option 1 being i can work out now and be healthy and lead a healthy life for many years
option 2 i can continue to eat and indulge now and pay later. continue to gain weight which will in turn jack up my knees and other joints and then potentially be unable to enjoy life in the future.

it seems pretty black and white right? ya, to me too.

but to be honest, i am a quitter. I have good intentions to work out and go running but half way through i quit. I have no self drive when it comes to working out. and to be honest again, it really pisses me off. i look back throughout my life and i see this Lynse that has drive to get through some pretty hellish things.

I pushed through and survived the sexual and emotional abuse.
I pushed through and quit pot and cocaine.
I pushed through dealing with the abuse because i knew it would benefit me.

Now, none of those things were easy or fun. Let me tell you i hated every minute of it.

But when it comes to working out and getting healthy i cant push through and i always end up quitting.

Through my years in TwentyFourSeven during our insane workouts the leader would say several things to motivate us. The one thing that always stands out in my head is

“you can pay now or you can pay later.”

I can pay now by working out and pushing my body to run that extra mile or do that extra lunge or crunch. Or i can pay later by being unhealthy with a poor quality of life.

those are essentially my two options.

but every time i put on my exercise clothes and tie up my shoes there is that voice inside of me that says i will never finish the run. or i cant ever lose weight or get healthy. And i buy into it and quit.

I am a quitter.

I dont want to be a quitter. I dont want to be the person that looks back years from now and wishes that i would have just paid in my 20’s instead of paying in my 50’s.

As much as i would love a Jillian Michaels, (who by the way is so freaking kick ass) I dont think it would be good for me in the long run. Knowing me, after she left or i quit seeing the trainer i would quit. I would have not built equity up in myself to get out there and face my demons of quitting and would find another excuse to quit.

This is much more than a weight issue for me. This is a character thing. It is going to be a life long struggle that isn’t even associated to my physical health. It is a motivation issue. It is a self value issue. It is a confidence issue. A self starting issue.

And right now to combat this I think the only way i know how will be to put on my exercise clothes daily and lace up my running shoes daily and push myself. Do that last mile, that last lunge, that last crunch.

Not because I need to lose weight, but I need to show myself that I value me, that I deserve to be healthy, that most importantly i wont quit on myself.

What do you always end up quitting that you need to push through?

Through out my life I have been objectified.

I was abused by several men growing up and because they viewed me as an object. I was no longer Lynse, my identity was taken away and i had become just another thing….a baseball card that is bought and sold…when you are done with it you maybe put it in the closet or throw it away.

There is not a lot of value in an object.

After years of being treated like an object i began to believe that i was an object. I was there for someone else’s pleasure. my dreams, aspirations and voice did not matter, because, you see, i was only an object.

I am no expert, but i feel like a lot of people i have talked to who were abused woke up one day and felt like “i have to find myself” or “reclaim who i am”.

As i was half watching Criminal Minds and half having an inner dialogue about the damage of being objectified i realized that it was probably the most damaging aspect, for me, of the abuse.

Once you are objectified over and over and over you begin to think you are an object and you follow suit of your abusers and remove your own value.

And the on going cycle begins…if you dont have any value in yourself then others wont value you.

today as i am 10 years past the most recent sexual abuse trauma i am still left picking up the pieces. I still am trying to learn to value myself. I am still trying to see that i have a voice and those that love me should value what i have to say. I am still learning that i am a valued person by those around me, and i deserve to be valued. I deserve to be a person and not an object.

This is why when we went to New Orleans and walked Bourbon Street messed with me. This is why a part of my heart aches for human trafficking victims. Not that i know the extent of the pain, loneliness and all other emotions that have to be tied up in there. But i know just a sliver. I know what it feels like to be devalued. To be told over and over by different people that you are worth no more than sex or the pleasure that you can provide to them.

each person deserves to be valued. valued by themselves and others.

this is something i am still learning…and will probably be learning for my entire life. Learning to first value myself and then those around me.

Do you have a hard time valuing yourself? What about others?

Each time i see it, it reminds me that we are to be LOVE to the world. How else will people around us know that we have the LOVE of God? If we repel people by offending them instead of loving them where they are what will make them want to come to God, who is LOVE.

I think about my story and how i got into church…i was a rebel, i was angry. I smoked, drank and cussed like a sailor. I had no reference for what was wrong or right in church or as a “christian.” No one had told me. It was a make it up as you go situation. But there were people, to whom i am so grateful for, who came alongside me and LOVED me where i was…and for who i was then. They knew that if they could encourage me to get closer to the God of LOVE that the different things in my life would begin to line up with scripture.

Had they have sat me down and attacked me i would have been so turned off…and to be honest i would still be turned off. I sent this tweet on Friday and i stand by it

“Don’t get me wrong I love Gods truth but if you say it in a judging manner and not in love I don’t want to hear it.”

