In the eye of the beholder

I hate photographs. I know I am not the only one, and these days, for the sake of others who want to capture memories I submit without too much open protest to being photographed in groups. Friends who know me well are merciful these days and usually don't insist too much if I quietly demur or offer to take the picture in group situations. I still occasionally have friends who find it hard to believe that I really don't like it or who with the best of intentions will send me photos of myself.

To close friends I am often brave enough to admit now that, at the wrong moment, unexpectedly being confronted with a picture of myself will make me feel physically sick. That's not hyperbole. Literally, physically, sick. Independent really of the situation or my relative appearance. I don't see what they see when they look at the photograph and they don't realise that I only manage to exist and enjoy my life because I constantly, consciously don't think about what I look like. Being confronted with a picture reminds me that other people have to look at and relate to what I physically look like all the time.

It's why I hate any occasion for which I need to get dressed up. I have to think about what I look like, the physical me that people have to relate to. In order to start enjoying myself I have to get to the point where I have 'lost' myself again, when I can forget that I physically exist and what it is that people are looking at when they look at me. Being dressed up also often involves fitted clothes which constantly remind you of their existence. It lies behind my insistence that if I ever get married I will do so in jeans and with no photographer. The wedding dress is the ultimate expression of clothing that is designed to focus attention on your appearance. Most of my friends don't really understand the extent of the misery and discomfort looking at myself causes me, so they don't understand why I would be willing to sacrifice convention, propriety and being the centre of attention in order to avoid constantly being reminded on a supposedly happy day what it is that others are looking at.

Self-image is so wrapped up in layers and layers of shame for me, that I am reluctant to admit how I feel about what I look like. I am ashamed of my shame. So over the years I have cultivated deliberate self-forgetfulness. Forget about what you look like, dismiss the thought, consciously reject thinking of yourself as a physical person, or in fact thinking about yourself at all and then you don't have to be self-conscious, you can be focussed on others. Photos, mirrors, reflections in shop windows, getting dressed up, thrust that physicality back onto you and you have to push it away, reject it again before you can be comfortable. I can never accept myself, only forget myself.

I know I am relatively extreme, but not unique in any sense. It is an aggravated degree of something many people, particularly women, experience all the time. As humans we are constantly bombarded with messages about who we are. From the subconscious clues of the way people relate to us, to the images and representations that surround us, to the actual words that people use to describe us. We absorb and assimilate expectations, judgements. We are constantly being told who we are and who we should be by the world around us. Physical self-image is bound up with moral judgements on ourselves, when I look in the mirror I don't just see what I physically look like and the accompanying physical judgements, I see all of the world's judgements and my own judgement's reflected back at me.

Until I was 22 or so, those judgements would be profoundly uncomfortable for a stranger to listen to. Physically what I saw was ugly, disgusting, unfeminine. More generally I was worthless, dirty, unloved and un-loveable. I had absorbed the world's judgements about myself. Self-mutilation was easy, self-disgust could fuel days and days of not eating. I wanted to cut my face, to write the judgements I had absorbed in plain sight for others to see, to destroy what I loathed and made me feel sick. I managed not to do that, in the end my shame at how I felt overcame the desire for public exposure of it.

I know this makes uncomfortable reading. It makes uncomfortable writing. So why am I writing it? Because of course it is not the whole story, only the beginning of it. I am friends with Jesus so it's where I start, but not where I end. The world told me a story that if I wanted to be loved I needed to, "Be beautiful, Be funny, Be smart but not too smart, Be successful, Be smiley, Be popular, Be fashionable, Be desirable, Be thin, Be quiet". And then it told me I was none of those things. I was a failure. But praise God he took me in hand and told me a different story. It was a simple one, just this, "You are mine".

