I remember being a child who always knew that there was something more than this. I went to church, I learned about the bible... but it was just a book. Just some stories. It had to all come with something even bigger.
How is it that when we are children ideas become so much smaller? The world is smaller, our dreams are smaller, sometimes even our God...
Are we born with the awareness of something "more"? Perhaps it is something that we are given by God in order to become closer to Him. This is one of those big questions that we may never know.
One of my favorite movies I've ever seen about our search for answers, our search for something bigger than us, is Contact. It combines our search through science - the theories we create, and prove, disprove - and religion - something that we will never be able to prove, it's not meant to be.
Contact is a must-see. They find something. Something they assume is scientific, something that they want to explain. Jodie Foster's character even has an experience with this something that no one else witnesses and they discount her search. When she finds that her experience has "failed" scientifically she asks herself the hard question: was it real?
What's real for you?
Your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying,"This is the way, walk in it." Isaiah 30:21
Friday, December 10, 2010
Thursday, December 9, 2010
My story
This is how I got here.
God graced me with two parents who love me and raised me as their adopted child from my infancy. I know nothing of my birthparents. Only that my birthmother was 15 when I was born and that my adoption is closed and remains so under state law. My sister is 9 months younger than I, our parents' biological child. We are two puzzle pieces that look nothing alike but fit snug. Meant to be put together.
I had a beautiful childhood. My family loves nature. We'd take walks in the forest behind our house and sit on sun-dapples logs searching for a pretty bird, a deer, a vibrant leaf, a big bug. I took dance, piano, voice lessons, theater classes, swimming lessons. I was a blessed child.
But there were dark times too. My parents had their plights (workaholism, stress, despair, illness) and I often retreated to my room. I became solitary from an early age. I delved into reading, music. When I would socialize it would have to be centered around me or it wouldn't feel safe or important. I was afraid a lot, but I was loud. I had to be heard.
I remember the first time I lied. I was in trouble for something (which happened a lot) and I considered very carefully the consequences if I told my mother the truth: she would be mad. She wouldn't like me. Most importantly: I won't get what I want. I lied. And even when I was found out, it felt good to evade the inevitable, if only for a short time. This became a habit - no - a lifeline. I needed to be loved, and it didn't seem I was enough, so I'd be whatever they wanted me to be. Or at least pretend so.
You can imagine where this habit took me. My people-pleasing nature and perfectionism combined to form a love addiction and co-dependency. I relied on the perception others had of me to pull me through everything. I may have had fleeting moments of being my true self, but these were difficult to tease apart from the tangled mess of lies that I clung to.
Beginning in high school I had boyfriend after boyfriend, each relationship always ending in me being unfaithful and overlapping into the next. I got labeled horrible names that I started to believe. Now it's easy to see that I was looking for love "in all the wrong places."
I tried one type: the bad boy. Another: the narcissist. Another: the pacifist. Another: the abuser. Each sent me deeper into a twisted spiral of self-loathing and despair.
Then I found alcohol.
My first year of college I spend the entire first semester discovering the warmth, satisfaction, and release that came with drinking. I had friends. I had something I could blame stupid choices on. I had a common denominator (drunk). This was it. I could push away the pain for a few hours with a bottle or two and wake up laughing about it.
My spiral took a while to speed up. Fast forward to 2007: I am out of college. I am in my second of 3 abusive relationships. I am sleeping with one man while dating another and wooing three more. And drinking to feel ok about it. But I never do. The unbearable part isn't the hangover, or the guilt, or the loneliness. It's the lethargy.
I'm not talking about just being tired from being up too late or a bout with insomnia. I'm talking about a lack of desire to wake up in the morning that swells up from your very bones. Not a suicidal sensation, much worse. A desire to LIVE so great, that it physically hurt. I'd wake up at 7 AM to go to work and by 9 AM I already had absolutely nothing left. Each day was a pattern of "wake-eat-shower-dress-work-lunch-work-dinner-go out and drink-pass out."
One fateful April evening I had been returning from a "Sunday Funday" with my bar-acquaintances (9 straight hours of drinking) and got followed home by a woman who observed me driving on the sidewalk of the opposite side of the road. She called the police and, when they arrived to find my tire flat and my breath heavy with alcohol, they arrested me for "wreckless driving" (saved from a DUI only because they didn't witness it). I was put in jail for what seemed like two days but was more like 2 hours, and was bailed out by my baby sister. $500. But it cost her more than that.
She sat me down when I got home. She said: "You refuse to let anyone love you. You are pushing everyone away and I can't stay here and watch you do this. Something has to change." I dissolved. I was the big sister and here was my sister handing me an ultimatum: Do something or you will lose everything.
