There is a wealth of discouragement flooding my mind right now. I feel...well, I feel too much, and all of the wrong things.
And yet, even as I burn with frustration and disappointment, I am conscious that it could be much worse. That even though I feel overwhelmed and broken and a bit hopeless, I am not, in a true sense of the word, depressed. The light does feel as if it has been choked out, but I know it is still there, just behind the branches and the thorns. I know that in the morning, the wind may shift and blow those obstructions to the side, and I will soak the sunlight up again.
And so, I have only to survive tonight.
When I was in my LACE year of camp, the hardest year, meant to test me and prepare me for staff should I return, I had to crawl through a winding section of cave that was maybe two feet high and three feet wide. Being far down in the cave, the only light was from our headlamps. I don't know how long we had to crawl, but it seemed nearly unbearable at first.
My claustrophobia rises if my socks are too tight, and this was a deal more constricting. If I at some point got hit with a panic attack, I would need to crawl backwards as far as I had come forwards before getting to a place where I could stand up, and it was still quite a long way to the surface. But ye olde human resiliency revealed itself (thank you, Lord!), and I found that I was capable of more than I had thought. As I army-crawled through that small space, going first left around a corner, then right, then back again, like I was crawling through a giant snake, I told myself that just around the corner was a big room. I knew that this was most likely not the case, but I had to trick that raw, instinctual part of my brain into not fighting and not fleeing. So every turn, I said to myself, "It's okay, there's a big room right around the bend." And when there wasn't, I just said, "Oh right, it's around the NEXT bend." It worked.
I could say that's a good metaphor for where I am right now in life, but it's not. The truth is, right now I'm crawling slower because I don't know what's around the bend. A big part of me wants to just go back up to the top, even though I know I'm supposed to keep going forward.
But tonight. Let's talk about tonight.
I was struck with a giant wave of insecurities this evening, right around snacktime. I did not have a snack at snack time. Perhaps if I had, I would have carried on quite at ease.
But alas, three o'clock passed, and with it my peace of mind. I felt rather productive at first, because I was getting some good baking done. I made cranberry coffee cake AND Fragilite (I can't figure out how to put an accent over the "e", so just imagine it). But then I tried to watch Hamilton, and it was buffering about every ten seconds, and it basically wrecked the feeling of productivity I had tentatively captured.
It is humbling to think not only about just how frustrated this experience made me, but also how easy it is to normalize it. Entertainment is such a seductive, addictive thing, and it has strong effects on the mind. I use entertainment to escape. That's something that I realized through therapy. It doesn't do a whole lot for my feelings, but it's a wonder for shutting the door on pesky thoughts. And I'm so used to using it in this way that it's often the first place my mind goes when I'm stressed about something. I don't even think about it, I just grab my phone and go to YouTube. Take a mental sedative.
It used to be that when I finally came out of my stupor, I felt quite ashamed, but also oblivious as to why. In my mind, I was too tired and stressed to actually do anything useful, so why not enjoy something? I had tricked myself rather effectively.
When I got back from my recent Europe trip, I was shocked by how many things I found myself wanting to do, and able to do. I realized how sick it made me feel to bury my stress in my phone, and how much I wanted to be involved in the physical things around me. I realized that I really did want to be responsible with how I used my time, and that I'm much less miserable when I am responsible.
The question was - would I allow my feelings about work to drive me away from the progress I'd made? And unfortunately today, the answer was yes.
I don't believe this was a complete relapse. At some point, I realized that I was wasting time waiting for Hamilton to load, and I just needed to try again later. I was actually able to turn it off and do something else. But I still had that awful self-loathing, and it began to pick on insecurities that I had been doing a pretty decent job holding off.
My weight for instance. I'm short and squat in my opinion, and my weight has definitely begun to grow more within the last year.
Another lesson from camp: one of the questions in our private devotional time that we were supposed to work through was, "Can I stand in front of a full-length mirror in just a bathing suit and say, 'I am fearfully and wonderfully made.'?" I struggled with that question then, and there has never been a time since when I have had a satisfactory answer. I know that I am fearfully and wonderfully made, but it somehow doesn't sound very convincing when I look at myself without any clothes to hide behind.
Additionally, since I came back from Europe, my checking account has been pretty dry. Now, I haven't been paid since returning, and there were many expenses on this trip, so this is to be expected. But I hate the feeling of not having a safety net (although I really do have a financial safety net still), and it makes me feel like I've done something terribly wrong. It even has me questioning whether I should have gone to Europe in the first place. And I definitely should have.
Here's the really important part though.
Sure, I could be more frugal financially. Sure, I could eat smaller portions and healthier food and exercise more. Sure, I could get more sleep and treat my friends better and spend less time on my phone. And these are all things I should do even. But when I fail at them, I cannot allow myself to think that defines me. I am not earning my way to heaven. I am not bribing God to love me. I am not trying to prove I'm worthy of being his child.
I've already failed. Horribly, too. I fail every day. Yet God never looks at me and says, "She's three pounds heavier than last Tuesday, and she just had a bowl of ice cream instead of going on a walk. She's hopeless."
I am just as precious in God's eyes as I would be I was a perfectly fit neurosurgeon. I dishonor him by seeing my worth in those things instead of in Christ.
There's plenty more I could say, but it's late and I'm tired. The Lord is with me. He has made me and keeps me even now. Bad days are just that - bad days. The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places.
