Saturday, April 21, 2012

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.


4 comments:

  1. I love this...and I struggle the same way! I will pick up the fight while you watch Game of Thrones if you'll do it for me! We need to get better about this...

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  2. Sounds very similar to some things I went through a while back after a bad experience with a church...it gets better, and yeah, time out by the TV with hubby is not wasted time. ;-)

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  3. I watch game of thrones, too!

    I can also totally relate to "losing yourself" in things...bad habits die hard.

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    1. Totally. I have always been drawn to the heroes in stories, I wanted a battle like the ones they have faced. The other day I thought about the ending of most of my favorite books though. The heroes life cannot return to normal, they become depressed. Is this really what I want for my own life? To spend everything I have to fight something and have my life be ruined because of it?

      I suppose that may sound selfish, but in the world we live in now I am realizing it is a possibility to be more balanced, and when I am more balanced I coincidentally get more work done.

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