May The Weary Rejoice

**Disclaimer: This piece was written pre-deconstruction of religious beliefs and faith system. Many of these beliefs inform the sentiments of the writing and are not in alignment with my values. As this is a part of my journey and an extensive blog over years, I have chosen not to remove a majority of my posts written on faith. Please as a reader, take this into consideration and take what works for you, leave what does not. I also apologize for any harm my words from this past perspective may cause to any readers.**

This is my very favorite day of the year! Truth is I wasn't even looking forward to it this year, I just wanted to hunker down and get through it, and through 2016 to January. I thought I'd just be reminded of what a miserable year it was, feeling singleness even more, not able to afford to buy anyone gifts, it being just another day off in a sea...

I woke up today with another dang sore throat, but ya know what? I am excited. I'm quietly thrilled I get to spend Christmas Eve at my own home church that I love! I'm looking forward to spending time with my family even though it's been a rough year for a lot of us. Though it's new and uncertain as new things of its nature are, I'm awed that [Cute] Coffee Shop Guy, or CSG (whose name will come in due time), came around and has been sweetly sweeping me off my feet for a few days. Just the pick me up this year needed to not go down as the worst ever.

I sit and ponder this day, this eve. It's not really about gifts, and everyone I love is hopefully convinced of that truth without my buying them some thing to symbolize it. It's about love. I did my annual bell ringing shift, on Christmas Eve eve. It was harder for me this year, usually I'm oozing joy and that's only been coming back to me for a few weeks. Some people flat out ignore a greeting directed specifically at them, others give generously in a way that was evident. A few times it brought me to tears the matter-of-fact way that someone would give. It was like a subtle marker of the proverbial joining into the struggles of another without hesitation. Maybe that's just me, and I'm over thinking it, like I can do. But I think there's something powerful in this season. Especially this year, I'm hopeful to see it, to see a weary world rejoice.

Lesson of the Disingenuous

I had two very different interactions recently, and, juxtaposed, they point to something I felt the need to share because it's been on my mind:

In my job hunt, I've been working with a handful of recruiters - a sort of middleman between a company and a potential employee. [Surprisingly, all four of them are women.] Friday, after playing phone tag for a week, I finally got in touch with a recruiter I hadn't been working with yet but applied to a job he'd listed. He talked my ear off for 20 minutes, a miserable 20 minutes at that! At the end of the call, I felt this sense of exhaustion and disgust. When I went to sleep later that night, I couldn't escape the feeling I should cancel my in-person meeting with the guy scheduled for today. I finally sent an email last night, forwarning him apologetically that I would not be working with him further. No response yet today...

However, I got the nicest reply from one of the creative staffing recruiters I've been working with. I'd sent her my updated resume and a simple email saying if anything jumped out based on it, she should let me know. She replied, with lots of exclamation marks, a thank you and that she absolutely would. She also added that things will pick up after the holiday, and wished me an "awesome" one. Her reply was nice, genuine, and kind. I thought about our first phone call, she was my favorite of all the recruiters I'm working with from the get-go.

Her email got me thinking about these two professional interactions, trying to figure out why they struck me so. The juxtaposition led me to note a disparity in genuineness between the two people. The guy I spoke with was cocky, and smarmy, and just plain annoying. I immediately didn't trust him or feel like he would work to get me in the best fit for me, in spite of his claiming he would. The woman on the other hand (no emphasis on gender, just for differentiation's sake) was genuine in all of my interactions with her, and that makes me absolutely want to work with her.

I recently wrote some thoughts on the influence and ubiquity of social media on our ability to be real, or rather our tendency toward the contrived. It's been on my mind a lot lately. I've never seen the point in letting others' expectations or really any sense of pride determine how I live. There are obvious exceptions, but I think too often we all fall prey to living the way someone else wants us to, instead of authentically. I think the male recruiter might not actually be an annoying, egotistical person. He seemed concerned with proving himself, though I don't know to who because that's not even close to the point of being a recruiter. Granted, I can be the queen of a big talk - if you've ever driven with me, you already know that - but I have to keep myself in check. I don't want that to influence whether someone can trust me. I don't want to so filter my words or alter my portrayal of myself that I'm seen as untrustworthy.

I think that's the reason being genuine is important to me: it affects trust and speaks to integrity. The level of trustworthiness sets the limit for how deep the relationship can go. In twenty minutes of talking to someone, their disingenuousness could lead another to distrust them and their inauthenticity imply a lack of integrity. Or in a simple email, someone can make you feel completely at ease.

To some extent, vulnerability plays in, too. The person who isn't perfect but isn't afraid of that fact will more often earn my trust. Yes there's wisdom in discretion, but also value in honesty. Maybe the more we lead with our true selves, the more our opportunities for connection and all else will be successful.

Curation Liberation

Today I woke up and scraped the remaining makeup off my face from the day before. It was the holiday costume party for my part-time job, and I wore a full-face of makeup for the first time in...who knows how long. I did my hair. I wore the tights with the waist sincher. Everything short of heels.

When I'd finished perfecting my look before I headed to the party, I paused in the mirror, recalling how different I look with eyeliner and eyeshadow and mascara and any pesky zit covered slyly with concealer -- made up, to be sure. See, a few years ago, I found liberation from makeup; from the need to daily change my face to how I thought the world would better accept it. Years before, in high school, I discovered my natural hair was more than acceptable and that hours of my life had been wasted every week making it what I thought it should be.

In a second of giving myself the final look over, my altered look reminded me of something I'd been pondering already. A week or two ago, I was doing something - I don't even recall what - and I was straining to try to capture a picture with my ailing phone, in bad light, when I caught myself. Why am I doing this? WHAT am I doing? A pillar of the way I try to live my life has always been being genuine; I struggle with anything that requires me to do something I feel is contrived. And as I wiggled and bent and shifted to try to get the perfect shot I thought, this isn't what I'm about, yet somehow it's become second-nature. The joke in society is, "If you didn't instagram it, did it even happen?"

I don't do things in life for the sake of my instagram or facebook audience; I don't do them for the sake of someone else's approval of the picturesque parts of my life. I don't do things in life for any other reason than to experience it. I miss when taking photos of something was simply to memorialize it and capture its wonder or significance, not just to impress people with carefully created snippets of our lives.

So I've been taking pause and asking myself - and only myself - to be honest, why am I doing this? There are hundreds of people who have unbridled access to the curated version of my life, yet they don't know me. That's something to think about. How can I live true to myself in the hyper-filtered age of Instagram? How do I live life with a blind eye to the measuring stick that is Pinterest? Do my passions have any purpose if not exposed in a rant to whoever has yet to unfollow me on Facebook? Is this a wise or valuable use of my time?

I want to strive to have these questions, this pause be the only filter for my choices and my actions. I want to live to be who I aspire to be, not just appear to be who I think the world wants me to be. I want to go back to living life just for the experience of it.

A Darkness Demands Light

**Disclaimer: This piece was written pre-deconstruction of religious beliefs and faith system. Many of these beliefs inform the sentiments of the writing and are not in alignment with my values. As this is a part of my journey and an extensive blog over years, I have chosen not to remove a majority of my posts written on faith. Please as a reader, take this into consideration and take what works for you, leave what does not. I also apologize for any harm my words from this past perspective may cause to any readers.**

The thing about darkness is that it demands light.

Let me elaborate. This year has sucked - I'm trying to get more concise when including that in every post. I recently realized something about my year of struggling, wading through these months of pain: I'm still here, and that means something. Aside from the teen years being, well the teen years and chock full of angst for legitimate reasons as well as at the fault of immaturity, this has been the hardest year of my life. There have certainly been good things, too, but I struggled to enjoy them as much as I should, as I process through having loved and lost being a part of my history now. Then! I lost my first truly professional (in the sense of what I studied to do) job before even hitting the two-year mark - in the midst of house-shopping. So much for concise...

Understand, this year I've felt on edge of losing my faith, stuck, alone, depressed, and downright broken. A few months ago, I realized it was the actual, tangible grace of God that I'm alive. #Realtalk. It feels a little melodramatic to say that now that I'm less and less fragile every day, but I believe it's true. Then last week, something else occurred to me, a silver-lining: I've survived; I am resilient. And that gives me hope; it helps me know this isn't it.

Furthermore, I haven't exactly had it rough in a while. All that has been good and great and gloriously splendid in my life over the years makes a time like this feel heavier. I think we can all agree, things have just felt heavy lately. For starters, our president elect is frightening. There was some kind of shooting in Ohio that I don't even have the energy to look into right now. I just read the news about a friend from church's (a husband and dad of two kids) diagnosis with an aggressive cancer...

And it got me thinking, this Jesus thing just has to be real. I look around at people, and when I have that thought in the forefront of my mind, I see us all in desperate need of Him. He has to be real. All this heavy darkness demands a great light. Not only is it impossible to be a darkness without a respective light, but how much more sweet will it be when it indeed shines!

