I'll be the banks for your river

God used to speak to me. And I used to write about it on this blog. 

I use the past tense here because lately I’m not so sure. I don't know how to be sure that it’s really God’s voice that I heard. 

It's not that I believe I never heard from God or that I was wrong about it all. I’m just less...certain. More cautious. (16-year-old Aly would have been horrified by this “lukewarm Christian” talk and wishy washy faith). 

I’m currently in treatment for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and one of the themes of my obsessions and compulsions is Moral Scrupulosity. 

“Scrupulosity is an OCD theme in which a person is overly concerned with the fear that they are doing something that goes against their religious beliefs or is immoral.”

Simply put, I have a deep and distressing fear that I am not living out my values. And I have developed compulsions to alleviate this fear. I have been convinced that I must find the right answer–the right action–in every situation and God will make this known to me through signs and certainty if only I pray hard enough, believe earnestly enough, and am faithful enough to figure it out. (Spoiler alert: this is not actually figure-out-able.)

I didn’t know this was part of a disorder until six months ago. To me, the anxiety and the fear and the worry and the rumination and the second-guessing was just my normal experience of faith. Or more accurately, an indictment on my failed faith.

So now I find myself asking the disturbing question, “Was it the voice of God or a mental disorder?” 

Before recovery, I would have rushed to find this answer. I would have NEEDED this answer to be okay. I would have rejected all the good and beautiful and redemptive things I learned about God.

I am learning to live with uncertainty. To hold space for the messy.

I can believe God loves me and also be confused about how He chooses to speak or not speak. 

I can embrace my belovedness even if I don’t know all the answers. 

I can be bewildered by violence and war and racism and still believe that God is good and there is goodness inherent in all people. 

What I cannot do is be certain that my faith or my politics are right. That my way is more holy.  And conversely, I cannot be certain that the other side is wrong.

If God is as big and powerful and loving and grace-filled as I believe, won’t He* understand that I don’t understand? That prayer might be hard right now? That grief lingers in the corners of my recovery? 

Needtobreathe** has a beautiful song called Banks. Some of my favorite lines go:

I wanna hold you close but never hold you back

Just like the banks to the river

And if you ever feel like you are not enough

I'm gonna break all your mirrors

I wanna be there when the darkness closes in

To make the truth a little clearer

I wanna hold you close but never hold you back

I'll be the banks for your river*

Maybe God’s not judging me. Maybe He’s okay with my ebbs and flows. Maybe He’s the banks to my river. 

*you can see I’m still scared not to capitalize He for God ;)

**Don't worry, I haven’t backslid too much–Needtobreathe is a Christian band!). 

***

This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Lyrical".

Results: A medium job of trying "meduimer"

Results: I did a medium job of trying mediumer (and it was excruciating)

I scan my faculty ID card, bink, and enter the silent building. I breathe out cold puffs of air and adjust my face mask. I don’t know how long it will take. All or nothing Aly would stay all day if I had to. I would not eat or break until my portfolio was perfect.  

This time I set a time limit: 2pm. I will submit whatever I have completed by 2pm, I tell myself.

Thirty minutes in, my pulse is racing, butterflies swirl in my chest, what if I miss something? What if I’m doing this wrong? What if I mediumer is actually failure? What if I get fired–or worse–what if my performance evokes something less resounding praise?  

An hour in, I’m talking myself out of the project completely, scrolling Instagram instead of compiling documents. 

This is taking too long. I will never finish. Trying mediumer sucks. 

I try out one of my favorite OCD strategies: maybe this is taking too long, maybe not. I keep working. 

The adrenaline still pumps. I notice a typo on a PDF I’ve already created and uploaded. I leave it (gasp!).

By 1:30 I’ve compiled and submitted my materials for 2 of the 4 courses I’ve taught in the last year and a half. 

At this point, sticking to my time limit would be actual sabotage. I’m disappointed I’m not excelling at trying mediumer. That my portfolio will take more time than I budgeted. That my medium isn’t..perfect. 

I head home at 2 and get ready for a church barbecue. I can’t stop ruminating about the last two class materials I need to curate. I’m crying in the car as the kids listen to Blaze and my husband drives us to meet with friends. I make it through the barbecue but OCD is still sucking me in more than I would like. If my goal was to free up mental space to connect with the people in front of me, I am failing. But I am there. 

The next morning, I let my anxiety, my need to finish, get the better of me. I stay home from church to work on my portfolio. I work through the final two classes doing “mediumer.” I let myself re-use my materials from my last evaluation. I have trouble downloading a file, so I just scrap it. Is this mediumer or irresponsible? I honestly don’t know. Will this all bite me in the butt later on? 

I submit my portfolio at 10:53 on Sunday morning, over 24 hours before the deadline, which I have never done. Usually I am tweaking, strategizing, solving until the very last minute. It would be irresponsible not to use this extra time, wouldn’t it? I submit anyway, go for a walk, take a bath. 

The real results won’t come until mid-March when I get the feedback from my evaluators. But that’s not really the point. I let OCD pull me in, but I also fought back. And that’s worth celebrating. 

Experiment 1: Try Mediumer

Experiment: Try Mediumer⠀⠀⠀

Introduction: I'm a lecturer in the Linguistics department at San Diego State University. I teach writing to students whose first language isn't English. As a non-tenure track instructor, I'm required to complete an annual evaluation where I compile a portfolio of my work. I'm asked to submit major exams and assignments, sample activities, syllabi, student evaluations, and peer observations. I'm supposed to highlight my "best work."

In my 5 years at SDSU, this assignment has never failed to make me miserable. I spiral into What ifs? and lament that my "best" could always be better. I avoid avoid avoid until days before the deadline and then I work for 72 frantic hours compiling, clarifying, and convincing myself (and hopefully my supervisors!) that my work is not one big heap of rubbish.

I have checked and double checked my files, my explanations, my exemplars until I have accounted for every type of activity, answered my evaluators' every question before they even think them. I have worked until the portfolio feels JUST RIGHT.⠀⠀

In OCD recovery, I am learning that this need to achieve "perfection" is actually an Obsession, and my actions--avoidance or overachieving--are actually Compulsions. Rigid rules of perfection that make me feel in control, but actually perpetuate my anxiety and fear of failure.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

I am learning to ask, what do I value MORE than perfection?⠀⠀⠀⠀

I want healing, self-compassion that spills into grace for others. I want to be proud of my work, but not a slave to it.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

So here is my Research Question: Can I purposefully submit work that does not feel JUST RIGHT, but GOOD ENOUGH? Can I give myself the grace to Try Mediumer?

I'll post my findings on Thursday. Do you have any experiments you'd like to try? Comment here or use the hashtags #exspearymints and #trialandreflection on Instagram.