new normal

As we are halfway through week five of this quarantine, social distancing, stay at home order I feel the cabin fever setting in and I’m willing to bet that you do too.

Maybe you’ve used this time to do nothing and now you’re desperate for something, anything to do. Maybe you’ve been using the past few weeks to crush goals and finally make a dent in that ever-increasing to-do list that never seems to get done. Or maybe you’ve been struggling – cut off from friends, events, church, or just the daily comings and goings you so looked forward to.

Maybe you’re asking and praying for things to return to normal.

But what was normal life? Being so busy that it’s only within the last few weeks you’ve actually picked up your bible, having to blow the dust off the cover before it can be read? Being stuck in a job that you can only complain about and pray for Friday to come swiftly and deliver you from your torture? Wishing so desperately for a vacation or a break that never seems to come? Or maybe your were happy, contented with your comings and goings, a good busy, but at the same time maybe there  was someone you were missing – someone who wanted your attention but you were too distracted to see.

What was normal life? The busyness of life creating such detrimental distractions. The anxiety about the economy and money worries leaving us feeling trapped in jobs we never really loved or wanted but couldn’t leave? The insecurities about family and friends and co-workers that paralyzed us? Frustrations over gas prices and money woes and worries? Coming to Devoted and other church events but not really being present? Leaving maybe emptier that you came in? Having all these great ideas but no courage or to speak them aloud or try and see if they may work?

Hindsight can be a wonderful thing, but also a tremendous hindrance. When we look at what was through the lens of what we know now we often do so with rose-colored glasses. We mustn’t be like the Israelites wandering in the desert after they’d been delivered now moaning and groaning about going back, how Egypt was better than this. (Numbers 11:4-15).

At the same time the future is impossible to see and we fill in that misty unseen path ahead with stories and what-ifs and monsters and hopes and fears and aspirations. But this kind of thinking leads only to anxiety and fear. Psalm 119:105 says, “your word is a lamp for my feet and a light on my path,” meaning the light of the Word casts just enough light to see the next steps ahead. We look not to the misty unseen future or back to a past forgiven and forgotten (Luke 9:62; Isaiah 43:18-19; Philippians 3:13-14), but looking at what it in front of us now and we ask:

What new thing is God doing? What is God using this time, right here, today, to speak to my heart? What is God revealing about myself, my world, and how I interact with it in this time?

We must look at this time in our history as God creating in us a new normal. Before, the earth was groaning against us. Now we have a chance to rest, to read, to pray, to make those changes, to invite God in and ask: God, what in me is causing your pain? Where must I be changed by your loving hands to be made more like Jesus? What is my gifting? Where are you leading me? What is my purpose, my calling, my true hearts desire?

To invite God in and to say speak to my heart in this time. Rejuvenate me with a new and fresh filling of the Holy Spirit. Open my eyes to my purpose, my true identity. Let the Potter sculpt your little-lump-of-clay-self into something beautiful. Let this be a time of refining. (Remember the old hymn about the refiner’s fire?).

Ask God what new thing he is doing and what he’s calling you – yes you – to change as we move into these new seasons of life.

What is God saying to you today? Are you listening?

social distancing.

I came across a meme the other day that said something along the lines of “social distancing… I’ve been training my whole life for this!.” And it’s definitely true for me. As an introvert and someone with both social anxiety and social processing issues social distancing is something I practice in general – without being told to do so.

Now, with a few days of “social distancing” underway I’m seeing posts popping up expressing all the same sentiments; missing friends, not being able to bear the quarantine, people wanting to get out and go do things.

And it’s a feeling I struggle to understand because I yearn for days when I can stay home, relax, and not have to see people. I can quarantine myself for 2 weeks and then some. I can social distance myself for 2 months and then do it all over again without issue.

While this time can be used to refresh and recharge and maybe even check a few things off your to-do list there is a dark side to social distancing. It’s delicate balance to keep from teeter-tottering over to the darker side of ones mind. The time alone with your thoughts — all of your thoughts — even the ones you can normally keep at bay with busyness. The privacy you are now afforded that can trip you up and  slide you back into the secret patterns and behaviors you’d rather not talk about.

And maintaining this balance, trying to keep atop the tightrope without falling down, down, down, is harder in your introverted, socially anxious, and socially processing disordered friends because we are already so adept at staying home.

When you’re missing your people and yearning to be out with your friends don’t forget about the wallflowers, the introverts, the homebodies. Reach out to them often. Encourage them to choose what’s lovely, what true, what’s praiseworthy (Philippians 4:8).