So it is, through welling tears, my weary heart mutters, Come, O Light of the World...

Thankfulness

This is my favorite time of year. I love it from the first snow, to the Wednesday night hockey game before Thanksgiving, to the Day of Food and my family going around [being positive for a change] saying what we're thankful for, Christmas time, Christmas eve church and Christmas hymns! It's the best.

This year however has been the worst. The downright worst. This year, I was dreading the 'sharing time' with my family, not having much I feel thankful for with my life in disarray. This year, my thankful list is rather short. I used to write these long posts, brimming with compliments to friends who probably didn't read it anyway.

Joy.

This has been a year where I feel like my joy has been stolen and for me that's like a car without fuel. It's taken me a while to build up any, for a sense of normalcy in my existence.

So what I'm thankful for are the people who actually prayed, when I asked or when I didn't. For the people who didn't dissappear, and the few that sat with me in my pain without trying to minimize it or claim they know it, or douse it with platitudes. This year, I'm thankful for things like a roof over it head, food on the table, and being alive. And the shrivel of hope that next year will be better.

The Lesson of Loving and Losing

Life is full of challenges, curve balls thrown at us every day or every other day, who knows. Losing a job. Losing a loved one. Car breakdowns. Family tensions, family breakdowns. Lessons around every unsuspected corner.

I've done the job thing before. I've done the car thing, too - in several variations. I've done the family thing with every member of my family. I am introspective to a fault, so I usually try to learn from the things that come at me in life. Well, some lessons take longer than others...

There's a lesson I've been learning and yet struggling to understand for what feels like my whole life; in grade school, middle school, high school, college, and now, even in adulthood. I've always had somebody in my life who I'm close with and feel a deep sense of attachment to, like they're "my person", as Grey's Anatomy would have me say. But as time goes on, that person slowly detaches from me. I feel it and start to question if I need them too much, and why they don't feel the same way. I've always wanted someone in my corner, steadfast, and have rarely felt like I've had it long enough or for very long at all. 

A married friend of mine put it really well when she was talking about how different and difficult it is to be single when others are coupled off: She noted how she has her husband to be utterly devoted to her, and of course she in turn is with him, in everything in life. Us single people don't have that. Maybe that's a part of why Paul says in the bible it's better to not marry, if you can manage (my paraphrase) - no wholly devoted distraction.

I always wanted to have a ride or die best friend. The older I got, the less I've held to that desire. I realized people come and they go, their priorities change. Maybe their tolerances change, I don't know. I became bitter, and then I became comfortable for the first time.

Then came The Relationship. Not only did I have someone in nearly every square inch of my life so to speak, but I felt needed, too. It wasn't just me. Then it wasn't even me...then it was what am I nuts? It was me too. Then it was just me. That place I hate to be in, I was in all over again and the deepest I've ever been. I thought I knew myself better than to end up there, especially with a romantic relationship. I thought I had a good enough read on people, I thought that maybe some more commitment was hiding around the corner - not a rejection. Not a dragging on. A year ago today was a sort of mile-marker in our relationship, for me anyway. I look back with fondness laced with confusion, seeing where we were and wondering how it got this far.

Throughout the last several months, I have seesawed as to what to do with this heavy love in me that had no home, no object. It has been a huge facet of my pain. Recently, as I sat with a friend who had a microscale-version of this experience and witnessed her heavy, saddened heart, I spoke words I needed myself: Love given matters just as much as love received and love reciprocated. As painful as it has been to love someone who is willfully not in my life, I believe it completely still matters. There is some great importance to loving when you expect nothing in return, and also great pain. We all experience rejection a time or two in our life, but I can say with certainty a general rejection holds far less weight than the very depth of love.

It teaches you about the value of loving. A painful way to learn, to be sure, important nonetheless. I can't say for certain because I'm not there [yet?], but I think the next time I have that kind of love I'll cherish it all the more. Until then, maybe I'll spend that love on those around me whom I'm not dating. Maybe all that heartache simply deepened the well from which I draw.

Fear of Being Known

Every once in a while I'll read back in my blog to see if there are trends I've been writing about recently or ones I haven't touched on in a while. Just today I noticed the presence of something threaded throughout my writing over time, a thing I've been toiling with lately. 

A goal I set out with in my writing is to engage what I consider to be a personal strength: vulnerability. As I've spent my entire life learning and yet striving to reject, vulnerability isn't just scary to engage in for yourself but it scares others to see you engage in it. So I have pushed back against the shame I've often received for my openness, because, as Brene Brown would agree, there is power sharing in my story. Even knowing and believing that to be utterly true, I struggle against shame and judgment for being willing to be open and raw with my story. 

That's the pattern I noticed throughout a handful of posts I read through, and oddly I'd been pondering the last couple days after receiving criticism yet again: I tend to feel pressure to apologize for my openness, as if it's something to be ashamed of. That simply isn't true. 

The truth is more likely that others feel a sense of fear and shame at their own stories; an inability to share openly themselves. I also realized that often the critics are the ones who allow few people to get close to them, are often unwilling to admit when they're wrong or they've messed up, and spend more time critiquing the lives of others than truly engaging in relationship with them. The irony is I find that expressing the sometimes gritty, ugly, or messy reality of my life levels the playing field and opens others up to trust me. And yes, there's a risk that vulnerability will only provide relief without reciprocation of trustworthiness - which again, ironically, is what critics are afraid of and yet perpetuate in doing just that! 

So, what have I been learning as I toil and wrestle through the shaming for being open and vulnerable and messy in a public space (which as a writer is an acceptable, even expected practice)? I do not have to internalize someone else's fear of vulnerability, or judgment of mine, as truth. Because the truth is I desire to be known; I don't fear it. My hope - and experience - is that being comfortable or brave in sharing honestly about my life will give others the courage to feel at home in their skin, if not to follow suit. Maybe if more of us would pursue honest tellings of our experiences, we could be more whole people; unafraid to be human and messy.

I've often said you can learn a lot about me from reading my blog. If you read this blog often or from time to time, thank you for taking in my stories and taking time to know me a little better.

Compassion is Key

I finally put my finger on something the day before the election: So much of whether I can respect someone rides on whether or not I see compassion as evident in their lives and values. And saying, "Well, of course I have compassion for [X], but..." doesn't count. 

I notice this especially being surrounded by so many Christians. I've struggled to articulate why this election and frankly our society in general is so disheartening, but it's because on every level I have seen a grave lack of compassion. That is honestly my biggest concern across party lines and up and down the age spectrum.

This past sunday, the speaker at my church (our new youth pastor) talked about when Jesus said we'd abide in his love if we keep his commands. The pastor noted that the greatest commands are to love the Lord and love your neighbor. I've been thinking, we have an incredibly cheapened idea of what it means to "love [our] neighbor". We have mouths constantly salivating at the chance to bite at someone with so-called truth. We are ever ready to self serve and preserve.

Anyway, the passage continues on with Jesus saying that we are to love each other as He has loved us. What's interesting and striking, and one of my favorite yet most challenging verses, is the verse that follows: "Greater love has no one than this: that one should lay one's life down for their friend." Beautiful...and convicting. Because isn't the point of my life that it's mine? And isn't it that I only get one chance to live it, so everything better look Pinterest perfect? And I certainly shouldn't have to work any harder or give anything up for someone else. I certainly shouldn't have to be gracious, or put someone else's needs before my own... But that's exactly what we're called to - nay, commanded to do. Sure, I think we're incapable of truly laying our lives down for a friend. But that's what Christ did in His death, out of love and we're called to emulate Him. As 1 John 3:16 tells us, "This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters." That is what Christ said is the second greatest command: love others [we share space and municipality and life with].

This week, love has been a challenge. But I think we need to continue to look at the example of Christ's life, because that love is transformative and leaves a wake of good. Jesus didn't love easy; going to the cross wasn't just for those that are easy to love and it wasn't an easy act. Mercy isn't just for those that were unfairly treated, but those who deserved what came down on Christ in their stead.

After the results came in, I was talking with two friends into the wee hours as we were in shock and awe. One painted a beautiful picture of how if Jesus will meet us in our iniquities with mercy, he will show the same to our enemies. In that we have hope, knowing that that mercy, his kindness leads us to repentance. No Facebook post will do what He will. So show up in love, live with compassion on the forefront.

And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
Micah 6:8

Struggling Through and Handling Pain

I feel like I don't even need to write the preface anymore, if you read this blog you already know, it's been a rough year, and spiritually a long confusing drought.

I've been frustrated and baffled to find how little help anyone actually has to offer when you're neck deep in pain and hopelessness. I'll readily admit, there are people who have had a worse year, or season, but for my life, this one has been a hard year. I'm one not usually averse to being open and vulnerable, but I have slowly found myself resistant to sharing with just anyone how this really feels.

