Patience

Sometimes I forget to write when it's good, when life is peaceful.

And it is peaceful. 

God is so good. So, so good. 

For a really long time, I've tried to force myself into recovery. I told myself to start the process and just get it done and over with it! 

But my heart was never in it. There are still days my heart isn't in it. But I've realized something about myself. 

I needed to allow this process to start naturally. I needed time. I wasn't able to just recover because it had been X amount of days since the last trauma. I needed to have patience. 

And although I'm not perfect at it, I've been working to love my body---my body that is clearly overweight and imperfect and scarred. 

I look at the tattoo on my foot, the one that says Warrior, and I am grateful that my body gets to display that new beauty mark. I look at my foot and I am reminded that I have lived through so much. So on the days where I panic about my weight and start the internal dialogue of unworthiness, I have a reminder that I am so, so worthy and that I can live through anything. 

It's funny, really, because it hasn't been easy lately. I've been overly obsessing about lost friendships. I've been off of my anxiety meds for over a month (Sorry, Alecia...I know you've told me a million times not to do that). I can't sleep with my back to the bedroom door because I get anxious about someone stabbing me. Not kidding. The anxiety I swear up and down I experience while on the meds is intensified by a thousand and the chest pains are real. 

In fact, today at Walmart, I looked at my knuckle and thought there was blood on it---not my own---and I freaked out and scrubbed my hands raw before realizing it was remnants of a bottle of lotion I had picked up a few minutes earlier. Super weird that my first reaction was to believe it was someone else's blood that had been wiped on my hand...

So there have been a lot of hard moments. But it doesn't matter because I'm working hard against them. I have a natural positive internal dialogue---NATURAL---that now coincides with the negative internal dialogue that presents on many occasions. I have been reading the Bible about Christ's life and learning about true strength and sacrifice and I'm learning to work FOR myself instead of AGAINST myself. 

And because it probably won't always be this way, because I don't believe God gave me all of the hard stuff at a young age to get it out of the way, I needed to write this out to remind myself that time is a part of the healing process for me. It takes more patience and hope. Recovery isn't a magical fix that starts and ends with books and meetings. Recovery is internal. 

And as hard as this part is, recovery takes trust. I am learning to trust my tribe again, to let people in who tell me they love me, and to BELIEVE them when they say it. 

I am learning to be open with people and trust that they won't leave---and then to trust that if they do, I'll still be ok. 

These are hard things for me. I don't know if they'll ever be easy. But they are worth it. They are worth it because real relationships are worth every scary moment and every insecurity I've ever had. 

And because I now believe I am worthy of vulnerable relationships again, I am able to reciprocate the type of relationships my tribe has shown to me during my darkest hours. 

God is so good, you guys. He is. He knows me and wants me to succeed. And the life that I'm living, the choices that I'm making---I really, truly believe that I am exactly where I'm supposed to be. 

I know that not everyone understands. I know it's hard for my parents. I know a lot of people believe this is me falling further into the hole. 

But it isn't. 

It really isn't. 

I feel like I'm carrying so much less burden than I was before. I feel like I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be, doing exactly what I'm supposed to be doing. 

Whatever this is---permanency, a learning experience, etc---it is worth all of the uncomfortableness that comes along with it. 

I stayed where I was because everyone told me it was safer---but my world still crashed. I still experienced so much turmoil. And I have learned throughout my life so far that my experiences aren't punishments. I am not a bad person because I have experienced a lot of grief. I didn't deserve it. It wasn't God's way of punishing me. 

And through it all, I am learning that I have held onto the things I truly know---that Christ died for me on the cross so that I could be made whole and have growing experiences in my life. I also know that love is more powerful than hate and that true Christianity is not tearing someone down to build others up but a fellowship of love and empathy for all of the heartache AND the happiness each of us feels throughout our lifetime. 

It's beautiful, really, when you imagine life through the eyes of Christ. His compassion and forgiveness seems unreachable but it isn't. We can all get there. And the amount of work it takes to get there is worth it.