sometimes i think too much

stories 

words

things that were never supposed to matter

things that ended up mattering much more than anyone could have ever imagined

stories about girls

the skinny models in mother's college flat who ate tuna off of lettuce leaves 

they didn't use mayo. because mayo had too many calories. instead they mixed their canned tuna with celery and carrots and swapped lettuce for bread

facts. facts about weight. the perfect weight. the ideal weight. 

'you get 100 lbs for 5 feet, and 5 lbs allowance for every inch above that'

ok, mother. i understand. i will make you proud. 

the admonishments 'a moment on the lips, forever on the hips' as she pinches hers, already ample, already wide, and i swear to never become her. 

'the perfect waist-to-hip ratio....hourglass figure...if you just lost a few pounds' 

'just eat smaller portions'/'just go on this juice fast with me'

'just stop eating sugar'/'just stop eating carbs'/'just stop eating processed foods'

...just stop eating?

'that outfit is for skinny girls' as she sits on the couch downing a bag of chips

'my skinniest weight was 117, just before i met your father' and she is 5'5 or something of the sort, and even i know that that is underweight, but maybe not because she is so proud of it, like a trophy badge pinned to her past

'change your clothes or boys will notice' because God forbid this girl was born with a body prematurely developed by 11, and if i lose enough weight, maybe they will stop staring at me like hungry wolves because there will be no more meat on these bones

first comment coming back from summer camp, sitting in a restaurant, wolfing down my meal after a sparse breakfast, 'well you've gained weight!' 

losing ten pounds in two weeks by not eating, met with 'now you're perfect...don't gain anymore' 

lose five more pounds, and it becomes, 'don't lose anymore..you're getting too skinny' 

oh how they love to throw around that phrase 

'too skinny'

what do they know about too skinny?

my mother? stuck in a cycle of diet/binge/complain about her weight? the one who ought to deal with her own disordered eating before she dare judge me on mine? the one from whom i learned this measuring rubric, by which i am grossly overweight, drastically inadequate? she may love me, but this is not the way. 

or...maybe the healthy ones? 

the boy who makes himself two grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner and goes for a run because he can and because he wants to, and because for him running is not punishment or shaky legs or black spots dancing before your eyes, but it's strength and the wind in your face... he will never understand the pain of stomach rolls and arm-wings and little boys who poke the squishy parts and tell you you're fat

the girl who sits in coffee shops before beautiful latte art and doesn't think twice before putting it to her lips, perfectly blissfully unconsumed by calorie counting, because for her food is fuel and art and necessary not bad and evil and proof of need... she will never understand the feeling of realizing how broken your eyes are, reaching out for help to be dismissed with 'not sick enough'...'not enough'... never enough 

the girl who laughs and blows the wrapper off her straw into my face, a teasing glint in her eye, who sips her milkshake without worrying about where to find a bathroom to throw it all up afterwards, because for her this is just a fun outing with friends, not constantly on display as if to prove that she is well enough, healthy enough, self-sufficient enough, not too needy, where she is worth their time and care. 

the one who looks over at her with a fond smile on his face, the one she links arms with to navigate the darkness of DC nights... 

where have they come from, and who are they? 

these people for whom food is not fear is not punishment is not pain is not a curse... they will never understand the feeling of stepping on a scale to see the number dropped one, maybe two, from the previous day, and feel an overwhelming sense of numb triumph, swearing 'just five more pounds' 'just two more' 'just let me get to my goal then i'll stop, i swear' then reaching that goal and needing fifteen pounds worth of buffer... 

they are normal. 

normal without the whispers clawing their way past all defenses in the middle of the night 

'fat' 'lose weight' 'no boy will ever love you' 'i'll buy you diet pills' 'only good to jerk off to' 'i'd never date the fat girl' 'step on the scale..you must weight a ton' 'you should go on a diet, lose all that weight' 'why can't you look like her?' 'if i tried to pick you up, i'd break' 'anorexic' 'bulimic' 'sick' 'not sick enough' 'have you gained weight? you looked better when you were skinny' 'ew you're so gross' 'lose five more pounds and you'll be perfect' 'gain five more pounds and you'll be perfect' 

but the worst are the too's

'too fat' 'too skinny'

always too...too much....

too much need, too much sadness, too much numb,  too much pain, too much hurt, too much i don't know, too much questions, too much confusion... 

always, always too much 

and if i disappear into numbness will i finally not have to feel? 

has this taken over me to the point where i don't care anymore? 

maybe. 

i don't know. 

and usually that scares me. 

but lately? i've been having trouble feeling.... 

so, hey. i'm fine

i'm just fine. 

