Recovery Realities: The Painful, Exhausting, Imperfectly Beautiful Journey

I prefer things in my world to be orderly.  I prefer things to be done with excellence.  I prefer not to make mistakes.  I prefer to be in control.Sometimes that's possible.Often it's not.Recovery is no exception.  And that's hard for me to accept for myself.  It's also really hard for me to acknowledge to those of you who are following my story and to those who do so much to support me.With the help of my therapist this week, I realized that it feels safer for me to be vulnerable about my past weeks in treatment.  I'm not in that place anymore.  I'm further down the road.  It's still uncomfortable to share, but I do it in hopes that it will encourage others.  And something about it feels a lot more comfortable than writing about present day recovery realities.But the hidden truth there is that I'm not being completely vulnerable.  I'm hiding behind the safety net of blogging about another time.  It's what was formerly raw and real, but I'm somewhat removed from it since I'm no longer in the same place.I guess that's not fair.  It's not real.  It's vulnerable only within defined boundaries.  It's pretending that the struggles are only in the past and life is a bed of roses now.And that would be a lie.The truth is that recovery is hard.  Every phase of it.  It's grueling.  It's exhausting.  It's slow.  It's inconsistent.  It's heavy.  It's a tangled mess.The anxiety is high.  The fear is strong.  Depression is still a battle.  The eating disorder voice in your head continues to be loud and convincing, that you aren't worthy of love and care and nourishment and you deserve bad things.  Body image can throw you in a tail spin at any given moment.  You feel like the world is scrutinizing your every move.  You must follow a very strict meal plan with no room for error.  You live every day with a relentless war going on in your head.  And then there are the every day living stressors on top of all of this and the difficult efforts to live life in such a way that no one realizes these things with which you struggle all day, every day.Images of a recovered life dangle before me and fuel me to keep moving in the right direction.  But that directional arrow moves around quite a bit, despite my best intentions and strongest will.Some weeks that arrow points straight ahead.  I'm doing the hard work.  I'm challenging disordered thoughts.  I'm following my meal plan without exception.  I'm committed to attending all therapy appointments.  And I can see the healing God is doing in me as I choose to take those forward steps.And then there are weeks like this past week when the arrow bends every direction but straight ahead and I fall flat on my face.It's not that I don't want to do the hard work.  It's not that I don't want recovery.  It just happens, even though I would never mindfully choose another direction.I spent the session with my therapist yesterday processing all of this.  Where did I get off track?  What happened?We identified several contributing factors.  I'm challenging disordered thoughts but still remain in their grips, just sitting with the shame and unworthiness.  I've skipped some exchanges here and there and found ways to justify it.  I cancelled a session with my dietician last week and psychologist the week before and tried to find ways to cancel this week.  I've avoided tracking my meals and snacks.  I've really struggled with obsessive thoughts and memories after blogging about past trauma.  I've been in my head.  I feel a distance among family relations.  I've tried to keep a happy face in place so no one would know I was struggling.  And I've isolated myself.Eating disorders love secrecy.  They want to isolate.  They love to hide behind a mask.  They thrive in shame.  They take great pride in their self-sufficiency.  They look for just the tiniest crack in the door to gain some extra footage in your life.And the eating disorder found a crack this past week and had some victory.  I engaged in an eating disorder behavior on Monday.  I didn't follow my prevention plan.  I thought I could do it on my own.  But I couldn't.  And I slipped.Then comes the guilt with which you have to sit as a result of your failure.  Following close behind is the shame over what you've done and how you've disappointed so many people.  Those feelings give birth to more negative emotions which drown out the small relief you received from engaging in the behavior in the first place.This is when the eating disorder convinces you that you need to cover this up.  Just let it go.  It was one time, and no one really needs to know about it.  My healthy mind counters with the first step back in the right direction is doing the next best thing.  That's telling my team and eating whatever exchanges I need to make up.  But the eating disorder argues back that it had been a while since I engaged.  It was just this once.  I can let that go.And so I did.  I didn't tell my friend.  I didn't tell my husband.  Sitting in the office with my dietician yesterday, I was under such conviction that I needed to share it that my heart was about to pound out of my chest.  But the eating disorder convinced me to hold my tongue.  I could get back on track on my own.I felt ashamed of myself as I got back into my car after the dietary session.  Have you ever been in an invitation at church when you knew God was compelling you to go pray about something at the alter and you found excuses not to go?  When the invitation is over, you just know you were wrong and you'd disobeyed the Lord.  And it's an awful feeling.  This was the same feeling I felt now.  There was no question that God was telling me to bring into the light what I had done wrong.  But I didn't do what He was calling me to do.Driving to my next therapy appointment, I confessed my disobedience to God as the sin that it was and determined that if given another chance, I would do the right thing.It probably wasn't even three minutes into my next session with my therapist that the Lord swung the door wide open.  And I did the right thing and was able to process the chain of events and learn from it.My therapist reminded me of I Peter 5:8 that tells us the the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour.  Satan wants to destroy me, and he knows he could accomplish that through the eating disorder.  It will take my life.  He knows that is a great area of weakness for me, and He's going to hit hard every time He has the opportunity.But 1 Corinthians 10 says that my faithful God will not allow me to be tempted beyond what I can stand, as He will always provide a way out.  I didn't tap into His strength or look for His way out on Monday.  But it had to have been there.  I was just too busy handling it on my own.The eating disorder has reminded me often this week that I've messed up.  I've relapsed.  I've flushed away all these weeks of hard work.  I'm not going to be able to recover.But I can't give it another victory.  The only truth in that is that I did mess up.  But I haven't relapsed.  This does not eliminate the weeks of hard work in recovery.  It doesn't mean I'm a failure.  And it sure as heck doesn't mean that I can't recover.  God is my Healer.  Through Him, all things are possible.  I will hold on to hope.So yes, I do find it safer and less intimidating to blog about days that are well in the rear view mirror.  But I want to be completely real, and that means not pretending that everything is just perfectly simple now.  It's definitely not.  I'm in a better place than I was, but I still have a long road ahead of me.  Recovery can take years to fully realize.  But I'm in it for the long haul.  I will not give up.Maybe you've had a bad week, too.  It doesn't mean you're a failure.  It doesn't mean that all the right choices you've been making are eliminated.  We all mess up.  We all fall short.  Thank God for His grace.  Thank God for His mercy.   Thank God for His love.We can get back up.  We can learn from our mistakes.  We can look for that way out God provides next time.  But we cannot quit.  Recovery is possible.1 Peter 5:10 And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.I'll get back to blogging about my treatment journal entries.  I know those are such important times in the healing process.  But I also want to keep it real and practice vulnerability consistently.  Because these days are important, too.  And recovery is far from predictably perfect.