This has been a tough week.

Work has been incredibly busy, we've been going through painful life decisions, and I've been staring down past demons and acknowledging that the time is quickly approaching in which I must crash into them head on, allow the brokenness to shatter my soul, and then to allow Christ to put the pieces back together. That's the missing element in many of my issues- I think I've allowed Jesus to reign, but in fact I have just acknowledged their presence, felt nothing, and moved on. I can't honestly say I haven't dealt with them because I have tried to deal with them, and in so I have done a lot of handling with my past. But never have I actually felt something.

It's the strangest thing- if someone else shares their past, even mentions hurts, I will almost immediately begin to tear up. I cry at commercials. I cry when people I don't even like get kicked off of reality shows I don't even care about. Yet when revealing the sordid details of my horrific childhood, it's like reading off the ingredients in a cookie recipe- the chocolate chips are more enticing than the baking soda, but neither actually elicits a deep connectedness from the depths of my soul. What's sad is that, obviously, random ingredients really shouldn't. But relating to the tragedies of my childhood really, really should. Never have I cried for myself. Never have I hurt for what that young girl had to go through, and all she has endured. I don't want to live a life of pity; that's not the point. But what is the point is that I have never felt anything, and I am growing more and more certain that this simply isn't right. To slap on a happy face because there's utter emptiness is not true redemption.

A study that we're going through with our community group, How People Change, has been incredibly enlightening. Christians who love Jesus buy into the lie that they have to put on their happy face all of the time, because if we're not filled with joy and praising Jesus constantly then the world won't know He's real. I think this is a travesty. Psalm 88 is filled with hurt, discontentment, and despair. The Sons of Korah are telling God that they are upset with Him and that He's made them quite miserable. Unlike some of David's darkest Psalms, this one doesn't end on a high note of praise to God. Rather, it ends with a testimony of being utterly alone, shunned and closed in by darkness. It's the song the Sons of Korah would sing on their way to be atoned, and they were shrouded by the past of their ancestor's rebellion against Moses. Korah died, but his sons were allowed to survive and carried the shame of this failed coup against Moses, Aaron, and God Himself. Kind of a big deal to Jews. Thus, the Sons of Korah had to reconcile their redemption found in God with the marked judgment leveraged against them based on their past (be it of their own doing or no, Korah's wrongdoing became theirs by association).

I can relate to this. Due to foolish decisions (ie a fake bomb and the summoning of the bomb squad, SWAT team, and every news team in Washington state) made by my biological father, the entire town where I grew up was aware of the abuse against me. One look at our appearance revealed the poverty I lived in, and my entire extended family openly pitied me and criticized my mother for her parenting skills (and still do to this day, though often in more subtle and covert ways). My desperation for love scared away every close friend and made me incredibly vulnerable to the torture leveled by every child who perceived themselves to be higher on the social ladder, which was just about everyone. I overachieved academically because it was the one area where I could feel at all superior to anyone, which I thought would garner people's affection. Instead it just made them feel intimidated and disgusted that I was so prideful.

And then there was the food... oh, the food. Whether it was government issued mystery meat from a can or the rare occasion of the purchase of pizza, food made me feel better. I cannot express in words the way food was the sole thing that didn't reject me, didn't love me conditionally, didn't require that I alter myself to meet certain standards, didn't abuse me emotionally (at least, not that I could see), and didn't tell me I wasn't good enough. I never felt the need to deserve food. Plus, when I'm being quite honest, food never allowed me to be thin, which I really didn't want. I was desperate to be loved for anything but physical beauty. As I grew older, I wanted to be thought beautiful yet I was scared to death of actually being found desirable physically by any man.

I am dealing now with the fact that I am self-destructive with food because I fear being physically attractive. I'm not afraid of being raped, per se, but there is a comfort in believing that no one would ever want me. I'm scared of who I could become if I were beautiful. I don't know how I would handle looking in the mirror and realizing that the woman looking back at me is beautiful. I am not certain that I could handle this, and if I found that I could, how would I go about that? I am honestly just unsure about it all. It's a lot to deal with. But I am, slowly. I am taking these issues as they come and figuring out what to do with them. For example, I am recognizing why I get so destructive, and why I struggle at times to take better care of myself. The fact is, everyone eats a cookie now and then when they know they really shouldn't. But not everyone eats half a bag of cookies because they are punishing themselves and simultaneously protecting themselves from the scary unknown that is realizing their own physical attractiveness.

So, these are my issues. I'm working out what it looks like to be real about these things, to dig through to the place where I can finally allow myself to feel for the child who was victimized, the teen and young woman who filled her empty heart with tasty morsels that never quite satisfied, and ultimately the woman now who just doesn't know how to even begin to approach it all. Most importantly, I am realizing that it's ok for all of this to cause pain- real pain that could never be healed by a "Jesus loves me" T-shirt. Rather, being real, raw, and open with Christ in the process, and allowing others to see that Christianity is about praising God, yes, but that He is glorified by more than perfect, happy families with plastered on smiles. Life is messy, it's not always happy-happy-joy-joy, it's full of heartache and sin, and redemption means nothing if that which needed redeeming was never marked by authenticity.

In the (much beloved by me) U2 song Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own, the lyrics state at one point:

... the best you can do is to fake it...

To this I say let's stop faking it. I want to admit it when I'm hurting. I want to be raw about struggling with discontentment with God because I can't undo years of a sinful relationship with
food by a couple of months of working out. I am frustrated with the Lord that I am not losing more weight. I think He needs to bless my attempts with miraculous amounts of weight loss, to supernaturally speed up my metabolism. He seems to think that wouldn't be the best for me, and there are weak moments where I almost resent Him for that. But the fact is, He is God. He doesn't need to bow down to my will, but He will pursue me until I surrender to His. I don't have to pretend that it's all fun and joy in the meantime. In reality, that's not a God I would want to worship, One who requires absence of genuine emotions and mindless prancing around proclaiming His glory in such a way that the rest of the world finds Him utterly incapable of relating to and useless.

I do choose to praise Christ, but in such a way that I am honest about the struggles and real about His redemption. It's a long journey, but I am grateful that the grace of God has been shone into my heart and I am beginning to allow Him to dig in and transform me from a girl who lived by rules and regulations into a woman truly after His own heart. She's forming slowly, but that woman is growing in me and I long to meet her when she stands up on her own two feet.

That said, when she does, I'll be her and I won't be sad that who I am today has morphed into her.

No fit tips today. But... at the risk of sounding needy, I really love every word you all write. I know I have random readers around the country, even world, some of whom I likely don't even know, but I welcome comments, questions, criticisms, etc. I always have a little soul-cartwheel when I check and have a new comment to moderate, and I always feel a little sad when I post and check the next day and there's nothing new. This isn't a guilt trip, just an encourager... if you ever want to comment but think I'd rather you didn't, it's the opposite of the truth!

Ok, enough. I need to get back to work :)