Reckless Redemption: A Check In

A Check in. My heart is full one day and the next it feels like it’s searching for something to grasp on to. Almost like I have to beg people to see my heart, to see me right where I am, to stop trying to change me, almost like I have to be something different to make other people happy. It’s like people only see all the steps back that they perceive and the credit for all the steps forward is completely invisible; all lies from the enemy. 

A check in. This last week, bluntly, has been exhausting, but putting on a brave and happy face has become second nature and like all the kids say, we are still growing and showing. I can’t be the person everyone needs me to be, and I’m learning that I need to do more for me than I do for others, especially in this season of my life. I’m meeting people, saying goodbye to others and everything around me is pure chaos, but my one constant still, through all of this, is God. How rad. 

A check in. Walking in recovery is hard, especially when it’s hard to get yourself to understand what got you there in the first place, but for me, it hit me like a freight train yesterday. 

I had to use one of my extra visa picture because we are applying for Uzbekistan visas this week. I use to take one look at it and feel physically sick. I kept the photos tucked away in a pocket I rarely found myself entering. Every time I had it in my hand I couldn’t help but be triggered; every single time. The lies would flood back into my mind; how was that girl ever loved? How did she ever find happiness and joy in her everyday? How did I ever possibly get myself to that point in my life? It made recovery feel impossible when I gazed upon that photo.

That photo was taken eight months and 70 pounds ago. To sit here and try to explain how the inside of my brain works would be an impossible feat, I can’t sit here at the kitchen table and fly my fingers across the pad in a sorry attempt to grasp the reality everyone is so desperate to understand, because I hardly understand it myself. I don’t understand why a photo of me makes me sick, I don’t understand why recovery has made me more sick than when I was making myself sick, and I don’t understand why it feels as though God is taking a back seat on this one, but still in the back of my mind always knowing He’s still in the car with me. A check in, filled with hardships, a check in filled with little evidence that I am making progress, a check in that is filled with so much hope, a check in to Papa, because He truly knows where my heart is, and He truly knows what I long for most in this broken world. l don’t have to beg Him to see my heart, to see me right where I am, to stop trying to change me, I don’t have to be something different to make Him happy. He doesn’t only see all the steps back, He gives me credit for all the steps forward that are not invisible. And that is redemption. 

Knowing that He sees me, truly believing that and not totally losing my grip on reality, is redemption. The fact that I wrote the fourth paragraph of this piece in the past tense the first go around is redemption. In the midst of this writing episode I read what I had finished to my sweet friend Marianna. I cut off in the middle of a sentence, and looked at her and said I’m not sure where to go from here, I’m not sure if this will end in redemption, I’m not sure where this is even going. She looked at me so tenderly and softly spoke words that basically summed up to please don’t stop. 

Papa has a divine way of reminding me how enough I was and how enough I still am, that each version of myself is still authentic, it’s still love able, and that is redemption.

Redemption doesn’t come all at once, it comes in waves. Waves of unpredictable chaos, waves of emotion and wondering. Redemption in the small and big things, redemption in the way I view love, the love of myself, the love God has for me, and the love the people around me have for me, even if I perceive it incorrectly. Redemption in finally realizing I never let God love me. 

A check in, a raw and honest check in; I am struggling. But I am struggling in the divine chaos of God’s reckless love for me, I am struggling in good ways, because my intimacy with my King is deep and powerful. Struggling doesn’t mean I’m not making progress, it doesn’t mean I’m not moving forward, my struggling is filled with redemption, and I am not ashamed of that any longer, because shame has no hold on me or my life. 

The two photos of me, they are both beautiful. The girl on the left is as loved as the girl on the right, the girl on the left was still as rad, funny and worthy as the girl on the right. The vulnerability bleeding from my fingertips is from the deepest parts of my soul that I never thought I would have the strength to divulge to this world, and that my friends, is my redemption.