{passover..and matzoh bread}

Do you ever feel like you've screwed up too badly for God to forgive you?

like...where is God? where did He go? when sin - my sin and that of others - seem to have formed an impenetrable barrier between His love and my guilty soul, what respite is there? what hope is there?

when no matter how hard i strive (in my own power), i cannot rid myself of what i am ashamed of, when I cannot forgive myself the sins i have committed and those committed against me?

i hate admitting this, but lately i've been drowning

drowning beneath the weight of condemnation and fear and lies and sin, and, God, i can't seem to get free.

there is no freedom for me.

today i scream/cried to the storming skies that my God, i want to live, and yet, You seem so far away, and where are You when I need You, and why didn't You deliver, and hello can you hear me because I am calling from so far away....

i am the thief on the other cross, asking, why would you look to this man to save you because look at Him and look how good He is at saving people... He can't... He won't... will He?

I know it's Holy Week, but I've grown calloused to Easter...it happens every year, and nothing changes, nothing is different, and even Jesus Christ Superstar which never fails to break me isn't working.... and i am so lost.

and somewhere between the drinking and running into the middle of the street and starving and remembering what terrifies me and walking eyes open into what i am ashamed of because it will never get any better than this and trying to make sense of it all... i have hid away from Him and I am helpless hopeless despairing drowned.

and even though He has been whispering love through it all, ' i turned away, with this sin in my heart tried to bury Your grace and then alone in the night i still called out for You ' but all i met with was silence.

there are so many better people, purer people, cleaner people, people who are not damaged and destroyed by the ravages of sin that how..HOW could anyone, least of all God, want ... me?

he couldn't possibly.

but... don't ask me why i sat down at my computer today, on a whim, and pulled up Cornerstone...

maybe it was St Peter's and peace at long last, trembling shaking in the presence of God, torn between slipping off my shoes and falling headlong at His feet, and fleeing in pure terror.

maybe it was sobbing sick drunk last night after He had hedged me in and slammed every door to the past right in my face, insisting that giving up wasn't an option, but God, i still wanted it.

i don't know.

what i know is that somewhere between the tears and the 'alright God you win but where on earth do i go from here when i can't forgive myself and how could you ever ever use/want me?', i wound up with tonight's sermon.

God grabbed me during worship, and wouldn't let go.

'when all seems lost in my brokenness, i call Your name and You answer.. You hold me up You hold me up'..... 'nothing can separate, even if I run away, Your love never fails'.... 'without You i fall apart, You're the one that guides my heart'

because He's pleading with me to let Him hold me, and I cringe and cry out 'unclean unclean!'.. God, you can't touch me... wouldn't want to touch me.. not if you knew...

but passover. and redemption. and Pastor Gary repeating that Pharoah was stubborn and my sister looked over at me and raised her eyebrows and goes 'hmm...i wonder who that reminds me of'

and... matzoh bread.

the nasty cracker-like stuff that mom buys every year (she never gets the salted kind...), but suddenly it made sense.

matzoh.

see, he was going through a list of how passover is fulfilled in Christ, and the second to last point on his list was matzoh bread. leaven or yeast is sin, and how even a little is unclean, and we love to compare and say 'well at least i'm not as bad as an ax murderer (do you even know any ax murderers!?) 

but...in reality....even the slightest bit of yeast will cause the bread to rise - i've done enough baking to know that - and his Jewish friends would have to dust books because even the smallest bit of yeast during passover made a house unclean.

even the smallest bit of sin is uncleanness...is unclean...

and his last point?

that under the blood is salvation. deliverance.. freedom.

in the same way that even the smallest bit of leaven is sin, even the smallest bit of uncleanness is death, and the sin of one man (pharaoh) caused the death of countless firstborns, and the sin of one man (adam) caused death to all... the death of Christ is liberation.... in the same way as the blood of the lamb was redemption, so the blood of the Lamb is deliverance.

we deserve hell, we all of us, no matter whether we're relatively 'good' or are...well..ax murderers, for lack of a better example.

we are all guilty. every one.

and yet... the blood cleanses us from all unrighteousness.