The conversation will start with some apparent offensive honesty that I just don't feel that excited about God right now, or I'm wondering where He is, or that I just don't feel very loved by him right now. All too often this has been met with a but the glass is half-full yet sort of platitude. I started to justify the lack of feeling like anyone could meet me in this funk with sincerity by thinking, maybe I'm looking for answers in the wrong place. And maybe I am, but nonetheless it drew my attention to the fact that Christianity can leave a giant, gaping plot hole in the narrative of another. It is just plain useless to slap a happy-go-lucky "but God loves you" on someone when they feel trapped, alone, or abandoned.

We don't know what to do with pain. Plain and simple.

Pain and brokenness are difficult and gritty, and so many of us Christians don't know what to do when faced head on with the reality of another's pain. We want to cover it up with a disengaged sampling of possibilities, without acknowledging that the felt pain is legitimate. Dangerous words, believe me I know having grown up in a conservative home where the phrase "validating someone's feelings" was practically profanity.

I've never felt so overlooked as this year going through pain. I've never felt what it's like to struggle to believe what I did whole-heartedly before, and then be told I should have more quiet time. I've never had so many conversations about feeling frustrated and disoriented without an offer of prayer extended to me.

The other night, as I lay in my bed, crying, feeling utterly paralyzed at the amount of things I don't feel great or even good about in my life, I had one sad silver lining. For years now I've known the thing I want to pursue next in my life is practicing therapy. As I laid there and thought about how many unknowingly-lame responses I'd received to my pain, I thought that at the very least knowing dark times will make me better suited to sit with people in their pain; to acknowledge the very real weight of it in their lives.

Because the thing I've needed most is someone not to quickly silence me with their hope, but to hear the struggle I'm in and stand with me.

With some things more than others, it is an immense struggle to hope when you've been waiting a long while already. It's not helpful to be told there's another man out there for me, or that the lifting of my weird faith fog is just around the corner. It helps others feel better but I'm left with no hope and feeling as though the burden is too much for others to bear.

Now, it's true in part that I cannot seek for others to heal me, but in my frustration of loneliness, I realized I'm probably guilty of this very thing myself. And so as I take the challenge on myself to be aware of my responses to others' stories, I raise the challenge to whomever may read this. We must take care and be wise with our use of the hope we have. We must take care to bear with one another in burdens. We must take care to make time for the pain of the stories we ask to hear. 

The Truth About You

A conversation with a friend the other day stirred something that was latent in me, or dormant rather. I was giving this friend some compliments, explaining what I liked about him. He was perplexed at my mentioning areas that he felt insecure and thought he was lacking in. Frankly, it made him uncomfortable: "Weirds me out," he said. I explained that I get that a lot. I said we all have insecurities, and I like to combat that. "It's kind of my thing," I said.

Often our perceived flaws are all we see when we examine ourselves. Along with my slew of compliments, I told my friend that I try to only say what I mean. See, I want my word to be good, for those around me to know that while I may compliment easily, I say it because I want others to know themselves from a different vantage point. Looking in a mirror is only a replicated image of the real thing. When someone else knows your heart, studies your actions, hears you -- they notice what you only have time to fret about in your imagination. You only know how your body feels to move about in, how the words form in your mind, how your voice sounds from inside your own head. Others see you, understand you, and hear your words or song. They get to, that is.

People fascinate me. Granted, they also frustrate me, but...there are things I see in other people that amaze me, or give me joy or a warm feeling of pride in humanity. But those people likely don't see - let alone know it is in themselves.

I've learned through many hurts over the years, many poorly chosen words toward me and by me, that our words have immense power. People have written and spoken things to me, good and bad that will be, even if only in sentiment, etched in my mind forever. Power to tear down or build up...

"That's noble," my friend replied, maybe mockingly, who knows. The thing is I'm not passionate about it for the nobility, but for the psychology, for the nourishment of our souls. If I have the power to sow into another's life a truth of who they are, I can change the world.

Not just because it's the good thing to do, but because it's the powerful thing to do. And because it's the loving thing to do; speak the truth in love.

Stuck/Unstuck

It's approaching 8:30 on a Sunday night, and I've been trying to figure out what to do with myself and battling feeling emotional, for what reasons I don't even know.

I do know I feel stuck. I've felt stuck for a while in a few ways. I'm stuck on a relationship that just doesn't have any feasible way forward. I was stuck in a job that I saw nowhere to go - now I'm about to go somewhere but it's out the door. I'm stuck living at home, trying to make a dream happen that's derailed by said employment situation. I've felt stuck in my faith for a long time now, like trying to push a boulder when you're already exhausted kind of stuck. I'm more just sitting by the boulder, hoping it rolls for some reason. And not back on me.

Stuck.

I'm not much of an ambitious person, but I am pretty good at knowing if I set my mind to something I can accomplish it. Here and now, I feel all-around stuck. There are too many things to try to make happen at once, and they all affect one another, and the ones that affect me drain my motivation and confidence to pursue the others. Stuck and I can't even tip the first domino.

I'd felt fine about it all, until I realized I can't do nothing. I cannot just take another hit and not get back up...but I kind of want to lie on the mat for a while. Catch my breath. Unfortunately my life isn't a boxing metaphor and I don't really have that option. My sanity feels as though it depends on providence and my strength to keep fighting. And the faint flicker of hope that a day of feeling unstuck is on some future horizon of mine.

And maybe this is just today.

The Perspective of Pain

I wish I could say I saw it coming, but I didn't. That's about as much commentary as I'll lend to it...

I was told last week that due to budget cuts, my position will be dissolved. I was caught off guard, and yet I wasn't - because it's just been that kind of year. Everyone has such sincerity in their voice and their eyes when they ask how I'm doing. "Pretty okay, actually," I say.

This year started with ultimate heartbreak which brutally dragged itself, well and me, along. While viewed as a virtue, loyalty can be a fault. Call me crazy, (no one did, but they were thinking it,) I had a hard time letting go of the one I loved...still do. Anyway, I tell people: I already hit rock bottom this year. I hit it and sat down there for a bit. This -- it doesn't even surprise me, considering this year.

When you can look back at a string of months that you just didn't feel like yourself and during some of which you felt downright awful, a little baby curve ball can't really phase you. Heck, I have done this before. I thought back and there's all of two jobs on my resume list that I left by choice. Two. Out of nine. Layoffs. Dumb firings for accidents. Quitting then getting fired. Every time I've made ends meet, with pretty minimal favors and many dinners paid for by a few kind folks. I'm not at any risk of being homeless. The timing is pretty darn wretched, but it always shakes out.

I just have to overcome the overwhelming apathy toward the whole thing, and get myself through the next month between finishing out some time at the job where they've let me go, and trying to find whatever the next thing is.

This didn't break me, it didn't even make me cry. I guess the upside of surviving the worst pain of your life is perspective.

Our Nature to Struggle, Doubt, & Trust

**Disclaimer: This piece was written pre-deconstruction of religious beliefs and faith system. Many of these beliefs inform the sentiments of the writing and are not in alignment with my values. As this is a part of my journey and an extensive blog over years, I have chosen not to remove a majority of my posts written on faith. Please as a reader, take this into consideration and take what works for you, leave what does not. I also apologize for any harm my words from this past perspective may cause to any readers.**

Sometimes peace is a choice - a destination you set course toward. My therapist told me this week, "you were doing so good," as if to say "What happened?"

She told me I'd found the right things to put me on a good path before, and I just need to return to those things. I felt a little confused from an emotional mini-whirlwind the last week or so - what did I do before that to be on a good path, in a good place?

Today at church it hit me, or God did with the truth: I lost my footing in an instant. I think of when Peter is initially trusting Jesus, he successfully walks on water - for like a hot second. Then when he sees what's happening, he loses focus on the trust and starts to sink. See, I like Peter because God starts the church through him, but he's kind of a dink sometimes. A real putz. It just goes to show, you could have the real, in-the-flesh Jesus doing miracles and stuff in front of you, and still have the struggles. It's in our nature to doubt.

I didn't lose my footing from anything so impressive as walking on water, but it's been a long and tumultuous time of weirdness in my faith. And I realized just this week, I'm still having trouble feeling close to God not because He's far away, but because I went through so much pain that I don't understand and I don't know quite how to recover from. Sure, the appointment before last I went to my therapist and thought, I don't really need to be here, I'm pretty okay. I felt finally normal again.

The truth of it is, I am still struggling to trust God after I feel like He let me down. But He tells us in so many places - today in my heart - that we need to trust Him, not our own understanding.

