Hot Mess: A Reflection

I’m sitting down with a quad shot Cubano that I made with a fifteen dollar espresso machine. It has been years since I pulled my own shots. When I was 15-years-old, I landed my first real job at a coffee shop as a barista. At that time, the minimum wage was just over three dollars an hour, but the work was incredibly relaxing. The smells, the sounds, and the art involved with making a really good cup of coffee was soothing to me. Even at that age, I was struggling with moderate to severe depression. They took me to see a kinesiologist. The kinesiologist told my mom that I was “allergic” to sugar and that is why I was depressed. So after that, I wasn’t allowed to indulge in culinary comfort. I never noticed an improvement in my depression in that year I abstained from all sugars.  I visited a medical doctor the next year when I became suicidal, a Christian man, he diagnosed me with depression and compassionately prayed with me for God’s help and healing. He also went over my diet with me (I was anorexic and having to cut sugar out of my diet served as a dramatic weight loss aid), exercise routine, referred me to a counselor and prescribed Lexapro. It worked. Over the years, I was able to wean off medication. When Ben and I started dating, he insisted I put on some weight because I wasn’t healthy. I love him, so I did. After we were married, due to our work schedules, Ben prepared most of our meals and kept a close eye on my eating habits. I’ve had a couple relapses over the years, but through Christ and with the help of Ben and friends, I’ve overcome my fears of being “fat” and have been working on better eating habits ever since.

My foodie motto is all things in moderation. I stay active (having two little boys helps a lot with that), and I work to keep accountability in my life.

This month has been incredibly challenging. I don’t think I’ve ever cried as much as I have in the last couple weeks.  Life is always a little crazy here; four kids, an EMT husband who also goes to school, having recently moved into a fixer upper, adopting another dog … you get used to the chaos, though. You can adjust to nearly anything. When I was pregnant and Hyperemetic, I forgot what it felt like not to be sick, not to have constant migraines, not to ache all over from malnutrition and bedrest. I think it is a blessing,  a coping mechanism — until it isn’t. This month my circumstantial stressors increased dramatically and I got discouraged. I stayed in God’s Word, but my prayer life dissolved from organized formality into constant pleading, “God, help me.”

I started seeing a new counselor. She confirmed my diagnosis of PTSD and added BPD symptoms. That first hour in her office, I cried the whole stinkin’ time. At the close of the hour, she thanked me for sharing my story with her. “We have a lot to work through” she said. In a later visit, she confessed that she thought many of my unhealthy habits were developed as a kid to help me cope with what was going on. It worked, more or less, at the time, but my life has since changed and those old habits are more hurtful than helpful, so my counselor is helping me learn how to change. I am on a lot of medications. I have two different prescriptions for anxiety and depression, one for hormone imbalance, one for migraines, and two more for sleep. The thing about medications, though, is that for mental health, they don’t fix the problem — they only turn down the volume so you have a chance of working on the real problem. My counselor is giving me assignments in reading, writing, calming techniques and mental wellness aka grace. I don’t buy into everything she says, not all of it is Bible based, but she does seem to be helping me. I’m working overtime to find Christian books on the subjects she tells me I need to work on. It is good.

We are almost into October now. In less than a month, I’ll be thirty-two. There is much work to be done as we identify harmful habits and I’m continually convicted of sin in my life. I’m one of those people who has incredibly low self-esteem and previously, I “dealt” with my self-loathing inclinations by focusing my energy on others. Learning to focus on myself in healthy ways is difficult. There is so much good work at my fingertips to keep busy with. People need help: my sister, other hyperemetic mothers,  my kids, my friends and neighbors, my church family — I love it when I’m useful. But I can’t truly help others unless I am confident in who I am in Christ and that is a Bible based philosophy. There was a huge dust up at one of my former churches this month. Accusations were thrown around, people on both sides got needlessly defensive and retailiated/reacted verbally. It was ugly. I hate it when Christians infight — especially publicly. There are only two teams: Believers and Unbelievers. We are all sinners and we will all mess up from time to time, but taking a swing at your own team is never helpful and doing so on the Internet is one of the more foolish things I’ve ever encountered. There is a Biblical protocol for the inevitable differences and injustices between the Children of God and it doesn’t include self-righteously talking at or about each other. While I am attending a different church now (we left on good terms when we moved out of town), I have friends on both sides of the argument and felt I needed to say something. So I did. I had some people thank me and some people get upset with me. While I don’t regret what I said, I can’t help but think I’d probably been more helpful if I wasn’t struggling with severe anxiety and insecurity. If I was more confident in who I am in Christ, wouldn’t I be able to hear the Holy Spirit more clearly? Wouldn’t I be of better use to further the Kingdom of God? But then I’m reminded that perfection is not what God’s after in His people — that would be glorification of ourselves. Our purpose is to glorify God, to show how wonderful He is. In the wonderful devotional, Reflecting the Glory,  NT Wright says

“The glory of Christ is not revealed in spectacular show of success, in people who get everything right all the time. People like that, as we know, can sometimes be a pain in the neck. The church reveals the glory of Christ through suffering and shame as much as through what the world counts as success.”

I’m a hot mess, but God has met me in my messiness.  He picked me up, He restored my broken spirit into fellowship with Him. He took the weight of my transgressions along with the weight I bore of the transgressions others committed against me, “Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28 NLT) His grace and my redemption have nothing to do with me apart from God’s mercy. He saved me because He both loves and delights in me, not only in the person I am becoming, but the person I am right now: His daughter, His hot mess. I’m forced to remember that He is in control of everything, including my personal struggles.  As I continue to seek Him and in so doing, pursue His likeness, I can rest assured that I am right where God wants me to be. I am humbled by my weakness and in awe of His strength. I can stand with my head high, not because I have achieved perfection, but because I am loved so much that He achieved perfection for me. 

“You see, the verdict is in. And now I perform on the basis of the verdict. Because He loves me and He accepts me, I do not have to do things just to build up my résumé. I do not have to do things to make me look good. I can do things for the joy of doing them. I can help people to help people – not so I can feel better about myself, not so I can fill up the emptiness.” -Timothy Keller in the Freedom of Self Forgetfulness