Five months into become, with Be finished and on the last week of Story 101, I'm wondering now what? I've gained some incredible tools this year. I'm owning the truth of my creative, artist heart, exploring in both words and photographs what is means to be vibrant and alive. There are projects, yes projects, plural in the works. Other than the times I've been ill, I've said yes to exercise 5-6 days a week, every week this year. I'm learning to honour my body and care for it. I have not begun to finish unpacking everything that I've learned so far this year. I can only imagine what the next 7 months are going to look like.
Heck I'm even asking "what's next" from a positive place, rather than dreading the next thing, certain it too will make life even more difficult. I know that I thrive on structure as long as I have freedom to pick and choose within that structure. The budget is not going to support more e-Courses for now, despite there being a couple that are tempting.
There isn't a road map for this part of the journey. I want one. I struggle to trust that I'm not wasting my time when I don't have that structure in place showing me where I'm headed. Yet, everything so far this year has happened without my planning it all out. Never in a million years did I dream that I'd be in the place that I am now. It's not been my plans that have gotten me here, it's been my yes. My yes to the tugging of my heart. My yes to making myself a priority in my life. I've jumped in brave and scared. It has been amazing.
Maybe I don't need to know what's next. What I need to do is to continue the road that I started this year, to say yes to the things that bring life to me, whatever shape or form they show up in. Here's to being brave and stepping forward without someone else's framework to hold me up.
Showing posts with label Be. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Be. Show all posts
Saturday, May 24, 2014
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
Embracing Silence
For this final week of Lent I am choosing to be silent here. This week coincides with the week of silence for Story 101 and for now I want to give my words the freedom to tumble out as they need to, without considering audience or having to edit them. I don't want to have to explain or find meaning. I'm embracing this week to simply be, to rest radically and get in touch with my own heart.
Saturday, April 12, 2014
Resurrection
It rarely looks like I expect it to look. It never comes in the timing I anticipate. It usually shows up still wrapped in grave cloths. It always sends ripples through my life that I didn't foresee.
This unearthing of my voice has brought some unexpected, unanticipated friends with it. Lies that kept it buried have been fighting furiously this week to reclaim their stolen prize. Because I'm seeing, no matter what those lies say that yes, my voice, my words, they are a prize. They have value. {oh that's a scary sentence to write.} It's true though. If I have value, then so does my deepest expression of myself.
I've learned over the past several years to accept that I have value and worth. Others that I trust serve as my mirror showing me a person that is otherwise hidden from my view. Three years ago this looked like an impossible journey. Yet this past year for the first time I celebrated my birthday because I wanted to be celebrated. I didn't apologize for being born or make plans to end my life. I didn't tell people who wished me a happy birthday to go thank my Mother because I had nothing to do with my birth and if anyone had asked me, I wouldn't have wanted to be born.
I fought. For three years I fought. Every excavation of myself brought pain and lies with it. Every time I didn't run, didn't medicate, I felt like my world had collapsed on me. I built muscle. I learned how to fight back effectively, I learned to not let my fear or my doubt make my choices for me. I learned how to hush, to allow myself to be comforted and supported. And now, now I'm learning to become. I'm coming alive in ways that I never dreamed possible.
So this battle, the battle that I've fought all week to write, to push past the resistance, the lies, the messages that come from my pain and from the pit of hell - this battle has been utterly worth it. It's a battle that I knew how to fight. I have those tools. I have people to walk with me, to encourage me on the days when I felt ready to give up and give in. I have a knowing deep inside that this is me becoming who I am called to be.
This upcoming week, Holy Week, I'm looking to see what lies about my voice and my value need to be put to death. I'm looking for the shame, the judgements, the self-loathing, the anxiety that need to go. This culminating week of Lent, my heart is more ready than it has ever been for those things that hold me back, that tie me down to die so that the woman I am called to be, created to be, destined {eep} to be can be resurrected.
This unearthing of my voice has brought some unexpected, unanticipated friends with it. Lies that kept it buried have been fighting furiously this week to reclaim their stolen prize. Because I'm seeing, no matter what those lies say that yes, my voice, my words, they are a prize. They have value. {oh that's a scary sentence to write.} It's true though. If I have value, then so does my deepest expression of myself.
I've learned over the past several years to accept that I have value and worth. Others that I trust serve as my mirror showing me a person that is otherwise hidden from my view. Three years ago this looked like an impossible journey. Yet this past year for the first time I celebrated my birthday because I wanted to be celebrated. I didn't apologize for being born or make plans to end my life. I didn't tell people who wished me a happy birthday to go thank my Mother because I had nothing to do with my birth and if anyone had asked me, I wouldn't have wanted to be born.
I fought. For three years I fought. Every excavation of myself brought pain and lies with it. Every time I didn't run, didn't medicate, I felt like my world had collapsed on me. I built muscle. I learned how to fight back effectively, I learned to not let my fear or my doubt make my choices for me. I learned how to hush, to allow myself to be comforted and supported. And now, now I'm learning to become. I'm coming alive in ways that I never dreamed possible.
So this battle, the battle that I've fought all week to write, to push past the resistance, the lies, the messages that come from my pain and from the pit of hell - this battle has been utterly worth it. It's a battle that I knew how to fight. I have those tools. I have people to walk with me, to encourage me on the days when I felt ready to give up and give in. I have a knowing deep inside that this is me becoming who I am called to be.
This upcoming week, Holy Week, I'm looking to see what lies about my voice and my value need to be put to death. I'm looking for the shame, the judgements, the self-loathing, the anxiety that need to go. This culminating week of Lent, my heart is more ready than it has ever been for those things that hold me back, that tie me down to die so that the woman I am called to be, created to be, destined {eep} to be can be resurrected.
Thursday, April 10, 2014
My Soul Cries Out
Relief, release
an easing of this pain
this pain of becoming
unearthing the festering wounds
inflicted on my soul by those who claimed to love me
Relief, release
from the lies ever taunting
the memories constant haunting
the words etched into
my very bones
dried up, dried out
dead bones
my bones
bleached in the desert wasteland
that has been my life
dried up, dried out
dead bones
is there really new life for my bones?
I want a do over
My soul screams that you own me at least that God
You created me
You gave me life
You let them snatch it away
one word, one blow, one touch
at a time
It's haunting me the things done in your name
Your powerful holy almighty name
The one that makes evil flee
The one that brings these dead bones
my dead bones back to life
Life - do I even want it?
It's all been sorrow, all been pain
Do I want new life
breathed into me?
