Rhythms and Cycles

This post brought you to courtesy of reading The Artist's Rule by Christine Valters Paintner as part of Story Session's Story 201 e-course. 

I've spent years searching for balance. That one magic point where my house stays clean, I stay sane, the budget is honoured, and my creativity flourishes. I've yet to find it and now I'm becoming grateful that I never found balance. If I had, I would have tried to turn it into a performance metric, one more thing to unsuccessfully strive towards. One more way to feed the lies of not being enough, of being a drain on my husband.

There isn't one point of balance. There are many. It's not this mystic magical place where I make it all happen, but rather it's slowing down to sink deep into the season, to honour the cycle of my life, my season, my month, my week, my day. The idea has been creeping into my awareness through nature walks. My spirit sensing the truth, seeing that everything around us was created with a rhythm and each piece is necessary for nature to thrive.

I've been reading Paintner's The Artist's Rule and soaking in the ideas of not searching for a balance point, but instead of honouring the season that I am in. I recognize that right now that's hard because my inner artist and my inner monk are in two different seasons. I'm not sure yet how to bridge the two. My Artist is in Spring - coming fully alive, bubbling with new ideas and new life. My Monk is in late Autumn, shedding beliefs and lies that keep us from the rest and faith that nourishes us. I'm not certain how to live in two season at the same time.

Recognition though is the first step. I'm choosing to sink deep into the awareness of my seasons, to honour them and not force Spring to be Summer before it's time, or to run back to Summer because Autumn is painful.

As a monk and artist, I want to rise and fall like the ebb and flow of the ocean. I want to shed parts of myself in autumn, to go deeply inward in winter, to blossom into spring, and to shine forth and be radiant in summer. I want to live my life in healing rhythms that honor the lmits of my body, the pleasures of rest, and the delights of play. +Christine Valters Paintner, The Artist's Rule

Interfaith Marriage: Stepping Beyond Just The Two of Us

Once more the uncertainty of my husband's spiritual journey is coming front and centre for me. It's that time of year when community groups and Bible studies and activities that we haven't had since he came out to me this summer resume. I want to support him. For him to know he has the freedom to choose what is right for where he is at and require him to hide his de-conversion.

Selfishly I hate that this is going to be one more thing that I do alone now. In reading some of the experiences of other spouses whose partners have de-converted, they often express that it gave them the freedom to explore their own faith in ways they hadn't previously. I love that for them. I'm the opposite. I was already exploring. I was the one who started, who gave him permission. While my journey has led me closer to my own spirituality, his has led him further away. I feel lonely in my faith. I'm still searching for what community could look like for me in my own walk and doing it alone is both liberating and terrifying.

As we walk out into this more public season of sharing what has changed over the summer, I'm afraid of the responses that we'll get. I'm afraid people will tell me that they are praying for him. Which, hey I'm all for prayer, but if that's the only support you are willing to give him or I, the only response that you have, then please keep it to yourself. Too often it feels like a dismissal of him as a person and my very real struggle. Ask how you can pray for us, listen to our feelings, or do non-religious things with us as couples.

I worry about the pressure, all the what if people say this or that. And yeah I'll deal with it, but I wish I could give people a primer on what not to say. Most Christians I know don't like to talk about what happens when someone's faith beliefs change. There's a lot of fear there. I get it. I grew up being terrified of hell with this angry Deity who killed people for making the wrong choices. There's much of this that I don't have answers for myself, so please don't feed my fear. Don't prey on it or pressure me to make him come back to church or God or faith. Don't ask me to explain his choices. Go talk to him. But when you do, please see him as a person, not a lost sheep that must be herded back into the fold. Or a child who's throwing a fit and needs to be tolerated, or punished depending on your parenting style.

In the same way, please don't be shocked when you hear that my prayer request is not for his salvation or his return to faith. I am not responsible to spend the next 20 years praying him back into the "family of God". I'm responsible to live my faith for myself. I need support and I need people willing to connect with my faith journey, because that's no longer built into my marriage. Sure we can talk about it, but he and I are reading from two completely different books these days, so common ground when it comes to faith is not something we have. I've said it before  and I'm going to keep saying it. This is lonely for me. It breaks my heart to show up by myself in faith circles where he used to attend with me. I have my own journey through this - and for right now, it doesn't involve re-converting him.

What it does involve is learning to be authentic with myself and with others. It means messy posts like this one and tears over coffee. It means ranting in my therapist's office. I have a tonne of questions. Don't we have enough challenges to overcome in this marriage without also navigating this? I don't expect people to have answers. I'm not even sure that I need answers as much as I need people who are willing to sit with me in the middle of the questions.