(yes..i know..i've been hearing this all my life, yet somehow never quite like this)

'no mater what you've ever done...when you come under the blood...there is therefore now no condemnation....God doesn't judge us.. he looks at us and sees the blood of the Lamb instead'

and i think i'm finally starting to get it, as the words of an old hymn rise unbidden to my mind.

'the dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain in his day, and there may i though vile as he wash all my sins away'.

that's it, the answer i've been looking for. the blood. that simple, that seemingly obvious, and yet that earthshattering

all sin is death, all death is condemnation, all yeast is contamination....

and all Christ is sacrifice, and all can be washed away, and all condemnation is gone because all life and freedom is found in Him, and God knows i still have learning to do, but this gives me peace and hope.

all sin is condemnation

all condemnation is death

therefore, all sin is death

but

but God

and i don't know how to put this in syllogism form and it's kind of annoying me right now because i wish i could.. give me a few weeks and i will, but it makes sense.

it finally makes sense how Jesus is the perfect lamb of God, and the blood covers me and everything I've done and has been done to me, the same way that it covers everyone else, because no matter how big or how small, sin is sin is sin is sin.

it's all the same in the eyes of God. 

but..the dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain in his day, and there may i, though vile as he, wash ALL my sins away... my old favorite hymn which i finally kind of understand.

all the firstborn were killed for Pharoah's sin, and we all must die for Adam's sin, yet in Christ all our sin, which all deserves death.. is all washed away.

so there will I, though vile as he, wash all my sins away.

{recovery isn't what they said it would be}

recovery isn't what they tell you it is 

it's not tumblr 

it's not pinterest

it's not coffee shops and road trips and sunrises and running away to a stranger city where no one knows your name

it's not 

recovery isn't a boy to kiss your scars or hold you when you're falling apart or tell you that everytime you hurt yourself you hurt him too 

recovery isn't still skinny and pretty or eating a pint of ice cream because you can 

recovery isn't him begging you to 'please just eat..for me'

it's not always supportive parents who recognize your struggles and respect them, or therapists and nutritionists and meal plans

it's not #anarecovered as you show off your thigh gap, or #edrecovered in a crop top and perfectly flat stomach. 

sometimes it's the opposite. 

sometimes its crying over size tags and dinner and breakfast and lunch 

sometimes it's shaking on the bathroom floor because you want/need the crimson so badly you can't even breathe

sometimes it's parents who refuse to even acknowledge you need help and insist that you're fine, you're always fine

sometimes it's tears standing in front of the dressing room mirror because the number on that tag whisper-beats into your head that you are fat you are worthless

sometimes recovery is relatives commenting that you've gained weight, asking why you're not skinny anymore, offering to buy you diet pills, critically glancing at everything you place in your mouth

it's wondering why other people are allowed to be recovered and simultaneously skinny and why that paradigm breaks down with you, and somehow you're not

sometimes it's hating friends, hating yourself, because it took them asking you to do them a personal favor in order for you to finally throw out the blades you'd carefully stashed at the bottom of the drawer as proof of strength.

sometimes it is harder hell than everything you're trying to be free from 

because at least before when you were alone you had your demons for company but what do you do now?

{but for now}

pain.

how can so much anguish, so much soul-wrenching, gut-tearing agony be contained in just one small four-letter word?

how does one syllable sum up the weight of an entire world of woe?

and how does one rebuild from the ruins?

