How He Loves

I have started many posts over the last few weeks and never really had the energy to complete them. Some days I think the Lord saves me from posting things that really aren't helpful...for myself or for anyone else. I sometimes think He allows me to hit a place where I encounter HIM and am compelled by his grace to make a change of some sort. Today is one of those days.
It didn't start as one of those days. I am the queen of justification and rationalization...like if it was a talent or spiritual gift I would be amazing. And yet it isn't and it most likely gets me into more trouble than anything else... mostly because it allows me to deceive myself into thinking something isn't what it seems. I never intentionally or maliciously try to sabotage my recovery or try to do things my way, thinking i know better than professionals. That's not it at all. In fact its quite the opposite. However when emotions run high and my very fragile heart is reminded of the pain it so desperately is running from I panic and I turn very discreetly to my drug of choice...to food, or the lack there of. There are few people in my life who I really allow the weight to speak to the choices I make. For so long I lived allowing no one into that place...and somehow at the same time allowing everyone into that place. When it came to taring me apart anyone could throw words at me and break me into pieces. However when it comes to being allowed to call me out on my shit...to tell me when I am full of just that...well, the audience narrows drastically. And there isn't much I hate more than hearing one of those people call me out, tell me how it is, and be right. So that is how the day started. Other people have been expressing similar things to me over the last week or so and yet I blew them off...thinking they didn't understand. Thinking they were over reacting. So my heart was heavy after my session with Tiffany this morning. I have been playing with fire over the past week and I knew it... but i hate being reminded of that when I can start to feel the burn of the flames. But I am so thankful that there is actually somebody I will listen to.
So I took that heavy heart into our body image group at renfrew this morning. And when faced with the challenge of writing a letter to my body I found that I wrote with an anger that I like to pretend doesn't exist. I like to believe that I am not capable of cruelty. I like to think that there isn't anything in me that links me to the intense pain that suffocates the life from everything I put my hand to. I think to admit to that mean, harsh, power hungry energy is to see that I am just like they were...like the people who hurt me so deeply have poisoned me and there is nothing I can do to seperate that poison from my blood. I feel like to admit to anger is to unleash a narsasistic evil within me that has the power to unglue someone else, as it has unglued me. Never in a million years would i want someone else to feel the brokenness that haunts my dreams, haunts my past, and haunts my reality. And as that hatred flowed from my hand onto that paper I could see it all play, as though a VHS tape in my mind was stuck and the same part would replay over and over...louder and louder until it takes everything in me not to scream from insanity...scream for mercy...a willingness to do whatever the puppeteers are asking, if only for a moments silence. Feeling dead from within, staring out the windows of my soul... desperate for the ghosts of my past to shut up and leave me alone. It comes across as an unwillingness to share my heart. It shines through as a stubborn calloused heart, with an unrelenting appetite to be in control and keep other out. There of course is an element of walls built to keep others from pulling the same strings in my heart that others have before. However I wish more than anything that it was just that...just a stubborn pride. But really its a fear that someone will see me in a state of pure torture and be frightened and repulsed by the rotting caucus that has been picked over and left to decompose by those who were bigger, stronger, and more intimidating that I ever could dream of being. So I try to protect others from the graphic depiction of the reality of a past of sexual abuse...from seeing a disturbing portrayal of deep loss, abuse, and silence.