Up until now this has been easier. I've had time and space to begin to adjust to not sharing faith beliefs with my husband, to being on separate pages, to no longer assuming that we are approaching spirituality from the same relative starting point. Now it's time to wade out a little deeper, to share this journey with my community. I'm nervous. I'm counting down the weeks until we start up again. I figure knowing what I don't want is a stepping stone to being able to articulate what I do want.

Notes Along the Journey: Interfaith Marriage

His lack of faith doesn't change that this is the man I trounce at cribbage. The one who vacuums our floors because the vacuum cleaner hates me. This is the man who texts to let me know he's running late because he remembers my irrational fears that he'll leave me or die unexpectedly.

This is still the man who held me through nights of endless flashbacks. The one who bound the wounds I inflicted on myself. He was the voice of reason in the middle of my insanity and despair.

He has struggled to face his past, to pursue his own recovery this past year and a half to give our marriage a fighting change. He's been the one to go toe to toe with me, holding his own, holding us when I was ready to walk away.  The one who has fought to take down his walls and share his heart, even as every protective instinct screamed for him to run and hide.

His rejection of the Divine doesn't change these pieces of who he is.

AND

None of these things change how I feel. Betrayed. Angry. Confused. Grief-stricken. It doesn't change my need to scream that this is not how the story is supposed to go. There isn't room for one more plot twist. It feels like the cruellest of ironies. As I have begun to find my footing in my faith again, to find glimpses of hope in how I could be part of community, he has slipped further away.

The loneliness threatens to drag me under. There are a few brave women I have found who are talking about this. I'm grateful for their words, their stories.

It's hard not to wonder where did I fail, to not demand an answer as to why God is passionate and intentional about pursuing my heart yet seems to not give a shit about my husband's.  That sounds like the God of my childhood, not the Divine being that I've grown to know and love. In all of this though, I feel held. I have a deep knowing that this story isn't over. I don't know the ending, but I know that honesty is necessary for growth.

I'm left in the same place I was before this bombshell - learning to love my husband in ways that are healthy and sustainable for both of us.

Before, In-between, and After

For years I've complained about not having a time before abuse. There's no reclaiming me, because the only me I've ever known was fragmented. Lately though I've been thinking that I don't have an after - at least not yet. I have a before - one filled with trauma, dysfunction, pain, addiction. I have my now - this place of in-between where I'm healthier and still not done working through all the things that linger in my present from my before. I don't have an after yet - an after I grew up, after my marriage healed, after working through trauma. 

I'm in this in-between. I don't have the end of the story yet. I don't know if I get to have a happily ever after. My husband has been wrestling with what he believes or maybe more accurately what he doesn't believe. The writing has been on the wall for a long time, but this week he finally verbalized what I've known to be true for several years - he's done with Christianity. I want to be careful to not tell a story here that isn't mine to tell. This is his journey and this place that he's in, I believe that it is a good place, a healing place, even though it is painful for both of us. 

Once again I feel like I am being asked to open my hands and let go, to stop trying to control my world. This illusion of control has allowed me a false sense of security. The truth is that whatever he believes or doesn't believe, he's mine. I'm proud of him. Proud of him for being honest with himself and with me. Proud of him for being willing to let go of something he's been taught his entire life because it's no longer true for him. 

I'm heartbroken for me. I'm lost, bewildered, wondering how is this too part of my story. The two things I wanted in a husband are the two things that my husband has abandoned. (The other thing was someone who shared my love and passion for music - specifically a guitar player). And in the middle of my hurt and yes my anger (though who I'm angry with, I really don't know), I have this fierce love for him, something that I haven't felt before. I'm holding onto him not in a clingy co-dependent desperate way, but in this healthy passionate protective way. In a he is mine and to mess with him is to mess with me kind of way. 

I love him more now than I did when he was doing the things that I thought I wanted him to do and be. I'm discovering that I love who he is - even when it doesn't look like what I hoped it would look like. I don't know what my after with him is going to look like, but I think that I'm beginning to actually enjoy the discovery of the in-between. 

