Growing into Friendships {reflections}

We both remember the day. It was late October at the end of apple-picking time. Just as soon as the sun disappeared, the bitter cold seeped in. Everyone migrated toward the the towering bonfire or retreated to the house for warmth. I was a shy ten-year-old, prone to scurrying from shadow to shadow, from familiarity to familiarity, avoiding all the strangers or strangers with familiar faces. Yet at that year's apple cider party, I must have been braver or maybe one of the familiar strangers' face looked more familiar than strange because somehow I made a friend.

My experience with friendships have always been...awkward. Growing up, I was shy so for the longest time the only friend I had was my brother who was just older than me. I don't even know if I was capable of having any other friendship up till I was 10, but after that night, I did have a friend and no idea what one was supposed to do with such a delightful thing. It's been 13 years now. Somehow she's still my friend, and I still don't quite know how friendships and friends are supposed to work, but this particular one has grown from situational to much more. The last few months, especially, have opened my eyes to the true worth of a good friendship.

I think we all have that vision of 'kindred spirits' when we seek friendships. We have an idea of what a 'best' friend would look like, and oftentimes, those images are a lot like us. We dismiss people or the potential in people because off the bat, we don't have enough in common, but maybe the best friendships have more to do with shared values and less to do with shared interests. Because if friendships were based only on interests, I don't quite know why this friendship has lasted.

We're different. Like...in a lot of ways. She's 3-years older than I in the middle of 9 (10?) kids [I'm the youngest of 5]. I like things more strictly structured. She is more spur of the moment. I'm organized, mostly. She isn't as much. Somehow she's the optimist, and I play the pessimist. Yet she packs the first aid kits, and I imagine scenarios where she falls off those cliff edges and rocks she's always scrambling on out in the middle of nowhere with no phone reception [But I don't think about bringing a first aid kit].  A few times in the past months, our conversations have wandered to how we process and view life, and she asked: "How are we even friends??"

Growth. Through a lot of growth. Not just the fighting tooth and nail kind-of growth, but the dancing kind-of growth, the 'God isn't finished with me' kind-of growth [which is really the best sort. I think if you're ever discouraged and don't feel close to God, see if you're struggling, if you're growing. As long as you're scrambling about in the mud and not lying in stagnant water, I think you're good]. And in this growth, I have become immensely grateful.

It's not that everything is easy now or I've 'become so patient with this person's quirks'. I don't mean it that way at all. Yes, a person in a relationship might grow, but more times than not, it's you [and I had my share of stubborn, sharp edges to dull down]. You learn about yourself and are honest with what's actually going on inside. This knowledge helps you have the compassion to see beneath other people's outward actions to their heart. And your pride needs a few kicks. Naw, these people aren't less annoying, your superiority complex has been shot full of holes and God has let you catch a glimpse of them through His eyes and not through your inward-tilting ones. Humility and vulnerability are great for a friendship's foundation.

Honestly, though, one of the best qualities I share with this friend is we both make everything so much more fun: whether it be burying dead mice and dog ashes or lugging way too many rocks or hacking down thistles in the middle of the summer or going through papers or reorganizing book shelves or raking leaves or bringing in pumpkins from the garden or washing walls or painting rooms or weeding in the early morning. 10/10 recommend finding a friend like this or becoming one. Because of that...

This friendship has taught me more about living intentionally in community, rather than being dragged about by the busyness of our culture. It's easy in this day and age to say we don't have time for friendship because we probably don't, and it's easy to put a fence around friendship as something that happens in a set time on Saturday afternoons or a movie one evening or sporadic texts through really, really busy periods of our life. I understand the temptation because I do love the safety of structure, the safety of predictability, the safety of knowing when you can take off the mask and be your messy self again -- usch, but the truth is I like showing my best self. Whenever I'm stressed, anxious, overwhelmed, or cranky, I'm going to close myself off more often than not, but sometimes that's when I need this type of friendship, community, the most.

It's an hour round trip to where my friend lives which is probably the farthest I ever drive unless I'm going on an actual trip. The whole community idea takes a certain degree of intention because of the distance. If you're going to the same college, living in the same neighborhood, going to the same church, or are housemates, family, etc., then it's easier to cultivate friendships that are actually the 'I'm choosing to live life WITH you' type of ones, but as we grow older and create our individual lives, those friendships will be less and less easy to just have. There won't be anything convenient or easy about them, but oh, these are the best kind!

After 13 years, I think we're [or I am, to be honest] finally getting over the messy 'I'm swallowed in life. I can't show up' obstacle. A couple weeks ago, we were going to get together, but she sent me an overwhelmed text the night before so...[full disclosure: there was still some internal groaning and growing-- "There's so much I need to do. I can't do this." Let's be honest, there will always be things we need to do, BUT people over productivity. Acts of love over accomplishments. There's nothing that makes your burden seem smaller than when you go to lighten someone else's]...I made dinner early and went to her house after work to help her with projects. Last week she came to my house after work and helped me transport a bunch of rocks from one place to another [don't ask] and actually saw the worth in what I was doing [You know you've got a good friend when you both 'ooh' and 'aww' over different rocks, BUT they were cool and not your ordinary, run-of-the-mill rocks]. Yeah, sure, neither of us needed to do these things. We'd both probably get over our breakdowns and keep on keeping on, but living life in community is a gift, a privilege. We get to love people, and through loving people, we get to love Jesus!

Sometimes we dismiss God's fingerprints in our lives because it seems 'too coincidental', but lately I've wondered if God has sustained this friendship through all these years for such a time as this. We might have sowed the first seeds of friendship thirteen years ago and over time wondered why we even kept the thing alive as our paths pulled farther and farther apart, but now, now it's showing that its foundation might have been slow in forming but is truly a shelter and a safe place. Sometimes we have a picture-perfect view of friendship, but the view doesn't often include the nitty gritty work, the commitment to honesty and communication, the patience and presence, the pain.

Maybe the kind of friendships we want most are ones we have to grow into, but if we give ourselves the time to grow and have the willingness to change, there's nothing more precious than growing WITH someone else. Being polished and changed and then looking up and realizing that person is still beside you. Friendship is more sacred than we treat it. Yes, we'll have the kind of friendships where we only go to movies or out to dinner or are always 'do something' with people, and then there will be the friendship where we get to live messy life, not just our highlight reel, with someone else. The best part is we get to adventure with these people. We get to work and we get to be. We get to commune and we get to wrestle. We get to borrow God's eyes to see them with and God's love to remind them who they've been created to be, and it goes both ways.

Presence Over Perfection {rambling reflections}

These past twelve months I've been learning a lesson (and learning and learning and learning): It's called 'Meaghan didn't really think she was a perfectionist but actually she really is'. For a long time I put the idea of perfectionism in a box. It was something that could freeze a person or make getting 'small' tasks done impossible or getting the urge to redo someone else's work because it wasn't up to snuff. I *knew* of people who were frozen by this kind-of perfectionism, and no way was it me. I did things: I learned cello, guitar, piano, sketching, gardening mostly by just doing it. Sure, sometimes I'd be disappointed with the results, but I'd keep trying and trying. No, it wasn't the small things that made me stumble over this perfectionism.

