Jesus to a Child

I love this song.  I’ve posted before about the link I feel between homosexuality and bipolar disorder and I just feel like this song encapsulates the struggle of being an outsider and the desire to find meaningful connections.

 

I Love to See the Temple

Yesterday, after I posted about slicing and dicing, the children's song, “I Love to See the Temple,” got lodged in my head.

Here’s a link for it if you’re not already familiar: I Love to See the Temple

There’s a lot of talk in my church about bodies being temples.  It’s not a weird Mormon idea, because I googled and saw all kinds of other Christian links to the scripture in Corinthians (which I believe I’m supposed to have memorized).  Strangely, associating cutting with the idea of my body as a temple wasn’t particularly upsetting (i.e. I should feel guilt for defiling my “temple”).

Instead of feeling guilty, I started thinking about what it’s like to be in the temple and participate in its ordinances, and how relieved I am to be endowed and to know more about God’s plan for us.

I know I’m messed up, and sometimes it makes me feel unworthy to enter the temple, but at the same time, I know that God loves me, even when I do stupid and harmful things.

Anyway, I didn’t want to get too far into the saccharine, but having the thoughts of cutting replaced by a song about the temple was an instant blessing and a good reminder of God’s daily role in our lives.

Sharp instruments…

Unless they are for food, you cannot show them to me.  Immediately my brain goes to thoughts of cutting.  It’s irrational; it’s absurd; it’s OCD and bipolar of me.

It’s not necessarily that I WANT to cut, it’s that the IDEA of cutting is lodged in my head the rest of the day.  I can’t stop thinking about how it feels and what it looks like.  And my gut gets all twisted and I want to cry, but I STILL can’t stop thinking about it.

It helps that I have a four-inch scar on my thigh.  I can tame things a little by thinking about how awful the night was when cutting finally sent me to the ER.  I never want to feel the way I did on that exam table, with my sister crying in one of those stupid chairs and the doctor trying to help me by telling me it’s a first-world problem.  I just lay there feeling broken and wrong; I don’t want to feel that way again.

The thoughts still come, but I can CBT them a little by thinking about my thigh.