Remember, if you can feel the darkness starting to creep into the corners or even if it’s already starting to seep inside of you, you can escape its grips. If you feel the darkness setting in, get out ahead of it. It’s hard work, but it is possible.

So, how are you doing today?

nothing.

today I did nothing. and I feel guilty for doing nothing. for not going to the young life prayer day. for not going to the farmers market for fruit for the school I work at. for not leaving the house.

but I’m learning that I need to forgive myself for this guilt, to acknowledge it and release it. because it’s not “doing nothing,” it’s decompressing, unwinding, and allowing my body and my mind to come back down after several days of too much – too many voices, too much noise, too many people, too many emotions.

and this doing nothing as it seems can become the dreaded avoidance – numbness, disassociation – avoiding the issue of overstimulation, avoiding the needs of my body and spirit because of shame and fear.

and that’s the trap I fall into. “oh, I’m just watching youtube or whatever because I’m so drained…” “oh, I’m not leaving the house because I need time to recharge.” bullsh*t (for lack of a better word). and that’s doing nothing. that’s the sin. believing the lie of the enemy that avoiding and numbing is the same as decompressing and recharging.

because it’s not. in the end it makes you feel worse because you’re still wound up and now you’re berating yourself for not getting anything done and you can do anything when your head is spinning.

I avoided today. but then (at 8pm, of course) I realized. I challenged the lies and I turned off the mindless drivel of the internet. I turned on the music. I started reading the words. I let myself fidget – physically and mentally – wrestling with words and concepts. I felt. and it was in doing that that I regulated myself, that I came back down from the too many, too much of the week. and it was in that that I was able to see again the TRUTH with new eyes.

I wrote. again. for the first time in years. and it was more needed than the “doing nothing” pattern of avoidance and lies I’d been clinging to.

take the step. turn it off.

pursuit.

do I really have it in me to write again? after all these years? it’s not like riding a bike – something you never forget – it’s trying to remember the delicate rhythms of fingertips dancing down the keyboard, words illuminating on the page, real life now, not just playing out on the ticker tape of my brain.

the other week I was challenged by the pastor’s wife to pursue goals and press forward. one of those goals was to write again… and to me that meant actually looking through the dusty folder on my computer labeled “writing.”

and with the unspoken goal of sorting out and decluttering my hard drive to create more space in the back of my mind I diligently started peeking into the me of yesteryear.

and other than a very clear picture of a person full of contradictions –  struggling and soaring, doubting and knowing, hurting and healing – I did find something that hit me full force. it stopped me in my tracks, my heart somersaulting in my chest. quick, quick, open a new page and write this down before it disappears…

all the years I spent living as a contraction – a pharisee and a pagan, a sufferer and a soul-seeker, a darkened heart and an illuminated spirit –

it wasn’t about me. it wasn’t me at all. it was never me.

it was – and is – God pursuing me.

in the end the common theme was God was there through it all. where I couldn’t see it and where I did. God was moving and pulling for my heart, my whole self.

God was floating up there somewhere in the aether calling my name. and he did not stop. never ever.

God was here in the mess and the muck protecting me from the full extent of the darkness I thought I wanted.

God was up above (like the quote I read earlier tonight – “when I want something with my whole being, and [God] withholds it from me, I hope [God] thinks to [God’s self], ‘silly girl. she thinks this is what she wants, but she does not understand how it will hurt.’”

there was a reason I could never fully commit to the demon deals I so wanted to make. there was a reason my vows to stop the spinning of the my world never came to fruition. there was a reason it always left me feeling more hollow. there was a reason I always wondered.

because my soul was bought and paid for while I was still soaking in waters of the womb.

what is God’s cannot be taken from him. but I did – and do –  have the choice (some academic types call it free will) to accept my call, my place, my role. and I did, but then those demons seduced me and I felt it was taken. and as I got older I allowed myself to be seduced. I confused myself, wrapped in rules and rituals, rebellion and restlessness.

Then end all now it that in all that, it all that has unfolded God has never given up, not even when other people did, not even when I did, not even when God probably should have (in my oh-so-right opinion).

God has never stopped pursuing me – even in my darkness and brokenness. God claimed my soul before I could speak. God has qualified me. God has saved me through the blood of his son Jesus Christ.  and if I can land on this one grain of sand as a foundation – God’s pursuit of me through it all – I can build a life, a faith, a ministry, a self from there.

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“i will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” — ezekiel 36:26

“how is it that wild flowers are not seen by men and animals just walk on them and don’t appreciate them? the wild flowers have a wonderful lesson to teach. they offer themselves confidently and willingly and with no one to appreciate them. they sing their joyous song to themselves that it is so happy to love even though one is not loved in return (but God loves their song)”. — hinds feet on high places, 56.

