Re-decorating, Winnie- the- Pooh, and Becoming New Again.

When I was a child, I redecorated my room every other month. Being that I shared a room with my younger sister, this basically involved moving my Winnie-the-Pooh decorations from one shelf to the next, but I loved the way it felt to walk back into the room I had memorized and be startled by the surprise of “different”. Of re-arranged. Of new. I like new. I like new a lot. My favorite “new” is new clothes, the smell and feel of a new outfit is one of my favorite things in this world. I like a new pair of running shoes as a really close second. Lately, the new clothes and the new running shoes, as fabulous as ever, aren’t “new” enough. As great as the new outfit looks, it’s only masking something internally old, and tired, and worn out.

I am happier than I have ever been in most regards. I have taken control of my health, worked vigorously to counteract the insecurities and negative thought patterns that dictated a 15 year eating disorder. I have fewer friends than ever before, but I have discovered what a true friend is. My career is in its infant stages, and I am in love. Real love. Healthy and healing and beautiful, safe, honest, and all-consuming love. The problem with that kind of love, the kind that turns the sky a different color than it was before, is it requires more from you than the kind of love that wants nothing from you.

Suddenly, I want to be a better person. I want to move all the parts of me around and re-decorate until I am someone I would want to be with. I want to be kinder, to show people compassion and mercy, grace and forgiveness, the way it is shown to me. I want to make people laugh so they can feel the joy momentarily that he brings me all day long. I want to understand because I am understood. I want to love because I am loved. All this would be perfectly great if it was as easy as just doing, or being, all those things, but to re-decorate, we have to rid the spaces we are decorating of what is old, what is no longer needed, and then decide what to keep, but improve upon, so that value is being contributed to the newly decorated space...only adding to the value of the space instead of detracting, and distracting from the shiny “newness” because something is old, dusty, unnecessary.

I am saddened by the amount of old, dusty, un-necessaries I have been carrying around. I am saddened by the amount of time I have wasted on licking old wounds, instead of dusting myself off and becoming new again. Part of me held onto the pain, disappointment, and hurt, because it was second nature, it was my coping skill. However; the other, much larger part of me, was holding on to the old because I felt that forgiving was accepting or giving permission to the people who hurt me and I couldn’t deal with that. I wanted to be less angry. I wanted to love myself and truly recover from the eating disorder. I wanted to trust and love unconditionally. I wanted to show mercy and grace to others. I just couldn’t. I couldn’t let go of the dusty old parts of myself that had formed like a scab around my emotional wounds because in doing so, I was allowing these people to “get away “with what they had done> I felt in my staying angry and bitter and jaded and confused and sad and scared, I was essentially a physical reminder, a walking, talking, breathing reminder, to these people that they, in fact, had dusty, old parts of themselves and I’ll be dammed it they were going to forget it. How dare they forgive themselves for hurting me in a way I couldn’t deal with twenty years later!!

So, here I am. Almost 30 years old and in this process of starting over. Becoming new. Re-decorating. I am allowing myself to forgive old hurts, to forgive others, but mostly myself. I am forgiving myself for the horrible things I have said to myself for 30 years. I am forgiving myself for letting the eating disorder consume 15 years of my life. I am forgiving my father, old boyfriends,an ex-husband, old friends, grandparents, and other family members. I am forgiving myself for not accepting the forgiveness God sent His son to die to give me. I am forgiving myself for not standing up to who I should have causing me to lash out at those I shouldn’t have. I am forgiving myself for being a “doormat” long enough that I turned into a cold, angry, and cynical person to keep myself safe from “being walked all over again”. I am forgiving myself, and forgiving others, and it is a redecorating to beat all redecoratings. Those Winnie-the –Pooh knick knacks were impressive, but this, this is something spectacular.