However, I've found the church doesn't have much to offer people who are trying to trust God in the midst or the wake of great pain. Words don't really do much to that feeling in you that's pretty damn undeniable; kinda feels like, "my life hurts right now." You can't just throw a 'God loves you' at that, because those words only do so much against certain levels of pain. They're not unimportant, but they're not always helpful. There is something to be said for the steadiness of it, though. When you rejoice; set yourself back on the facts of God's loving-kindness and trustworthiness, even if that feels hollow.

So this morning as my heart swelled in worship, thinking of the places in the lives of my friends that I trust God to work, the weight of my own situation crept in. And in His gentleness, He didn't give me any answers, but He reminded me that I can only be satisfied in Him. He reminded me that I cannot be at peace without trusting in His loving-kindness - and that that is a choice. I can't make sense out of loving someone deeply and being parted from them for reasons that my big God should be able to handle, but I can move forward in trust. That trust may feel weak, and the peace may feel weary, but it's less weak and weary than waiting for answers without Him. Because I think that longing for God is in our nature, too.

A year ago today

I didn't know it at the time, but it was a year ago today that it all started to become confusing. I came back to a relationship believing God explicitly led me there, the possibility and purpose of which I no longer expect to ever understand. I think I've let go of that because there isn't the same pain to it. It's got the dulling ache of a once broken bone, or the tenderness of a scarred wound. I've now come to terms with the fact that I survived the feeling I was certain and fearful would break me. I don't love it, but it is a part of my story now: having loved deeply and lost painfully.

A year ago I wasn't thinking much about the risk of all the pain that inevitably made its temporary home in my life. I'd spent so long regretting taking that step back into the relationship, but I don't anymore. Cliche as it sounds, to love was worth it, the risk of my very life. I learned afresh that in my darkest valleys, still I am not alone. I learned that in my lowest weakness, there is a strength that endures which sustains me – it's my own.

Still I may - or likely will, in my humanness - forget such impacting lessons. Time will continue to press on, and things like anniversaries of dates will come to remind me, putting that weird little flutter of bittersweet remembrance in my heart. I'll otherwise remember today as the day I watched baseball with someone I loved.

Might

Occasionally you might cross paths with someone whom you can appreciate and whom you feel as though you know, because their heart has been broken and their life rifled through by pain. You might stop at that crossroads of your meeting and revel in the brief, sweet company of a fellow enduring soul. And Traveler, that might be it.

Stitch Me Up

I got what I need,
there's no reason for me to bleed,
so can you stitch me up please?
I'm tired of falling apart
- tired of feeling this aching heart
if only
there was a way
to rewind
and erase it all from my mind
so it'd stop replaying
and stop relaying
- bringing it back
and throwing me off track
when trying to move forward
without you
is enough
with our memories
thick about me
as the air I breathe
so much time spent wondering
only in reprieve
when you'll bid me
a farewell I can believe.

That Once Brewed Quietly

When you get to breathing easy and laughing again, life throws you another one...

It's been a difficult, strange year, and I can't help but think the me before all that's happened would've been more chipper and resilient, but at this point I'm just so tired. Tired of feeling second string, - or like having feelings is some horrendous burden to bear. I'd say "I'm sorry" for being a feeler, but I'm not and I don't know how to be any other way.

And I feel so far away from everyone. Another cyclical, seasonal thing I go through - in tandem, usually, with my spiritual deserts - whose repetition I can never seem to figure out. I find myself in that place with little hope that I'll ever stop having these seasons, knowing in part this round is due to re-entry to the single life. I don't have much hope for it to feel different, the only hope I do have is that God will grow something in me through it. That maybe somehow in being parched for the very thing I crave and need most, I will find that quenched in Him, even though it doesn't feel like it right now.

I naively felt as though I already knew my low seasons in life many years ago. I don't say naively because they weren't low, but because I believed probably out of self-preservation that more would not come; I'd hit the quota. Somehow in that I felt brave, to endure and be strong. However, this year has broken many of my constructs about what I can endure, and what I want, and even what I already have. It has near evaporated the hope that once brewed quietly, a slow-rolling boil.

So as I have finally picked myself up and dusted myself off, I am tired, and faint, and lonely, with only the hope that my Refuge will come to me, lift me from my weariness, and set things right. Even though the hope is weary. 

Slack: Never So Steady

**Disclaimer: This piece was written pre-deconstruction of religious beliefs and faith system. Many of these beliefs inform the sentiments of the writing and are not in alignment with my values. As this is a part of my journey and an extensive blog over years, I have chosen not to remove a majority of my posts written on faith. Please as a reader, take this into consideration and take what works for you, leave what does not. I also apologize for any harm my words from this past perspective may cause to any readers.**

I have books piling on the empty side of my full-sized bed. Most of them books about feelings stuff and relationships, one about overcoming, two journals, and several folded bulletins covered in sermon notes (the ones with an asterisk are things my pastor said that particularly struck me). And my bible, the small one that I bought to take with me on my six-month mission trip five years ago.

Five years ago this summer, I was on a mission trip having the time of my life, dodging cockroaches and motorbikes like a native, and feeling like God was in everything, great and small. I actually woke up early to read my bible in the morning - me! I was fearless and I was on fire. Eleven years ago this summer, I was on a mission trip in Appalachia when I "came to Jesus", as they say. A year ago this summer, I was nervously choking out the words "I love you" to a man.

Seasons roll over us recklessly like waves do in the ocean, complete disregard for you in their path. Here I am in the path as the waves roll over me. I don't really know what this season is, - maybe low tide? Instead of relishing in God's goodness to me, or seeing it all over the world, my heart is weary, and I feel like I see Him almost nowhere. It's strange because I haven't stopped believing what I do, but it just doesn't feel very impacting against the raging world, and the pain in my own heart and my own back yard. It feels like God is being quiet. And that doesn't make me much want to pick up the bible next to me in my bed.

Very in line with the metaphor, I have found that seasons like this in my life ebb and flow, although it feels one was never so steady as this. A thing happens with tides between the high and the low, the current has to slow to change directions (forgive me if I butchered it, I'm not sciency, I'm feely). This is a period called slack water, when it is calm and quiet. I can't say I'm in the calm and quiet of life, but certainly a calm and quiet of my faith. My hope is that this is something like the changing of the tides, this quietness.

A favorite author, speaker, thinker, teacher of mine, Graham Cooke talks about how we have seasons of manifestation and conversely, hiddenness. Times when we feel like we are running hand-in-hand with God and seeing His glory in the land of the living, and then there's times when we feel like we don't know where God went but He sure isn't with us. Cooke says that's when God is growing things in you and moving unbeknownst to you. That has been my little seed of hope that even though things feel completely stagnant, God is at work.

And surely He must be; surely the tides must soon turn. I guess that's one thing an ebb and flow ensures: one must always be followed by the other.

Crash

One weak, coaxed sentence,
two words
ones I
told you
to tell me
- wanted you to sell me,
but you lacked in presence
then pleaded your innocence
never pulling up
seemingly embracing
the crash and burn.

The Overshare of Vulnerability

I recently tearfully (and a little snottily) finished Donald Miller's book Scary Close. In it, he effortlessly chronicles his journey of coming to grips with the fact that he was often being fake and that it had an effect on his relationships, to sum it up in a less moving and insightful way than his pages do. Miller is a writer I greatly admire, in part for a reason he himself notes in that book: he's good at being vulnerable. The way he described it, I could relate. I won't claim to be as eloquent or talented a writer, but I get the vulnerability thing.

Sometimes I make people uncomfortable, - well, okay, I think often times - with my vulnerability. However I've noticed something that matters to me far more than the comfort of those it bothers, it helps the walls between the others of us come down. It's exactly what Miller's book is about, too. I cried through the entire last quarter of the book because he precisely hits the mark. We need vulnerability to have deep relationships, and we need it to get through the walls to have those deep relationships.

Sure, vulnerability is scary; it involves risk, but somehow we've built our social understanding of vulnerability to equate weakness. Another writer I'm learning to love is Brene Brown, a social worker and doctor of psychology who has long studied the interactions of people. She has written entire books on the power of vulnerability and owning your story. As I've been slowly reading her latest, Rising Strong, I'm also often crying or shouting a resounding "yes" of agreement to the proverbial heavens, hoping somehow wherever she is she'll know I needed this validation.

See, I'm naturally a pretty soft, squishy "feelings person" - as I like to say, - always have been. Growing up as a youngest child my siblings didn't get it, so I was often criticized and teased for being "overly sensitive." Maybe rightfully so, I'll never know, but either way their callousness helped thicken my skin a lot. Thank God, too, because people are mean; bosses are mean, middle-school girls are mean, ex-best friends are mean, customers at a coffee shop are mean! So over the years I learned to toughen up and not let it eat away at me, while at the core there's still that sensitive little girl who doesn't want to suffer at the carelessness of others.