On April 10th, 2010 God staged an intervention.
I was all dolled up to go out (yes, again). My sister was away on a trip with my parents which I had weaseled my way out of, since I had "more important" things to do. I decided to surprise one of the only friends I had left for his birthday. I showed up bearing a bottle of vodka as a gift and made a grand entrance. It's all about me, after all.
We drank, we laughed - well I DRANK, they celebrated. Then, through some flurry of drunken texts, my latest male conquest sent me into a spiral of alcohol infused anger and I decided I had to go home. So I got behind the wheel after downing drink number 9. By the grace of God, my friend the birthday-boy saw this and refused to let me drive. So he spent his birthday evening driving me home. He yelled at me: how could I be so selfish? What made me do this? I was a horrible excuse for a friend.
He opened the door for me and drove off. I stood swaying in my front hallway, numb yet somehow still feeling that ache inside: how can I wake up? How can I live? But the ache was growing stronger yet and it was starting to take over. Nothing seemed possible anymore. This pain was my reality and I was not strong enough.
I grabbed a knife.
In my bed I sat there and stared at my wrist. I remembered a joke once where someone said "cut vertically." So I tried. But it hurt. It hurt a lot. And I didn't get more than a deep scratch before I dropped the knife and cried out "I can't even do THIS." I was in and out. The knife under my pillow. The booze pounding in my head.
When I awoke, no more than 20 minutes later, my boyfriend was sitting in bed beside me and found the knife. The next day. I woke up. I made plans with my therapist to check myself into an out-of-state treatment center. God showed himself to me there. 60 days later I was out and ready to live. And that's what I've been trying to do ever since.
God graced me with two parents who love me and raised me as their adopted child from my infancy. I know nothing of my birthparents. Only that my birthmother was 15 when I was born and that my adoption is closed and remains so under state law. My sister is 9 months younger than I, our parents' biological child. We are two puzzle pieces that look nothing alike but fit snug. Meant to be put together.
I had a beautiful childhood. My family loves nature. We'd take walks in the forest behind our house and sit on sun-dapples logs searching for a pretty bird, a deer, a vibrant leaf, a big bug. I took dance, piano, voice lessons, theater classes, swimming lessons. I was a blessed child.
But there were dark times too. My parents had their plights (workaholism, stress, despair, illness) and I often retreated to my room. I became solitary from an early age. I delved into reading, music. When I would socialize it would have to be centered around me or it wouldn't feel safe or important. I was afraid a lot, but I was loud. I had to be heard.
I remember the first time I lied. I was in trouble for something (which happened a lot) and I considered very carefully the consequences if I told my mother the truth: she would be mad. She wouldn't like me. Most importantly: I won't get what I want. I lied. And even when I was found out, it felt good to evade the inevitable, if only for a short time. This became a habit - no - a lifeline. I needed to be loved, and it didn't seem I was enough, so I'd be whatever they wanted me to be. Or at least pretend so.
You can imagine where this habit took me. My people-pleasing nature and perfectionism combined to form a love addiction and co-dependency. I relied on the perception others had of me to pull me through everything. I may have had fleeting moments of being my true self, but these were difficult to tease apart from the tangled mess of lies that I clung to.
Beginning in high school I had boyfriend after boyfriend, each relationship always ending in me being unfaithful and overlapping into the next. I got labeled horrible names that I started to believe. Now it's easy to see that I was looking for love "in all the wrong places."
I tried one type: the bad boy. Another: the narcissist. Another: the pacifist. Another: the abuser. Each sent me deeper into a twisted spiral of self-loathing and despair.
Then I found alcohol.
My first year of college I spend the entire first semester discovering the warmth, satisfaction, and release that came with drinking. I had friends. I had something I could blame stupid choices on. I had a common denominator (drunk). This was it. I could push away the pain for a few hours with a bottle or two and wake up laughing about it.
My spiral took a while to speed up. Fast forward to 2007: I am out of college. I am in my second of 3 abusive relationships. I am sleeping with one man while dating another and wooing three more. And drinking to feel ok about it. But I never do. The unbearable part isn't the hangover, or the guilt, or the loneliness. It's the lethargy.
I'm not talking about just being tired from being up too late or a bout with insomnia. I'm talking about a lack of desire to wake up in the morning that swells up from your very bones. Not a suicidal sensation, much worse. A desire to LIVE so great, that it physically hurt. I'd wake up at 7 AM to go to work and by 9 AM I already had absolutely nothing left. Each day was a pattern of "wake-eat-shower-dress-work-lunch-work-dinner-go out and drink-pass out."
