Ow! My Eye!

It used to weird me out sitting in church having sexual thoughts about people. I mean… good little Christian girls aren’t supposed to think about stuff like that during church. We’re supposed to be thinking of good little Christian stuff. It has taken me years to get my thought life under control enough so that it doesn’t wander into murky places when I’m supposed to be worshiping God. So you can imagine my surprise on Sunday when, with my head bowed and my eyes  closed, I listened to the pastor pray and the gnarliest thought imaginable surfaced in gory technicolor!

Dead bodies!

Correction: one dead body totally desecrated and very vivid in the detail.

No, I wasn’t having an apocalyptic vision.  Out of all of the memories cataloged in my brain, my mind opted to settle on scenes from the tv show I’d watched the night before: “Bones”. The CSI wanna-be that isn’t quite a cop drama that prides itself on coming up with really twisted ways to maim and mutilate bodies each week. My guilty pleasure (besides having a sexual addiction) is that I like to watch tv episodes on my laptop. Lots of tv episodes. When you’re alone in a bubble without people to talk to you have to find an outlet and tv doesn’t add calories. I use to lean towards stuff like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and it’s spinoff “Angel” then I moved towards all of the Law & Order type shows until I realized that they were heavily influencing my nightmares. Now, I watch stuff that I deem “harmless entertainment.”

At least I did until Sunday when images graphic enough to make me want to hurl would not get out of my head no matter how much I tried. It was disturbing. What used to be harmless entertainment is no longer harmless for me. Now this is NOT some “thou shalt not watch tv” message. I’m not going to talk about the evils of tv because I happen to like tv. Watch whatever you want. It’s your mind. I’m talking about my mind and what I learned about it on Sunday.  As I listened, my pastor spoke out of Psalms 51 about needing to have an inner heart change before we can experience an exterior behavioral change. I felt like I’d been given a poke….in the eye… hence, the “Ow! My eye!”

My mind wouldn’t have been able to call up those images if I hadn’t taken such pleasure in putting them in there in the first place. Which made me feel sick because watching the total desecration of another human’s body shouldn’t be entertaining to me. God’s been telling me to put “people first.” How can I do that when I will readily devalue them in the name of “entertainment?” I’ve hesitated to write this post because… I like me my tv and I sense a change in the wind that I might not want to readily follow. Just as I had to stop inhaling porn like it was a new flavor of Ben and Jerry’s, I’m going to have to change what I put into my mind by way of my eyes because my mind affects my heart and my heart affects how I live. And I want to live by putting people first.

Six days ago I decided to make myself accountable for 40 days to somebody else regarding my sexual addiction. It’s not some “purity pledge” where I pinky swear not to do anything immoral for 40 days. It means I’m willing to humble out and confess if I actually do anything immoral during the 40 days. That person will hold me accountable and pray for me. If 2011 was about getting to the roots of my more dysfunctional behaviors, 2012 is going to be about dealing with the fruit. I’ve been saying that I want God to deal with the thoughts and the desires that fuel my addictive behaviors because the actions are just the tip of the iceberg.

Evidently, this can’t be true for just one isolated area of my life. I just want God to deal with the sex issues, so I could feel good about myself. He wants to deal with my heart. I want him to… really… I do, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to ditch all my favorite shows in favor of Christian television. I’m not. I just need to start putting people first even in what I watch because it affects me and how I relate to people. I did get rid of “Bones” of my tracking list on Sidereel.com and I will try to ease up on really violent viewing. I even told God that I’m willing to adjust my viewing pleasures as long as he gives me something else to fill the void, because I know from past experience that I, like nature, abhor a vacuum. If there’s an empty space of time I will fill it and I won’t always fill it with good things.

Somebody once said you can’t overcome that which you are willing to tolerate. For too long I’ve been content to see people as objects of entertainment. And since you can’t form healthy relationships with objects, things have got to change. What that’s going to look like… I have absolutely no idea. I’m sure that in his timing Jesus will tell me…but for now, being mindful of what I put into my head is a good place to start.

Bipolar and Friends

My title sounds like a weird new clothing store for people who can’t make up their minds.

There’s a reason for my “Bipolar and…” titles. While I no longer actively struggle with symptoms of my disorder, it has colored every area of my life. Now that I’m symptom free, it’s like I get to see the before and after pictures of my life because it has been so dramatically different since my hysterectomy. Now I am actively able to participate in healthy relationships. This is not to say that I didn’t have relationships before, they just weren’t too way streets where I was able to give as much as I took.