For all your power I was still broken
I don't have hope to believe
Believe a different ending for the story that I know
Believe a different truth than the lies that I was told
Believe a different love the one that claims to set me free
Believe a different life - one of resurrection, of hopes no longer dashed
Where evil has not won
Because the story of those bones,
the story of my bones
didn't end in that desert wilderness
There was a word and a breath
A wind and a stirring
I don't have to stay here
in this valley of the dead
I don't have to weep here
for the life I never led
It's a long walk out of this valley
this place where my soul died
I am tired and weary
It was easier to be dried up on the desert floor
There was comfort there,
lying with the dead
This coming back to life - it hurts
dear God how it hurts
And so my soul cries
release and relief
*from a writing prompt for Be
an easing of this pain
this pain of becoming
unearthing the festering wounds
inflicted on my soul by those who claimed to love me
Relief, release
from the lies ever taunting
the memories constant haunting
the words etched into
my very bones
dried up, dried out
dead bones
my bones
bleached in the desert wasteland
that has been my life
dried up, dried out
dead bones
is there really new life for my bones?
I want a do over
My soul screams that you own me at least that God
You created me
You gave me life
You let them snatch it away
one word, one blow, one touch
at a time
It's haunting me the things done in your name
Your powerful holy almighty name
The one that makes evil flee
The one that brings these dead bones
my dead bones back to life
Life - do I even want it?
It's all been sorrow, all been pain
Do I want new life
breathed into me?
For all your power I was still broken
I don't have hope to believe
Believe a different ending for the story that I know
Believe a different truth than the lies that I was told
Believe a different love the one that claims to set me free
Believe a different life - one of resurrection, of hopes no longer dashed
Where evil has not won
Because the story of those bones,
the story of my bones
didn't end in that desert wilderness
There was a word and a breath
A wind and a stirring
I don't have to stay here
in this valley of the dead
I don't have to weep here
for the life I never led
It's a long walk out of this valley
this place where my soul died
I am tired and weary
It was easier to be dried up on the desert floor
There was comfort there,
lying with the dead
This coming back to life - it hurts
dear God how it hurts
And so my soul cries
release and relief
*from a writing prompt for Be
Thursday, March 27, 2014
Fasting from Self-loathing
When I walked into therapy almost three years ago, I was nervous, defiant, ready to run. I was there because I knew that I was drowning in my attempts to heal myself. I needed help, badly but help had not actually helped in the past. That "help" had heaped more shame, judgement and damage on my shattered self. The Spirit in me though wouldn't let it go. I committed to doing one intake, one sit down to see if one therapist was competent and trustworthy. That was all I had in me. I couldn't risk bigger than that and I fully expected to be disappointed. That was the beginning of a beautiful therapeutic relationship, one that started with the question what do you want to get out of this?
This week in looking at self-loathing, I'm reminded of that question and my answer. Three years ago I knew that I couldn't continue to survive my own self-hatred. Even though I was no longer cutting and planning my own death, the thoughts were there and the feelings that had driven those behaviours in the past continued to build in intensity, only now, they had no outlet. I thought I was going to explode.
I hated my body. It was too fat, too pale. too freckled, too scarred, too weak, too female. I hated myself. I was too needy, too broken, too controlling, too angry, too desperate. I had a lifetime of pain that told me that how I saw myself was true. All these messages about my worth were carved into my heart by the abuses that others had heaped on me.
That question though, that question opened the door for hope to peek in. My goal then is the same as it is now...to learn to see myself as God sees me. One day I will write the posts that declare that to the very depth of my being, I know that I am His and He sees me as I am - Beautiful and Beloved.
That day may not be today, yet this week has been a week of looking back to see how far I've already journeyed. There has been a sweet sense of being able to breathe a little easier, of finding my second wind. I find myself laughing. March has always been the culmination of what I had nicknamed my "suicide season". Historically this has been the month where there was no logical thought left and the screaming, howling pain had erased everything from my hearing but the relentless drumbeat of despair. This March I've seen glimmers of hope. The drums have been quiet. The pain is there still. There's no magic cure for that.
This year though, I've seen the beginning of "become" turn what I thought would always be true on it's head. As I sit with this week's fast, I feel rest instead of struggle. There is more work to be done, and I am already taking the steps laid out in front of me. The steps that bring me out of hatred and despair. Today I will own myself, my body and agree with my Creator that I am very, very beautiful, trusting that He sees beyond the limits of my own vision.
This week in looking at self-loathing, I'm reminded of that question and my answer. Three years ago I knew that I couldn't continue to survive my own self-hatred. Even though I was no longer cutting and planning my own death, the thoughts were there and the feelings that had driven those behaviours in the past continued to build in intensity, only now, they had no outlet. I thought I was going to explode.
I hated my body. It was too fat, too pale. too freckled, too scarred, too weak, too female. I hated myself. I was too needy, too broken, too controlling, too angry, too desperate. I had a lifetime of pain that told me that how I saw myself was true. All these messages about my worth were carved into my heart by the abuses that others had heaped on me.
That question though, that question opened the door for hope to peek in. My goal then is the same as it is now...to learn to see myself as God sees me. One day I will write the posts that declare that to the very depth of my being, I know that I am His and He sees me as I am - Beautiful and Beloved.
That day may not be today, yet this week has been a week of looking back to see how far I've already journeyed. There has been a sweet sense of being able to breathe a little easier, of finding my second wind. I find myself laughing. March has always been the culmination of what I had nicknamed my "suicide season". Historically this has been the month where there was no logical thought left and the screaming, howling pain had erased everything from my hearing but the relentless drumbeat of despair. This March I've seen glimmers of hope. The drums have been quiet. The pain is there still. There's no magic cure for that.
This year though, I've seen the beginning of "become" turn what I thought would always be true on it's head. As I sit with this week's fast, I feel rest instead of struggle. There is more work to be done, and I am already taking the steps laid out in front of me. The steps that bring me out of hatred and despair. Today I will own myself, my body and agree with my Creator that I am very, very beautiful, trusting that He sees beyond the limits of my own vision.
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Reclaiming my Beauty
Once upon a time I executed a perfect pirouette and felt myself beautiful...until my body type was shamed as "not right" for a ballerina. Those shaming moments that came time and again beat down my sense of my own beauty. A sense that already came far too infrequently and already carried baggage with it.
