There is no trippin to triathlon theme tonight...when I was asked to guest blog this weekend I didn't really expect the up and down emotional week I have had AND since I didn't give a theme I have just decided you are going to get the ramblings of my heart and my mind because my heart hurts and my mind is confused. I have figured out so much of my life on my own and I've done a pretty decent job of it. Yes, I am fully aware I write blogs about going from trippin' to triathlons which means I spent 3 years of my life as an addict, but even with that I have done a decent job of my life.
I believe that life is multi faceted that there is a spiritual, emotional, and physical component. Everything in our lives fits into these three components and each component is about free will and choices. After I stopped trippin' I put on nearly 100 lbs I replaced my drug habit with soda and junk food and wasn't working out. I was physically miserable which also made me emotionally blah. I made the choice to hire a coach to help me train for triathlons as well as get the nutrition component under control. I was and continue to be humbled out by her. Not once has she ever judged me or made me feel "less than" but letting someone into your world of working out and eating is a very personal thing, especially when it was a replacement for a very deep emotional cover up, drugs. Yet, I knew how badly I wanted this how desperately I want these last 50 lbs to come off, how I want to not just do triathlons but I want to be decent at them. I trust my coach completely, with not just the work outs and the nutrition but I know that all three facets of life work together therefore I made the choice to let her into my life and to share with her the emotional junk that has brought me to this place physically. I chose to share with her the lifelong battle with food, the drugs, and I chose to let her get to know me, how I operate as an athlete, as a wife, as a mom, and as a person. I made the choice to let Coach Kitty into my world, because I wanted the physical component of my life to be all that it could possibly be. I struggled with letting my guard down, because even though she lives thousands of miles away, she still knew me. She still knew when I ate junk or when I didn't bust ass in a work out, and I am so thankful for my sometimes way too honest personality, because in getting my physical together not only did I learn to trust more, I gained a coach and a friend with whom I admire and respect.
My physical journey has not been easy it is often embarrassing and makes me angry. I catch a glimpse of myself in pictures and can see the every bit of the 50lbs. I want to wear shorts that just 3 summers ago fit but now I'm lucky to get them up to my knees. I want to not have a stomach that can not be hidden no matter what shirts I wear, and I don't want to have to cringe at the thought of that tri suit waiting in my closet. I had a bit more physical confidence before our vacation this summer when my niece took a video of me jumping off the high dive and I saw just how huge I was in my swimming suit. Couple that with the comments I blogged about last week from my dad and I can safely say my physical confidence meter has been lowered. HOWEVER, even though my confidence has wained and I want to be 50lbs thinner like yesterday and I want to not be a back of the pack racer in the my triathlons I have a plan! I, without a shadow of doubt, know that I have done the right thing, I know what the answer is, and I trust the physical facet of my life to my coach. This week as I sucked through training I thought why am I doing this?!? I just want to quit! I don't want to work at this! I licked my wounds of self pity and regret and frustration I also was reminded that I have been given all the tools I need to be successful and that if I follow these tools my end goals will be achieved. My coach can't do the work for me, I have to eat the right things, or eat period, she can't do the workouts for me, but since when is 2200 a short swim??, it is about me and the work and the effort, but the plan is clear, the tools are solid, and the goal is tangible. I have got the physical facet of my life signed, sealed, and delivered!
The emotional facet of my life is in check! Well sort of, well most of the time anyway. I have slowly over the course of the last 5 years began letting my walls down, allowing myself to feel emotion and for that feeling of emotion to be safe. I'm not even sure I can describe this in a manner that makes sense. I am a very black and white thinker and with that a very all or none person and my emotions were not the exception. I often would feel something to the extreme, often anger, or I would feel nothing at all. It was to the point I could look at the faces of my sweet babies and feel nothing. I would ask people in my life do you ever look at your kids and feel nothing? You would think I had asked them if they were growing horns or to tell me about their sex life or something equally as odd. They all said no they always felt something, to which I then looked at them the way they had just looked at me. It was then that I realized I had allowed myself to shut down so much that I didn't feel. even when it came to my babies. This when I knew I had to make a choice! I could continue on this path of emotional self destruction or I could find some super extra large big girl panties and I could learn how to feel! It was not easy, it still is not easy, there are still days, especially this week, where I think why did I make this choice to feel emotions, being flat line and not caring was so much easier. Absolutely it was easier, it is easier, but I missed so much and I choose to not miss out like that again.
