(Draft #1, until I get Marilyn's list and can work from that as well. Final draft to be worked on with Kelly and then shared with my community group.)
What is repentance? It is being broken and sorry for the ways in which i have hurt God and others. It is turning from my self-destructive ways and turning toward Jesus. It is believing that God has forgiven and will continue to forgive my failings and my faithfulness because of Jesus. This is the part that I continue to struggle with. I can't forgive myself, can't live up to my own standards, can't believe that other imperfect humans could possibly be able to not hold my sins against me, and not understanding how a perfect God could love someone as blatantly imperfect, as consistently sinful as me.
I am supposed to make a list of the ways I have wronged people and sinned against Jesus. It's a comprehensive list, and the goal is not to rehash a bunch of ugly facts and make me feel even worse about myself than I already do (which is a difficult feat to imagine), but to get it all out on the table and see if, with the help of my friends who have promised to love me no matter what and walk through this with me, we can start to “unpack” the deeper motivations of why I have been doing these things, so I can move forward and not continue falling into the same traps over and over again.
1. I am a sinner. Yes, I know that's a given, that we all are, that that's the whole point of Christ's sacrifice and this crazy journey we're on, but if I don't start there and acknowledge the obvious, this is just a pointless exercise in self-flagellation. I have hurt Jesus, and I have hurt those around me.
2. I have been drinking too much. Not all the time, but enough to matter. Why? There are the surface answers: because it always seems to be around, because (at least at first) it helps get me out of my shell and actually able to talk to people... Then there are the much deeper reasons: it keeps the sadness (the depression, the barrage of feelings that often accompany it, the panic attacks) at bay, helps soften the edges of the disaster I see as my life.
How is this sin? Because I am trying to be the one in control. I see my life as being entirely out of control, and I do not trust or believe that God has me exactly where he wants me. I am afraid, all the time, but especially right now, as the Cryder's on whom I have relied too much are not going to be there to pick up the pieces in the coming weeks when I anticipate inevitably dissolving into a puddle on the floor. Probably more than once. I do not trust my community group to come through for me (a point that will come up again later in the list). And I don't trust that Jesus is enough to get me through the sadness and the panic. I feel like I have to do it myself.
3. I am a thief. More than once in the past weeks (seemingly as a direct result of drinking too much, losing my inhibitions, desperately needing the feelings to STOP), I have taken beer that did not belong to me out of Christian's fridge when I have left the house, and continued drinking at my place. It is an impulse I do not understand when I am sober, but it has not been a one time event. I have somehow managed to justify it in the moment, knowing that I have provided tons of beer and wine to these functions myself, but that is a crappy excuse and nothing more. It is stealing, and it is wrong. It has hurt Christian, it has hurt Marilyn, it has dragged Kelly into this mess (which may turn out to be a blessing when all is said and done), it has torn me up inside, and it has revealed, in yet another way, how much I desperately seek control of my situation and don't trust God to be enough for me. So I have taken what is not mine to take and tried to make the feelings stop under my own power, rather than trusting that this suffering that I feel is part of God's plan for me, and maybe he wants me to live through it, to bring me closer to Him.
4. I am a liar. Again, more than once, and again, in conjunction with drinking too much, I have lied – to Christian (saying I hadn't been drinking), to Kelly (saying I was too busy to get together when I was really just too drunk and sad), and almost certainly to others whom I can't even remember. I have been struggling to remember things. Obviously memory is clouded and distorted when too much alcohol is involved, but I have been forgetting things in many other contexts as well, which is one of the reasons they are having me write everything down. I believe that part of that is genuinely part of the chemical imbalance of depression; but even if you don't buy that, part of it is also that when I start to melt down, to focus on myself and all my problems that I can't seem to control, I spiral into despair, and I can't see beyond the mess. So I forget. It's a coping mechanism, but a very counter-productive one.
5. I am angry. I feel that promises were made in the past months, before and after I moved into my new place where I still struggle to believe that God wants me, and that my community has dropped the ball. Please don't hear this as an accusation: what I am saying is that I have had unrealistic expectations, I have felt like I was practically screaming for help, and I have felt like I have been abandoned by the people who were supposed to become my “larger family.” I have not reached out the way I should, I have been insanely needy and have allowed myself to become increasingly bitter about something most of my group has not even recognized as an issue. I have repented to God again and again, but the hurt is still there, and I need to (a) ask your forgiveness for holding accounts against you and (b) ask for help and accountability as I continue to struggle and feel so alone.
I have hurt Christian and Marilyn in this way as well. I have been selfish in my demands on their time (justifying it by trying to earn my way into their family by helping in any way I can think of, rationalizing that this is making their lives “easier,” when really I just suck their time to an unreasonable extent). I have found myself desperately desiring Christian's approval, rather than being content with the approval of the One I should be desiring, Jesus. Or even believing that I ever have Jesus' approval. I don't really believe that He can love me, so I reach desperately for the love I get from the people I can actually see. I see these flaws in me – hell, I read an entire book about it (Ed Welch's When People Are Big and God Is Small, all about fear of man over fear-of-the-Lord), but failed to find practical ways to turn what is clearly truth into reality in my life.
I am failing. I am hurting the people around me, I am engaging in self-destructive behaviors, and I'm losing heart. Each time I feel rejected by someone in our community (even when it's not true – when people are busy or hurting in their own lives or simply unaware), the shell around me gets a little thicker. It gets harder for me to reach out again. I am so easily wounded, because I don't have that foundation of faith to stand on that is supposed to be enough for me. I can't find that freedom that is supposed to come with trusting Jesus. Which means that I'm not trusting. I'm repenting, but repentance without real belief that can withstand the storms of life just leads to despair.
So I'm trying to move from that self-focus (that leads to despair) to self-awareness (that is supposed to lead to true repentance and hope in the God who gave His life for me). In spite of all my sins. In spite of the fact that even as I repent, I know that I will fail Him again.
I need your prayers. I need your forgiveness, for the ways I have failed you passively, for the ways I have held things against you, for the ways I have hurt some of you actively. Please pray for me. Please don't give up on me.