The first sexual assault on my child body was when my body's beauty became used for someone else's exaltation of power and control. I was four years old and no longer innocent. The pattern continued, one perpetrator after the next, using my beauty for their pleasure. Beauty became something that needed to be hidden. Every time I started to reclaim my own beauty there was another perpetrator stealing what belonged to me.
In my pain I harmed my body. Cutting it hundreds of times in a vain attempt to purge the evil in me. I hid my body and my beauty. I buried it with clothes and when that didn't work, I buried it with fat. Now I could shame my body, to tell it how disappointed I was, how it had failed me in this too, that I now could never be beautiful again. There will always be scars and stretch marks - my life story written on my skin.
I believed that I had destroyed any beauty that was left in my body. I desecrated it and now what's left served only as a mockery of what could have been, of what was intended to be.
Over the last three years, I have journeyed with my body. For a long time I've referred to it as "my ugly". It wasn't mine. It doesn't look like me. As I've learned to let go of some of my self-hate and the false blame, my relationship with my body has come front and centre. I could see that who I was might be beautiful, but the skin it was housed in was deemed ugly and not suitable. My awakening heart wanted to feel beautiful, to be beautiful and I resigned myself that it would never happen.
I began belly dancing about a month ago. After that first lesson I walked out sore, alive, and more connected to myself than I had ever felt. I felt like a woman. Each lesson connects me more and more to my body. Every time I practice I see glimpses of how right now, in this moment there is beauty in my body. Beauty in the movement. Movement that comes from MY body.
As I learn to dance again, I'm learning that my beauty matters. Deeply. In times past when I felt my own beauty I was authentically and unashamedly myself. Feeling my own beauty, embracing it grounds me in my body and in the moment. Time seems to hold it's breath as my essence twirls in celebration. I owe my body an apology for the abuse I heaped on her and compassion for the abuse that was inflicted on her by others.
I cannot change what has come before. However, I can learn how to see myself right now as beautiful.
The first sexual assault on my child body was when my body's beauty became used for someone else's exaltation of power and control. I was four years old and no longer innocent. The pattern continued, one perpetrator after the next, using my beauty for their pleasure. Beauty became something that needed to be hidden. Every time I started to reclaim my own beauty there was another perpetrator stealing what belonged to me.
In my pain I harmed my body. Cutting it hundreds of times in a vain attempt to purge the evil in me. I hid my body and my beauty. I buried it with clothes and when that didn't work, I buried it with fat. Now I could shame my body, to tell it how disappointed I was, how it had failed me in this too, that I now could never be beautiful again. There will always be scars and stretch marks - my life story written on my skin.
I believed that I had destroyed any beauty that was left in my body. I desecrated it and now what's left served only as a mockery of what could have been, of what was intended to be.
Over the last three years, I have journeyed with my body. For a long time I've referred to it as "my ugly". It wasn't mine. It doesn't look like me. As I've learned to let go of some of my self-hate and the false blame, my relationship with my body has come front and centre. I could see that who I was might be beautiful, but the skin it was housed in was deemed ugly and not suitable. My awakening heart wanted to feel beautiful, to be beautiful and I resigned myself that it would never happen.
I began belly dancing about a month ago. After that first lesson I walked out sore, alive, and more connected to myself than I had ever felt. I felt like a woman. Each lesson connects me more and more to my body. Every time I practice I see glimpses of how right now, in this moment there is beauty in my body. Beauty in the movement. Movement that comes from MY body.
As I learn to dance again, I'm learning that my beauty matters. Deeply. In times past when I felt my own beauty I was authentically and unashamedly myself. Feeling my own beauty, embracing it grounds me in my body and in the moment. Time seems to hold it's breath as my essence twirls in celebration. I owe my body an apology for the abuse I heaped on her and compassion for the abuse that was inflicted on her by others.
I cannot change what has come before. However, I can learn how to see myself right now as beautiful.
Friday, March 21, 2014
The Girl In the Corner
i
or...thoughts on self-perception. also a further excavation into self-judgement.
ii
I've been turning this over and over for the last three weeks. I've started to write this and walked away. I've considered whether I needed to share it privately with my course-mates, or only with select individuals. In the end I settled for writing it here. Doing anything else is only fuelling the very feelings that I need to talk about.
I no longer believe that I'm intrinsically evil simply because I'm female. I'm still wrestling with all of the repercussions of how that belief has defined me. In the wake of that shifting and changing, another core belief surfaced. I have this perception of myself as "other". It has historical trauma roots like most things that I continually face. It's not just one root. This is almost as strong of a core belief as being evil used to be. They are tied together.
I was other the very first time I went to public school because I lived in the cult up the street. I was other because I already knew how to read. I was other because there were crafts that I wasn't allowed to do.
I switched schools two years later - and I was other from day one. It wasn't anything that I did or didn't do. I lived in a different city and I hadn't started in kindergarten with the rest of the class. The next fall the family moved out of the cult building into a house - and the friends that I had had there, well once again I became other.
When my self-harming behaviours escalated out of control in high school, I was the other that every one was terrified would succeed in killing herself. Even before that I was the other not allowed to see my peers outside of school hours, not allowed to go to parties and I had long ago learned that it wasn't safe to bring friends home.
It happened again when I went to college. It happened when physical health problems kicked in. It happened when I moved to a new country. It happens every time someone asks me "so what do you do all day?"
It's been a pattern in my life - a pattern of reinforcement. I have a mountain of evidence that says I'm other, different. I feel like the girl in the corner. She learned to hide there and watch people. Occasionally she will dart out to share a crumb of herself before running back to safety, to watch and see what these people do with the crumb. I hate this. I get it. I see where it comes from. I want to be open with people, and not in my defiant - here's who I am, you can take it or leave it, see if I care - way. I still believe that if people really knew me, they'd run away or try to "fix" me. That's usually what happens.
I don't trust that people are generally good or have good intentions. "Good" intentions are what shattered my personality. "Good" intentions kept people from calling CPS and allowed them to believe the deflections from my mother.
