I don't know who I am anymore

The truth is, I don’t know who I am anymore. 

I will never forget this day. Ever. It was one of the happiest days of my life and, it was also when everything I had ever known or believed started to crumble. 

This was June 6, 2016, a little over 3 years ago. Just look at me all innocently smiling. I don’t even know what is about to happen to my life. 

I was invited to participate in a 3 week program where you essentially “reset” your body by eating a plant based diet. It was a fairly expensive program but it came with everything we would need to succeed. Rodney said he would do it with me and we committed to it 100%. We even gave up coffee, man. 

At the end of the program, we both felt indescribably amazing. This was my "after" picture. I remember thinking, “omg. I have been THIS CLOSE to feeling THIS GOOD my WHOLE LIFE!?!” I mean learning some new recipes and changing a few things you buy at the grocery store and that was literally ALL it took feel this freaking good? 

I still live in astonishment of it. I live in astonishment of everything now. 

However, all of my jubilation about my vibrant physical health began to slowly turn everything around me into a nightmare. 

I was a chicken farmer and a cattle farmer. I made my living from raising and selling chickens and cattle for slaughter. Something that I never even questioned. I always believed that meat was necessary and now, here I was, in a clear-minded, physically thriving body after I’d stopped consuming it for 21 days. 

I had argued against veganism for every reason that any non-vegan uses. All of them. But what was I going to do about the truth of what was actually happening to me? What was I supposed to do with the blinding truth? Go back? Go back to being sick and tired and depressed just so I can keep from rocking this enormous boat in which I'd found myself? I told myself for a while that I had no right to judge people who ate chickens and cows just because I was choosing not to eat them. 

I could still raise meat for those who choose to eat it. 

And that was about the point when my mind started to experience some serious short circuits. 

Every day, before I walked into my chicken houses, I would strap a respirator to my face because I couldn’t breathe otherwise. I put on safety glasses to keep the feathers out of my eyes. I tied a plastic bag followed by a tightly cinched bandana around my hair to try and keep out the godawful stink. Then I walked through a sea of wall-to-wall chickens, looking for injured, dying, or dead birds. Rodney and I did this for 20 years (along with a million other unmentionable tasks) and I never thought a thing about it. Not one thing in the world was out of place. People need chicken. 

Every 6 months or so (or when bills came due) we would load our corral with cattle and “strip” babies away from their mothers, load them in a trailer, and send them to the sale barn where they would be auctioned off for slaughter. Because people need beef. 

Except, they don’t. 

I had unexpectedly proven it to myself. I was standing there looking at myself in the mirror without a shred of evidence to prove otherwise. 

I was vibrating with health and joy. We both were. 

Neither of us knew what to do. 

.......

One day, I’ll tell you all about the journey that has brought me to this new place. I’ll tell the story of how I quit my job because of my convictions. I will speak of lost friends and of making new ones. Of how I was betrayed by people I love because I can’t stop telling the truth. Maybe one day I will be able to explain how I was able to delude myself for so long. Perhaps I will speak of my immense grief. My earth-shattering, anxiety-attacking, heartbreaking grief for the animals. 

The person looking at herself in the mirror there was about to go back to work on her farm and never ever be able to see it the same again. 

How could she? 

The events that have occurred since I took this very innocent “after” picture have been nothing short of miraculous. Perilous at times. It’s still perilous. But oh so beautifully miraculous. 

And, while I don’t really know who I am anymore, I’m really enjoying finding out. Because I am now free. I am living in my truth. The truth I’ve somehow buried my whole life has now come to set me free. There is no light and momentary affliction that could possibly cause me to step back into the insanity that I've been freed from. I know what an abundant life is now. I live it with every single breath. 

So, I will keep telling my story however I can possibly tell it. Even while it still doesn't make sense. Even while I'm still somewhere in the middle. Not who I used to be but definitely heading somewhere really really good. 

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. -Galatians 5:1