Mud Season

Fresh buds are beginning to feather the branches here in Raleigh. We’ve passed through fall and what claimed to be winter (but was in fact an imposter!) since I last posted.

Though I feel majorly cheated out of winter, I’m happy to be springing forward and leaving behind a dark and chaotic season in my life. After many painful, confusing weeks, I am finally emerging with new growth. (New growth other than a lot more silver hair, I mean. To quote Lucille Ball in an episode of I Love Lucy: “I’ll bet, Ethel, if I skipped my next Henna Rinse, I’d find my hair snow white”. I can, at a moment’s notice, usually summon an I Love Lucy quote to suit any specific situation. Feeling fat? “I’m nothing but a BIG BLoated bunch of BLUbber.” Etc. etc. More on this amazing skill another time.)

For a while I sort of flailed, unable to find a way to condense what happened into a kernel of meaning, something to hold in my hand, because I always want explanations. I always want neatly packaged answers. Only recently have I stopped asking why I decided to withdraw from my SSRI meds, why I fought through awful withdrawal symptoms only to relapse into my eating disorder and end up returning to the medication. Though it seemed like so much wasted effort, time and tears, I’m beginning to see why it wasn’t.

Six years ago, I was driving 8 hours round-trip several times a week to meet with an eating disorder therapist. Spring in Colorado is less a triumphant explosion than a slow thaw, a tiny but steady drip from the tip of an icicle. The world which seemed so pure and beautiful beneath the white drapery of winter becomes brown: brown with piles of plow-scraped gravel, dog feces, mud. Driving through the mountains between Steamboat and Evergreen I passed the thawing carcasses of dead animals long encased in ice by the roadsides.

I can see how God has used the past months to expose carcasses lurking under the snow in my heart. He uncovered sins that were keeping me from changing. By his grace and unlike me he isn’t content with whitewashed death. So – it’s an ugly, messy time, but it is necessary. The snowmelt makes mud, but then it waters the valleys. The frozen stillness becomes a rushing, swirling, foaming dance that sinks into the earth, calls out the green grass and the red, purple and yellow wildflowers. Before change comes truth. Before growth comes the thaw. Before spring comes mud season.

Come to Me, Lord…

Come to me, Lord: I will not speculate how,
Nor think at which door I would have thee appear,
Nor put off calling till my floors be swept,
But cry, “Come, Lord, come any way, come now.”
Doors, windows, I throw wide; my head I bow,
And sit like some one who so long has slept
That he knows nothing till his life draw near.

~George MacDonald, Diary of an Old Soul

Snack on That!

Photo courtesy of www.nabiscoworld.com/snackwells/

I’m confused.

This ad is trying to tell me something – I just know it. Obviously it’s trying to sell me Snack Wells. But I feel like there’s also an embedded code message here. Something to do with black boots…

Hmmmm. I’m putting on my Top Secret Infrared Subliminal Message Decoder Goggles now:

Apparently these snack packs “let you be bad and still be good”. (It’s magic!)

So…if I decided to drizzle some white fudge over a bowl of caramel corn in my kitchen – that would be bad? I mean, Actually Bad? As opposed to eating a 100-calorie pack of white fudge-drizzled caramel corn, which is Not-Actually-Bad Bad? Maybe

Bad = non-diet food (Wow – these goggles are amazing!) and by extension

You=Bad for eating it.

That means eating Snack Wells fudge creme brownie bites is good…because it feels like indulgence, but contains the dangerous female appetite within a tiny 100-calorie package. Otherwise I’m just packing fat onto my bones like someone building a sandcastle – right?

Tiny package=Not-Actually-Bad Bad and

Tiny You=Good. 

I think I’m getting it.

“Kick Up Your Naughty Side.”

Huh? This is related to sleek black stiletto boots, if I’m going by the picture. Also maybe animal prints. Ok…

The goggles are picking up a subtle sexual message here. Perhaps a link between the idea that women have a repressed desire for sexual freedom

Sexual freedom=naughtiness

similar to their repressed desire to eat vanilla creme fudge bars.

Naughtiness=illicit pleasure=fudge bars.