Before I was diagnosed with Bipolar, I was the human equivalent of a black hole. Y’know the kind of friend I’m talking about. People would get too close to  all of my drama and get sucked in and then wonder where they went. When I was on the suicidal Ferris wheel that was college, I had these friends who knew about my depression and kept trying to help me. What they didn’t know was that I had Bipolar and what they mistook as me getting “better” was actually me being manic. The resulting downswing into depression made them feel like they’d failed and they couldn’t deal with me or my depression anymore. There was one friend who stuck with me all the way through college. She even showed up once when I’d tried to take an overdose. She was my lifeline. We stayed friends for over 20 years until the co-dependent nature of our friendship no longer worked for me. As much as I loved her, I had to admit that our relationship wasn’t healthy and I let her go. Or rather, I let her let me go.

I am not an easy person to be friends with. I don’t think anybody with a mental illness is “easy” to be friends with, but it doesn’t mean that relationships are out of the question either. It just takes people who are willing to care even when they don’t understand. People who can look behind the mask because they aren’t afraid of what they’ll see. People who have issues of their own and have learned how to cope, because it takes another person who knows struggle to even vaguely understand what the struggle against mental illness can mean. Of course, any friendship could benefit from at least one of the participants being like this whether or not the other person struggles with a mental illness or just normal neurotic human behavior.

The other night a friend came over to talk with me. We were going to catch up because it’s been a while. The subject of my counseling came up and it was like the can of worms and the bandaid were both ripped open at the same time. I felt so much raw emotion. Tears hadn’t been on my agenda for the evening, but as I talked to her she drew me out the way that only a real friend can. She and I have always been able to just understand each other. Few of my friends really understand me. They like… some of them even love me… but few can claim to actually understand me. In talking to her I realized just how deep my fear of this counseling goes.

The book that I’d started reading to prepare for it was doing more than just “mashing” a few buttons. It was getting so deep under my skin that it hurt. I have hit an awful impasse: I do not believe the major premise of the book. In  a nutshell? They insist that because of the commandment that tells us to “honor our mother and father” all of my drama stems from the fact that I have dishonored them by resenting things they did to me. Doesn’t matter what they might have done to me to create my sexual addiction or all my fears and other hangups. What matters most is my sinful response to whatever it is that they did or didn’t do. I sinned in my response to them, so what I’m experiencing now is a reaping of my own sin. My dad tried to kill me when I was a small child. Evidently it’s my fault that this messed me up. My sexual addiction is also my fault according to this author. The actions of other people don’t matter. It’s all on me.

Every time I have tried to get to the roots of my sexual addiction the bottom has fallen out of my world. I have fallen into depressions so deep I didn’t think there was an end. Actually, I did think there was an end. I thought the only way to end my free-fall into madness was to kill myself. It is by the grace of God that I am not dead. I used to beg God to free me of my Bipolar and from the sexual addiction. And the taunting voices that used to come back at me in my own mind were horrible:

“God’s not going to help you!”
“See! You prayed and he’s still not changing you!”
“He CAN change you… but WILL he??”
“What kind of Christian ARE you to struggle with this?”
“You can’t live the rest of your life like this. You might as well kill yourself.”

Even though I was surrounded by people every day as  a teacher… very few people knew what I struggled with as far as the  Bipolar. There were even fewer people who knew about the sexual addiction. I was rather close mouthed back then. Now I talk about it because my life depends on it. Silence was dangerous. How can people support me in prayer if they don’t really know what my needs are? This is not to say that I run around airing my business indiscriminately. Despite the fact that I’m pretty transparent in this blog, I’m pretty introverted around real live people. The few people that I let get close enough to me have earned my trust. I learned a LONG time ago that not everybody can be trusted with who I really am. People mean well, but well meaning people can ignorantly cause a lot of damage.

In the end, my friend helped me realize that I’m afraid that this counseling is going to mash a whole bunch of buttons and I’m going to nosedive into an endless pit of depression. Living alone has it’s benefits… and I love living alone, but what if I do spin-out because of this counseling? I could OD and nobody would even know for days. And before any of my friends reading this get all nervous: I am not suicidal and I do not want to die. But at this particular moment in time, I do not want to do this counseling either. How can God point me in the direction of something that seems so dangerous for my mental health? It wasn’t my idea to do the counseling, but I trust the person who suggested I do it. If I need to go through this counseling in order to be set free from my addiction, then no matter how many of my buttons are getting mashed, I have to do it. I didn’t think God would ever heal me of my Bipolar, but he used a hysterectomy to free me from overt symptoms. He might be planning to set me free now and maybe there is no need to fear depression. Besides, the biggest difference between now  and every single one of those other times that I tried to get to the “roots” of my addiction and my depression, I was alone. I had friends… but I wouldn’t let them in. I didn’t want them to see the “real” me.

This time it could be different. The “real” me is tired of hiding from what people might think. I let this one friend in. It’s time to let others in. It’s also time to talk about this process because I know that I’m not the only Christian woman going through something like this. And if I don’t want to talk about it, they probably don’t either.

