Brother

When I look into the face Of my enemy I see my brother I see my brother When I look into the face Of my enemy I see my brother I see my brother Forgiveness is the garment Of our courage The power to make the peace We long to know Open up our eyes To see the wounds that bind All of humankind May our shutter hearts Greet the dawn of life With charity and love

We sing this song at church from time to time, and last night I got to sing with the band at rehearsal one last time before moving next week. After such a hard week, it really made me feel great being able to sing with them again.

Anyway, some things happened this week that made it really hard. My husband was trying to reconcile with a friend who had greatly hurt me last year through e-mail. I'm not going to get into detail, but the response back from this friend was very negative and they said a lot of terrible things about me. My husband didn't want me to read the e-mail, but I snuck onto his computer and went ahead and read it. I was so hurt by it that I couldn't read the entire e-mail. It said things like THEY were victims of me. I was trying to manipulate them with my sadness and apparently I try to manipulate my husband too every time I look for a shoulder to cry on. They doubted my brain injury or even my Asperger's (which doctors are the ones who diagnosed me with those). THEY were friends with me because my husband asked them to. Even thinking I was trying to make the relationship into something that I never meant to turn it into. So many false accusations by people I trusted like family. People I thought were dear friends of mine. I went ahead and cut. It hurt so much, yet hardly any tears would fall. How could I have been fooled into thinking they actually cared about me? I was so suicidal my doctor had to put me on Xanax.

At the band rehearsal last night, we sang this song, and it's been going through my head today, especially tonight. I was doing okay today (provided the Xanax makes me really sleepy - I got up around 10am, ate breakfast, then went back to bed and got back up at around 1pm) until I had to share everything at Celebrate Recovery tonight. On the way home I started making my husband worry the way I was talking. As I was getting ready for bed and had to take another Xanax, this song came back to mind. I started singing the chorus until I found it on YouTube. I realized I needed to blog about this song.

All the people who have pretended to be my friends and then ditched me, I see them as enemies. But in reality, especially those in Christ, are my brothers and sisters. How can I have so much anger in my heart towards them when they are my brothers and sisters? So what if they ditched me when I needed them most? They are still my brothers and sisters.

Forgiveness is a hard pill to swallow, no matter how bad someone has hurt you. It takes courage and love to be able to forgive. Sometimes you never get to hear the words "I'm sorry" because something happened to them, or maybe they're just too arrogant. While you don't have to go up to them in that case and say, "I forgive you," you need to have the attitude of forgiveness. What this means is that in your heart you forgive them. If they ask for forgiveness then wonderful! Forgive them! But if they don't ask for forgiveness, forgive them anyway in your heart. This isn't something you only do one time though. Every time a memory comes back and hurts you, you have to forgive them again.

Matthew 18:22

"No, not seven times," Jesus replied, "but seventy times seven!"

We must always forgive no matter how many times it takes.

Mistakes

A year ago from yesterday, I made one of the most foolish mistakes I've ever made.  A year later I'm still suffering the consequences of that mistake.  I don't want to get into details of what that mistake was, it's quite irrelevant.  But at the time, I didn't think I made a mistake.  I was happier than I had been in a long time, until it bit me in the ass later on.  I'm not even sure if the people involved even forgive me.  They say they do, but some of their actions say the opposite.

What do we do when we make mistakes?  Sometimes we can move on quickly, other times we beat ourselves up for a long time.  We've got to be able to forgive ourselves and move on, even if other people don't forgive us.  I have a really hard time with forgiving myself for anything.  I can typically forgive other people easily, but when it comes to myself I don't.  Maybe because I care about other people and I don't care about myself.  I don't know.  They do say you're your worst critic, there's definitely some truth to that.

My husband reminded me once of the verse that says "Love your neighbor as yourself."  I told him that was easy for me except I hate myself.  He said according to the verse I need to love myself.

