Self Forgiveness What An Amazing Gift

Friday morning I was composing an email, whining to my friend Robin, while doing the umpteen million things I needed to do, before I could even walk out of the house. I was looking forward to two free hours, kid free, chore free, animal free, errand free, gym free, virtually responsibility free while I got my hair cut and colored. Then the phone rang, as I was walking out the door, the lady that was supposed to cut and color my hair couldn't, her daughter was sick. Sigh, there went my free time, my  me time! But I got it, I get it! I have spent the last 10 days with a sick kid in my house, this flu is NO JOKE. The email I had mentally written to Robin was about HOW IN THE HELL AM I GOING TO MAKE IT THROUGH THE NEXT THREE MONTHS!?!?!? We just opened up our rabbitry (and I am quickly learning that buying rabbits is NOT like buying show goats, insert I am way too OCD/Type A personality to keep having these curveballs tossed at me), I have 12 very expensive show goats coming in the next month all of which will need bottle fed and picked up from the airport all on different days, 40 baby chicks arriving this weekend, the 3100 sq ft garden needs planted, I have two kids starting baseball which means games or practice every night, I have one taking horseback riding lessons, and the other three well they just get to tag along, OHHHH and because I am no longer trippin' but working on that IM triathlon I train 12-15 hours a week at the gym! And NOW my haircut/color had just been cancelled I somehow had to fit that whine into my email to her, right?




I then walked past the shelf, you know that one that is full of well intentioned, some day I'll get to it stuff, this shelf where I keep several devotional books. AH CRAP! That's right, I had told myself I was going to try to read a devotional everyday to work on my self improvement. UGH when was the last time I had read one, ummm maybe last week, no maybe the week before, no not then must have been January sometime. Well, might as well do one RIGHT NOW so I can mark that off my to do list. My heart wasn't in it, my self improvement wasn't in it, I, just for that day, wanted to say I did my devotional. I was going to read it on the fly and say that I had done it, that somehow I was a better person for those three minutes of reading. However, that day, that moment, God knew that even my check list daily devotional could speak to my rushed, hurried and challenged heart. Because, like so many other ladies I am a busy woman, wife, mom, homesteader, writer, athlete but Friday morning my busy got spoken to.




Anyone that knows anything about me knows that I messed up pretty bad from May 2010 until May 2013 that I spent those three years of my life trippin'. Some days, weeks, and months worse than others but that three year span of my life I was trippin'. I have spent a lot of time, the last couple months, struggling with self forgiveness and even more so I have spent the last few years of my life trying to feel the empty spots, those deep voids with busy, those areas that I needed to forgive myself for and just turn over to God. Because of the way I lived my life during that span of three years, and also because largely in part to how I grew up, I try not to feel emotions, emotions always seem to get me in some kind of trouble. I try to fill the emotions, the numb, the frustration, and even the good feelings with busy. Busy isn't a feeling, busy is an act, busy is something I can do and I can do it well. Busy isn't something that I have to think about or even better yet busy isn't something that I have to feel. Busy is just a way of life and I can fill all areas of my life with busy and I can make that busy work in my favor. However, Friday I saw, during that "cross this off my list three minute devotional" that there are deep places within my soul that busy can not reach. I suspect those are the places that God has designed for nothing to reach except Him. Nothing that He allows to fill those places but Him and nothing can truly reach those deep places, but Him. As hard as I try to allow busy to reach those and I get really close, busy just can't penetrate that which is meant for God.


I am also very much an introvert, I like being alone, I like my space, and I keep my bubble of friends very tight. But this has become more and more the case the busier I have become. I truly feel like I can't make room and time for one more thing, because I have tried to fill up all those deep parts with busy. I don't care to make time for relationships it's not a priority to me with the exception of my husband, my bestie Denise, and my close friend Robin. However, Friday I also saw that it is so much more than the busy that zaps my desire to have relationships outside of those three. Those three people: Roger, Denise, and Robin don't judge my imperfections, they see the me behind the busy, they don't care that I have 5 loads of clean laundry on my coach that needs put away, that if you crawl into the back seats of my suburban you might find some crazy science experiment, and they go beyond that they forgive this tattooed, tries to be tough and gruff when really I am just super sensitive person when I can't forgive myself. So Friday as I sat down to whine to Robin about my busy God took that opportunity to show me that I need to forgive myself I need to let Him fill the voids that busy can't reach. I wanted to open my computer to whine to her, instead I took a moment and said God show me what to do with this, show me how to forgive myself when You and so many others have already forgiven me.


I didn't have to wait long, He heard my heart's prayer, how do I make peace with my pain, the pain I caused myself? Friday afternoon I shared my story with essentially a stranger, someone I didn't really know. When I was done, I wanted to cry, I wanted to feel sorry for myself, I wanted to wallow in that self pity in that you messed up Ryan, not a little but really big, you were trippin' but instead I walked into my gym to work on that IM triathlon. While I was running I thought about what this lady had shared with me and I may have let a tear slip out of the corner of my eye, not because I felt sorry for myself, but because at that moment I realized how many people out there have a story like mine, now many people try to fill those deep voids with busy. It was on that treadmill that I realized just how truly grateful I am that time is over. That today, all I have left from that self inflicted pain is a memory. I have spent the nearly two years since my sobriety, since I flushed the cocaine down the toilet, living in that pain, because I refused to forgive myself. Friday, while running on that treadmill I made the decision that from "this day forward"  I will live without the pain but will always accept that I have the memories. Friday was a big day in my little world, I, for the 1st time fully accepted that in order to forgive myself of the pain and the circumstances surrounding the pain, I have to remember that today, any day no matter what, is better than any of those days. There were lessons in those three years that I learned that I never have to learn again. I am here, I made it, and I am fully able to live again. I absolutely will always be busy that is just who I am, but I don't have to try so hard to fill the corners of my life that God has meant to fill now that I can forgive myself and accept His grace mercy and forgiveness.


Tomorrow will be 21 months sober! This crazy busy woman, wife, mom, homesteader, writer, and athlete will be one day further from trippin' and one day closer to triathlon!