“the greatest victories and most beautiful [wild]flowers in our life to the Lord, no one ever knows about.” hinds feet on high places, 57.

letting go.

thoughts on a sunday night written after a day of reflecting on the sermon “enter the promise land”

the words of the sermon echo in my brain, “what do you need to let go of – that you may not want to – so that you may walk in what God has for you?”

i hear the words over and over again, “what in your life needs to die today for us to enter into the promise?”

and i know the answer the instant that the question is posed. it sinks into my gut like a stone dropped into a lake. i feel it crash down my esophagus and land with a splash and a crash in the pit of my stomach. it torments me as the preacher man continues on, words pouring from his mouth like a waterfall, passionate: fierce, yet at the same time beautiful.

still i spend the day avoiding the burning in my spirit, focusing instead on the meta (because isn’t that always the way, you avoid the meat by staying above it) of it all… that i have already let go of so much from yesterday, left on the various couches of therapists far and wide that unforgiveness seems a distant concept and not a modern struggle.

oh how i have missed denied the obvious. denied  so long it has become like truth.

and what i most need to let go of is avoiding. avoiding the world, avoiding the questions, avoiding the emotion of existence – past, present, and future. to die to the desire to avoid life by slipping into the realities of others – all those countless hours lost to netflix, hulu, and youtube. too afraid of my own mind to shut off the noise.

i am an addict through and through. addicted to food, to watching, to hurting myself, to the approval of others, to disappearing. but those are all symptoms of the main addiction. i am addicted to avoidance, to the numbness that acts as freedom (but is not freedom at all).

[what is unspoken about avoiding is that you avoid not just the ugly but anything good that comes as well.]

but at the core of addiction to avoidance, addiction to numbness is fear. fear of facing the emotion, fear of the truth, the fear of being alone, the fear of being seen and known.

the gospel was once defined to me as being fully known and fully loved, and tim keller said that “to be known and not loved is our greatest fear.” and that is the truth of my heart. i fear that if i am fully known, by God or by man, i will not be loved. so i run from hard questions and conversations. i stay in what is easy. i avoid.

so what do i need to put to death? what do i need to let go of in order to walk in the promise of God – to walk with the person of God? the letting go of avoidance – and those behaviours i cling to that send me miles from myself – and to let go of fear.

i started seeking numbness at a young age. running from the conflict in my household i would make up imaginary friends, avoiding the division and decisions thrust upon me i would create imaginary worlds and rules. shutting out the teasing and taunting of schoolmates i would hurt myself with whatever i could find. afraid of what – or who – lurked behind closet doors i would turn up the volume and open fridge. not wanting to be responsible for more discord i dropped the word ‘no’ from my vocabulary and learned to fly away. afraid of consequence but confused and seeking i found myself caught in darkness. afraid of rejection and more angry words i would watch and count every last ounce.

i got so good at numbing that eventually i forgot what i was running from and things were okay for a while. but the truth would rumble under the surface and all at once it bubbled up like a geyser and i was forced to remember. flashbacks became my reality and when a collision i could not make disappear hit me in the face i went to the wilderness to confront what i thought was the problem.

when hope gets lost

i think there is an expectation* that a retreat or missions trip creates a spiritual high that returns with you and lingers for a few days post trip.

and while i had long let go of that expectation, i find myself curious at an opposite effect happening post-lake champion. instead of feeling spiritually high, i am feeling spiritually turned off. starting saturday night it’s like i keep hearing these thoughts to just leave the faith, just quit. and tonight at small group, the topic of suicide came up a few different times and instead of being shocked and grieved, i related.

i don’t want to call this a spiritual attack, out of fear or over-spiritualising things, but i don’t want to ignore that as a possibility for my recent hopelessness and relapse into depression.

i know i’ve been disassociated from life lately. i’m trying, i really am. it’s just hard when hope gets lost.

 

*i have long loved and personally subscribe to the following two pithy statements: “expect the worst, hope for the best, and accept whatever happens;” & “expectations breed resentments.”

come up leaning on your beloved

written circa march 2013

Will you help me elicit the words you have given me, allow them to come out from their corners in the delicate hiding places of my mind? They are shy, the words I must write. This is why we whisper, so as not to frighten the syllables that have come to play. Did you know that they are a timid bunch? A harsh ‘shush’ condemns while a willowy ‘shhhh’ sounds like the sea and brings healing calm.

Words in themselves are just a combination of syllables, morphemes and graphemes, it’s the way we draw them forth that gives them meaning. Deepest meaning comes from the heart of the Author and everything else is translation.

