More Work To Be Done

I'm seeing these past two weeks that I don't believe that I'm unique or that I have anything that can't be offered by someone else, who will probably do it better too.  I'm scared to trace that back to where it starts.  Some of it is being lumped in with my sisters for so many years as just another one of the girls or as one of my parents kids.  No separate identity of my own unless it was negative.  Some of it comes from living in a world where comparisons ruled - so it was always that some one else was better, or worse being compared to my friends as "why couldn't I be more like so and so?" 

As much as I have started to truly embrace who God says that I am, so many parts of me are still back in the past, stuck in the muck of not good enough. Some days I can stand in my identity now and embrace it.  Most days I'm fighting and wrestling.  I thought that since I no longer hated myself and wanted to die, and because my birthday had become something I could celebrate that I had moved past this.  Nope that was just the first milestone.  I feel beat down and discouraged. I'm so very tired of journeying and healing.  

I remember writing years ago that I felt like maybe once upon a time I was this incredible masterpiece hanging on display in a gallery.  Yet every person who walked by, tagged me with their graffiti and no one stopped it. Some people just stood and watched as I was desecrated, others joined in or supplied more cans of paint. It's been this process of stripping away to find that masterpiece again.  Right now I'm not sure that it exists.  I know part of that is because I'm tired.  It's been a long week and I am beat down.  Every moment of rest has been necessary for me to take the next piece of my day.  I think I need to find a way to respect my introvert this weekend.  

Right now I feel that all I have to offer anyone is my pain and brokenness.  There is good and bad in that.  There is an authenticity that I can't deny.  There is a vulnerability there too.  There are places of victory that I can talk about - with self-harm, co-dependence, binging, smoking, drinking.  I mean I can actually open my Bible outside of being a good girl doing my Bible study homework.  There are so many pieces that I do have now.  Pieces I didn't have a year ago, much less 5 years ago. It has taken so much work to get to this place.  I know that this year of "become" is all about process and healing.  Today I don't like it.  There will be many more days this year of not liking it and maybe even hating it.  There will also be days of fun and playfulness, days of exploration that aren't pain-filled.  I know too that I need to feel this pain and honour what it has to teach me so that I can find the freedom from walking through it.  

I don't have to like the process.  I rarely do.  That dislike however doesn't have to keep me from a place of acceptance in the processing.  That's where I choose to sit today.