There is a difference in speaking the truth in love and speaking it with judgement. LOVE compels you to improve while judgment causes you to back off and turn away.

So, i have a two part question….and would love your thoughts….

1.  Is it christians that are turning people away from God with their actions, words and judgement?

2.  As a christian, what could you/we do better?

if you dont watch LOST please excuse the LOST talk…it is a good quote that resonates with me…not just a LOST quote. ;)

in season 3 episode 11 Sayid is flashingback to when he was being tortured to confess that he tortured a lady during his time in the republican guard (Iraqi Army). She comes in to talk to him, to have him confess…and this is what she says,

“After my husband and I first arrived to Paris, I was afraid to ever leave our apartment. So I would stare out the window of our apartment and I would see this cat looking for scraps. One day some children came to the alley and trapped him in a box. I watched them light firecrackers and drop them into the box. I could hear him howling from three stories above. And finally, I had a reason to leave my apartment. I rescued this cat, and I brought it home. It sits with me when I read, sleeps with me, and he purrs. But, every once in a while, he will bite me or scratch me. He does this because he forgets that he is safe. So I forgive him when he bites me, because I know what it is like to never feel safe. And that is because of you. So today, I ask only one thing of you. I ask that you show me the respect of acknowledging what you did to me. That it was you who questioned me, that tortured me, and that you remember me.”

when i heard that i started to cry.  i realized that it put into words what i feel at times.  what it feels like to never feel safe.  because of the abuse i endured i dont always feel safe. i have different fears that haunt me because of things that were done to me. and a lot of times i feel like that tortured cat…not feeling safe is a scary thing for me. because i wasnt safe then so i try so hard to feel safe now to avoid some of those feelings from coming back.

But i am so thankful that i have a husband who understands those fears and my need to feel safe. but who also understands that when i dont feel safe i get a little weird…i act like that cat. i do crazy things to have control to feel safe.

anyways…is there a quote in a song or a movie that “gets it?”  that you heard or read and you thought…yep, thats me…in words?

Here is the whole article but you can read it here too.

SEATTLE — The mother of a Ballard High School student is fuming after the health center on campus helped facilitate her daughter’s abortion during school hours.

The mother, whom KOMO News has chosen to identify only as “Jill,” says the clinic kept the information “confidential.”

When she signed a consent form, Jill figured it meant her 15 year old could go to the Ballard Teen Health Center located inside the high school for an earache, a sports physical, even birth control, but not for help terminating a pregnancy.

“She took a pregnancy test at school at the teen health center,” she said. “Nowhere in this paperwork does it mention abortion or facilitating abortion.”

Jill says her daughter, a pro-life advocate, was given a pass, put in a taxi and sent off to have an abortion during school hours all without her family knowing.

“We had no idea this was being facilitated on campus,” said Jill. “They just told her that if she concealed it from her family, that it would be free of charge and no financial responsibility.”

The Seattle School District says it doesn’t run the health clinics at high schools. Swedish Medical Center runs the clinic at Ballard High and protects the students’ privacy.

T.J. Cosgrove of the King County Health Department, which administers the school-based programs for the health department, says it’s always best if parents are involved in their children’s health care, but don’t always have a say.

“At any age in the state of Washington, an individual can consent to a termination of pregnancy,” he said.

But Jill says she not only didn’t have a say in her daughter’s abortion, but also didn’t know about it.

“Makes me feel like my rights were completely stripped away.”

what are your thoughts?

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Dark night, dark blood carrying with it a river of rage that had brought her to this point. And the horror of it suddenly shone with the clarity of her face in the mirror as she reached down for the razor blade. She always kept a constant supply of loose blades for when the rage took over. The cutting helps relieve the tension, she says to herself in a reassuring voice. I’m not addicted, I don’t have to do it, I just do.

She lives on the street in San Franscisco, it gets cold at night. She doesn’t know where her home is, she doesn’t have a home. Every passing day she is more mad at herself for where he life is, or isn’t in her case. She holds so much rage and pain in her sixteen year old being. People say singing or writing is their therapy but it is really their “release” from a “free” world where everything is dictated. She sees drugs, alcohol and citing as her way out of a life she dreams of leaving everyday.

The blade is bone chilling as she drags it across her stomach as she does each time. She stops and sits in silence for a minute or so, and waits. She is waiting for the pride inside of her to die and the courage to rage so she can have the guts to push hard enough to break the skin. You would think after two years of cutting it would e no problem, not for her, it’s more like a ritual. In this ritual she is waiting for the pride to die so she can humble herself before her “god” an refuge of cutting. She places cutting before anything, before life, love and herself. The pain that is carried with cutting, pain on the outside is no match for the pain that she feels inside, the void of something she has never felt for herself.

