71 Days (Not that I'm counting)

I just spent some time re-reading this blog. I've been all over the map, haven't I? I was glad to be reminded of some of the strokes of insight I had, in particular this one:

"I need to let go of the things in my life that are holding me back in order to make room for the things that God wants to put there."

No doubt some of the things that are holding me back are my beliefs, one of which I crushed this week in another moment of insight. I have been believing that this whole Christianity "God thing" was a phase. I have been waiting for myself to drop it, the way that I've dropped dozens of programs and grand plans before it. They say that it takes three weeks to make a habit but for me it has taken almost a year. 

You know, I've stuck with the YONA even during the really hard times. I've stuck with it in times of celebration and boredom and anger and pain. Just go with me on this one, but that is what I need to do with God as well. I need to stick with him even when I don't see the point or the purpose, even when all I want to do is the spiritual version of ditching the YONA and grabbing a glass of wine. I'm not sure what that would be, but it seemed like a good analogy when I started that sentence.

Anyway.

I needed this year to prove to myself that I have staying power with something that makes no rational sense at all. 

God and the YONA

A faithful reader asked me to explain how God relates to the YONA.

The short answer is that there is no relation. But since I couldn't spend a year writing about how I wasn't drinking I had to write about something and God is what has been on my mind this year.

The long answer is more complicated and it begins with me deciding to believe that God exists and that he loves me. (I don't believe that God has a gender but am using he because using she bugs me) From there I asked myself "What would it be like to live as if God existed? What would it be like to live as if the Bible were true?"

I was raised a Catholic, but not a very well educated one. The fourth of five children, I was left out of the religious education that my older siblings got when my parents decided they couldn't afford four children in private school. I went to "CCD" (Sunday School not on Sunday) off and on, but since I couldn't even tell you what CC or D stands for it didn't have a huge impact on me.

Catholic God was scary. Church was boring and sometimes scary. I walked away from the Catholic Church when I was in college, went back for a visit to get my daughter baptized, and never returned.  God was awkward to talk about and if I were to be honest I was kinda mad at him for some stuff that happened when I was a child.

My daughter, who never went to church as a child, has had a solid belief in God for as long as I can remember. What I don't remember is talking to her about God, so I have always considered that a sign that he exists. I wasn't going to be on speaking terms with him, but I was glad that he was a presence in my daughter's life.

Years passed and I got a yearning to go to church. I didn't want to go to a Catholic church, so we went to a non-denominational Christian church. It was there that I slowly began to accept that God wasn't such a bad guy. He didn't just want to punish me for doing wrong things. I couldn't quite call him God yet - when I spoke of such things I always said The Spiritual. I was connecting with The Spiritual. 

More years passed, some of them non-church going ones, and I once again wanted to connect. We found another non-denominational church, and it was there that I slowly began to accept that God loves me. He wants to have a relationship with me. He has been calling to me all these years, waiting for me to turn in his direction. 

There's a song lyric that I love which describes what I think about that time. 

Be Still, I'll never leave you

When you're far, I am near

"Don't Give Up On Me"

MercyMe

No matter how far away I was, God was always right there with me, waiting for me to turn to him.  And believe me, I was pretty far away many times.

So all of that lead up to my question to myself last fall, right before I started the YONA. What would it be like to live as if Christianity were true? I stopped asking questions (I can hear the shrieks of the atheists from here) and decided to just trust and believe. 

I don't think that anyone has ever convinced anyone that God exists. I go on faith. I have decided to live like a believer. So that is why there are posts on here about God and my search for him in my life. I believe you have to be looking in order to see his presence, and while I am in the beginning stages of life as a Christian I have seen him and felt him often enough for my belief to be justified. 

God didn't tell me to give up alcohol, although he did have a hand in telling me what day to start. When December 6th hits - in 94 days - I know he's not going to mind me going to back to drinking. While connecting with him I've learned something about moderation, and that's a good thing.      

Be Less

So I was reading a book a couple weeks ago and the author suggested that sometimes we should ask God what to pray about. I thought it sounded like a good idea so that night I asked God "What should I ..." and before I could even get the question completely formed in my mind the answer came. 

Be less.

It's like he had been waiting for me to ask.

Now, be more, I get. I am always looking for ways to be more healthy, more helpful, more friendly, more consistent, more fun. But less? What do I need to be less of?