Tonight at Kairos the message was about dating. After learning over the last week that the man I thought i was going to marry is dating and sleeping with someone else it wasn't exactly the topic i wanted to touch on. And yet, as is quite often the case, the Lord knew better. There was so much solid truth and genuine wisdom spoken tonight. The necessity to "live like the person you are looking for is looking for" and the warnings of the vertigo that chemistry or excitement and desire can cause in our attempt to make decisions. It was helpful to be reminded that I don't want to bait someone in with my body because they will only stay as long as that bait remains...it was all so refreshing. However I think the thing that hit me the strongest was when we were doing one of the closing songs. Michael Boggs encouraged us by reminding us that God isn't here to bring condemnation...but instead to bring freedom to live the life we were created to live. We closed with a song David Crowder Band has recorded called How He Loves. And for a moment my whole world faded away and I encountered a God so in love with his children that He willingly came and faced their sin, my sin, and died to bring me out of a place of shame and death and into His hope...His life. There is a little girl inside of me who I hate. I feel like she represents everything in my life that I hate. She represents my weakness. She represents the filth the disgusting shame that I carry. She represents my inability or my choice to not protest the things which tonight Michael Boggs said were scarring to my soul. He said sex isn't just physical... but that instead it damages your very soul. She represents everything I have spent a lifetime trying to undo. And tonight as I allowed the words of that song to wash over me I was overwhelmed by God's love for that child. That even though there is evil and hatred inside of me that His love is greater. That the darkest night is light to Him. That no matter what happened He has already overcome it by His love. And to be honest it takes alot to simply allow Him to love her. I want Him to side with me and destroy her...and instead there is a righteous anger that comes in and blows away all shame and embarrassment. He doesn't look at the filth that is covering me...instead He picks me up and embraces me. I think of Ansley after eating a cupcake last weekend for her brothers birthday. She had used the frosting as finger paint and covered her hands and arms and face with it. I tried my hardest to wipe her down before even attempting to pick her up to take her into the bath. I didn't want to chance her getting her "tasty art" all over me. But that's not the stance Jesus takes. He runs in and picks up the little girl in the mess...not stopping to protect himself...but instead sacrificing his purity, his sinless body in return for her embrace. And just as no one can tell me that I can or can not love someone else I can't tell Him not to love her, to love me. It's not my place to make that decision. Though it's painful and scary to watch there is something so freeing in being loved despite anothers knowledge of why they shouldn't love you. It terrifies me to know that someone could hold that information...to know the truth about me and to know that at any time they could use it against me.... which i think is part of why I hold on to it so tightly. Because with knowledge there is power and I am so tired of anyone having power over me...I don't need to give anyone else a reason to hate me. But the truth is that I want to be married some day. I want to be the person that the somebody I am looking for is looking for. And if I am to ever be free I have to embrace and soak in that love, chancing that the anger and the hatred maybe be let out as well. They may present the world with one more reason to run away from me... but it opens the door to healing...to freedom...to hope.



