 

This can lead to loneliness, profound loneliness, and chronic loneliness. 

You can be with other people and still be lonely. 

Blog nine covers some of this information. I talked about giving to get. 

That's what emotional shoplifting is, but we'll dive into the unbelief part of it. 

I will give and give and give parts of myself away to feel fulfilled in the dark parts. 

My unbelief will then be believing, but I'm going to get it from you, the mortal man who is an enemy to God. 

I'm going to get it from you, who has not figured out your crap. That's the thing. 

If we feel like we lack something inside, it's only because we thought we should get it from somebody else. Usually, that's a childhood wound. 

It comes from emotionally immature parents who were unable to connect with us emotionally. 

It gave you relationship anxiety. 

You were like; I hope today's the day they can love me because they've been on the struggle bus for a week now, and I haven't received any love from them yet. 

I've only received their struggle. 

It's tough for you to see who you are when all that's going on. 

You're paying so much attention to what the other person is doing and whether or not they're doing their job, which you think is to give you the total 360.

I see you, I know you, and I love you anyway. 

But once we hit 18, if we didn't get that in our childhood, it is our job to help support ourselves emotionally. 

Let's put an age on this. 

Let's say 32 is my favorite age. It's the age I'll be forever. 

I've got my kids so conditioned to believe that when I turned 57, one of them asked, how old are you really the other four echoed. She's 32. 

But at 32, it's this really good age between 32 and 46. 

You know you're smart enough not to do stupid things, but you're still emotionally developing into your person. 

A lot of morphing happens in that decade, and you're hanging out with people you knew in your childhood, right? 

Whether it's siblings or parents, it's usually the close, intimate relationships that you had or should have had with these people. 

Let's say you're still around them, that they will say things because their memory of you is in the past. 

My sister will always consider me the six-year-old she came home to visit because she's 18 years older than me. 

She always remembers me as the little shiny-eyed kid who was so happy to see her, and she still sometimes talks to me that way.

Even though she's in her seventies and I'm in my fifties, it's like, I'm a grown woman now. You don't have to use your baby talk to talk to me. 

If you hang out with people like that, I'm not saying they are bad people for seeing you at an age when they remember you best. 

It's your response to them that matters because that's what determines where you are that day. 

Emotionally, that's emotional health, right? 

We have to either stay in an emotionally healthy place or be emotionally wounded. 

If your wounds are opening, if somebody says something about who you used to be, and you've come so far and gained so much in maturity, career, and relationships. 

You've chosen well for yourself in many ways, but that one comment opens up a wound, and for the next month, you find yourself wanting reconciliation. 

You want to close a chapter in your life, so you bandage the wound and see it heal. 

You don't want to feel less than unseen, unknown, or unwanted. You don't want to feel like that anymore.

The reason you don't want to feel like that is because, intrinsically inside of you, it's not true. 

You are known, you are loved, and you do belong. 

You're all the healthy parts that you want to be. But there's that child in you, and I want to hear it. 

I want them to show me. I want them to speak my love language, and that's the only way I will accept and receive what I'm missing from them. 

I need them to tell me how good I am. 

I will put a hole in that right now because it's not their job to tell you how good you are. 

It's your job to tell you how good you are. 

You're the only one who matters. 

If they're having a bad day and can't tell you because they're telling you more about how unseen they are, you're like, yeah, but I want to be seen. 

I will talk incessantly about something to get your agreement on it. 

I will take agreement over a hug because that's all I can have. 

That is a no-win scenario. 

You cannot be enough, know enough, talk, and be funny enough. 

You can't do that and heal the wound because you're trying to get something that's not being offered. 

That's emotional shoplifting. 

You're trying to get something that. You think it's the only way you can receive it.

You're not willing to receive it based on who the other person is. You're not willing to receive it based on the only means of expression. 

The other people can muster up. You're only going to receive it if it's done your way, the way you need it to be done, and you get nothing. 

Your bus, your basket, remains empty. Nope. 

There is no healing, no good happy morsels, nothing. Nothing's in your basket. 

