Mystery

                         
I didn't finish the blog challenge in June.  Part of that was every time I thought about mystery I could hear Madonna's voice in my head singing

Life is a mystery, everyone must stand alone

I hear you call my name

And it feels like home

Not the entire song, just those first few lines.  And then I would giggle because I'm pretty sure that singing Like a Prayer isn't what blogging about mystery meant.  :)

So now that I've had a chance to think beyond Madonna, I realize why mystery gave me writer's block.  Mystery both terrifies me and motivates me.  The thought that today could be completely different from yesterday scares me.  Knowing that I don't know what today holds, good or bad, is frightening.  I so want to be in control.  I so want to emotionally climate control my life.  And I can't.

By the same token, mystery is appealing.  Thinking that today could be completely different from yesterday also brings a big sigh of relief.  Come to think of it, yesterday was kinda draining.  I'm glad that today has the potential to be different and really it will be different because even if I have a day similar, today will bring different people into my life even if they need a similar solution as those yesterday.

My desire to always be in control makes mystery an enemy but desiring to experience my life rather than endure it makes mystery a beautiful and alluring friend.  How I choose to view it may be different from day to day but in the grand scheme of things, I think that mystery has gotten a seriously bad rap.

Travel

                     
I was bitten by the travel bug when I was a child.  I love to travel and I hate that it is so freakin expensive!  I've been to Hawaii and seen Pearl Harbor.  I've been to New York City and have pictures with me standing in front of a skyline that still held the Twin Towers (I was there in 2000).

I've been to Germany, France and Amsterdam.  I bought my wedding dress in Paris.  I went up to the top of the Eiffel Tower.  I sat on the patio of a French Bistro sipping wine and watching Paris light up for the evening.  I toured the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam. I toured the Holocaust Museum in Germany.

I've been to Vegas.  I've been to Houston, Dallas, Amarillo.  I've been to Oklahoma and Kansas.  I've seen the Statue of Liberty and the Golden Gate bridge in the same day (starting in the middle of the country, flying to the east coast to catch a flight to the west coast.) I've been to beaches on the Atlantic and beaches on the Pacific.  I've seen the inside of an obscene amount of airports. 

I've been to Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago and the Smoky Mountains in North Carolina.  You get it.  I love to travel.  At the peak of my disease, I had a desire to go to a new town for a friends wedding.  I was to go alone and the thought of being able to just get lost in her city sounded amazing.  I ended up not going but I still long to go, to visit, to walk, to discover a great coffee shop and a fabulous book store.

Traveling brings me peace when I feel insane.  It brings me joy when life feels out of control.  It makes it safe to run away and yet still stay present for myself.  I want to travel the world.  I long for the day when I can take Hubby to Saverne France, for the day when Buckingham Palace is on my day's to see list.  I want to see it all.  It reminds me that the world is bigger than me and my problems.

Oh, and people watching doesn't need a translation :)

Bliss

               

Bliss is the days when I can ENJOY chocolate and peanut butter without a single guilty thought, without once thinking about my thighs, without once worrying what someone else would think if they saw me, without analyzing, without fear. 

That is my definition of bliss.  It happens from time to time now, and I like it :)

Purpose

                  

My profile says it all.

I'm striving to live my life on purpose and with His purpose.  I want to leave a legacy when I die not just a memory.

Living on purpose, what does it mean?  It means living not just existing.  It means being proactive in my life instead of reactive.  It means partaking in my life rather than letting life just happen to me.

I want to live my life on purpose.  I want to live with purpose.  I want to live God's purpose for me.

Forgiveness

                    
I think until the day I die, I will be learning to forgive.  I often have to forgive myself.  I have to forgive myself for abusing my body.  I can't think I'm worthy of recovery if I don't work on forgiveness first.  I feel so guilty.  Sometimes that guilt is misplaced, but it is nearly always there.  As long as I feel guilty, I also feel like I deserve to be punished.  As long as I feel like I deserve to be punished, I cannot feel like I deserve to be cared for.  It is a ridiculous and vicious cycle.

There is also a lot of forgiving others in my life.  If you have read any of my blog, you know that already though.  I have a lot to forgive.  And it is a daily process.  Some days it comes easier than others.

What's the saying?  Holding a grudge is like letting someone live rent free in your head.  It isn't always easy to evict them though and it is even harder when the grudge you hold is against yourself.

