Needing to Believe

A homework assignment I was given by A on that horrible emergency session I had a couple of weeks ago was given back to me with a new extension. It's been in the back of my mind since Tuesday, but came racing up to the forefront today when I was driving home from one of countless errands I ran today.

The original assignment was to fill in the blanks from a popular 80's song, "When I'm Back on My Feet Again" by Michael Bolton. I've heard it many times before, in fact I think I even have it on my iPod, but never really listened to the lyrics. Given the dark place I was in a couple of weeks ago, A thought it only fitting to give me this assignment. I spent a lot of time on it, trying to figure out what I needed to get out on paper.

My title reads: "When I'm Able to Believe Again." 8 times I pose that hope.

My chorus:

When I'm able to believe again,

I'll walk determined down this path again

And you'll look at a smile again

And you'll see that I'm free.

Gonna hear the voice of reason,

Gonna hear the words of God

Won't be loud, won't be loud,

'Til I open my heart to Him.

When I'm able to believe again

Gonna feel this shame diminish,

Gonna pray for God's grace to fall on me,

One sweet day, one sweet day

I will deserve it,

When I'm able to believe again.

So A poses the somewhat obvious question for me to work on this week. What do I want to/need to believe? It was as if God delivered this answer to me as I was driving, because out of nowhere I stopped singing to the radio and it was just there.

I need to believe that someone can love me, as damaged as I am. Somewhere in the back of my mind I've decided that I am not worthy of anyone's love because of how I feel inside. I know my family loves me, but they "have" to. Part of me has even convinced myself that they loved the pre-abused, pre-messed up me and are obligated to keep doing the same.

But deep down I know that I won't let anyone love me until I can figure out how to love myself. Somehow that seems like the much harder thing to do.

Body Margin

So the current message series at my church is about margin. Basically being able to create balance in your life so that you aren't filling up and overflowing with things that can be toned down, balanced and kept away from the edge.

This week was about body margin and how to treat your body with kindness. It doesn't belong to you, it belongs to God.

Oddly enough, right before I went to church last night I had a small breakdown and put-down festival with myself over my body. I stood in front of the mirror and just tore myself apart. I made myself feel guilty for not going out and running like I "should" have, but instead choosing to veg in front of the TV.

Then I show up and have God speak to me through our senior pastor. I couldn't help but chuckle and think "Nice one, God. I hear ya."

So creating body margin is based on the idea of managing your physical energy. This can happen when exertion is followed by rest. But being able to find the balance of this is a challenge for most people. Too much exertion/not enough rest results in being over-stretched. Too much rest/not enough exertion can result in atrophy of the mind, depression.

For my life is spent with sorrow and my years with sighing; my strength has failed because of my iniquity, and my body has wasted away. (Psalm 31:10)

This made me think quite a bit about God's expectation of our bodies. He doesn't expect perfection (or at least, the man-made ideal of perfection) because to him, we are already perfect. God doesn't care that I have 30 lbs to lose, or that I would look hideous in a bikini. God sees who I am without actually seeing the physical me. I need to start thinking about that when I feel the need to demean myself because of my looks. God wants me to take care of me, because it is what he would do. God wants me to be healthy. God doesn't want me to hold myself to the standards of others, to hate the body that he gave me and to punish it in the ways that I do.

God gave me this message as I am coming up on some very stressful and hard times these next two weeks. I have to hope now that God is going to give me the strength to be able to listen to and follow it.

Beliefs

I've been in such a cloud of grief since last Wednesday that I haven't really done much for myself. Sunday evening I decided to sit down with my homework for the week, since I was having trouble sleeping. My assignment was to identify beliefs that were formed or intensified as a result of my abuse as they pertained to 4 different categories: myself, God, others and the world. Have you ever tried to sit down and figure out when you started believing what? It's a very time consuming process that left me feeling extremely out of touch with myself.

Going over those beliefs today makes me realize just how alone I felt in the first few years after my abuse. Everything I wrote down was something I believed as a direct result of that. Some of the beliefs were things that I no longer believe to be true, or only apply with certain people instead of being a blanket statement. Some I still believe to be completely true. One in particular has pushed me back into a feeling of such deep loss and grief that it brings me to tears when I just bring it up, let alone discuss it in depth... and of course tears presented themselves in session when I voiced this belief: God abandoned me.

I'm an inconvenience

So in session today, we started breaking down this letter I wrote. Spent the whole time on the first paragraph. I chose to address things in order of which they happened in my life; it was just easier to segregate that way. This paragraph we looked over was a nutshell of my pre-teenage years. From about 10 sentences she showed me how much they radiate certain beliefs I picked up then and have now; mainly that I am an inconvenience. It is hard to look back on my childhood and have that be the general feeling I get, and not only that... it's even harder to see now that my belief of that has affected how I respond to and enter into certain situations. It has completely destroyed my ability to have relationships with anyone. I mean, why would I want to enter into any relationship (friend or boyfriend) if that is I what I truly believe? The only problem is that I never knew that's what I believed. I don't go around saying to myself "OK, you can't be friends with her because you are an inconvenience" or "You can't date him because you'll only be an inconvenience." At some point it became so engrained in my psyche that it subconciously affected my decisions.

So now I have the knowledge. But the knowledge is not a light switch.. it does not just magically flip everything to a new outlook and new beliefs. I have identified who specifically I am an inconvenience to, and have to work on not labeling other people with that. I am not an inconvenience to them, only to these specific people. And while that is not a pleasant thought, it is true. And it proves to me even more that I am doing the right thing by getting help working through this anger I feel towards my family and the entire issue of my abuse. I have yet to feel anything about that... but considering that is the entire 2nd paragraph in the letter, it'll probably be presenting itself soon.