After it was over, the realization hit. That was from God, not from me.
I have given my recovery testimony so many times and each time I was told I should write a book and applauded for my writing and story telling abilities. I am thankful that God has in fact given those abilities to me. But this time. This time was different.
I left the podium and my first thought was, “Thank you Jesus for the 101 ways you chased me when I was so broken. Thank you for never giving up when I was convinced I could do it myself. Thank you for loving me back, gently, when I messed up again.”
In those moments, I thought about the people that surround me currently, different, but much the same throughout these years. We’ve all learned and grown. We’ve all hurt and been hurt. We’ve all loved and been loved. Biblical community, family, the way God intended it to be. As with any family, it isn’t without strife. People that we are, it isn’t without its fleshy moments. I didn’t fully appreciate and understand the magnitude of the community God placed me in until this moment.
Two weeks ago, I was asked to step in for someone who was unable to give their story that night. I had just given mine twice recently and it was expected that I would just pull that one out and deliver the story of my deliverance and the way God loved me and the way my life was hard. But then a random idea was planted, though I doubt it was really that random. A beautiful friend said she had just rewritten her testimony with a format that put more emphasis on Jesus and who she is now than all the mess of before. Her husband said her testimony was beautiful that way. And though I’d never heard it, something in me said, I wonder if mine could be done that way. The format felt extremely restrictive, especially for a verbose human that I am needing many words just to explain one thought, and I loved the way my testimony was written, both versions. And yet…what if?
I thought about it all the way home. I even thought about it in my bed that night. I couldn’t shake it. The last time I couldn’t shake something like this was when God was giving me my inventory topic for my fourth step study, a unpacking of a complex relationship that I would need to work through before my life completely changed. That worked out well. Maybe I should try.
I have a strict policy when writing. It’s something I’ve always abided by in blogging too. If it doesn’t flow, if it’s not fairly easy, then it’s not ready yet. It needs to marinate a little longer. When it’s right the words just fly out of my fingers one after another without much pause, much like this is right now.
I turned the word count on. That was key. But could I be bound by word counts. Isn’t that legalistic? Isn’t that stifling the Holy Spirit? Also don’t I have more amazing words than that?
And I started writing. I didn’t reference my other versions of my testimony. I just started writing. I knew my past. I also knew I would have to hit the highlight reel. Christian home, dead dad, perfectionistic performance based human, mental health, eating disorder. Got it. I looked down. The word count was a little over 850, though not much. The goal was 800. Close enough.
Ok now for how I got to recovery. I needed to voice the absurdity of the fact that I felt like I didn’t belong in recovery because I wasn’t an addict and that nothing I was doing was intrinsically wrong. Shame, humiliation, anxiety, suicidal thoughts. They all had to be mentioned, though not dwelled on. This is for the new comer they said. Ok. Enough details to elicit a “me too” or empathy, but not too much. What characterized my first few years in recovery? Performance based recovery and doing it all by myself, the way I had always operated. Following the rules close enough to feel like I was successful, but bending them enough to suit my desires.
Relapse. It needed to be said. How many people come back or come for the first time after a relapse? How many people are sitting in those seats feeling the same shame I felt? How many people need to know that there is no shame here? How many people need to know they can be met with love, even in disappointment? That there is no judgment here in the CR family. That I felt likely very much like they do. Shame and guilt and all the things. That I didn’t know what to do, but God met me there. That’s what happened. That’s what needs to be told.
900 words or so. Ya, over again, but close enough. We all knew I couldn’t really get anything into 800.
And now. I thought back to the sweet lessons I learned in those brutally hard days of feeling so much isolation but having so much sweet time just me and God, the way He desired it all along. I needed to voice that He continued to love me back and that surrender was the only way that recovery could ever work.
And oh the sweet community He gave me after I surrendered to Him. Not the dynamic, boisterous people that made me feel like I was somebody and important, but the quiet souls who met me with kindness and love and mothered me all the way back, with the hands and feet of Jesus. And there was God’s sweet story of loving me while I fought and while I ran and loving me all the way back. I should be dead in so many places, but He had a plan for me. He wasn’t through with my heart. He still isn’t.
It could have gone differently. My heart was scared of love always. It remembers the hurt of having someone stripped away. It knows what broken trust feels like. It was determined never to let any of that happen again.
But what it knows now is the role I played, the fact that I have always been hard to love because I didn’t understand how anyone could love me. Sometimes love is risky. Sometimes love is brutally hard. Sometimes friends hurt friends, unintentionally or otherwise. Sometimes I am the cause of my own suffering or at least usually an equal party.
But the love I’ve found here, from people, from God, from even dare I say a man that He sent when He finally thought I might be ready. (For those of you who wondered why it took so long; He had a lot of work to do on my heart first and I had to let Him do that).
It’s here that I am grateful. I look around at even people who have hurt me and know they have helped me so much too. Some of the deepest wounds came from some of the people that loved me the most and always will. And I caused my fair share of wounds too. And I can love them here in spite of and because of all that has happened. Because we’re all just human after all; doing the best we can. One day at a time. That’s surrender. That’s being a disciple of Jesus.
I’ll never be perfect, no matter how hard I want to be, but thankfully He has never, not one time expected that of me. When I get those notions there’s a good chance He shakes His head a little, maybe even let’s out a sigh, and says, “oh my precious daughter. I guess we’re going around the desert one more time. Take my hand and off we go.”
That’s what Jesus has written for me. May i never forget this sweet place of surrender and may I daily die to self and give it all to Him. May the valleys be a little less shadowy with Him, and His people, beside me all the way through. And may the mountain tops continue to be glorious and point others to His wonder and majesty.
All of Him. None of me. I am so grateful for this journey, no matter how hard it has been or may be in the future. It is well, when God is in it.
This Season.... 