I can be new. Every day that I wake up in Christ’s love, I am made new. I can be a kind person, a compassionate person, a sensitive person. I can be giving and merciful, and it’s okay if that doesn’t turn out the way I would like it too, I will simply forgive that person, and start anew the next day. My prayer is you allow yourself to start new too. My prayer is you, whoever might be reading this, allow yourself to forgive yourself, and those whose burdens you carry, long enough that you can do some redecorating of your own. It can start off small, as it did for me. It can start with something as simple as saying hello to the neighbor who played their music too loudly the night before, but if it is done enough, the smaller forgiving(s) turn the bigger forgiving(s)  like letting the anger of an old break-up dissipate and no longer affect your new relationship. The forgiveness can turn your angry words at that extra weight you have been carrying around, turn into words of encouragement on a weight loss journey.

I love the feeling of walking into a room with new outfit on, but I like the feeling of walking without carrying the hidden weight of years of hurt and anger even more. I like feeling new.

Patiently waiting......and waiting.......and waiting

I don’t like waiting in lines. I don’t like waiting for food to finish cooking. I don’t like waiting for the restroom while someone else uses it. I don’t like waiting for movies to start once I am in my seat… and I don’t like waiting for God’s plan for my life to come into fruition. I think we are afraid to be honest about that sometimes. We hold back saying, “God is taking too long, I want something to happen now. I am afraid it (it being whatever we are searching for) won’t happen”. So we rush things, we go around God’s plan.  I have done it many times, unfortunately some of those ending in divorces, lost jobs, and financial consequences. On a smaller scale, some of the decisions result in a boring night out or an awkward date.

When I share my fears and worries that my academic endeavors won’t turn into the career I have always dreamed of, I am often quoted Jeremiah 29:11:

                “ For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future”

However, I am not quoted the verses immediately following, and it makes sense this might be the problem I am dealing with:

                “Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart”.

Maybe God is trying to tell me to come to Him and listen instead of yelling out demands and frustrations and claiming I am being faithful. I believe whole-heartedly in being honest about my relationship with God because it isn’t perfect and I know as fellow, imperfect human beings, most can relate with that. It is so easy to believe in God’s plan when it coincides with ours, but when it doesn’t it is equally as easy to feel confused and upset.

                I find myself in a state of anxiousness and borderline panic often, especially lately. I went through difficult break up, lost my grandmother and father, and moved twice during my Master’s program. I have to remind myself all the time that God’s purpose for me is to be a therapist, otherwise why would I make it through that program so successfully, despite the issues that I dealt with, if I wasn’t? On the other side of the coin, why haven’t I found a job? The economy is bad, got it. I live in community with limited options, understood. There are tons of graduates looking for the same job I am, I know. It doesn’t change the fact I make student loan payments on a degree that sits on a shelf. It also doesn’t help I have to fulfill 3,000 hours in six years or start over again. It also doesn’t help that my desire to dedicate my time to helping people is spent not doing so. Sure, I volunteer or listen to a friend on a bad day, give homeless person money or spend an extra five minutes in Starbucks talking to a person who is obviously lonely, but that’s a different kind of helping.

I want my pain to have a purpose. I want the ten years I spent trapped in that black hole of an eating disorder to matter. I want what I learned about life, and how to overcome tragedy at the hands of others to be shared and hopefully internalized as lessons for other victims. I want to help people not be victims.  I have had this burning, internal desire to help people overcome obesity for a long time. I have pursued Master’s degrees and personal training certificates. I spend hours researching and reading on the causes, symptoms, and treatment for this epidemic, but I also spend hours feeling frustrated it isn’t being put to use like I dreamt it would.

                I know I am not the only who feels like this. I know I am not the only person with multiple tools in their tool box waiting for an opportunity to use them, and to those people I say be still. Easier said than done, I know. I practically have to sit on my hands and duct tape my mouth to keep myself from interfering with a plan that is created for me that I don’t understand quite yet. I don’t want to get so busy getting in my own way that I can’t hear the sound of God’s voice guiding me over the sound of my own making the wrong things happen so that I can say something is happening.  I do not stay still so that I can feel comfort in my ability to be faithful, so that I might feel righteous or entitled to compensation. I stay still because I am an idiot and I cannot be trusted to be in charge of myself. When I get anxious, overwhelmed, or even depressed, I can hear God telling me to shut up and give Him a minute. Okay, maybe He doesn’t say shut up, He probably says “be quiet please”, or maybe even, “hush little one”, but the point is he silences me.  I’m a little lost, a little confused, and a lot anxious; but I can’t continue to make life even more difficult on myself by trying to do things my own way.