On Tuesday, a friend and I took our kids to see Inside Out. I didn't think it was as great as everyone was making it out to be, but that's to be expected, from me, it is about emotions. However, one part of the movie that has stuck with me for the last several days is that joy and sadness must work together. A life can not be full of joy without some sadness and even in the saddest components of life there is always a piece of joy. I have thought about this all week long, and I have looked back on my life and I am thankful for the sadness, for the disgust, for the fear, because without them I would not be able to know joy fully. I made the choice to stop relying on alternative means of temporary emotion bumps through the cocaine and pills and heroin. I would feel nothing so I would do cocaine, I would do too much cocaine and would be feeling too much but nothing a handful of pills or a hit of heroin couldn't resolve. However, more than the mood and emotion altering substances I partook in on a daily basis I made the choice to work on what was truly causing the emotional dysfunction in my life. Coming from a person that doesn't like to feel emotion, to have to dig deep, to have to pull out that emotional sludge that looks and sounds and smells and tastes awful and to figure out what is making it that way, it down right sucked! There were those moments, those days where I wanted to quit, and sometimes I did, but I knew I made the choice to do this and I didn't want to turn back. I relied on friends to carry me when I couldn't carry myself, I relied on the fact that I knew if I kept doing these things then I would have a successful and solid end result. I knew if I did xyz then in the end I would be okay. I flushed the drugs, burned the drug using supplies, and walked out of my bathroom never to use again. I knew what the end result of that emotional choice would be. I met with a psychiatrist I poured my heart out to her and I knew what the end result would be. Just like with the physical no one could do the emotional work for me. My friends could hug me tight (when I let them), they could cry with me, laugh with me, walk with me, and even yell at me, but they couldn't get sober for me and they couldn't work through the emotional sludge for me, I had to do it. My psychiatrist could listen to me, could tell me what I should do, could challenge and encourage me, could call me out on my bullshit, and could show me what needed to be done, but she could not do it for me, when I left her office the choice was mine. But, I knew the truth I knew what was right, I knew if I did these things my emotional facet would be in check! I have the emotional facet of my life signed sealed and delivered!
Alas that brings me to my spiritual trifecta. What a shit storm this has been! Let me just say I'm going to be brutally honest here, and probably offend someone, but hey even when I'm not writing on matters as personal as spirituality I always manage to offend someone in my blogging, people are just easily offended I suspect. This isn't even about a church or religion but about what spirituality means to an individual. Even for a person that is an atheist I still believe that they have three facets of life and they make the choice to not believe in the spiritual component and that is okay, that is their choice. For many years I have doubted and questioned spiritual matters. I have wondered is there a God, I have wondered if there is a God how can everything in the Bible be true, I have wondered how there can be so many religions, so many denominations, so many belief systems each one claiming to be true. This area of my life stresses me out! I want to do the right thing for myself and for my family, and I think I have found what works for us. However, after I write all this, and it is published I might be tossed into the provberial spiritual river and sent floating without a paddle. My entire life I have heard how wrong certain religions are. Wrong based on what because they believe differently than the one pointing out the "flaws" in the other religions belief system? As I started to type about spirituality I wanted to point out what I don't like in churches and then it occurred to me it isn't about the churches, someone else's spiritual journey should not impede mine. It should not matter to me if someone wants to be a Sunday morning church quarter back, or if someone wants to devote 2 years of their life to the mission field, or if someone wants to pray 5 times a day facing Mecca a persons spiritual journey is their own. My stress this week comes from just this, not so much the spiritual facet but from the fact that I don't know what to do with what I believe. That moment when I think I have it figured out, when I think I know exactly what I want to do, some well meaning friends stage an intervention of sorts and try to save me from the dark side (said tongue and cheek of course). Last week I mentioned that I was going to attend a church, a not so main stream church, but one that is well known at the same time. I was hesitant to even cross that threshold and mention to my family and friends on the ever so delightful likes of social media where I was going to attend, but I did. I knew that I was going to get some resistance, that is to be expected, but I never would have imagined that a week later I have been made to feel like an incompetent, worthless, ignorant, human being because I decided to try this church.
