The thing about the New Year I find so interesting is the way you can look back at the big picture of your previous year and occasionally see patterns. It's like this year the dissonance between all of my old thoughts, patterns, lies and behavior collided violently with the new creation I am through Jesus and the new life he has been calling me to live. It's been a year of uncovering what I know to be true and the difference between what I know the lies that I react to in my everyday walking around life. It's been exhausting, refining and often very hard. But I'm finding hope for the new year and trying to move forward holding onto that even if I can't quite see the end of this struggle yet.
See, the reason I don't make resolutions is that I suck at them. I did barely any of these for longer than 3 months.
Although I did pretty good on the no drive through thing for awhile. But sliding back in was my downfall. It's a good one to revisit I think.
I started realizing, and really working through the fact that getting healthy was about so much more than losing weight and wearing smaller pants.
I lost some weight, I gained some weight, I worked hard at relationships and I completely ran away from some relationships. I started realizing just how intensely paranoid I was about any and all relationships and to be honest just paranoid in general.
I flirted with an angry and cynical Bethany that I knew I didn't want to be. Sometimes, I flirt with her still.
I began what I can see now was the slow roll down the hill into what is now an intense withdrawal from relationships and human interaction of any kind. I had stopped feeling safe months before I could put the words to what I was feeling. I've felt for many months as if I've been unraveling slowly from the inside out.
I hid in the halls of Hogwarts and slowly worked on plowing through 52 books this year, I didn't hit 52, but I got close. I learned that pretending to be ok doesn't make it true and often you end up more damaged than if you would have let it all hang out in the first place.
Oh, and I had a FLOOD in my HOUSE. I honestly feel like that happened about a million years ago but really it was less than a year which is INSANE to me. But the good news is I got new flooring and bathrooms and all sorts of junk out of it for my deductible and a lot of exhaustion on my (and ok, Pete's) part. The flood sort of forced me to ask people for help, which if you know me isn't one of my spiritual gifts, like at all.
(I think I might make it my One Word for 2011 actually)
I started recording one (or several) good things a day and posting a Good Thing month in review post, which has been a lot of fun. As someone that can often see only the darkness in front of her this has been like fresh air.
I turned 31, which felt weirder than 30 and more internally climactic for me than 30 ever did.
For my birthday Pete FINALLY made the move to Cincinnati and into his basement "apartment' in my house!
It's sometimes weird living with a boy (and I use living with in the strictest platonic roommate way possible) but mostly hilarious and fun and reassuring because if there is a freak accident and I split my head open I won't languish slowly bleeding to death for 3 days...or you know...something like that.
I started to uncover exactly how deep my issues with relational abandonment ran and just how damn broken that made me feel and act. I learned again and again that even when I can't hear or see him God still moves. I started to try to believe that there are people that will still be there when I need them to be if I can only realize they might not be the people I thought they would be.
I learned that sometimes my words weren't adequate, or even more lately I don't have the words in me to share. But other people do, so I just use their words while my heart tries to recover.
It was a good, hard year. I'm hopeful about some decisions I've made for 2011 and hopeful for how I can start to repair the damage I've done to myself and the valid damage that others have done to me this year. Because I'm just over it already and I want it to be better. I want to be better.
No comments:
Post a Comment