Balancing Act

It's only April and I feel like I have accomplished more these past four months than I did in the two years prior. I suppose I am playing catch up for all the life I missed out on during my depression/quarter-life crisis/eating disorder/whatever the heck I was going through during that time.

With all of this accomplishment there isn't much time for rest. Recently I started work as a prep-cook in a local vegan cafe in hopes of saving money for school. I work the early morning shift and my days have been filling up quite quickly. After unemploying myself for three months this has been a difficult transition for me. I quickly became accustomed to deciding what I wanted to do with my time, and being able to fit anything in. Now I have to be more selective. I have to create boundaries. I admit this is something I have never been good at.

Therapy has helped me identify some major patterns in my life. One of them is a problem of causes. I have a tendency to completely lose myself in things I believe in. My identity suddenly becomes interchangeable with the cause. This tends to work out fine until something like doubt steps in, or when the cause no longer needs me to fight for it. When I lose a cause I feel like I have lost myself, and then the opportunity to rebuild presents itself. Usually I ignored this opportunity and set about finding something else to devote my life to (I went from being a hardcore evangelical to a hardcore vegangelical in the space of a year) Now I am trying to become more balanced.

Obviously this has been a challenge working with Mars Hill Refuge. There are days when I catch myself completely lost in it. I want to fight anyone and everyone who has a kind word to say about that church, or I spend my entire day combing the internet for information and talking to fellow refugees. Other days I spend a moderate amount of time on the blog, and I have time to have a relationship with my husband, family, and friends. Those are the best days and thankfully they are becoming more numerous.

This is when my 15 year-old self would have written about, "finding my identity in Christ" Now that phrase makes me want to vomit. When I hear people say it I tend to wonder if they really know what they are saying, or if they are just spitting out the same tired Christian rhetoric. What I will say is that I am learning. I have been created with many different aspects, and as much as I would like to always be the impassioned girl throwing caution to the wind to fight injustice, sometimes I have to sit down and watch trashy television with my husband, and that is okay. Someone else can pick up the fight while I watch an episode of Game of Thrones.