Jesus, My Mercy and Reconciliation

Below is a retreat talk I gave earlier this year, people ask about your purpose in life and what your Why is. I am not always sure I truly know but what I do know is that I am a work in progress, constently growing, changing evolving.

Open Song: Papercut by Linkin Park

Forgiving Others

I love the line in that song that says, we all have a face we hold inside. For me there has always something inside myself I was battling, but it’s been through Jesus and my faith where I have found my mercy and my ability to heal, grow and forgive.

Apologizing wasn’t something that came naturally to me or was ever really taught to me growing up. Up to the age of seven I was primarily raised by my mother who was an addict, while I was still living with her, her primary drugs of chose were heroin, cocaine and alcohol. I bring this up because I am not sure if any of you grew up similarly but there is not apologizes in addiction households. It might seem silly but partly because many times, the person does not remember what they did, or because to talk about it made it more real. An example I can pull from growing up is that my mother broke her best friend’s nose, a woman who helped to raise me named Roz, and there was never an apology for the action.

 

So forgiving others, or knowing how to ask for forgiveness was not something that was part of my early education. My education in this area came much later and after a lot of personal pain. Anger and hatred have a funny way of eating away at us, my anger turned me against people and against God. When I was seven, my mother began to downward spiral that started when we received the news that my 16 year old brother had been shot and killed by a 15 year old boy name Jeremey during an argument. Then when I was ten I then got another phone call that my mother had been found dead on the side of a road. The circumstances around her death are still not clear to this day.

To say I had a lot of areas I was pouring anger out onto is an understatement, however the truth was that none of the people I was angry with had any idea or were effected by my rage. My brother’s killer was in jail on as different charge by the time I was in high school, my mom’s ex boyfriends who left bruises on her had move on, the dealers that fueled her habit didn’t remember her, and my mother was dead and God…while to me God thought I was big joke. How untrue I know that is now however that where I was at sixteen.

However, God always has a hand and his mercy was still working through my life even during this time. This all became apparent during an experience that forever changed me. First part of it was actually during a retreat I was forced into going onto by my mom’s best friend how had taken over raising me after my mother died. I remember a talk about what reconciliation was, and understanding how because of my hatred, my anger, my unwillingness to forgive and ask for forgiveness I was blocking my relationship with God. Now while I didn’t fully know what type of relationship I wanted with God, there was something in me, underneath all the brokenness that wanted something. And while I couldn’t fulling express it I knew it was there. A month later I had a personal encounter with a homeless woman at a free lunch program I was volunteering at as part of a Young Christian and Work Holy week retreat, it seems odd and the only way I can explain it is that, this woman looked like my mother and somewhere deep deep down inside me there was a clarity that my mom wasn’t suffering anymore, that through her death she was freed from a life full of pain. It was Holy Thursday when this took place, now I look back and I am able to make the beautiful connection between the last supper and this supper program for me. The next night we celebrate stations of the cross, and at the station where Jesus meets his mother, I was mentally taken back to walking into our apartment the day my brother was killed and vividly remembered the look on my mother’s face that day, she was completely broken, without will to fight or do anything, I can only imagine Mary must have looked similarly. That night I went to reconciliation and at first I couldn’t say anything and finally I started to talk and cry and talk and cry. For the first time I could remember I finally said out loud that I was mad at my mom, my brother and at God. I remember Father Gary just listening and finally I remember the weight that was lifted off of me during absolution.

I also like to say here that it wasn’t a quick fix, but it was the start of the journey, I started to go to mass with Roz again, and really listening to what was said, I spent time journaling about my anger and I read a lot, from everywhere. By summer people who hadn’t seen me since the start of the change told me how they didn’t recognize me at first because I looked so different. And it had nothing to do with my outward appearance, it was an internal change that was shining outward. That following spring, I was finally confirmed.