I was with another friend today. I haven’t known him long, but felt like I could let him in. I told him about the time I did the cardboard testimony at church. He was surprised that I could have gotten up and actually done that given my testimony. I could do it because I knew that nobody in my church would judge me. I knew that my friends there would love me no matter what messy past was scribbled on my sign. I know that my real friends are going to read this and pray. Tonight I post because I’m really thankful for the friends I’ve had. I’m thankful for the ones who were there before I was diagnosed. I’m thankful for the ones who were there when I struggled to deal with the meds and the side effects. I’m thankful for the ones I’ve had in the last five years when I began to see my need for deeper healing. But I’m most thankful for the friends  that I have now, because they help the “real” me be me.

Sometimes

Sometimes,
and now is such a time,
I don’t know how to express
everything that is on my heart and mind.

Ok. Anything.
I don’t know how to express
ANYTHING that has been on my heart and mind.
So as the minutes and hours and days have ticked by-
I’ve said nothing.
I’ve blogged nothing.
And backed myself into a corner of silence.
The walls of the bubble have definitely gone back up.
And I am alone.

Sometimes I feel like nobody would understand,
so I say nothing.
I let people think everything is ok…
and now is such a time.
People won’t understand.
How could they?
when I don’t.
Very little seems to make sense to me right now.

And yet, I know that I am exactly where God
intends me to be.
Dealing with what he’s decided I need –
even if it means battling fears, disappointments,
and feelings of rejection.
All of this has been necessary.

Other times,
and now is not such a time,
I handled such things with depression
isolation
and suicidal thoughts.
Those time are gone.

I might not like what I’m feeling right now.
Easy answers might not be anywhere in sight–
but the air in the bubble is not so oppressive
and the road ahead of me does not seem so dark.
Death has not crossed my mind,
because I
want to live.
Last night I looked at all the things that are
overwhelming me
and I could actually see that I needed to
thank God for them
instead of complain.
He’s sending these things my way for my
good...
Even if I can’t understand.

I felt better after I realized that.
No, “realized”  isn’t the right word.
BELIEVED.
I felt better after I believed that.

So even while I don’t have the words to express
all that is going on.
I had the words to give thanks for all of it last night.
And
SOMETIMES
giving thanks makes all the difference.

The Divine Dentist

Post: The Dentist Chair

Date: December 17, 2005

Twelve years ago I sat in a dentist chair waiting to get my impacted wisdom teeth removed. I’d been through a lot of emotional and physical trials and I had nothing but my faith in myself and my own inner strength to fall back on. I’d managed to get through five years at UC Berkeley as a Rhetoric major suffering through unrelenting depression and suicidal episodes. Moving to Maui seemed like the perfect way to heal. I would move to paradise and do all the “inner healing work” to move my inner child further along the path of enlightenment. I was all about self-actualization. I just knew that someday I’d reach to top of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs pyramid and would somehow be spiritually and emotionally evolved.

How that path led me to a dentist’s chair on Maui is obvious to me now, but at the time I felt like I’d taken some cosmically… horribly… wrong detour. I had to have two separate surgeries for my wisdom teeth, so the details of the first surgery bleed and ooze into the memories of the second one. The details happened… to me… in gory Technicolor… but they get fuzzier and fuzzier the more time passes.

One of my wisdom teeth was abscessed and horribly infected. The dentist said it had to go ASAP. Fine, if you have dental insurance. Not so fine for me since I didn’t have insurance, didn’t have a job, and didn’t have any money either. I was one step closer to my other worst nightmare: unemployed, depressed, and facing the prospect of living on the street. My faith in myself was taking some direct hits. I was getting to a point where I didn’t have faith in anybody or anything, let alone myself.

Sitting in that dentist’s chair, it was hard not to think of the pain to come. The oral surgeon that I’d been referred to agreed to do the surgery on a payment plan, but he’d only do it under a local anesthetic. This after telling me that he’d never seen teeth so badly impacted in his 25+ years as an oral surgeon. He went on to tell me that if he had to line up 20 people and say which of them would have the most pain as a result of the surgery… he said that he’d have to pick me. And this was supposed to inspire confidence HOW????

He’d never seen teeth that far down into the jaw, yet he wasn’t going to knock me out with happy gas to get to them??? Sadist. I sat in the chair crying. I couldn’t feel the tears rolling down my numbed up cheeks, but I knew that they were. I looked into the overhead light and wished, for all the world, that I was dead and going to Heaven. I felt like I was in hell though. I could hear everything; the drilling, the popping, and the cracking… As he yanked and drilled through my jaw bone, it felt like I was in hell, so that must’ve made him Satan.

All of this was happening to a woman who was already deathly afraid of dentists. The sad part is… he only took out one of the teeth; the one that was the biggest threat to me. Knowing that I’d eventually have to go back for another surgery terrified me. As I sat in that chair, crying, I don’t think I’ve ever felt so hopeless. Hoping in myself hadn’t helped me. Thoughts of self-actualization hadn’t comforted me as he drilled and hurt me. And yet now, I know that I needed to be in that chair. If I’d avoided the surgery the abscess would have gone septic. I would have been poisoned by something in my own body that didn’t belong. As painful as that procedure was, I needed to submit to it and to the wisdom of the dentist performing the surgery.

