I am a coloured girl (pt. 1)

I just walked in the door from watching For Colored Girls.

I had no idea how connected I would feel to this Tyler Perry film.

I was sitting in a sparsely occupied theatre, attentive to the movie, relating to the experiences being portrayed by the women on the screen. I was thinking things like Yup, I dated that guy and Don't believe him! I've heard that before and baby girl, don't give up - I've been there, too! (Who am I kidding? I was yelling those things at the screen just like the other 20 women in the theatre.)  I sat there in my seat and felt the same hurt and shame and resentment that the actresses conveyed as the women's stories unfolded. I felt along with them because, I realized, they were telling my story - not all of them, of course, but a few....one in particular. It was actually really difficult to watch at a couple of points - sitting in the theatre with strangers and friends who don't know my colored girl secrets, feeling like I was being exposed. Maybe they felt that way, too....

I left the theatre wondering what happens next? Tyler Perry has a way of introducing and facilitating the beginning of conversations that, although they are important conversations to be had, get left as just an introduction. And then I'm left to wonder where the responsibility falls to pick up the conversation, continue it and turn the words into some sort of action? Who helps the colored girls to be more than a series of almost unmanageable stories, a collage of tragic entertainment and casualties of their circumstance?

As a colored girl, a woman who saw her past splashed vividly across 30 ft of screen, I'm prayerful that this isn't the end of the conversation. (If you'll notice, this blog post is a 'part 1', so you know it's not the end for me......)

Watch the trailer, watch the movie, join the conversation....

~gg~

Imperfection

It's amazing what God can use as tools to bring us to Him.

I was on Twitter last night when I got the message: The devil wants to condemn and judge you, putting you in fear of sharing what you have overcome. Share; when you share you overcome the enemy.

After writing yesterday's post, I battled myself for most of the day, trying to decide how much of myself I should share because, well...I act, dress, and think very differently now that I'm a believer than I did when I was in the world. I'm not proud of some of my past moments, but I recognize the power of sharing the places that God has literally saved me from. Sooo....I guess there is no time like the present.

In those days, when you were slaves of sin, you weren't concerned with doing what was right. And what was the result? It was not good, since now you are ashamed of the things you used to do, things that end in eternal doom. But now you are free from the power of sin and have become slaves of God. Now you do those things that lead to holiness and result in eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. 

(Romans 6: 20-23 NLT)

This story (performed spoken) was written a while ago...about a time before that.....

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I have what you would call an 'addictive personality'.

That means that I am more likely than most to turn a habit into a compulsion, an idea into an obsession. I am inclined to take a casual indulgence and create a dependence on it so strong that I would then be classified as an “addict.”

I think that’s what attracted me to him in the first place. He was my casual indulgence. He made me high.

I was never addicted to nicotine, alcohol, cocaine. I didn’t find myself allowing drugs rob me of money, time or energy. I couldn’t fathom the idea of letting a tangible object control the way I felt.

But ED was different.

I knew about his reputation. I had seen the havoc he could wreak in the lives of the women that gave you the time of day; the ones that were seduced by his charm and manipulated by his lies. I had even heard that he had experimented with some boys. You see, Ed didn’t see gender, race, sexuality….he was interested in everyone that was interested in him. But at the end of the day, he really had a way with the ladies. ED, he was a shape-shifter.  Like a fugitive, he was constantly altering his presentation so that on first, second, and even third encounter, he was virtually unrecognizable.  I knew what he could do, so I think that if I had recognized him from the beginning, we wouldn’t have gotten in so deep.

But I never saw him coming.

ED showed up at the perfect time – just on the sunny side of mourning a relationship that ended at the same time as my self-esteem. I looked in the mirror and saw a girl who was imperfect. Unloved. Sub-par. Unpretty. He saw the potential I had to be amazing. Enviable. Beautiful.

Perfect.

That’s how he got me. With the promise of perfection. And so, I followed his lead. ED showed me that I already had the tools to do what was needed – I had determination, motivation, discipline, self-control. That was the key. I had control. I loved control. That was my drug of choice and he handed me an endless supply. And every time I showed my strength and kept things under control, he helped me to see a better version of myself…but he never took credit for it. It’s like he was my silent coach – never wanting to be acknowledged, spoken of…

...and I was so high.

People were noticing the change in me. They were amazed by my discipline. Envied my ability to work toward my goal. Said I looked gorgeous. Everything he told me they would say, they said and their affirmations fed my addiction.  You see, nobody had changed the way I looked for me.  I did that.  I decided how hard to work, what to eat....and that sort of power was intoxicating.  So, I had to keep following him. Even though he began to raise the bar on expectations.

More work. More discipline. More results.

I wanted the results. But I was tired. Giving in to tiredness makes you weak, he said. Work harder. And I was hungry. Eating more makes you weak, he said. Eat less. He made me punish myself until I heard his words come alive in my voice. Do you want to go back to being fat and unloved and unnoticed? Do you want people to think you can’t do this? Do you want to be a failure? 

Of course not….so I pushed on, giving up one destructive relationship for another. Addicted to the control…not realizing that control was exactly what I was losing.

It was as he began to show his true colours that I finally understood why he didn’t want to be acknowledged. If I had ever told people about the mess I was involved with, they would've told me to turn my back and run like hell. But I didn't recognize him.  It took the careful observation of a friend and her courage to call him by name for me to realize who the monster was that I had come to love.

