Commitment

I think I have to start writing more, but it’s hard when my brain so often feels like mush. How do you will a brain to un-mush? I don’t have any good answer, except to draw on my experience weight lifting. . .through sinus issues and migraines, bad days and tears. If I waited to get better, I was never going to get better. And if I wait for my brain to get better, it will never get better. It, too, needs to be exercised to un-mush, just like my body.

I have been tempted multiple times to subscribe to EPF’s subscription website, but always stop at the price. If I can’t find the means to write regularly (the universal advice for improving writing), what good will a subscription service do me?

I did go so far as to take her “stages of writing” quiz, which said I was at the stage of a hostess looking for guests. Insert eye roll here. Yes, obviously, I have no readers. Would I like more of a community? Yes. That is naturally the draw of a “community” website.  But do I have energy to chase around a readership? No. I can barely write, never mind chase people around.

Which leads me to the other thing. . .do I really want to be a part of her subscription website? There is a part of me that digs in my heels. No. I am not looking to monetize. I just want to write. Writing as a grace. Writing as gift. Writing as a thing given. Not a business. Do I want to be published? Yes, because I want to be read, and I want to be worth reading. Not because I want to make money off of it.

I recognize that my digging in of my heels might be misty-eyed sentimentalism. I mean, I would rather go buy a typewriter and do it the old fashioned way. Really have to put some thought and effort into it, some care and consideration, not just bang out words on a digital screen and hit ‘post’ because no one will read it so what’s the point of making it better?

I say I want to write under the banner of ‘I am a child of God first.’ But then today I went to try to go start that site and completely choked. Who am I to write under that title? And how can I while my brain is mush? Surely I need something important to say first, and since I am a drooling mess today, how can I say anything important? This is not an unusual sensation to me; why do you suppose I have filled spiral bound notebook upon spiral bound note book, but choke repeatedly on anything that has a hard cover?

Partly, I think I need to get over myself and write for a more public audience, however I need to get there. Partly, I find myself confounded by my innate refusal to make money. I do PT, but I am angry that it is a fee-based service. Shouldn’t it be a ministry? What’s up with this, if you pay me money, then I will care for you? If you pay me money, then I will alleviate your suffering? How messed up is that?

But now I drag that in to writing, too. Write a book about being a child of God? How could that be a thing that you are allowed to make money off of? I mean, fiction, sure; a research treatise, ok. But if what you are claiming is that you are speaking of your experience seeking and serving the Divine, how on earth do you justify being paid for that? Doesn’t the very act of asking for money diminish the truth and power of the things you have to say?

But then the practical part of me says, look, you don’t get to do everything for free. How do you eat, get clothes, etc? But the idealist in me is annoyed, because when have those things ever helped me anyhow? Wouldn’t I do just as well, as they say, chasing a bean around the table?

Always and always and always I come back to that I do not want to do this alone. Any ministry. I don’t want to do it alone. But then who do I do it with? That brings me back to loneliness and community, and feeling alone and abandoned. Of course I want that solved. More, even than I want a ministry.

But what do I do with the in between? With the the feeling alone and needing to write and wanting community and not wanting my job and wanting land to sabbath on and someone to share my hopes and dreams and efforts with and make decisions with. . . Sure, I could work on showing up and writing. But if I look at problems with my analytical mind, the first problem is needing to find my people. And I am resoundingly too exhausted to attempt and better effort in that direction.

Part of my frustration is that my analytical self wants to fix things. But my spiritual self recognizes that it is not with in my actual power. And that confuses me as to what my posture should be. I’m waiting for the sky to split and the path to be announced by a pillar of light and smoke, but it seems like my life is more like Joseph in the dungeon, cooling his heels and wishing to be remembered.

Strategy and planning won’t help me. Analysis and prioritizing won’t really help me. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with these things, but they aren’t powerful enough tools to wrest control from God. (Real true wrestling doesn’t work, either; see also: Jacob.) But I’m so tired of turning around in the same place, and don’t know what to do instead.

Unrequited

I have been struggling for a while with wanting a relationship with someone who probably does not want a relationship with me, or at the very least, has a different understanding of the meaning of relationship than I do. “Relationship” and “someone” being vague, I suppose I ought to define my terms better, but I used those terms on purpose. Someone who has acted as a mentor in my life, who has seen things about me before I have seen them, and believed in me when it seemed no one else did. I don’t want a friendship in a shallow sense of smiling when we see each other. And she is more to me than a vague acquaintance or co-worker.

The conundrum is caring in a deep way for someone who seems to only care for you in a superficial manner. And because you care deeply, you can’t seem to help but long for reciprocation – for the other to understand you, value you, respect you, maybe even be proud of you. Yet, again, because you care deeply, you can also see the other truths: a home life that was always manipulative, and continues to be; lies to placate being the way to restore peace; co-dependent relationships giving a sense of stability because someone needs you and that makes you feel safe; a desperate need for predictability and control; and someone who’s values and ethics are completely different from yours — with a far lower value on honesty, and a far higher value on entertainment.

Fourteen hundred miniature rejections every day. If she hadn’t been so meaningful and pivotal in my life, it wouldn’t matter so much. I keep waiting for it to stop hurting so much, but it never does. I keep praying for her to understand the true meaning of love, and instead I see her “helping” me, but with her only true motivation being hurting someone else she has deemed even lower on the totem pole, and in need of being punished. It’s grievous in the truest sense of the word.

What I want is to be as meaningful in her life as she has been in mine. What I am getting is that I am not entertaining enough to be valid in her life. I get put-up with at best. The blatant favoritism she shows toward others smarts terribly, because they visibly treat her badly. But she knows they need her. So it is a safe relationship, where she won’t ever really be rejected.