My perfectionism shows up most in the standards I set for myself and the difficulty I have giving myself grace when I fall flat on my face. Perfectionism is a form of anxiety. It's a voice inside of your head condemning you quicker than a speeding bullet, and it lies. A LOT. That voice tells you your mess-up was of EPIC proportions when it was only a stumble or just a 'you have a lot of willpower, but your body is TIIIIRRREEED'. There's not a whole lot of ground being human and being perfect share in common (How 'bout none?), but sometimes we listen to perfectionism and that fear more intensely than we do the Holy Spirit. Oopsy. Here we are condemning ourselves over our lack of perfection while Jesus is up in Heaven interceding on our behalf when Satan condemns us. And condemnation separates which really doesn't help us (*will now put herself back on track*).

The past year has been a fight for me. There's been a lot going on internally. A lot of wrestling with myself. Wrestling between how I feel and what I know and then my flawed thinking patterns. My emotions have been all over the place, and when you feel like an extremely messy person (who is well aware that some of her thoughts are illogical but for the life of her can't get the emotions part to just STOP), you don't really feel like showing up in other people's lives. It's a pride thing. It's a fear thing. It's a 'I've overthought this X10, and now I will be the martyr and save other people from having to put up with me because if I can't deal with myself, how can I expect other people?' thing. It's kind-of stupid because 'oh no! People will now know I'm imperfect', but the whole dismissing feelings doesn't work great.

Because of some not-so-fun experiences in the friendship/people department growing up, my perfectionism appears here a lot. There's this thought that because some friendship didn't work out, it was directly correlated with something I did. I said the wrong thing here. I overshared. Maybe I tried too hard. Maybe I wasn't open enough. Maybe...maybe...That tunnel of thought is long and dark and filled with many under-stretched or over-stretched thoughts. Essentially I created the theory that if I made a mistake or did something stupid once, it could ruin a relationship. There was no room for grace, for the trust that people would give me open communication, for me if I was in a funky mood or was complaining too much or felt too unsure. No safe place. So...Meaghan is now shut for business.

But everyone is under construction, and we go through periods where the very walls of our heart are torn down for renovation, and it feels pretty naked in this place. I don't like it because I don't like sometimes how I feel about myself or how I feel about the whiplash of emotions or fall-out of logic so why would anyone else?  Why would I show this side of myself -- the side that can't even fake perfectionism -- to anyone else? Why would I lean-- how could I lean on their compassion? According to my relationship theory, it's suicide, and yet, I can't walk this path alone. So what are you supposed to do?

I get out of my circular circus of crazy thoughts, and I remember something: those who love you don't need your performances or your pretend perfection. Your presence is most important. Your so-called 'perfection' isn't what they see, anyway. You are you are you even if you are more Eeyore or Piglet than Pooh today, and sometimes you need that presence to remind you who you are when the whiplash of emotions leave you feeling lost or numb. There is laughter and fellowship and bright moments even when under construction, and presence without perfection creates the strongest connection.

Something a Bit Rusty Like Hope {rambling reflections}

Love is a verb -- it's something we've been told many times and are consistently reminded of.  There are songs about it (*inserts 'Luv is a verb' by DC Talk*).  People teach about it. When you think of all the important relationships in your life, it comes down to 'choosing to love', and not just that, but also to do other actions propelled by this choice to love.

But you know that verse in the Bible about Hope, Faith, and Love? Because love is the greatest, often the other two words slip through the cracks. Hope more so than Faith, and yet, they are all verbs. They are all words of action.

Hope is a verb. I hadn't realized that until recently when I was reading a post on the To Write Love on Her Arms blog. This past twelve months, I've been disappointed, almost ashamed, by the lack of hope I felt. As a Christian, I should have all the hope in the world and my hope should be anchored on something untouchable by life, but I didn't feel hope. So what did that mean? Had I let my hope go?

And yet this blog post I read gave me a different image of hope. The author painted hope as something you do. You show up to life each morning, regardless of how you feel, regardless of the many times you ask yourself 'why', and you do the next thing and the next thing after that. Maybe like love, hope has little to do with how you feel and more to do with your actions.

Hope is more of a trust, and our trust is placed in God -- That He will make our attempts enough, that He will use even our most tired of actions to mean something, that tomorrow's tomorrow's tomorrrow will bring light and life and another spring. Hope is getting up every morning and still believing that someday, eventually, you'll want to try again and you'll have a hope you can hold in your disbelieving hands.

Hope, like Love, is not always dressed with perfection. It's a grittier thing, a stubborn thing. Maybe the 'feeling' is a bird with many feathers, but the real thing is time-resistant, two steadfast boots not about to budge, hands rubbed raw as they hang onto the end of the rope, taking care of yourself even when you ask, 'But why? What's the point?'

       We're imperfect humans in an imperfect world, and any hope less than the hope that involves clinging wouldn't be sufficient. So we will get up. We will lace up those boots, and we will try and try and try, and when hope in tomorrow and our resilience and those around us falters, our hope is 'built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness'.

Forgiveness: 7X70 {rambling reflections}

Something brought her face to mind and the same old anger followed as a mask to hide the pain of being painted a different color, the hurt of a love misunderstood, and the sorrow of losing something irreplaceable.

If she really knew me...if she really loved me...if she was--

It happened every time without fail. The memory and then the rekindling of the anger to steal my joy, to sour the day, and that made me even more angry. Why was I letting her have this much power over me?

Each time the anger came, I'd try to smother it, to bury its sharp edges with forgiveness, because what good was the hurt now? If you're hurt or angry, swallow your words. Pretend you have a tougher skin. Don't ever let them know how much power they have. Besides, anger was of no use. I had chosen to keep silent and not direct the hurt towards someone who had wounded my heart so why would I let the memory wound me further?

I'd be walking the dog, cleaning a house, and there it was again, and there was the anger. How come the anger always came so swiftly when I supposedly already forgave and pushed the emotion out the door? Each time, I had to choose to forgive and not to dwell in the bitter resentment, but what did that mean? Had I even forgiven or did I just go through the motions of forgiveness?

She was in the wrong. She was the one who ruined it.

150 days of anger and the pretension of forgiveness?

She was the one who changed, not me. I would never have given up on her. 

Was my forgiveness really just an idea and not reality?

Maybe I don't even know about forgiveness which is funny since there's books and articles on it everywhere you look. There are the 'facts' you hear about over and over again -- forgiveness is healing. Forgiveness sets you free. Forgiveness knits hearts back together. Forgiveness and the asking for forgiveness is what heals relationships and makes them last. Forgiveness and the asking for forgiveness is what Jesus-loving people do and all that really matters with us flaw-filled humans.

Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Leave your sacrifice before the altar and go make amends with your brother and then come back. Forgive them for they know not what they do. Don't let the sun go down on your anger. 

Why wasn't it working?

Maybe I don't know about forgiveness because I never really tried to give it, not when it mattered the most, anyway. To be honest, forgiveness is a hard thing to like. Even when I need it, I still struggle to like it because it's not fair (and we have a funny way of picking and choosing what is fair in life), but this time, forgiveness mattered, even if it wouldn't ever be asked for or likely ever knit hearts back together.

I say to you, if your brother sins against you up to 70x7, forgive him. 

70X7. That's a lot of times. Maybe when Jesus told that to Peter, it's because He knew we'd sometimes have to forgive someone for the same thing over and over again in our hearts. Every single time we thought of the person or the circumstance. It doesn't mean there is something wrong with our forgiveness or that we're not doing it right. It's just that we're humans, and we're forgetful, and we hold tight to things that hurt us, but God knows our frames. He knows how we stumble over ourselves.

Forgiving is easier mentally than emotionally, and so we work on our minds and our thoughts. We work on them day after day after day until our heart finally catches up, and our emotions right themselves -- a lot easier said than done. After six months, I realized there was no longer any anger, and a month later something happened, and I was angry all over again.  We're all a work in progress, and that's alright.