It's the claim to silence all claims. The judgement to end all judgements. What and who I am is not the world's to determine, it belongs to God to say. He made me, then he bought me with the blood of his precious Son, only he is worthy to tell me who I am. His is not another voice in the competition of voices telling me who I am, his is the voice. Only he is worthy to tell me who I am. To allow that right to anyone else, including myself, is to dishonour and de-throne him. It may not have been my fault, the things that happened to me that created the voices of judgement in my head, but that I allow them to sound above the Lord's voice, to take his place, and of that I need to repent.

So having allowed that the Lord has the right to define me, to tell me who I am, what is it that he says? Does he have another list for me of things I need to be? No, the Lord Jesus had for me words that would set me free from the weight of the judgement of the world. Isaiah 43 became the scaffolding on which I could start to re-build my identity, re-shape my view of myself into the reflection of who the God made me and died for me told me I was. "Because you are precious and honoured in my sight, and because I love you", began to replace the solid foundational truths of my understanding of myself. I could not be worthless if God said I was precious, I could not be dirty if I was honoured, I could not be unloved if my Lord said, "I surely love you".

Over time the rock of Jesus' words about me became more and more the foundation stone of my identity, I gave up more and more of my judgements of myself to him. I accepted myself because I believed I was accepted, not on the basis of my merits, but by the love that said while you are dirty and guilty and my enemy I will lay down my life for you. On the basis that, "This is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be a propitiation for our sins". It's not a completed work, it never will be this side of heaven, there are days that I hear the world's voice as the loudest in my head, coping strategies that I run back to under pressure that reflect the old identity rather than the new.

One thing that remains is the visceral antipathy to my physical appearance. The belief that I am ugly and disgusting and weak because I am overweight, the only thing that I see when I look at a photo, or a reflection. The constant battles with dieting which, like for most people, has absolutely no long term impact. The constant reminder that when it comes to physical appearance I am a failure and it's my own fault, a failure of will, self-discipline, inner strength. I am learning to tame the excesses it leads to. I no longer often skip meals, starving myself part in punishment, part in desperate attempt to make an impact. It never worked anyway. I try to at least start the academic year with the concept that time to cook and eat in my life is a necessity, not an indulgence that I don't deserve. I buy fruit and vegetables that I like, even though it seems like a waste of money to spend on myself, because I am more likely to eat them. I try to remember that however I feel about it, my body is not my own, because I am not my own, I was bought at a price, so I try to take care of it.

But I know the Lord is pushing me on. Challenging me to see not what the world sees, or what I see, but what he sees when he looks at me. Not perfect, not worthy in itself, but acceptable because he accepts it, lovely because it is loved, beautiful because he has found beauty in it, the beauty that he has put there by choosing to love it and therefore giving it some of his own worth and beauty. Pushing me to believe that the inner things are more important than the outer, the unseen is of more value than the seen, that charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting, but that a women who fears the Lord is to be praised.

I'm not there yet. I still hate photos, still struggle to look at them, but it no longer hurts to hear the verse a dear friend once gave to me inscribed on a bracelet and which I could not read for years and years because I couldn't accept it. Slowly, but slowly the Lord is changing even that deepest truth that I have believed from a small child, that I am ugly. Slowly I am letting him be the arbiter and learning to accept his words when he says: "The King is enthralled with your beauty, honour him for he is your Lord".

 

Where are you God?

I read something recently about grief which talked about the writer's experience of finding joy and peace hidden within the process of grieving. This would be a lovely testimony, except that the writer generalised their experience to all Christians. And I thought of some friends of mine and how discouraging they would find that. Because as the writer blithely described the experience of God drawing near through grief and feeling the blessing of his closeness I heard in my head the baffled cry of a Christian friend going through a terrible grief, "If I felt closer to God it would feel less pointless, but in the worst time in my life he has never seemed so far away."

I know she is not unique. I have felt that same thing. In the darkest night of my life, when I feel I have needed God's presence more than I ever have before, suddenly he has disappeared. And not for a day or two. For a month, for a year. Left in that swirling void is confusion, anger, doubt: Where has he gone? Is it my fault? Is God angry with me? Is he punishing me? Is he even there? 