My stressful spiritual week looked like this: 1) I no longer doubt there is a God so now that I have established that I can move on 2) I think I have found a church that is exactly what I want for me and my family with a group of people that I instantly feel comfortable with and like I belong 3) each piece of the church service spoke to exactly what I had been talking to my friend about and I walked out of their feeling like I belong like I connected with these people and that it was the right place 4) Roger and I talked religion, spirituality, God something we never had done before and I was like woohoo virtual high five this is absolutely the right thing to do and we both felt connected with this church our kids had friends there we felt welcomed and we liked the messages 5) the fan mail began if people weren't texting me telling me that I am too smart to believe in this, they were messaging me on facebook telling me that I knew better than to do this, or they were finding some of my closest friends and telling them they needed to talk to me staging their own little spiritual interventions 6) I realized what a big deal to me the boundaries for this church that I really enjoyed are. They attend based on where you live and I don't live in the right place to attend this church that I want to, yes I could attend the one I am supposed to because they teach the same thing but that struck something in me that I still haven't been able to shake off I cried so much that day I gave myself a headache and I think 3 days later my eyes are still swollen, I know many think what's the big deal you don't go for the people you go for the message but for me it is a very big deal for so many reasons but I shall save that for another blog 7) I meet with people from the church today and they shared a video with me to watch and as I watched it I kept thinking OH MY GOSH that's exactly how I feel right now and I felt like okay this is the right thing I'm on the right track 8) I was asked whether or not I wanted to be baptized and join the church in just 3 short weeks.
There are things in this church I am not sure I believe, yet there are things in main stream Christianity I am not sure I believe either. However, what I do believe is that as humans we were given free will, we are given the choice to make decisions about how we live on Earth which includes how we choose to carry out our spiritual life. I wish that it was as clear cut as the physical facet where I knew when I listen to Coach Kitty and I eat the way I'm supposed, train the way I'm supposed to, sleep like I am supposed to I will not only make it through the race I will cross the finish line and get a shiny medal. I wish I knew that it was like the emotional component where I flushed the cocaine down the toilet and left my bathroom and never picked up my phone to call my dealer again, or I sat across from my psychiatrist and I pulled up that sludge and we cleaned it off and put it away and everything was great. However, that isn't true for the spiritual. I don't know what waits for me when I die and more than that I don't know what is the right way to get there. I don't know if I am supposed to believe what your religion teachers or yours or yours or yours or hey even yours. (Yes I'm talking to you) I don't know if I am going to totally mess everything up by attending one church vs another or that I even need to attend at all. I had a very wise friend say to me this week, "Ryan does it matter which way the pearly gates swing open, does it matter if they go left or right" Well no truly that doesn't matter, I guess it just matters is that they open at all, because I'm sure scaling the pearly gate is no easy task. My spirit has been so uneasy this week, it has hurt
When I die only then can I say (well you know what I mean) that the spiritual component is signed sealed and delivered. However, in the meantime I can strive to align my family with a group of individuals that have a spiritual belief system similar to mine. I can strive to raise my children with spiritual beliefs that I feel will sustain them not only now but as they enter into their teen and adult years. This is not a task I take lightly, you know when I cry over something it's serious business, but what I never expected was the added stress that people bring to spirituality. I was so excited, elated in fact, when I finally felt this spiritual peace that I had searched for all my life. When I finally knew what this spiritual hunger was about, when I finally felt that down deep I had found the spiritual answers I had longed for. I did not expect others to feel that level of excitement with me and for me but what I did not expect was for them to try and kill the joy and peace of the spiritual journey I have been on for years.
Tonight I want to encourage you to look at your trifecta. Are their choices that you can be better making to help sign, seal, and deliver each component so they are harmoniously working together? However, I also want to challenge you to be cognizant of the trifecta of those around you. Their journeys might, and probably will, look different than yours, walk along side them, don't cast judgment, help carry their load, you never know what one little statement, in passing can do for them. One statement, on some hard bleachers, in the middle of a coach showdown, at a little league baseball field brought to me the spiritual peace and joy I have sought for 38 years, be that kind of person, not one that muddles the beauty of the trifecta of life.
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