"Feelings are meant to be fully felt and then fully surrendered to God. The word emotion comes from the Latin for 'movement' -- and all feelings are meant to move you toward God." - Ann Voskamp

Emotions fully felt, not judged by us, and given to God.

Words Without Meaning {rambling reflections}

I am a lover of words. In the beginning it was just a story thing, but then the love grew to poetry and lyrics, quotes. Just words in all their many forms. I think you're like me. I think we write because words hold a unique power, and we hope and hope our words have a place. That these letters sewed together will, in turn, slip inside someone else's mind and become something to cherish and believe in. Oh, the beauty of words! The endless possibilities!

We create worlds and people with the paint of words. We take the achings from our hearts and etch them on pieces of paper in different forms. We save quotes, memorize scripture and poetry because well-chosen words is music to souls. There is a beauty to words, and yet... and yet, with all their power, words have this way of turning to ash and becoming nothing.

I write a lot words, but I find myself fighting to believe them day to day. They deflect off of me, never penetrating the surface, never being absorbed. Not the good ones, anyway. It seems strange, doesn't it -- that words of affirmation are low on the list of my love languages? I don't know why exactly. I can't pinpoint the reason. Maybe it's because there have been times when good words filled me with hope, and then later, they disappeared because there was no substance behind them. They were just easy words to say, and words are too easy to say without having any meaning behind them. And some words are spoken with good intentions, and the intentions were good, but there was no fulfillment of them.

So there's the issue then. It's not just the words. It's never just the words. It's a mistrust because people know the right things to say, the polite-even-though-there-is-no-substance words, and who's to say if there is actually heart behind them? It's best not to put too much weight on them then. It's not a fear decision. It's a practical decision, right?

I've grown hesitant to hope, hesitant to put too much weight on words because one action can turn a multitude of words into noise -- a chaotic, teeth-grating noise. Words can be lies, and there is only a temporary, skin-deep beauty to lies. So words deflect. The good. The bad covered with what appears good. Sometimes there is never a chance to weigh the words given too easily, and sometimes good hearts give me good words. Words that are supposed to be life-giving, that are supposed to be like an exhale to the chaos inside, but they slide off. They just slide off, and it's not that I believe my doubts and all the inner monologue in my mind more than hearts I'm meant to trust. I know my inner monologue lies. It probably lies more than anyone else and in more destructive ways, but why are life-giving words so easy to dismiss?

Maybe if someone clasped my face in their hands and made me look them in the eyes because eyes mean vulnerability, the words spoken might penetrate deeper. Maybe there are too many words, too many superfluous words mixed in. Too many opportunities for me to make excuses and dismiss them because they don't know me that well. They can't know me that well. They can't because then they'd see their words aren't true, and you can't accept words you don't believe.

There many words and many ways to make words mean nothing, and sometimes I lose sight of the words that do mean something. The God-breathed words, the ones I need to believe because God is not human, and His words are not tainted by flawed language and human misuse. His words are true and always will be, but I'll forget and then I'll remember again, and maybe each time some portion, will stay with me, and by learning to believe the words that are changeless, words given to me by good hearts will be easier to accept. It's all a circle.

I think I might grasp a small piece of the importance of writing words of meaning. More than that, to live a life where the words I SPEAK mean something because writing well without speaking and living in accordance means nothing. And maybe some other heart will become a little less hesitant and someone else's wound will ache a little less.

***

This is mostly just a thought dump.
 I haven't reached any grand conclusion so please, share YOUR thoughts in the comments! Any of you writers out there wrestle with these wonderings? 

2018

There's a reason why I save the year's recap till the very last post. It takes time for me to lift my head above the moment and gaze back at the year from a more aerial perspective as opposed to a 'still stuck in the middle of the throes' perspective. If I'm still stuck on land (and to be honest, I am), it's hard to collect the good moments in a tough year. 2018 was hard - a new kind of hard I hadn't experienced before. There was a lot of caves and tunnels and dead ends and places that looked like dead ends and places that might not be dead ends, but I'm still not sure the way out of.

Those places are the hardest to gain perspective on - the 'stuck' places - and so when I reach the end of the year if I'm still in the-place-that-has-no-way-out to my limited eyesight, it can be disheartening, almost suffocating. People are talking about the whole 'new year, new you', the big goals, the exciting goals, the 'I should be happy for them' kind-of goals, and the ways in which they have succeeded. And I don't know. I begin looking too much at other people's journeys (comparison - usch), and I'm not there. I'm not somebody else or living somebody else's life. Meaghan, get your head back over here. Narrow your focus. 

We all have those glowing moments we slug through the mire of 365 days to find so we feel good, so we know we really did do something 'worthwhile' with our limited breaths. The importance of productivity and progress and big things is emphasized everywhere we look. Whether in our minds or in society around us, our worth is tied up in what we produce or the profit from our production. Somehow that belief has been worked into my core, and even though I KNOW it isn't true, it keeps tripping me up. No wonder, I read it takes 21 days to tackle a thought inside your mind and replace it with something else, something better, something that will survive. 63 days to make it have roots and branches enough to thrive. That's a long time and about a million reminders to yourself through all kinds of chaotic emotions and circumstances. That's a lot of courage and a lot of plain old stubbornness.

And I don't seem to have a lot of either of those right now. I'm tired, to be honest. There's a lot of lessons I started learning in 2018 that I'm not finished learning. There's a lot of major construction and destruction going on over here and so I know the feeling of stumbling over other people's highlight reels and forgetting for the millionth time that it is their highlight reel, their collection of half-told stories (and let's be honest - even if people do say what goals they didn't accomplish, we tell them to have grace on themselves, that they did their best, but we don't extend the same grace to ourselves).

This New Year's Day was filled with a lot less bittersweet melancholy than some. A lot less pressure of making it into something. A lot less "Oh man, it's January. Where did the time go? Have I even done anything with my time? Now it's the New Year, and I'm suppose to have goals and dreams, etc." Worries and anxiety that start to suffocate. Instead I got up as if it were any other day, forget about the month or the year, and tried to focus on the moments and collect them because the moments -- the here and now -- they're where I'm most at peace. If I extend myself too far into the future and tomorrow's worries, then I find myself running and running to try and keep myself from falling. That running is exhausting. So for right now, I'm just here, and hopefully this year, it's where I'll spend most of my time.

And with that, here are some of my favorite moments of 2018.

-Snapshots of 2018 -

February 24th - I don't do spur of the moment, but I did. He was moving, and that's a lot of driving alone. I picked the soundtrack, and we crossed the mountains, and there was fresh snow on all the trees. The world transfigured into a Narnian forest. Car rides aren't so bad. 

May 20th - Riding tandem bike for the first time along the Columbia river. Warm day. Cool breeze. He bought me Captain America socks -- my first fandom clothing. 

July 2nd - Perfectly shaped, beautiful, white and purple turnips. Also my nephew's favorite toys. 

July 4th - "Please not again, God." Anxiety knotting up my insides, but it releases as I carry serious boy - nephew- through my garden and tell him about all my vegetables. He follows my pointing. He seems to know. 

August 15th - I'm on top of the world in arctic terrain. Pieces of Rohan. Valleys and peaks shrouded in endless apocalyptic smoke, but the noise in my head is gone.

August 16th - I can reach out and touch the mountain. My mountain in all its intimate closeness. I touch snow in August. My muscles scream, but I am happy. Happy among wildflowers and perfect places where worries seem so small, mountains are kind, and God is infinitely beyond all imagining.