It's quick and easy to diagnose the fault with the believer from the outside, not enough faith, some sin blocking the way, but in my opinion also quite wrong. I know a little something about strong emotion, and a little something about grief from a personal point of view and they have this in common, your emotions cannot be trusted. They will lie to you, and they will overwhelm you to the exclusion of any other feeling. That includes physical feelings, like hunger and tiredness, and so how much more more abstract feelings like being loved. God may feel far away simply because the overwhelming weight of your grief, pain, anger, loss holds at a distance all of the feelings you associate with his presence, joy in your salvation, supernatural peace, the sense of being loved and protected. 

But even above and beyond all this is the fact that the human brain can only tolerate so much distress without shutting down its emotions altogether. This is a blessed mercy in many ways as it allows you to get through the early stages of grief and all the things that have to be done. From the outside people will comment about how well you are dealing with it, but in reality you are sleep walking, numb, in emotional shutdown. This stage of grief can last weeks, months, years, especially if there is a need to 'carry on' or 'be strong' for others. You can't afford the luxury of feeling your pain so you shut it down, but it’s not selective. Along with pain you have to shut down all feeling.

Another common reason that God can feel distant is particularly potent for faithful Christians. It is the fact that you are angry with God. You don't want to be, you feel it is wrong to be, you ought to trust him, to submit to his will to believe in his goodness even in this, but everything in you cries out, it's wrong, it's bad, it's unfair, how could you. We are much less holy in practice than in theory. It's easy in good times to say God has a purpose for good in all things, but when confronted with the ultimate unnatural evil of death our theology can easily be swamped by feeling. 

Now this may be because we secretly have some problems in our practical theology. We may know that we are the recipients of grace but be quietly holding on to the belief that God owes us something because we are good. We may believe that God is Sovereign and Good but have not practiced trusting and dwelling in that sovereignty and good in our everyday life so we are ill equipped to face the ultimate test. There is nothing like death and despair to show up our spiritual flaws in neon lights. But even if these things and others like are present there will be an underlying anger which is entirely fitting. Because death is wrong. It is unnatural. It was never meant to be and so feelings of confusion and anger are entirely appropriate. If you don't believe me read the Psalms. Read Job. That isn't to encourage anyone to wallow in anger and feel justified, in fact for your own good you should try to move out of it as soon as possible, but it isn't wrong. 

However, we often believe that this anger is wrong, so we deny it, conceal it and don't deal with it. It sits, festering, unacknowledged. And unacknowledged anger doesn't go away. So, we have to face up to the fact that maybe God feels distant because we are angry and we want him to be distant, in fact we are keeping him at arm’s length. 

Now some will argue that surely God provides peace that passes all understanding which will penetrate through all of these layers that would keep a sense of his closeness away. And I would wag my finger at those people and remind them that context matters. That passage in Philippians 4 is about anxiety. It's about peace in uncertainty because we know that God takes care of our every need. Incidentally, not a small challenge in itself! Now I wouldn't for a second deny that God can and does often break through graciously and give supernatural experiences of peace and joy in grief and loss. But if he doesn't Philippians 4 should not be used as a stick to beat either the suffering Christian or God himself for not providing this peace. 

Now I have no wish to affirm that God may feel distant and leave Christians hopeless in their predicament. I have some encouragement to offer which I hope is sweeter than the condemnation of God or self for failing to feel joy, peace and presence in the darkness of grief.

Firstly, have a good look to see if you are angry. Don't hide it, don't pretend, if I know anything it's the damage that emotions that you refuse to look at can do to you. You don't have to nurse it but be real about it, tell God about it, ask for his help with it, tell him you don't understand why it had to happen, that death feels wrong, like a betrayal, and remember that he knows all about it. That you are talking to the God who cried out in the face of death, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Which as well as being a Messianic sign and a symbol of facing a much deeper rejection than we as Christians now experience in death, was nevertheless a real expression of feeling. 