Now, twelve years later, there’s something in my spiritual life that has to go. It’s becoming septic and the only way to get it out is an aggressive surgery that I can’t sleep through. Yet, I have something now that I didn’t have 12 years ago. I have my faith in God. Oddly enough, that first surgery put me on the path that led me to Jesus. Something inside of me that was dead and decaying had to be removed in order for something perfect and good to be put in its place. Now, I’m in the emotional equivalent of that dentist chair.

I came to the blogstream.com to blog… to process my emotions about Colin marrying somebody else. I didn’t find out until Labor Day weekend and it sparked an ugly chain of events that I can’t undo. Everything has been spiraling out of control and I can’t make the train stop.  It’s been four months. I keep thinking that I should be over it by now. Move on. I would give anything in the world not to be sitting in this particular chair right now. The emotional pain has been intense because I’m not trusting God.

In some respects, I guess I’m still one who doesn’t believe. It’s Christmas. At the time of year when I should be rejoicing, I’m walking around like I have been grievously wounded by God. How had my relationship with Colin turned in to this farce? Why was I acting like such a fool? How was my home and work life in Maui unraveling because of my foolishness?? And why was God being so unfair? My pastor recently said that God is not in the business of being fair as the world understands “fair.” I’m glad I understand that now. Faulty beliefs are as bad as wrong interpretations. Both need to go.

Next week, I have to go sit in another dentist’s chair. I’m having new dental problems. Not my wisdom teeth praise God! After that first horrible surgery, I still had three more teeth to be removed… same kind of situation. Only thing is, before the second surgery, I’d accepted Jesus. I now had a job, a place to live, and insurance to pay for it. I was knocked blessedly unconscious and only remember counting backwards from 10 to about 8. I didn’t see any lights or feel any drills or yanks… and the only thing I heard the dentist say was, “Ok… it’s time to wake up now.” The thing that amazed me most of all though, was that the surgeon was bewildered. On the original x-ray it clearly showed that I had three other wisdom teeth to be removed, yet when he opened my jaw up to get them out… he only found two. Even upon further x-ray there was no third wisdom tooth to be found. It, and the pain that it would have taken to remove it, was gone.

I’ve learned that sometimes intense pain is inevitable. Unfair and inevitable. Sometimes you have to face it with your eyes wide open to all of the sights and sounds. You must experience the harshest of pains. Other times, you can go through the same type of pain and be comforted through it. In time, the pain of both surgeries faded, and just like the memories of my PNG road trip, they got tucked away in the folds of my brain. That comforts me now. In time, the hurt and devastation caused by my first, real “true love” will fade.

Christmas has never been easy for me and it’s not easy this year. I’m battening down the walls of my bubble, but I’m really trying hard not to lose sight of the fact that I am not alone in this chair anymore. I no longer have to rely solely on myself. While I’d like to just lie back and count backwards and be “awakened when December ends,” I know that I can’t. I have to write. I came to blogstream.com because I had hoped it would help ease the pain… and it is helping. Maybe not as quickly as I would like or as other people would like… but it is. Blogging about PNG, the dentist’s chair, and my messy little life all show me that I need hope. Painful as these experiences have been for me, they served a purpose: removing that which is destroying and decaying to put something good and perfect in its place.

Perspective

My non-mood swing is over.

It actually ended Sunday, but I didn’t feel like blogging. Why is it that we rush to share the bad news, but lag behind to share the good news unless it involves something major like a wedding, the birth of a child, or some other “big” thing. That’s one reason Bipolar Girl used to avoid reading the newspaper or watching the evening news. It’s generally all bad news… and what’s so new about that? Besides, I had enough drama in my own life. I didn’t need to look at all the bad stuff happening to other people. It’s almost a given that somewhere in the world some country just had an earthquake, a famine, a flood, or some other natural disaster. Somebody somewhere just got shot, raped, bludgeoned, or killed in some other unspeakable way. And to my way of thinking… knowing stuff like that never ever did anything but completely tank  my moods, so news from the outside world rarely made it inside the impenetrable walls of the Bipolar Bubble.

That, however, is only marginally my point. That whole “no news in” thing works both ways: no news in also means no news out. When I isolate myself I tend to shut out the people who I most need to be letting in and it’s only after all the dust settles that I realize that I set myself up. Last week, I was in a bad mood and was content to simmer in it. I had emailed a friend to vent, but I’m finally coming to realize that venting via email really isn’t the same as real live communication. It’s also not the same as humbling out and admitting where you are so that people can specifically pray.