August 17th - We had to backtrack and everything took longer, but it was alright. The music was still good. Kayaking in warm, clear waters in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Hot chocolate down by the lake in moonlight. The food was good. 

August 18th - Narrow roads that can't really be roads swallowed in early morning fog. The first glimpses of the pacific - old friend, you know, it's always been too long. Sand. Walking along the ocean shore. Ocean forests swallowed in eery mist. And the painters out in the morning light with
their easels. The endless rush of pebbles falling over one another. Starfishes. We didn't reach the most North-Western point of the consecutive United States, but it didn't matter.  

September 7th - Carrots. Perfectly shaped, purple carrots. One handful, two handfuls. Something worked, and I've never seen anything quite so beautiful. 

October 6th - Birthdays are blue days, but it's a day up in the mountains where there's fresh snow, and it's cold, and it's Autumn and Winter and beautiful. We drink hot cider up on the top of the highest point and eat sandwiches, and it seems like the best food I've tasted for awhile. The wind numbs our hands, but there in the moment of sunlight, it seems worth it. And it's not so bad talking to my knees in the cramped back seat of a pickup truck. 

October 11th - Wandering through a Fall Japanese garden in Seattle. So peaceful. And the colors are rich and the reflections are serene and the fish frightening.

October 22nd - After work, I'm kidnapped to the foothills to see the sprinkling of Autumn colors. The tradition for a couple handfuls of years. We drive along in the shadows of the hills, and they stop in the middle of the road so I can get out and take pictures of the yellows in the sunlight, and I want to take all those yellows and decorate my soul with them, to fill myself up to the brim and push back all the blue. I want to become a tree, planted by some lake, in the middle of an evergreen forest (later she said she would like to become a tree across the road from me). We walk across the bed of the lake to our island, and everything slides back into perspective. I never want to leave this place. Hot chocolate on the car ride home. 

November 7th - She said she was rooting for 'optimistic Meaghan'. Rooting -- someone is rooting for me.

December 12th - I got there late after an emotionally exhausting day of 'this seems too painfully familiar', and she had to work in the morning, but she brought me dinner in a bag, and we listened to music and drove all around looking at Christmas lights. And we talked and some of the load slipped from my shoulders. 