It is frustrating for me to be able to see so many different layers of broken, and yet still be hurt. And yet still hope that, maybe today, she will value my presence. Of course she doesn’t. I am only valued in that I am useful, and I am only useful right now as a tool for her to flog someone else with, a role I don’t want. It is an exhausting situation for me, and I keep waiting for it to “resolve,” like a partial-chord with so much hanging tension.

But it doesn’t, and then I get angry with God. Somehow I have decided that it’s His job to make everything resolve while I watch, and His shortcomings on that account clearly show His lack of interest in me and my life, and point clearly toward nothing. ever. changing.

I keep praying He will show her what real love is. Because I want to be proven wrong. But also I am angry at myself for still wanting her approval today, even though I didn’t have it yesterday, and likely will never have it. I feel like I should be able to let it go and move on, but instead, there is that smarting again. And again. And again. Right when I am least ready for it, another slap in the face.

Reluctantly, I recall Jesus being betrayed by Judas, by His friend who ate with Him, traveled with Him, said he valued Jesus more than anything but didn’t mean it. I recall the Israelites turning again and again from the One who wanted a meaningful relationship with them. I remember, even, Adam and Eve, hiding in the garden, because they decided they didn’t value their relationship with God as much as other stuff. It’s not like I can really throw a convincing fit that God doesn’t understand what it’s like to be rejected every day, while the object of our meaningful affection instead courts the superficial and unhealthy relationships that give them more of a fleeting thrill, sense of control and false honor.

Still, I struggle with the sense of feeling like it’s pretty dumb to set up situations where you get to care about a person who won’t reciprocate to the same level. The temptation is not to try to learn from it (learn what? besides what being unrequited feels like?), but rather to want to leave: fine, then. Be that way. Be twisted and messed up, and not value me. I can leave, and then you can have your pretty little twisted up life to yourself. On an independent, humanistic level, this makes sense. Only, that’s not what God does at all. And if we are supposed to be little Christ followers, it makes sense only that we must imitate God. And that would seem to indicate continuing to show up in this woman’s life, only to continue to be rejected, possibly endlessly.

So then I want to demand the why. Why do I have to put up with this nonsense? What’s the pay-off? When will she finally come to her senses? Ad nauseam.  Having very little understanding of the ‘why,’ I mostly feel endlessly trapped. I find myself looking for a way to force resolution myself: me stop caring. Get her to care. Get her to stop pretending to care, when obviously she doesn’t really. Of no surprise to anyone, I’m entirely unsuccessful in any of those endeavors. And I am left to mope that I’m seeing very little of either my power or God’s.

Why God has put me here, I really don’t know. But my deepest hope’s desire, and so my continued prayer, is that He would be pleased to demonstrate His power, by teaching her what real love is. Through me or just in front of my eyes. But please hurry. This is a heavy burden to have pressed on my shoulders and it makes it hard to breathe.

o hope

I feel like I am being sucked into one of those places where I just don’t know what the point is any more.

You try to help people get better, but they don’t want to get better, or never get all the way better, or it comes and it goes, or they’re back for something else, or you can’t figure out how to help them, or — you know what? We still all die anyway.

Write paperwork that no one reads. Go to work with co-workers who couldn’t care less you fell off the face of the earth. Collect a paycheck with little more motivation than paying bills. Go to bed tired. Wake up tired. Do it all over again and again, with nothing but a slogging sense of endurance.

Why? For what? I can grasp around some philosophical and ideological reasonings, but no real concrete substance of why.

Ironically, one of the reasons I first got interested in this field was because, even if everything else went wrong, at least I would still be doing something meaningful: alleviating suffering and taking care of human beings. Never mind all the people who don’t seem to want to get better, the people beyond any of my helping, and the somewhat appalling sense of something close to selling oneself on a street corner: being paid to care. Not in a deep meaningful sense of community building and relationship growing. People coming in who you honestly truly cannot stand, and yet pasting on a terse little smile and a professional voice, and listen to them go on and on in the most objectionable way — not because you actually care, but just because you can’t kick them out on the grounds of being unpleasant to be around.

I sometimes find myself thinking that if I was working to — support my own house and land, or if I had my own family, or if I had energy enough to be passionate and involved in some of my (many) other interests — then the why of it would ease up. But I don’t really think that’s true. I’ve seen too many people with their own property, and their own families struggle with the why, and to my shame, too many people with health much more limited than I still find a way to be passionate and involved.

I feel a terrible loss of agency, and I tell myself fiercely, “Good!” I need humility, need patience, need to look to the hand of my Master. But somehow I feel like I am losing things I need to lose without also gaining things I need to gain, leaving me completely barren.

I tell myself I have a job, a good job. Many people don’t have that. I have food and clothes. I have mother and father and brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and cousins. I have a grandmother. I have a few close friends. What else do you want? I rebuke myself sternly. What else do you really need? Would anything really satiate you, anything really make you happy?

I am angry at myself for trying to tell me I have no right to be unhappy with my circumstance, as though I ought to be content in that which is clearly lacking. Here I can see, to my shame, my arguing with the Potter that He doesn’t know what He is doing. But still, I protest. Where’s the plot? Where’s the fruit? Where’s the hope? Where’s the direction?

How many people, I scold, have spent their whole lives longing for a fraction of what I have? Well, yeah? How many people have more than I have? I know my defiance is helping exactly nothing at all, but still, it is there. Why should I not want more next year than I have this year? Just because I’ll always be wanting a little more seems no reason for complacency, for settling. Justifying my anger, justifying my dissatisfaction, justifying my victimhood. If there were more progress, I wouldn’t be so resentful.