Fast forward and, for most of my adult life, that has translated to being unapologetically me: openly sensitive and yet not a punching bag. I'll be honest, I'm still learning but much of that resulted in being a fiery defender of the underdog or raging against inconsiderate injustices (that would've been a mouthful of a band name). I'm passionate. And while I know I have to rein that in sometimes, I'm still not ashamed of it. I'm also not ashamed to be truthful. I place a high value on truth and honesty, partially because I've started to see through people and through the meanness - I don't mean that judgmentally. It seems everyone has a scared being inside them that they want to hide from the world. The sad thing about that is, it's usually the part of them with the most to offer. How can you be your best self if you don't even allow the world to see your true self? This is now what I get criticized for: being too open. Because I'm not afraid to share much, I obviously am sharing too much. This is of course usually decided by those who don't like risking an ounce in vulnerability their self.

I have been going through a shitstorm (sorry if that word bothers you, it's about the only word that seems sufficient) in the past few months - and guess why: I was vulnerable and it hurt, big time. There's no way to say it without sounding mushy or sappy, but I loved and it failed me. Without even fully realizing it, while holding back on admitting it - thinking that'd actually protect me - I put my heart all in and lost out.

I took some time and thought about it. It was a slow start, but I wasn't about to hide my pain from the world as if there were shame to loving deeply and with great hope. I had no idea how I could possibly maintain a semi-normal life and wade through the grief I felt. I also knew that there is power in vulnerability; power in stating that life is sometimes downright painful and ugly, and it can be hard to get out of bed, simply because you risked and lost, and the disappointment is a heavy load. That should be incredibly relate-able, but we shame vulnerability. Still, my goal was to be real, as it always has been.

I wanted to share my story, because I thought even though some may judge my honesty and openness, maybe even look down on me for it assuming a lack of self-control - I thought some people may need this. Some of us need to know we aren't the only person in the world who has had the days where it's difficult to get out of bed. You aren't the only one that's scared to try to love again, want to love again. You aren't the only one crying in the bathroom at work and avoiding eye-contact with passersby on return.

Turns out I was right, at least a few times. I had people thank me for being brave, because they felt shamed when they had pain and they felt alone because of it. I can't help but think how much we could change the game if we were just honest, not brutally so, but truthfully - if we were real with one another. What if we stopped being so concerned someone would think less of us because we're human and it hurts to be sometimes? Maybe through all of these gushing words over these weeks and months I have only helped a few people wipe clear the shame of their pain; maybe only a few people learned something about how to address someone in pain, but I think that's worth it.

My good friend said to me just recently, Vulnerability begets vulnerability. She's incredibly right. I've seen that when I am real about my struggles, others breathe easily around me, and in their exhales share their struggles in return. And when I encounter someone who is open to a fault, I feel more comfortable with them than all the perfect instagram friends I know.

So I won't apologize for being vulnerable, or "too open", if you want to call it that. I won't stop, either. Facing a fear could be viewed as reckless, or it could be touted as courageous, so I'm going to keep pushing to change the landscape, even if only around me by starting with my own open book.

Shapeshifter

I feel like what we were is morphing in memory, a shape shifter; sometimes something beautiful, sometimes something maddening. And my heart strings are woven through that object, slowly wearing down as it changes and moves and alters. Was it always this way? Maybe it was, and it was always fated to fray the strings and, eventually, inevitably disintegrate - though that part is yet to be proven. That is just my pessimistic prediction, as I emerge from the Dark, Dark Place, a little jaded.

Home

The thing is, I never wanted to be in love more than once. I'd never wanted to want to marry more than one person. I've always known that if I make that decision, it will be it. I went into it, not thinking it'd be it, but searching out if it could be. In all the textbook ways (and I mean, really trained not stereotypical, romanticized ways) it relationally had what it takes [to go the distance, as they say]. Neither of us are perfect, of course, - I've never heard of such a couple - but together it was good. I couldn't have imagined getting along with a guy I was dating so well (mostly because everyone says what hard work it is), but so it was. It didn't take long for being with him to feel comfortable and safe and warm, like home. So I struggle to let go of wanting to go home - to think about making home somewhere else.

Maybe it just takes time. It has, after all, healed me of my Dark, Dark Place and is healing me of my weakness and insecurities. Maybe time, too, will smooth over my longing for things to just return to comfort and ease.

In one of my favorite films, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, there's a clinic for ex-lovers to erase one another from memory. Only hangup is Joel grapples with the decision to remove Clementine while the process is taking place. Similarly, I'm not convinced I want time to heal me of missing "home". I grapple with feeling as though really, I can't imagine finding someone I feel that way with; have that connection with. And yet, several big things in my life would drastically change to be with him. So I am, within myself, at a stand still. A stalemate, if you will, of the head and the heart. I just want to be home, but I'm not sure it can be my home anymore. Saving grace is that the pain of having settled into it as such, as home, has decreased and is decreasing. Yet, the desire to go there remains.

If I'm honest, a part of me is confused: should you be able to want to make more than one person in life your person? You've certainly heard the saying, "The heart wants what it wants." Well, I wonder, if my heart ever wants anyone else again, could it even be true? So it must be, that lifelong commitment is not simply a matter of the heart, but a decision; to dive in together, for life, in love. But I fear if I love another, it won't make this love any less a part of my life, rather it will just be a different choice. I never wanted that, to go the opposite direction my heart was.

I've been reading Donald Miller's Scary Close, and in it he says:

To hear her voice and smell her hair and remember half the feeling of home is usually a person.

You know, in the end of the movie (spoiler alert), Clem & Joel meet again after they've mutually erased one another. They're drawn to each other again, and with the fear that history will simply repeat staring them in the face, they stare back and decidedly say, "Okay."

I quietly wonder, what will we say?

Going It Alone & Being Okay

I thought I would write more. Turns out, vacation has been busy! I sit on the rooftop of my crappy but affordable hostel, drinking very cheap wine from a small bottle and eating very cheap chocolate from the grocery store. That's how I do.

I'm wiped, and shush, don't tell anyone, I could've gone home yesterday. But let's start with the good part, since today I happen to be particularly wiped and cranky that I felt to ill to truly enjoy The Vatican I spent €20 to visit.

GETTING HERE
I started my trip by flying through New York. I ventured out of the airport like a big girl and made my way to Manhattan to visit my friend and sort-of-coworker Debbie. She kindly made me lunch, and we caught up and took a brief walk in a sunny and vibrant central park.

After, I hurried back to the airport, bragging on social media about figuring out the formerly intimidating subway, only to get lost. On the right train, I ended up chatting with a black man I observed as he chatted with nearly everyone in small bits. He had construction gear with him, and though he looked tough, he emitted an evident kindness. He ended up sitting next to me once enough people cleared out there wasn't someone else to relinquish the seat to. Somehow, I don't recall, we ended up talking. He asked where I was going and where I was from, with my obvious traveler look, backpack in tow. When I told him Minneapolis, MN, he said something about back country and farms. "Y'all tipping cows and stuff, huh?" "No," I think I belly-laughed, "it's a city, like a real city. I've never tipped a cow in my life, I don't know if I've ever seen one [up close]." He told me I was brave traveling all over Europe by myself. He had a new tattoo which I noticed, and shared with him my best healing advice don't bother with A&D, it heals way faster. By the end of the ride, it was like we were friends.

THE DARK DARK PLACE
Between that and finding my way in and back out of the city that day, with plenty of time to spare before my flight, I began to realize further the importance of this trip: being okay with being just me, by myself.

As an adult, that's been one of my strengths, - literally in strengths finder, "adaptibility" is one of mine - figuring things out on my own. The strange ying to that yang is I don't prefer being alone (as you may have read I wrote a great deal about recently). In the very weird space I've been in since the end of January which signified the end of my relationship, I now refer to it as 'the dark, dark place', I slunk into desperately needing people, but not trusting almost anyone with the truths of my heart. No one seemed to value or understand The Dark, Dark Place.

In that place, I felt as though I fell back into insecurity that I hadn't felt in such a long time. At some point, I'd grown into a lot of confidence which caved under me with massive heartbreak. People seem to make all heartbreak out to be massive, but I'm not convinced it is so. For me, a formerly resilient and confident woman, I felt myself cowering at situations I once would not have blinked at. I felt scared at feeling scared, - would I return to myself? And in how long?

I kept thinking I finally had been back to normal, then I'd find myself crying again, or avoiding something I used to find adventure in. I continued to wonder, when would I shed this new awful skin? It actually changed right before I left - well, in part...

I started to be able to hope again in tiny, microscopic bits and I felt joy coming naturally again. I felt like joy just wouldn't come for so long, and that scared me - because it's not who I am. Joy has always been a constant fruit in my life. I noticed these two things, joy in laughter and company. Hope in that I met someone who I was attracted to! Even if the smallest bit and someone I now know is unavailable, I found a man interesting.

