Forward Motion

I've seen people do these surveys that are soundtracks of their lives, and I think how remarkably true it is. Music does so much for people. Lifts the mood, inspires, catharsizes (not a word, but I like the sound of it; catharsis as a verb), and defines in a way that sometimes I can't do for myself.

Like now. The hit single for my life soundtrack is Forward Motion by Relient K. It's not exactly what it sounds like. Yes, it is about being stuck in a rut, but why.

We're easily distracted, humans. Beyond the 'Oh, Shiny!' that most of us can do, we have the capacity to think things to death. Like the past.

Forward Motion is going beyond sight of your past, not looking behind but ahead. Because when you start looking at the past, its easy to start moving that way. To live in retrospect, in memories, in things you did or didn't do and what it might have been. To live in a dreamed about reality, alternative from where you are.

Yeah, I struggle with Forward Motion. Second guess whether I could or should ask that guy for coffee, whether that ties me to the area or if it just frees me from wondering what might have been, if I didn't.

Can't decide whether to seriously start researching a move out of state, or whether to just let it simmer, and torture myself in the 'what ifs' for my future. So I think about past homes, past good experiences, to take me out of the frustrating present. I struggle with Forward Motion.

After Midnight

It's 12:30 am, and I can't sleep. Rather, I refuse to for the moment.

You see, I've been catching up on my friends blogs here, away from my other, more central, blogging home. And I've realized something.

I don't really know them at all.

These words we put down, for posterity or for expression, or even just for catharsis, they don't define us. Semantics of language is one thing I'm a stickler for, but its easy enough to know that about me. Just listen to me talk for five minutes.

But does anyone really know how I'll be reading along, and a turn of phrase will captivate me, make me go dreamy-eyed, imagination taking off for parts unknown? Does anyone know the things that can get a reaction like nothing else? The soul-deep feelings, convictions, and desires?



No, I didn't think so. So I'll sit here, 1230 am, and think a bit more about these things that I will be wrestling with for a while. Things that are separate from other people.

But not from God.

And I have to learn to live with the comfort that brings me. However little that may be at 12:30 am. However little I try to understand it. However little my heart's capacity for His truth may be.


Because it all comes down to choice. I cannot advocate for an abdication of social responsibility. You're greater than the sum of your parts your DNA, your habits, your vices, your desires, your wants. You're greater, because HE is greater.

I wish.... no, I PRAY, that He become greater in me. So that my way ceases to be the best way for me. And my choices, whatever they may be, become something I can live with, and not hate myself for.


How can you love anyone else, even God, if you can't love yourself?

I talked with two different friends tonight about how I'm feeling. I've had these mood swings lately, where I go from normal to awful in seconds, usually fueled by bitterness or self-contempt at how my life is, especially in the area of personal relationships.

Its sad, how compartmentalized my life has become. In a way. One friend, non-Christian, but certainly 'spiritual' was encouraging me to take risks, to try and find out if what I wanted lay down the path I'm considering.

The other, one of the most steadfast Defenders of the Faith I know, listened, encouraged me, and gently nudged me into reading the Bible. Which, I admit, to not having cracked in ages.

Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.
Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.
And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.
Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful.
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God.
And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

SOme food for thought tonight....

What's so amazing about grace?

It's 1:11 am as I start this, and I wonder if I can begin to say what I am thinking. No, really, its not as easy as all that. To express all my frustration with myself, my sense of failure in struggling against the flesh, my overwhelming lack of hope.... I don't have words for it, and for that, I am glad. I don't want to make it real, like words will do. I'd rather it stay as inarticulate as possible.

Except for this. I saw WALL-E Friday afternoon, and I was blown away. Fantastic movie, but what got me was a small, almost throwaway line.

"I don't want to just survive. I want to LIVE."

I didn't dwell in the theatre, caught up in the beautiful animation and the heartwarming story coming to live. But how true is it, that we exist in survival mode?

Thinking about it now reminded me of a Nichole Nordeman song, called, ironically enough, Live. The song's emphasis is life beyond the mountaintop experiences, in the mundane and ordinary, and its so pertinent to my life right now I am floored. More than I should be, because there hasn't really ever been a time when my life doesn't find corollary to her music.

Did you come that we might just survive?
Did you come so we could just get by?
Did you walk among us
So we might merely limp along beside?

I was bound, I have been set free
But I have settled for apathy
Did you come to make me new
And know I’d crawl right back into the skin you found me in?

It’s where I am, not where I’ve been

You make me want to live
You make me want to live
You came to shake us
And to wake us up to something more
Than we’d always settled for
And you make me want to live

We’ve all been up on the mountain top
A golden glow that’s bound to soon wear off
Then it’s back to the mundane telling tales of glory days
When we were hopeful that this change was here to stay

So why would a young man
Live in a waste land
When the castle of his dreams is standing by?
Why would a princess
Put on an old dress
To dance with her beloved and a chance to catch his eye?

To say this fixes everything is a lie. Yet....I don't feel quite so defeated. I hope.....oh how I hope that will continue. That I will continue. That change will continue.