For a while, I could play the game of just-beyond. If I could just get through this class –! If I could just get through this semester –! If I could just get through this degree –! If I could just–! But now that’s run out. Welcome to the stale American dream of slogging. I tried my hardest to make the best of the journey, but now the journey has stalled at something that looked like a destination. And while I furiously lecture about how a new plot point should be right here, how I can’t do the same thing over and over without seeing some kind of fruit, how a course to a new destination needs to be set, I don’t see any way forward, or any direction or any path. Or any point.

And I know that people talk about the grass being greener, that satisfaction is an illusion and if we can’t find peace in the present, we never will in the future either, and so on. But the thing is, that’s a double edged sword. If the grass isn’t green now, how will it ever get greener? If there’s no peace or satisfaction and there never will be — what’s the point? Why get out of bed to go to work? Deeply ingrained duty and responsibility and the illusion that there is no choice can carry you quite a ways, but they don’t carry you on in joy, or in hope. Instead it brings with it the keening wail of “how long?”

I know that I cannot run on anger. But I also know that I cannot run without hope. And when mornings run into evenings and days blur into smudgy memories I feel grateful only to have made through. . .either the well of hope is not deep enough, or the rope on my bucket is just too short to reach it.

And I can think of a lot of things to hope about, for hope deferred, for later, for when-this-is-all-done. But I can’t find a whole lot of meaning or purpose or hope for – tomorrow. For the day after tomorrow. For next month. For why I am here. And the prayers that I pray seem to bounce and rattle and never really drive home.

There is something to be said, I know, for endurance. For faith without sight. But there is a lot to be said for hope, too, and hard to stand and watch it crumble into little more than an intellectual construct with little light to offer on cold days and short nights. Hope was supposed to burn.

 

Reassess

I’m pooped.

This would not be so disheartening, except that I badly calculated.

Rather than the 6-8 hours of manual labor I have some how remained certain I can coax my body to do, I planned on 3-4 hours. Yet after 1 hour of manual labor, I am drained utterly. Standing is work. Trying to do mental work is work. Planning is work. There is little I can do but sit and talk, after a mere one hour of physical labor.

At a different point in my life, I might likely have rallied around some cry like “rage! rage against the dying of the light!” Now? Now I recognize that, wanted or not, I am spent. Recalculate, but admit the truth. You can’t do practical things with faulty data.

It’s sad to me. It is a very real, in-my-face reminder that I cannot be the person I want to be. And a reminder of how often I drink that worldly wisdom in, without even realizing that’s what I’m doing. Isn’t becoming who you want to be the epitome of a life’s existence?

Only, in the moments when I am awake, I don’t believe that to be true. I remember again how it is spoken that Jesus was sent into a mortal body, to learn obedience. The One true, perfect, holy – to enact obedience. How much less us? Yet that is not a thing of our own planning or devising. This is sobering, and humbling.

I had just three goals for this not-winter season. (1) Finish painting the porch. (2) Make my garden into raised beds. (3) Go through my things and cull.

I thought these were very modest goals, achievable, and, whether I knew it or not (I don’t know), a way of clearing up responsibility so that I would be free to do whatever I wanted. No half-finished projects taking up familial space, no piles of belongings getting in others’ way. By the end of fall, or the end of the year at the very least, I would have a nice blank slate to spring board off of.

Instead, my health problems have continued in fits and spikes, the gifts being not feeling miserable, not a return to previous capabilities. I barely, sort of, mostly finished the painting of the porch, with help. I got maybe 1/3 of the way through the garden project. And perhaps 1/8th of the way through culling my belongings, or even knowing where my things are.

Emily P. Freeman says too often we think our limitations are thing to be fought against, rather than recognizing that limitations are one of the ways God directs us in His will. There was a time in my life where I would have thought that struggling against my limitations was almost a moral purity, a strength of character. I have tried that enough times that I have been forced to sit down and consider that, maybe, just possibly, Emily was right.

So I stopped fighting, gave up on the garden bed, and came inside. But that was maybe my one last chance to do anything with the garden this year, and I was incapable. So that’s the end of that goal for this year. I can still wrestle a bit with my belongings for the rest of the year, but in all honesty, I have to admit: most of what I planned to do this year never happened.

So: time to regroup and reassess. Oh, guys, I have no limit to the things I want. No limit to the things I want to do. No end to the plans I can make. And, after years of hard heart, closed ears and a forehead of flint: a brokenness that makes quite clear I have limitations. What comes next, then, cannot be guided by what I want, what might be able to be done, what I can plan for.

In my head, everything tumbles around in a jumble. . . half finished sewing projects I want to dig out. . .that novel I was 7 chapters into writing. . .the idea of writing a lectionary around the gospel of Mark, a scriptural patchwork quilt to enjoy. . .the watercolors and acrylics that astound me when I get them on to canvas or cotton paper. . .my dSLR camera sitting in a drawer, waiting for me to learn how to use it. . .the French course I’m half way through. . .the piano I want to learn to play classically. . .the tantalizing beginning of voice lessons I’ve heard. . .the almost grim (in the sense of admitting to real life) thoughts of house buying, and the giddy delirium of making a place my own. . .the conviction it is time to stay where I am working, and the aching sense of marginalization I feel every day at work. . .the consuming longing for a husband and the slightly guilty girlish dreamings of wedding gowns. . .the face and paws of springer spaniels, the only dogs that ever made my heart flip over. . . the quiet graces of household chores that, when rested, I actually find deeply satisfying. . . the idolization of making my body Work The Way It Is Supposed To. . .