I'm rambling. Yes I'm learning slowly that there are places where I don't have to be the girl in the corner. The lies still surface, even in those belonging places. All week I've felt like the girl in the corner who can't stop crying. The one who's so broken, too broken. I want to stand up and scream that my heart feels shredded and I can't even tell you why. I'm using every self-care tool that I have - it's the only thing that's keeping me from disappearing into the madness.
iii
Part of my self-care is that I've begun learning how to belly dance. It never fails that I walk out after a class feeling grounded and connected to my body in a way that I've never been before. I walk out sore, of course, but centred in myself and my emotions. I can step back, look back at the part of this entry that I wrote this morning when all of the emotions were all up in my face and recognize that I don't always see myself as other. I have kindness for myself. I can see that yes I am broken and that brokenness doesn't define me, doesn't have to define me. There is a me that is bigger than the brokenness of my identity, a me beyond the horrors inflicted upon me by others, and a me that is becoming this kick-ass woman that I truly love fiercely and passionately.
or...thoughts on self-perception. also a further excavation into self-judgement.
ii
I've been turning this over and over for the last three weeks. I've started to write this and walked away. I've considered whether I needed to share it privately with my course-mates, or only with select individuals. In the end I settled for writing it here. Doing anything else is only fuelling the very feelings that I need to talk about.
I no longer believe that I'm intrinsically evil simply because I'm female. I'm still wrestling with all of the repercussions of how that belief has defined me. In the wake of that shifting and changing, another core belief surfaced. I have this perception of myself as "other". It has historical trauma roots like most things that I continually face. It's not just one root. This is almost as strong of a core belief as being evil used to be. They are tied together.
I was other the very first time I went to public school because I lived in the cult up the street. I was other because I already knew how to read. I was other because there were crafts that I wasn't allowed to do.
I switched schools two years later - and I was other from day one. It wasn't anything that I did or didn't do. I lived in a different city and I hadn't started in kindergarten with the rest of the class. The next fall the family moved out of the cult building into a house - and the friends that I had had there, well once again I became other.
When my self-harming behaviours escalated out of control in high school, I was the other that every one was terrified would succeed in killing herself. Even before that I was the other not allowed to see my peers outside of school hours, not allowed to go to parties and I had long ago learned that it wasn't safe to bring friends home.
It happened again when I went to college. It happened when physical health problems kicked in. It happened when I moved to a new country. It happens every time someone asks me "so what do you do all day?"
It's been a pattern in my life - a pattern of reinforcement. I have a mountain of evidence that says I'm other, different. I feel like the girl in the corner. She learned to hide there and watch people. Occasionally she will dart out to share a crumb of herself before running back to safety, to watch and see what these people do with the crumb. I hate this. I get it. I see where it comes from. I want to be open with people, and not in my defiant - here's who I am, you can take it or leave it, see if I care - way. I still believe that if people really knew me, they'd run away or try to "fix" me. That's usually what happens.
I don't trust that people are generally good or have good intentions. "Good" intentions are what shattered my personality. "Good" intentions kept people from calling CPS and allowed them to believe the deflections from my mother.
I'm rambling. Yes I'm learning slowly that there are places where I don't have to be the girl in the corner. The lies still surface, even in those belonging places. All week I've felt like the girl in the corner who can't stop crying. The one who's so broken, too broken. I want to stand up and scream that my heart feels shredded and I can't even tell you why. I'm using every self-care tool that I have - it's the only thing that's keeping me from disappearing into the madness.
iii
Part of my self-care is that I've begun learning how to belly dance. It never fails that I walk out after a class feeling grounded and connected to my body in a way that I've never been before. I walk out sore, of course, but centred in myself and my emotions. I can step back, look back at the part of this entry that I wrote this morning when all of the emotions were all up in my face and recognize that I don't always see myself as other. I have kindness for myself. I can see that yes I am broken and that brokenness doesn't define me, doesn't have to define me. There is a me that is bigger than the brokenness of my identity, a me beyond the horrors inflicted upon me by others, and a me that is becoming this kick-ass woman that I truly love fiercely and passionately.
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
Detaching and Protecting
I've been detaching from people all week long. Part of it stems from having been overwhelmed with people last week. The weekend helped to balance that out. But I'm detaching still. My heart is behind my walls again. I'm protecting myself. But why? What the hell is going on that my instincts for self-preservation have kicked in?
My reaction is disproportionate to the present circumstances, which of course means this isn't about the present, but is about the past. 22 years of trauma tend to make for a hell of a lot of triggers. I know the big ones, but this one?
What is it about re-framing how I see that is setting it all off? Is that even the trigger? It seems to have started there, but it could just as easily be held over from last week. Sometimes I wish this was easier. Right now I'd settle for a book or an idea or even some good questions. My questions just seem to keep my brain spinning in circles right now.
Here's what I do know.
I'm homesick. I miss President's Choice Blue Label products and their decadent chocolate chip cookies and deluxe white cheddar mac and cheese. I miss my chosen family - it's been 5 1/2 long years since I last got to hug them. It's an ache that never goes away and I don't want it to go away. Because loving them is worth hurting every day that I'm not there doing life with them. I'm building something incredible here - and I know this is where I'm called to be. This space, this time has been carved out for me to have all the pieces that I need for me to do the deep healing that's necessary for me to even live day to day life. For my marriage to even have a chance at lasting or being healthy, this is where I need to be. Maybe one day I can have all the people that matter most to me living in the same country, or at least on the same side of the continent.
I am grieving still for the marriage that I thought I would have. The one where my husband isn't an intimacy anorexic. The one where recovery was something that was there for other people. The one where I didn't have to gear up and fight every day. I knew marriage was hard. I knew for us it would be horrific - it's all kinds of messy when two abuse survivors marry. But I didn't expect it to be hell for the first 5 years. It's better than it's ever been and I'm impatient. I hate that he has to chose every day to be brave and connect with me. I hate that connecting with me requires him to be brave. I hate that he was hurt so badly, abandoned and neglected to the point that no one is trustworthy.
I am wrestling with God, faith, belief and what that all looks like in my life. I am still de-programming from the toxic abusive bullshit I was taught in the name of God. It's hard, painful work. I am still questioning how an all-powerful God allows abuse, especially that done in His name.
I'm tired of being patient and waiting. I'm tired of everything taking hard work. I'm tired of continuing to pay the price for the sins of others.
I am tired. I don't know how to even begin to re-frame any of this. I don't want to let go of my judgements. yes they hurt me, they hurt people that I care about. But letting go of one more thing? I already feel stripped of my defences. And yet I know this is what I'm called to do - to live with my heart wide open. This week I'm running away from that calling and that's why I'm detached. That's why my walls are up and I can't seem to engage with my course. This week requires an openness of my heart that I'm not ready for yet. I'm learning - and I'm not there. Not yet.