Last week I was really struggling. Filling out that application for counseling wasn’t all that hard, but the emotional fall out all week long was brutal. I think I mentioned how a bunch of my buttons were being mashed last week. As expected my issues with my sexual addiction reared more heads than a hydra. It is really hard to play the role of “Good Little Christian Girl” when you’re struggling with sex. For the record, I’m abstinent. You say “sexual addiction” and people think I’m putting out the red light and having different guys over every night. People are so clue-less about what sexual addiction really looks like. I put a lot of my worst behaviors behind me when I became a Christian, but I still have an addiction. I also believe without doubt that no matter what your sexual past is… Jesus can and will redeem you.

Am I “born again virgin?” That term is so ridiculous I won’t even bother to make fun of the person who thought it was funny when they made it up. I’m 42 years old. A bit late for me to be trying to convince anybody that I am a virgin of any kind… but as a committed believer who happens to be single and celibate, I have taken a stand for purity. The world mocks this because it doesn’t understand this.

Christ calls me to be pure. But that has been my biggest stumbling block since I became a Christian 17 years ago. There is so much sexual brokenness in my life that I have not always been able to bear remembering the things that I have done. The weight of my shame was unbelievable. When I became a Christian I thought if I could just “get to the root of the dysfunction” I would be free of it. Actually, this thought occurred to me long before I became a Christian. We Christians often act like we’ve cornered the market on morality and conscience. We seem to think that when the non-believer sins they are ok with it. I’ve actually read books that come right on out and say that. Me? I had problems with my sinful behavior back when I wouldn’t have called it sin. I hated the things that I did and the person that I was. At first my out of control sexual actions made me depressed. When the depressed thoughts turned to suicidal ones I sought counseling because I was afraid of hurting myself.

Therapy is not new to Bipolar Girl. I started counseling in college. I think it was my second year. And I really have lost track of the number of therapists I’ve seen since then. People in crisis have a hard time remembering names, dates, and faces… even if those were the faces of people throwing them emotional life preservers. I think on some level I have always wanted to forget them. Every time you start counseling the therapist or counselor wants you to “start from the beginning.” On thing is… it’s not new to you. If you’ve been in counseling for as long as I have, you’ve “started from the beginning” more times than should be considered healthy. You sit there in that office voluntarily peeling of another emotional scab in the hopes that finally… this therapist or this style of counseling will help you. I had become a cynic, but was willing to try again since God had asked. .

Last Saturday I voluntarily started probing old scars. Unfortunately, I forgot what the after effect feels like. Once you get all those thoughts and memories all churned up you’re pretty much at their mercy as you go through your week. In the past when I’ve tried to deal with the “roots” of my sexual addiction I’ve taken some direct emotional and mental hits. My response is always the same: I self-medicate. In trying to get rid of the problem I turn to the problem to help me deal with the stress that picking the scabs created. Add work or home stress and I crack. Last week I started having uncontrollable sexual thoughts and the desire to view porn was starting to creep back in again. I struggled with masturbation and severely inappropriate fantasies. It got to the point where it seemed like giving in to it was easier than fighting it. I started to rethink the whole counseling thing. Sure, I believed without a doubt that God had told me to do it, but I didn’t think I could take much more of the onslaught.

I kept  my thoughts to myself. Talking to people about this is still hard even with all of the accountability that I’ve built into my life. There is so much shame surrounding sexual addiction in general… but for a Christian female it’s worse. Saturday afternoon I found myself at my beach sitting on a rock talking to God. He confirmed anew that he wants me to do this counseling. He got me to admit out loud that I’m still angry at my mother, my brother, and my stepfather for their roles in creating this addiction. My life is still broken. I am still broken… yet they’ve all gone on to live their lives. This, of course, is not new to me. After nearly a lifetime in counseling I have walked down this path before. I’ve prayed to forgive them. I’ve written letters forgiving them. I came to understand that forgiveness is an event and a process. My question to Jesus in all this is: When does it end?

When do I stop having to reap the consequences of actions that were done over 30 some years ago? When does the hurt and the pain and the anger go away? I have tried many times over the years to deal with it, but would stop when my mental health could not handle the stress and the emotional upheaval. I would get close enough to the roots of my addiction to actually see them… only to run away from the edge like Alice trying to avoid falling into the White Rabbit’s hole. Last week I felt like I was falling down the rabbit hole of my past and there was nothing to hold on to because my present was falling into the hole with me. Isolated with my own thoughts there was nobody to help me.