There were some immediate answers. Be less self critical. Be less demanding. Be less impatient. While those are all things I need to work on, I didn't think that was the direction God was leading me. Those are all really just a different way to say be more. Be more self accepting. Be more flexible. Be more patient.

In the following weeks I mulled this over. I said little prayers asking for more information, but God kept quiet. Obviously this was an assignment for me to figure out. 

Be less.

I've noticed that while thinking about this I am at peace. It flies in the face of the "not good enough" thoughts that took over my brain long ago. It takes away the striving, all of the "I should"s and the "I ought to"s. 

I've also been contemplating why I'm here and what I'm supposed to be doing. I read a lot of empowering words, people telling other people that there is a grand purpose for our lives and we should risk all to achieve those things. There is only going to be one me in the world ever and I have an important part to play. I need to get at it!

Talk about stressful. This is the ultimate Be More.

So while I still can't put into words what I think Be Less means I sense it has something to do with not trying so hard. I am no longer focused on the big "why am I here and what should I be doing?" question and more focused on today, right here, right now. 

Be less.

I am looking at the trees and not the forest, and certainly not the path through the forest while trying to figure out where it ends and what I should be building as I travel along it.

I think Be Less is just another way for God to wrap his arms around me and say "Hush".

Eight Months Down Four To Go

About ten days late with this post, but I just passed the two thirds mark for the YONA. 

I no longer am afraid that when I start drinking again I will fall back into the same old patterns. This past week was challenging and not once did I wish I could drink the pain away. Not once did I try to eat the pain away either. It was just abundantly clear to me that neither one of those options would make me feel better. 

I reached for God to help me through the tough times. Unfortunately, if he was there I didn't feel his presence. So I sat and felt the pain, and then I cried and I felt the pain some more. And when I thought I was done with it, and I was all on board, opening my heart again with a promise to God that I wouldn't hide, I was blindsided by a pain, a heartache, that left me reeling. 

Here's my heart, I said to God. I won't wall it off. I won't hide it to keep it from being hurt. I will keep opening up and trusting. And then I got slammed.

What do I make of this? What kind of answer is that to give me? 

This is faith, or at least it is my faith as it currently stands. I still trust God. I don't know why the heartaches happen, and I don't know why I was knocked down just as I was standing up again. What I do know is that even though I didn't feel him this weekend, God was with me. 

Always in Pain

At one of my recent chiropractor visits I found myself telling the doctor that I am always in pain. While that is true enough - and irritating enough - on a physical level, I've begun to wonder if that is also true on a psychological level as well.

I had a couple of conversations this week that brought this to mind. 

The first conversation was with a co-worker who also lives in my neighborhood. I don't see him very often so we were discussing this and that, and thinking about it afterwards it began to dawn on me that everything I said was negative. 

"Did you hear about the neighbor who was arrested during that big drug bust?"

"Let me tell you about this horrible woman I heard yelling at kids at the pool last week."

"Don't you hate it when people let their yards go? Those weeds make the whole neighborhood look bad."

Why didn't I talk about how peaceful it is on my patio? Where were the words about the cardinals and the hummingbirds? Why didn't I think to bring up how nice the new playground equipment is?

The second conversation was with a friend who is also reading the book I've mentioned here a couple of times, Made to Crave. For 45 minutes I whined about how hard it is, how much I'm struggling, and what isn't going right. She also asked about my husband's new business, and all I could do was complain about not having a steady paycheck and not liking him being gone so many nights.

Just as easily I could have talked about the better food choices I am making. I could have said that there have been times when I have been balanced, when I haven't turned to food but turned to God instead. Certainly I am grateful for any amount of success in my husband's business and for the good reviews he is getting. I could have been more optimistic about the business' future, or more appreciative of the hard work he is putting in for our family.

Ask me how I am, and I will usually say fine. Listen to me talk and mostly what you'll hear is what is going wrong.

Am I truly always in pain?

Recognizing this is one thing. Changing it is something entirely different.

The Voice of Truth

Out of all the voices calling out to me

I will choose to listen and believe

the voice of truth 

~ written by John Mark Hall

sung by Casting Crowns

 

This week I had a wake up call. A long time friend decided she needed to take a few steps back from our friendship - be friends from afar - because she can no longer tolerate the denial she sees in me. She doesn't want to point it out, doesn't believe it is her place to point it out, but at this point needs to be a friend who loves me from afar.