Monday, March 17, 2014
Judgement
This week is all about letting go of judgement. {cue bitter laugh}
You'd think that having growing up in a world where everything I did and was would keep me from continuing that destructive view in the present. Instead I find that I don't know any other way to see. It has been a painstakingly slow process to learn how to see others differently and I'll admit that if anyone ever heard the shit that goes through my brain, but never makes it out of my mouth, I'd be horrified and friendless. I'm good at judgement. I excel at it. More than shame which is something others have put on me, or lies that I tell myself which stem from unhealed wounds. Judgement is woven into the fibre of my very being. I breathe judgement.
Of all my character defects this is the one where I am most powerless. I've started to learn over the past three years about mercy and grace. I've been learning to extend that to others, to choke back my judgemental thoughts and to beg God to please show me how you see this person because all I can see are the ways to shred them to pieces with my words. I know that judging others was a form of self-protection for a long time. I needed ammunition and I got good at attacking before anyone even knew to duck. I did to others what had always been done to me.
I am learning to live my amends - to extend grace and mercy before they are even needed. I am learning to live at peace with others, to create spaces that are free from judgement. It's hard work. It's necessary work. It's sacred work.
This Lent seems to be all about next steps and this next step is a doozy. I don't know how to turn off the constant stream of self-judgement that runs through my brain 24/7. Every thing I do, think, speak, or feel is judged. That judgement is held over my head, beating me back down to my supposed rightful place any time I dare to be breathe. There's been some shifts, because the punishment that comes along with the judgement is no longer there. I no longer have to pay for my existence with blood and bruises. I'm grateful for that.
Yet I still see myself as too much - too broken, needy, desperate, silent, loud, clumsy, awkward, weird. I feel my walls up this week. I know that they are there because I am scared that you will see me and judge me as lacking, not good enough. My heart can't take any more harsh judgements and so I've built a wall of my own self-judgement to keep yours from ever getting to me. Any external judgement just increases the strength of my walls because you are simply agreeing with how I already deem myself to be.
This is the ugly truth, the aftermath of years of emotional and verbal abuse. This is what happens when you demand constant perfection from your children. This is what I learned. I don't know anything different thanks to you.
I don't know what this week is going to look like. It's going to be challenging that's for sure. Here goes nothing.
You'd think that having growing up in a world where everything I did and was would keep me from continuing that destructive view in the present. Instead I find that I don't know any other way to see. It has been a painstakingly slow process to learn how to see others differently and I'll admit that if anyone ever heard the shit that goes through my brain, but never makes it out of my mouth, I'd be horrified and friendless. I'm good at judgement. I excel at it. More than shame which is something others have put on me, or lies that I tell myself which stem from unhealed wounds. Judgement is woven into the fibre of my very being. I breathe judgement.
Of all my character defects this is the one where I am most powerless. I've started to learn over the past three years about mercy and grace. I've been learning to extend that to others, to choke back my judgemental thoughts and to beg God to please show me how you see this person because all I can see are the ways to shred them to pieces with my words. I know that judging others was a form of self-protection for a long time. I needed ammunition and I got good at attacking before anyone even knew to duck. I did to others what had always been done to me.
I am learning to live my amends - to extend grace and mercy before they are even needed. I am learning to live at peace with others, to create spaces that are free from judgement. It's hard work. It's necessary work. It's sacred work.
This Lent seems to be all about next steps and this next step is a doozy. I don't know how to turn off the constant stream of self-judgement that runs through my brain 24/7. Every thing I do, think, speak, or feel is judged. That judgement is held over my head, beating me back down to my supposed rightful place any time I dare to be breathe. There's been some shifts, because the punishment that comes along with the judgement is no longer there. I no longer have to pay for my existence with blood and bruises. I'm grateful for that.
Yet I still see myself as too much - too broken, needy, desperate, silent, loud, clumsy, awkward, weird. I feel my walls up this week. I know that they are there because I am scared that you will see me and judge me as lacking, not good enough. My heart can't take any more harsh judgements and so I've built a wall of my own self-judgement to keep yours from ever getting to me. Any external judgement just increases the strength of my walls because you are simply agreeing with how I already deem myself to be.
This is the ugly truth, the aftermath of years of emotional and verbal abuse. This is what happens when you demand constant perfection from your children. This is what I learned. I don't know anything different thanks to you.
I don't know what this week is going to look like. It's going to be challenging that's for sure. Here goes nothing.
Saturday, March 15, 2014
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.
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Found Poetry - Lamentations 1:1-6
a princess
tears on her cheeks
comfort her
she dwells
resting
daughter of majesty
strength before the pursuer
Pantoum(s): (from free writing)
passive, cut-off, isolated
barred from connection
paper-bag mud-spattered tear-stained crown-has-fallen-down princess
risky freedom of being a daughter of the Most High
barred from connection
abiding grafted on grafted in
risky freedom of being a daughter of the Most High
pain in the cutting away and cutting in
abiding grafted on grafted in
paper-bag mud-spattered tear-stained crown-has-fallen-down princess
pain in the cutting away and cutting in
passive cut-off isolated
Daughter
knee-deep in disbelief
loneliness sucks the life from my bones
rescue me
knee-deep in disbelief
not slave or pawn
rescue me
my feet itch to dance
not slave or pawn
loneliness sucks the life from my bones
my feet itch to dance
Daughter
The last piece that we were to do was to cut out words from two random book pages and create our poem with those. I can't seem to take a good picture of what I did, but I'll attach it for the sake of completeness.
Freedom
she wore words of anger
drowning secret tears
defined by family
difficult choice keeping trust
bewildering how you love me
my lady gaze expectantly toward your King
find comfort in genuine Love
FREEDOM
Painting anything is new to me. I haven't painted since the days of finger-paints. I found it hard to suspend my judgement of myself.
Out of this I have fallen in love with the idea of getting a Bible specifically for found poetry. The idea of taking something that has been an instrument of incredible pain in my life and intentionally turning it into a work of beauty feels healing.
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Found Poetry - A Processing of Fear
I hate this theme of fear running through my words, my life, my heart, my veins. The fear feels like it's bonded to my very blood. I know it's March and for reasons beyond my understanding, the terror that comes with March, that terror in my blood - it shuts my heart down as the depression rears her ugly head for another life and death battle.
I have to laugh or cry right now. This entire experience with Be so far has been staring my fear in the face, of allowing myself to be stripped down just a little bit more, of putting down things that aren't helping me to be fully me and picking up things that are helping me learn to dance, to be.