You went to the market, and you stole nothing. 

You thought you stole a whole bunch and got away with it, but in the end, your basket was empty. 

You stole nothing. 

This is emotional shoplifting, taking things that are not being offered for free. 

Now, I'm pausing here for a second. I want you to hear that. 

Where in my life am I doing that? Where do I go to the ends of the earth to bone up on a topic that I can speak to this person about, that they would see me for my value, that they would love me for going the extra mile to be there for them or to know something that would be of value to them to share with them when they're not asking you to share.

Where are you doing that in your life? Because it's not serving you. 

It leaves you empty because you gave and gave and gave, and you received nothing in return because it wasn't offered. 

Why are you still trying?

If you are working hard to receive support and guidance or to agree with someone who is usually disagreeable, especially when it comes to you, they're controversial. 

They're going to poke holes in the choices you make for your life. 

They'll say that you didn't do your homework, need to learn more, and are not smart enough to see through the cracks. 

How does that feel? It feels terrible. It feels empty. 

I used to do this with my mother. 

I told a lot of stories about myself about her because she was emotionally immature, and so was I. 

My effort was my emotional immaturity. 

That's where I was trying to shoplift from her emotionally. 

I thought that if I could have a family and have all these children close together, I could mother them, and we could have fun and become close and tight with one another. 

My mom would go, Oh, I did it wrong. You're so good at this. You and I thought her being wrong would make me feel better. 

I thought maybe her seeing how good I am at it would somehow fill the void of all those years of emotional neglect. 

That she would somehow see my value and go, Oh my gosh, I missed the boat. I

I never saw all this light and love in you. I'm so sorry. I tried to get it from you, but it never happened. 

What really happened was I was parenting my children for all the wrong reasons. 

I was trying to be a good mom to my kids, not to show them how lovable they are, but to show my mom how lovable I am. 

She would love me now or acknowledge that I was doing a good job at my parenting, and she never could. It wasn't in her to do in this life. 

She was too emotionally immature. 

How is a three-year-old, emotionally immature three-year-old supposed to say, wow, you're doing such a good job? Have you ever heard a three-year-old say that? No.

Three-year-olds are incapable of saying, oh, you're doing an excellent parenting job. No. 

That was my misperception that I could try harder or no more or even try and shame her for what she didn't know that I know as a parent. 

Everybody knows that this is what you do as a parent, not that. 

You know, that's pride, that's ego.

 I tried all the ways to get her to see that I was a good person, that she missed the boat and did not want to get to know me. 

There was no win in that because I was just taking from her. 

I was emotionally shoplifting what she would; it wasn't that she wasn't even offering it. 

It was that she was incapable of offering it. 

What are you doing that's efforting to open something that triggers you?

Triggering is like putting a gash back in an old wound when triggered. 

Someone brings up something from the past, and shame shows up fast.

All of a sudden, you're startled, blindsided, and in a triggered moment. 

Your nervous system's on fire, and you're trying to backpedal and make it right. 

You're trying to go with the flow. You're trying to just let it blow by you without effect, and it doesn't. 

Then, days later, you're still trying to emotionally shoplift from this person and trying to get them to say my comment about you was not to make you feel bad. 

It's the thing I admire most about you. 

We were trying to get them to smooth it over so we could feel better. 

It's not going to happen. It's not their job to do that. 

Once you are over 18, it's your job to emotionally mature and grow by seeing that it was not you who was ever in question. It was them, their misgivings, their misconceptions. 

Maybe they needed to understand or never stepped into their parenting role. Your siblings carry very similar wounds. 

They can easily trigger that old wound in you when they repeat something they heard their parents say to you. 

There's another aspect of this. There's another aspect of emotional shoplifting. 

That's when you're like trying to eke your way into someone's life. 

You're trying to pry open the door of belonging and show them everything you do: the effort, the knowledge, the hard work, the good promotion you got, the award you received, the article that was published, the giving that you spent your life offering.

You're doing that to make room for yourself in someone's life because you perceive that there isn't a place for you in their life. 

