How'd I get here, anyway?

Two more weeks of Freedom for Life and three classes, including tonight. We joke at our table about how we will all be free and healed in only X more weeks. At this point I just don't see it. In fact, I am still trying to figure out how I even began the class. How did that happen? I think it was the love that did it to me, and I never saw it coming.

Four months ago I was leading a small group for church, chugging along on the path before me, and only God could orchestrate all the little things that changed my path. Then Freedom for Life was announced. And for 4 or 5 Sunday's in a row there were short testimonial videos in church from people who had used the information from the FFL class and gotten free of various addictions, and I felt each testimony like it was calling out a longing in my heart. This happened as I started to fall apart. The depression I'd medicated for 15 years went out of control, I wasn't sleeping, I wasn't... well I just wasn't.

I think one of the things that made me so susceptible to even beginning to see that something was wrong was that the people at small group really seemed to love and accept me. They kept coming back, more than once! Leading a group was so different than attending a group because I could be my needy self at a group I attended, knowing that the group leader at least had to act like they liked me but as a leader, I had to be... a leader. And the thing that wore on me week after week was that they just kept coming back. I had such a low opinion of myself that I just couldn't figure it out.

Instead of being frustrated with a falling-apart-first-time-leader, my interns encouraged me, "Whatever you need to get healthy..." "We love you..." "We'll take over!"  And Sunday hugs and notes and how-are-you-doings from group members...

I thought I was going to the class to work on some of  my control and food issues. But God knew that wasn't the root issue. It was love. I thought I wasn't lovable. If someone loved me, they must want something, and for certain it would only be short lived. I could list ways that I was just waiting for and at the same time trying to avoid love, sure that it would disappoint.

But love has found me. More than the air I breathe, the food I hide behind, or the emotions I stifle as I'm afraid to feel them, I want to let Love in. 3