The Tatoo of Transformation

As I have been working on writing a book about the story of my life there are so many events wrapped into many different seasons that have all been epic and pivotal. I have been writing in many journals throughout these past few years and I am amazed as I read what I have documented and expressed within every step that has taken me forward, back, around, into and through the roads that have led me inward before allowing me to emerge into the world that is all around me.

I cross the full gamut of emotions when I read what I have poured out onto the pages that hold my life's greatest sorrows, joys, and inventions. These have become an ever evolving map. This map of my life reminds me of all that was, is and is filled with the hope of all that is to come as long as I continue to believe and hold fast to the one who made me. For He is the one responsible for this trans-formative metamorphosis, and it is His signature that is tattooed within every fiber of my being.

I am living proof that anything is possible! I have lived a life so utterly despicable and in such depths of darkness for most of my life where there was no light. The only times where even glimpses of possibility flickered were usually in the altered states of emotion induced by drugs or alcohol, and sometimes both. Once the buzz or euphoria faded, so did the hope that appeared like a hologram in the brief thawing of my frozen heart.

This past 5 years has been a whirlwind that has ripped everything I thought I was apart and has stripped away everything that made it nearly impossible for me to find an opening to begin my journey into the center of myself. I'm pretty sure that this is the real journey to the center of the earth! I have written about my days within each season and what it has held for me. It has been terrifying, dangerous, breathtaking, and unfamiliar, but I have been able to capture the true essence of all that I am certain I would never have been able to remember. I have been able to capture the crazy (R)evolution of my life, my process, the crossing of insanity and the journey back.

I read the pages I have written and find myself immersed within the story that is my life. There are moments of great pain and I weep, there are moments of great joy for what I have been able to realize, accept, and that also makes me weep. There are stories I have captured that make me giggle so hard that I almost cry and then there are the pages that hold all of the begging, pleading and whining as I was undergoing many emotional deaths...even more amazing are the pages that follow and illuminate the process of resurrection where I have died to the bondage's and demands of my ego and false self, only to be raised up from those ashes into the experience of true freedom from none other than me!

Then there are the pages that I had written at earlier times so full of clarity, insight and revolutionary wisdom that was absolutely poured into me from the heart of Heaven. In some of my greatest struggles I would grab one of my journals and randomly open it and to my amazement, what I read clearly gave me exactly what I needed to pull myself out of whatever I was going through that was so difficult! But it reminds me that I am never so far along this journey that I am immune to having to practice all I have learned if I want to continue having success and be able to master me.

I have been my own worst enemy in my life and I find that its in the times when I feel like I am so certain that I “don't do that anymore” that I am prone to some sneaky subconscious process and old way of doing things to slip in nearly undetected. It is especially important for me to maintain order and consistency because otherwise the chaos around me will spin me inside and in the moments of overwhelming busyness all that used to be my “default” tries to kick in. It seems that being busy tends to take me out of being present. Not being present is an unconscious existence, and that can be catastrophic depending on how long it takes me to realize that I am “off” and return to where I left myself.

Sometimes what's even more difficult for me is when I come face to face with everything I have done my best to avoid having to do since I was young and realizing that just because I distract or go off in a different direction doesn't mean that it is going to go away and leave me alone. Having to learn how to do things now seems much more overwhelming to me because of all of the thoughts that do their best to invade my process dangling reminders clothed in the form of “should have's and if only.” That has always been a dangerous place for me to go because of the guilt and shame that has always followed close behind.

Being 41 trying to learn how to be healthy seems much more difficult than if I would have just decided to take an interest in myself when I was still in High School or when I moved out to live on my own. However, I was not mentally healthy then. I am certain that until I finally became well in my mental and emotional health that anything I would have done physically also would have suffered. Its almost like now that I have been deconstructed from the inside and remade, now the outside of my house (my body) is finally able to be primed, cleansed, and re-sculpted as if for the very first time.

