Thresholds and Way Closing

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I wrote this post about two months ago when I finally stopped and acknowledged I had some BIG feelings about the kids heading back to school (Cara to Kindergarten). 

I haven't forgotten about the marriage mold... But it really is complicated and I've realized I don't want to stop posting what inspires me just because its not related to that topic. So...eventually.

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I’m approaching a new threshold in my motherhood. I can feel it. Soon the road I’ve been on for the past eight years - little kids who need me all of the time for almost everything – is closing and a new one is opening up in front of me. This new road is one where my kids are finding more and more of themselves separate from me and my heart aches at this good becoming they are doing. I’ve only just started to look up from this closing way. The new gifts waiting for me, for them, for our family, and for our community are not quite here yet. They are in process. I’m going to stand present and attentive instead of trying to manipulate the process to make me more comfortable. I’m not going to try and pacify my anxiety and fears by banging on the door behind me, refusing to listen to the lessons of way closing, insisting these two crazy kids can’t find life apart from me.  

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I keep learning that letting go is something we must do over and over if we are interested in a healthy life.

Life is full of thresholds - thresholds of change - of necessary endings.

I find myself standing on several thresholds of change these days; my mothering perhaps the smallest among them.

I love the Quaker way of talking about listening to life, finding a sense of direction.

It is especially meaningful for me, because as I’ve said many times here on the blog, I have always fought off endings and I haven't been very good at listening to life.

I make life peel dead things from my vise grip. I get stuck in this place most of the time. Letting go (see also: leaving, giving up, endings, walking away) have been difficult for me. I focus on the sorrow of the ending. My heart can steep in it. Mostly, in the face of endings, I redouble my efforts to resuscitate whatever is dying refusing to accept what needs to fall away. This is the ultimate arrogance.

But way forward is often found because way has closed. (Quaker language.) Possibilities are often apparent once the way you thought you would go, comes to an end. One of my favorite writers shares this wisdom: “In sixty-plus years of living, way has never opened in front of me... But a lot of way has closed behind me, and that's had the same guiding effect." 

Will we humbly listen and discern way closing as a guide?

If you are like me, you often turn around to the just-closed-door and knock and knock and knock hoping the door will open to you again. You try to find your key. You look for a hidden key somewhere. You use your code that has worked many times before. Maybe you sit and wait by the door for someone to open it back up. Me? I’ve always been assertive so I would more likely wiggle in a window if the door will not open.

But recently, I’ve been doing something different. I’ve been accepting what life offers me, accepting the way that closes. Sometimes those doors have slammed shut when I least expected and other times they’ve closed slowly until at last I heard the gentle latch of closure. It’s usually the slow, quiet latches that have broken my heart. I am practicing what it means to recognize ending. Maybe I will even welcome them one day. I've realized I can either let way closing squeeze me out or I can participate in the process.

In the face of way-closing, I am learning to turn around and look for the possibilities in front of me.

On the current threshold places of my life, I am finding the honesty and courage to admit that many doors have closed behind me; ways I thought I would walk for my whole life have narrowed and come to an end.

I can stand there pounding and searching for a hidden key or I can acknowledge the ending, turn myself around, and look out at the wide world and what it calls me toward. This is where I find myself these days. I have stood with my head on the closed door long enough. I have grieved over this closed way. Now, I am turned around and the world seems alive with possibilities. Hopefully it will not be long before I step off the stoop and onto the new path waiting for me.

Why do we have so much trouble turning around from the closed way to look for what might be opening in front of us? I think it has something to do with threshold moments - the old has passed away but what is new hasn’t quite arrived yet. Liminality. Unknown. Uncertainty.

I know I’m not the only one who gets a little nervous when everything starts to look unfamiliar, unpredictable or uncontrollable. I scramble around for keys or new doors so I don’t have to wait in this tension of old things gone but new life not yet within our reach.

The realization growing deep and wide for me is this: I always focus on the letting go but never the possibilities taking shape ahead of me. I am keenly aware of the grief that accompanies endings. When the door begins to close, I focus on what I’m losing. Often I work harder to keep it from going. I grow anxious at what I can’t see. But incredible growth and insight happens in the liminal spaces if we will just stay open.   

In the face of what is fleeting, we often try to capture, contain, or deny what we are losing.

Instead we must let our hearts be filled, maybe even pierced, by the palpable bittersweet joy of the present moments without guarantees about the next.

Instead we must stay with the difficult task of mutuality with life, its risks and its gifts.

We must remain present to one another and to life.