Free Bird

I have been writing since I was old enough to hold a pencil. I write anything and everything. I write poetry if I am in that kind of mood. I write stories when I am feeling creative. I write essays because I have to. I write in my journal daily or I would probably go crazy. I have always been able to express myself best through writing. I have been wanting to write about losing my Dad since he died in February, but I cannot bring myself to type it, to put it on paper. Maybe so it won’t be real, maybe because it is. As much as I like to write, I think once and awhile it’s okay to let someone else say what you’re trying to say for you. So, this is for you Dad.

If I leave here tomorrow

Would you still remember me?

For I must be traveling on, now

'Cause there's too many places

I've got to see

But, if I stayed here with you, girl

Things just couldn't be the same

'Cause I'm as free as a bird now

And this bird, you cannot change

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh

And the bird you cannot change

And this bird you cannot change

Lord knows, I can’t change

Bye, bye, baby it's been a sweet love

Yeah, yeah

Though this feeling I can't change

But please don't take it so badly

'Cause the Lord knows

I'm to blame

But, if I stayed here with you girl

Things just couldn't be the same

'Cause I'm as free as a bird now

And this bird, you cannot change

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh

And this bird you cannot change

And this bird you cannot change

Lord knows, I can't change

Lord help me, I can't change

Lord I can't change

Won't you fly high, free bird, yeah?

Demons Within Us

I sat in supervision at my intern site yesterday, working with my supervisor on different networking ideas to get myself, or my career I should say, moving forward. I was discussing ideas on eating disorder workshops, and how to get myself going on that, when my supervisor asked me why I chose that as a specialty, being that is a relatively narrow field. I made a quick reference to having gone through one myself for eight years, and geared the conversation back to logistics. My supervisor picked up on this and changed topics with me, however, at the conclusion of supervision hour she asked me, “if you don’t mind my asking, we have a couple of clients here experiencing an eating disorder right now, what happens in someone’s life that causes this?”

Everything. Nothing. I have no idea and I have every idea. Who signs themselves up willingly for something that controls their every moment? Who chooses to succumb to something that controls them? Eats at them from the inside out? Dictates their every waking moment, every thought, every work day and vacation, every Christmas and coffee date, every movie or book they read, every run and every nightmare? I have been asked more times than not, “why didn’t you just stop?”

Because I enjoyed it. Because I like hating myself and destroying my body to try to make that feel better. Because I love the feeling of listening to voices scream at me inside my head telling me the grades, the degrees, the hard work means nothing because I’m fat and disgusting and worthless. I like lying to my family and scaring them. I get a rush off of staying home because I feel too fat to go to the movies with my friends. Who wouldn’t want to stare at food on a dinner date with anxiety because if you eat it you won’t have time to go to the gym afterwards and run it off? Is it not fun for people to cry in Burger King because they’re out of salads and you have to eat a cheeseburger in front of people so they don’t find out?

I don’t know why I did it; it started as insecurity, and at some point consumed my life. I don’t know where it started and I am not even sure when it ended. I know there are people closest to me who blame themselves, and I know deep inside they are wondering how someone with half a brain and potential like I have would waste it on worrying about weight. I know people who don’t know me, or anyone who has gone through something like this even try to understand. That’s okay, at one point I would have tried to justify it, but at this point I don’t really care. Why do drug addicts become addicted to drugs? Why do alcoholics drink? Why do people spend money they don’t have and get themselves in debt to keep up with the Joneses? We all make decisions against our better judgment, and my decision just turned into something that I couldn’t control.