December 24th - We were all cooking and baking together, and I knew what needed to be done but didn't have to do it alone. After the church's Christmas Eve service, we searched for somewhere to eat and found Popeye's was the only place open, and we took it and the stockings to the Air Traffic Control tower where my dad had to work late. We all sat on the floor and shared plates and opened stockings. We stayed up till 3 am because of a late night Celtic Christmas with bagpipes and gift wrapping I should maybe have done long before. 

~~~

What are some of your favorite *small* moments of 2018? 

Perfection & Compassion

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

courage to change the things I can,

and wisdom to know the difference.

Oh dear heart, I see you and I feel your exhaustion. I feel the weight of a burden too heavy you've been carrying on your shoulders and how it keeps forcing you to your knees. You keep pushing and pushing and pushing. I know because I do the same, and it seems the only way I learn this lesson of grace and compassion is on my knees, stripped of the moorings I've used in my life, with a keen awareness of my inadequacy.

We keep chasing after a perfection we think is possible to achieve without God's grace and righteousness, but it is only an illusion, a hole in the floor we fall into time after time. This hole is a suffocating place to pull ourselves out of. In this desolation, we have no hope but to cast ourselves on God's mercy and compassion, as if surrender is a last resort when it should have always been our first hope.

Why is it so hard for some of us to learn compassion for ourselves? Maybe we're molded by expectations set too high by those older than us. Maybe our environment, circumstances, or a fear of failure and disappointment formed us. If we do all things well, then we won't have to rely on this thing-- this compassion, this grace -- that doesn't make sense, that has no justice in it.

Maybe we'll never know the cause of this cruelty toward self, but it's there deep inside of us, worked into our very core -- the idea we are somehow unworthy of compassion from others, and especially from ourselves to ourselves. Oh, we would bleed from our very cores for others to know compassion and grace. We would fight for others to know rest, to know how it is to lay aside their load of expectations, their drive to do better, always to do better. What have we done so unforgivable that others are deserving of this grace but we are not?

Why can't we grasp onto the compassion God has extended and extends to us? If we cannot learn to accept God's compassion, then we will never be able to accept compassion from others or our own selves. This cycle will repeat endlessly.

We are torn equally between mind and heart. Logic and feelings. We have both, so what is missing? We raise high standards, impossible standards and become frustrated when we can never reach them. We fight against every aspect of being human with all our strength. Our wheels spin until we're burned out, and how do you come back from being burned out? How do you learn compassion for self and remember God's voice isn't the same as the condemning voice constantly on inside of your head?

We latch onto truth and forfeit grace in exchange as if the two could not exist together. Randy Alcorn writes, "People thirst for the real Jesus. Nothing less can satisfy. Grace and truth are His fingerprints. We show people Jesus only when we show them grace and truth. Anything less than both is neither."

Anything less than both is neither. 

There is no hope in truth and subsequent condemnation (I have fallen short and sinned, and now I am separated from God). There is only hope in compassion (I have sinned, and I sin, but God knows my frame is only dust. He knows. He knows. Beyond this, 'He who believes in Him is not condemned' - John 3:18a. We are not condemned. In fact, Jesus is in Heaven now as our great intercessor. As we condemn ourselves again and again, He intercedes.).

Yet, we believe so strongly in our pursuit of perfection that the pieces of scripture we let penetrate our mind show our pursuit to be right. The words condemn us because we are nowhere near where we are called to be. After all, perfect love casts out fear, and the very pursuit of perfection is driven by fear. 'Be perfect as your Father in Heaven is', and if we are not perfect or striving toward perfection with all our strength, then are we even trying?

We seem to forget how lopsided this arrangement of eternal life is in the first place. If we don't grasp a small inkling of how unimaginably absurd it is that we should have this gift, then we'll never know of God's heart. We'll never believe grace and compassion in all their wonderful colors.

Oh, if only we could take to heart the things we are shown of God's mercy, grace, and compassion. "For He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted [persistent pain or distress, great suffering]; Nor has He hidden His face from him; but when he cried to Him, He heard." (Psalm 22: 24). God does not despise us, the poor and striving. He delivers the needy (Psalm 72: 12-14). We are the needy. Their blood is precious in His sight (Psalm 72:12-14). Our blood is precious in His sight. He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds (Psalm 147: 3, 10). He takes pleasure in those who fear Him, in those who hope in His mercy (psalm 147: 11).

What He doesn't take pleasure in is the legs of men. He has no pleasure in our own strength (Psalm 147: 3), and yet, we do use our own strength. We fight for perfection almost entirely with our own strength, and we forget we are human. God never forgets our frame of dust, but we do. We forget our goodness is nothing apart from Him (Psalm 16:2) and that it is God who arms us with strength and makes our way perfect (Psalm 18:32).

So what do we do? How can we rest on this grace and in this compassion? We must grasp hold of the fact God's perfection is enough. It is not simple or something we will learn in a day. Maybe it will take a lifetime. A lifetime of accepting humbling compassion and grace from others and from God and in time, letting ourselves rest. We will fail and fall short, but we must get up and try again. We need to remember to look past our rules, regulations, and goals to God's heart because there is an easier way than the one we've chosen.

Our God is the God who said: "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." (Matthew 11:28-30). Dear heart, let us run to Jesus with all our tiredness from trying so hard and heavy burdens of unrealistic expectations for ourselves and learn from Him. This is the only way to start.

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This is something I've been struggling with a lot lately - compassion and perfection. Sometimes perfection has a way of sneaking into our thinking where we don't even realize how much we're influenced by it. I hope you felt love, compassion, and understanding as you read this. Do you struggle with perfectionism? What is something you do to offset that drive?  Happy Thanksgiving!

To Love Well (Part Two)

(Read part one here)

I feel there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people. - Vincent Van Gogh

     If we are artists, what kind of artists are we? If we are Christ-lovers, what should we be known for? What do you want to be known for? If we believe our lives consist of more than what we create, do we dare to live that belief wholeheartedly? Do we dare to learn how to love well, even if that means the sacrificing of ourselves or our own comfort?

     It is when the lives of others are messiest that they desperately need us to walk beside them in silence for that stretch of broken road. It'd be easier for us to stand just beyond the splatter screen unaware of the darkness inside they battle with just like us. Somewhere safe where we don't have to know of the wars they rage against their own brokenness, and this brokenness -oh, we know it so painfully well. This brokenness looks a lot like us.

     And that hurts because we're repulsed by our own crippled limbs. We'd like to think we have it together or are somehow better, but we grow weary, too, and become too tired to fight, too discouraged to hope. We get torn down, and then we are most vulnerable to temptations, to those pesky little thorns which dig into our sides out of others’ view. And the weariness cripples our ability to fight. We succumb and hide our shame because we should know better, and we do, but we’re so tired. We're so broken. It hurts to see the same brokenness in another. How are we even capable of love, let alone some kind of artistic love?

      Although we are broken, we are far from useless. Somehow, with all our flaws, God can use us in unimaginable ways. He has this knack of making broken things beautiful, artistic even.

     For example, in a portion of Joni Eareckson Tada’s autobiography, The God I Love, she relates the events following an accident that left her a quadriplegic at 17-years-old. Joni spent many lonely hours in the hospital questioning God as she tried to wrap her mind around this new way of life.

     One night after visiting hours, a friend she never considered particularly ‘close’ to snuck in and spent the night with her. For those hours, she was able to forget where she was and what was happening. She was a normal teenager having a slumber party with her friend.

     In the grand scheme of things, the action might have seemed so small, but it wasn’t. Later when Joni was asked where the turning point was after her accident, she always pointed to that night and said it was the best thing a person could do for a paralyzed girl.

     I read that story, and I stopped. Could I be a friend like that? Could I be brave enough to be that close to someone’s hurt? Joni didn’t write that her friend tried to fix her sadness or tell her it was going to be all right. Joni wrote that her friend just laid beside her and sang, "Man of Sorrows".

      In the same situation, I would make so many excuses. Rules. I can’t break the rules. Maybe she doesn’t really want company. I even make excuses for my selfishness because of my unwillingness to drastically break routine. Or just because of fear. Fear of being that intimate with someone else.

     This depth of relationship isn't something that is just nice. God gave us friends specifically for these dark hours. In 1 Timothy 2:1 (NKJV), Paul writes: "Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men."

     Intercession - that is such a strong word. It means we’re pleading for someone else. We're asking on behalf of someone else's soul, and those are the prayers all of us desperately need not just in the hardest places of life but every day.

     You know the first scene in It’s a Wonderful Life? It’s the one where the prayers of almost everyone in town are being sent up to Heaven on behalf of George Bailey. It may be just a fictional story, but I can’t think of a better picture of intercession than that.

     If we never open ourselves up to that kind of relationship to begin with, how will anyone ever know the sadness behind the offhanded, "If you could pray for me, that’d be great." Prayers are the very lifeline a person needs. There will be days when each of us will desperately need people to go before the throne of God, into the Holiest of Holies, on our behalf. That is nothing to be ashamed of.