......what does one lose in the furnace?

they say the storms come to wash us clean, but what of the pure ones? those who have never known sorrow, suddenly defiled?

what of the senseless, deliberate evil? the innocent fallen beneath the crimson-stained scythe?

the questions, fruitlessly wracking the tireless mind -

where is God? who is God? how is good who He is, when this also is Him? for there is nothing good in this!

and the theologians, the safe ones, will tell you not to cry out in wounded fury that if God is real then He is a liar. He is a sadist. He is cruel - cruel and careless and cold and callously indifferent. He must be.

How else is one to reconcile the wounding -the striking - the cutting bruising breaking, with Him who is the Healer? the binder-up of wounds?

who is the Almighty?

who is He who plans men's lives and holds them in the palm of His hand?

where is He who shelters the weak, and with His strong arm comes to salvation-aid the defenseless?

has He slept? has He turned from man His face? is He busy? preoccupied?

or, perhaps most terrifying of all, is He watching? still watching, yet doing nothing, never intervening?

all that, and more beside, flash lightening-quick through a mind weary and heart-sore, desperately hunting for answers in the aftermath of the unimaginable, and yet finding none.

where does the seeker end? and where does the Almighty begin?

where does the soul come to an end of questions, and rest in the peace of God?

i do not know.

but what i do know is this.

through the breaking, through the pain, through the unimaginable - the unspeakable - atrocity upon grief without name - a thread has been woven.

i cannot see the entirety yet, but this i see.

this will not let me go, and this is my faith - my hope.

this will remain as i gather up the tattered fragments of what was, and begin again in always search of life.

this.

that 'we do not know the worth of a single drop of blood, one single tear. All is grace. If the Eternal is the Eternal, the last word for each one of us belongs to Him'

All, all is grace.

And i know that the Eternal is yet the Eternal. He could not otherwise be.

...I could not otherwise be.

And if the Eternal is the Eternal, then He will have the last word.

standing in the face of the unimaginable - the death of God to the soul of the child who was Elie Wiesel, these words came. that all is grace, that the Eternal will have the final word.

to Ann Voskamp, whose book I picked up on a whim, and who arrests me with her brutal honesty, the same words come. that this, too, is grace. that all is grace.

even when the heart splits in two, torn at the thought of a loving God who has planned the breadth of each ones life, planning this pain.

'i won't shield God from my anguish by claiming He's not involved in the ache of this world and Satan prowls but he's a lion on a leash and the God who governs all can be shouted at when I bruise, and I can cry and I can howl and He embraces the David-hearts who pound hard on His heart with their grief, and I can moan deep that He did this - and He did'

in her words I find mirrored my own confusion, my own pain and woundedness. How could a good God....?

the never-ending, never-answered question. How?

and for her too, the answer came. the only answer we will ever see, ever receive.

that all, all is grace. and that if the Eternal is indeed the Eternal, then it is He, and not I, whose voice will echo when all questions have stilled and ceased to be.

but for now, the Voice-Eternal whisper-sings, repeats, in the joy and the pain and the heartache and confusion of my own disbelief that, whether i see it - whether i ever see it or not...

for now, "all is grace"

{the bitten man}

i half-walked, half-ran down the stairs yesterday after work, slipping out the door and into the car with a huge sigh of relief. not that work itself had been so stressful - it hadn't - but the past few weeks had been overwhelming, and after coming dangerously close to crying at work, no less, i was more than relieved to be done with people for the day. 

dad turned to me, putting a finger on his lips as he muted his phone (on conference call), and then we began our usual i-ask-dad-about-his-day-and-he-asks-about-mine ritual,  which we've established over the past few months. 

i didn't have much to say about my day, so i handed him coffee and asked about his. he accepted it gratefully, while mentioning that he'd been dying for a cup around 3, but couldn't get away, due to a sudden influx of patients. 

'there was this one guy...his hand was all swollen, oozing with pus, and it had spread all the way up his arm...from a dog bite.' he began, and i shuddered because that sounded so incredibly nasty - and painful. 

well, as the story continued, turns out this patient had been bitten by his dog at around 2am Sunday, and yet it took him till Tuesday afternoon to go see a doctor. 

what absolutely floored me, though, was when my dad went on to say that 'I finally convinced him to go to the hospital - '

and i interrupted in utter disbelief. 