Soul

 

 

“What can you ever really know of other people's souls - of their temptations, their opportunities, their struggles? One soul in the whole creation you do know: and it is the only one whose fate is placed in your hands” ~C.S. Lewis

   
No matter how much your bare your soul, no one will ever truly know it aside from you and God.  Only you know the thoughts that happen in the stillness of night.  Only God truly knows your heart.  And yet, somehow we manage to come together and support each other and love each other even though we don't know the depth in another's heart.  That is the definition of beauty, strength and friendship.

Face

                 
To face the future is no small task.  The future is unknown, it is out of my control.

To face the past brings pain.  It hurts, it is also out of my control.

To face my fears is terrifying.

To face my depression, anxiety and pain is overwhelming.

But for the first time I can face myself.  I want to say I can face myself in the mirror, but that is only true about half of the time.  I can live with myself now.  I guess that is the facing that really matters.

Home

                 
Sometimes being home feels like being trapped.  When I was a kid being home was unpredictable.  Sometime it was wonderful, sometimes it was suffocating.  I spent many years feeling like home was suffocating.  The hurt was so big and the home so small that I could feel the entire house desiring to collapse on me.  I stayed over-busy venturing home only when necessary.  My home has always been far too small to hold the massiveness of my hurt.

Sometimes it still feels that way, but not usually.  My home is messy but welcoming.  Home means squeals of joy and my kids racing to see who can hug me first (bonus point, I think, are awarded if they can knock me over in my high heels!).  Home is safe now. 

When my hurt is too big for my house to hold, home is the mountains where there are no ceilings or walls trying to contain me.  Home is a welcoming, safe and peaceful house of a friend. 

If home is where your heart is, then I am truly home now.  Anywhere my husband and kids are is home. Home is anywhere there is peace and serenity.

Fight

                     
Fight. I'm hurting.  I'm hurting a lot.  But something has changed,  I'm still fighting.  I don't feel like eating.  It is hot and uncomfortable (try 101* INSIDE my house today) and eating sounds gross when I am this hot.  I don't feel like eating, it is easier not to. 

 Eating means I'm still fighting though.  Eating means I haven't given up, even though it is tempting.  I suppose that eating means (both figuratively and literally) that I will live to fight another day.  I'm glad tomorrow is a new day.  And I hope the fight is easier tomorrow.

Compliment

                  
“You is kind. You is smart. You is important.”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Help

And I have a few to add to that.  You are beautiful, more beautiful than you will ever know.  You are capable.  You are strong, stronger than you ever thought.


Psalm 139:¹³ For you created my inmost being;
    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
¹⁴ I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
    your works are wonderful,
    I know that full well.

You are treasured, you are sacred, you are His.


You are worthy of love, you are worthy of care, you are worthy of protection.  You are one of a kind, a masterpiece.  You bring something to this world that no one else in the entire universe can offer.  


I believe in you!

 

Tears

                    
I have cried a lot of tears in my lifetime.  If it is true that God saves each and every tear we cry, then when I get to heaven I will have filled an entire lake solely with my tears.  Recently depression and anxiety have been a bit bigger hurdles for me.  I'm struggling.  There have been days that it simply just hurts to be me.

I feel like I have spent most of my blog talking about my tears.  The tears are often what drive me to write, just so I don't explode.  Since you probably know that, these are some of the things that have caused tears recently:

~anything at all to do with the Jerry Sandusky trial
~Hubby dealing with his own depression and the fact that I cannot make it better
~friends feeling lonely in their marriages
~that Garden of the Gods is in the path of one of the wildfires here in Colorado
~that they are evacuating horses at the fairgrounds in Estes Park due to another of the wildfires
(those two places are two of my favorite places in Colorado.  Their beauty brings serenity to my life.  The thought of even possibly not having them as a sanctuary any longer weighs heavily on my soul.)
~my brother-in-law yelling at my kids

Laughter

                           
I remember the day I laughed.  It had been months.  The relationship with the boy who I loved had ended and so had I.  I had no idea who I was if I wasn't the woman loving him.  The ache in my soul was so incredibly deep.  I was going through the motions and nothing more.  I was trying to convince myself that I had never loved him.  I was trying to do whatever it took to survive the pain.

I had just bought my first car from a dealership where a family friend worked and my air conditioning stopped working about a week after I got the car.  Even though I had bought an old car with no warranty, our friend said he would help me out if I brought the car in.  I stood there in the dealership while they were working on my car and this friend made a joke.