Interesting. Also offensive. Oh, there’s more…wait…wait for it…

Morality! That’s it – there’s a morality imposed on women’s eating! Yes! I got it! (I’d like to thank my decoder goggles and my mom for always believing in me!)

Good foods and bad foods and not-actually-bad good foods. That makes sense, right? Also good behavior, bad behavior, and good-naughty-not-actually-bad-fudge-drizzled-sexy behavior.

I hate ads like this. They reinforce the idea that women should fear losing control. They perpetuate cultural norms of women as dieters, women as sex symbols and women as perceiving the need to control their appetites while lusting for something more and better.

They tell us to indulge – but not really. 

They tell us to “be bad and good”.

Where’s the normal in any of this? Unfortunately, these ideas have become our normal.

Well, guess what. The media can stuff its stereotypes and mixed messages into a 100-calorie pack. Meanwhile I’m going to make my own white fudge drizzled caramel corn and eat as much as I want and not feel bad.

Snack on that!

A Lovely Story

The history of my life will say to the world what it says to me – There is a loving God, who directs all things for the best. ~ Hans Christian Anderson, The True Story of My Life

Gracie sleeping on my bed

Learning to Dance

The strange rabbit stopped dancing, and came quite close. He came so close this time that his long whiskers brushed the Velveteen Rabbit’s ear, and then he wrinkled his nose suddenly and flattened his ears and jumped backwards.

“He doesn’t smell right!” he exclaimed. “He isn’t a rabbit at all! He isn’t real!” ~ Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit

Recovery for me is learning to be real.
Real people eat.
Real people take risks.
Real people make mistakes. They have likes and dislikes. Sometimes they eat too much.
Real people have appetites and feel their feelings.
Fullness and hunger.

Becoming real begins with seeing that you are not, in fact, real. At least not to other people.
Yet.
Real people dance and play.
But when they ask you to dance, too, you make excuses like the Velveteen Rabbit did to hide the fact that he had no hind legs:

I don’t feel like it.
I don’t want to.
I don’t like dancing. I’d rather sit still.

But those excuses are lies because all the while you are longing to dance, for a funny new tickly feeling is running through you, and you feel you would give anything in the world to be able to jump about.

Fulfilling this longing doesn’t happen all at once. In the words of the Skin Horse, becoming real takes a long time. It sometimes hurts. Recovery for me has meant

Making choices
Accepting responsibility
Experiencing hurt
Owning my life
Learning to love
Allowing myself to be loved
Feeling pain.

But real tears turn Velveteen Rabbits into real rabbits who can “whirl around and dance” with the others. Those who sow with tears reap in songs of joy (Psalm 126:5). Allowing pain to rake its deep furrows instead of anesthetizing it creates a soil ripe for freedom.

This summer I learned to dance – sort of – thanks to Google, lots and LOTS of practice, and several very gracious friends who suffered their toes to be stepped on. But it’s probably more accurate to say that I allowed myself to dance instead of sitting still and making excuses. The truth is that I always wanted to dance. I’m not technically good at it. In fact, I look the way I imagine a praying mantis would look while doing the Carolina Shag to “Under the Boardwalk”.  But it doesn’t matter, because I have nothing to hide anymore.

Recovery is learning to dance.

A Thank You to…?

Thank you notes are hard for me. For some reason when I sit down to write them, words to express how I’m really feeling don’t come easily. A thank you note just doesn’t seem enough. I’m trying to get better at expressing my gratitude, though, and tonight sat down to write several cards to people who have blessed me recently.

But there’s one person I can’t thank with a card, even though I wish I could.

This person (or persons?) over the course of the past year has been anonymously mailing me Lowes Foods gift cards. The timing of these gifts is always perfect, and they are wonderful testaments to me of God’s faithful provision.

I wish I could thank this person in person – but I respect their desire to remain anonymous. They have, in fact, mastered the art of not letting their left hand know what their right hand is doing. They have a black belt in secret gift giving.

The only thing I know for sure is that this person knows me and probably sees me often, so my hope is that they read this post and know how greatly they have blessed me and how thankful I am. Truly, truly thankful.

