When I was sixteen, I stopped drinking permanently. I'd soon fall into anorexia because my eating followed such a strict set of rules that there was next to nothing to eat and very little time in which to eat it. At nineteen I was assaulted by a person I'd considered one of my best friends and a potential soulmate, and in consequence, I created a new set of rules as pertained to boys.
At twenty, I was generally the best woman snowboarder on most hills I played on and I moved out west to follow my dream of becoming an Olympic halfpipe rider, following a strict training regimen. Shortly thereafter, I had a catastrophic tumble upon landing a big air off a huge kicker and broke my body. I could have died that day, according to my athletic therapist. The imprints my skull had made inside my helmet were deep enough to deduce that had I not been wearing it, I'd most likely not be here today.
Between the fear, the arthritis and the devastation that came with being unable to maintain my athleticism at a certain level, I stopped snowboarding completely and moved back home. As my plans differed from those which my father had intended for me, I was soon very unwelcome in his house and had to find another place to live, which was made all the more scary because of living with the remnants of a blunt force trauma to the brain. My eyes were completely bloodshot and dimmed and my body was a mess.
A boy took me in and would spend the next six years telling me how terrible a human being I was. The stress of the abuse caused my immune system to attack me and as my endocrinologist would put it later on, "It was touch and go for a while there."
Suddenly, my body was useless and completely broken. I wasn't allowed anything over a slow walk for fear that my heart would stop beating. I was put on relatively massive doses of thyroid suppressants and beta blockers, both of which gave me the constant urge to die but the lack of motivation to get on with it.
Up until that point, I had lived a fairly selfish life. I was nice to my friends, but I wrote people off extremely quickly, and I was quite angry and very repressed most of the time. I did go out of my way for friends though, even to the point of jeopardizing exam results to spend time with them if they needed me. I was always a loyal friend to a select few. And I was honest. I've always been honest, often overly honest to my own detriment.
But being practically incapacitated while in a relationship that offered no support or love, only belittlement and condescension, I decided somehow that maybe if I gave people what I needed, the world would be a better place (for me). And so I did. I gave them community, loyalty, love and compassion and with time, I began to realize how much of the world had been exactly in my shoes. I realized how many people felt unloved and uncared for. I realized how many people, regardless of their circumstances, were so burned by life that they too were shut down and angry.
And so, I thought it'd be nice to be the one person in maybe a couple of people's lives that might keep their hope alive, or at least give them somewhere to vent and somebody unexpected and reliable to lean on.
Over time, I started becoming more open, less angry, and far more empathetic. Life was just too short and leaving a legacy of bitterness just seemed so counterproductive to life itself.
The guy I lived with would grow to resent it, complaining that I spent too much time helping others and not enough time on him or on things that were profitable. But I started to realize that the more people communicated, the more they'd open up and the more burdens I could help them carry. People would tell me I empathized too much, but in my heart, I knew that without empathy, without living life from their perspective, all I was left with was my daily handful of pills that made me want to die. All I was left with was my abusive relationship that I was too broken to leave. It felt good to live in other people's shoes for a while, even as they struggled and in spite of the fact that some of their loved ones were dying.
I developed a heart for other people because my heart was so broken and mutilated. I developed a heart for other people for selfish reasons.
I gave my all. I gave my time, what little money I had and what little effort I could muster up. I gave everything such that they might feel loved and supported such that I might feel loved and supported, not through reciprocation but through the actual act of giving. It really was selfish.
And eventually, my confidence grew and I left the abusive situation. My health still wasn't 100%, and my doctor was on "wait and see" mode, making me go in for blood tests every two months. If I didn't start taking care of me, he said, I'd soon need radiation.
I worked on myself and tried to put the years of emotional abuse behind me to lower my stress and try to gain some optimism for the future, all the while, still giving all of myself to others.
I didn't drink or party, I didn't hoard my money, I gave whatever and whenever I could and I was always there if anybody needed me- I was a good girl. I really was. (Except maybe to myself...) By almost anybody's standards in this society, I was an unselfish giving person, but even still, after spending a few years feeling the brokenness around me, I started to feel like anything I did to help was never enough.
And then I met the Christian guy who asked me, "What's the point of being such a good girl if you don't believe in heaven? What do you get out of going above and beyond what any normal person would do to help anybody? You're like the perfect Christian only... you're not Christian."
Had I not had such a disdain for religion back then, I might have said, "Even the good I do as a non-Christian is still the work of Jesus, using my life to glorify God," but we all know that no atheist or agnostic on the planet would ever say that.
But that's what it was, and still is, only now that I'm a Christian, the Christians I meet have a tendency to call it legalism. It's the funniest and most disturbing thing in a way. I do set rules for myself. I always have, even when generosity is concerned. If I haven't helped somebody today yet, I go through my mental rolodex and figure out somebody who might need support and reach out. It's not legalism. It's not filling quotas for Jesus. It's purely selfish and always has been. Being a Christian doesn't change that; it just makes it a little more socially acceptable in Christian circles.
Suddenly, I'm in a circle of people who thinks they shouldn't drink or partake in other purely hedonistic activities and suddenly, I'm in a group of people who endeavors to be nice against their normal will and desires and therefore, I must be the same and have the same justifications for my behaviors.
But I don't.
And while it seems like legalistic behavior to the Christians I meet because I tend to set so many rules and obligations for myself, I was a rules and obligations girl long before I became a follower of Jesus. I didn't get into this pattern of behaviors because of my quest for Jesus, either. Jesus is relatively new to me. I didn't even get into this pattern because I wanted to be a good girl. I got into this pattern of rules and over-generosity because of my own brokenness and my desire to feel lovable. Granted, if any pattern of broken behavior is a good one to have, it's a pattern of unselfish selfishness and selfish generosity, but that doesn't make my broken motives anymore righteous.
However, the goal now, as a Christian, is not to tone myself down such that Christians stop thinking that I'm a legalist to the max (wouldn't that be legalism? :D), rather to redirect the response to God. The goal becomes redirecting the reaction I get away from me and my desire to be lovable and point it to God. I have to let go of my driving need to be loved, reflect the glory to God and be satisfied in His love alone.
But I'm a broken girl and no doubt I'll end up hoarding some for myself. I'll just have to make sure to, at the very least, thank Him for it later.
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