Or do I order things more properly by priority? Another tumble. . .taking care of my body. . . being creative. . .being outside. . .resting. . . professional development. . .relationships. . . preparing for the the future. . . learning. . . throwing it all to the wind and becoming primarily devoted to religion. . .

I could go on and on. But it’s not directive.

They said boy you just follow your heart 
But my heart just led me into my chest 
They said follow your nose 
But the direction changed every time I went and turned my head 
And they said boy you just follow your dreams 
But my dreams were only misty notions 
But the Father of hearts and the Maker of noses 
And the Giver of dreams He’s the one I have chosen 
And I will follow Him 

–Rich Mullins, David Strasser, Giver of Noses

What I most want is to join with my husband and go recklessly follow God. Of course it sounds romantic. Golly, if you can’t sound romantic about wanting a husband, do you even want a husband? But every time someone starts prodding me that, if that’s what I really want, I should go out and get it (one way or another), all I can think of is Sarah trying to force God’s promise to happen on her time. That trying to force and smoosh God into doing what we want only leads to greater heartache.

So here I am, sitting in the shambles of what I thought I could do (I couldn’t), turning over plans in my head that feel like settling-for-less, dreaming of things I have no control over. I have no direction.

When I started this year, I felt like my job this year was to listen and pay attention. I did pretty abysmally at that, too. It’s hard to feel like you have a way to move forward when it doesn’t seem like you’ve ever moved forward.

The strand of hope that I’m holding to is just that. . .when we don’t get what we think we want, it’s because God has something else that’s better in progress. That we don’t have to figure life out, because God already did, and His intricate and beautiful plans continue to unfold whether we realize it or not.

The problem, I suppose, it that it’s just so unsatisfying when we don’t realize. We God stays that still quiet voice we rarely hear, when we want obvious change and progress and fruit and plot arcs. But it seems the only word I’ve heard from God of late is, “Wait.”

And that wasn’t what I wanted to hear. Sometimes it feels like the only thing I’ve done with my entire life is wait. I want to start drafting plans or designing aesthetic principles, or something. I want to know what I should stop doing, what I should start doing, what I should focus on. Some way to clear out all the voices and fuzz in my head and have some kind of clarity about Next.

But if God says, “Wait.” What else can you say, besides, “Teach me to wait.” In calmness, not in fury, in joy, not in anxiety, in expectation, not in fear, in hope, not in anger. Eyes wide open, hands at rest and up-turned, attentive by ear, undistracted, and confident of the goodness of God. Maybe, the difficulty in waiting is because we try to wait unattentive, and then grow frustrated that our focus on distractions hasn’t yielded obvious change. Maybe waiting is so unsatisfying because we keep looking away.

I am afraid of waiting, because I am afraid it won’t produce fruit. I hate “practicing the pause.” I try to find every excuse away from resting. If I am anything, I am constantly frantic on the inside. Why do I not feel safe to be still?

If I have to be still, I want to know the exact reason why, the exact time it will be, what the pay-off is, and what I can do in the meantime. I don’t think this is an unusual want, but I do think it is unusual for it to be given. So it must mean that the call to “Wait” is not focused on the unwaiting, a thing God has already taken care of, but on the dwelling. The call to Be Still, and know that He is God, so oft repeated and so rarely headed.

I am not good at this. That may be why I need to practice. God help me.

People

People ask me why I sleep outside in the tent instead of inside.

***

I step in the front door, and already I hear — the fridge in the gym, the fan in the basement, the computer in the gym running, the hum of a house that never really shuts down. And also, someone in the kitchen. Making noise, yes, but more importantly, will this person be grumpy, angry, sullen, sad — or even just try to talk to me in the middle of my waking up thoughts?

It’s Dad.

***

I hate talking about “negative energy.” It sounds so floo-floo. When they post those random, “You know you’re an empath when. . . . you walk into a room and you can instantly tell if the group of people is tense or relaxed.” Can’t everyone? Seriously, can’t everyone? Doesn’t everyone? Constantly monitor the emotional electricity in every situation? Doesn’t it wear you out? Don’t you ever wish you could be around No Energy so you could rest?

***

I get people, but not people’s rules. Which random professions you tip versus which professions you don’t. When you’re expected to give hostess gifts and who is supposed to be gifted at Christmas (the mail person? really?). And why do we do this lying game where we say “supportive” things to people we don’t respect, don’t like, don’t approve of? The social games, those I do not get.

But I do get people. I can tell at a glance. And I’m learning more and more to trust it. More often than not, I wind up comforting someone in tears. So I know I know people. What I don’t know is why it seems so hard to build an actual friendship.

***

I never would have said before that I have anxiety or social anxiety. But now I find myself playing things over and over in my head. But what were they really saying? What were they really thinking? What is wrong with me? Why do I put people off? And then the dark whirlpool of pleasing others and earning affection.

I don’t think I need to be everyone’s favorite. I hate the feeling of wanting to ask people what the other people are saying behind my back.

***

I suppose that is too much to ask.

Relationships

Here’s a thing that I don’t get in my life: People I know, who I thought I was friends with, who go through major martial changes, keeping mum, and then afterwords send out a generalized “now that I’ve ignored any of your attempts to connect, let’s be friends now that it’s over.”

I get that when you are going through major challenges, you may be too overwhelmed or vulnerable to share everything with everyone. But if I know you well enough to know that something is not ok, and I reach out to you, and you literally ignore me with no response, and then after — after a divorce, after hooking up with the new guy, after marrying the new guy — you want to pretend that our friendship hasn’t been affected in any way and I should just jump in and be happy for you — well, I’m confused.