What I didn't understand about my mother was that she needed me to belong to her. 

She was incapable of making me feel like I belonged to her. She couldn't figure out how to allow me to belong to her when she never even belonged to herself. 

She had self-abandoned her entire life. She had left herself hanging out in the cold with the story that I was unloved. 

No one will ever love me. 

How would she ever tell me how much she loved me when she could not express that about herself? 

She couldn't act that way, and she couldn't live her life in a manner that showed some respect and consideration for her own needs. So, she needed me to belong to her. 

It was a battle for me to say, I belong here.

Stop trying to push me away. We are family. You don't get to go through this alone. But it was verbal. 

I had to say, she had open heart surgery, and she went in by herself without telling anyone, right? 

Who does that? Except for a profoundly lonely person. 

When she was coming out of the anesthesia, they forgot their memories. Not back yet. 

They forget and forget and forget and forget. 

Every time she would come to and see me standing there, she goes, Oh, what are you doing here? 

Then she would fall back asleep, and then she would wake up and go, Oh, what are you doing here? Because I had flown across the country to be with her. Fifteen different times, I had to hear her disappointment that I was there. 

If I had taken it personally, I would have left. I would have been like, OK. You old bitty, you stay there.

I will go away so you can be alone in your profound aloneness. 

But I insisted that it was okay. I'm here, and we'll get through this together. It's okay. 

Those were my hugs to her until she allowed me to give her a physical hug. 

She didn't accept those very easily. She didn't like to be touched. 

She was desperate for touches, but one touch would never be enough, and she would die of wanting more. 

She just pushed that away. She didn't want to accept it because it would have been so much more lonely if she got one hug, and that was it. 

That was when the supply and demand were over. 

Are you trying to pry the doors open in someone's life trying to belong? 

I see this in my family all the time. I see people trying to belong to somebody else because they think they don't. 

They think they don't belong, but they perceive that somebody didn't have the ability or the capability to include that person, wrapping their arms around them, holding them close, and saying, I love you. I see you. You matter to me. 

I know your worth, and all I want for you is for you to know your worth. 

If that were possible, wounds would heal, but it's not.

Watching these people I love is painful because hours of talking about nothing are spent trying to get something in return. 

They are trying to feel validated, agree, connected, and make an emotional connection happen because they perceive no room for them. 

After all, this other person is so distracted by caring about everything and everyone that doesn't matter to them. 

Listening to the voices of the world, paying attention to politics, watching the stock market rise and fall, watching real estate, the economy, the presidential election, and all the things that don't matter. 

They matter, but they don't matter, like intimate relationships. 

There's no emotional connection with those outside noises. 

When you're trying so hard to fit yourself into a life where someone is so distracted by outside noises that they don't have, or it appears that they don't have time for you, or they're not going to connect with you emotionally. 

The way you say it has to happen with words of affirmation, gifts, or your love language: touch time. 

Otherwise, you'll lose. 

You'll miss out on an opportunity to give, not to get, but to give, give, give, give because it feels good. 

Here's the antidote for emotional shoplifting. 

Assume you belong, you are known, you are valid, you are valued, and you are loved. And assume you are loved—dearly, deeply, intimately. 

Emotional shoplifting is exhausting, and it's based on fear. That's not who you are. 

You are not a fearful person. 

You just think there's something to be feared that this person that you love so much is going to die without knowing you. That's not true. 

They do know you on many levels. 

My mother knew who I was—she did. She just couldn't show me that she knew. 

I kept trying to get her to show me that she knew. It was when I took charge of my life, emotional security, and loneliness that I took charge of it. 

I took personal responsibility and started giving because if I wanted a hug, I could only imagine how much she wanted a hug. 

I would just hug her and tell her I loved it. 

It always felt good because I wanted to remember that the key to removing resistance to trying to force yourself on others and trying to be validated as a scene by others is to love them. 

Your love is enough for you and them.

Only if you think you're empty that it's too much. 

I can't give them what I want to receive because they won't give it to me. That's not the game you need to play. 

You're playing the wrong game. The game that wins is love. 