She never cuts deep enough to do more than hurt the skin, she is too afraid. She doesn’t know that cutting the outside is killing her on the inside. So many people care that she doesn’t know about. Since she left home when she was thirteen she has thought parents have no care in the world. They only think about themselves.

As she presses the blade a surge of pain jets through her body giving her a “supernatural” feeling, if she even believes in anything spiritual. It feels so good. How could other people not get how good it feels? The blood trickles down her stomach and pools into her bellybutton. It’s like she has left her body. Like she is sitting on the stairs, watching herself. She knows that it hurts but not knowing what else to do. Cutting is her way out of a boring life into a life less ordinary. A life not too many sixteen year olds lead. Cutting to the world is wrong, it’s morbid and people that do it deserve to be locked up and need only counseling.

But to her cutting is all she has to survive the nothingness her life is.

________________________________

As I read this I was taken back to when I was 16. And when all of those feelings and emotions were true to me. I was a little girl trying so hard to get caught. To be found out so I wouldn’t have to live in silence.

It makes me wonder how many other people are out there just wanting their addictions to be found out so the silence can be broken.

As my week continued the phrase “my story was not nearly as bad and hard as yours” seemed to be a theme. I started reading a new book called “The Kids are All Right” by Amanda, Diana, Dan and Liz Welch.

It is their memoir, all giving an account of growing up under the same roof but having very different memories and stories from the same times. But the title says it all, the kids are all right. No matter what they felt or remembered…even if it was different than their siblings they are all right. It was as if God was trying to get my attention. To speak something to my heart.

During Life Group a couple weeks ago we were talking about some situations happening in my life and the lives of those of us in the group and it came up again. “my situation is not as bad as __________. So i guess it could be worse….”

and in that moment i think the lightbulb came on for me. I heard what God was trying to say to me all week.

I always hear people comparing their stories….almost one upping eachother to see who has or had it worse. But in either case dont we all have it the worst?

In our circumstances. In our stories. In our pasts. in our present situations. It is our story. and we are right.

and for us in that time or this time it is the worst….for us.

statements like “my story is not nearly as bad or hard as yours.” is robbing yourself of the hardships and trials that you had to endure to get you to today. Yes, mine may be different than yours…but harder?

to you it is hard….and it should stay that way…

remember as you share your story and listen to others that we are all right.  we all have different levels that we can endure…we all have different lives and stories.

But we are all right.

“People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone.” – Audrey Hepburn

Remember…in this holiday season, with your family, your friends and especially if you are in retail…that people grace.

Dont write anyone off.

Well as you read this think of that tone.

cause i am yelling “BREAK!”

I have spent a few days realizing that i should take a break from this little thing called blogging, twitter and facebook.

The play is for me to take 2 weeks off to spend time focusing on me…through continued healing as i am on my journey. To spend some uninterrupted time with Chad as we plan our next steps as the Stevens’. and to refocus my love towards God and remove this little idol that keeps creeping its way into my life.

So from tomorrow AM until December 14th i will be M.I.A. But i will be available by email at lynseleanne[at]gmail.com , but i will not be checking it as often, but i will be checking it twice a day. :)

I would appreciate your thoughts and prayers during these 2 weeks… make sure i dont miss anything too HUGE…kthxbai.

I sinned. I messed up.

When i sin or mess up my first instinct is to isolate and hide….to keep it a secret.

But I know that is not healthy.

So i resisted the urge to hide and keep my sin a secret because i knew that if i did that it would continue to grow and grow and i would keep doing it…because it is in the dark and not in the light, and thats where it grows and festers….

So i confessed it…first to God and then to a few trusted friends that i knew would keep me accountable.

I chose to tear down the wall and share my secret…where i am weak.

as always it is scary. the thoughts running through my mind

they will think i am horrible
i let them down
i cant believe i did that
they are not going to be my friend anymore
they are going to tell everyone
they are going to judge me

but after i told the response on the other end was not at all what i anticipated….

her exact words were

“Love you. Messed up just means allow the rescue. Nothing you can do but allow it in.”

she didnt judge
but, she didnt approve of what i did
she didnt unfriend me
she didnt make me feel like i let them down
she didnt tell anyone

this person simply reminded me that God is my rescue….that i cant save or rescue myself. I cant do enough to rescue myself….only God can.

Rescue is defined as (n) an act of saving or being saved from danger or distress; or (v) save (someone) from a dangerous or distressing situation.

She couldnt rescue me.
I couldnt rescue me.
Chad couldnt rescue me.
You couldnt rescue me.

only God can rescue.

and in that moment of grace and love i felt the rescue of God. His plan to rescue me from where i was…the emotions, the anxiety, the shame, the darkness…he rescued me when His son died on the cross.

But it is our choice to allow the rescue…

The next time you mess up are you going to allow the rescue in? Or will you flounder on your own trying to rescue yourself?