On the one hand, maybe I am in so much denial that I simply can't see it. Despite all of the introspection and work that I do on myself maybe I am just spinning my wheels from one thing to another in order not to focus on the thing - whatever that is - about which I am in denial. It is certainly not the first time I have heard this theory. My trainer also believes I am hiding from something. 

Are these two both the voice of truth?

On the other hand, I have worked so hard on myself for so long that maybe the wake up call is really that I need to get over myself. The idea that I am someone that someone else has to stay away from is ridiculous. Absurd. And yet I treat myself that way, don't I? I treat myself as if I am a mass of broken parts that need to be fixed, that at the same time are too broken to ever be fixed. Possibly I have been loving myself from afar for a long time and it is time to stop the madness that is Project Ginny. Maybe there is no deeply buried anything that needs to be faced.

Is this the voice of truth?

Surely you see my dilemma.  This reminds me of one of my favorite episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  After being poisoned by a demon Buffy comes to believe that she has been in a mental institution, and that her life as a slayer has all been a hallucination. She sees her parents still happily married, not divorced, and she begins to prefer this new non-slayer life. Buffy keeps falling back into her slayer "hallucination", and eventually decides that the slayer life is her true life. It was heartbreaking watching her say goodbye to her dream mother, but she had to decide which road to take, which life to live.

And so, which road do I take? Do I take the one that tells me that I am in denial, hiding from something that has been plaguing me, pursuing me, for most of my life? Or do I take the one that says I am fine? Which is the voice of truth?

Maybe what I'm in denial about is that I am fine, and that I always have been and always will be. That seems the easy road, doesn't it? But is that me choosing to stay in the happy parents-are-still-married-and-demons-are-not-real world?

When am I awake and when am I asleep?

I woke up in the middle of the night last week with a single clear thought in my head.

"I need to let go of the things in my life that are holding me back in order to make room for the things that God wants to put there."

There was no background chatter, no sensation of waking up and remembering. It was simply coming to a complete and sudden wakefulness with this sentence in my mind, over and over, as if asleep me wanted to make sure awake me knew it was important. Above all thoughts of addictions to food or alcohol, more than any ideas about shortcomings or weaknesses, I have lived my life holding on to the belief that I am too broken to be fixed.

The voice of truth tells me this is a lie. 

All of the other voices, the ones in my head and the ones from my friends, are lying to me. There is a strong pull to believe them instead, but that road has led me no where. No, that's not entirely true. That road has led me here, right here, to where I am, believing that I must no longer love myself from afar.

ready to be done

I am more than ready for this to be over. 

I am not dying for a drink nor am I tempted to drink. I just want to be done with this because it is like this "thing" hanging over my head.

It's a burden. It's annoying. 

It is a simple decision that I made seven months ago that once was interesting but now is boring.

I haven't learned anything except that I can say no to alcohol.

And truth be told, I'm a little irritated that I am not going to give this up.

Why is that? Why can't I just say "I don't want to do this anymore"?

Am I afraid of what it might say about me? Am I worried that I will end up regretting that first drink because I didn't stick this out to the end?

What is that all about? 

I used to think that it was a good thing to stick with my commitments. But when commitments no longer make sense is it still a good thing?

I know I can walk right in to the kitchen, open the refrigerator, and pour myself a glass of wine. No one - except my daughter - will be disappointed. That's not a guess; she told me so just now when I asked her. My husband would probably be immensely relieved and completely supportive. Others may or may not congratulate me for making it this far. Most others won't care one way or the other.

Maybe my irritation is about having to wait. I wonder when was the last time that I had to wait so long for something. 

And it's not like there is going to be any big payoff at the end of this either.

I'm not counting days until a big vacation.

I'm not awaiting the arrival of a baby.

I'm not looking forward to retirement or the start of a new job or a visit from a good friend.

All I'm doing is passing time waiting until I can have a glass of wine again. What a waste of the passage of time.

There are 148 days until the end of this project. What else can I do in 148 days? Maybe if I have something tangible to show for this I can make it through the next five months without making myself crazy.

And there it is. The thing that has been lurking around the edges of my mind for awhile now.

What would it be like to read the Bible?

After doing some careful research with chapters and verses and numbers of each, I have decided that a reasonable goal is to read the 150 chapters of Psalms during these last five months of my YONA.  I was going to go for the entire New Testament, but the numbers weren't coming out as neatly as they do with Psalms. I'll start out reading the first three today, and then do one a day for the next 147 days.

Well. So now there's that.