75 Days

75 days...I've gone the last 11 weeks without cutting. I can't believe I've made it this far. Honestly, I had huge doubts that I would ever have made it this far. It truly was all by the grace of God.

Today, I had a prayer answered. We had a guest speaker in my Parish and Personal Evangelization class (Only at Franciscan do you have classes like this one. Haha) named Michael Poirier. He's a Catholic singer who travels the country with his wife and kids sharing the salvific message of Christ. He sang a part of a song that he sings after Holy Communion in Mass when he does the music. He sang it today and it brought tears to my eyes, because just last night, I asked the Lord to let me know His love for me. Here's what Michael sang.

You are beautiful to me, but still you don't believe me
You are beautiful to me, it's why I'm telling you again.
You are beautiful to me, please stop trying to win the love that was yours from the beginning
You are beautiful to me, you think you understand
You are beautiful to me, so tell me, why do you still run?
You are beautiful to me, I'm longing for the day you will believe me.

Never have I felt that a message was made more for me. After class, I talked to Michael for a few minutes and told him that this really was an answer to my prayer. This exactly what I needed to hear because most of the time, I don't feel beautiful. For 2 years, I listened to the lies of Satan and abused my body. I still get the temptation...a lot actually. To be totally honest, it's every single night that I have to fight the urge. It usually comes at least once during the day as well. I hate it, but I'm slowly coming to terms with the fact that this is my Cross to carry right now. I have a friend named Erinn who's in the class as well. We had a little conversation about how this got me emotional and after class today, she sent a tweet to Twitter that said that "catherinengland (my username), you're beautiful." It got sent to my phone, and I started to tear up. She has no idea how much that means to me. Each time someone says it, even though I don't really believe it, I can feel myself coming closer to really knowing Christ really does love me and created me beautiful. One day, I'll get there. All in God's time.

I spent a lot of time thinking about the last 2 years lately. I know it's not good to dwell on the past, but I feel like to heal, I need to look at it. 23 months ago, I started cutting again. After 2 years of being addicted to cutting, I look at the scars on my upper arm, my legs, and my forearm and I'm appalled at the fact that I did all this damage to myself. But then, I remembered something Fr. Greg told me a while ago. He told me not to look any further down my arm than my tattoo. So, I'm trying not to. I'm trying to see my scars as battle scars. I look forward to the day that I can look at them and say that I won the battle and that they are a sign of how bad things were, but how good they can be, and that life is so much better. Again, it's all in God's time.

"He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds." -Psalm 147:3