I Showed Up

I showed up
Shaking in my brave
No masks
not even make up to hide behind

I showed up
Uncertain of acceptance
Arms barred
scars showing

I showed up
Trembling tearful words
Honest, authentic
me

I showed up
Heart in my eyes
Brokenness and wholeness
Walking together into that room

I showed up
Breathing through panic
Triggered by past baggage
Ready to bolt

I showed up
And it was okay
My heart was heard
My words accepted
My story not scorned

I showed up
to women shaking in their brave
to real spilling down cheeks
to shared journeys

Tonight I showed up
Tomorrow I will do it again.

Ugly Truths: A Rant and A Confession

I feel like the red-headed bastard child. The one that is tolerated, but no one actually bothers to converse with. The child being permitted just this once to sit at the table with the grown ups, the real women. 

I've chosen not to have children. It's not that we can't, we don't know, we've never even tried. I spent most of my relationship with my husband long-distance until 6 months before we got married. I wanted time for the two of us to live in the same country, the same time zone before we became responsible for a tiny human. Only now it's been 5 years and I'm still saying no - because of his addiction, because of mine. Because when I don't get enough sleep, I physically cannot function. Old mostly managed health problems flare to the surface under stress, sleep loss, poor eating habits - all the things that come with a newborn. Because I still can't see a doctor for a women's exam due to the flashbacks and triggers that set me back in my healing for weeks. Because I won't subject a child to his emotional neglect and abuse. Because of a million reasons all of which boil down to this - I can't be a responsible mother yet. 

I'm angry. I'm angry because I know I'm making the right choice for me, for my marriage. I know it deep in my bones that this is a not now. I'm angry because there only seems to be room for SAHMs in the church. Career moms feel excluded. Single friends feel excluded. I feel excluded, looked down on - because in the very needed push to affirm those women who have made the choice to stay home with their children there has been another message sent. One that says we will only see you when you produce a child. That declares that motherhood is the highest calling of a woman and what God has designed us to do. For those of us who either by choice or by circumstances outside of our control do not have children  - not only do we have to deal with the social and societal ramifications of that choice, we're told that you will never truly understand God's love for you, that your calling and life choices are second best, and that you can't love anyone unconditionally. 

People tell me it must be nice to have so much free time. The bold ones when they find out that I'm not a mother and I don't work ask "so what do you do all day?" I'm usually so taken aback by the accusation that I mumble something incoherent to justify why I'm not working, not parenting, not doing something with my life that you can deem as valuable before escaping the conversation. 

Here's the real answer: I invest in me and the people around me. I fight to deprogram my brain from all the lies and false teachings and brainwashing that I endured for 22 years. I fight to stay sober, to live my life un-medicated and to not just feel my feelings, but to honour them even when I've thrown up yet again from crying the tears that couldn't be cried then.

 Everybody loves to point out that I'm free now, that I've made so much progress in my healing, that I'm so strong. It takes a hell of a lot of work day in and day out to be me. To show up in a world that I do not understand. I've had to learn new cultures - first when I left home and discovered a whole new world that was radically different than what I'd be taught to fear about it. Then when I moved from Canada to the USA - and to a very conservative side of the state. I don't understand this world I find myself in. It makes no sense. I fight to hold onto who I am, when I'm constantly swimming against the current. 

I spend my days working, wrestling with trauma. Mine, others. My phone rings, chirps, beeps with messages of pain and panic from women who feel unseen, unheard. Women who are fighting to live, fighting the lies of their pasts, fighting to not medicate, to live one day at a time. 

I get it. I'm fat. I'm socially awkward. I don't have the right clothes. I loathe small talk and getting to know you ice breakers. I no longer cover my scarred arms and that makes you uncomfortable. My story of being abused in the Church, by the Church makes you look at how you parent, raising ugly hidden questions you'd rather not see. 

I go to these events that are supposedly for all women. I watch you fawn over each other's perfect outfits, make-up and hair dos. I listen through speakers that assume that we are all wives and mothers, all white conservatives. I hear about events and opportunities - none of which fit my schedule, all of which require extra money that I do not have. You spread a little Jesus over the top, to go with your matching napkins and table centrepieces. I walk away feeling unseen, unheard, and unwelcome. 

And yet, I'm showing up again, protecting that small ember of hope that this time will be different. This time it's something I'm passionate about. This time, maybe there will be women there who are willing to be real, authentic and look past all the things I'm not to see who I am. To see my heart and my passion for women to heal and no longer be bound by the chains that have been wrapped so tightly that they are choking to death. I'm summoning every last scrap of brave that I have and putting all the tools I've learned in the last 8 years into my bag to take with me because I believe that one day, one of these times I will look around that room and see you. 

