The adventures of recovery, part 1

I sort of feel a bit like John Cusack in America's Sweethearts, how he just goes around saying "I'm grateful for this tree. I'm grateful for this bush." But while he is forcing it to try and bring a bit of calm to his life, I'm not.

I know it's a bit of an emotional high, to realize in a matter of weeks that A) I've been seriously depressed and somehow didn't realize; B) to make a decision about your future that excites you, and stirs you from that apathy, and C) to finally have someone PUSH you on the things you need pushed on.

There's a lady at my church who cornered me two Sunday's ago, and basically started asking me the hard questions. How was I doing with the addiction. How was my relationship with God. What could she do to help. The last was what really got me resisting. I'm very independent person, not always because I don't like people telling me what to do. I love structure and order. If I have rules to follow, I'm good. But I'm also very good at getting out from under someone's gaze, when it comes to my problems. I don't like sharing my problems. Never have. I'm much more willing/interested in being there for a person in their problems than my own. Which, now that I think about it, is a bit contradictory, as I'm an introvert who recharges in solitude. But I digress.

I'm not good at letting people into my problems because I don't always trust they'll see it through, the implied committment my sharing with them entails. And I've gotten burned on this before. Not just with problems, but with life in general. Friends giving me a raincheck. People forgetting to include me. A lot of it isn't deliberately hurtful stuff, and if the people involved knew how personally I took it, they'd be horrified. But I'd be horrified if they knew, because it means that A) I'm sharing my problems, and B) I'm letting them get close enough to hurt me.

I'm the kind of person who can wait in a line somewhere, and on a good day, talk to half the people in the line as we wait. I nearly always talk to the people next to me on planes. I just have one of those faces, i guess. So its not that I'm not good with people, per se, but socially, I'm awkward. It takes a long time for me to really warm to a person, especially if I only see them once or twice a week. I mean, there's people I go to church with for several years now who know less about me than my coworker of a few months. It sort of takes repeated, prolonged exposure to a person to get me warmed to them. And to know they're there gets past the trust thing. Sort of like a little kid. You know, if they don't see it, it doesn't exist for them, hence peek a boo is so effective, and why the littlier ones cry when mom or dad is gone. Because they're not just gone, they're GONE, forever in the baby's mind. I probably have a holdover of that going on in how I relate to people. Making friends at girl scout camps, on vacations, etc, and while we always promised to write, we never did.

And as an adult I know it's a two way street. I could have written. But the needy part of me really wants the other person to take the first step, and by doing so, validate me. Make me matter.

And I said all that to basically explain that I walked away from that conversation on Sunday realizing things had to change. And in the past, I'd just pray they would change, and be disappointed that they wouldn't, feel like it was God's answer for me. But I thought about it enough to get her email address, and I emailed her that week, and after a bit of back and forth, I was convinced to go to Celebrate Recovery.

So I went last Friday. And I gotta say, I do NOT like crowds. Of any kind. LeakyCon is going to test my capacity for being around lots of people. I've lived in CA for nearly 5 years, not once have I gone to ComicCon. Because of the crowds. Same with concerts, sports. Part of it is a sort of claustrophobia thing, but the other part? Goes back to that socialization thing. I'm surrounded by STRANGERS, and do I trust them with my physical proximity? Heck no. So now I'm going to a group I have to trust with the overwhelming number of people, but also eventually with my emotional healing. OY.

But I'm working past that. I'm taking the step and believing that God will change me. That I'll not only let him, I'll embrace it. I've been so passive in the past, so apathetic to what Jesus wants to do for me, that he can't do anything, because I was doing nothing. It's like the saying. "If you want to walk on water, first you have to get out of the boat." I was clinging to the boat like nobody's business, but now I think I've loosened my grip a bit. Letting go and letting God.

I'm tired and I should be going to bed, but this evening, talking to the women of my church and bible study really just blessed me. We're in 2 Corinthians, and in Chapter 2 it talks about God's triumphal procession. How we're not going just TO victory, but FROM victory. Thinking of life in those terms, that I've already won, that I'm starting off from something good, it's a great feeling. And a great truth I'm really wanting to keep in mind, and in heart.

Another spot caught me in Chapter 3. God writing not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts. That if God can write on stone (admittedly difficult in those days), then writing on my heart is comparatively easy. There was a lot of good stuff, and I took notes, but I think my exhaustion is catching up with me.

I'm going to try and really write this sort of thing down when it happens, so let this be the first of many posts to that effect.