Breathe in, breathe out. Sink down into the clouds and let the Word come to you. Be still, darling. I know it gets crowded in your head and the slow motion is just a hallucination for really things are spinning faster than a carnival ride and you just want it to stop.

So you break open the flesh, hoping another outlet will slow down the speech and it does, but it has the dreadful side effect of leaving scars and bringing forth the melancholy. It is a false promise beloved. It promises peace, but brings fear and a need for more, more thoughts instead of the Word of comfort and hope.

I am who I am and I have called you healed. My mercies are new each and every morning and I touch my own scarred places to your heart wounds and it’s warm here, healing balm for your spirit. My blood was shed. My blood is sufficient. I have transfused my blood to you, redemption.

You are set free. Let the words come out of their scared places and testify. Your words are now washed and I love when you whisper your story because you speak Truth about what I have done and that helps heal the souls of the world. I am using your talents darling-one. You are a penholder in my story, give glory to the One who was pierced, the One who writes, the One who unfolds. I breathe my words into you by the very Word and I have redeemed you from the depths of Sheol.

Come up, arise little one. Talitha Cumi. Come up learning on your beloved.

trust falls

written circa march 2013
and so so so relevant still.

I remember trust falls in 6th grade up at our school’s retreat center. I remember revisiting them again when they gathered all of us awkward freshman into the gym for Peer Leaders – a sorry excuse to miss gym for bonding with our classmates and learning how to trust and rely on one another.

Those moments when the group leader announced trust falls I’d feel my skin go cold and clammy. My head would start to spin in six different directions: from “I want to do this, to test and see if they’ll catch me” to “I don’t want to do this; I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.” Standing in the old gym I’d slink to the back of the crowd and appear composed when inside I was weeping and screaming and falling apart.

I never did trust falls, at any time. I tried them when I was alone though. To see if I could trust myself at first, then to see if I could trust God. I’d stand on my chair, or I’d lift myself onto my tiptoes on the diving board facing the wrong way. I’d give myself permission to fall. I’d start letting go, but always I’d catch myself. Never let myself truly go. I always had the soft bed to land on, the knowledge that I could stop the falling and jump up if things got to scary. Surrender was in my vocabulary, but it wasn’t in my heart.

No one will catch me, I reasoned. So after these experiments (that sometimes I still conduct) I vowed to always have a safety net. Keep this much money in the bank and don’t dip below the magic number, stop after this and that, don’t get too close to people, remember to push them away. Don’t ever let anyone in fully. I got so good at locking the whole truth away, that I forgot who I was myself. If you’re going to jump, make sure you installed the net yourself.

Recently God has been revealing to me the closed-fisted, heart walled up girl that I still am. The girl who would rather be alone and figure everything out then just take things day-by-day, the girl who wants to drive the shard of broken glass down her arm after being in community. God, in his divine perfection pointed out to me – with all the bluntness of the Almighty – that I have a problem with control. I want to be in control always. When I am not in control I despair, I cry, I run. Through the compassionate words of a friend and the letters strung together in the Word, and then again in the book I am currently reading God has shown me just how my need for control is keeping me stuck, is keeping me in the pit, is keeping me from being a true disciple and member of the body of Christ.

But, may I ask… how do you let go of control? How do you learn to surrender fully? The Word says, in numerous places, that God is trustworthy… so why do I still hesitate when there is not safety net – that I know about? Will I one day be able to trust fall into the arms of the one who created the universe, the one with nail scarred hands and arms wide open?

Help me oh Heavenly Father, to know true peace in full surrender.

holes to holy

written circa february 2013

My Sunday-school classroom has a toy where you put shapes into their respective holes. The red square goes in the square hole, the pink triangle into the triangle-shaped hole. The kids all love this toy and enjoy figuring out which hole is the key to getting their piece inside the box.

As I have come to see, these children may just be teaching me more that I am teaching them. God is showing me more through them than the other way around, as I had once believed. As I watch each child struggle to put the diamond into the rectangular or the oval hole I am reminded of how I have tried to put this or than into my own empty spaces. As I see the delight on these precious little faces as they match the hole to the correct shape I am reminded of my Savior’s face when I allow Him to remove the poison I’d been filling myself with and allow what really belongs there – his own substance – to flood my being.

We all have holes. They are in different places and are different sizes, but nonetheless they are all places where we lack. We try to fill them will different things, but in the end our unique holes all need the same thing: the grace-driven love of Jesus Christ, his substance, his blood, his unique, tender, healing touch.