I smiled.  And then I chuckled.  And then I full out laughed.  It felt so good to smile again.  As I laughed I realized I couldn't remember the last time I had laughed.  I laughed more than the joke was really funny but it just felt so amazing to laugh.  By the time I got in my car I had laughed until my sides and face hurt.  I laughed until I cried.

I still sometime get so busy doing life that I forget to enjoy it.  I still sometimes forget to laugh.  I am so grateful for my children in this area.  They remind me often the joys of laughing and the healing it brings to my soul.  They say the silliest things and I cannot help but laugh.  I love the mornings when I wake up to the sound of brothers playing and LAUGHING together. 

Their laughter brings me comfort as well.  Knowing that my children know how to laugh, that they enjoy the lives they have, that they are happy and safe brings a smile to my face.  The sound of their laughter often brings out my own laughter.  I never again want to be the girl who forgot how to laugh so now I practice often :)

End

                          
I want nothing more than to be able to say "The End" on this blog.  Not that I don't love you all, I do.  But I don't love that I have a need to write this blog.  I want to say "The End" to the eating disorder.

I wonder sometimes if there will ever be a real end and I don't really think so.  Not that there won't be an end to the disease, because I don't believe that, but that there won't be an end to the affect it has had on my life.  My life has been forever altered.

I believe in full recovery, I have to.  I have to believe in hope and healing.  Otherwise I'm just a girl walking along waiting for the next relapse.  I believe there will be an end to the eating disorder.  But I don't believe there will ever be an end to the journey.  Life is a journey, not a destination.  I'll never be "there" until I'm dead.

As much as I long for the end, I am grateful for the journey.  I am grateful for the dear friends I have met through the journey.  I am grateful for the healing and refining that has happened in my own life.  And most of all, I'm grateful for the fact that my openness and honesty has opened doors to help others walk through this journey.

I'm not there yet.  I wouldn't consider myself recovered yet.  It isn't the end of the eating disorder.....yet.  But I am on the path to freedom.  I am on the road to the end of the disease.  But there won't ever be an end to the journey, to the ways this has affected my life, to the way I allow God to use it in my life and in the lives of others.

Beginning

                                                                     
It is fascinating to write about beginnings.  I've been pondering quite a bit lately about the beginning of my eating disorder.  I remember clearly the exact moment that it became a conscious choice to allow the eating disorder a sacred place in my heart.  One of the prettiest, friendliest, most loved girls in my high school said she wished she could be as thin as me.  I had been extremely ill.  I had lost a lot of weight in a very short amount of time.  I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep, I couldn't concentrate.  I was SICK.  I never found out what was wrong.  It was after losing 12 pounds on a frame that couldn't afford to lose 1 that she complimented me.  I wanted her to like me more, I wanted her to envy me, I wanted to have the body that the most perfect girl in our high school wanted. It was so easy to continue to not eat, no one expected me to because I had been ill.

That was the moment I consciously thought, "I'm not going to eat."  But in reality it began long before that.  I used to drink my mom's Slim Fast and then say I had had lunch already.  I couldn't have been more than 7 or 8.  The can said to replace two meals with shakes and then eat a reasonable dinner.  It made sense to me to think it was a meal to have a Slim Fast shake and I truly thought my thighs were fat.  Really. Really. Fat.

When I was 9 years old there was a worship concert at our church, a husband and wife team.  I remember admiring the woman so much.  I remember longing for her petite figure and her naturally curly and long hair.  I remember her less than supple chest and thinking that is what I wanted my boobs to look like when I got older as opposed to looking like my mom.  I actually prayed really hard that night that God would let me grow up to be a very tiny, skinny, woman with small boobs, pretty hair and kind eyes.

There are other things, but not necessary to my point.  I was flirting with and engaging in disordered eating years before I actually had an eating disorder. It felt like it had a specific beginning but the reality of it was that it was a coping mechanism, a crutch, a fall back long before the acknowledged beginning.  I really don't remember life before food troubles.

A much more fun beginning though, is now.  I'm beginning to live.  I'm beginning to feel.  I'm beginning to love.  I'm beginning to get my life back.  Maybe saying getting it back is not quite true, I don't feel like I ever had this life before.  Sure the eating disorder stole a lot from me, but I feel like by the time it stole from me I was already mostly a shell anyway.  Abuse stole so much from me.  Depression stole so much from me. Not being allowed to have a voice had cleared out my soul.  I was empty, it was easy for Orange to move in.