One fateful April evening I had been returning from a "Sunday Funday" with my bar-acquaintances (9 straight hours of drinking) and got followed home by a woman who observed me driving on the sidewalk of the opposite side of the road. She called the police and, when they arrived to find my tire flat and my breath heavy with alcohol, they arrested me for "wreckless driving" (saved from a DUI only because they didn't witness it). I was put in jail for what seemed like two days but was more like 2 hours, and was bailed out by my baby sister. $500. But it cost her more than that.
She sat me down when I got home. She said: "You refuse to let anyone love you. You are pushing everyone away and I can't stay here and watch you do this. Something has to change." I dissolved. I was the big sister and here was my sister handing me an ultimatum: Do something or you will lose everything.
On April 10th, 2010 God staged an intervention.
I was all dolled up to go out (yes, again). My sister was away on a trip with my parents which I had weaseled my way out of, since I had "more important" things to do. I decided to surprise one of the only friends I had left for his birthday. I showed up bearing a bottle of vodka as a gift and made a grand entrance. It's all about me, after all.
We drank, we laughed - well I DRANK, they celebrated. Then, through some flurry of drunken texts, my latest male conquest sent me into a spiral of alcohol infused anger and I decided I had to go home. So I got behind the wheel after downing drink number 9. By the grace of God, my friend the birthday-boy saw this and refused to let me drive. So he spent his birthday evening driving me home. He yelled at me: how could I be so selfish? What made me do this? I was a horrible excuse for a friend.
He opened the door for me and drove off. I stood swaying in my front hallway, numb yet somehow still feeling that ache inside: how can I wake up? How can I live? But the ache was growing stronger yet and it was starting to take over. Nothing seemed possible anymore. This pain was my reality and I was not strong enough.
I grabbed a knife.
In my bed I sat there and stared at my wrist. I remembered a joke once where someone said "cut vertically." So I tried. But it hurt. It hurt a lot. And I didn't get more than a deep scratch before I dropped the knife and cried out "I can't even do THIS." I was in and out. The knife under my pillow. The booze pounding in my head.
When I awoke, no more than 20 minutes later, my boyfriend was sitting in bed beside me and found the knife. The next day. I woke up. I made plans with my therapist to check myself into an out-of-state treatment center. God showed himself to me there. 60 days later I was out and ready to live. And that's what I've been trying to do ever since.
Perfectly human
"But He said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me." - 2 Corinthians 12:9
We learn things. Behaviors, right and wrong. How to be "good" and how to be "bad." And the human brain takes the path of least resistance. Hence the overabundance of black-or-white thinkers out there. If there is a good and if there is a bad then something must be either good OR bad. If I am told that getting good grades is good then I am good if I get good grades... the examples are endless.
Life is nothing like this.
I myself am a perfectionist to the MAX. And a people pleaser. I want to make everyone like me, I want to be the center of attention, I want to do whatever I can to hide that which I have been told is "bad" about me and bask in that which is good. Which, of course, I often take credit for.
God is the writer of your story. You are His character. His vessel. He doesn't make mistakes. So, you're lazy. You're materialistic. You're prideful. You're a mess. You're God's mess. And when you spit in the face of your own flawed human-ness you are spitting in the face of God and His image for you. He creates weakness through which you will come to know His power and grace.
I don't need anything but God, and I can't do anything to DESERVE God; my relationship with Him is not merit-based. My job is to get out of His way, pray for His will to be done through me, and discover more about His character each day.
We learn things. Behaviors, right and wrong. How to be "good" and how to be "bad." And the human brain takes the path of least resistance. Hence the overabundance of black-or-white thinkers out there. If there is a good and if there is a bad then something must be either good OR bad. If I am told that getting good grades is good then I am good if I get good grades... the examples are endless.
Life is nothing like this.
I myself am a perfectionist to the MAX. And a people pleaser. I want to make everyone like me, I want to be the center of attention, I want to do whatever I can to hide that which I have been told is "bad" about me and bask in that which is good. Which, of course, I often take credit for.
God is the writer of your story. You are His character. His vessel. He doesn't make mistakes. So, you're lazy. You're materialistic. You're prideful. You're a mess. You're God's mess. And when you spit in the face of your own flawed human-ness you are spitting in the face of God and His image for you. He creates weakness through which you will come to know His power and grace.
I don't need anything but God, and I can't do anything to DESERVE God; my relationship with Him is not merit-based. My job is to get out of His way, pray for His will to be done through me, and discover more about His character each day.
Saturday, March 17, 2007
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