And since I don’t know exactly who you are right now, all I have to give in return is my friendship and my prayers. I know that our Father, who sees in secret, will reward you, and I pray that I can someday return the blessing.

I thank my God in all my remembrance of you…” Philippians 1:3

P.S. I realize this anonymous person might not be on Facebook or read my blog; if anyone out there in Facebook universe knows who it is, please pass along the link for me!

Surely not…

Oh, surely yes! Your eyes do not deceive you!  This is indeed a giant tractor parked in a visitor’s spot in a certain homeowners association which shall remain anonymous. I find my job so very amusing at times. This has “violation” written all over it. (*smiley*)

On Growth

How does growth happen? How did we get from where we were to where we are? And how do we get from here to where we need to be?

I’m mystified by the ways I’ve changed. I can’t pinpoint any “aha!” moments when something just clicked in my brain; in fact, I mainly remember fighting growth. Running from growth. Because avoiding and hiding is easier in the short run than changing.

But fortunately – as Francis Thompson wrote in his poem “The Hound of Heaven” – “fear wist not to evade as love wist to pursue“.

I’ll be honest – I had to think about that one for a while. And research some 19th Century vocab. My own paraphrase is: fear isn’t as good at running as love is at chasing.

I am changed because God’s love pursued me, “those strong Feet… followed, followed after…with unhurrying chase, And unperturbèd pace, Deliberate speed, majestic instancy“.

Still…I didn’t notice myself changing. If my old journals are any indication, mostly I felt hopeless.

But here’s another great truth, courtesy of one of my favorite authors, George MacDonald: God sneaks up on our hearts. MacDonald said

“To give us the spiritual gift we desire, God may have to begin far back in our spirit in regions unknown to us, and do much work that we can be aware of only in the results…in the gulf of our unknown being God works behind our consciousness…He may be approaching our consciousness from behind, coming forward through regions of our darkness into our light, long before we begin to be aware that He is answering our request – has answered it, and is visiting his child.”

So now when I’m looking at the huge gap between where I am and where I want to be, it’s encouraging to think that He is already working in me in ways I can’t see. (That’s a good thing: if I could see them, I would probably try to take the credit.) The best part, though, is that the God who spoke the world into existence is also the one who creates growth. That’s the answer to my first question, how did I get where I am: He spoke completely new things into existence in me!

Any growth seen in me now was not made out of what was visible (Hebrews 11:3). It all comes from Him. By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, and in my life ”past those noisèd Feet/A voice comes yet more fleet” - that same creating word:

All which I took from thee I did but take,

Not for thy harms,

But just that thou might’st seek it in My arms.

All which thy child’s mistake

Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home:

Rise, clasp My hand, and come!’

Adopted

It was my first summer as a dog owner, 2007, and I was walking Gracie down Franklin Street in Chapel Hill. I was struggling in recovery and had just completed an hour of water aerobics that I didn’t really have the energy for. So I was stumbling along behind my dog completely exhausted. We passed a harmless little terrier, and I could barely restrain Gracie from making a meal of it because I was so tired.

The thought crossed my mind as I felt my arms being jerked from my shoulder sockets that I wished I had adopted a different dog – one with less energy, smaller, more suited to an apartment, one I could control. God used that thought to teach me a little bit more about Himself, and myself, too.

I realized that God has adopted me as his daughter, and He has never and will never say, “I wish I had not adopted her; I should have saved someone else instead.” Gracie helped remind me of what it means to be loved just as I am. In my own life I tend to love perfect things, but God is not like that. He saved me knowing full well how many times I would chase after a squirrel instead of listening to His voice, or try to run away from him. He never questions His choices.

Unlike me, God doesn’t struggle to give unconditional love. He is Love. No matter how many times I’ve tested the leash, so to speak, He is strong enough to rein me back in. And someday He’ll present me before his glorious presence without fault – without fault! – and with great joy (Jude 1:24).

This is an encouraging thought to sleep on tonight.

Happiness Sketch

This sketch was my afternoon project. It’s not perfect and I may redo it a few times, but it still makes me happy and I wanted to share. Enjoy!

(Click on the image for a larger view.)