As I've read through our Found Poetry exercise for this week, I've tasted that old familiar shame. The one I heard time and again. The one thrown at me any time I did something creative. "That's so artsy-fartsy." Lectures on how only math, science, and engineering degrees were "real". "Play the music as it's written...there's no rubato there and definitely no retard." It was less painful back then to shut down any part that wasn't logical and rational. I remember taking a right-brain/left-brain test in 2005 and I was very left.
These days I'm pretty close to centre. A big piece of my healing over these last years has been about discovering my creativity. Polyvore has given me some space in which to do that and it's been amazing to explore. I've got a feeling that as I continue to heal, as I continue to become that I'm going to end up as a right-brain. I'm discovering my love of crafting candles and blending oils.
Each step on this reclaiming of myself has been scary - and now here's the next baby step. The exercise this week - oh I want to bawl like a baby. To approach a passage of Scripture and find the words that taste just right from it....there's nothing about this that is safe. I have put so much work into making sure that Scripture in my life is always in context. What would it look like to let go of that for this? I could use something else, but I don't want to. I sense there's something here, something beyond the scope of the exercise because I see the colours of the Spirit dancing in my soul every time I read through the instructions. There is freedom here, another layer, another piece. I won't let fear snatch it from me.
I have to laugh or cry right now. This entire experience with Be so far has been staring my fear in the face, of allowing myself to be stripped down just a little bit more, of putting down things that aren't helping me to be fully me and picking up things that are helping me learn to dance, to be.
As I've read through our Found Poetry exercise for this week, I've tasted that old familiar shame. The one I heard time and again. The one thrown at me any time I did something creative. "That's so artsy-fartsy." Lectures on how only math, science, and engineering degrees were "real". "Play the music as it's written...there's no rubato there and definitely no retard." It was less painful back then to shut down any part that wasn't logical and rational. I remember taking a right-brain/left-brain test in 2005 and I was very left.
These days I'm pretty close to centre. A big piece of my healing over these last years has been about discovering my creativity. Polyvore has given me some space in which to do that and it's been amazing to explore. I've got a feeling that as I continue to heal, as I continue to become that I'm going to end up as a right-brain. I'm discovering my love of crafting candles and blending oils.
Each step on this reclaiming of myself has been scary - and now here's the next baby step. The exercise this week - oh I want to bawl like a baby. To approach a passage of Scripture and find the words that taste just right from it....there's nothing about this that is safe. I have put so much work into making sure that Scripture in my life is always in context. What would it look like to let go of that for this? I could use something else, but I don't want to. I sense there's something here, something beyond the scope of the exercise because I see the colours of the Spirit dancing in my soul every time I read through the instructions. There is freedom here, another layer, another piece. I won't let fear snatch it from me.
Saturday, March 8, 2014
Saturday Rest
With Be, we're taking a collective Sabbath on Saturdays. More than the fasting element, this piece scared the crap out of me. I remember when my father got on his "Sundays are sacred and family-time because it's Biblical to have a Sabbath" kick. It was awful and there wasn't any kind of grace, or rest, just a lot of forced spiritual practices and trying to appease him. I'm sure there's more work for me to do on that in therapy.
I was apprehensive going into today. What would it look like to take a Sabbath? I can handle the no collective group activity and figured if nothing else I could respect the intent that way. Today has been so much more than that. I had an hour to cuddle and connect with my hunny first thing this morning. All the things that I needed to accomplish got done and I took myself back to bed, exhausted and slept for 5 hours. There was no belittling myself for needing the extra rest. I don't even see it as I wasted the day, which is my usual response. It feels like the shame and condemnation I'd usually hold against myself as a matter of course is gently, firmly being held back today. I can breathe; I'm clenching my teeth a little less.
If this is what Sabbath can be - a day of respite and rest - I'm excited to continue to explore it. I'm sure it won't always be like it was today. That's okay. I'm grateful that it was a good experience to start off with, and that because it happened on a Saturday, the triggers from the past weren't there they way they could have been had it been on Sunday.
I was apprehensive going into today. What would it look like to take a Sabbath? I can handle the no collective group activity and figured if nothing else I could respect the intent that way. Today has been so much more than that. I had an hour to cuddle and connect with my hunny first thing this morning. All the things that I needed to accomplish got done and I took myself back to bed, exhausted and slept for 5 hours. There was no belittling myself for needing the extra rest. I don't even see it as I wasted the day, which is my usual response. It feels like the shame and condemnation I'd usually hold against myself as a matter of course is gently, firmly being held back today. I can breathe; I'm clenching my teeth a little less.
If this is what Sabbath can be - a day of respite and rest - I'm excited to continue to explore it. I'm sure it won't always be like it was today. That's okay. I'm grateful that it was a good experience to start off with, and that because it happened on a Saturday, the triggers from the past weren't there they way they could have been had it been on Sunday.
Friday, March 7, 2014
A Hope and A Purpose
Let me start by start by saying I passionately hate Jeremiah 29:11. I hate that it's a promise that God gave to Israel right after He told them that "guess what guys, you've gone so far away from me, that the last tool in my toolbox to get your attention is selling you off to slavery (again)" Jeremiah 29:11 kicks in as He tells them "but I'm not going to leave you there. I'm not doing this without a reason, and there is hope and purpose and future that I have for you. To get there, you have to walk through this, but this won't last forever."
That verse becomes this glib, pat answer, written on graduation cards, sympathy cards, milestone birthday cards..it's on mugs, magnets, bookmarks..I hate when Scripture is misappropriated. It scrapes against my soul and deepens wounds that have never had a chance to stop bleeding.
And yet...the idea behind it, the truth that God has a plan, a purpose, Romans talks about that. About how He works things for good and glory. Hebrews reminds us that that good and glory isn't always this side of death. Sometimes we get the raw end of the deal and we don't see what has been promised in our lifetime.
Sometimes though, God is gracious and we do see it, even if it's only pieces. Today was one of those pieces. In the midst of being honest with myself for the first time in a long time about how much shame I still hold, the last piece of plan clicked into place and I could see. I could see how Be + Story 101 + belly dancing was His perfectly crafted gift to me for this next season of healing. It tackles the big issues, my faith, my voice, and my sense of myself as a woman. It stares down my identity issues. It not only gives me a voice, but teaches me how to better use my voice. To reconnect with my body, to teach it strength and grace and flexibility, to feel like a woman, sensual without being tawdry. A woman who holds herself up and dances - without shame, opening herself up and sharing her joy.