I will see your heart trying not to spill out of your eyes because your husband is addicted to porn and you have done everything you can to make yourself be enough for him. All the perfect clothes, and make up, are you trying to fill that ache inside of not being enough for the man who vowed to love, honour and cherish you. I will see you, the frazzled nerves from it being a miracle that you made it there and didn't forget a child at home because your husband is deployed yet again and the only way you have to cope with the loneliness and the fear is to form your life around your children. I will see that behind all your stories about your daughter is the remembered years of interviews and inspections, invasive questions and dashed hopes as you struggled through the adoption process. I will see the loneliness that hides behind your too cheerful chattering words. Your voice begging to be heard; your heart begging to be nurtured.

I show up hoping that today is the day I can see you and realize that none of us feel enough at these events but we show up, holding onto hope that we will be seen. 

When Faith is Messy

This process of peeling back layers of my life, my story it's vulnerable, painful, yet some how, some times exhilarating. There's something about telling the truth - MY truth - that smells like freedom. I want to race to the end, to sprint ahead, but this is still a marathon journey. I do not have the strength to sprint the rest of the way.

As I write more pieces of the truth, more pieces show up. I've spent my weekend emotionally reeling from seeing the connections between all the pieces of what I thought were highly disconnected spiritually abusive groups. I knew there was some cross-over. I hadn't connected that they were all connected, that they all trace their own histories back to the same tainted source. Whether it was the extreme charismatic signs and wonders, the never-ending worship and prayer services, the character seminars that promised to reveal the hidden principles of a successful life, or the commissioning of house churches to serve under regional apostles it all traces back.

I've spent my weekend floundering, wondering if there is any part of my faith that hasn't been tainted by this toxic teaching. Desperately hoping that there has been something from the first 25 years of my life that wasn't connected to this filth in the name of God. It's painful to face the inevitable questions - is there any of it that was real? Have I ever had a faith that wasn't tied to a cult?  Where do I go now? Is there any faith community that could be safe? How would I even know?

What will I learn 5 years from now about the church that I've been a part of these past 5 years? This church that has been a haven and a family, yet that feels like it's now choking the new life being born in my deepest self. My fear and my fury are mixed together. My prayers are wordless screams again. I can't see straight about anything and I want to run. To run from anything that looks like Christianity or religion. To run to the water, the trees, the sunlight where my rawness has room to breathe.

There are so many questions: Do I dare? Do I dare follow where my heart is leading me? Do I dare try one more version of Christian community? I still need the Church. I know this to the core of my being. I need Her. I need her humanity, her history, her example. What I don't know is where to find her in a way that won't deepen my already bleeding wounds.

For now I stick with what I know. I run to the water, to the trees and the sunlight. I run to the thunderstorms and the cries of the geese. I allow my prayers to be wordless screaming and angry profanities mixed with heart-wrenching sobs. I honour the place where I am trusting somehow that Love will meet me here. And for now, that is enough.

Easter

Easter is not an easy holiday. It is gritty and raw. Every year I gain a new piece of why there is only pain and a rawness in my soul. Here's this year's piece:


For two days you ask me to journey deep into the darkest recesses of my soul. Just as I settle into the wonder and the weeping, you show up. Emotional whiplash. I'm not ready to rejoice.  There is more here in the dark. More that needs to be felt for, discovered, grieved over before it can be unearthed. I'm not ready for resurrection.

The light is too bright for the rawness that is my ravaged heart. I find myself face down, eyes streaming, begging to go back to the darkness. The work you were doing in those hidden places, it mattered. Now the light has chased away my shadows, the fleeting pieces of my jagged edges. I've lost them, yet again. These snatches of untold story that were starting to unfold. The sudden light has shoved me into painful unseeing once more.

I'm not ready to rejoice, to sing songs of relief and gladness. I'm still back in the remembering. My eyes had adjusted to seeing the beauty and nuances of the darkness. I cannot grieve for you one day only to turn around and embrace with whole-hearted ecstasy this supernatural gift. This fleeting gift of your presence here. Far too soon you will leave and retreat to this glorious world outside time that you left for only a short while. Your transient life makes me retreat back into my darkness, alone, but for the half light of a spirit, your spirit that allows my weary soul to dimly see the next step along my road.

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.

Beauty From Hard Places

There's a theme showing up over and over as I wander through nature.  My eye is drawn to several things time and again. Pine cones, new buds, water, the interplay of light and shadows. These are all important.  There are things here for me to hear and see. My mind wanders over the thoughts and images, seeing new life - it's fragile beauty. It's tenacity. The trusting brave that winter is over. It reminds me that growth takes time. First grow the new shoots and then come the buds. It will be months before the full beauty of the blossoms is seen.