If you look at it from a man's standpoint, I love that person so much that I'm going to run up and give them a hug. 

I will kiss them on the cheek and tell them how much I love them.

It's going to freak them out, but I love it. 

You are here because you're full of love. You're light. 

Your unbelief is holding you back from the relationship you want to have with somebody. 

It is not light, it is not love, it is fear. 

If there's someone in your life, just know you always belong to somebody you like; I want to belong to this person. I want to matter to this person. 

You do matter. 

It's just that you think you don't matter. That's what's holding you back. 

Your perspective holds you apart from the love you want the most. 

From the person you want that love from the most. 

Stop expecting them to give you the love you need to hear or receive. 

Just go to them and give them the love you want to receive. 

You'll discover that your candle lit their candle, and now the room is brighter. 

Everything's better just because you can't take a lit candle to somebody and give somebody a hug that has that whose wick is not lit, and you give them a hug, and you think it's going to put your wick out too; it does not. 

When your wick touches their wick and your wick is lit, their wick gets lit. 

Everybody wins. 

Now you're in unbelief, but you can increase the parts of you that still feel dark about not feeling loved, valued, or important. 

It can turn everything around. 

When I started taking initiative with my mother and insisting that I belong in her life, she softened up. She didn't push me away. 

She welcomed my visits. She was happy that I thought of her. She was grateful for a letter I wrote to her when I was in the middle of raising a family. It felt good to me, too. 

There was way less struggle in me, way less. That doesn't mean all my wounds were healed. 

It means that I was slowly and incrementally healing the wounds I had the power to heal. 

One way was to give because I wanted to; I wouldn't take anything for free.

I wasn't trying to emotionally shoplift anymore. I was just giving the thing that I wanted most, and I found that I got what I wanted most. 

When I became the thing I wanted most, I became the hug I wanted, the value I wanted, the knownness I wanted, not loneliness, and belonging to the people I wanted to belong to. 

Now, the caveat is I was doing work behind the scenes. It wasn't just all about that relationship I was trying to have with my mother. 

I was working on my relationship with God. 

I was known, loved, and seen by my heavenly father. 

This added to the brightness of my candle. 

I had more light and love to share, which took nothing away from me. 

I gave that love to the ones who couldn't give it to themselves. 

They were incapable of giving it to themselves. 

Emotional shoplifting only hurts you. It never adds unto you. 

But when you work on your relationship with yourself, who am I, what do I want, and who am I to God? What would he want for me? He wants you to be happy. 

He wants you to feel his love, and he wants you to know how worthy you are of it. 

Don't try and take it from the natural man who's struggling to know their own worth and hasn't done the work inside. 

They still feel empty and have nothing to give you, but you're still trying to get it from them. 

Stop, stop efforting. It's not worth the effort because you're not getting anywhere. 

You're not feeling better about it. 

You might have a glimpse from working hard at it, and then suddenly, they give you an itty bitty nugget of hope that maybe they do know you, or maybe you have been seen, or maybe they do love you more than you've given them credit for loving you. 

It is your job to figure out who you are and what you want, especially how you see yourself through God's eyes. 

Do that work behind the scenes, and you will do much less emotional shoplifting. 

That's not to say you'll stop doing it completely because you'll have moments where you're off track and feeling out of balance.

You've given more than you received and all the stuff that goes with life and our ups and downs, but you will feel better and have more light and love to share with the people you care most about. 

It will be added to you. I promise your light will light other people up. 

Your candle will light their candle for as long as they let it burn, but they're competent and have the right to blow out their candle. 

Don't blow yours out just because they blow theirs out. 

You have to keep your candle burning bright and do that through daily interaction with God. 

You must know who you are to Him and study this in your mind. 

You need to pray if it is true, and then you write about it. 

Journal, journal, journal. 

That's where the natural light shines because it comes through in personal revelation. It comes through in the true knowing that you are seen and loved. 

Then you'll stop trying to get it from everybody else.

Note: You can access the full blog content in audio versions on Spotify and YouTube. Happy listening! 🎧 

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