Live Everything

“I want to beg you as much as you can, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. Perhaps you do carry within yourself the possibility of shaping and forming as a particularly happy and pure way of living; train yourself to it – but take whatever comes with great trust, and if only it comes out of your own will, out of some need of your innermost being, take it upon yourself and hate nothing.”

-Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

**warning: ugly personal shit here**

I didn’t intend to write this out here.  But I need to put this somewhere outside of myself.  I knew the other blog wasn’t a safe place yet.  Not because I didn’t want people to know, but I didn’t want them to carry this.  Not yet, anyway.

A couple weeks ago I was talking to a friend, and mentioned how fed-up I was with my weight.  She turned to me and pretty much told me I sounded like a broken record, and I’d been saying the same thing since I’d known her.  She asked what needed to happen to make a change.  I told her that if I’d know the answer, I’d be doing it.

Lots of little things have happened lately.  I didn’t recognize the sound, but it might have been the tumblers dropping into place in a combination lock.  You don’t always realize that you’re close to the lock opening until it just springs open.  I don’t think I’m there… but I think I’m closer.

I’ve been pretty open about my past history of sexual abuse from my childhood.  I’ve talked to many people about it in different situations.  It felt safe to talk about for some reason.  I really don’t know why. Today I read a blog on a different topic, but something that a commenter said really annoyed me.  I wasn’t sure why, so I decided to sit with it for a while.  And in that space, came a memory that has only come to mind a couple times.

When I was in grade 8, on a two week student exchange to Quebec, I was sexually assaulted by an 18 year old guy.  It was in a pool.  He told me as he was doing it, that it was his birthday gift to himself.  The worst part was that we were not alone in the pool.  There were three other guys there, other exchange students from Ontario… who I thought were my friends.  Despite my cries for help, they stayed in the pool and watched, and laughed.   They apologized later, saying that they thought I was only joking around.

I think remembering this, and taking some time with it, is going to help me find some answers.  It was after this incident that I started having issues with my weight.  As an adult, I have always prided myself on being strong physically.  I think it is because I couldn’t fight back… couldn’t get away from his grip, and I don’t want to ever be in that position again.  That also seems to be the time I began to despise my feminine figure.

No wonder I have trust issues, and always leave a back door open in relationships.

Lots of shit tied up in this.

God, I hate this.

“If you find yourself saying, ‘I can handle it,’ ‘I can stop it,’ or ‘I can do without it,’ try to perform a very simple test: simply go ahead and stop it. Do without it. If you are successful, there is no addiction. If you cannot stop, no amount of rationalization will change the fact that an addiction exists.”
-from Addiction and Grace, by Gerald G. May, M.D.
via marthamartha

Peterson quote I don’t want to forget…

“Hope does not mean doing nothing.  It is not fatalistic resignation.  It means going about out assigned tasks, confident that Gd will provide the meaning and the conclusions.  It is not compelled to work away at keeping up appearances with a bogus spirituality.  It is the opposite of desperate and panicky manipulations, of scurrying and worrying.

 And hope is not dreaming.  It is not spinning an illusion or fantasy to protect us from our boredom or our pain.  It means a confident, alert expectation that God will do what he said he will do.  It is imagination put in the harness of faith.  It is a willingness to let God do it his way and in his time.  It is the opposite of making plans that we demand that God put into effect, telling him both how and when to do it.  That is not hoping in God but bullying God.  “I pray to God–my life a prayer–and wait for what he’ll say and do.  My life’s on the line before God my Lord, waiting and watching till morning, waiting and watching till morning”‘.

-Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction

Confession

I’ve been turning things over in my mind. First one way, then another. I turn my face for a while, wondering if it will all go away, if it will look different when I turn back.

When I first started this bit of the journey, it was to explore healing with Lori. She suggested reading through a 12 step book she’d worked through. I figured it wouldn’t hurt.

When Wicked Step Sisters came about, I didn’t know what it would look like, or what form it would take. But I was along for the ride, and decided to see what happened.

And not surprisingly, since we had entered the journey through the door of 12 steps, the conversation became focused quickly on addiction issues. And the last day or so, I’ve felt a little lost, and wondered if I really belonged. I realize that I have many issues, but I rather doubted that addiction was one of them.

And that question was running around my head at work today, as I was bouncing from one fire to another as I worked as trouble-shooter for the office. That question was running through my mind as I took a break, and walked in the kitchen and spied a tub of icing left over from a party, and wondered to myself if anyone would mind if I ate the tub of icing.

…and wondered if anyone would mind if I ate a tub of icing…

Hello. My name is Super Hero Soul. I am a sugar addict.

“There must be more than this, O breath of God come breathe within.
There must be more than this, Spirit of God we wait for you.”  -Tim Hughes

I wonder sometimes.

I wonder if cultivating contentment means to kill anticipation.

There must be more than this.  I’ve thought this a thousand times over the last few years.   Feels like I keep failing kindergarden, while those around me find their stride and move on.

Spirit, be my tutor.

Teach me how to love.

Teach me how to love You well.

Just testing the waters here

I am currently swilling Buckley’s and sucking Sucrets.