Tonight when I walked through my door, I thought, “I don’t know if I am sober, but I am happy.” I don’t know if I am mentally sober. I mean I don’t want alcohol. I don’t want drugs. I don’t want sex. Ain’t interested in porn. I got friends. We have started to laugh a lot. I am happy. Only I feel like crying right now.
Sunday nights are fun anyway. I do reckon it is on the way home from Sunday nights that I find myself singing, “And the sweetest thing that you’ll ever see in the whole wide world is a happy girl.” That is how I feel. Only I feel like crying right now, but I don’t think it is a sad cry. Maybe overwhelmed.
Ten years ago, I got saved sometime in the middle of March. If I was going to have to set a spiritual birthday, it would be today. I am ten years old today. It has been a little overwhelming to think of the action packed ten years. Eight cities. Six states. Four educations (finished one, beginning another). Six churches. Countless nightmares. Countless hours with God. Countless tears. A whole new person.
I remember those first years of being saved. I was suicidal before I was saved. Last night I wrote about how I am a mistress of denial, but I have never been in denial about the abuse in my past or denied its painful effects on my life. I remember for years I fell asleep listening to Scripture and would set my stereo to start playing it before I woke up in an attempt to divert nightmares. As I fell asleep, I used to pretend I was in the arms of Jesus to comfort myself. It helped me deal with them, but it did not make them go away at all.
Years later, I discovered one of my habits that did make them go away. I became a slave to that habit. Then God asked me to give that habit back to Him, so I did. Now I dream, but I only worship my God to the best of my ability. It feels good to not be a slave to habits.
When I started this journey, I knew nothing about myself. I had no idea what I liked. I had allowed everyone else in my life to define everything about me, or perhaps I had no choice to do so myself in my then environment. I know what I like now, and I like ice cream.
Today’s lesson at CR was about insanity versus sanity. The insanity of my story is that I went into all my addictions after I knew God. When I started this journey, I had an unfathomable amount of pain tightly trapped inside of me. Eventually, I lost control of my tightly managed lifestyle and pain. My pain was buried in all kinds of habits.
Yesterday when I read Galatians, I noticed the list of “acts of the sinful nature” Paul talks about includes “selfish ambitions”. That was my go to release of pain for years. Just be full of myself and think the journey was about me.
I started this journey falling asleep each night wrapped in the love of Christ. Ten years later, I do the same only now my insides are not filled with pain. He has healed me. For some reason, I keep thinking of my first round of counseling in early 2007. I sat on my mattress on the floor of the friends’ house I was staying at. The dog and I more or less shared beds. I at night. She during the day. My bed always smelled a bit like her. We were in the midst of remodeling. I was between boxes and a bunch of plywood leaning against the wall. My “room” was divided from the rest of the world by a dowel supported with boxes and the plywood. My clothes hung on it. That was my closet. In that humble abode, my life changed. I processed a lot of anger there.
Yeah, I just went to my bookcase and got out my journal from back then. Odd how so much in our lives changes and so much stays the same. When I think of that girl and all the pain and problems she was processing, the years I spent burying myself in addictive and compulsive behaviors after that seem almost like progress. So much progress was made in all those years. What can I say? I am a piece of work.
For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. – Jeremiah 29:11
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