I also returned to prayer the last Sunday before my trip. I have prayed a few other times, but I felt ready and faith-filled. Oddly enough, a guy came up to me who was going through a very tough breakup. He needed to talk it out, I could tell because he just poured out his heart. I nodded and listened, eventually telling him just how much I understood. To me, that was God at work. Because I know how much it further hurts or does nothing at all for your pain when someone cannot empathize with depth of it.

THE TRIP
I connected through Brussels, and thought with a six hour layover I ought to see the city. It was dead on a Saturday morning at 8am. I wandered and ate a waffle, eventually had a beer. Then hurried my butt back to the airport.

I stayed one night in Crete's capital city, Heraklion. It was narrow and uncomfortably crowded with beautiful teenagers. I'd initially forgotten it was Saturday night. The next morning, I walked to the ferry. I met a girl along the way, from BC, Canada. A waif, she seemed nervous and shy, but as we got to talking she was well-traveled and probably about 30. We were seated separately. My seat-mate was a 50-something greek woman named Lida. She just happened to speak great English and be a pediatric neurologist. No big deal. She was so kind, I wanted to keep taking to her, but I arrived.

Santorini was the perfect way to start the vacation: island life. It is charming, laid-back, and picturesque. This was a big bucketlist item, I'd always secretly wanted to honeymoon there. I could've spent a week, but I planned three days. The port is of course way down the cliff from the town up top. The bus wove around the hairpin turns, cliff drop right out the window. I hated that part and was happy to be flying out later.

I burned myself badly spending over six hours at the beach the first full day with two girls, one of whom was in my room at the hostel. We talked about all sorts of things, and I explained my breakup in the most calm fashion I maybe ever had - crying later of course. The girls were to leave the next day.

That morning, we went to get greek donuts together, and I saw my new friends Sophia and Lina to the bus with parting hugs. I love when people are easy company like that. I decided late in the day to rent an ATV, since I couldn't go to the beach burnt and honestly there's not a ton to do there otherwise. This is my least favorite part of Santorini. Within the first 5 minutes of curving roads full of buses and cars impatiently passing me, I almost get in an accident that surely would've landed me in a hospital. As I was careening into the path of an oncoming car, I actually thought "I'm going to a hospital in Greece and I declined insurance. My mom is going to be pissed." I lived, no accident. But shaken and with 5 more hours booked, I took a breather and pressed on, muttering "I hate this," on every winding turn. Soon as I could, I stopped - conveniently at the famous winery. It is like something out of a movie. If Jennifer Anniston ever stars in couple's retreat comedy on Santorini, that's where they'd go. I met a nice woman, also alone, named Kim. She offered to take my photo as I was taking one of the view and my wine glass, probably looking somewhat pathetic. Then after a while she offered me some of her cheese in exchange for company. Me with my splurge of €3 glass, I said sure. We talked about travel, about Santorini, and I told her about the ATV. She told me I was brave, she could never do it. I repeated that I didn't like it, she repeated that I was brave.

ATHENS
Athens felt very different, for obvious reasons. When I came up out of the metro, I was initially stunned by the busyness of the square near my hostel. I was exhausted and just wanted to check in. I wandered a while, found my cheap gyro for lunch and eyeballed all the tourist shops. I walked everywhere in Athens. EVERYwhere. It was a very walk-able city and I picked the right hostel. I saw all the sights to see there, I walked my butt up the acropolis - puffing my inhaler like a nerdy 6th grade boy. I couldn't believe I was really there, amid ancient structures that have long outlived their builders. My hostel there had a bar on the roof. One night I decided to check it out, but encountered so few people that spoke English that I bright brought a book. Me. Something I noticed, it's apparently quite strange to dine alone. The first few times I felt a little embarrassed, but I told myself this is a part of ripping off the bandaid - or my healing, rather. Sitting in the discomfort of being alone, and finding out how to be okay with it. So, the last night, I took my book again and enjoyed my cheap wine alone in the crowded, bustling bar.

ROME
At this point, I was quite tired. I'd had noisy roommates at all the hostels. Some people apparently have no remorse for the fact that others are sleeping while they slam doors and talk like it's not 2am. I was ready for my nice, splurge hostel. I'd waited to book, so I had to spend a little more but it looked fancy. Pictures can lie. Sure they have some nice rooms, and they have some that look like rows of beds in an orphanage in the 30's. That's my room, four beds. The bathrooms are worse than any I've ever consistently used - and I traveled through Vietnam for nearly three months and grew up with eight people sharing one bathroom. This. Is. Gross. It's happening, so whatever.

I was more excited for the sights here than Athens, but heard so many pick-pocket horrors, I was sure it was going to happen. I pictured everywhere teeming with shady looking people, that I wouldn't know who to trust. To my surprise, everyone holds their bag and the streets aren't overrun with thieves.

My first night I treated myself to a sitdown dinner. The restaurant down the street had affordable pizza. The waiter was nice. Turns out the waiter really wanted to have a drink with me. I tried to decline, but that good old language barrier... Eventually these two middle-aged ladies sat at the table next to me. As I heard them chatting about their walk, I could bet my left cheek the one was from Colorado. I know my home away from home. They watched the waiter dote on me, and I figured we were going to talk. Eventually we did, and I was right! Butt cheek saved. Again, I explained that I was in fact traveling alone. You should've seen the look on the Coloradoan's face, "Oh wow. Good for you!" They asked how it was, and when I stupidly didn't have enough for my bill, the other gave me €2 to round it off. Then the waiter brought me an after-dinner drink trying to convince me at 9:30pm to stretch out my evening til he was off so I could come over for a drink. He couldn't understand why I'd turn down his repeated offers. I jokingly asked the women how to leave, my CO friend said "Did you pay? Get out while you can!" I grabbed my things and practically jogged down to my hostel.

I've spent the last two days walking a different way so as to not cross his path again.

Today was the Vatican, and things didn't start out great. I slept horribly because a group of people were partying and arguing at 4AM across from our open window. You know, no AC in this charming place. Then, the metro was closed across Rome and all the cop could tell me was "trouble" and "no work". The Vatican is an hour walk, and it's period day one (surprise!), so that was not happening. I waited nearly an hour in a crowd for a bus. Everyone crammed on like it was India. A nice half hour or so later, I knew I was close enough, so I hopped off.

I wearily wandered the Vatican, hot, irritable, and in pain. Several times I thought to myself "Don't puke in the Vatican, you cannot puke in the Vatican!" Certain I might pass out if I pressed on, I found my way to the metro, wishful it was back up. Saving grace, it was. My afternoon since consisted of a nice siesta nap, some budgeting for the remainder of my travels, and a grocery trip. I don't mind Rome, but I think I'd like to visit again when I'm not a broke nonprofit writer. Stay somewhere nice, not get my period, and drink way more wine.

Tomorrow, I'll hopefully make up for today's defeat by climbing the dome of St Peter's basilica and if there's time visit the Pantheon.

SURVIVAL
I realized this trip is about being thrust into standing on my own two feet again. Not because I didn't in my relationship, just that it's demise caused me to forget how. I kept expecting something grand to happen, and I'm not sure anything more grand will than the trip itself and the small victory that is taking it alone.

I'm very ready for Paris, a reunion after almost five years. My heart has longed to return and though it won't be the same without the others who helped make it the experience of a lifetime, it will be like seeing an old, familiar and beloved friend.

...But are we sinners?

**Disclaimer: This piece was written pre-deconstruction of religious beliefs and faith system. Many of these beliefs inform the sentiments of the writing and are not in alignment with my values. As this is a part of my journey and an extensive blog over years, I have chosen not to remove a majority of my posts written on faith. Please as a reader, take this into consideration and take what works for you, leave what does not. I also apologize for any harm my words from this past perspective may cause to any readers.**

"But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:8

The Greek word "yet", or in more translations "still", has a meaning that implies it was a state that is no more. The interesting thing in this verse then, is that the implication of Paul's words is that we were sinners, but are no more. The language of this verse, as well as the context tells us Paul did not presently buy into the identity of "sinner" for himself or other believers. 

Even in Romans 7:24-25, Paul says that God "delivers" him - present tense. In the midst of the struggle within himself as to what he will or will not do, God delivers him through Christ. He even concludes at the end of verse 25, that he has a dual servitude: in his mind to God's law, in his nature (or flesh) the law of sin. 

One could rightly conclude, though my nature without Christ is to serve solely sin, in duality as a baptized believer, I am presently also in service of God's law. I think too often total depravity would say we are useless, worthless, incompetent...but that seems to discount that God delivers us - present tense! That Romans 7:25 is followed by one of likely the most well-known verses and truths of the bible - "There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ, because through Him the law of the Spirit who gives life has set us free from the law of sin and death."