'wait. wait. this guy..has pus streaming from his arm and hand, multiple dog bites all over his hand, could lose his arm, and yet you had to convince him to go to the ER!?' 

dad nodded. 'he wanted to go home.. and take care of his dog.. the same one that bit him'. 

i couldn't believe it. 'why didn't he want to go to the hospital?'

'oh, it's more expensive, takes longer, they'd have to do a full examination, and he doesn't want to be sick. i told him that he could lose his arm, and he said he didn't care.'

I sat back, dumbfounded. that seemed like the stupidest, most foolish thing in the world. there was no doubt in my mind that he was being an idiot...frankly, i couldn't believe that he was even for real. how is that even possible? 

...goes to show how little i see my own blind spots...because as i mused, it suddenly hit me...

i'm the man with the dog bite. 

oh, not a literal dog bite, but i had just spent the entire day fighting my friends, God, even the rational part of myself which says that i am killing myself, because...i would rather go back to the familiar even if it kills me, than actually humble myself and get help. 

funny how these things work...

what astonished me most about dad's story was that a man with such an obvious wound, obvious infection, damage, decay... had to be convinced to do what he knew would be best for him, what people who knew better had told him was the wisest course of action, and what would, ultimately, heal him. 

and yet, i regularly do the same thing. 

just earlier that day, i had been told in no uncertain terms that 'if  you want to get better and be helped...at some point, you will need to start confiding in people because you know its the right thing to do. not because someone has convinced you that you need to for your own sake, over the course of a four to five hour discussion'. 

...which....guilty. 

see, what the man with the dog bite hated was the hospital. it was expensive and time consuming and potentially far too invasive for his preference.....he wanted a quick fix, a topical anesthetic to numb the pain so that he could go back to life the way it always was. 

and if i'm honest, i'm the same way. i don't want to trust, to get help, to let people in. it's costly - i have been left far too many times by those who swore to stay, and most of the time i do not want to take that risk, because what happens when they leave and take my secrets with them? 

it's time consuming, and invasive, not because i don't trust them per se, but because i still find myself chasing after the all-elusive 'independent, strong woman who doesn't let anyone in'...and there is always vulnerability which comes with allowing someone to see the parts of you that you hide away, the flaws and failings and damage and infections and yes, even the pus, and i hate being vulnerable. 

i tend to want the quick fix. i want something to make it better real quick so i can go back to the dogs. especially when i don't know how to handle what hurts me, i forget the lessons i have learned in the depths of my pain, and then refuse to let people in who will remind me of what i know is true. 

ridiculous, right? 

i know. 

but sometimes the long road is oh, so long... and sometimes the valleys are oh, so deep, and i find myself hanging by a thread, refusing to grasp the rope which has been thrown to me. 

but, i am learning that i must.

for i can't go back. 

there's a fantastic passage in Pilgrim's Progress, where Christian is standing on the crest of the Hill of Difficulty, and encounters Mistrust and Timorous, who tell him that ahead lay beasts of prey, lay fear and even more danger. the closer to the Celestial city they get, they say, the more danger they encounter. 

which, truthfully, is the way i've been feeling lately. like, the closer i feel to finally being free, the more gets thrown at me, the more i struggle, the more danger and fear and heartache comes my way. 

but I love Christian's response. 

'Then said Christian, you make me afraid, but whither shall i flee to be safe? If i go back to mine own country, that is prepared for fire and brimstone, and i shall surely perish there...'

(if the man with the dog bite goes back to his beast....if i go back to mine...)

'if i can get to the Celestial City, i am sure to be in safety there.'

(and i love this next part so much)

'I must venture. to go back is nothing but death. to go forward is fear of death, and life everlasting beyond it. i will yet go forward'

as will i. 

as must you. 

as shall we all. 

because to run back to the darkness is death. certain death.

and while help may be costly and invasive and hard and painful and uncertain and take ever so much longer than slapping a band-aid on our wounds.....the end of it is life. 

life and freedom. 

i will yet go forward.