So just for tonight I open my eyes and look to see that the God of love is standing before me with open arms... to see that there are tears in His eyes and that His heart is to love me and to lead me into the life He created for me to live. And to see that that is exactly what I am desperate for. That little girl is so calloused and hardened that she believes the last thing she needs is to be loved. But just for tonight I found the strength to see that is exactly what I long for, and what she needs. That it can be healing when it is genuine, pure, love...and tonight I found the strength to hope that one day there will be a man out there who will love me as I am... and that I will be the someone that my someone is looking for.

1 Corinthians 13:4-7
"4 Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud 5 or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. 6 It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. 7 Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance."


"We will overcome by the blood of the Lamb
And the word of our testimony, everyone overcome"

Watering Flowers

I would like to preface this by saying I hate flowers, plants, or anything else that doesn't have a voice to remind me that its there. Their innate silence collides with my lack of memory and things die. They can't tell me when they have had enough water or not had their fill. I could water them some and they still really need or want more and i don't give it to them because they didn't tell me it wasn't enough. How do I know when they silently oblige, allowing me to continue doing what I am doing despite the pain or destruction it is causing them. Their silence isn't consent, but it might as well be.

Have you ever felt so powerful that it scared you? Have you ever been taken back by the ability you have to take power over the things that are weaker than you are? When I was little I got a pet rabbit for Christmas one year. Her name was Buttercup and when she was a baby I thought she was the most wonderful gift I had ever received. The only problem was that Buttercup smelled horrible. I tried to keep her in my bedroom but the smell of her cage, no matter how often i cleaned it, gave me horrible headaches. So eventually my dad built her a wooden cage outside by the fruit trees. The bottom of the cage was just wiring so that when she pooped it would fall out of the bottom and there would be no requirement for me to clean it. This seemed like a spectacular idea until the poop just built up under her cage and flies and bugs swarmed. Buttercup became big and hard to hold and she had a tendency to bite...the less I held her the less she was comfortable being held. My dad used to work out in the yard all the time and so he would constantly remind me to feed her and clean up her cage and hold her etc etc. But when my dad died the reminders faded away. For awhile I realized she was a connection point for my dad. She was a gift from him and for some reason there was something about her that helped me believe my dad had once been real...that his life hadn't just been a figment of my imagination. But that desperation faded as life got busy. The poor rabbit sat outside in that cage for months with no attention. Some days I would get sad and think about how awful life for her must be. Trapped in a small cage hanging over your own waste, alone. One summer when I was in middle school I had a busy month ahead of me and I didn't really think much about it. I went to summer camp for a week and then was picked up from summer camp by my friends family who then took us to the beach for two weeks. I returned from that trip long enough to unpack, wash my clothes, and leave the next day for another week long camping trip with my family. One night during that last camping trip I realized I hadn't fed Buttercup before i left...and in a panic i asked my mom to call and have someone make sure she had food. My mom agreed and I didn't think much about it until we got home. We got home when it was dark and I remember walking into my room to unpack and my mom followed me in and told me Buttercup had died while we were gone. I tried to shake it off and act like it was no big deal...i mean i didn't even like taking care of her anyway. My mom said something about not remembering to give her water or food while I was at summer camp and that she had fried out in the unbearable summer heat. What an awful death. Slow. Painful. Lonely. You may say Bethany, you were young. It wasn't your fault. But the same thing happened when my high school boyfriend gave me a pet bunny when he went away to college. She started off living in my room until it made me sick. She therefore had to move outside...only her cage was smaller. Summer came. She was out of sight and out of mind...and she died. Every time i step on a bug or swat a fly I am ridden with this sickening sense of power. I exert my will on something smaller and weaker...something unable to fight for itself. In my hands I could take the only life they knew and literally stamp it out of existence. I am just as bad as an abuser. It's the reason I cry anytime i accidentally step on a snail or see worms sizzling out in the sun after the rain clouds have disappeared. I frantically try to put them all back in the moist ground, hoping my good will somehow over ride the bad. You see I hate that in each of those things i see myself...and i feel helpless. Forgotten. Silenced. I see that look... the look when the fighting has stopped and the knowledge of the inevitable settles in. Eyes glazed over, you simply have to mentally take yourself as far away as you can without ever having to leave the position you are molded into. Its a look of begrudging survival.

It was never in those moments that I hated my bunny. I never even hated the bugs or the snail. It's that my desires or needs were more pressing or seemingly important than their voice or lack there of. I didn't give it a second thought until it was too late. I took their whole world only because I was too focused on a single moment in my own. It came at their expense...and it cost me nothing...but took from them everything. It's just a rabbit or insect you say...and I kinda get that. I guess its more that i am faced with what I am capable of and it terrifies me. The power I, or any of us, have is greater than we like to believe. I never want to get to a point where I am desensitized to the frailty of life. I never want to get to a point where I can see the empty look of death in the eyes of something smaller and more vulnerable then I am and not be moved, unchanged. I never want to become so distracted by my own wants that I stop seeing the cost that it comes at for anther animal, person, or living thing. The fact that its not intentional is what scares me. If it was something I did with purpose at least I would know how to change it. Instead I feel like I walk around with this capability inside of me to be evil, like it could strike at any moment without me even meaning to have it happen. It makes me feel like a time bomb. And what brought all this up you ask me? Watering flowers. Yep, I'm in charge of watering flowers and plants and they don't talk to me or remind me they need to be watered and i forget and they die. They suffer because I can't remember something so simple. It's not rocket science. And so I drive myself insane every day at this point trying to remember to water the flowers...and remember to care if I have watered the flowers...and remember to remember that my actions can either bring life or bring death. The power rests in my hands. I must use it wisely.