Until God reminded me on Saturday that I was supposed to do this counseling and that I shouldn’t fear falling into the hole. There is no hole too deep for God’s arms to reach me. He just didn’t want me to try to make the journey alone. The counseling really is going to be like pulling a bunch of scabs and I will take a lot of direct hits as Satan tries to get me to turn back. He doesn’t want me to finally be free of the hurt and the pain and the anger. Those things keep me from being effective for Jesus so he’s not going to stop trying. Those things also make me continue in the vicious cycle that is sexual addiction. On Saturday, God told me a what and a who, but he didn’t tell me when. The who? I was supposed to email the three women who will be praying for me throughout this spiritual quest. The what? I was supposed to spill all the details about last week and to get them to pray for me. I hate being that transparent. Makes me feel like I’m walking down the aisles of WalMart naked or something. But I did send the email and then drove to church wondering what God would do in response.

MAN! I was blown away by his response. God showed up in a way that was so real and personal  that I know that the email was the right thing to do. He also confirmed again that the counseling is the right thing to do. But more importantly, he gave me a new hope that if I can just hold on through this counseling, he is going to set me free from the things that bind  me. Years ago I could never have imagined my life lived without Bipolar Disorder. I was told that I’d have it until the day that I died. I was also told that I’d probably struggle with suicidal thoughts all my life. That felt like a death sentence to me. Those doctors, however,  were wrong. God has healed me of any and all visible symptoms of Bipolar Disorder. Maybe my brain chemistry is still off (I’m still on medication so it’s hard to tell)… but I don’t feel like I have a mental illness.

People in the recovery field say, “once an addict, always an addict.” I do not want to own that. If God could remove my mental illness, he can remove the roots of my sexual addiction. I believe this now no matter how many scabs the counseling peels off. All last week I kept leaning on my own understandings and things looked mighty bleak. Sunday God got my attention and told me to look at my life from his perspective, and I must admit I like the view of my life better from where he sits.

 

Ambiguous Emotional Place

Bipolar or not… I’m still a rather moody person. My encounter on Friday with the well meaning, but totally ignorant, Christian dampened my happy happy joy joy from earlier in the day. And I can’t say my movie choice was all that inspired. It didn’t provide the mood pick me up that I’d hoped. Consequently, I’ve been in a weird emotional place ever since yesterday. Hard to put my finger on it or give it a name… so I’ll settle on calling it “ambiguous.”

The reason for said mood? Coming in from way out in left field:  my sexual addiction. That has to be the hardest aspect of my life to write about because it’s embarrassing. Other people get cool ministries like Mother Theresa or Billy Graham. And even if you weren’t looking so high up there on the righteousness scale… I’ve got a friend who spends months putting together boxes for Operation Christmas Child and another friend who volunteers tirelessly with a local organization called “Feed My Sheep” that helps get food to needy families. Me? I get to half-heartedly champion the mentally ill and the sexually addicted. Oh joy. Sorry my attitude is a bit snarky. I’m still in a bit of a mood. Sexual addiction? I cannot talk about what Christ has done in my life if I don’t talk about my mental illness or my sexual addiction. If I leave that stuff out I’m not being true to the reason Jesus  has me blog. Putting aside my pride to actually attach my name to this blog and talk about my mental illness was hard.

If I thought writing about my mental illness was hard, writing about my sexual addiction is almost worse because now my friends read my blog. My family has completely denied me because of things I’ve said in my blog. People have a face to attach to the dysfunctional behavior.  Plus sexual addiction is such a debatable topic. The world says that it’s normal, healthy even to explore your sexuality in whatever way you want. I once had a therapist tell me  that I should go out and sleep with somebody in order to move past my incest issues. There are actually some doctors who do not believe that sexual addiction is really even an addiction. So the water on that side of the fence is murky.

And Christians? Their views on sexual addiction aren’t any better. More and more Christian men are coming out of the closet and being honest about their addiction to porn, masturbation, and illicit sex outside of marriage. People are beginning to understand and be sympathetic but then the media is always quick to pick up stories of pastors caught with their pants down or priests caught with the hands in the wrong cookie jar. Not all people with sexual addictions are pedophiles or men. Nobody is really even all that shocked anymore by men struggling with sexual sin, but there is still a stigma about women with sexual addiction issues. With internet porn being so accessible, the number of Christian women and girls becoming addicted to it is growing.

I continually praise God that I’m free of my addiction to porn. That used to be a nightmare before he freed me. And the list of things that I no longer do has gotten quite short, but it embarrasses the daylights out of me to say that I still struggle with masturbation. Again, the world says that it’s ok. Healthy even. There are also those in the church who would argue that because it’s not specifically prohibited in scripture that it’s ok to have at it. Me? As much as I hate those “WWJD” bracelets… I apply that reasoning to this issue. Masturbation: WWJD??? I cannot believe on any level of thinking that Jesus would condone masturbation and I certainly don’t want to think that he might ever have engaged in it himself. Ew. That’s just wrong.

Sex outside of marriage… God’s pretty clear about it. Solo sex is sex. Seems clear to me.

