Living Again: Cultivating an Appetite for Life

"We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned,
so as to have the life that is waiting for us" (Joseph Campbell)

Dear friends and family, as many of you know, the past two months have been Hell for me in every sense of the word. I’ve tried my best to remain cool, calm, and collected in the face of turmoil, confident and secure in the face of weakness, and above all, positive in the face of despair.

But I have failed. Miserably and completely.

Somewhere in the overwhelming shuffle of life I have lost myself. I don’t recognize the girl staring back at me in the mirror with haunted, lifeless eyes. She trembles at the slightest twitch in her direction, and cowers from the flicker of her own shadow. Her fear disgusts me.

I used to be known for my walk. At nearly 6ft tall with a love for red power suits and 4in platform heels, I tend to make a striking impression upon entering a room. It took me years to feel comfortable in my own skin, but settling into myself ultimately meant understanding, accepting and celebrating that no matter how hard I tried to be “just like everyone else,” I would always stand out in a crowd.

At age 7 my classmates and I did a school project on our future careers. The other kids proudly got up and showed pictures of firemen, doctors, nurses, astronauts and policemen. When it was my turn I stood up and told my class that I couldn’t decide between becoming the President of the United States or the first female Knight of the 21^st century. (I’m pretty sure my parents were contacted…)

But my voracious appetite for life wasn’t something that I grew out of with age (although some people tried to beat it out of me). The harder things got, and the more times I got hit, the more motivated I was to grit my teeth and get back into the ring. In my book, the only way to lose a fight was to CHOOSE not to get back up. And losing was simply NOT an option for me.

JOY used to exude from confident postures and bright smiles and fill the room with warmth. These days I find myself attempting to fade into the upholstery, shrinking my too-big heart, my too-big personality, and my too-big pain into a fearful shadow of myself.

Help.

Just 4 weeks ago we celebrated Easter, the season of New Beginnings. Easter has always marked a season of JOY in my life, starting with the secular Easter egg hunts, egg decorating, chocolate bunnies, etc. and culminating with the faith-based assurance of my own eternal salvation.

This year I lost my JOY. Somewhere between resigning from my job and being displaced from the safety of my home church I allowed the Enemy to turn a possible New Beginning into a dismal end. I turned tail and hid my face with shame, and I stopped celebrating my favorite holiday of the season. I gave in to fear and I stopped celebrating LIFE.

How did I get here?

Just hours after I finished rejoicing in Easter with my family and friends, my body followed through on what my heart has been fighting since February 26^th when this whole mess started. It shut down. And when I say ‘shut down,’ I mean, shut down, cease to function, completely throw in the towel, refuse to work, go on strike, protest. For 2 weeks I was bed-ridden with the worst case of food poisoning I’ve ever had. I wasn’t able to keep anything down for longer than 30 mins, and I literally thought I was dying.

After realizing that I didn’t have a 24hr, 48hr, or 72hr bug, I began researching. 1 week passed and I had already diagnosed myself with norovirus, ulcers, e-coli, salmonella, and a plethora of other terrible afflictions. 2 weeks passed and I forced myself to re-enter the world of the living, but unfortunately I still couldn’t keep any food down. 3 weeks passed and the best I could stomach was a few cubes of plain chicken and a piece of toast (if I was lucky). 4 weeks passed and by then I had lost a total of 28lbs.

My body is starving, and so is my heart. As I start week 5, I find that I am no longer hungry. Not for food, and not for life. God has laid before me an all-you-can-eat buffet of blessings and new beginnings, a new job and a rest from ministry, new friends and community, and new inspiration for my novel. BUT, my appetite for life has diminished to the point where I am standing at the end of His heavenly buffet line holding an empty plate.

Last night I was prayed over for the first time by some friends, old and new. Their prayers inspired this blog entry. It was extremely uncomfortable for me to be surrounded by a group of people who I had only just met last week, and I was so terrified at the prospect of this prayer that I was literally paralyzed by my own fear. I wanted to whimper “please don’t touch me,” and run for the hills. But a friend that I trust was asking me to take a leap of faith, surrender to God’s grace, and accept the love and support they were offering. So I poured out my heart to a roomful of strangers and wept as they spoke words of life over my wounded soul. I like to think that this act of trust was my first taste at the “new-beginnings buffet table.”

The life I have now isn’t the life I planned for. The woman who I am right now is not the woman I want to be. The things that have cracked my heart in two are not the things I want to dream about. But I have a responsibility to God, to myself, and to the people I love, to start living again. I have to CHOOSE to get up and get back into the ring. And so do you. Beloved, I don’t have much wisdom to pass on at this moment but I do know this. If your JOY has been stolen by the Enemy, if you are standing in front of God’s buffet table and your plate is empty, if your heart is broken and you don’t recognize yourself in the mirror anymore… You have the power to CHOOSE to live again! I believe that once we make that choice, maybe our appetites for food, and for life will be restored.

                                                                                      

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“Then Jesus declared, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall never hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” (John 6:35)