Pain Before Peace

I am reading a beautiful, raw, haunting book called Finding God in the Ruins by Matt Bays. He writes about the hard, messy stuff in his life: being molested as a child, a broken family, his sister's cancer, his alcoholism. This is not the pretty kind of white middle America mega church Christianity. 

He talks a lot about the importance of living in the hard places, and telling your story and your truth. He writes, "The path of recovery is painful before it is peaceful". I identify with that a lot, especially right now. I've written before about my eating disorder and about the freedom I found for so long.

And then I had a day.

And a week.

And two weeks.

And a month.

A car accident, musical roommates, difficult work tasks, a death of a young student, a longtime coworker gone.

I tried. I tried more yoga. I tried less yoga. I tried reading. I tried sitting. Coloring. Walking. Singing. Running. Cooking. And when nothing else gave me the relief I wanted, I just stopped eating again.

It's scary how easy it felt. How comfortable. I don't even think I've told more than two or three people, and now here I am telling everyone at once. I went to see my counselor probably a week after I should have, but I went.

I don't know who first said it, but addiction is often likened to having a pet tiger. If you are addicted to drugs or alcohol, your recovery is about learning to keep your tiger in its cage. No one expects you to casually be able to go to a bar or have just one drink. But recovering from an eating disorder is about learning to take that pet tiger for a walk three times a day. And even when he's been on his best behavior, things can go wrong fast.

For me, watching my tiger run wild all over again was like watching your child have a very public tantrum: embarrassing. shameful. out of control. helpless. as if people were judging me.

But Matt's book is encouraging me in the best ways right now.

What if we aren't going to 'get better'? What if our sufferings and doubts are necessary components - or even the very essence of our faith? 

You might feel that going back will break you, but maybe it will make you instead. 

 My counselor said she was so glad I reached out. I scolded myself for not being better and talking to her sooner, but she said I did a great, brave thing in asking for help. And part of all of this is believing that she's right, that even if going back, digging deep, and being honest feels like the worst, most terrifyingly awful thing in the whole world, and it happens a fraction of an inch at a time, it's one more fraction of an inch towards wholeness than I had before.

Isaiah 45:7 says

I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, I am the Lord who does all these things

 God is the author of all things, so to reject the pain and the rough edges is to reject a fundamental part of who He is. As Bays writes,

When our faith is built upon a theology of no more pain, we fail to hold dark and light together and cannot experience the fullness of God. It could even be said that we willfully reject His fullness.
I'm learning that even this part of my story has a plot twist, that the neat and tidy ending I thought I had was only part of its arc. I'm learning to be ok with that, and I'm learning that I still have a lot more left to write. I want that wholeness and even if it's hard and I feel like I'm breaking, I'll keep pushing back.



You might feel that going back will break you, but maybe it will make you instead.