Now my second is a re-interpretation of a phrase that has been thrown at me many times by the well-intentioned. Feelings aren't facts. Now my response to this is always to say that without feelings facts become meaningless to me. But for me I have learned that the thing to set in opposition to feelings is not facts but faith. I may not feel God is close, but I can have faith that he is. I may not feel his love, but I can have faith that it is there. I may not feel joy in my salvation but I can have faith that my salvation is real and is something that is truly, deeply, immensely good. I may not feel God is good, kind, merciful, loving, but I can choose to have faith that he is all of these. I can choose to listen to his word and affirm its truth in the face of what I feel. I may not feel that God is bringing good out of this miserable darkness but I can choose to have faith that he is. I can look at the stories of him bringing bigger and stranger blessing out of tragedy and mess and darkness and sin over and over throughout the Bible, culminating at the cross and I can believe that however I feel I can trust that he is doing this in my situation here and now. I may not feel a loved, precious child, but I can choose to believe I am one and act accordingly. 

Each strand of sorrow has a place

Within this tapestry of grace;

So through the trials I choose to say:

“Your perfect will in Your perfect way.”

 Stuart Townend and Keith Getty. 

Now none of these things may lift the darkness or make God feel any closer but they will help the pain feel less meaningless and hopefully lighten the load of frustration at God's apparent distance. And it doesn't last. The numbness fades in time and leaves deep anguish but also the potential for moments of peace, the bitterness of the loss fades a little and there is space for us to recognise God's presence which has never actually left. And ultimately as we cling in the face of our feelings to our faith in the truth we can know his promise that it will be bearing fruit, in our relationship with God, in our lives as we become equipped to help and love others better, in the church as they see us persevere through the darkness. 

And finally, we can use this experience to grow our thirst for heaven where God's presence will be the light, with us always, that never goes out, where there will be no grief, pain or sorrow to cloud or obscure our enjoyment of his love, where there will be no death, no parting or loss. 

"For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal." 2 Corinth 4:17-18.

Moving a mountain

When I started this blog 6 months ago I was exhausted and terrified. Exhausted from months of sleeplessness, exhausted from the effort of appearing normal, exhausted from the unbearable pain and confusion of broken relationships and rejection I was experiencing. I was dancing on the edge of a precipice, ready to give up.


Those who had told me they loved and cared for me couldn't seem to understand what was happening to me, they were confused and upset. They couldn't relate the silent, quivering wreck with the person they had known before. I couldn't see myself, couldn't step outside the mountainous load of pain and fear I was carrying. I felt their anger, their frustration, their hurt, confusion and fear but I couldn't understand it at all.


I try not to think back too much on that time, or the times like it that have come before. It still hurts, still has the power to terrify me. I'm nervous of the approach of Easter, the temporal landmarks, Lent, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, returning to school after the Easter holiday, each event tied into memories of spiralling anguish, confusion and despair. Waiting in the cold for ambulances with weird and freaky hallucinations dancing in front of my eyes, baffling meetings, inexplicable conversations, fleeing into the night to sleep in my car, the only place left I felt safe.


These are the bad times, its rarely like that, not now, praise the Lord. I still can't reflect really on what went wrong, or who was to blame, if anyone was. Even in my current state of well-ness thinking back into that time has the power to paralyse, to drag me down back into the mire.


But one consequence of this latest dive into the dark depths was 3 words that dropped into my life out of the storm. 3 words that others have found so painful to be given, but for me have been the beginning of healing. Borderline Personality Disorder. I'm not claiming I am better, I am neither so foolish nor so bold, but I have seen that through the gospel applied to the insight that diagnosis gave the mountain of emotion has begun to move.
My friend who helps me think through things told me today that she always knew this was possible, that although there might always be a vulnerability here, there could through Christ and the gospel be change and healing for me. I used to argue. I don't anymore. I used to think my emotions would always be a stick of dynamite hanging by a thread, a battleground where I was fated to lose and lose and lose again, and could only win periods of peace by constant vigilance, discipline and self-control. But in the last 6 months I can't deny that I have experienced change I would not have believed.