I'm excited. I feel like I have something to hold onto here as I dig into the painful places that my Healer is leading me. There is a purpose for facing the pain, there is a light of hope that says I am crafting a perfect plan tailored specifically for your damage so that you won't stay here in this place of darkness and shame. I better understand why people love Jeremiah 29 - I get it, because they can connect it to the slivers of hope that they've been given.
That verse becomes this glib, pat answer, written on graduation cards, sympathy cards, milestone birthday cards..it's on mugs, magnets, bookmarks..I hate when Scripture is misappropriated. It scrapes against my soul and deepens wounds that have never had a chance to stop bleeding.
And yet...the idea behind it, the truth that God has a plan, a purpose, Romans talks about that. About how He works things for good and glory. Hebrews reminds us that that good and glory isn't always this side of death. Sometimes we get the raw end of the deal and we don't see what has been promised in our lifetime.
Sometimes though, God is gracious and we do see it, even if it's only pieces. Today was one of those pieces. In the midst of being honest with myself for the first time in a long time about how much shame I still hold, the last piece of plan clicked into place and I could see. I could see how Be + Story 101 + belly dancing was His perfectly crafted gift to me for this next season of healing. It tackles the big issues, my faith, my voice, and my sense of myself as a woman. It stares down my identity issues. It not only gives me a voice, but teaches me how to better use my voice. To reconnect with my body, to teach it strength and grace and flexibility, to feel like a woman, sensual without being tawdry. A woman who holds herself up and dances - without shame, opening herself up and sharing her joy.
I'm excited. I feel like I have something to hold onto here as I dig into the painful places that my Healer is leading me. There is a purpose for facing the pain, there is a light of hope that says I am crafting a perfect plan tailored specifically for your damage so that you won't stay here in this place of darkness and shame. I better understand why people love Jeremiah 29 - I get it, because they can connect it to the slivers of hope that they've been given.
Thursday, March 6, 2014
Thursday Thoughts
My brain is weary tonight. My heart feels full and for the moment cried out. I'd forgotten yet again how many tears come with this journey to the centre of my being. There were so many good words spoken in the call tonight for Be. I have pages of scribbled notes and questions to chew over. I'll get there. For this moment my take-away is gratitude. I'm not alone. I'm not alone and there is hope. That hope is part and parcel of what pierces through my shame. It's not some nebulous wispy "we'll get there someday" hope. This hope has voices and faces. This is a hope borne of the raw beauty that is the hearts of brave women sharing pieces of story tonight.
I don't remember a time in my life before shame. I don't remember a life before trauma. I don't remember the little girl that I was before. I'm not sure that I have a before. It feels like shame is woven into every splintered piece of my personality.
Tonight in the chat it was spoken that we are made new.
I need a new. There's nothing left of me to be restored. I need a new. I can see pieces where He is making new in me and it's breathtaking. I have whole days now where I don't hold myself responsible for the evils that others inflicted on me. I have whole days where I can see this incredible woman who has been buried in all of the shit. I'm not there yet. I don't see all the new yet.
For this night I'm holding onto Brandy's words. "it's okay to be where you are. We have work to do." I'm sitting in them, wrapping them around my raw heart places and practising acceptance of where I am.
I don't remember a time in my life before shame. I don't remember a life before trauma. I don't remember the little girl that I was before. I'm not sure that I have a before. It feels like shame is woven into every splintered piece of my personality.
Tonight in the chat it was spoken that we are made new.
I need a new. There's nothing left of me to be restored. I need a new. I can see pieces where He is making new in me and it's breathtaking. I have whole days now where I don't hold myself responsible for the evils that others inflicted on me. I have whole days where I can see this incredible woman who has been buried in all of the shit. I'm not there yet. I don't see all the new yet.
For this night I'm holding onto Brandy's words. "it's okay to be where you are. We have work to do." I'm sitting in them, wrapping them around my raw heart places and practising acceptance of where I am.
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
Fasting From Shame II
After writing this morning, I took my aching head and heart back to bed for some sorely needed rest. Looking at how shame continues to impact my identity isn't easy. I thought I was further down the road than I feel right now. So many of my insecurities are screaming in my face. Seeing myself as I am, without judging, or shoulding is proving challenging.
My vision of myself is skewed - one way or another. Coming out of the last season of healing I felt more comfortable in my skin than I ever have before. It was amazing. I knew there was more work, but that felt far away and I blissfully soaked in the glow of no longer hating myself. All too soon, here I am for the next layer, the next round and I want to go back to the bliss.
I enjoyed not gearing up for war every day and going to battle. It was sweet relief. Now it's time to fight again - I don't feel ready. I feel as weary putting on my armour as I did taking it off in December.
In the middle of it all today though, the middle of being ready to throw in the towel and walk away, God still met me. Jason Gray's new album dropped today and so many of the songs on there were this soothing balm for my soul. Tonight I'm choosing to rest in that comfort, to not judge myself for where I'm at, and to extend grace to me in being where I am.
My vision of myself is skewed - one way or another. Coming out of the last season of healing I felt more comfortable in my skin than I ever have before. It was amazing. I knew there was more work, but that felt far away and I blissfully soaked in the glow of no longer hating myself. All too soon, here I am for the next layer, the next round and I want to go back to the bliss.
I enjoyed not gearing up for war every day and going to battle. It was sweet relief. Now it's time to fight again - I don't feel ready. I feel as weary putting on my armour as I did taking it off in December.
In the middle of it all today though, the middle of being ready to throw in the towel and walk away, God still met me. Jason Gray's new album dropped today and so many of the songs on there were this soothing balm for my soul. Tonight I'm choosing to rest in that comfort, to not judge myself for where I'm at, and to extend grace to me in being where I am.
Ash Wednesday - Fasting From Shame
I haven't fasted in years. Fasting has been a dirty word, one filled with disgust, shame, and guilt. Disgust because all that I've seen of it has been from the place of worshipping a vending machine god. Insert proper spiritual practice, make your selection and down falls your chosen blessing. Like all vending machines, occasionally the blessing gets stuck and you have to insert more spiritual practices.
I feel deep shame around fasting. Maybe because it was used as a punishment as a child. Maybe because only the "holiest" of Christians fasted. Maybe because it was required. I don't know where all the shame comes from - but the idea of fasting, of intentionally putting something down to make time and space for God to whisper. That idea stirs my desire to run, to hide, to cower. My view of God is still so warped, especially when it attaches to any kind of spiritual discipline that I grew up with. Too quickly it spirals into feeling guilted for not reading enough Scripture, for not attending enough services, for not serving in children's ministry.