What is friendship? Is it not the process of sharing the good times and the bad? I don’t call a distant cheering section of spectators “friends.” If you can’t even do the dignity of a response — any response — (“I’m having a rough go right now, but not ready to talk,” counts, among many other things) then how are we even friends? How am I supposed to pick back up that supposed friendship I thought I had after you shut out any interaction with me? How is this not a damaged relationship?

I recognize that I have never been through a divorce, and I can’t speak to what that experience can feel like. I can only share my experience from this side: I’ve lost more friendships from cutting me out, ignoring my attempts to reach out, followed by a vague and generic group statement about how now I should feel happy for them. The temptation to make a biting comment about how relationships take work, and maybe the fact that you don’t seem to realize that is a factor in you dissolved marriage is definitely there. I don’t make it, but I realize that, whether words are spoken or no, I grieve the loss of friendship and move on.

It might not have been that the friendship was damaged. It might have been that it was only a figment of my imagination in the first place, and all I am grieving is my lost notion that there was a relationship. Am I owed an apology? No, but I don’t think I owe one either. If my presence in your life did not merit an acknowledgement, I am willing to accept that. But if there is no attempt to literally mend broken things, I’m not going to pretend they weren’t broken.

I’m saying this not to condemn the people who went through the dissolving of these relationships; I’m saying this because I can’t for the life of me believe that those people understand what it is like to be on the other side of these ignored-friendships. If you really think you can suddenly put up a generic Facebook post about what happened in the last year and we can pick up our friendship where we left off, you’re wrong.  If you think that just because you have had a rough year it automatically absolves you of any need to invest in relationships, you’re wrong. And if you think that being your friend means that I will automatically agree and support everything that you do, you’re also wrong.

I didn’t walk away from the friendship because you got divorced. I walked away from the friendship because you walked away first. I got tired of looking at your back. And now that you are all fake-smiley and waving, there’s not much to walk back toward.

unformed

I guess what I was trying to talk myself around to the other day, when I became suddenly distracted by the unrelenting desire for Sabbath land, is that I think I’ve drunk more of the wine than I realized.

The world of school is perpetual Deadlines and Doing. Perpetual. And it doesn’t matter if you have enough time or not, because, at the Deadline, the Work is submitted anyway. And there are rubrics and directions and we just talk about how you figure out how to do it and then you do it. Because that’s how life works. You decide what you want to do, you make a plan, you do the plan, stuff happens. It’s as simple as that.

Only it’s not.

I mean, if you are a citizen of this world, I guess you don’t have any other choice than to embrace that. But the perpetual doing blinds you to your inner self, and certainly keeps your eyes well off the things above and you can’t really function in a way that assumes the superiority of the heavenly places, because we aren’t there — we’re here, and we’re doing. It cripples you in your ability to hear, because you are too busy deciding and doing. They did make a little lip service to this with “reflection” assignments, but they, too, were a thing to Have Done.

So, after years of sickness, my biggest (yet subconscious) goal has been to get back to Doing. Planning, shaping, accomplishing. Deciding, doing.

After hurling myself repeatedly against that brick wall (and the harder I hurl, the more likely, it seemed, I would be getting sick again. And again), I am beginning to hear just a little bit that small, still voice. And am surprised to find it prodding me toward “spiritual formation.”

As someone who has long held (even without knowing this was what it was called) to sola scriptura, “spiritual formation” seemed like just a thing God did to you while you weren’t looking, like growing that half inch between birthdays. Growing up wasn’t a thing you did, it was a thing that happened to you. This was compounded by the fact I didn’t really get what “studying” meant. I mean, you were supposed to “study scriptures” but what did that really mean? What do you do, besides read the passage and think about how people smarter than you would probably see more in this line than you can. Fourteen million years of studying for school later, I have a few ideas. . . but I’m less sure than ever that “studying the scriptures” is really a main thing we are to do. Studying, I can say after much experience, is for facts. And I don’t believe that the Bible is just a dense packet of obscured facts for us to try to make some sense out of.

If God Himself describes the interaction of mankind and God as a relationship, then facts are not sufficient. There is something more about dwelling with God, walking with God, and seeking God than knowing facts about God. And so He cannot possibly have just meant that book to be as stale as a textbook, to be neatly repackaged and summarized in notes for easy regurgitation. I think that pretty thoroughly constitutes Missing the Point.

Well, my former self says, there is prayer. And there is His Spirit. Only, often I have no idea what or how to pray. And the Spirit seems something so elusive I more often than not have no idea how one hears It or communes with It or through It.

Still, my former self says, “spiritual formation” is contrived and a man-made concept. Only, with some peculiarity, as I read the New Testament, it seems like part of Jesus coming to this physical world, in a physical body — as we are, even now — was, for lack of a better word, for His spiritual formation. How else can it be said things like “He learned obedience”? He never learned disobedience, and He had nothing to repent of. So what does it mean to “learn obedience”? Somehow, though I do not claim to understand it very deeply at all, part of the Son coming to this world was also the shaping of the Son.

The problem for me is that so many discussion on “spiritual formation” are so effort driven, so contrived, so clearly reeking of the priorities and concepts of mankind. I am doing better now with words like posture and framework and a system of reminders and practicing remembering and training your mind to different reflexes and thought patterns and listening.

It’s not about improving ourselves, or making our spirits into different shapes. It’s just about practicing, again and again and again, turning our face toward God. And then being open and receptive to His changing, His planning, His deciding and His doing.