We must quiet ourselves to stay with the process of discernment, recognizing when way opens and when way is closing.

Sometimes this means admitting how we block new growth (for us and our community) when we’ve shut our eyes and plugged our ears to endings.

We must stop pretending there is a magic blueprint (and that we have it) guaranteeing the perfect outcome if we’ll only follow it. This is uncomfortable and requires time and presence rather than relying on a formula that give us a false sense of control and certainty we use to buffer from the unknown. We must stop chasing certainty if we hope to find wholeness that fosters freedom to love, create, become more whole and help our world become more whole.

Discernment is nuanced. Its a process. It takes time, silence, presence. There is not much room for discernment in our addiction to certainty, our incessant opinions, and our unwillingness to wait.

Instead, we put down our stakes and we refuse to ever move them. We think this is wisdom. We stick to all of the old roads and call it faithfulness. I think the faithfulness-formula has been misused. Instead of a culture of ‘never-changing’, we need room for the slow process of listening for how we can end well and what must die off to discover what is waiting to be born and nurtured. The cycles of life, of the seasons, teach us that healthy life has seasons of change. In our seasons of ending, of things falling away, we can let go in trust and hope. 

We need staying-places, yes. But we must be willing to let go, too. I think we are afraid of endings because we are afraid of grief. We do our lives and our communities’ so much good when we will discern endings are near or necessary and cooperate with the process in faith, hope and love.

I know a few people who are always bouncing around. They never seem to stay anywhere long enough to have any real root system. It seems their challenge is not leaving, but learning to stay. That is a different post from a different person. My staying (clinging), or what I’ve called faithfulness, is the obsession I must release.

Often it is a difficult, spiritual labor to discern when and where to leave or when and where to stay. Sometimes it takes time to discern what is truth, what are lies, because the best lies always have a little bit of truth. What is humility and health and what is fear or pride? When do we persevere and when do we honor the work of our hands and hearts and say enough?

The way forward comes clearer in the discernment process.

Instead we love formulas for truth that don’t require humility or ask us to re-evaluate a life or a belief system, a career, or a wound received or inflicted. 

Instead we create shibboleths for faith and life that keep uncertainty contained, holding dissonance at bay. A process of discernment always brings the discomfort of dissonance for me. A true commitment to the process of discernment illuminates things I have to rumble and reckon with that are not how I like to see myself. But dissonance creates a liminal space that can birth new life, change, becoming if I will only stop freaking out.

As we wait on the thresholds, the dissonance might require us to reconsider beliefs about ourselves, our motivations, our choices, our people; sometimes our worldview. We will have to try and know our heart beyond prescriptions of who you should be or want to be.

For the dissonance to move us toward life, we will have to be willing to reconsider the stories we have told ourselves or others have told us or maybe even the stories we have told others (this last one might be the hardest for me).

Fundamentalism taught me the lie that to look to my own heart in the process of discernment is the biggest danger of all. By elevating the heart’s deceit over its possibilities for love, forgiveness and a life lived in humility with God and others, the message came through loud and clear.... Trust not thine own soul. 

Listening to life, to my soul, has been the truest guide for living a life of integrity, wisdom and faith. It has always pointed me toward True North. And yet, I still doubt her. I have been working to deprogram this messaging for years. 

Instead of guiding her people in a messy and uncertain discernment process – the church usually shuts down dissonance with her formulas that discount the human experience to inform our faith and understanding of God.

We miss the wisdom of ordinary living showing us what is holy. We ignore lived experience and the gifts of risk and vulnerability. We avoid the discomfort and the humility of being uncertain. We also avoid noticing the Spirit at work in the thresholds persuading and calling us forward. Maybe we misread the discomfort as confirmation that we should keep pounding on the closed door.

We pluck some verses and hold fast to doctrines that keep all people from being able to know, hear and test the Spirit leading us toward truth, repentance, humility, love. We pretend it’s possible to separate our humanity from what we read as ‘Truth’. I think this is the most dangerous of all.

These days, I am frightened by folks who don’t see their potential toward misunderstanding, misreading, misinterpreting. I am frightened by folks who think it is only a self-serving enterprise to look inward and understand how your dark and light affects what you put out into the world. I am frightened by folks who appease their dissonance by simply building thicker, higher walls around their understanding of themselves and their beliefs instead of being willing to invite a new way. I am frightened by people who think the rules they have discerned for their life are the rules they have discerned for everyone else too. 

It has taken me a long time to acknowledge this way closing. But I have heard the gentle latch and have finally turned around to see the possibilities shimmering in front of me. 