To wake up every morning with a routine that is self-destructive, negative, and binding, it makes waking up difficult sometimes. To be in a relationship with someone who sees this happening to you but turns a blind eye because it’s inconvenient for them, it’s isolating. To hate yourself so much you will allow yourself, your own person, to hurt yourself, not protect yourself from being a victim, but being the perpetrator in your own demise, it’s shameful. To be caught up in thoughts so horrible and controlling, and loud, it’s deafening. This isn’t a mental illness you can take medication for and work through how to cope. This is a mental illness that few people have any empathy for, there are fewer therapists trained in this field than any other, and it is something that people who love you cannot understand. The love they do have for you causes the protective side of them to come out, but this is often communicated as anger, or a “why do you do this, just stop doing this”, and you get to the point where you don’t want anyone around you. You don’t want people seeing you like this, you don’t have the time or patience to explain to people what is happening to you, and quite frankly, you know they are incapable of understanding if you tried.

When someone recovers from something like this, we pat them on the back and say good job. Those of us who have been through it are sensitive enough to the reactions of people to know that most are thinking, “It isn’t hard to decide to eat again”. Oh, but it is. These thoughts don’t just go away because you wake up and decide you don’t think you’re fat anymore. Someone saying “you’re too skinny” isn’t a conviction that can catapult us into recovery; it is a compliment that makes it that much harder to change. Of course we want to stop, eventually. A drug addict eventually wants to get sober right? The problem is the fear that overwhelms us if we do. How will we look if we begin eating again? How do you not work out hours a day? What thoughts will replace the ones were trying to remove? A person suffering from Dissociative Disorder (multiple personality Disorder) has a hard time overcoming the illness because they don’t necessarily want to get rid of the different people living within their mind. They have become attached to them, learned to cope with life through them. It is the same for eating disorders. This is how we live. Whether we like it or not, this.is.how.we.live.

I overcame my eating disorder three years ago. The thoughts, they don’t go away. I have to work every single day at keeping them at bay. I struggle everyday with wanting to revert back to something that is more familiar to me than not.

Who knows how we get to this place. How do I answer something like that in five minutes? It would take longer than people are interested in listening to explain how we get to this place. What can you do to help? Removing the confusion that leads you to expect us to explain why we’re doing what we’re doing is a good place to start. Just love us.

It’s all we really need, is someone to love us, because we’re not doing the best job at loving ourselves.

Staying Stuck

I was driving to work today, reflecting on reading I had done in my Bible before leaving for work, and Psalm 106:25 (“They murmured in their tents, and did not obey the voice of the Lord. “) kept coming to my mind. It made me think of different people in my life that spend a lot of time complaining, making excuses and justifications for why they stay stuck in the situations they are complaining about, but do not take the advice they are given, do not try the suggestions people give them, and most importantly, do not go to the Bible they follow and find the answers in the best possible place to find them.

                As Christians, at one point or another we all turn away from the answer God gives us, because it’s harder, or it’s going to cost us a luxury we don’t want to go without, but eventually, we all realize that doing it our way only cost us greater in the end, and we turn back to God for guidance…but them some of us don’t. I am nowhere near innocent when it comes to this, I won’t get anywhere if I don’t take the hard way, but one  thing I can say honestly, is I don’t complain while I muddle through, and I have eaten crow more times than I count.  It isn’t watching people I love struggle through hard times that frustrates me, it’s listening to days, months, years even, of the same problems being complained about, and not a single step has been taken in a different direction.

Problems don’t fix themselves. Weight doesn’t lose itself,  homework doesn’t turn itself in, car payments won’t pay themselves, these problems are in our lives every day, they won’t go away without being replaced by new ones, but the solutions are as available as the problems. Sitting and complaining about the same thing, all the time, isn’t going to get things done any faster.

Remember in school when you would have to write an opinion paper, and part of the assignment was to include arguments you thought someone would have against your opinion, and then counteract those arguments with statistics, etc.? I feel like I am listening to people write opinion papers about their lives out loud. “Problem, problem, problem….solution, excuse for why solution won’t work….. problem, problem….why solution worked for everyone else but wouldn’t work for me……problem”.  There are times we are in the depths of something destroying us and we truly do not know how we are going to overcome it, and there are times we know exactly what we need to do, but we won’t do it.