I hate that he still comes around. I hate it when I see him with other women because I know what he will do to them, too. I hate that his words are still in my head and that when I look in the mirror, I see a girl that needs to be improved instead of a woman that needs to be embraced. And, yes, I’m still getting over him – probably will for the rest of my life, or at least as long as it takes me to not be afraid to call him by name. See, ED isn’t really his name, but rather, his initials: E.D. I've always hated using his name when telling people about my relationship with him. I prefer ED, because his full name - Eating Disorder - makes it sound like something’s wrong with me and, finally, I know that’s not the case.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Update: My mind went back to this time of my life after my little run-in with chocolate last week. I'm praying about it (I hope you will, too)...God's working on me. But I'm blessed and free from this type of addiction today.

~gg~

Confessions and struggles

I'm a great actor. No, seriously, I am.  I had my church family convinced (for years) that I was a model Christian. At the same time, I had my teachers convinced that I was a model student, had my boyfriends convinced that I was a ride or die chick and had my parents convinced that I was still their innocent angel.  Me and God were the only ones who knew what I really was: lost and confused.

A Work in Progress isn't my first blog. It's actually my third. I ran a blog called Pen to Pages for the greater portion of the last year.  It mainly focussed on my writing and spoken word-related activities, and had some content that's a bit questionable in terms of what I would now consider appropriate. So I shut it down. Actually, I shut it down, went into hiding, changed my pen name and hauled booty to a new blog. Twice.

Now, I tell you these seemingly unrelated pieces of information to illustrate my struggle - the need to look perfect in every situation. I reeeaaallly struggle with appearances.  Not physically as much, but what is appropriate for the situation. I know I'm imperfect (see the name of the blog), but there's something about my journey to get closer to God that, for some reason, I feel needs to look a certain way. So I abandoned my old blog, cut off my followers and built this one as a separate blogger so I could have a fresh start. In speaking with my brother about the new blog, he pointed out that my selfishness (my word, not his) could actually be robbing people of the opportunity to see what God can do. Really, what's the point of this blog if I'm going to be selective with sharing the amazing, life-changing joy I have since letting God do what He does??  I had built a reputation of being a talented writer and an hurt, angry, single woman - used by a number of past relationships and damaged by bad decisions - but none of my past blog-followers get to see the other side of the coin.

This is a part of my struggle: to stop trying to make things look the way I want them to look and get out of God's way. Pride sucks.

The day is coming when your pride will be brought low and the LORD alone will be exalted. 

Isaiah 2:11

I hope so....

~gg~

How'd I get HERE??!?

I grew up in church. So, God and Jesus and salvation and the whole deal isn't exactly new to me. What is new is the concept that, well, any of that matters in my life.

I used to go to church with my parents and my brothers every Sunday, dressed up in my good clothes, with an ever-increasing indifference to the reason we were spending a quarter of the weekend at this building. I would play with my friends, sing a few songs, learn about a whale or a (now vacant) garden and then chuck the information into the back of my mind until we would rinse and repeat the following week. They were nice stories, but I just wanted to see my friends - especially as I became a teenager. I mean, we had all grown up together in that church and I wanted to get back to them to find out what had happened in their lives during the six days we had been separated. I actually gave my life to God at one point when I was younger, but the act was discredited by so many adults around me, that I soon believed that it was insignificant and returned to doing what I wanted to do. I gave God 5 hours of my Sunday every week, broken up by social exercises for my socio-emotional development. Then I tucked Him away with my teen study bible for a week.

Then I tucked Him away for a few years.

My trips to church became less frequent as I got older, as my friends moved on or away and as I began to make choices that "church folk" frown upon. I wasn't one to deal with the anticipated judgment, so I kept my pregnant belly and unwed self at home....where it was safe from the disapproving stares of those who I had come to know as my extended family. I was 19 and pregnant 6 weeks into my freshman year of university and acutely unaware of the challenges that would visit me as I continued through life trying to do things all by myself. I wish I had known then what I know now; I could have saved myself years of stress and trouble.

Fast forward through: ending the relationship with my son's father, multiple emotionally abusive relationships, an eating disorder, depression, anxiety, copious amounts of self-destructive behaviour, and countless bad decisions to a time of a complete and utter loss of control.  I was doing whatever - really, whatever -  I wanted to make myself feel better and nothing was working. I couldn't drink away the hurt. I couldn't find happiness in the guys I was with. I needed more. The only thing I was doing well was being a mother and I was running out of energy and drive to do that.

I needed to be filled up because I was running on Empty.

I never forgot about God. I just never asked Him to do what I was trying to do myself. Something inside me would always flash to Him in time of trouble, but I had no faith that trusting Him would be better than what I was doing. That is, until I recognized Him as the only possible answer to my hundred thousand questions.

One day, I met a man that had a past like mine - full of bad decisions and stress.  We were performing in a show together and got to talking. He told me that he had come into a relationship with Christ while serving time in jail.  During the conversation, I couldn't help but take notice of the calm and contentment that he had and it was exactly what I was seeking. I wanted what he had and when he told me what it was - a new life in Christ....I realized that it wasn't enough to just know about God; I had to start trusting Him.

My life was different from that day. I stopped looking within the world for the solutions to my broken-ness and called, unabashedly, on Christ to do what He came to do - take all that mess on his shoulders so I don't have to feel its weight. I got a fresh start!!

God's still working on me. I'm still working on letting go of the thought that I know better. I'm a work in progress, but I see (and feel) the difference of having God directing my life everyday.  So, now I'm just trying to figure out how to multiply that feeling, keep it, get deeper into it. Letting Him in was the easy part - I just had to say what I already knew:

I'm messing up. I'm sorry. I'm ready to do something different.

The hardest part has been trying to cut out the stuff I've come to rely on, but it's a process. I hope that by writing about my journey, it will help me to do better, to be better. But I never imagined it could even be this good....

Video: Imagine by Yomi - www.myspace.com/theofficialyomi

~gg~