And to that I can say yes. Yes, yes, and yes. Because when the framework and mindset of life drives me away from God, what I have is life, with an after thought of God, and that has not been working out well at all. Cramming God into little leftover cracks and being frustrated when things don’t seem to be growing. And what I need is a framework and a mindset of leaning toward God, and life just being a part of the structure pushing me closer to that which is God.

Which is listening.

Which is drives toward: Mercy. Forgiveness. Repentance. Patience.

But it starts with listening, and the other things come out of it. It doesn’t come out of effort toward Mercy or Peace. It comes out of shutting the heck up, sitting down, and listening.

I still don’t really know what “spiritual formation” means. Right now it means being curious about what it means to other people, and listening. But from all the looking and listening, spiritual formation means following God on purpose, not as an assumptive after thought. And that means a certain amount of doing. Which itself seems obvious, something about faith without works being dead. But still a struggle for me to figure out.

This thought I lost. . .my brains wore out by the end of the day, and the moments from before supper to after took my last few coherent sentences from me.

I would like to not always be the caregiver and would like to have someone take care of me. And that sounds very cold, like I am not appreciative of all the things that people do for me. But all day I am a caregiver. And then when I come home, people ask me to give them care. And I don’t know how to fill back up. I am not even sure what I want, what taking care of me looks like. I am just so tired of majority of my conversations being about how I can take care of people or how I might suggest other people take care of themselves. Sometimes I just want to be alone, just so that no one will ask me for advice, tell me how they are hurting, or limp around in a self-martyring way because they won’t bother me even though they are dying.

It’s not that I’m particularly good about being able to share what is bothering me, or what I want or need. It’s just that I’m so spent from caring for others. It’s not that I think I deserve more attention. It’s just sometimes I wish we could talk about something mutually interesting, not about you, or even about me.

When I went over the things I did on a daily and weekly and monthly basis, I couldn’t find anything that actually engaged my brains, my thinking-deeper, my not-just-basic-problem-solving-and-organizing brain. My emotions are totally drained. I can kind of sometimes do things a little creative. But actually having a meaningful conversation with an exchange of ideas (not an emotive rant) seems to be out of the question.

I feel broken and un-tended to, and despite my attempt to actually work through a thought process today, it seems I have once again circled back around to wanting a sabbath and a chance to heal. I think I could be a friend and a human, if I could heal. But right now I feel too broken to even be a friend or a human. I am stiffly going through the motions, because that’s what you do, you do things. Why does everyone make it sound like it’s a virtue to push through? Why can’t it be a virtue to stick up for yourself long enough to get off the hamster wheel and re-gain your equilibrium and sense of direction?

I know that getting life just-so is not really an option. I know that we aren’t called to trust in God because it will be easy to get life figured out and in control just like that–that it is chaos and weakness that drives us to God. But I don’t understand why God so many times calls us to rest and then all the people around us seem to imply that’s a sin. I just feel sad and tired and empty and exhausted and I want to get better.

Where am I today?

I felt so strange the year after I graduated, like the person inside of me was so buried as to be dead. I kept calling, waiting, listening, watching. Long after the “threats” were gone, I couldn’t shut off the adrenaline of survival that had become my complete existence: getting through. Nothing but pure endurance. Head down, focusing on one foot in front of the other. And now, on the other side, I couldn’t stop.

Immune system badly weakened from what had happened over the last two years, I fell badly sick again, shoving me back into head down, one foot, one breath, suffocating, paralyzing, desperation to not cease to exist, feeling the inexorable slide toward just that.  I finally wound up sobbing uncontrollably in the office of a doctor I’d just met, saying over and over “I just don’t know what to do, I just don’t know what to do.”

The next 9 months or so was a muddy swirl of attempting, once again, to recover; followed by the brutal yet predictable slam of winter darkness that leaves me crippled with annual faithfulness.

Now, in the last few weeks perhaps, I am finally (I think perhaps maybe) making a few tentative steps away from adrenaline. I find myself observing in myself peculiar thoughts and outlooks that don’t seem like me at all, that I hadn’t realized I’d picked up in the last few years. I feel a queer sense of deja vu when driving flashes of my cross-country travels blinking across my subconscious, the strange sense that it is about time to skip town again. There is a unsettling sense of duality, the “me” that existed in the prior years, and the “me” of the intervening years, and the “me” now that seems to slide awkwardly between the two, no longer able to settle into either shape, and the almost-more-unsettling that it is time to create a new, third thing which actually is the shape of the me now.

The people I saw almost daily now seem to have no idea that I even exist. The people I tried to keep friendships alive with from before saw so little of the me-in-between that I feel almost as though I am faking when I am with them – they have no idea how I have been smashed and twisted in the intervening years, and without words to explain it, I resort to trying to be the same person I was before. But in the meantime, I keep trying to find a mirror capable of helping me actually examine my scars, assess my damage, and understand what I have become while I was too busy trying to stay alive to see any of the things on the inside.

Some things maybe are good. I don’t want you to think I am merely broken. Not that merely broken should be a phrase at all, as it is in our breaking we are made whole – although that does not make the breaking any more pleasant. I think there probably has been growth of good things, questioning of things that should have been questioned, and certainly there is no end to the need for humility.

Some things maybe are bad. I feel the scars, but even writing “maybe some things are bad” and I cringe away. I don’t want to look. It hurts, and I only go that way very gingerly, very cautiously, and unable to share in any kind of meaningful way when I can only look at tiny pieces at a time without feeling powerfully overwhelmed.