aimless

I don't ever feel like i have much to say and yet my mind is constantly racing, my heart pulled in a million directions at all times. I have been back in Nashville for 5 days now and I just can't seem to get back into the normalcy of life. I feel lost, like I'm wandering from moment to moment not entirely sure how i will make it to the next hour, next day. I feel like I should point myself in a direction and launch into a new life...and yet I am genuinely unsure of where to go, what i even want. I know I am fixated on ideals and wanting things to have turned out differently. And yet nothing I do today can change what happened yesterday or years before. I know that the only moment I have is really the moment I am in...and yet somehow that seems more overwhelming than simplifying. There was a memorial service yesterday for a man named Maurice Carter. He used to come to Mercy Ministries once or twice a week and lead our morning worship. He died of what they believe was a heart attack, he was in his early forties....young. I started to worry today about how much i yearn for what is in the future and yet how I am missing some of what could be the best days with my family. I started to panic at the thought of ever having to deal with losing my mom...how lost i would feel...how utterly alone I would feel...being left without any parents. And yet I choose to live thousands of miles away from her. I long for children of my own and yet i don't want time to pass...because time changes us and I want the mom i know today...not the mom who will have aged how ever many years. I live my life not appreciating the time i have with the people i love because i distance myself so far away from the those i love the most. I am a living contradiction and I am tired of it. I am tired of being sad and feeling alone because i haven't met "the" man who will suddenly throw my life back onto the track i feel like I jumped off of so long ago. It turns out I am searching for a man to be my savior, not my husband. I would never admit that. I know better than that. I know that I need someone to be my helper, not to be my Jesus. There is only one Jesus who can turn my pain into beauty and can turn the stain of sin to a color as white as snow. And yet I run from Him too. I keep trying to fix my own sin and transform my own life and I wonder why I am so burnt out and frustrated. I wonder why I feel so alone and depressed. It's because I acquired a taste for this world somewhere in the deepest darkest moments of my pain. I found comfort in something that was stealing my life...only because it distracted me from a void so raw and so deep I was left feeling as though i would be abandoned and bleeding to death. I hate facing those moments where I can't see God... i get terrified that the one who will never turn from anyone turned from me. I doubt. I have little faith. I feel like my circumstances are too big for the Lord. It's almost funny...I mean its not. It's not funny that I believe I am so big and so grand that I am beyond the Lord... it's depressing. It shows me that I live my life filtering my pain through the comprehension of a young child. I don't know the way out. I feel like I am in a maze and like the ropes that guide the path keep changing...and like me ever finding the end is hopeless. But in reality its not the end I am seeking. The fulfillment of life isn't tied in a bow waiting in that final moment i take in a breath and exhale for the last time...life is lived each and every day. We miss out on so much joy and laughter...so much purpose if we keep seeking, waiting for the day when life will be "worth" living.
My treatment team wants me to do a week of day treatment at renfrew, then 8 days of nested IOP. I don't want to. I don't think I need it. I honestly don't. I am doing better than I ever have before. I am eating all my meals and snacks and I am doing everything that is asked of me...everything except to do these three weeks of treatment. I know I am just being stubborn. I know I am not wanting to trust anyone besides myself. I really am just afraid to spend this much money and be in this much debt and months down the road be so overwhelmed that I can't function...and then go back to the eating disorder. I keep trying to convince them that they just can't see that I don't need to do this...and yet they keep reminding me that if my past is a predictor of my future I need to do these last few weeks in order to secure my recovery...to invest into my future. I think I am so afraid because this is actually requiring trust. I am allowing someone else to make a decision for me that I know is going to cost me money...and alot of self sufficiency. Making this decision I feel is going to make me more needy and dependent long term...when I know they believes this investment is going to make me more independent and happy in the long run. I guess I know what I should do...even though my gut is telling me not to. Every wall that I have built is signaling alarms right now...I am walking in to new territory ... territory that goes against all those rules that I thought once kept me safe.
So I have made the decision to live...not for tomorrow but for today. It's really all that I have. I don't know what will happen next week or next month and I want to truly use the time I have been blessed with to make a difference...and to really know the people in my life that walk beside me. I don't want to regret waiting to live until its too late. I can't remember if I used this quote a read a few weeks ago on here before...but even if i have its worth posting again. It is from the book Redeeming Love. It says,

"You're a bird who's been in a cage all your life and suddenly all the walls are gone, and you're in the wide open. You're so afraid you're looking for any way back into the cage again...Whatever you choose to think now, it's not safer there. Even if you tried to go back now, I don't think you could survive that way again."


God I desire to be thankful for each day that you give me...help me to live in the moment. Help me to make the decision to trust, even when it feels like its taking me and breaking me apart. I know you know the desires of my heart God and I give those things back to you. I want a husband, but I want Him in your timing. I want a family, but only in your timing. Help me to keep you at the center of who I am. Help me Father God to seek you every day...to seek you until I am found by you. God I am so tired of living life on my terms. I give you my life. I choose to walk by faith, believing you are who you say you are. Heal the wounds of my past. Help me to walk back through the things I need to in order to find true freedom in you...and help me to leave everything else where it belongs...in my past. I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to live in constant surrender...but I believe that you do. Teach me. I desire to be a vessel for you to do something great for your name...not for my glory...but for your glory alone. I simply want to extend the love that you have given me and reach a hurting and broken world. Rid me of myself and fill me with you. Transform my darkness into light. I believe you are who you say you are... and once again I turn my heart over to you. Teach me how to love and be loved. Teach me how to receive without insisting I pay for everything i get. Show me what it truly means to receive grace. Point my life in the direction where you are and lead me step by step into the promised land. I surrender to you.