I don't know just how or why that verse tends to get lost, ignored, or downplayed. Nor the one to follow (8:3) where it says the law was weakened by the flesh! God's law was weakened by our flesh warring against our desire to serve [the law] as our master instead of our sin nature. So, God had an alternative plan for handling sin, one that was equally just and merciful. Why do we insist on preaching God's justice but not living in His mercy? Why do we insist to land on one verse of Paul's letters and build an entire component of theology around it, placing ourselves continually under the burden of sin? Again, further in Romans 8 at verse 5, it says that those who live in accord with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. If we have our minds set on our sin nature, do we not hold ourselves to the fire in spite of the Word telling us we're already refined? Does not the insistence that we are worthless diminish what Romans later tells us, that though our body is subject to death, the Spirit gives life because of the righteousness of Christ in us? 

I tend to get a little perturbed when I hear people say they're sinners, clenching to that name for themselves, because I believe they're holding themselves in the mindset of the flesh, not fully walking in the freedom from the law of sin and death! Nothing about reading Romans gives me the impression that is strictly limited to the life after this one. I therefore refuse to refer to myself as a sinner...

Does my nature try to tempt me away from God? Yes. Shall I go on sinning so that grace may abound? Certainly not. Did I deserve Christ's death? It depends on which way you're asking - I deserved the punishment He took in my stead, but I did not deserve that He should take my place, yet I was worth it to Him. In fact, it was an act of love (as 5:8 tells us), that while I was undeserving He took the place which was rightfully mine. It was love, not law for which Christ took the cross. The law could remain in tact and thus we could perish, but He wouldn't have it, instead showing us love by His sacrifice to meet the law's wrath for our iniquities. The act is done. 

The place that was ours was taken by Jesus so that God could demonstrate His love for us and reconcile us who were sinful to Him through love, into righteousness. 

"The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs — heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory." (Romans 8:15) 

I Am the Sky

I'm apparently convincing more and more people, by no intention, that I'm an introvert... I've tried to stop being indignant when I hear someone matter-of-factly refer to me as such. I'm not anti-introvert, some of my favorite people are introverted, but it's more that it's not totally true of me.

Something I've learned is that I need to think things through and make sense out of them for myself. Some things take more of this processing than others, and then some may require no thought at all -- if I say "I've never thought about it," I'm likely just being honest. I process a lot, not just often but on repeat. Yes, sometimes it's overthought, but mostly it's just processing. The chaos, busyness, and noise of life can become overwhelming, and are at times cause for great adventure, others cause for retreat. Whether experiences, plans, goals, or tasks, I need to settle into what I think or feel about things, to be comfortable and confident in navigating life. That may be a very internal thing, but I have never fully lived in my inner world.

In the last year I've gone on an arduous journey; falling in love, fighting for it, then being separated from whom I shared that love with. Which, all in a year, I can hardly believe!

Love grew quickly, which I think we couldn't help. It was natural and we were easy companions. My family wasn't really in favor - well they were, then they weren't...some maybe were again, I don't know. See they had a lot of thoughts and assumptions - many of which they didn't share with me (which of course still got back to me anyway, as news travels in large families). Then there was the distance which prevented my friends from really getting to know him, or his getting to know me. They knew only of the plights of the relationship, shared to solicit their insights. No one could know how we felt about each other, how easy it was to trust one another with our stories, how close we felt.

Through this I began to find that the safest, most familiar place in my outer world was him. He was the person who noticed if he didn't hear from me for a few hours. He was the person interested in my every stupid thought, or passing whim. He was the person who called because I sounded sad over text. He was the person that put up with all my quirks and frustrating habits, rather patiently. He was the person who never grew tired of me.

The older we get, the harder it is to have deep friendships. I began to notice this a while ago, but managed to be okay with my extroverted world full of a-little-more-than surface level friends. I know plenty of people who have a feel for me, yet know so little about the depths and lengths of who I am. Then we happened. I had a best friend that was as into the friendship as I was, a love, the only discord being our distance-separated worlds. My world became phone calls and texts, time between weekend visits, and thinking about how to defend my most important relationship to all the other important relationships. I often thought about how it was like being forced into a corner where I was virtually alone.

Fast forward to this relationship ending, against my hopes and heart. Now, my world is vastly different than it was little over a year ago when this all started, my outlook is different. There are a lot of relationships I haven't invested in in a while - a lot that haven't invested in me in a while. Most of all, with hands full of heart pieces, I don't feel like letting just anyone in to my world right now.

Society is full of people with quick tongues - heck, I'm sometimes guilty of that! (But I'm learning.) Right now, I often live in my inner world, and have been for a while, as I've trekked this path. Many people who've been unfortunate as to only really get to know "me" on this leg of the path have seen me in atypical form. I may very well appear to be an introvert, when it's actually that I've found a lot of pain which has sent me inward. And I ran out of grace for people taking the opportunity to express opinions such as I was settling anyway, or good for me, or there's someone else "better". So not only did I lose my best friend, but a lot of trust elsewhere was damaged. I had been very vulnerable, and so became very hurt, but only because I loved very deeply. For all that pain, I still hold that that was a worthwhile journey, to love and be loved deeply...so when I'm told some sort of 'attaboy' or 'good riddance', it only hurts and causes me to linger in my world.

After so many times hearing it said with the same sureness one would use in naming the color of the sky, I'd begun to wondering if I was now an introvert. But that's something I've learned this year, when there is no safe place to process verbally, I retreat inward. With that and the slow rebuilding from my brokenness, I have certainly been more in my inner world this year than any other time in my life.

I could understand how in a dust storm so many would think the sky is a muddied gray, but in fact when the dust settles they will find that it is a rich, bright and deep blue.

Haunting

The other day, my friend tried to set me up with a guy. Sort of. He showed up to lunch with us wearing my favorite shirt of Shawn's. Not just any old Target shirt, or something - a very specific t-shirt-sleeved button down with tiny beige flowers all over and those pearl-like buttons.

The next day, Facebook drew my attention to a memory; a picture of the ex, his ex, and me, all in an awkward row at thanksgiving nine years before present. Another of my mom holding their daughter as a baby, seven years back. Spooky.

I felt proud to go a few measly hours without thinking of him, and without feeling like something's missing. Usually like two or three is something to be proud of. I headed home tonight and thought about this being the life I live - 10 minutes to home from my favorite dive bar, out seeing some cute guy play in a band, then going home at nearly midnight, a little buzz on a 'school night'. All the while knowing, he is fast asleep hundreds of miles from reach. No buzz, no band, likely no thoughts of me, and for more than a few hours...

Often, I miss his head - of all things! I see pictures of him or us, and I just want to wrap my arms around his head, hold it to my chest, tousle his soft, yet wiry locks. And I miss his nose. Sometimes I'd run my index finger down its bridge, starting between his bushy brows and skipping off its end like a ski slope, landing on his top, then bottom lip. He'd just let me, not even a question asked.

I miss his smile. Though I didn't see it in all its unbridled glory too many times, when I did, it lit my heart on fire. His laugh! Oh, his laugh...

I miss his gaze. The one where I knew he was absolutely vexed by me, in that moment. It was accompanied by a soft smirk of astonishment. I'd kiss the apple of his cheek, just above the treeline that was his beard. It always seemed like the best place, wanton.

And I circle round and round, why it is no more. Why such torture and longing...why such deep fancy, mutually displaced by differing convictions.

And, of this, I'd tell him: "I guess this is what you get, for dating a writer."

Dating is a Sh-t Show

It is. (And hey, I got you reading, didn't I?) And I think I might be bitter...

I went all these years without dating anyone, and then when I did it was awesome, but it couldn't last. And everyone's response is all about how there's something better out there for me, or I shouldn't "settle". I guess I didn't know I was...settling. I never thought he was somehow less than deserving of my time - actually, I thought he was immensely worth my time, so I spent a lot of it with him.

It's so damn complicated. I managed to fall in love with somebody that I never got tired of being with; could talk to about anything; was up for almost any random thing that came into my head; could cook; that I found really attractive -- and it was mutual; was honest; we communicated easily. We kind of couldn't get enough of each other. Maybe that's naive and not enough, but that is what I'd always wanted in a relationship, a best friend that I'd never grow tired of.

But as if it's not hard enough to find a guy who (all personal preference here) doesn't waste his spare time on video games, isn't obsessed with football, is a self-sufficient adult, serves others well, showers regularly, knows how to cook real meals, doesn't have basic white bro taste in music, has an idea of what he wants to do in life, is respectful, is self-aware, and is passionate about his faith -- that's not hard enough, I've gotta find that guy that also shares the same understanding and passion that I do about what exactly that faith looks like.

Right. Okay...go?