I don’t know what else to say except that I am yearning for healing. When I think what would I do, if I could do anything I wanted, without fear of judgement or condemnation or “reality” or “responsibility” (so often self-made concepts without real truth). . .I think of buying some land to have a sabbath year on. No schedules. No expectations. A time to be alone with God. A time to face up to damage and scars. A time to listen to the still quiet voice without the clamoring. A time to rest, o God, a time to rest.  I would come back out of it, I know; I have no ideas of being led to a purely hermitage lifestyle fleeing from the challenges and trials of this world. But some raw, earnest, honest, wilderness time, to learn (again?) how to breathe, to rejoice, to hope, to be alive. . .

People say we have to learn how to do that while in the midst. People say we’ll never have a life quiet enough to spend the whole day, or day after day, seeking, praying, meditating, reading, listening, singing, dancing even. They say you have to find it in the middle. But with sadness and longing, I see in the Old Testament God setting aside day after day, whole years even, to do just that. To rest and rejoice, and remember that He is God and we are not, and to be filled with courage for what comes next.

I am not at all sure I have the courage to withdraw. I am not at all sure I have the courage. Leave a job I should be lucky to have. Step away from the people I was waiting so long to be close to. Emptying hard earned money into rocky ground that will likely “never be good for anything,” if doing nothing truly is worthless. Shutting my ears to things that burden me with implied, implicit or explicit responsibility.

Yet I am also not sure what kind of existence I can have without a rest. A real rest. A prolonged rest. Surely, there would not be condemnation for rest, after all of that? But I say it with such tentativeness, because I feel such condemnation. Life is hard; you’re supposed to be harder.  But I am not hard. I am not tough. I’m sensitive. I cry. I carry the burdens of people I’ve barely met. And I am looking for the courage to hope. I’ve found a lot of different ways life can be harder. I want permission to learn a lot of different ways life can be more full and less parched.

I can talk myself into the truth and necessity of a real, long rest in my mind, in theory, in concept. The fear and anxiety and, honestly, terror, overwhelm me when I try to talk about it aloud. If I can’t explain to you my hurt and brokenness, how will I ever be able to convince you of my need for radical rest? But if I don’t have the faith for rest, how will I have have faith for action, for sacrifice, for growth, for living?

I don’t know. I didn’t expect today’s writing to go there. I thought this would be more introspective. But it seems compelling, I suppose, that no matter what path of thought I take, I seem to wind up here. And by “here” I mean, looking at land listings and wondering how realistic it is to buy some land as soon as possible, because why wait? But I also feel like I need someone to talk to about all this, to stop just hiding in my own mind, to find the courage to say the words out loud. To move beyond a place of ha-ha-just-kidding-we-can-dream-right? to the place of no-I’m-serious-help-me-figure-this-out.

My own level of avoidance can be rather self-shocking.

 

Listening to yourself

I started this blog because often times I feel like I am still muddling my way through, well, more feminine issues. . .things that I don’t necessarily feel like a I can share with a wide or mixed audience.

I was really surprised by how badly I wanted in-put from my friend on my next round of work clothes, and the insecurity I felt — noticed, I’d guess it’s normally there — about my body and appearance.  Am I squeezing myself into too small of a size? Would this be a pretentious pair of shoes to wear to work? Are my arms too big for the rest of me? The picture taken from that angle makes me feel like I am a million pounds overweight. Am I trying too hard or not hard enough with my presentation of myself? Am I being honest, or attempting to present something I’m not?

(and, some of the flip. . .when I take the picture from this angle, dare I say I have a beautiful face? my hands look elegant and kind doing that. Maybe this dress is a good idea?)

I tell myself it’s just hormones, and while I’m sure there is a hormonal component, it also feels like there is something more than that. Why do we use “just” in front of hormones anyhow, as a way to dismiss what is going on? At the same time, it seems ludicrous to say, “no, this seems more momentous than hormones; there is something important going on.”

Still, I wanted this to be a year of listening. I did. I do. Part of listening is, you have to listen to all of the things. If you are already deciding what to listen to and what not to, you haven’t made listening the priority. I am not saying you don’t then make a discernment about what you have heard; I am saying if you decide — prior to listening/paying attention — what is worth listening or paying attention to, you’ve already missed the point of listening.

Only, I am finding, the listening and making up your mind about it go so close hand in hand that sometimes it is hard to tell where one ends and where the next starts. I think that’s why listening is so hard; you have to  be pretty vulnerable while you do it. Sometimes that means it seems harder to do that with anyone else around — hard enough to be that vulnerable even to yourself. Other times, it makes you really long for someone else, because you want someone to make you feel safe and understood while you try to figure things out.

I just spent an absurd amount of time looking at products I never knew existed to put in my hair and make me feel less bedraggled and hobo-like. And I want someone to say, “yes, that was important,” even though I can’t figure out why it was. I spend a lot of philosophical energy on how I’m not artificial and you just have to take me as I am, and yet I am being swept in a wave of wanting to be . . . more me. As though what I am actually isn’t what I’m meant to be.

It’s an odd feeling. Like when I feel so certain that the weight I am is NOT what I am meant to be; the guilt of being this weight is not a societal hand off but a strange sense of being in defiance of what I actually am. To say that seems both strange and awkward and somehow accurate. I need to lose weight, because that is actually who I am, and being who I am right now is sticking my fingers in my ears and trying to ignore who I am right now and also who I really am, underneath my going in a pigheaded different direction. It feels frustrating to say that, because I don’t really know what I mean by that or it’s implications: only that’s how I feel as best as I can hear it.

