Amanda C. Bauch
Relief‘s Assistant Editor, Amanda C. Bauch, ruminates on ritual compulsions and Lent.
My fingers were bleeding. Again.
Even as I pause while typing this, my right hand reaches over to the left hand, longing to pluck at a piece of loose skin on my pointer finger. I worried this piece of loose skin on the drive home yesterday, when I was working out, and while I watched the Winter Olympics with my husband.
But it’s not only the fingers. It’s also my legs, my face, my scalp. All subjected to frequent, almost ritualistic, picking. I’ve scratched and dug at my legs so often that they’re bloody and bruised. My face bears scars from years of attempting to rid myself of imperfections, whether real or perceived.
The face digging began when I was in junior high. The finger mangling started in college. The leg scratching and scalp digging are fairly new developments, added to my repertoire over the past year or so.
The escalation of my finger picking during college prompted me to seek counseling. I felt out of control, and I knew the problem wouldn’t go away on its own. All of my fingers wrapped in band-aids, torn and bloody, I cried as I told the doctor that I couldn’t stop and I actually enjoyed hurting myself on some level.
This initial appointment set me on a road I’ve now been on for over a decade, trying to understand why I do what I do.
While I’ve been diagnosed with OCD for some time, I’ve only recently learned about a disorder that goes by many names, but is most frequently referred to as dermatillomania. In layman’s terms, compulsive skin picking.
Viewing a variety of websites and reading testimonies of those who suffer from this ailment, I am amazed to see my story reflecting back at me from my computer monitor. However, one young lady’s comment resonates: “I have not felt worthy.”
Now that we’ve entered the holy season of Lent, I had to decide if I was going to give something up, and if so, what. During Ash Wednesday service, I sat in the pew, praying to God to help me make this decision, all the while picking my cuticles into oblivion. I pulled a particularly tenacious piece of skin I’d been attacking for some time, immediately feeling the tingle and rush of pain derived from tearing off layers of skin.
At that moment, I knew it had to stop, and I felt that God was telling me that it was time.
Granted, this skin picking is a habit I’ve developed over about twenty years of my life, and I know that it’s not going to vaporize overnight. However, I made a commitment to the Lord to try to change. To truly believe that with Him, all things are possible. I am learning to trust Him, trust myself. I’m learning to combat the self-criticism and feelings of unworthiness with His Word: “When I said, ‘My foot is slipping,’ your love, O Lord supported me. When anxiety was great within me, your consolation brought joy to my soul” (Ps 94:18-19).
Over these forty days of Lent, I’m giving up my self-criticism. I’m giving up the belief that if I just had enough faith, all of my problems would be resolved. And perhaps most importantly, I’m giving up the belief that I am unworthy.
***
Amanda C. Bauch, is Relief‘s Assistant Editor, a writer, and a teacher. She fled the harsh Upstate New York winters and now resides outside of Jacksonville, Florida. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University and is currently working on a young adult novel and a memoir. Her short fiction has appeared in Tattoo Highway, Bent Pin Quarterly, The Hiss Quarterly, and nonfiction pieces have been published in Writer Advice, Empowerment4Women, as well as two print anthologies, Tainted Mirror and MOTIF: Writing By Ear. She is also a monthly contributor to 30 Points of View, a blog/ezine/something-or-rather ( www.30pov.com).
Thanks, Amanda, for writing honestly about your struggle. We all have something, some of us many things, to wrestle with. I think the desire to “give it up” is healthy and God-given. The reality of that happening is uncertain, but the lessons gained in the process of trying are gifts. As for feeling worthy or not, perhaps we’re not commanded by God to believe we’re worthy of love, grace, salvation, and so on, but simply to see that, despite my unworthiness, God loves me anyway. All the best to you during Lent.
Just red your tremendous entry,
especially gripped because I in-
herited Hailey-Hailey (a form of
pemphigus) from my mom’s side
of the family. And when the lesions
do surface, what I do is exactly what
I should not do, try, etc. not to do:
SCRATCH & PICK the scabs! Anyway,
you get the ooozing picture. Thank you
for so vulnerably sharing. Meditating on
our Righteousness and Justification —
because of Jesus.
Deanna,
I appreciate your kind and thoughtful words. In a weekly Bible study I attend, we just discussed the story of Jacob wrestling with God. I understood so much what it felt like for a spiritual and physical struggle to be so intimately intertwined.
Blessings,
Amanda
Geoff,
(apparently, I don’t know how to post these replies directly below the comments–my apologies)
Thank you for taking time to read and comment on my post, as well as sharing your own experience. I am amazed by how many people suffer from these kinds of ailments, and I wonder if perhaps I might be able to serve the Lord by ministering to those who do.
Blessings,
Amanda
I tried to find your email address via these *Relief* pages and over on the “old” site, and even through Ubiqui-Google, but no me find.
Related to your mention of “Jacob wrestling God,” I thought you might like this poem I wrote:
MATCH?
Jacob ends up beating God?
It must have been a set-up
with Him allowing a man
to win.
Imagine
hours on the dusty mat in rocky
Jabbok, and picture the deceiver-
supplanter becoming a contender-
prince by pinning God to the dirt.
Did the Creator get hurt?
One thing’s for sure:
Although Jacob won,
he never forgot his not-always-
omnipotent Opponent, the One
who popped him good, socked him
in the hip before he stepped from
the dawn, with a permanent limp.
from *The Word in Question: Verse Reflections on Peculiar Scriptures from the Bible*
Geoff,
Thank you for sharing this poem, and that section could definitely be classified as a “peculiar Scripture.” :0)
~~Amanda