There's another thing that my eye is drawn to - trees growing out of rocks. Life from harsh environment. Life and beauty in these hard spaces. The roots have to dig deep to anchor the tree, to dig under the rock, to dig even into the rock. It's a message my heart needs, and one that I don't always want to see.

I know too well the struggle of growing in those hard places. Fighting all the time for the basic essentials that I need to survive. I've spent so long begging for a transplant - and in some ways I got one when I moved to be with my husband. But that transplant wasn't to a beautiful garden where all my needs are magically taken care of.  It was to a different type of hard place, new rocks mixed in with the old ones.

It's easy for my soul to scream to the heavens that this is not abundant life. My screams are answered with these trees growing out of cliff faces and on rocky river shores. They are answered with new life mixed in with the left over dead growth from winter. They are answered with bare branches that are teeming with tiny new buds.

There is life here in this hard place.  There can be growth here, now.  It will take time. It will take tenacity. It will take trust. And one day there will be the stirrings of beauty, not somewhere else, but here in the middle of the rocks.

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.

Starting

It still feels surreal.  I'm actually doing this, Story 101. I'm nervous and so very excited.  I want to learn it all these next 10 weeks.  I want my voice back.  It's mine damn it - given to me by the One who knows me best.  My physical voice is a muscle - one that requires discipline, practice, repetition and care to be all it can be.  My written spirit voice is no different.  These 10 weeks are boot camp, a launching pad for me to no longer hide my words away in fear.

This is the first step toward secret dreams.  Ones I have only started to dream again.  Ones that I only dare to whisper to myself.  Story 101 is my next step in this journey of becoming me.  I know that I know that I know this is where Spirit has lead.

In the next 10 weeks, I can guarantee that there will be moments of wondering now deluded I must be to even imagine that I could write anything that others would find value in, much less bother to read.  This is no different than any other becoming thing that I have been lead to in the last almost 8 years since I found my freedom.  I never thought I could be as free as I am from the chains of the past.  Yet those chains keep falling off.

When the dark days come, let them come.  I have faced storms and doubts before.  I am learning to stand and lean into the driving pounding winds and rains.  Every time those storms strip away things that I no longer need to be bound by.  Every stripping away reveals another piece of hidden beauty, beauty that would not have been revealed without the stripping power of the storm.

Even precious metals need fire and hammering, gems require cutting - all to bring out the glorious beauty that can only be glimpsed in the raw potential.  If I am that precious, then I know I too will need refining for my beauty to be displayed to it's fullest extent.  The beauty is there - this is the next step to it being held, first by myself and then by others.

Temper Tantrums and Next Steps

Like most people I have patterns of behaviour in my life that are relatively predictable.  One of those patterns is my temper tantrums.  Every time I do something new, take another step forward or am placed in a situation that requires growth I inwardly throw a tantrum.  It goes something like this:

You can't make me.  I won't do it.  Nuh-uh this is stupid and it doesn't fit me anyway.  I'm too broken for this.  I'm further along now in my healing and I don't need this.  I don't get it.  I don't see the point.  YOU CAN'T MAKE ME!! YOU CAN'T! YOU CAN'T! YOU CAN'T!

I usually then plop down right where I am in a storm of angry tears.  See I resist because I'm afraid.  Every new step brings up all the fears.  I don't do well being pushed into things.  I sniff out unvoiced expectations like a blood hound.  Even when I know that one step comes after where I am, I still resist at first.

In my first time through the Twelve Steps, it became quickly apparent that every time we moved onto a new step my response would be "You can't make me do this."  I was blessed with leaders who were willing to stand out of the way and affirm that they weren't going to even try to make me do it.  I desperately need to know that I have a choice, one without strings attached to it.  I didn't have choices as a child and the choices that I made got me hurt even more.

The pattern is still here though.  Every time I run into something new, something that stretches me I throw myself down for a good old-fashioned tantrum.  God is so patient with me.  He's never shamed me for my tantrums.  He knows I'm scared.  He knows that I need the space to feel free to choose to take the step in front of me.

I get frustrated that this is the way that it is.  Too often I'm standing over my scared little girl-self screaming at her to grow up, stand up.  Telling her that is no way to behave and would she just do as I say because she's embarrassing me.  I'm a grown up and she doesn't get to carry on like this.  It's just not done.  I heap insults on her.  Rarely do I stoop down into her dirt and see her.  Often I grab her arm and drag her behind me, still kicking and screaming.

