Everything is weird.
📷: Em Bateman
I use weird as a cop out word. When I don’t know what I’m feeling (or don’t want to do the work) I say I’m feeling weird. Jason will usually make me choose a different word if I try to use it on him, but not right now.
Everything feels weird. Going to the grocery store, staying home, generally living life….it’s all weird (even writing feels weird but that’s probably because I’m out of practice).
I’ve spent the first few weeks ignoring the feeling, trying to operate as normal. It didn’t work out so well. Disordered eating thoughts came out of dormancy, I was simultaneously completely exhausted and incredibly anxious, and felt completely paralyzed in my brain. Never the less, I was determined to hold on to normalcy. Which meant that I should be fine. There was no room in life for struggle because I needed to keep moving forward like everything was normal.
Shockingly, this method proved quite ineffective. Avoidance led to fear, which led to shame, which led to self doubt, which led right back to avoidance.
This cycle is not unfamiliar to me. Thankfully, I’ve gotten better at “shooting myself in the foot.” I called one of my best friends and told her everything. I braced for the alarm bells to sound. For her to freak out that my eating disorder is back and send me off to the hospital. Instead, she calmly said, “that makes sense.”
She reminded me that we are in uncharted waters. My recovery plan did not include a global pandemic or shelter-in-place orders and it would be logical that I would struggle. Her insight interrupted the cycle. I was able to give myself permission to struggle.
A weight was lifted. The shame, self doubt, and avoidance shrank back. The disordered thoughts seemed much smaller with all the space that was created by simply allowing the struggle to exist.
And now every negative thought pattern is gone and I’m totally perfect….
LOL. Not gonna happen this side of heaven.
Things still feel weird. Recovery looks different right now. I’ve had to figure out what works in this new context. It’s been hard…
… and also surprisingly beautiful.
It’s been like God gave me the reins to my own grace. He let me hold it and decide if I was going to let it wash over me. Grace is powerful and precious. The ability to hold it is sacred and washing in it divine. I’ve never experienced grace in this way before.
It’s ignited a hunger to see this grace throughout the world. Grace that holds space to let this season be whatever it is, in any given moment for every single person; the kind of radical grace God has promised to us. The idealist in me wants this to be a reality today (I’m looking at you Twitter, politics, gen z’ers on TikTok) the pragmatist knows better.
Instead, I’m looking for opportunities to hold grace and adjusting to the complete weirdness of life during a global pandemic.