So, the truth is - it's been a kind of rough week in regards to following my meal plan. I haven't been perfect, but I am trying to learn and remember that I don't have to be!
Last night I had "Meet the Teacher" at school, and to my delight, it went very well! I really felt like God shielded me against and protected me from what I was so fearful of encountering! Hallelujah!
In regards to recovery, it is surely a rough journey right now... I kind of feel like it is a journey on which I have taken a couple of steps backwards, but I am not willing to quit! I will keep fighting even though it is hard - VERY HARD!
I went to my best friend's apartment last night after I left the school. She could tell that if it was going to be up to me alone, I wasn't going to eat, so she invited me over to have some dinner with her... While I was there with her, we began talking about a lot of different things, but we talked in depth about recovery - about the process of healing... As I talked with her, I realized that I really never have been willing to truly shelf my eating disorder and give recovery a chance. Deep down I know this is what I want to do this time around, but it is almost as though I am instinctively led to self-sabotage at this point.
I was doing my best to work recovery while I was in treatment, and I have been trying to work recovery after being discharged right at three weeks ago. However, as I talked with my friend last night, I began to realize that in many "small" ways, I have been acting out in my eating disorder... Part of me is frustrated, and part of me feels like I'm doing the best that I can right now... I don't know though!
One thing I did realize as I talked with my friend last night was that because I have never really been willing to try out recovery for real and have always kept ED in my life - kept him in my back pocket - and practiced my eating disorder in some way, shape or form, I have no faith in nor trust in recovery! I am also terribly afraid of what it means! I am afraid of the unknown!
Somewhere, deep down inside of me, I am trying to believe that recovery is really what I want - that it is really so much better than what I have known up until this point in my life. However, I am struggling to see how truly ugly ED is. There still seems to be certain incomparable comforts in him.
I have made many recovery collages and posters that somehow seem to capture the idea and dream of recovery. I seem to depict recovery in a very positive light. However, as I present it as positive, I also present it as very rigid... As very strict... As very black and white... As all or nothing!
After talking to my friend last night and after talking to a blessed friend who is working her own recovery this morning, I have been reminded that recovery is meant to be a flexible journey. If I keep such a rigid and all-or-nothing-mindset about it, I am not going to be able to do it! It seems so foreign to me to even consider that recovery can be flexible... I have such a hard time trying to believe that it really can be! However, I guess that too, is a process...
As I talked with my friend who is working her own recovery, I was reminded that the journey of recovery is a journey of trust... Wow! That hit home! I am definitely on a journey of trust! I am trying to trust God with my new job as a Spanish teacher... I am trying to trust that He is the King over my finances - my Provider - that He knows how to make ends meet... He knows exactly what I need and has a plan for provision... I am trying to trust that God has put together a great treatment and support team for me... I am trying to trust my dietitian... Trying to trust my therapist... Trying to trust my meal plan... Trying to trust my body... Trying to trust myself! And... It is a scary journey!
As I have been doing my best to muscle my way through my meal plan each day and at each meal so that I can get in the nutrients my body needs, I have been fueled first and foremost by a strength that is not my own but that is from God who lives in me, but I have also been fueled by trying to believe that if I am not willing to follow my meal plan, I will not be able to be the teacher my students need me to be nor the mentor they need me to be!
So... I hit this place in which I find myself at a crossroad... It is a place that reminds me of a place I have visited many times before... There is one thing different though... This time, I actually realize that I am at a crossroad - that what happens next is partially up to me... To a certain extent, it is a scary place to be... I think that in the past when I have visited a place that seemed similar, I have always been launched into a flight mode - entirely too afraid to keep trekking forward... However, I don't want to take flight this time! I am tempted to, but I know that I can't keep running from the painful things that rise up inside of me... If I choose to run from the rising pain and discomfort I feel within me, I will never have the chance to walk in freedom... However, I am terrified to leap fearlessly into a trust fall... The trust fall is RECOVERY, but I am afraid of what I will find as I walked forward into the free fall...
For only the choice and time will tell...
ONE DAY AT A TIME...
ONE STEP AT A TIME...
ONE MOMENT AT A TIME...
ONE BITE AT A TIME...
I will choose to believe: Healing is HARD, but it is not HOPELESS!
I will choose to say: God in me is my HOPE of GLORY!
I will choose to take the next step... One small step in the direction of LIFE!
Will you join me?
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