I'm a blogger

Most people say they're a writer. I only wish that was so. I'm a blogger. I like to write in these online journals, posting about my life like its something someone cares about, and see what reactions I get to ideas, thoughts, and snippets of 'real writing'.

But sometimes I see people who are both. More writer than blogger, and I envy them a little. Not always the talent, but the honesty. That they can just put that part of themselves out there and believe that not only will people read, but will embrace them and join in the chorus that says 'you speak for me when you say that. its my experience too.'


I'm fat. Not by most people's standards, because I'm not obese, but I have a BMI that is right on that line. And worse than being fat, I'm lazy. I get up, go to work, come home, and sit. I don't eat right, don't exercise beyond what I do at work, and I just... I'm fat.

I'm coming to a point of being tired of it. Not in a resigned to my fate kind of way, but in a "I want desperately to be able to make this change and I'm scared I'll fail" kind of way.

Because I will fail. Not for lack of trying, mind you, but for lack of WILL. Not mine. His.

Its much the same as how I feel about facing this addiction. I'm resting in what He has done, but not doing anything to build on it, to ensure my foundation isn't mine, but His, and that what grows up from it bears the mark of His craftsmanship.

I'm an excellent procrastinator. I say I'll really get things moving once I move. Once I get past this date. This landmark. I live my life in future tense. WILL. Not AM. Two simple words that define the difference between my hopes and my reality.

I live a life of the mind. I am caught alone too often in my own head. I know this. I don't change it as much as would be healthy, for a plethora of what I call 'practical reasons'. But it boils down to fear. As much as I am not enslaved by fear of people knowing about my addictions, I am still a slave to fear that when people get close enough, they'll see something wretched, repulsive, and leave, never to return.

They'll see me for the fat, miserable, solitary thing I am.

Fear is a tie that binds me. Its kept me from understanding love, and joy, and all the good things God's grace has to offer. I don't love myself, can't, I wanted to say, because if I did, I'd have no real choice but to accept that God does love me, won't abandon me in my state, and I would have to move. To step out, trusting in Him for all things. Jehovah Jireh.

I would have to let him connect my head and my heart, and I don't know what's scarier, not feeling a thing, or feeling everything.

A Restoration

I wrote down a bit of a testimonial a few weeks back with regards to the women's retreat I attended. I decided to repost, and maybe reflect a little on what it really means in the long run.

For definitions sake, RP is role-playing, done in written format. Its a bit like collaborative fiction writing, with each person playing a character, or several characters, and they interact as the plot, whatever it may be, goes forward. Now, onward.

I've made no bones about the fact that I'm a Christian. Granted, I don't insert it into every conversation I've ever had, nor do I quote scripture constantly, but following Jesus informs who I am as a person. In the past few years, that influence has waned. And that's not something I'm proud of. I look at my life and I see a lot of time wasted. Not RPing. Don't think that's what I mean. I mean I've wasted the time I spend with God, the time that should be devoted to learning about Him. I go to church, I try and attend a bible study (when not in class), I teach sunday school. By virtue of all those things, I should be fine, right? Well, I'm not.

I'm sorry if this doesn't make sense. I'm trying to build myself up to admitting what I need to say here, and its frankly really difficult. Yes, these are words typed on the page, but trying to find the proper expression for a... confession if you will, just as difficult as saying a confession (I respect you Catholics who do so - I can't imagine doing it).

For about two years now I've been struggling with an addiction to pornography. There, I said it. Not so hard, right? Only, it doesn't encapsulate the despair, the anger, the distorted way I came to see myself and how it ate away at me inside. I won't argue the semantics of its morality here - suffice it to say I don't think its alright, but that's for another entry - when it draws you away from living your life, and sucks you dry of the emotion and time you can/should be giving to the people around you, its not healthy.

I went to a recovery program for six months last year on Thursday nights. It went a long way towards equipping me to face this addiction, but it didn't fix it. I knew then, same as I know now, what would fix it. Nothing less the the healing power of Jesus. I was able to confront some peripheral demons at this group, which was all a good thing, because its like the straw that breaks the camel's back, the simplest thing will suck you down again. But I was still clinging to the bulk of my addiction.

At that point, maybe two people knew about this. One was a lady from church (I told God if someone asked, I'd finally tell, and she was the one he put in my life for that), and the other was a dear friend from college whom I hadn't seen for a long time (telling someone when you can't see the look in their eyes, either pity or imagined condemnation is so much easier). I was working things out with God, facing the root of what was going on in my life, seeing the distortion for what it was, but I was still holding fast to it.

Its such a hard thing to describe, why I would hold on, but I'll try. The distorted view I had of myself, of seeing myself as only being good for this, only being able to connect to an image on the screen rather than a real person, all that false intimacy, well, its easier than real intimacy for one. For another, by defaulting to that, I didn't have to make hard decisions, and do hard things. Its a small part of why my thesis isn't done. Its a hard scary thing to me. Porn, while ugly at times, is hitting the pleasure centers in my brain, which feels good, and who doesn't want to surround themselves with things that feel good? But like any artificial high, there is a low. I'd walk away from it hating myself, hating that I wasn't strong enough to break free from it and say no.

