When the World Flips Upside Down

When I'm going through the motions, I try not to think about the next move I'm gonna make and I just make it. I know the next right thing to do. Somewhere, inside of me, I know the next right thing I need to do in each moment. Too much thinking can send me down a rabbit hole of mistrusting myself and taking forever to make either the same decision or a different decision that may not have been the one I wanted to make in the first place if I had just listened. 

Yesterday I was able to speak with my dietitian about how I don't know how to make life manageable right now. Trying to help, she gave me a very basic plan (I'm talking BASIC), and I told her I couldn't do it. It was so simple, and I was embarrassed - but I couldn't commit to it. I wasn't gonna sit there and lie and then feel bad about myself when I couldn't accomplish these minor tasks. She asked me why and I said, "that's just a step too far ahead for me." If I were her, I would've looked at me like I was crazy. But she graciously pulled back and asked me what would be a step in between no change at all. And she found a step even smaller.

In these unprecedented, unpredictable times, it's not helpful to make plans that we can't commit to - further causing feelings of frustration towards ourselves, and also not taking care of ourselves because often times when we can't handle a plan we made, it's too overwhelming to even begin, so we ignore it altogether and spend the day in anxiety or avoidance (which always causes unease). But if that plan had to do with eating, doing homework, or taking care of ourselves - we have to do these things. They are non-negotiables: taking care of ourselves is imperative. So we need to make it manageable.  

Right now, my plan is just to eat within an hour of waking up, and have lunch before 2:00. I'll have dinner at night, at some point. And of course snacks in between. These are my big plans and goals for the week (really shooting for the stars). Of course I have to turn my homework in, but right now, I can't put that in a schedule without giving myself anxiety. All I can do is say "this is the assignment I want to finish today." We are surviving right now, not trying to change the world. We can do what we are able to do, and be the people we were naturally designed to be. That's all we have to do.   

Amidst the unknown, you never know what new things are gonna change. There have been times in my life where I would wake up at night, wondering if what was happening was a nightmare, and then realize - no, this is reality. This is my new reality. Then I would find comfort in the thought that it probably can't get worse and be proud that I was handling the absolute worst. And the next day, it would. Something new and completely impossible and unexpected would happen. 

It's in times like this that I can reach deep into my past memories, and I know I can be okay.

Why am I okay? Because I have anchors. And those anchors have brought me through before.

There will be a time, someday, that your deepest security may be ripped from under you, and your world flips upside down. Life as you knew it will be shredded. It will and can never be the same. It's something you never expected or could have imagined. But it is your new reality. And it's during those times where you have to find where your true security lies.  

Is it in something that would sustain you through time? Do you have solid ground beneath you that you can keep walking through life? Because somehow, some way, you have to. 

Even if you think there's no possible way life could go on without it being the way it was, it will. Every day will keep moving. The people in your life will keep living. Reality continues to exist.  

This happened to me a little over 2 years ago. My life was never the same, and it never went back to what my whole life of "normal" had been, for 20 years. I had to build a new world around my new reality. I had to pick myself up every day, and build a new life. I had to create. Not from what was destroyed, not picking up remnants, but creating something new. My life changed permanently in a way I never expected it to, and couldn't have expected it to - because of how deeply my security laid in it.

I had one anchor to hold onto when all my previous pretend anchors were uprooted: God, and His ways. God's ways are love, and goodness. They have been from the beginning of time. Those two things are always true. I had that. Maybe not from a person, but I had it from God. He understood, he saw through me, he knew me, he was with me, and he knew there was a future for me. I used to be so certain of so many things, and now I understand absolutely nothing. After I went through that, I just became grateful that there is someone bigger than me that does see and know it all. And that someone, praise him, is telling me all I need to do is stop trying to figure it out, to be me the way I was designed - not the way I was tamed or taught or expected to be - and to love, making all of my decisions out of love. He doesn't ask for anything else, just to be the way I was created, to accept his love, and to show his love to others. 

I know this, because the only thing I do know is the Truth. 

I remember being scared one eerie night before bed when I was 19, and asking my roommate to wake me up before she turned in for the night (which was always at like 3 in the morning) without telling her that the only reason I asked was because I was afraid that I wouldn't. I wanted to know that someone was going to check. I was not in a stable place, and that night I didn't know what would happen. 

Another night a couple months later, I remember lying in a hospital bed (due to my eating disorder), with a nagging depression that I hadn't felt before. A numbness I hadn't known until I was in this place. A feeling that maybe I would never leave this state of my life, and this might just be it. It was not uncommon that this would happen to people in my situation. Everyone around me seemed to be a zombie. 

SuddenIy, out of nowhere, I got a strange nudge in my brain. A thought popped into my head, a voice, something that didn't come from me. It said, "If you die like this, what would that mean for you? Who are you to not let God fulfill his purpose through you? You aren't yours to kill."

And that was it for me. Every day after that, I carried with me that notion. I fought my way out of the hospital every day. I tried my best to ignore what people around me were doing, and did what I needed to do. My anchor was  my Knowing. My Knowing was God inside of me. The Holy Spirit.

Circling back to the major flip my life took 2 years ago when I was 20, I had something in that dark time, when I was so incredibly weak mentally, keeping me as strong as I could possibly be. That memory from the hospital stayed with me when my life was upturned.

Everything changed, but God. Every time something was added to the mess I was in, my heart broke, I crumbled, and God said  "We can still do this." I have never been more empowered in my entire life, than when I was crumpled on the ground with nothing to grab onto. 

Nothing about life is promised. God is the only promise. His tactics are love and goodness - and he is the one watching over us. His tactics haven't changed, even though the whole world has changed. The same way his tactics didn't change before. And I can reach into my arsenal of knowledge that I have been in places like this before. 

And I have a rock solid foundation. 

I can also look back and remember that at first, when life as you know it changes - it seems unimaginable. Impossible, like a nightmare you can't wake up from. And then after a while, you start to build your world. A new reality that you slowly but surely can live with. And it becomes a brutal (as it may have ripped your heart out) and beautiful new reality. You were able to create something, when this something was unimaginable your whole life. The more you see yourself through trying times, the more you realize how temporary the world and its ways are. 

I am fairly calm during this current time, because it seems as though Satan is trying to throw his old tricks at me, and I'm just sitting here like, "You think this is going to work? You've done your worst, and I didn't break. Keep coming at me, and see that my foundation is stronger. God is so much bigger than you."  

If you're afraid, I understand that. I understand fear. It makes so much sense. 

Glennon Doyle's reaction to that is always this: "I see your fear, and it is big. But I see your courage, and it is bigger."

I might not believe in myself all of the time, but I believe in God all of the time. And he is bigger than every demon, and every temporary challenge, no matter how devastating, scary, and strong it may be.