I’ve been stating from the first blog post I ever put up, that this “journey” is about my pursuit of a meaningful make over. It is more that just losing weight or slapping on some make up. Beyond learning how to shop for my shape or find more flattering ways to wear my hair. Though I am interested in beauty rituals and think they are important for self-confidence as a woman, the main event has been the dissection of my heart.
The exposure of the whys and how’s I was allowing myself to operate in an attempt to understand and evolve. Above any other motivators, the thought of staying stuck in my dark, miserable cave of self loathing had become too much. I had reached my limit.
I will throw myself out in the wind and be vulnerable again, creative again, and honest again and again and again. Because I know that there is real life to live out here. That’s all I have really…my honest experience. That is what I share here. A REAL account of trying to be the woman I was created to be. Cutting out all the B.S. expectations we all stick on ourselves as women, wives and mothers. The “pinteresty”, fake, pressure-y ways we compare and judge each other. I believe there is MORE to this womanhood than looking good and appearing good.

This has opened me up to a lot of new experiences. One of which being the 12 step recovery group I’ve committed to. Last night recovery class was intense. We are working on the fifth step which is, ” We’ve admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.”

“… God is light, and there is no darkness in him at all. So we are lying if we say we have fellowship with God but go on living in spiritual darkness; we are not practicing the truth. But if we are living in the light, as God is in the light, then we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin.” 1 John 1:5-7 (NLT)

There was lots of talk about walking in darkness, and exposing ourselves and our stuff in the light. Lots of talk about hiding and functioning with denial. Lots of talk about confession and admission. So many of us neatly packaging and tucking away our issues instead of dealing with them until we reach a point where we can’t. I heard someone say last night, “Self deception keeps us going because it works for us, until it doesn’t.”

How true.

The majority of my adult life was lived in this way. I think we are all guilty of deceiving ourselves at some point…it looks different for all of us. For me it was the nonchalant way that I dealt with my body image and self-worth. Making fun of myself and acting like it was fun to just go ahead and be fat and eat whatever I felt like. I had accepted being the fat woman. I had turned myself over to it.

It worked for me for a long time- until it didn’t.

Walking in the light, means practicing truth. It means that I am no longer deceiving or hiding. It means I am opened up and free to have intimacy with God and other people. Telling the TRUTH sets me free and may also help others to be free. It’s contagious. The light is warm and it thaws even the most hardened and frozen parts of myself even though it is sometimes painfully uncomfortable.
Being open always is. It is scary because honesty and openness may leave us feeling rejected or humiliated…but that fear that keeps us in the dark, keeps us living lies. Deceiving ourselves.

Yesterday I posted a cartoon about butterflies. The transformation that caterpillars go through in a dark cocoon to become what they are truly intended to be is not pretty. They actually dissolve into a liquid form and then reemerge into something totally different. Did you catch that? They dissolve into mush. In a dark place. We must surrender. Dissolve. Trust the process. Sometimes the dark is necessary to reemerge as we are intended to be in the light.

Living in the light is a choice I’ll have to make daily. Maybe even hourly. But with each new day here, I’m realizing its worth it.