Criminal

Guilt. Shame. A pair of life-suckers, and they are surely no strangers to me. Every day, at some point, I am likely to feel guilty about something, regardless of whether I have actually done something wrong. I am likely to have a visceral gut reaction to anything that tries to refute my shameful, guilty identity. It's the whisper in my mental ear each time someone tells me I'm OK, I'm beautiful, smart, helpful - the whisper of "You don't deserve that. That isn't really you. You are bad, you are wrong, you are flawed, through and through". A constant stream of accusation about my body, my accomplishments, my disorder, my failures runs through my minds like a liquid stream of poisonous mercury, slowly making me sicker and sicker.
Then, today, something shifted.
It wasn't what I expected. I'd been wishing and dreaming of liberation. Sort of a magic bullet, a pass to freedom. I wanted an out. I wanted to say the prayer, get the intense emotional experience, and then walk away with no desire to ever return to my disastrous behaviors. To clarify - my wish was, and perhaps is, for God to remove my eating disorder and all it's associated messes with a wave of his invisible hand, and absolutely nothing done on my part.
I am not implying that God does not take away whatever is hurting his child in a nanosecond. I think he can. What I mean is that I am lazy. I don't want to struggle and feel pain in order to grow. I want effortless. I discovered that I have been playing the helpless victim role. My mental dialogue goes a little like this:

Me#1 You really shouldn't binge eat and then throw that up.
Me #2: I can't stop myself.
Me #1: Oh really?
Me #2: Yes. Really. I am emotionally and spiritually wrecked. I need this. People have hurt me. I need to medicate.
Me #1: So ... what about all those people willing to help you?
Me #2: I have to ask them to help. That's hard. I'm too weak. They probably are too busy and have written me off anyway. I'm all alone. I have to give in now or I'll just die. I need this, just one more time.
Me #1: Right. Let me know when you want to call quits on the pity-party.

And so on. Man but being a victim gives you an out.

And then, revelation - or whatever you care to call it. I am only the victim if I choose to keep running away from God. And it is a choice, fear-based and lie-based though it be. I have chosen to hang on to those false beliefs very tightly, believing they kept me safe, intact, and insulated. It suddenly came to me - I am guilty, yes. Very. Worthy-of-death guilty. But it isn't my disorder, or my lying or my failures that are my deepest sins. It is pride, victimising myself, passing blame, and running from the truth. I have refused to see my own part in creating the mess I have become. I have denied my stubbornness and my unbelief, blaming it on something outside myself, believing it was not in my power to choose any longer. I felt I was a robot, directed by malevolent programming- but I am not.

Here is the crux, and the beginnings of release - I learned today that admitting guilt, truly feeling and owning my complete messiness, is actually the beginning of freedom. Which experiences the greatest relief and gratitude when finally pardoned-  the criminal who is convinced that they are the product of circumstance and they are not to blame, or the criminal who knows full well how completely guilty she is of her crimes? I think the latter. I am now becoming (I hope) the latter. I felt, for perhaps the first time, the sadness of knowing I'd been wrong. By my own choice, no matter how I was mislead, I ran headlong away from God. I tried to fix myself and blamed God and others for my failure.

But the funny thing is, the freeing truth is ... once I admitted that, I could beg for mercy and forgiveness. I could feel grateful for a gift I didn't deserve. I couldn't be forgiven of a crime I wouldn't let myself admit to.