When I first became a believer one verse that was significant for me had to do with sex.  I scoured the bible looking for God’s perspective on sex so that I could find some emotional peace of my own, but I steered away from the verses that ended up with people getting stoned for sexual practices that I’d engaged in. My eyes gravitated to a scripture that actually seemed to speak directly to me  even if I didn’t fully understand it:

“Everything is permissible for me”–but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is permissible for me”–but I will not be mastered by anything. 1 Corinthians 6:12

God is not going to stop me from doing anything. That’s where free will comes in. I can masturbate until my eyes cross and get stuck that way and God won’t stop me. But all the while I knew it was wrong and I couldn’t stop. That’s where forgiveness comes in. There is also forgiveness should I ever choose to seek it. Back then I didn’t think my sexual sin could be forgiven because it seemed so premeditated… and because I constantly returned to it. I never had one of those “go and sin no more” moments.

Surely, Jesus was getting tired of my same old lame excuses. To my way of thinking, if God wasn’t going to take the obsessive desires away and he wasn’t going to bring me a husband to have loads of God-approved sex… then my life wasn’t worth living. I’m part of a religion where virtue is revered. Because I struggled with compulsive sexual thoughts and behaviors, I couldn’t handle the resulting internal discord. By giving in to the thoughts and the porn and the behaviors, I had allowed myself to be mastered by the very thing I wanted to abandon. “Internal struggle” is putting it lightly. I was the “good little Christian girl” who wasn’t. The struggle fed my depression and my depression fed my suicidal tendencies. If I couldn’t be a good Christian, I should be a dead one.

Again, I praise God for how far he’s brought me. Yesterday I gave into temptation, but I wasn’t pushed over an emotional edge. I’ve decided that I do not care what the world or the church has to say about sexual addiction or masturbation. Anything you cannot stop doing is bad. I used to compulsively struggle with this and give in several times a day on a daily basis. Praise God that I’m not struggling as badly as I used to… but I do not want to be mastered by anything no matter how often I do it or not. I am also disappointed that my actions tanked the rest of my Saturday. Instead of getting out of the house and doing something, I stayed indoors and never even got out of my pajamas. I watched movies on Netflix and then slept most of the day. My mood was low and I felt unfocused and sluggish. I wasted the entire day and was too embarrassed to blog anything about it. Which I why I’m so excited about my next post. God does not leave us alone when we are struggling and seeking him. Today we had a wonderful guest speaker at church. He spoke about understanding the heart of Jesus. I’m still trying to process all that he said and I’m really looking forward to next week when he speaks again. Yesterday I prayed about my struggle with masturbation and today God answered me by sending this speaker. Now if you asked anybody who was there, they will assure you that the speaker didn’t say a word about sexual sin or masturbation, but it’s not so much what he said to us as it was about what God said to me through him. He had me in tears. He spoke about needing a contrite heart and my heart responded to that truth…  and there’s nothing like truth to pull you out of an ambiguous emotional place.

Planet of the Damned

damned: 1. condemned or doomed, esp. to eternal punishment

I’ve been known to turn a single Sunday morning service into a multi-post series spanning over several weeks. Remember my “8 Points to Consider Before Marriage” series?? I think that actually ended up being 10 or 12 posts, but I think I’m the only one who was actually counting. Hello? Anybody out there??? I think I just heard an echo. Why is it that when I look at other blogs I see that people actually comment? Part of why I blog is to connect with people… to step out of my Bipolar Bubble… and yet few, if any people, actually ever respond. I can’t understand what I’m doing wrong…but even the deafening silence isn’t enough to stop me from blogging (insert hint). So I guess I’ll stop rambling (sob) and get to my point (sniff).*Charlie Brown walks over to the corner and begins to eat a can o’ worms.

Restraining myself with this topic (Damnation) is going to be hard. Intimacy with God has been my quest since I became a Christian in 1994. I always thought the fact that I was mental kept me from singing Kumbaya with the rest of the saints and being really chummy with JC. Now that I’m relatively disorder free, what’s my excuse?  Last Sunday’s speaker talked about five things that stand in the way of intimacy with God and since I LOVE a good bullet list,  it seems like a given that I’d pump out at least five posts on this topic, right?

Nope. I’m going to amaze even myself (or maybe just myself… but who’s counting??) Condemnation, ignorance, and sin — three thing the speaker said block us from having an intimate relationship with God. Since I’m intimately familiar with all three of them, I can attest to the fact that those things not only stood in the way of me getting closer to God, but they also fueled many a depressed and suicidal episode. I mean, think about it: there I was a mentally ill Christian with a sexual addiction. That pretty much covers both the “Sin” and “Condemnation” categories. I’d act out and the feel condemned… like I was never going to be a good Christian and that I was failing at the Christian walk.