It feels like just about everything connected to my faith it tinged with shame and guilt. It's not how I want it to be. When I get away from religious behaviours, I find freedom and connection with the Divine. In churches, in Bible studies, in public prayer, in Scripture reading I find terror. It would be easier in so many ways to walk away, to throw my hands up in the air and give up. It's exhausting, painful work to keep facing the fear and sharing the shame.
For today I'm choosing to be honest. I'm choosing to not heap judgement and condemnation on myself for where I am at in this journey. Today I choose to honour my journey, to honour my pain and the raw places by lifting off the veils. Today I sit in the ashes of my faith, surrounded by flickering embers and weep for my little girl self. The one who believes she is evil because she is a woman. It was a woman who caused a man to stumble and people have been tripping over her ever since.
I weep for the scars, the white lines that continue to stand witness to my pain and the damage inflicted on my soul. I weep for an identity that was shattered before it was formed, and for the years I've spent scrambling to find, to hold all the pieces together. It wasn't fair, it isn't fair and my heart screams at the injustice of it all.
Here is my shame, it is threaded through so much of my heart. How do I fast from it, when I feel shame that I exist? I don't know. There's less shame than there used to be and maybe for today, for this time that is enough. For today I hold my head up, tears streaming down my face and declare that I am enough.
I feel deep shame around fasting. Maybe because it was used as a punishment as a child. Maybe because only the "holiest" of Christians fasted. Maybe because it was required. I don't know where all the shame comes from - but the idea of fasting, of intentionally putting something down to make time and space for God to whisper. That idea stirs my desire to run, to hide, to cower. My view of God is still so warped, especially when it attaches to any kind of spiritual discipline that I grew up with. Too quickly it spirals into feeling guilted for not reading enough Scripture, for not attending enough services, for not serving in children's ministry.
It feels like just about everything connected to my faith it tinged with shame and guilt. It's not how I want it to be. When I get away from religious behaviours, I find freedom and connection with the Divine. In churches, in Bible studies, in public prayer, in Scripture reading I find terror. It would be easier in so many ways to walk away, to throw my hands up in the air and give up. It's exhausting, painful work to keep facing the fear and sharing the shame.
For today I'm choosing to be honest. I'm choosing to not heap judgement and condemnation on myself for where I am at in this journey. Today I choose to honour my journey, to honour my pain and the raw places by lifting off the veils. Today I sit in the ashes of my faith, surrounded by flickering embers and weep for my little girl self. The one who believes she is evil because she is a woman. It was a woman who caused a man to stumble and people have been tripping over her ever since.
I weep for the scars, the white lines that continue to stand witness to my pain and the damage inflicted on my soul. I weep for an identity that was shattered before it was formed, and for the years I've spent scrambling to find, to hold all the pieces together. It wasn't fair, it isn't fair and my heart screams at the injustice of it all.
Here is my shame, it is threaded through so much of my heart. How do I fast from it, when I feel shame that I exist? I don't know. There's less shame than there used to be and maybe for today, for this time that is enough. For today I hold my head up, tears streaming down my face and declare that I am enough.
Inviting Vulnerability For Lent
I'm excited and nervous to be intentionally observing Lent this year. I'm doing it through Brandy's Be e-Course. As part of this journey I've been reflecting on what am I looking for? What's my hope in doing this? Overall my hope is healing. Anything connected to faith is still pain-filled, with the major Christian holidays being things for me to survive. I'm sick of it. At times I want to throw in the towel, stop fighting to hold onto any kind of faith, and quit. On the other hand, my faith is the only thing that is getting me through life right now. It's the only place that I can feel any level of peace or hope. It's my one positive in a sea of struggling.
So I want healing - great, same story, different verse...what would it look like practically? What do I need to pick up or put down that would open myself up for the healing that I'm desperate for?
I've got two things - one to pick up and one to put down. I'm picking up writing publicly, albeit anonymously. I have this love/hate relationship with blogging that results in my abandoning yet another blog out of intense terror as to who is reading it. I grew up in a world where keeping secrets and protecting the family was of the utmost importance. I'm not feeling brave enough to attach my name to my writings, but I have enough courage to write again. I'm going to practice the discipline of writing at least once every day here through Lent, with Sundays being my day off. I want to intentionally practice using my voice, even on the days when all I can do is whisper.
I also need to put something down - Monday through Saturday for the duration of Lent. Even though I'm sober in my food addiction, there are still ways in which food is comfort to me. One of those ways is eating out. It's too easy for me to not binge, but still use food as a comfort, to soothe raw emotions and to cover my vulnerabilities. It's time to let that go, to put it down, to take another step towards trusting that God can be my place of comfort.
I'm excited to see where this journey takes me. I'm excited to be intentional. I'm nervous. I'm great at making plans, but I struggle with the follow through. Discipline was drilled into me for so many years. It's easy to feel like I'm back in the past, fighting for the right to be a person, to hold an opinion, to be me. This though is about intentional seeking. I know it's not going to be easy. My desire to run is already stirring. My prayer is that I can channel that running into a running towards instead of running away.
So I want healing - great, same story, different verse...what would it look like practically? What do I need to pick up or put down that would open myself up for the healing that I'm desperate for?
I've got two things - one to pick up and one to put down. I'm picking up writing publicly, albeit anonymously. I have this love/hate relationship with blogging that results in my abandoning yet another blog out of intense terror as to who is reading it. I grew up in a world where keeping secrets and protecting the family was of the utmost importance. I'm not feeling brave enough to attach my name to my writings, but I have enough courage to write again. I'm going to practice the discipline of writing at least once every day here through Lent, with Sundays being my day off. I want to intentionally practice using my voice, even on the days when all I can do is whisper.
I also need to put something down - Monday through Saturday for the duration of Lent. Even though I'm sober in my food addiction, there are still ways in which food is comfort to me. One of those ways is eating out. It's too easy for me to not binge, but still use food as a comfort, to soothe raw emotions and to cover my vulnerabilities. It's time to let that go, to put it down, to take another step towards trusting that God can be my place of comfort.
I'm excited to see where this journey takes me. I'm excited to be intentional. I'm nervous. I'm great at making plans, but I struggle with the follow through. Discipline was drilled into me for so many years. It's easy to feel like I'm back in the past, fighting for the right to be a person, to hold an opinion, to be me. This though is about intentional seeking. I know it's not going to be easy. My desire to run is already stirring. My prayer is that I can channel that running into a running towards instead of running away.
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