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"
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