Legal Dictionary

Main Entry: con·demn
1 : to impose a penalty on; especially : to sentence to death

When I thought about all the stuff that I did before I became a Christian I felt sick. The sex addict in me was never content to walk on the line like most people playing with sexually inappropriate behaviors. I indulged in some pretty deviate things back in the day and you can’t take stuff like that back. You did it and you have to live with it. On one level I knew that I was forgiven… but I would  still condemn myself. My own thought life condemned me.

Especially since I didn’t stop  struggling with sexual sin once I became a believer. Every time I’d engage in inappropriate behaviors, visit porn sites, buy sex toys, or read erotic material a wave of condemnation would sweep over me. Having to sign a “morality contract” at most of my jobs forced me to live a lie or be unemployed, so the condemnation was even worse. Sin and Condemnation did a West Coast Swing all over me. And once I felt well and truly condemned, I’d start to think that God was never going to change me. And if he wasn’t going to change me, a life lived in torment like that was not worth living… so suicide was my only answer. Now some people might say that it would have been easier to just stop being a Christian. Just walk away and be done with a God who didn’t seem to want to help me,  but as  far as I was concerned, that was never a real option because Jesus Christ IS my life. Without him, I’m DOA anyway.

Over the years I prayed a lot about my addiction and, to be honest, I never thought the prayer did all that much since the thoughts, urges, and behaviors didn’t just go away. From the vantage point of 16 years later, I can now see that the prayers helped me to persevere when I wanted to give up on trusting God. He was working to change me from the inside out and to heal the broken places. He just didn’t wiggle his nose like Bewitched or blink his eyes like “I Dream of Jeanie.” What he did was lead me to other people who had walked down the same dark path. He lead me to really good therapists to get help. He guided me to online support for Christians who struggle with sexual addiction. And he got me to start blogging, because other people who aren’t as vocal as I am need to know that God forgives the sexual addict and cares for the mentally ill. And in telling my story, I found hope and healing. Most of the things that used to cause me to wallow in condemnation are gone. For the most part, I don’t feel condemned anymore. If there is sin in my life that I need to confess and address, I might feel conviction — the certainty that such behavior is a sin against my God… but if Jesus doesn’t condemn me, why should I place my own self-acceptance and forgiveness at a higher premium than his?

I’m going to have to revisit the condemnation issue in another post, but not now. I still processing the stuff that caused my recent writer’s block. Now that I dealt with it and talked about it to a friend, I no longer fell condemned… but I still don’t know how to write about it here. It’s like I put the acceptance and forgiveness of my imaginary audience above that of Jesus… and clearly that’s a problem that I have to work through. If he doesn’t condemn me, it shouldn’t matter what other people say.

And lastly, there’s IGNORANCE.

He wasn’t just talking about your garden variety stupidity or lack of generic information. The speaker talked about ignorance of the Word of God. The Bible. And if I still walked in condemnation, I’d have to say that I was guilty. I do not know my Bible as well as I wish I did. Now pride would have me saying that I know more about the Bible than the average bear… but when did it become a competition?

What matters is that I should have a working knowledge of my Bible so that it impacts the way I think and thus the way that I feel, the way that I speak, and the way that I act. And to be honest, I have to say that the Bible makes me mad. I read it and I get frustrated. I used to hate reading the Old Testament because God just seemed so mean. In my ignorance I didn’t understand that not everything that God did in the OT was a reflection of his love. Killing all the people in a town including the grannies and babies plus all the livestock never seemed very “loving” to me. Once I learned that stuff like that was a reflection of God’s justice I could understand. He set a law. People broke. Punishment ensued. I might not like it, but I can understand it.

Getting a different translation of the Bible has helped me. If you can’t understand what you’re reading you can’t internalize it. I got a translation that I could understand and I’m making progress through both the Old and New Testaments. But even today I found myself getting chapped with Jesus. It bugs me that he never seems to answer a “yes” or “no” question with a “yes” or a “no” answer. He gives some out of left field answer that seems to have nothing to do with the question. And since I’m done with accepting the pat Christianesy answers, I’m wrestling with it. But I guess wrestling is better than not reading it at all, because not reading leads to ignorance. I’ve been a Christian for around 16 years and I have yet to read the entire Bible! Jeez. Sixteen years to read one book?? Does that strike anybody else as odd?

There are a lot of people who say that they are a Christian, but if you talk to them for a while, it becomes clear that they have no idea who Jesus is. In order to know Jesus you have to know what he said and how he lived. You have to know his character and nature.  And in order to know all of that stuff you have to know your Bible. Jesus himself says that if people were really his students then they would remain faithful to his teaching THEN they would “know the truth and the truth would set them free.” If I want to be free, I have to know what he taught and walk in it. As I’ve sought to do that in my life I have been set free from a lot of things, but it wasn’t an instantaneous liberation. It took time. It will continue to take time. But now that I’m working on not being ignorant of the Word of God, am convicted of (and not condemned by) my sins, and no longer live on the planet of the damned… I believe that a deeper, more intimate relationship with my Lord is on the horizon.