     Some days we will be the ones whose hearts plead for someone to come and just sit beside us. Someone who won't tell us the things we already know deep down or try to say we shouldn't feel these things. Some days all we will need is for someone not to be afraid of our desperation, of our human brokenness. Other days we will be the ones interceding on someone else’s behalf. Or maybe we'll be the answer.

     And this is the artistic love. It isn't perfect, but it is trying. It's doing the things we find hardest. Being brave enough to expose our own brokenness in order to share in someone else's vulnerability. It's giving our time. It's fighting tooth and nails for someone else's very soul. And it's praying. It's stepping back from being right, taking credit, pulling the attention to ourselves in order to be a channel, albeit a leaky one, of God's perfect love. This is what makes a masterpiece. 

To Love Well (Part One)

"I feel there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people." - Vincent Van Gogh

     A lot of us here are artists of some sort. An even greater portion are introverts, and the art we do takes a lot of our time and energy. With art, there is no definite arrival. There is always something else we can do, and let's be honest, we get swallowed in our passions, stuck in our creations. Who are we kidding? The act of creating and the creations appeal to us more than the outer world. 

     

     But what if we viewed our art as something more than the books we write, the visions we create, the music we make? What if we viewed our life as the art and those things we create as the means to better prepare for the tasks God gives us outside our hobbit holes? The tasks we are given in life are important, but what is the second greatest commandment given to Israel? 

     

      “You shall love your neighbor as yourself...” -Leviticus 19:18b (NKJV)

     Maybe Vincent Van Gogh was onto something. We are artists with pen and paper, with words and music and color, and that is noble and God-given, but what if our greatest artistic work is the love we learn to give others? 

     Love is the hardest thing to do. 

     “Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.” - 1 Corinthians 13: 4-8 (NKJV).

     In the KJV, they use the word ‘beareth’ which in Greek is a term stemming from a verb for the term ‘roof’. So instead of the image of someone carrying around a huge burden on their back, ‘love bears all things’ should create an image in our minds of us being a roof, a shelter over others. 

     It seems impossible, doesn’t it? How do we love another, especially in times of grief and deepest hurt when this strangely artistic but broken love is needed most? 

     You know that book in the bible where God lets Satan take away a bunch of stuff from a guy and then there’s a lot of chapters of talking and you feel a bit confused at the end? Oh yeah, Job. Towards the beginning of the book, after everything has been taken away from Job, his friends show up. 

     “So they sat down with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his grief was very great” - Job 2:13 (NKJV)

     Think about that. They sat with Job in silence for seven days and seven nights. Honestly it would probably have been better for him if they had kept silent because when they started talking, they were going to fix his situation by fixing him. They said a multitude of words that meant nothing because they could not see the whole picture. Then there was Job's wife that told him to curse God so he could just end his misery. This story is a good lesson, not just in trusting God’s character in all situations, but also what love doesn't do when someone is hurting. 

   

      So the whole 'you've done something to deserve this' isn't the right way to go about this artistic love? What is the right way then?

     I can't think of any Jesus lover who doesn't want to one day lead another individual to Him. We want to be a small part of saving someone else's soul, and so when we know someone who isn't a Christian, we imagine going into battle for that person's soul. 

     But what about our brothers and sisters, our best friends? That intense caring for souls can't stop as soon as someone comes to Christ. We wanted to save a soul from utter destruction, but then we continue on our merry way with maybe a nudge deep down that something may not be well, you know, if people are anything like ourselves. What about the bruises and the crippling? Do we care then? There's more to be done for a soul than just simply pointing it towards the path of salvation. 

     I know, when all is said and done, we can't be someone's salvation or make someone else's decisions for them. But if there is a chance for us to fight for them, for their souls, just till they catch their breath, just till they find their footing again, are we willing to do that? Are we willing to swallow them up with a Love not our own and give of ourselves? God can use us as a way to show someone His love, as a crutch to help someone go along their path for a little longer. 

     

     That's something we have to remember - sure, we want to fix the ones we love, and that's good and all, but we can't sew them up with feeble human hands. If we can't, there's no reason for us to be here, right? Hold up, they don't expect us to fix them and God certainly doesn't. 

     Sometimes it is enough to simply sit beside them in silence. To sit beside them in their darkness and become intimate with their brokenness, but do we dare?

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This is my 100th post! And somehow I'm still here. 

The Bruises of Friends

"I ran the risk
Of being intimate with my brokenness.
I was given a gift of hope and a thousand finger prints
On the surfaces of who I am." -Ryan O'Neal

They say the bruises of friends can be trusted, but I don't know what that means. Who truly bruises you for good? We bruise each other with our selfishness and pride, with our careless words and pinpointed daggers because we know each other's weaknesses. We know each other's weaknesses, and we would use them against one another.

We would never trust the bruises of friends. We'd rather lose faith in the heart of the one who loves us than acknowledge the truth. Who wants to be told they're wrong? We don't need to hear those words. We don't need to take those bruises. There are others out there who do not judge, who will not question or challenge, who will let us be comfortable in our lives, with our decisions.

People are dispensable, or at least that's what they say, but a love that loves regardless of our wrongs, our mistakes is greater than a love that loves and sees no wrongs. A heart of love will bruise you but be there to bind you up. Love will not expose your nakedness to the world but quietly clothe the ugliness and look on you the same.

The bruises of friends can be trusted because it means they aren't afraid of being intimate with your brokenness. They aren't afraid to reach down and say, "You don't repulse me." Those are the friends who have been given God's eyes to see us with. They see us and who we can be. They love us enough to want better for us than we, at times, want for ourselves. And that kind of love is without price.

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I'm temporarily forgetting about my blog schedule because it's stressing me out. Plus, one of my brothers was home for a week, and I didn't have much extra time. 

Also, this subject is something I've been thinking about for a bit. I wrote it all down, and then I found this more in-depth article just yesterday (funny how God seems to send things your way at the perfect time), and I really recommend reading it. Some of the things stated are similar to what I said here, but I would say it has a stronger Biblical center. 

Even Miracles Leave Scars

Sometimes the best things happen. The miraculous things.  Events that show the evidence of God's tender mercies. Curtain closed because when prayers are answered and lives saved, when a mother gets a new heart and goes back to her children, that is the end of the story. There can't be anything more to add to all the unimaginable good.

But even miracles leave scars.

And I know about miracles, and I know about scars. And the world does close the curtain after miracles. And life does seem to continue on the outside. Why wouldn't it be any different from what you see? If the miracle hadn't happened, then it would be just another part of life and death. If a person was a survivor of a tragedy, there might be some lasting damage. Some cracks on the surface. Some scars. Some need of a bandage here and there, a little help for the healing.

But the good? The miracle stuff? There's no healing needed there. No band aid on a brokenness. Good doesn't equal bad. It can't be bad. We were given so much. Our cup was overflowed with blessings so why does it now seem empty? Why has the miraculous become the limping mundane?

A couple weeks ago you might have read my post celebrating 18 years since my mom's heart transplant. That's big, and it's something to make us exceedingly joyful. There is nothing that can negate from God's immense love and provision for us through that time and continuing to today. But it's not perfect. Nothing will be perfect this side of heaven, and on this side of heaven, miracles leave scars.

I've told you about the miracle, but the scars? It's harder to talk about them because you're left with evidence of a seemingly cruel kindness, and God is never cruel. But you wonder about God's love all the same. Why, God? Why is it this way? Why does a nine-year-old turn into a teenager with depression who turns into a young woman who struggles with the fear of a returning depression all her life? Why does a three-year-old who remembers people's faces and sadness but no other emotions turn into a teenager with lack of confidence issues because she isn't brave and she should be braver. What is wrong with her? But her parents don't need two squeaky wheels and it isn't her mom's fault but maybe all the time she's just had anxiety disorder? Why? Why do miracles hurt? 

We got the heart, but what about the empty place at the table? What about the heart missing from someone else's life? Curtain closed. Don't look too closely or you'll see we're just threadbare in survival mode. 18 years and still in survival mode. Medications. Hospital stays. Emergency rooms. Fear. Wondering. Uncertainty.

Maybe these scars are here on our hearts so we might never forget it is by God's great love that we are not consumed. We can ask God to take them away. We can plead that He will, but sometimes His answer will be the same as the one He gave Paul - 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in your weakness'. We are crippled and so we cling. We are bruised so He can bind us up. Man of sorrows, what a name!

Let Me Tell You a Story About Miracles

I wrote this up last year and posted it. Some of you have read it. Some of you haven't, but here it is again in all its flaws:

It began 18 years ago on a warm, July afternoon in a mobile home up a dirt road. There lived a family in that house. A family of seven. Three boys and two girls, all homeschooled, with their mother and father. The youngest was only three and a half, and I remember that the best out of all the children's ages; though the eldest must have been around fourteen or fifteen.

The time was shortly after a lunch - the food being a big pot of spaghetti. The mother had gone to lay down because she didn't feel well. The father was at work. The children were gathered in the living room as they watched Reading Rainbow. There was something funny, but when the children paused it for their mother to come and watch, the mother said she didn't feel well enough. Then she was leaving out the door with their grandma.

From that moment on, nothing made sense. It didn't make sense for nine long months, and even after that, I don't think it made sense until all the children were grown. And by that time, it was hard to comprehend the depths of what happened. Time numbed the urgency. Time numbed the sorrow. Time numbed the loneliness, but time didn't entirely take those feelings away. There was always something in the bottom of the children's hearts when they thought about that July afternoon 18 years ago.

18 years ago on a warm, July afternoon, a church was burning. Most of emergency personnel were downtown at the scene. When the mother called her brother-in-law who worked for the fire department to ask what she should do, he told her to drive to the hospital. It would take too long for an ambulance to get there. It would take too long...

Because the mother was having a heart attack. Not just a light one where you go the hospital. They give you medication. They help you, and then you get to go home to your family soon.

This was the kind where you almost die. Where your heart gives completely out and can't work on its own. Where machines keep you alive as you wait for a completely new heart - somebody else's heart.

This was the kind of heart attack where you almost die again and again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. This was the kind of heart attack where you spend nine months away from your family.

The mother was gone. The father was gone, to work and then to the hospital on the weekends.  For the children, it was somebody different or the somebody different but the same every day. People became adopted aunts and uncles and grandparents. It was meals brought by strangers and church family. It was every other weekend over the mountains to the big hospital in the big city where they ate bacon, cheeseburgers in the cafeteria and watched cartoons in the hospital waiting room. Sometimes they'd get brought popsicles. Sometimes they'd get to see their mother. Sometimes they'd get to hug her. Sometimes...

Sometimes they could only look through a window and wave and say 'I love you' in sign language.

But at night, back at home, after the father had sang hymns in the hallway till he hoped they were all asleep, the youngest would cry. She would cry herself to sleep, keeping her two older siblings who shared the same bedroom awake, because she missed her mother so much.

There were comings and goings. There were almosts and not quites. There were Christmas presents from the church. There were people who showed overflowing love. And praying. There was lots and lots and lots of praying. And there were miracles. Miracles like how the local hospital had just trained people to use the machine which saved the mother's life two weeks prior to that July afternoon.

And then there were sad miracles. In early March of 2000, a man who was studying to become a pastor was driving home with his fiancée from college. They were hit by a drunk driver. The fiancée was killed immediately, but the young man lived a couple days in the hospital before he died, but he had chosen to be an organ donor. His heart was the one which perfectly fit what the mother needed.

The heart was Jesus' heart already. And that was a bittersweet thing.

On March 7th, the mother was given a new heart. And every March 7th is a Birthday, of sorts. A celebration of another year of miracles.

I have a vague, 3 and a half year-old's memory of those nine months, but there are still things I remember quite clearly. And since last Wednesday was March 7th, I wanted to write something about it. I wanted to put into writing how broken everything can be without a mother. I wanted to remember how lucky I am to have had a mother these 18 more years because no matter how common transplants might become - they will always be a miracle.


We met the parents of the donor. All seven of us. They love Jesus, too.

Dear Anxious Heart

Dear Anxious Heart,

This isn't your fault.

Hold up, don't stop listening to me.

I know you. I know what you're thinking because I've been hearing all the things you've said to yourself for the past ten years. It's that verse in the Bible, isn't it? The one where you're supposed to hold every thought captive? You're beating yourself over the head because killing those pesky little thoughts is what you're supposed to be doing. You're not supposed to have a million worries tearing you to pieces day in and day out.

Oh, you know really well what you're supposed to be doing. You've rehearsed it: Don't worry. Have you looked at the birds lately? Do they worry? Does worrying change anything? What about the verse where perfect love casts out fear? Yeah, I'm guessing you must not have much love inside, right? Then there's the practical side: Anxiety kills sleep, kills joy, physically kills (you know anxiety can help cause severe medical problems? Mom wonders some days if anxiety was part of the cause of her heart attack, but let's not think about that. It makes us anxious). It kills hope. And friendship. And let's not start talking about your future.

I've heard your 'mature' side going to war against those anxious thoughts. Mature side? No, it isn't your mature side. I've heard its cutthroat threats. Its screams: You should know better than this. If you loved God, you'd just do what you need to do, what you're called to do. Get over yourself. You're so selfish and self-conscious. You're a people-pleaser. You are not capable of doing anything. You can't even go into Walmart without putting on army as if you're going to war. Good grief, it's just a store! You hide behind some sacrificial garb to avoid facing your life. Oh, and you don't have any self-confidence (is that really surprising?). You love yourself more than Jesus. You'd rather be safe and warm in your little ball of a comfort zone than follow Him. You're a coward.

Oh, Anxious Heart! You're not a coward. You are courageous, and you are a warrior. Even when alarms are screaming, and they all scream the same, you still get up in the morning, and you try. You give life a go. You're bloody and bruised, but you haven't succumbed to hopelessness. You haven't given up. You think anxiousness is a part of your heart, a flaw in your character, but it isn't! It isn't you, even as it tries to swallow you up and forces you to believe all these lies. You're just a child hidden away in a closet of a house with bolted doors and windows. There's a knock at the door, but in your dark closet you cannot see if it's an enemy who will trespass or a friend. All those resounding knocks carry through the house the same - as alarms. That is anxiety.

But Jesus doesn't despise you, heart that's a little anxious. He knows you, and He knows the battles you fight every day. He doesn't ever, ever, ever despise you.

And sometimes it's not even your fault - these anxious thoughts. These moments of rapid heartbeat where you can't hardly breath, and everything is too much, and something has to change. Sometimes the seeds of anxiety were planted long before you had the Holy Spirit inside to help you ward them off.

Oh, heart that's anxious, what an unfair world we live in where small, hardly memorable, 'let's just brush them off' moments have scarred. Moments when bigger hands and bigger arms were supposed to protect you because you didn't know how to protect yourself. Moments when 'you just have to grow a thicker skin' created a current of consequential actions you didn't even know were anything but an aspect of your personality.

Dear (for the moment) Anxious Heart, remember these things: You are not anxiety. Don't rip yourself apart because you know this is not the way God wants you to live and you think it's all your fault. Don't hold a pity party. These plants might have grown up when you were young, but you fight against them, and you must continue to fight. Your weaknesses don't have to separate you from God. Surrender to His mercy. He waits just beyond the wall of your own strength to reach out and grasp you. He will be your safety, the house where your closet is hidden (and He'll know just who's at the door).

Dear heart, if you see yourself as broken, it's just because we all are. Only our cracks are in different places.

Fighting Forgetfulness

Why am I even doing this? What's the point? All I ever do is go non-stop to sew up the loose ends other people leave, to pick up the slack. Why am I out here working again when everyone else is on their computer or reading? I should do what she says. I should just focus on my own stuff. Besides, when is enough enough? I could keep going like this forever, and it'd make no difference. Why don't they ever think about helping me? This isn't even my project!

Hold up! Where are these bitter, angry thoughts coming from? Just last night I was reading Ann Voskamp's The Broken Way. She was talking about serving and loving and giving. And I wanted that so much. I wanted to help people, to love people, even the unlovable ones. And yet, here I am having a hard time loving the people who actually, in their human broken way, love me back. That feeling of having a world of potential inside but no outlet - where did that go? That feeling of a lightbulb coming on. Yes, this is the way I should live, but how? That feeling of overflowing with love, but no one to love - where'd that go, too?

Ann wrote about a study that showed when a person helps someone else more than three times a day, they end up feeling less stressed. Not the big, earth-shattering help. No, just the simple acts of kindness, of giving of one's self and energy. Open doors. Hang up clothes. Move along laundry. Let someone else go in line before you. Cook dinner. The mundane. The mind-numbing.

Then what on earth am I doing wrong? Why don't I feel less stressed? Why do I feel suffocated when I think that someone might ask one more thing of me? I wash dishes by hand after everyone else has already gone to bed. I hardly have an hour of quiet to myself unless I stay up hours after everyone else has gone to bed. I give of myself. I give of myself, but why aren't I filled? Is it because I do them for the wrong reasons? I don't know my reasons. I just can't stop myself.

Ann also wrote about what she called 'chronic soul amnesia'. Our faithful forgetfulness - oh, you can sure count on it more than anything else in the world. Temptations? They're hardly needed. We forget what we're supposed to know, and then it doesn't occur to us there's a battlefield going on inside of our mind. Just these thoughts. These thoughts that tear and rip and shred every bit of hope and joy and thankfulness.