Go to God for advice. You can’t lie to him, you can’t justify, and manipulate, and re-word things. You can’t make excuses with Him, all you can do is admit you’re lost and ask to be found. The key to this, however, is you have to actually act on it. At some point, going to God over and over again for the same problem, doing nothing proactive to change things, isn’t crying out, it’s complaining.

This is coming off as harsh probably, but it’s the opposite. To sit back day after day and watch someone(s) you love self- destruct, to watch them live a lifestyle that is self-defeating and robbing them of living life, not just making it through, is hard. It is frustrating and scary and saddening but at some point, something in you shifts and you go from being compassionate and caring, to protective and angry. It is natural to lose patience with someone you love when you care more about their getting better than they do. It is frustrating when you listen to the same excuses time after time, wondering when it is going to occur to this person, “I’ve said this to her before”…. It is frustrating to exhaust every option you can think of: kindness, tough love, yelling, crying, laughing, walking with, walking away, walking toward…. And still watch this person tread water. I am not at all, in any sense of the word, saying it is easy. Life is not easy, but it doesn’t have to be that hard either. We have a tendency to make it harder on ourselves, and then complain about it, but at some point, we begin the walk back up hill. It’s not about comparing how I got back up the hill to how you’ll get back up; it’s a matter of taking that first step. Period.

This is not coming from a place of having had it easy my whole life and not understanding problems. I have dealt with my fair share, and for every problem I was handed I created two of my own, but I have overcome obstacles. I have gotten on my knees before God more times than I can count and asked for help. I have been humbled over and over again, and as soon as I get comfortable enough to put my feet up, something knocks me on my butt again. I don’t stay stuck. I may not be a lot of things but I am resilient. That is why this feels that much more frustrating- because I know exactly what you’re up against. I know exactly how lonely it feels stuck in the pit, and how overwhelming it feels to crawl out. It is irritating to no end, to have someone come to you because they know you’ll understand, but when you don’t enable them like another yes-man, all of a sudden you don’t know “what it’s like to go through this.” Correction, I don’t know what it’s like to go through this without going to God for guidance. Only difference.

I guess what I am getting at, is at some point we have to stop grumbling in tents, or coffee shops, treadmills, work spaces, and listen to the voice of the Lord in our lives. We have to stop listening to our friends tell us to leave our husbands because things aren’t what they used to be, and go before God to help piece back the puzzle. We have to stop disrespecting our bodies, then grumbling in the tents about bad we feel, listen to God’s voice telling you to honor your temple.

It’s easier said than done, I get that. I more than get that. I just think that ignoring the solutions so that we can continue grumbling about the problem’s end up being much harder.

All You've Got

“Don’t compromise yourself- in the end you’re all you’ve got “– Janis Joplin

                I get where Janis was going with this, and considering she made a career out of doing exactly what she wanted when she wanted, it isn’t a philosophy I’d argue with her. What’s sad, is people really, at the end of every day, feel this way. When they lay their head down at night, despite how many people might inhabit the very same home they are sleeping in, they feel alone, and entirely responsible for themselves, making themselves happy, carrying themselves through the hard times, working through problems and life’s struggles alone.

                I get that this is a society that rewards self promotion, a society that is all about me and how I can achieve things on my own, I don’t need anyone’s help. It is considered a weakness to ask for help, and whether it costs you a marriage, friendship, or family time, climbing that ladder and having stuff to show for it outweighs saying, “sorry I can’t stay to work that overtime tonight, my kid has a soccer game”.

                I get it. I am working on a second masters, I want a career as well. I would be lying if I said I didn’t sacrifice to get through school. Often times I had the attitude that if people really loved me they would support me; but when people walked away from me because I wasn’t available for coffee, it hurt like hell.

