The Truth of a Thousand Lies

My face has been in a lot of pain lately. Seems I have a bum tooth thanks to an almost 20 year old silver filling that is shifting and allowing decay to get underneath the it and into the nerve of the tooth. The pain intensified Thursday morning and it woke me up to seeing colors at about 3am.
I went to the dentist and got it all taken care of and was commended for the care I take with my teeth, brushing, flossing, mouth wash etc. Which was odd, because I was pretty much ready to stop flossing because I blamed the flossing for my bum tooth.

On the way to the pharmacy to fill my prescription I started thinking about why I thought it was the flossing that gave me the tooth decay, because it clearly isn't. I realized with a start that when bad things happen I blame the good things for them.
I don't think about my decisions to live on a diet of solely Mt.Dew. chocolate and high sugar fruity adult beverages. I don't think about the years I didn't brush my teeth a lot and certainly never flossed. I blamed the good thing, the flossing and the good habits I'm developing now. I automatically decided that I shouldn't even bother flossing because all it does is cause the decay to happen. It didn't occur to me without a lot of thought that the flossing only brought out the hidden decay that was already there, just below the surface. Decay that would have come out eventually even without the flossing.
I do that with a whole lot of things. I used to never wash my face and I rarely had acne. When I started washing my face I broke out so badly and it was super painful. So I stopped washing my face again. Until a friend told me that I was breaking out because the face wash was bringing all of the junk hiding below the surface of my skin out to wash it away. If I would just stick with it through the pain and break outs my skin would clear back up and I wouldn't have that much acne again.
I thought of that on the way to the pharmacy too.

I thought of how working out has caused my knees to hurt, my arms to ache, my head to throb and how I almost threw up after working out that one time. It makes me want to quit. Because I blame the working out. I don't consider all of the junk I've stuffed into my mouth for 30 years. I don't think about all the lazy days spend lounging in bed drinking soda and eating chips that caused all of this weight to be stressing my joints. I blame the good thing, the good habit for the current pain.

I thought about my relational baggage. How I blame every single less than exactly how I wish they could be fella for the shortcomings of the one I really want to be with. I don't think about the lies I was told, that have become so ingrained in my heart that I don't hesitate to believe them. Ugly. Fat. Worthless. Stupid. Unlovable. Selfish. I blame the fella. I call him shallow when that isn't really true. I seek out his shortcomings and orchestrate his downfall in my mind before he finds the truth of a thousand lies I've engraved on my own heart. I blame the fella for the intentional bad choices I've made in relationships, for the repercussions of such things.

I blame the good things to avoid dealing with the bad.
I thought this morning as I lay in bed nursing the left side of my wounded mouth about how surprising it is to me that I still believe these lies. The liars have been revealed. The truth is out, they were full of shit. But still, years have passed with me still believing their lies. I believe the slithery lies whispered in my ear in the dead of night.
Don't even try, you will fail.
Don't speak up about these things, no one wants to hear them.
It's his fault, not yours
You don't deserve this
They're better off without you

But I'm realizing that this is all the decay. The decay of a thousand lies told to me by the enemy and by people that should have loved me. The decay has always been there. It's always been just below the surface. Talking about it hasn't caused the decay it's only healing it. But still I dodge, deflect and demur. I blame the talking about it, the being open about it as what causes this pain.
So today I'm trying to remember, that the pain, the junk, the decay is not caused by the good thing. It's not caused by the moving forward, moving on, airing of the hidden lies. The pain is a sign that it's working. That the infection is being attacked and healed and that one day it will be as it should be. I'm holding on to the promise that mercy will come and wash all of this away. That in the end this interim pain and struggle won't matter anymore because it's the good that will come from it that matters.

I tried so hard
In spite of the way you were mocking me
Acting like I was part of your property
Remembering all the times you fought with me
I'm surprised

It got so far
Things aren't the way they were before
You wouldn't even recognize me anymore
Not that you knew me back then
But it all comes back to me in the end

You kept everything inside
And even though I tried, it all fell apart
What it meant to me will eventually be
A memory of a time when

I tried so hard and got so far
But in the end it doesn't even matter
I had to fall to lose it all

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