I am in way over my head and though I can swim, I am struggling. I’m usually able to see clearly and yet I wonder if that's true then how in the world can everything feel so dark and hazy. What I am experiencing right now is more than just emotional. It is nearly inescapable within my body physically. It is also as emotional as it is physical. The resistance within is throwing everything off and my body is crying out in ways that it hasn’t in what seems like forever. I have come to the place where I am face to face with the me I am, the me that I used to be and the me I hope to become. The me I used to be grew up rooted in the fear of punishment and withholding based upon what I did or did not do.

That “me” was shaped and formed by the church doctrines that I am still finding myself struggling to be free from because they operate on what seems to be the subconscious ingraining which is so automatic and habitual because it was “wired” within me from the time I was 10 months old all the way through my life.

I just want to be totally real about where I am in my journey and how I am navigating this thing we call life. It seems that just as the oceans have tides and currents, so it is with life. I am finding that no matter how much I have learned and overcome or stopped doing along the way because I learned how to choose differently instead of trying to not do something anymore that life happens in waves and seasons of tides that are coming in and drawing back out again. 

When the tides of my life are coming in sometimes it happens so gradually that it is almost unnoticeable until I am almost in over my head and being pulled backwards by the force underneath when I am giving all I’ve got to keep moving forward. I resist the very periods of being pulled backward and out of what looks like balance and consistency. I forget more than I remember it seems just how important all phases of the tides and waves in life are. They are the breath of life that cause expansion and then create room through the release that so many times feels and looks more like loss than anything healthy or productive. 

I am not here to write pretty words that make me feel good or anyone else feel all warm and fuzzy. That used to be my agenda. But all of that has changed. Don’t get me wrong, I love lifting people up and living the hope that burns within everything I am. 

 

I have come to believe so strongly that Love is the only choice that makes the impossible possible that I have chosen to let everything go that is not love…even when the letting go feels anything other than loving. This has been the most excruciating journey. Though I know with all of my heart there will be a point of completion, the truth is that I am in the heart of the greatest nightmare and miracle that is beyond my wildest imaginations. The truth is that I never would have imagined this road twisting and dropping off as it has along the way, and I was so certain that by now I was going to be in a place that looks nothing like what any of my life looks like at this moment.

I cling to the hope that no matter how it looks and feels right now, it won’t always be this way. And then I stop myself like now and ask, “What if everything did stay just as it is, then what?” I think even asking that question I can feel my resistance because I have been living my life for the grand design of my Heavenly Father who is my everything and surely He has amazing plans for my life…for all of our lives. 

 

What I have experienced over these past 5 ½ years has not only rocked my world because of everything I have gone through and endured along the way, it has rocked my world because I have been witness to and experienced life fully immersed within the incredible nature of God and a savior that have more often than not been so much cooler and candid than anything I was ever taught about them when I was growing up and even as an adult. 

So much of my life right now feels like I have again become entangled within the web of religious rules and traditions that I have experienced the freedom from in a way that changed my entire life. Its been a very long time since I have become so wrapped up in the heavy, nearly indescribable fear that is somehow lurking deep within me. It doesn’t matter how much I’ve learned. It is not a discipline thing. It strikes me physically and I am gripped by the hands of hyper vigilance. To me, it doesn’t matter what label it has, fear, anxiety, hyper vigilance, trauma…I am beginning to see that it seems to be rooted in my expectations which I thought I really moved beyond. 

Even more than that, when I stop choosing without realizing that I have, I begin reacting to everything going on all around me, and the tormenting grips of indecision and questioning what I am supposed to do end up taking over.

I have committed to being real, honest, and totally authentic with myself and everyone else. This is who I have learned to be. The problem I am facing though is one that I am certain finds form in what is called ego or my false self. My false self is all about image and having to “have it all together” and “have learned so much” that before I even realize what is happening I am withdrawing from within myself and that slowly trickles into everything. 

What’s even worse is I end up feeling like others are judging me and looking at me funny when the truth is that I am actually judging myself and looking at myself funny. It only looks like it is everyone else. They are only reflecting back to me what I am unwilling to see going on inside of me. This totally sucks because it feels crappy and I would rather not feel sad and scared. Then the dangling reminders of how I was taught all of my life that if I am afraid it means that I don’t have faith ends up causing me to judge myself even more harshly because “I know better.” 