When I told her to move out, I had nothing to fill that space with.  I didn't have a "me" that I wanted to return to.  I have gotten to have a true beginning.  I have gotten to decide what I want to fill the spaces inside of me.  I've begun to learn who I am, what I like and create the me that I want to be.  Now this is a beginning!

Now

                         
Living in the here and now is hard.  I want to run and hide a lot of the time.  But I don't, usually.  Living NOW is the key to living recovery.  I can't change the past.  Living there only brings more misery.  I can't control the future, living there brings more anxiety.  But I can live now, today, right this moment.

Staying present during pain is the hardest part of living here and now.  I'm learning, I'm getting better at it though.  As I stay present, as I feel in the now, the pain gets easier and easier to handle.  I never thought I'd live to see the day when I could do that, to live now.  The more I practice it, the easier it gets.

Love

                                    
As much as I love my family, I couldn't love them when I was stuck in my eating disorder. At least, I couldn't  love them fully. I loved my disease too much to allow much else in my life.  I was stuck, so. very. stuck.

I would look at my children and think how much I wanted to love them RIGHT but instead I was spending all of my time and energy to hate myself.  I was sharp and angry with them, a lot.  I very seriously don't remember a year of all of their lives during the darkest pit and the slow start of the climb out.

I would look at Hubby and think of the days that I wanted him physically and wish they hadn't gone away.  To clarify, it wasn't HIM I didn't want, it was being touched, being seen, being known that I didn't want.  I wanted to love him the way he so deserves to be loved but all of my emotion was going into hating myself.

I wanted to love my friends, but I was too busy loving Orange.  I wasn't there for them anymore.  I was devoted only to my disease.  And as much as I hated that about myself, I couldn't make myself change it either.

Things are different now.  I love again, and to be honest it is amazing.  I feel again and it too is lovely, most of the time.  Love now is genuine and deep, no longer false acts based in my own self hatred.  I enjoy spending time with my family again instead of shutting them out.

Not only can I love truly again, I now can be loved as well.  I can rest in Hubby's arms and know his love.  I can see my Mother's Day cards from my boys and feel their love for me.  I really don't remember how long it was that I couldn't feel the love that was being poured into me.  I really felt like no matter how much love and care was given, all I could feel was hatred and judgement being passed.

I don't think I've actually EVER felt love like I do now.  I not only know love, but I can give it and I can feel it and I can experience it now.  It is an awe-inspiring thing to finally understand love and to have a great capacity for it!

Perfect

                                  
I'm struggling with doing this challenge right now.  And oddly enough, it has much to do with this word.  Perfect.  I wanted so badly to do this right but I got tired, I went out with friends, I spent time with my family and then I realized that I wasn't doing this challenge perfectly.  I cannot keep up.  I even started out behind.

I'm at this strange place in recovery.  I am angry with myself for not being able to blog every single day to a new word.  And yet, I realize, maybe for the first time in my life, that the reason I haven't kept up is that I am actually LIVING my life.  I'm going to concerts with girl friends, I'm tucking my kids into bed, I'm having sex with my husband, I'm getting to bed early enough to be productive at work.  I'm living instead of hiding on my blog.  And that is ok, good even.

Not to say that blogging is bad.  It isn't.  I love my little spot in the world where I can just be, no matter what it is that I need to be.  This is therapeutic for me.  But I can't let it control me either.  I nearly gave up on this challenge.  I had intended to since I'm so far behind.  Then I saw the word perfect today.  I strive so hard for perfection that I was about to quit rather than be less than perfect. 

The dream of perfection is a hard one to leave behind.  I wish I could tell you that every day I just accept myself and all of my imperfections.  I wish that I could tell you that I am always, or even usually, as willing to love living and be able to accept imperfection as well as I just did two paragraphs ago.  Sadly, that is not the case.

I'm learning to live again.  But giving up perfection is still hard.  Acknowledging my limitations is still difficult.  I still think that the physical laws of nature should apply to others but not me.  I still think sometimes that perfection is achievable.  The important part in it all though is that I'm making progress.  I'm learning to accept myself, slowly but surely.  I'm learning to live.  I am learning that perfection is not realistic.  I am learning that I am enough, exactly how I am.

And I'm grateful for those lessons though sometimes overwhelmed and scared by them.

Crowd

                                         

I can't decide if I despise crowds or kinda like them.  I love that it is easy to get lost in a crowd.  No one is noticing me.  I can be invisible.  I can be no one.