I write this pithy and honest, but I also feel strangely on the brink of tears in a coffee shop. Maybe because it's too soon. Maybe because there's an early-aughts playlist of peppy songs by emo punk bands about the one that got away loudly interrupting my every thought. Maybe this is my stage of bitterness because I don't understand it yet and I'm not all that convinced that it would've been settling. In fact, I'm more concerned that anything else in the future will feel like settling (words I do and don't hope I regret writing).

So it is with nearly complete apathy that I've begun to notice guys again. I've begun the search again. When just over a year ago I was a-okay being single old me, now I feel out of place in everything, my confidence is apparently on sabbatical, and I'm painfully doubtful I'll ever find something I like as much as what I had.

There is no neat and tidy cute way to wrap this up, which is the exact point. There is no telling that it's for the better, or someone else is out there, or whatever platitude. Dating kind of sucks, and when you're not in it, its pains are easily forgotten.

Present, All-Sufficient, & Abundant

**Disclaimer: This piece was written pre-deconstruction of religious beliefs and faith system. Many of these beliefs inform the sentiments of the writing and are not in alignment with my values. As this is a part of my journey and an extensive blog over years, I have chosen not to remove a majority of my posts written on faith. Please as a reader, take this into consideration and take what works for you, leave what does not. I also apologize for any harm my words from this past perspective may cause to any readers.**

He just indignantly kept saying he had all he needed. And I think maybe that is true for him right now. Maybe right now, there is enough. But sometimes, there comes a time when there isn't enough; when it doesn't feel like it and the simple knowledge that there is doesn't make the doubt of that truth disappear. 

Sometimes our feeble, fickle hearts need more to not grow weary, laying down and giving up the fight. I've felt like that; I'm an emotional person and, I daresay, I need God to be Lord over my emotions and to interact in them. They don't just go away nor can I simply discount them, but as real as they are to me, I know there is another reality that they don't always pick up on. 

I've spent months of my life trying to explain to my best friend what it means to be spiritually engaged in faith - not in any romantic sense, not with another, but within yourself. And my spirit can be swayed by both my heart and mind. Even with a mind full of truth, my heart is still capable of discouragement that can be paralyzing, it's still capable of doubt that can breed discouragement, it's still capable of self-preservation which shuts out others for my own sake. I need God to interact with that place in me because in my life it is a motivator, whether at times good or bad, true or deceiving. 

I can't escape the thought that that's written into His very story. He came that we would have life abundantly, through His death and resurrection to life [everlasting]! And that moves me, at times motivates me, and settles my heart into peace. I don't always know peace with a close familiarity, I am human after all. Especially right now, I can't say I know a comforting peace. My heart is anxious and low, doubtful and discouraged, and I'm having trouble reconciling my circumstances to His truth. The beauty is: in that wreckage is the perfect place for my great and mighty Yaweh to come and dwell. The bible says He is near to the brokenhearted. 

A part of me has quietly wondered if that was the purpose of it all, in my life, that God would have a place to be nearer to me than there's recently been space for Him to be. I say 'quietly wondered', because I don't like to believe that God causes pain in our lives. Plain and simple, that's not a pillar of my beliefs about Him. I think evil is rampant in this world, and I long for God to pull me from every pit I may stumble or be pushed into, because He is the All-Sufficient, Almighty One who never leaves me; because that is the Truth.

In Hebrews 11, it says that Abraham placed the very conduit through which he was expectant to receive God's promise to him on the altar, because "he reasoned" that God could raise the dead. And in Romans Paul tells that even before the promised son existed, Abraham believed - against all hope - and that that faith was credited to him as righteousness:

"Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, 'So shall your offspring be.' Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised. This is why 'it was credited to him as righteousness.' The words 'it was credited to him' were written not for him alone, but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness—for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead." (Romans 4:18-24, NIV)

Abraham believed against all hope that God had power to do what He promised.

I was flabbergasted and tearful when I read up on the use of the word "LORD" (in the NIV) and stumbled on an explanation of "Lord Almighty" as well. The latter is where the name 'El Shaddai' would be used. It held the meaning of an all-powerful, all-sufficient God, one who is all-bountiful and sustains. Whereas, LORD, spelled out in capitals, was to avoid the use of 'YWH' which stood for Yaweh. That name was the one God gave of Himself and it meant, "I am that I am" or simply as we sometimes say, "I am". I read that it connoted a present God. Those two things astonished me. God is not only present and is, but is all-sufficient and all-powerful. That is my God.

I can't help but look at these two things and think that I can be fully trusting in Him in spite of my circumstance looking different than I anticipated a year ago, and in the same breath I can trust that He is present, and will not leave me wanting for what He's spoken. No matter what it looks like, I can hope against all hope, I can hunger to see more of His sufficient bounty, and my heart will be satisfied. I know who He is, and I just can't get enough.

It Was Still Meant To Be

I think I had to love him. There was no other way. 

I mean, I got to, but it was bound to be a part of my story. And figuring out what to do with that love now is confusing and unclear, because life doesn't always jive with matters of the heart. Sometimes it's completely unfair because it draws you into something you can't have, but you do. Your path crosses with someone else's and you can't help but walk with that someone for a while. And that walk may be grand, - it may be all sorts of things, including short, shorter than you'd like. 

But if you've had that love, it may just have had to be a part of your walk. That helps me to sort through my feelings now, because the love doesn't just go away. If it's good and it's deep, it doesn't have to be cultivated forever to be an important part of my story, and I believe, a part of his, too. I felt privileged to love him and privileged to be his. 

It had to happen. 

Blocking the Punch

Sometimes you're going the wrong direction, putting energy into something that's leaking so fast, its momentum is ever slowing. You have to decide to stop wasting fuel and take things in a different direction.

Wisdom isn't always easy. Sometimes it's incredibly frustrating, and feels a lot more like defeat. That's where I am. I'm not even sure I want to call it wisdom, but that's the only thing I could think of that seems to fit and hasn't the negative connotation of "giving up"; I am not a quitter, thank you! But sometimes wisdom is knowing when to walk away.

Nothing's ever plagued me the way this has ('this' being the end of a very dear relationship, with a very dear man). I can't say I'm surprised that it affected me so, but I was surprised by it. The whole dang thing was a surprise, from start to finish, everything seemed like something I didn't expect. I didn't expect it to be so easy. I didn't expect to get so much advice; I didn't expect to get so much judgment. I didn't expect to feel so special. I didn't expect to feel so low. I did not expect to fall in love with a staunch Lutheran...didn't see that one comin'. Probably the worst thing of all, I didn't expect to want to walk away from a man I loved.

I tend to claim to know myself well, - though lately I've been questioning it - and in that I've always been so sure that I won't have more than one relationship. If I'd bother to get romantically involved with someone for any substantial amount of time, that would probably mean it's the real deal. I not only know myself pretty well, but when I'm wrong I'll own it. Not that I'm not afraid to admit it but that I'll get myself there, because honesty is important to me.

I fought really hard, just short of completely altering my life to keep fighting. That's been me a lot, too. Not trying to sound like a martyr (if it still sounds that way...oops), but I'm loyal and I know relationships take sacrifice and compromise. Being the go-with-the-flow type girl that I am, I tend to bend to whatever, let go of a lot of things (with some exceptions, of course), get trampled, even get neglected...All because I have this picture of that being what you do in relationship: give of yourself. And then give again. Which has helped me run into some doozies of relationship in which I value it more than the other person does.

I don't say all this to be melodramatic, or to paint a harsh picture of him - I say it as catharsis, as holding myself to the new direction, and as offering my story to anyone out there in hopes that they might learn and grow without having to go through it, too. Maybe they will anyways, but they'll know that it's survivable.

If there's one thing I've got going for me, it's been that I'm generally pretty resilient. Certainly it's a God-given thing, and not to my own credit. I have gone through some things in my life that I forget were my experiences because they're so far in the distance and didn't manage to hold me back. This, however, has been a time in my life I've been genuinely worried that I won't bounce back; that I'll be too scared to go anywhere near love again. However, my advice wouldn't be to guard your heart in that way you know I despise, rather it would be "protect yourself". If others won't protect you in how they treat you, and it's not done for the sake of your growth, that might be a sign you're taking one on the chin when you shouldn't. It's kind of like the phrase "throwing good money after bad"; all the self-sacrifice and fight in the world may not wake them up to the fact that you need them to come through and to fight. You also can't, and shouldn't, run from every relationship just because you get hurt sometimes. It's a fickle balance, whether or not to take one for love.

This was the first romantic relationship I've had to stop giving to, but I've had a handful of other very close relationships where I needed to walk away or stop investing, and I'm speaking from all of those. It doesn't get easier, just more recognizable. It doesn't get less painful, but feels a little like taking a breath because you blocked a punch. And it doesn't stop the love.