 

Or do I? 

 

For the first time in my life a couple of Saturday's ago I said something out loud to a friend of mine that I never would have even dared to speak out loud to another human being at any other time in my life. 

 

I told her that it occurred to me that it’s quite possible that everything I think I know is wrong! That is one of the most terrifying places I’ve ever been because it brings me right up against everything I was taught for pretty much my whole life. To be honest, everything I was taught growing up was all founded in fear anyway. Fear is the thread that has been within every part of my life and when I wasn’t afraid of the dark anymore, all it did was change form and become something else.

My conflict is that I have learned that life is so much more than what I am being right now, and sadly it’s like I can’t even access any of the things that have effectively made it possible for me to get here. About 2 weekends ago I went to a church retreat about discernment and I went in believing that I was on top of things when it came to discerning in my life. 

 

Three days later the conference ended and I was overwhelmed by the mess I felt like suddenly enveloped in a mass wave of fear that ushered in unexpected panic. I thought I was going the “right” direction and suddenly I was hit with feeling like everything I believed was totally off and I had no idea! 

So I chose not to run from the pain I was feeling emotionally and I was not going to try to distract from it either. I chose to be with myself in the condition I was in which is pretty exhausting because I have experienced what it is to have every day be beyond words amazing and full of joy and awe. I have found that I don’t have to feel like crap and that shifting my attention to all that Love is and recalling things that brought me happiness can change everything I feel, see, and do, faster than most cars go 0-60! 

So I was miserable and choosing to be in the fullness of all that is because I know that it was happening for a reason and that it is teaching me more about myself. It is revealing things that are still very alive inside of me and as ugly as it feels, being able to be real and raw in my life and experience continues to be a gateway that leads to places beyond my wildest imaginations. It is in this darkness that I have been able to hold fast to the light that is inside of me…even when it looks like it has gone out.

I guess if I am willing to be totally naked in my life and let it all hang out, I see that I have gotten a little too used to the darkness inside this cocoon. Sometimes not being able to see what is really in front of me can be a form of ignorant bliss because in the dark it’s much easier to hold onto my own ideas and visions that have been the color and hope within my world than to try and see beyond the mountainous obstacles that interfere with my hopes and dreams only to litter my reality. 

I am coming face to face with the me I was never willing to grow up and become and the one that I have always dreamed I would be one day. Though it seems like these 2 are two totally different people, they are not. They are both making each other possible because they are me. One is the me I have been and am, and the other is what is possible if I will only set aside my own grandiose ideas and dig into my own life to face all of the things I have spent my life avoiding.

Then something incredible happened today while I was driving to Lifetime Fitness and in a moment, the ordinary became extraordinary! There was a large construction sign on the left side of 42^nd street in Crystal and it said, “Thank you for your patience” …at that moment it was like God letting me know that no matter what it looks like or feels like, that He is proud of how I am patiently navigating through this process with Him. I barely finished my thought when the most radiant orange Monarch butterfly flew at the middle of my windshield from the right side of the road! It made me nearly unzip my skin and go all alien because I could barely contain the joy of just how He is always with me in every step; and just because I may feel I’m not doing enough or unsure if anything I’m doing is making Him happy with me, I am reminded that He has never seen things the way we do. That is so incredible that words don’t even begin to do it justice!

I have been in the darkness of my cocoon for some time, but I understand now that this pressure and intensity is only preparation for when I am ready to emerge with wings of my own that will allow me to soar as I never could before. Not long ago I learned that when caterpillars go into their cocoon in the process of metamorphosis they become totally liquefied…crazy huh?! 

 

But just as with the Butterfly, we will never know just what we have been created to become without the season inside the cocoon that completely and irreversibly changes all we once were. Even more difficult to understand sometimes is the process of emergence. Wings have to dry before its possible to fly...and if anyone helps the butterfly out of the cocoon, it will die for it is the strength developed in the process of exiting the cocoon that gives the butterfly the wherewithal to fly! So it is with us if we are willing to “go it alone” even though we're never alone! Thank you for sharing my journey and taking your time to read my blog! I love you and God loves you more than anything!