I also despise crowds.  I hate feeling claustrophobic in a throng of people.  I am a little afraid of crowds.  Actually, I am afraid of new situations but especially when those situations involve a lot of people.

Last summer I had the privilege of being in the "pit" at two different concerts.  I'm not going to lie it was terrifyingly awesome.  I was afraid at first that I would get crushed.  But I also felt a rush like I've never felt before. I stood up for myself.  I pushed the drunk guy who kept standing on my foot.  I even told him after the concert, when he tried to make small talk with me and my friend that I didn't enjoy being near him during the concert because he was rude.  Whaaaaaat?  I said that to someone?

I still am not entirely sure how I feel about crowds, but I'm not as petrified of them as I used to be.  Now I find myself people watching when in a crowd.  I think I am more amazed than afraid now because I see that there are a lot of people, who are just like I used to be, a lot of people who are hurt and angry.  There are a lot of people who want to be invisible and try to do so by getting lost in a crowd.

Force

                                                        
            

Isn't it funny how your brain associates words?  I instantly thought of a tsunami when I heard the word force.  A force of nature.  A force to be reckoned with. 

I have visions of  hurricane pictures in my head, of wind blowing trees nearly to the ground while rain pours in sheets.  Windows boarded up, streets deserted (with the exception of that one crazy reporter trying to get famous for their coverage of the worst storm in history). 

I also see the eye of the storm.  The place where calm resides even though the storm rages around you.  The force of the storm doesn't steal the calm of the eye.

I think it is odd that I saw power as evil and yet I see force as powerful and terrifying yet beautiful and calm at the same time.   I almost feel like I should detest the word force as much as I detested the word power.  In the context of power forcing me to submit, it seems as though I should.  But I don't. 

Logical

                                                      


                                      

There is nothing logical about an eating disorder.  If it were logical, those of us who have had them could easily see the error of our ways and stop killing ourselves.  


Hubby once told me that dealing with someone with an eating disorder is difficult because you have to be rational yourself while acknowledging that the person you love cannot be rational or reasoned with.  Malnutrition messes up every single thing in your mind.

When I was malnourished, I couldn't see how much my actions were effecting my body.  I was constantly in a state of "conspiracy theory", certain that everyone around me hated me.  Even when I finally realized that I was killing myself I couldn't think logically about it.  The logic of my malnourished brain said, "My family is already watching me die slowly.  If I were in a car accident, they wouldn't watch me die they would get a phone call to say I was gone.  It makes more sense than putting them through this."


It made perfect sense to me.  It was logical for me.  But it wasn't rational.  Nothing at all is rational or logical about any addiction, including eating disorders.  Do you know how many times I have heard,  "Why don't you just stop?"


If it were that easy it wouldn't be a disorder.  If I could explain it, I wouldn't have needed help.  If it made sense I would have never been stuck.  If it was logical, I wouldn't still have days that I just don't feel like eating for no reason at all.

I have a friend who is dealing with some pretty serious food demons right now.  And the difficult thing is that her husband is dealing with his own different demons.  He finally acknowledged his demons with this statement, "I guess I should start to stop."  She proceeds to tell me that she doesn't understand that "start to stop" mentality.  When she decides to do something, she just does it.  What does it mean to start to stop?


I smiled and reminded her of the illogical ways that that addictions work.  Do you know you should be eating?  Yes.  Do you know you are destroying your body? Yes.  Then why do you do it?  You know the problem, you can see the problem and yet you haven't stopped the behavior.  Suddenly his issues and willingness to work on them came into perspective.  


Addiction is emotional first and then physical.  Long before our bodies  crave the relief from restricting or purging or alcohol or drugs or whatever the addiction, our minds do.  Our minds crave the relief from the craziness of life, from the pain of our emotions.  We cater to our minds and emotions and then without warning and very quickly the physical body is completely addicted.


It would make sense to just stop.  But in the middle of the addiction, it doesn't make any sense.  To someone on the outside it seems so obvious.  To someone stuck it is terrifying.  To just stop means to have no way to cope with the pain of life.  To just stop takes away the illusion of control that you think you have.  


If making sense of it all were enough, if being logical and reasonable and rational were enough, no one would need treatment centers.  We wouldn't need help.  If being logical were enough, it wouldn't be a disease, it wouldn't be an addiction, it wouldn't be an issue at all.


EATING DISORDERS DON'T MAKE SENSE!  THEY ARE NOT LOGICAL SO PLEASE STOP TRYING TO FIX THE ONE YOU LOVE WITH LOGIC!