Forgiving Myself

If my teens where about learning to forgive other people, my 20s have been a lot about forgiving myself. Because while I had let go of the pain others had caused me, I still held onto a lot of stuff I believe was my fault. I have always wanted to be perfect. When I was little it was about, being the most perfect daughter on the face of the earth, in hopes it would stop my mom from relapsing. In school it was about proving I was more than my learning disability. In my 20s it was to prove that I was more than the girl with the dark history. The standards I held myself to and still do at times (we are all a work in progress right) were beyond human. This failure lead me to a lot of unhealthy habits, I struggle with body dysmorphic disorder, which is a big fancy why of staying that I don’t realistically see my body. It has throughout my life lead to bouts with anorexia and bulimia.

While I was able to forgive others, I have always held myself to a high standard. In some ways I was a good thing, it help me to work hard and make progress. It lead me to competing and winning scholarship money in pageants, completing a Master’s degree in Public Administration and being totally self-sufficient by 20, living on my own and working full time while going to school full time. However nothing was ever been good enough. No pageant title was big enough, no degree was high enough, and ect. And because my standards could never be met and sometimes I still struggle with this, I was a failure in my own eyes. I was trying to create a perfect life, as a way to prove that I was a good person.

Then at 26 I found myself facing the biggest failure I could imagine, I broke off my engagement to my boyfriend of 3 years and found myself for the first time totally alone, in a city that wasn’t home and having to rebuild my life for the bottom up. Before I broke the engagement off, I was at mass after receiving communion and I just prayed that God would let me what to do. I promised I would obey whatever he led me to. The evening the answer became clear. Still I remember feeling like such a failure and humiliated for my decision.

I was suffering, I was in pain, I was fat. Yes, I was the heaviest I had ever been in my life and with my body issues that became even more depressing for me. So there I was living in a studio apartment, without my friends due to the breakup, alone and fat. However I had a hope that the breaking down who I thought I should be, was going to help form me into what I needed to be in this world. The issue was, I couldn’t hear God, I was in a deep personal dark night of the soul and I had no idea how to move out of it.

I found my place of forgiveness in the oddest area, a gym. I was on a journey to loss the weight I had put on from my breakup and get back into pageant shape. Once again looking for external approval of myself. A friend of mine recommended I contact a personal friend of his for help losing my weight. I trusted my friend and because of that trusted my coach. I remember sitting down the first time to meet with him about my goals, he asked me if I had ever heard of CrossFit before. I remember it as I probably almost laughed and said all I knew about it was that they yell at you a lot and make you throw up. He promised me no one had ever thrown up at his box (aka gym). I didn’t know why but like I said I trusted him and was desperate to try and take control of my body and that part of my life again. And while I was struggling, God gave me people who saw my potential in my far beyond what I could see. Once again God mercy and plan were there but in a very odd why. It took the breakdown of my relationships, body and life to create something totally new in me.

When I first started I was also working on a degree in Pastorial Studies and was in a class talking about suffering of all things, we were working through the book of Job and let’s face it if anyone knows anything about personal suffering it’s Job. Through the process of physical suffering, I was starting to develop a deeper relationship with Jesus.  I also started to look at my body differently. In CrossFit it isn’t so important what your body looks like, as what your body is capable of doing.

God made each of us fearfully and wonderfully made, we are to use everything he gave us to glorify him. God gave me this outlet and I was going to do the best I could through it. I realized that what was causing my lack of ability to forgive myself was stopping me from growing into relationship. I had to let go of what I thought prefect was to allow God to make me into his prefect child. Finally I started to feel a connection again. At the same time at CrossFit I had to let go of my end perfect goal, and forus on each small success and victory I had made. And the more I let go of what I thought my perfect life should be, the more God has opened up to allow me to see where he wants me to go next. And while it isn’t totally clear in CrossFit if I will ever be like Camille Leblanc-Bazinet (CrossFit Games Champion), because I am not her. And in my life its not clear what my next career or personal move should be, I am least at a place of listing for the answers again.

One of the scripture passages that I have reflected on during all of this has been from 2 Corinthians Chapter 12 V 7 through 10. Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

So that’s where I am at now, I’m not perfect and at times I still hate it but I also know that my ability to be a disciple I need to not only forgive others but also forgive myself. Everything I have gone through, all the hardships have made me the person I am today. My ability to forgive others and myself has helped to free me to be more who God truly called me to be. It through his mercy and love I have been able to go into a better human being to honor him.

Closing Song The High Road- Three Days Grace