Hating yourself is false humility.  Humility is loving people as much as you love yourself but if you think you're being humble by hating yourself, you're wrong.  So forgive yourself for your mistakes and move on.  Moving on may take weeks, months, even years.  But it's vital that you do move on.  Even when you do move on, sometimes it'll come back to haunt you, and when that happens pray about it and go on with your day.  Don't let your mistakes cripple you.  Once you're in that pit it's hard to get out and no one wants to go down there with you.  They want to pull you out.

I'm With Meg

A friend of mine named Meg had a long battle with cancer and NF (http://www.nfnetwork.org/understanding-nf/what-is-nf).  She was one of the sweetest people I knew.  She was always positive and a fighter.  She loved children.  I knew her when I used to live in Virginia Beach.  We went to the same church.  After I moved I hadn't talked to her until I got Facebook.  Sometimes she would send me encouragement and that would lift me up.  She had a beautiful spirit.  I remember a picture she had on Facebook of her wearing a pink wig and I just laughed.  She liked having fun.

Yesterday, at 2pm, she passed away.  I didn't find out until last night.  Even though I hadn't seen her since I was in the 8th grade and hadn't talked to her in a while, it hit like a brick wall.  Another person I cared about lost the battle to cancer.  Everyone I've known who's had cancer has lost the battle except for one person and another person who's going through the battle right now.  I thought, "Why did Meg have to go?  She's such a great person.  I do nothing to contribute to society, I've tried to end my life three times, and yet I'm still here."  The weird thing is, even though Meg was a friend of mine, she was more of my mom's friend than mine and yet I was more emotional about it than my mom.  Maybe it's because I don't deal with death well.  Or maybe it's because it's a side of feeling overwhelming emotions that comes from having Borderline Personality Disorder.

The ironic part of this is I'm actually going to a talk at my church tonight about how to talk to someone who has lost someone through death.  It's often quite awkward I think because we really don't know what to say.  Meg was a strong believer in Christ so I know she's in Jesus' arms now; she's no longer suffering, but if I said that to her family it wouldn't comfort them.  I mean, it doesn't even comfort me!  It's like, "okay, yes she's no longer suffering but I want her here still.  I still want to be able to talk to her.  Why couldn't God just heal her?"  That's me, I can't imagine what her family must be going through or thinking now.  Because we don't know what to say, we usually say, "I'm sorry for your loss."  Is there really much more we can say?  I guess I'll find out tonight at the talk my church is giving.

I can be happy for her for where she's at now.  I can be happy for her that she's no longer in pain.  But it's still hard to think that she's not here anymore.  I can't make it to her funeral because of expenses.  But I look forward to the day I get to see her again.  My husband wrote on his blog about dealing with death today too if you want to read it (http://deeperwaters.ddns.net/?p=9122).  Meg, I'll always remember you, I look forward to seeing you again some day.  #imwithmeg

Update

This is a sort of update entry.  I went one week without cutting, then I cut one time.  I was going to cut again last week but the scissors were too dull to cut anymore.  So I've gone a week without actually cutting again.  Since I don't have anything to cut myself anymore (my husband refuses to get new scissors) I'm hoping I'll be able to make yet another week without cutting.  I'm hoping I won't get too desperate and do something like break glass to cut.  I've been getting suicidal lately.  But when I start really feeling that way I talk to someone first so I don't start making plans.  To calm down I guess.

I got in the mail today a bracelet from an anonymous sender.  It's a self-injury support bracelet.  It came with a couple encouragement cards like "Going one day is progress" or something like that.  I got a card and letter from one of my aunts today too that was encouraging.  Getting these things have encouraged me a lot and makes me want to stop cutting even more.  I really want to quit, though sometimes it feels like I'll never quit.  But I'm determined to quit.  Every time I do it I feel like I'm letting people down who are praying for me.  In reality I'm not just letting them down, I'm letting God down and I'm letting myself down.  I've got to quit.

Thanks to everyone who's been supporting me.  I really appreciate it and I'm trying really hard to quit cutting.  I know it's going to be a long road because I don't really know how to cope.  I've learned some other coping skills, though they don't seem to really help me.  But I'm going to keep trying until I can find a healthy way to cope that works for me.  Please continue to pray for me.  Thank you.