It doesn't work.  I always have to go back to her and make yet another amends, praying that God would please show me how to make her do what I need her to do.  It's the wrong kind of prayer though.  This time I'm asking that He would show me how to get down in the dirt with her and see her - her fears, her rage, her beauty.  She is fierce. Truth is, I need her.

Can I learn to touch her with gentleness, compassion, tenderness?  Can I learn to stop heaping judgement on her and instead wrap her in mercy?  I need to learn.  I must learn.  God help me learn.

Socially Awkward

Part of the repercussions of being raised closed off from most of society is that I am still very awkward socially.  I do okay once I get to know people and they know me.  Yet the process of building those bridges - oiy it's full of self-doubt and difficulties.  I can't connect with people over children or work or school.  I don't have any of those pieces in my life right now.  My life is very much focused around healing from trauma and addiction, my own and others.  It's my full-time job and I love that this is where I am right now.  I love that I am discovering myself for the first time ever in my life.  It's such a cool process.  Yet where I'm at right now makes small talk even more painful for me - I just don't do small talk.  I'm a "lets-get-coffee-for-four-hours-and-trade-life-stories" kind of a girl.  It makes new places and new people feel itchy and uncomfortable for me.

There's a community group through church that my husband and I have belonged to for the last 2 years.  It truly has been a belonging, not just an attending.  We started out attending and on paper we "shouldn't" fit with this group.  We're the only ones without children and around 10 years younger than the average age.  But there's something about the dynamic that just works.  It really does feel like belonging and it's amazing.

It's not the sitting-on-the-outside-please-let-me-play-with-you that we've experienced in the past.  It's healthy and vibrant.  There is life there.  There is a place where I fit, where I don't have to hide or fade into the background or bite my tongue.  There is room for my rough edges and my tears.  There is also room for my sense of humour and for my becoming.

It's times like tonight that I can look back and say that God knows what He's doing.  He's got places for me where I don't have to hide in the corner.  We had a group before this one, a group that we loved and where I was really comfortable.  It was uncomfortable starting over two years ago.  It felt awkward and strange.  I didn't know other's stories and they didn't know mine.  Yet as those stories have been shared, there's been a growing sense of belonging.

I'm writing to remind myself that once upon a time, this didn't feel like I fit.  I currently have a couple new groups of people in my life.  People that I don't know their stories and they don't know mine.  It's new and different and I feel that awkward there.  I'm over-analysing everything that I say and do in these new e-Course groups.  "did I share too much?  Did I not give enough background? Oh crap I totally put my foot in my mouth..."  I've been here before and sometimes it takes time to find the place that's mine in a group.

I'm grateful for the places I have now that I know where my fit is.  I'm trying to practice patience as I remind myself that I will find the place that is mine in these new groups as well.

Chewed Up and Spit Back Out

I ran into one of my top 5 triggers yesterday.  I spent the rest of the night working through it and it's aftermath.  I hate this.  I hate that this is still my life.  That the mention of something can send me right back to being 16 and trapped.  The people who were intended to help me did yet more harm and they used their "God" to do it.  The thought still turns my stomach.  I hate revisiting teenage me.  Not because I hate her, I actually (now) really love pieces of who I was back then.  The intensity of her anger and the anguish of her daily pain - God how did I survive that?  No wonder I wanted nothing to do with faith or God.

I don't want to talk about it.  I don't want this to be part of my story.  Christian Ritual Abuse is ugly.  It takes what is sacred and spins it around, using prayer, faith, and Scripture as weapons against innocent victims.  I hate that so much of what was done to me was done in the name of God.  It still brings up unanswerable questions - and I have nothing left in me today to wrestle with them.

On my good days, I know that the "God" I was taught about is not the one that I choose to follow.  Nor do I see that "God" in the world around me or in the pieces of Scripture that I can hear.  Today is not a good day and I find myself pleading in tears for mercy.  Mercy for my doubt-riddled belief.  Mercy for my angry words of pain.  Mercy in this fight, because today I can't fight.

I can't fight.  All I can do is rest.  I wrap myself in softness and purple.  I let the music flow over my rawness.  I sit in the pool of sunshine and grieve for the child I was.

Gungor's "Please Be My Strength" is one of my favourite songs in this season. It's deceptively simple - a heart psalm, and one that I find myself often repeating.