self reflections

Some days I don't have the words to adequately express this journey I am on. The highs and lows seem to keep my world spinning...and I am daily in awe of how quick I am to doubt the faithfulness of the Lord. It is hard to make myself sit back and reflect on each day and yet when I turn and look back I see that the person I am no longer matches the person who was typing these pages one year ago...it doesn't even match the person I was one month ago...and for that I am so thankful. It's funny because in the moment I long to see evidence that I am changing. I feel so low most days because I feel like my heart genuinely longs for total freedom and yet my actions don't always validate those desires. I want the instantaneous change. I want to be healed overnight. I want to wake up tomorrow and be in awe that the chains are gone and freedom abounds. I guess I wonder to myself quite often what it is about the here and the now that scares me so much. Why is it so hard to accept where I am? I don't know, its a question I have been asking myself a lot these days. Why is it so hard to accept myself, as I am? Why does it seem more socially acceptable to hate my body than it does to have self esteem? What is this awful thing I have done and will I ever be able to pay a price, be punished enough, so that I can return to loving myself. I even shudder as I type those words. It's crazy. It is a cycle that keeps me from being able to really know how to love others and how to allow others to love me... and if I ever want to have more than the life I have been living I MUST come to terms with myself. It's not easy. It's not something that I have been thinking about for a few days and am suddenly now great at. I guess the only thing that has really changed is my intention to figure out how to make myself be ok with who I am right this moment...to be gentle with myself. I try to compare the price I have to pay with the penalty that has already been paid for me and I see the grace that allows me to be free...the amazing grace that saved a wretch like me.
Today in group we did a self forgiveness exercise where we had to sit and hold a mirror in front of us and look at our reflection and individually repeat a script about forgiveness. There were "blanks" in the script where you had to fill in your own details...describing what you were forgiving yourself for and other lovely details that made me want to crawl out of my skin. I guess its just funny because I have been so positive about learning to forgive myself and yet when i had to look myself in the eyes and say the words out loud I could barely stand it. I think the thing that intrigued me the most was how uncomfortable it is to look myself in the eye. I mean I think it would be awkward and uncomfortable for anyone but guess i never know what its like to look me in the eye. So to stop and really look beyond my hair and my makeup was challenging. I could see the pain. It was more tangible in the moments than it is when I live within it everyday. I guess I could see the desperation and the fear...it was as if I was just waiting to be kicked in the stomach...just waiting for that final blow to knock me off my feet once more. I think my hint of compassion scared me. I see the pain in the eyes of people around me everyday and sometimes I am brought to tears when I see the anguish they carry with them. I am moved to reach out and touch them, just to let them know that in this crazy big scary world there is someone who cares. I lack compassion for myself. It's like I think that if i were to have compassion for myself I would be swallowed in self pity and end up being this undisciplined pathetic person. I am afraid I would become so absorbed in my sad self that no one would remember to punish me...to keep me in check...to keep me from hurting others. It's as though I see myself as this wild beast that I keep tame through self punishment and destruction...I am afraid of what I am capable of doing and afraid of love being taken away because of it. It is as though love is a drug to me and I am so desperate for it that I don't care what I have to do to receive it. I will take it in any shape or form...even if it hurts.
I guess its just ironic that the very thing I have been coaching myself to do was brought to me today...demanding that I come face to face with the person I fear the most...me. And I did it. I repeated those words with as much honesty and vulnerability that i could muster up...and yet they felt empty and useless. They simply felt like words. I know this is just the beginning and those were really just the initial steps in learning to forgive myself but I know that the more I repeat those things to myself the more real they will become. I know that I need to hear affirmations over and over again in order for them to replace the lies I have believed for so long. I know that if I desire lasting change I will have to face myself...that instead of focusing my attention on the outside... my relationships, my appearance, and my job that I have to look deep into myself and learn to love and accept the child that lives inside of me. I need to forgive her. Who am I to call her shame when the creator of the universe calls her beloved.