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.