Looking at hair care products (or clothes or anything) that go right ahead and put “sexy” in the title doesn’t make me say, “yes, that is who I really am,” except kind of yes. It is a part of me that feels neglected. I am bogged down in bills, laundry and unpaid overtime, and there is so much of me that feels neglected, and yes, that is part of that. A part I am not quite sure what I mean by, what I mean by “is this dress a good idea?” It’s sassy and flirty and cuts a figure and I have no place to wear it while drowning in bills, laundry and unpaid overtime. Is getting the dress and putting in the closet sufficient? Is preparing for something that isn’t an act of faith or an act of delusion? And anyway, I really need to lose 5 more pounds for it to fit me better than a sausage casing.

It is a strange place to be, I think. Catching passing glimpses of maybe I could be stunning, but only stunning for what? Yes, you go right ahead and embrace stunning, and, and, and. . .don’t forget to sweep the stairs, and water the plants, and pay your taxes. Stay late doing paperwork no one reads.

There is a part of being yourself that feels awkward in that it is a denial of others. Throwing off (or gently prodding aside) the culture and expectations of others. With that comes an uncomfortable level of examinations. If I change the way I do my hair, everyone will notice and comment. At work. At home. I’ve hated observational scrutiny, from when I was 6 years old and losing teeth. Let me be invisible. Except also, let me be beautiful and unique, and kind of take your breath away in a subtle kind of way where you didn’t really expect it, but now that you look at me. . . This desire to be both seen and unseen is not one likely to be realized.

It is a thing that I think maybe is important, because it rises when I am full. When I am rested or at peace, I am more creative, more patient, more kind. . . and also more in desire of being aesthetically beautiful. When I begin to drown, creativity, patience, and certain amount of kindness go out the window. And so does my desire for aesthetic beauty, as survival quickly trumps any desire to present or attend to myself. It’s not like eating sugar that rises up as a monster as the stress swells inside of me. Nor is at grand plan that I plot for world dominion: it’s small things. Different socks. A different watch. A different way to twist my hair.

And then I stomp it all down because I am busy and struggling and who has time for that and dammit. Usually not that last one, but sometimes that is the only word I can find for how I am feeling. What do you want me to do, skip breakfast so I can do my hair before work?

It also makes me feel angry and frustrated, because logically, philosophically, it shouldn’t matter. It’s what’s inside the body that matters, right? Only we are still in bodies. And I’m not quite sure what that means. Only that even for all of the trying to ignore it, it still matters. It does. There is something here that is meant to be valued, by me. And that takes effort and defiance and hope. And sometimes hope is what I feel like I have the least of.

Nobody can do this for me except me, but in order for me to do this, something would have to be sacrificed. But what? And why is this important enough that “practical” things ought be sacrificed for it? And what’s the end goal, because I want to know what the point is.

Right now, all of that is beyond just listening.

 

 

Becoming Music

There’s some kind of powerful magic in someone who knows how to use their voice like it’s an instrument — not beat-boxing or what have you, but the recognition that their own voice is a powerful, potent creator of music. With the really well trained individuals, I find it’s not just their voice. Their whole body knows music, and at least how to play an external instrument or 2 or 7.

This is not something that is bound my music genre, and I’ve very nearly (and may yet) buy albums of music of genres I don’t care for, lyrics that don’t speak to me, only just because I hear the exceptional control and wielding of music moving through a human body.

There is something very important here that I want. I don’t want to make light of the word “sacred,” but nor do I want to understate the importance I find here: it’s something deeper than aesthetic. It’s something deeper than just skill alone. It’s something that is not a Pinterest/Instagram style romanticisation of music and those who make it. My own inability to speak well in the language of music leaves me feeling — not uncultured, but rather childish and lacking understanding of basic truth.

I keep circling around my failings in this matter. Surely some people are gifted more than others. Or had more opportunity than others. But really where I keep landing is looking full in the face of my own inhibition. To music (which is not a verb, yet the only word I know to describe the action), one cannot remain cloaked, clothed, withdrawn. Those two things are completely at odds with one another. Music, from a place of inhibition and refusal to be vulnerable or truly share, is just noise.

And I cannot. I cannot put aside the self-consciousness, the awareness of self and other, long enough to move to the music, let the music in me, through me. I keep thinking if I could just — get better, I wouldn’t be self-conscious. Or if I could just work with the music alone long enough, then I wouldn’t care who else heard it.

If you look deeply into anyone who is serious about their art, you will always find it turns into a spiritual discussion. I don’t think it is really possible to separate art and spirituality. Not from the poets or the painters or the sculptors or musicians or anyone else. Nor is there any religion that I know of that does not make use of music. And my difficulties with music do not come to “I’m not smart enough” or “I don’t understand” or “there is no way to learn.” It comes down to an essential human problem: how do you be vulnerable, and not die?

Some of us come into the world naturally less inhibited. Some find the need the chemically loosen up. Some of us struggle with our inhibited nature, knowing that inhibition is not always a virtue, but unsure of how to bridge the gap. Yet how can one engage in truth, in comfort, in beauty from a place of deep inhibition?

It is essentially fear and pride that hold me back. There is no way to move deeper into music without also confronting fear and pride. I do feel that the phrase “spiritual practice” is over used and under understood. But one does have to understand the problem to move toward any solution. The problem I need to tackle is not one of having an ear that is not trained enough or a lack of practice. The problem I really need to tackle is that I recognize deep value in those who can avoid fighting being an instrument, but I am more concerned with my own protection, and I am too cowardly to move forward. Both humility and courage are needed, and I think that is a definition of grace, a definite quality of music.