Alright, bringing us back to present. This weekend was the women's retreat at my church. The theme? 'I Choose Joy.' Oddly enough, I didn't really want to go. I don't as a whole like what some people equate with Joy. Folks, Joy isn't Happiness. Happiness is fleeting. It depends on you and your emotions reacting to something. So I might be happy to get a certain book one day, but it won't make me happy the next time. It has to be something new to make me happy. Get what I mean? But Joy.... joy is like the lightness of being when you find God. Joy is the utter peace you have when you let go of trying to control your life and you let God guide your steps. Thats joy.

So clearly Joy wasn't something I was having as much luck with as I wanted. I'd never admit as such, but I thought that by being a Christian I had to have joy in my life somewhere. Even if I wasn't sure where. But I got gently nagged by people far wiser than me and I went.

It was a lovely time, let me just say. We sang worship music, ate good food, I got to spend time with women I normally don't talk to (not because I don't like them, but because we 'run in different circles', kind of thing), and go shopping. Very girly weekend on the whole.

Saturday af the end of the speaker's talk, she asked if anyone wanted an annointing of the Holy Spirit. This caught my attention, because I always believed that if you accepted Christ into your life, then you'd been annointed. Apparently not so. Least not in all cases. Several people were receiving prayer, and I was trying to pray for them, but I just.... couldn't. I backed off to a spot by myself, and before you knew it, I was crying. Now, you have to understand, I don't cry. Most of the time I'm physically incapable of it. I can count on one hand the number of times in the past year I've cried. This...it was more than any of them. I could feel the scream building in my throat and I bit it back because I was certain if I let it out, I would have sounded like an animal in pain. As it was, I couldn't breathe and I just wept for at least 10 minutes straight.

In my direct experience with God, I learn the most through metaphors that come to me. I don't think I come up with them, because I'm just not that good at it. I think its God. I saw two metaphors in my head during all this. One was of a pitcher pouring water into another container, and when it was poured out of the second container, instead of being clear and clean like it was when it went in, it was murky, muddied and gross.

The second image was more abstract. It was the fact that my joy was locked away in a clear box, and I could see it and understand it, but I didn't HAVE it. And both those images were distressing, but liberating. So I let it all go. I let go of my fear and my sickness that kept me clinging to my addiction. I can't begin to describe what that feels like. I was still weeping for who knows how much longer, but it was cleansing, like a load had been lifted.

And I told you all that to explain RP retirement, didn't I? Well, in the matter of addictions, RP is definitely one of them. And because its so easy to take on a different persona, and write/do things that person would do, its easy to get sucked back into this addiction if I have in my head two young healthy males for characters. You know? I miss them and the folks I RPed with already, but I was utterly convicted to change this part of my life to aid in this healing. Because it is a healing. Before there was shame, and guilt, and self-hatred. Now, there's hope. And that is HUGE for me. I'm not a particularly hopeful person by nature. I'm too pessimistic for that. But with God's annointing I have hope. I memorized Romans 12:12 - "Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction and faithful in prayer." And now, after all this time. I understand that.

Do I think I'll mess up? Maybe. I certainly don't feel the tug of war in my soul that I did. Really that might have been why I cried, because I could feel a rending of the sickness from my spirit. And now I feel surprisingly empty and light. But not hollow. Definitely not hollow.

So I did a huge cleanup of my other, more long term blog on LJ. I cleared out a lot of communities, all RP game stuff. Anything that might prove a temptation. Some of it is probably ok, but I'm drawing a hard line for myself, because I'd rather overreact than not. I want to live free and grasping at God's blessing than live captive and clinging to the chains that bind me. I'm not reading fic anymore. I don't know when I'll write fic (I deleted my fic here, so unless I archived it at Coloured Grey or in an exchange comm, its not posted. Likewise, my involvement in fanfic comms is going to be nil until a time comes when it feels....safe, I guess. I don't know when that will be, but I'm trusting this was the right thing to do.

******************

Its been a few weeks now. I'm well into 'withdrawl' if you will, and have had some problems, some moments where I feel the urge to just read something that will make me feel good, or see something, and I run. I am still scared, though. Running is still something I can do in my own strength. Facing temptation and saying NO isn't something I can do. I talked at the retreat with one of the women in my room about it, and she gave some practical advice. Get up, do something different. And for the most part, that's worked. I'm reading more now, but away from the computer. I spend less time online than I have in ages. And I don't miss it. Mostly. But the circle I built, of online friends, feels....less. And thats sad to me, because of the fact that in collaboration in writing, I found some people who appreciated me as me, not as a Godly woman, or as a great worker, or anything other than the girl who is sometimes funny, sometimes serious, can talk light or deep, and wants to be real.

So, I'm more real, I suppose. More open. I've talked to several people about what I said at the retreat, been approached and confided in someone else's struggles even - that was hard. Because I can't hardly begin to see restoration in myself, so I'm certainly not strong enough to carry anyone else, in any other way besides prayer. I'm still humbled by it all, and by what I know God is doing through this, but I'm also still shaken, not quite standing. And I want to. I want to stand for all that He has done for me and for the world. I guess that's the next step.