Cookie cutters and clay

I have always liked cookie cutters. They are precise, you know what the finished product is going to turn out looking like, they are less messy. They just fit nicely.

I have tried to fit in various shapes of cookie cutters my entire life, but just never really fit any. I was involved in sports, but not an athlete; the arts, but not an artist or star performer; the intellectual/smart kids, but not really fitting there either. One teacher once told me you are either "artsy fartsy" or smart. Hmmm. I was both, I knew it. But to my young mind I was so torn because I just didn't FIT.

I tried being friends with "popular" kids, but only a bit because those kids at my school were doing things that did not sit right with my soul. I tried, experimented, made some friends, and then moved on. Never really finding my place. I had friends in different groups and felt torn trying to understand which group I fit in the best.

Even in my family I never felt like I really fit. I was loved, yes. But I was different, sort of. Even being "different" didn't totally fit because there were so many similarities.

When I began looking into religion, I thought I was looking for a church that fit MY beliefs, but really, deep down, I was trying to find a cookie cutter I fit or that fit me...I just wanted to fit. Then I learned about the Gospel of Jesus Christ, according to the teachings of the LDS church. It fit my heart more than I had imagined I would find. It even had a choir I could join (which was one of the things on my list I was looking for in a church)!

I felt that I didn't really fit when I was baptized (or afterwards) because of my life experiences. How could a person like me fit the cookie cutter mold of a Mormon? I was different from most of the other people my age because I was a convert, had experienced much that they never would have to face, I didn't have pioneer heritage or traditions of much that fit with the Gospel. I didn't have an eternal family. But I worked HARD to try and make myself fit. Sadly, that isolated me even more because in my efforts to fit what I thought was the cookie cutter, I became a sort of zealot. I was intense. The harder I tried to make myself fit the mold of a "good latter-day saint", the more alone I began to feel. For awhile I felt I just didn't fit in the Church at all. But Christ was in my heart and I had to find a way. Try harder, do it a bit different, look at how other people are living and try and be like them. Anything (almost) to FIT.

I married a returned missionary in the temple...isolating myself from my family, but determined that THIS was how I was going to finally have my cookie cutter life. It was a struggle from early on. I just didn't understand it. I tried to do all the things that we were taught we should do for the ideal family, but it just wasn't turning out like the cookie cutter. Lots of trials and struggles for many, many years. Our family just didn't fit the mold. Our counsellor even said to us one time, "the church teaches about the ideal, and you just do not fit the ideal mold." He was trying to be helpful to encourage me to look at other options that might make our life a bit more doable for me and my husband, but it was just another way that I didn't fit. I just wanted to FIT gosh-darnit!

And then D-day #1 happened. Any hope that I had been clinging to of progressing to a place where I fit was gone. My world had collapsed and I had no idea which way was up. We tried to rebuild, tried to overcome, tried to get back to "fitting" as best we could, but that cycle just always brought more problems (and more d-days). I did not fit the ideal LDS marriage/family, and I never would.

But then I discovered the world of WoPA's. I studied and read and learned and tried to morph myself and come to terms with my "new" identity as a WoPA. I joined forums and other groups, I read blogs and started my own, I began working 12 steps for betrayal trauma and recovery for loved ones of addicts. I learned a lot and felt like I may have found a place that I fit. Not the shape of a cookie cutter that I ever wanted to fit into, but part of my heart was happy to finally feel like I fit SOMEWHERE.

And then last week that all got flipped on it's head again. After over a year of counselling, we were told that our therapist does not believe my husband is an actual "addict". He is bordering on the line of addiction, had addictive tendencies and an addictive personality, but he is not to the point where he can be diagnosed as a sex addict or money addict or any specific "addict". He's close, as our therapist said, but doesn't quite fit the definition. My identitiy that I had come to accept (as a WoPA or WoA -wife of an addict) dissolved right in front of me. I no longer felt like I fit in the places that had become safe to me...the forums, blogs, support groups. Gone. Poof. Sure, I have faced betrayal and have experienced betrayal trauma. That is true. But I apparently am not a true WoPA. I am a WoAA...wife of an ALMOST ADDICT. I almost fit, but not quite. And that has been a hard blow. Reading the blogs and forum posts is just different now. It feels like another loss.

How is it that I am grieving losing my identity of being a WoPA? Really, that just sounds crazy to me, but it actually hurts. A lot. Because I want to fit. I want to feel like I'm not different AGAIN.

Additionally, with my "miracle" I received last week, that opened my eyes about my own destructive patterns and behaviors, I still don't "fit". I don't know if I have an actual addiction. I have researched this and while I fit SOME of the "qualifiers" of addiction, I don't fit all. It's like I just don't have enough dough to fit into all the corners of the addiction cookie cutter...as a wife or as an individual.

That should be a good thing, right? But it doesn't feel good. It hurts the part of me that just desperately wants to fit.

As I have pondered more on this, I am starting to gain a different perspective. Or perhaps, God is helping me to see it differently. Maybe God doesn't want me to be a cookie cutter? Maybe He wants me to fit HIS mold. But His mold for me isn't the same shape as anyone else. And I'm thinking He isn't wanting me to be the same as anyone else. He is a potter that molds the clay how He wants.

"But now, O Lord, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand." Isaiah 64:8

I think God sometimes lets us try and help Him shape us. He wants us to be involved in bettering ourselves, actively engaged. But sometimes (and occasionally more than sometimes) we make a mess of the clay. And that is where the Master Potter steps in (if we let Him) to FIX us, instead of trying to FIT us into a certain mold. To smooth out the bumps, fill in the cracks, reshape the warped and wonky, to guide our hands as we try again (and again and again).
http://www.lds.org/general-conference/1982/04/beginning-again?lang=eng

"Arise, and go down to the potter's house, and there I will cause thee to hear my words.
Then I went down to the potter's house, and, behold, he wrought a work on the wheels.
And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter: so he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it.
Then the word of the Lord came again to me, saying,
O house of Israel, (O Steel Cocoon), cannot I do with you as this potter?...Behold as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are ye in mine hand." Jeremiah 18:2-6

I think it is time I stop trying to fit a defined mold and embrace the vessel the Master Potter is shaping me to become. And if that doesn't fit in a certain group or category, that is ok. It does not take away the validity of what I am living. Jesus didn't fit the cookie cutter either.