This chronic soul amnesia is why we have to continually relearn lessons again. It's why we spend a year trying to move on and end up in the exact same place spiritually.

I forget so much. I forget that nothing we do for the Lord is useless (1 Corinthians 15:58). That we can do all for the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31). That we can do all things through Christ who gives us strength (Philippians 4:13). That He will never leave us or forsake us (Hebrews 13:5). That He is actually in us (John 14:23). That He is the only giver of peace and we shouldn't be afraid (John 14:27).  That we should always be joyful and prayerful and thankful 'for this is God's will' (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18).

And still with all these promises, I forget. I stumble and trip, and I get mad at myself because I'm so human. I go from light bulb moments when I think I finally get it to the darkest places in seconds. My forgetfulness is constant, but I'm not.

That's why we're supposed to read the Bible every day. That's why we purposely memorize portions of Truth. That's why we listen to songs reinforcing Truths. That's why we do Communion. That's why we surround ourselves with people like us who fight this forgetfulness. It's so we don't forget, and if we do, we'll remember it all again soon.

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I don't know. These are just the rambling thoughts of a frustrating day, a frustrating week. What are your thoughts on this? Do you struggle with this chronic soul amnesia? What do you do to help yourself remember? You all should read 'The Broken Way' by Ann Voskamp. It was a bit rough getting back into her style, but she writes poignantly. So many wonderings. So much possibility.

It's Okay to Ask for Help

I don't like asking for help. At all. I'll go high and low to avoid it, even if the help would give me peace of mind or save me from hours of extra work or worry that could have been avoided.

Nope. I'm absolutely, most assuredly not going to ask. Besides, I know exactly what they're going to say. They're going to say something I don't like, and it's not just that. They'll probably say something that shows how little they know me. And it's just too tiring to tell them all the reasons they're wrong, and wait, you're not supposed to swat down brainstorming ideas so you just have to politely listen, all the while boiling up inside, because they assume a lot and you don't actually need this help anymore and the whole thing was a failure...and...and...

And sometimes I just feel like it's way too much work to ask for advice.

But you know what?

It's not this whole exhausting thing. At least it doesn't have to be as long as we don't toss our pearls to swine. It's easy to let these negative interactions leave a nasty taste in our mouths. To keep us from experiencing the good parts. In our minds, we reason away the work of admitting our vulnerability because we're all flawed humans and no one has it more together than any other and anyway we know everything ourselves. But sometimes we have scraped the bottom. We are not enough, and we are being suffocated by that very 'not enoughness'. There's absolutely nowhere to go, and we've put great big walls all around us, and we are isolate because we're supposed to be able to do this on our own, but you know what?

It's still okay to ask for help. It's never too late to ask for help.

Yes, we're all flawed humans, and we don't have everything together, and some of the most respected individuals have revealed over time their sin stains to us. But being helped up by someone who stands a little taller than you, whose feet are on a more solid rock, whose love speaks loudly, is how it's meant to be. God wants us to always be growing. To be lifting our younger brothers and sisters all the while being lifted ourselves. None of us will ever fully arrive.

If you need help, ask for it because...

1. We all get worn out and tired and discouraged.

And we lose our ability to see our problems clearly. We can't get far enough away to view the big picture. We're stuck in the valley, and sometimes it's good to have a watchman up on the top telling us what is waiting on the other side or which place is easier to climb because they've already done it.

2. Nobody knows everything, even if we mostly think we do.

There's always room for learning, and every single person you meet knows something you don't. I got this pride thing. It's really hard. I'd rather exhaust every ounce of me before showing I don't have it altogether. I don't want to be viewed as stupid because I should know this and this, even though I don't. I don't want to be viewed as lazy because I could have figured this out if I'd only give it time and energy. I don't want to be a bother. Yet, on the other hand, if someone thought I could help them, I would. Without hesitation, I would give their problem, their worries, all of my attention. I'd even wonder, "Why are they asking me? Why do they think I could have this wisdom?" I am humbled by someone asking me for help. 

3. I think it's something God wants. 

There aren't a whole lot of verses exactly on the idea of having mentors or counselors, but there is a lot about us sharpening each other, encouraging each other, mourning with one another, financially helping one another. Because of the way things are structured, I believe God had that kind of thing in mind. He made families. Fathers and mothers to guide us in the way we should go, but sometimes they just can't help or are not around. He placed church elders and pastors for guiders. Sometimes even paid counselors. God can use anyone to bless us, anyone to lift us up, dust us off, and send us on our way.


Is it hard for you to ask for help or is it just me? What has been your most helpful advice? Least helpful? How do you feel about giving advice? 

Recenter

Take a breath
And let it out.
Just let me breathe
In and out.
Slow this pulse.
Slow this pace.
Pull this heaviness
From off my chest.
Stop the chase.
I can run forever
But arrive nowhere, 
If you're not there.
Force the fear 
From all my veins.
Unclench these knotted fists
And give me something to grasp,
Something like grace.
Don't gaze on imperfections.
Let me pass before you now.
Don't only see my broken.
Don't let me only see 
What I haven't got
And what I might never achieve.
Let me breathe,
Just breathe,
And try to remember.
Try to recenter myself
On something other than myself.
Slow the clock's time.
Slow the world's spinning 
So I might catch my breath
And not be left behind.
My chest is a bomb
With a fuse ever shortening.
I am only myself,
And myself is not enough.
So reach out your hand,
Uncoil these springing clock's wires.
Reach out your hand.
Maybe your touch will remember 
What peace is actually like
Because there is no peace
And no breath, no relief, 
And no curable pain
Where it's just me and myself,
And so just let me breathe.
Just lift this pain from my heart.
Remind me, after another fresh breath,
There's always a brand new start.

(My apologies for not keeping up on answering comments and reading your blogs and commenting. It's been a stressful few weeks for my family, but I hope things will start winding down a bit, and I'll get back on top of everything.)

One Thousand Gifts (Wandering Thoughts on a Book)

"Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world." - Sarah Ban Breathnach

I've seen the gratitude lists people have made - mostly blogposts, not so frequently in day-to-day life. I've skimmed through them and thought they were nice, but I never considered creating one of my own. After all, I would end up halfheartedly writing the same things as everyone else: "A roof over my head. Family. Friends. Etc." The big things in life that I know I should be thankful for but always seem to take for granted. I don't freeze midday and just thrill through with thanksgiving over these things as I wonder, "Why me? Why do I get to experience this?"
And I think that's the first problem with my mindset towards gratitude lists. I look for the big things to write down that I should write down. In my prayers, I just gather everything up, every little crumb, in a nice packaged 'Thank you for everything', and that's the end.
But it's the little things that catch my eye throughout the day. It's the little things that cause me to freeze and thrill with unspoken thanksgiving. I am delighted by bugs and flowers and my garden and the sky and nature, but I still clump them all together into one big package when it's even the smaller things that make my heart sing. I don't necessarily always smile when I think about my garden. Sometimes I think about the gopher eating all my onions. Or the back breaking work of digging out potatoes or some other hard job.
But if I concentrate on the small things, then the small things reach out to me. It's not just my garden, it's the first pumpkin growing on its vine and the first watermelon. The honeybee who gets shot by a water droplet, and as I lift it off the wet ground, it shakes its wings off, and I feel the sprinkles hit my cheek. Or the silly stuff: my fuzzy blanket that never seems to be cold. The cup of hot chocolate I drank in the morning that somehow turned my grumps away. People who make me food.
It's these little things that make up the big things, and if I can't be thankful for them, how can I be thankful for anything and everything?
I never considered how keeping a list might change me, and I never considered it could be an act of worship and an essential part of a living faith. It's not the list. It's having a list to remind you to look around, to take note of things, to be present right where God is.
In One Thousand Gifts, Ann Voskamp writes, "It's not the gifts that fulfill, but the holiness of the space. The God in it...This is supreme gift, time, God Himself framed in a moment...When I'm present, I meet I AM, the very presence of a present God. In His embrace, time loses all sense of speed and stress and space and stands so still and holy. Here is the only place I can love Him"

And Ann goes on to write achingly real and poetical about her life and her struggles. Her fight for joy and thanksgiving and a full life. I reread sentence again and again and try to carve these words into my heart so I won't forget them, but the words are so many and so penetrating, and I am so forgetful.  I wish I could share all my highlighted lines from this book with you, but there are too many, and it's too late, and my words come out more and more rough and broken.

Read this book.

What do you think of gratitude lists? Have you kept one? Have you read One Thousand Gifts? What did you think? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments!

"The real problem of life is never a lack of time. The real problem of life - in my life - is lack of thanksgiving. Thanksgiving creates abundance; and the miracle of multiplying happens when I give thanks - take the just one loaf, say it is enough, and give thanks - and He miraculously makes it more than enough."