My Entire Life (The In-Process-ness Of Recovery)

“My entire life can be described in one sentence: it didn’t go as planned and that’s okay.”

Rachel Wolchin

I’m a Type A kind of person, making perpetual lists, usually to the exasperation of my husband. What can I say? I get a satisfied thrill from attacking things, one by one, only to cross it off the list, once completed.

I’ve been big into planning since childhood. I was dutiful; I was obedient. I was the “good girl,” believing my Girl Scout training would certainly guarantee perfect and reliable results.

 Laugh here.

I did, however, sell my share of Girl Scout cookies in the process (silver lining).

Anyway, my little list-y self sprouted for a variety of reasons: low self-esteem, abuse, a need to feel safe and, what the heck, some perfectionism thrown in, just for giggles. It was all about doing life “right.” If I just did that, things would go exactly how I wanted them to go.

Again, please, laugh here.

Alas, however, life doesn’t work out like that. And with issue-ridden me in the mix, things were not going to happen smoothly, predictably or perfectly. Yet I still kept trying. You know the old joke:

“How do you get to Carnegie Hall?

Answer: Practice!”

Yeah.

So, there I was, with me, myself and I, all operating from that perspective. Now, let’s add some eating disorders to the mix and see what happens.

(This may not be suitable for some viewers).

Therefore, for years, as I chased self-esteem, safety and perfectionism, all while choosing some behaviors which directly flew in the face of those desires. I starved, binged, purged, berated myself, ate out of dumpsters, risked my health, stole from people, lying about anything and everything I was doing the entire time.

Convincing.

So why did I do it?

One biggie was my mentality of achieving my perfect self/life in one fell swoop. Ta-dah. I’m done.

Please feel free to laugh again.

I fell for the ta-dah lie. No process, no waiting and no painful struggle were required. There was only my instant “happily ever after” life, perfectly occurring instantly.

My life would be perfected at microwave speed. There would be no process required.

I know. I never said this was a correct or sound viewpoint, now, did I?

Nevertheless, I was counting on being the beautiful, perfect fairytale princess who never made mistakes. She just spent her days living her actualized perfect life in her perfect kingdom. It was magical thinking even a Disney princess would look at and say, “That’s completely unrealistic.”

But I clung to it all the more as I tried not to face the disparity of my less than perfect and princess-y self. There were no fairytales with eating disorder storylines. They were no overweight or awkward heroines, only the ugly stepsisters, step mothers and the designated villains looked grotesque, unattractive or morbidly obese, while doing shameful and horrible things. Not our princess! Oh no, not her!

So, wanting to live out my delusion I sidestepped the famous recovery Twelve Steps. You know, these guys here:

1. We admitted we were powerless over a substance, behavior or addiction - that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. We humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. We made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. We made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. We continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
11. We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

I didn’t have time to fuss with that nonsense. After all, my entire life, lived perfectly beautifully and instantly, was at stake.

So, I began my wrestlemania with God, others and myself. I blamed, lied, hid, argued, ran away from and made myself miserable. I convinced myself this would get me to my promised land, rather than facing ugly, unflattering reality. I equated that little detail with personal failure. And that was not on my type A perfect life list.

Reality was failure; process was failure. Only me getting perfect, instantaneous and pain-free results merited success in life.

(Laugh again).

But life is a process. The cliché is there for a reason; it’s TRUE! Life and recovery are day in, day out, repetitive, tedious and sometimes painful processes. No one is exempt. And being in the middle of that process does not make one a failure.

Indeed, even God does not create failures. So, He’s certainly not intimidated by our “in-process-ness.”

“Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh. Is there anything too hard for Me?”

Jeremiah 32:27

He’s there, fully aware.

 “Doth not he see my ways, and count all my steps?”

Job 31:4

And He’s already decided on His Thoughts...

 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.”

Isaiah 55:8-9

“For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.”

Jeremiah 29:11

It’s not a single, onetime only thought directed towards us. It’s an ongoing and constant succession of thoughts, deliberately aimed at our lives regardless of our thoughts and feelings. God does not need our permission to view us in a particular way and want certain things for our lives. He does not need permission to put our lives through process.

There’s a recovery term, “fighting our help.”

Scripture mentions how God is the Potter, while we are His clay.

“But now, O LORD, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand.”

Isaiah 64:8

"Then I went down to the potter's house, and, behold, he wrought a work on the wheels. And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter: so he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it."

Jeremiah 18:3-4

However, we each decide if we allow or fight the process. And often, because we want easy and instant fixes, we unfortunately choose to fight.

 “But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, 'Why did you make me like this?'"

Romans 9:20

The choice is ours. It’s been there all along.

“I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.”

Deuteronomy 30:19

Our recovery is about the bigger picture, bigger than even our entire lives. There is purpose; there IS a plan.

So, what does the clay say about that process now?

Copyright © 2018 by Sheryle Cruse