                I expressed that hurt. I was okay with saying I was hurt by the fact I had lost friends because I was working towards a dream I’ve had since I was kid, but I know there are people who would think this was weak, that this was immature or made me look needy or dependent. No, this makes me who I was created to be. I believe in God, but whether you choose to believe God’s word is the absolute truth, or you prefer to follow what science tells you, it has been proven we are created as human beings with a need for connection. We are created to connect, and need that connection from others. Studies have been done to show married people (happily married) live longer; people with a large social circle get sick less often, do better at work, suffer from depression less. There is something to be said for the statistics that show when someone loses the partner they have been married to for 50 or more years, they go soon after.  Because we need to fulfill that need inside of us to be connected to other humans.

                I don’t want to be all I’ve got in the end. I want to know I have my God to go to for anything at anytime, to be loved unconditionally by him, and know that no matter how I feel at the time I am never alone. I want to know that I can call my mom for any reason at all and she will do whatever she can, whether I need advice, money, or a kidney, to help me. I want to know I can gather my girls up on a Friday night to grab a bite to eat and laugh the week away, so I can let go of enough stress to face the week ahead. I want to know I can love someone, so entirely it scares me, and have them love me back.

                I don’t want to be all I’ve got in the end. I don’t want to go through life having no one there to correct me when I’m wrong, to tell me when I am being a complete jerk. I want to know I have people in my life who can kindly tell me I’m in the wrong and need to correct myself. I want to know I have people in my life to be honest with me and tell me when I am setting myself up for failure, when I am repeating a mistake I should have learned from the first time. I want people in my life who love me enough to smooth my rough edges, even if it’s going to hurt me to hear it. We’ve become a society that turns our back to these types of people in our lives, and then we complain people are fake. 

                I don’t want to be the girl who says things like, “I don’t like girls, and they’re drama”…. I love my girls. I love that I have women in my life who understand me, who have my back and believe in me, who are content to watch me shine and happy when I am there to watch them get their turn. I treasure my friendships with those women with all of my heart.

                I don’t want to be the girl who is so jaded from past relationships that I don’t let myself love again. I don’t want to go the rest of my life involving myself in relationships that only scratch the surface because I’m too scared to have my heart broken again.  It makes me sad that having your heartbroken, being cheated on or lied to, is treated as such a death sentence. Friends will encourage their friends to divorce their husbands before they will tell them to pray and work through it, not to give up on the man they loved enough to marry in the first place. We don’t want to go to our friends anymore and say, “I’m crazy about this guy”, because we don’t appear to have the upper hand that way. I’m okay with being head over heels for someone, I’m okay with admitting that when I love it’s with all I have and it has gotten me in trouble in the past. I will gladly admit that I trust people until they show me otherwise and unfortunately this has caused me some disappointment in the past. I give in to my need to be with another human being, and when I find someone that I connect with, someone whose name gives me butterflies when it pops up on my cell phone screen,  I run with it; and when they let me down, I heal, and I move on.

                I worked hard to earn my degrees, and I am right at that exciting point in my life where the world is ahead of me and I am equipped with what I need to grab hold of my dreams and make them a reality, but I love my family, and I won’t follow any dream that takes me too far away from them. People scoff at that, they think I’m nuts for looking for jobs that keep me in the same state as my parents. I don’t care. My parent’s themselves tell me all the time that this is ridiculous, to go where I want to go. I won’t do it, so they can tell me to, and like many other things they’ve told me to do in my life, I won’t listen. I need to know I can drive to my mom’s house and sit at the dining room table while she cooks a meal when I need that home cooked mom food. I need to know that I can go home and walk into my old room and feel who I am again. I need to see my old dog, and goof around on their computer, and harass my sister, because it reminds me that no matter how far away I feel from myself sometimes I have a home, and I am needed there. No career is worth losing that to me, and I am okay with admitting that. I trust that God’s plan for my life involved me being close to my family, and that’s why I was given a family to love so much.

                Be yourself, yes, but in the end let the people in your life share in who you are, because when that’s all you got, you don’t need anything else.