When we first started working together, specifically using the BPD characteristics I firmly told my friend that I didn't believe that they could change. They were too deeply rooted, too firmly embedded in my defences. But I wanted them to change. And when I was diagnosed with BPD we learned two things which seem to have made a tremendous difference and have held the seeds of the change I have experienced.


Firstly we learned, that unusual as my behaviour was for a depressed person, it was classic for someone with BPD. The sudden, violent mood swings, the blinding intensity of emotion, the anger, the terror of rejection and abandonment, the numb emptiness and obsessive thoughts of self-harm, these were characteristics straight from the BPD playbook. So we treated it like a shopping list. The gospel speaks to all of those, my friend said, pick one and we'll start there.

Secondly and probably more profoundly we did some reading and spotted a trap we had been falling into for years. Tell someone with BPD that they need to change and they will feel judged, tell them that they are OK and they will feel unloved and misunderstood. The former means you haven't understood how impossible change feels, how overwhelming and hopeless the emotions are. The latter means you don't care how much pain they are in. You don't realise how not OK it is.


We both saw it, it was a lightbulb moment. As was the solution recommended by the specialist writing. First, they said, you have to show you have heard and understood the person's feelings. How overwhelmed and trapped they feel, how impossible they feel change is. But then you have to tell them that although it feels impossible, change is possible if you work for it.


And there it was. The gospel tearing down resistance to change. Jesus sees and accepts you just the way you are. Your feelings are real, they are understandable and they are OK. But he loves you way too much to leave you there, there will be change. The relationship between my friend and I had to be modelled on the relationship between Jesus and us. We both started talking differently to one another. I would express my feelings, openly, honestly, excruciatingly and she would hear, acknowledge, validate and affirm them. She would acknowledge their justice where just, and my frustration where they were irrational. From that day I felt heard. I felt understood and I was able to trust much better.


Then we would lay out a plan for where we wanted to get to. No matter that it felt impossible. We would shoot the moon and agree a plan for where I wanted to be. And then we would find a way to work for it. Look at God's character, his stories, his people, many of the places we went are laid out in this blog. We would pray honestly, confessing sin, unbelief, hurt, fear, seeking healing and change. And I would take the verses away to meditate on, to reflect on, to write about. I did this not because I believed I could change but as an act of faith that the one who could move mountains, could in fact move my mountain.


And against all my expectation, change started to happen. Roots that were dug down deep suddenly began to come loose. I'm not better and I'm still afraid of a return to the darkness but I can't deny that I am facing situations and people in a new, healthier way, that I am richly enjoying God's presence in a way I've not known before, that I am finding depths of comfort and strength in my relationship to Christ that were previously unfathomed.


We have setbacks. Days were struggle to hear each other, days we need to re-tread old ground, remember old truths. Its hard work, but rewarding, in the same way that digging up the dandelions from your lawn is more satisfying that chopping off the tops. Back-breaking, but this way we know they won't be growing back.


I may never be free from the emotional volcano beneath my feet, but I now believe, some days at least, that I can live free of the fear of it, free of the harmful defence mechanisms that have served their turn and gone past their usefulness, free of enslaving lies that tell me change is impossible, that the mountain is too big and your faith too small.


Most of all free in the truth of Colossians 3:12, that I am a dearly loved, chosen child of God, just as I am, utterly accepted. I can stop hating my feelings, stop fighting them, stop struggling to suppress them. They are mine and with all their excess and the ugliness they sometimes possess, Jesus looks at me and says you are OK, you are mine. But then free in also to change, to clothe myself with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forgiveness and love. Because Jesus accepts us as we are, but never leaves us where we are. He loves us too much for that. That is the truth, and the truth will set you free.