Two summers ago when my mom developed MRSA from a spider bite she only discovered this virus by a gaping hole that opened up on the back of her knee. To me, this is what I think of when I think of my own holes. Different places in my body, different areas on my heart, have these open sores and deep caverns. They weep, the bleed, and they hurt; and I try to fill them with stuff. I have tried to fill my holes with the touch and approval of naked men, with anything that money can buy, with knowledge, with alcohol, with food, to heal them by starving myself and hoping they’d disappear. I stick my finger inside these open wounds just to feel alive and see my hands covered in blood. But my blood doesn’t heal, it can only clot. All I was doing was further infecting what I would be unable to heal on my own.

I need the antiseptic of Jesus’ blood to cleanse me. I need the image of Jesus on that cross – taking my sin and shame upon himself – to remember who and who alone heals and fills. When I tried to fix myself on my own I just gave myself more holes and a worsening infection. The holes opened and oozed. But when I finally came to Jesus, saw how the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had been pursuing me, my holes were cleansed and slowly they were filled in with what is holy. What once nearly killed me became bruises – battle scars to remind me of where I have been and marks to show others that I am not perfect but continually being restored and made whole in Christ alone. Soli Deo Gloria.

We all have our holes. We all have our bruises and scares. We all have a story. Let the master craftsman in. We will all be limping to the table of eternal feasting and grace, and it’s okay. We carry our bruises in different places, but only as a reminder to what once was and what Christ has done. Where are your holes and how have you tried filling them? Do you know how much God loves you and wants to be The Great Physician to heal your wounds?

the victory is ours

written circa february 2013

There is love in my heart, words on my tongue and breath in my lungs and this is the way it is supposed to be. There is silence in my head and the Mighty Counselor whispering lyrics into my ear.

I don’t know how to just write anymore. Words get tangled up in the sinew of my muscles and my tongue gets tied into knots the same as my stomach. There is so much to say, but I’m tired of choking. People say that this is a war and I am starting to believe them because it feels like a great cosmic battle over whether or not we can speak. Are we more than pawns on a chess board? Are we not soldiers actively participating in the fighting?

After a battle I emerge bloody and covered from head to toe in bruises. After a fight I am sore. When the skirmish ends for the day – when the next on watch take my place on the front lines – I feel a kind of tired that permeates my bones. I am worn out and empty, a broken vessel.

The day after I wrestled with demons… I am tired. I ache. My muscles are still and my heart is in a tender state. My brain is heavy and I want nothing more than to sleep. It is not pain, no, that came the day before as I walked into the battle arena (but do we ever really walk out of the battle zone?) The pain rising in my limbs. Hot. Like fire in my bones, that is the only pain I feel. Pain is good, pain means I am alive, fighting, serving One who is higher.

The time after the fight I am drained. I am weak. I am susceptible to the sneak, freak attacks of the enemy. He plays dirty and when I want to let myself unwind, come undone I want to give in. But this, this dear Beloved, are the demons’ most cunning attack of trickery. They don’t play fair because they leave the battlefield. We then never leave the battlefield. The enemy knows he will not be the victor. The demons know their brute strength and physical attacks will never be enough so they curl underfoot when we think the fight is over for the day and we think we are safe enough to let our guard down – when we let ourselves be tired.

But I know that there is a place where I will be mended and refilled. I know a man who will heal my scars with only the gentlest touch. He has wounds of his own and when I look on them I feel my black-and-blues mending and my heart swelling once again with what is alive.

Even though it aches, even though it stings, even though it hurts, even though doing anything feels like the final straw – feels like we will break in half – we must press in. We press into the One we are fighting with, the One higher than any demon, power, or enemy. We seek refuge in the one with scars of his own, to the Father who gives us strength, love, and freedom. We press into the Son – our savior, redeemer, and friend – who died so that we might truly become alive.

Press in and walk out. Don’t succumb to the attacks of a beast who knows he is defeated and insists on playing dirty, waiting until you are weak and vulnerable to attack, a beast who cannot win the war. Press into the God who created you.

Beloved, we have the victory in Christ. Who can fight us? Who can call us out? What can they do to us that God cannot heal, fix or redeem? Don’t be tricked that you are fighting on your own – or that you have to fight at all. We are fighting as community, not as independent mercenaries. We are fighting by the strength and power of the Spirit. Keep going to the wellspring of life to be cleansed, filled, edified, and breathe… breathe, Beloved. Drink deep of the Father. Press into him. He is our salvation, strength, our refuge. Press into him for comfort and healing. He has overcome and we are part of that community. We don’t run foolishly into battle, but there is a Master with a plan, a Master who protects his servants, and a Master who will fight for us, if only we are silent, if only we submit and press in.