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What places in your life invite you to recognize way closing? What keeps you from turning around and seeing the shimmering possibilities? What wisdom have you gained in the threshold places? 

Breakdown and the Gift of Uncertainty

Over the past couple of years, I have started learning to be okay without tidy resolutions. I am more comfortable with the phrase this is what I know for now. It’s more honest. One woman said that phrase in the class I taught last week as we discussed sexuality and God and faithfulness. And I was moved by the humility, love, trust and vulnerability that comes in a statement like that. No pretending paradox does not exist, no pretending/controlling to feel better in the middle of the tension. This is what I know for now. Not only is there freedom in that statement but there is grace and there is room for each of us.

In November 2011, I had something of a nervous breakdownspiritual awakening as Brene Brown might say. In desperation, I picked myself up off the bathroom floor and packed a suitcase and drove to Bragg Creek as I felt everything I thought held my life together seem to fall apart. Really, it was my false selves falling apart, not my true life, but it sure felt like it. Sitting out under the big Alberta sky, scared to pray for fear of how I might twist or misunderstand whatever I thought I heard coming back to my heart, I wrote a list of the things I could say I knew to be unshakable truth. I wasn’t sure I would have anything. I did, but surprisingly, it was a very small list. I still work off that list scribbled on a tattered piece of notebook paper.

There is a Creator

Who loves me (us) fiercely 

Who is good

Who is Mystery 

Who is Love

I will not break

This is what I felt and knew and held unswervingly. I realized everything else might fall away for awhile or maybe forever but this I knew for sure. 

My life had formed around so much fear. I believed the lie that control could tame/manage fear. I worked hard to keep fear in line but really, it was keeping me in line. This looked like a lot of closed-fisted control in my life. Perfectionism. The gentle life is not possible when our hands are furiously and desperately clutching an illusion of control. This happens with sincere faith too. It is out of fear that we clutch desperately and leave no room for conversation about the mystery of faith and God. Mostly, I am no longer afraid of saying This is what I know for now. Usually, I am just hoping to have the maturity and wisdom to remember this in any given conversation. I sometimes still clutch, but not as tightly, and it is starting to feel foreign to me.  I continue on the path of God-ward obedience without the fear of one/every misstep. All is Grace. Because of this, I am freer to share the ragged, unpretty parts of my story, to become more human. I am also freer to hear and hold the stories of others without needing to control them, give answers or make them fit within my own ‘tidy’ (narrow) theology. It’s messier but it is rich and deep.  

1 Corinthians 13 is a great comfort to me as my heart ponders and wonders and shares experiences that often hold many questions and tensions. It gives grace and permission to not control and distort by pretending we have all of the answers. There is room for the Mystery of God because we know our spiritual vision is blurry. There is room for me to release the perfecting and trust that it is enough to do the best I can to walk with trust and hope in God and living out love the best I know how, even if it is messy or inadequate or wrong. There is grace because God already knows we don’t see things quite as they are so He gives us trust, hope and Love to guide us toward the day when everything will be clear. For now, we’re called to do the best we can with what we know now. When we acknowledge we don't know where every piece of the puzzle should go, there is room for sharing and honoring the stories and wisdom of others.

What we say about God is always incomplete…We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting as through a fog. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright. We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us … But for now, until then, and in all that fog we have three things to guide us toward that time: Trust steadily in God, Hope unswervingly, and Love extravagantly. And the greatest of these is love.

Love this talk  on the faith pilgrimage/spiritual formation.

I know it's been awhile since I've posted. Check back soon for pictures/stories of the past couple of weeks. 

Depression, Desert & Discernmnent

For many friends who are being courageous and practicing authenticity in their own hard places.

I wrote this several months ago but decided to post it today. Lately, I have heard many stories of depression and almost all are woven with shame. 

It’s my worst fear. It’s always been my worst fear. But lately it is harder to keep it far from my heart.

The fear that I will wound my kids so deeply because of my own wounded or messed up places.

Eggshell walking happens a little more frequently at our house these days. Oh how I remember eggshell walking. It confused me. It scared me.

Sometimes I breathe this prayer … “Mothering without wounding. Mothering without wounding.” Sometimes I have the presence of self to breathe it gently. It comes out like a desperate chant from a crazy person on the worst days. What I’m really praying for is help to get my crap together so I don’t crush these tender hearts I’m supposed to be caring for in my exhaustion and newly short-fused self.

Shame calls my name. It says, Look at what you are doing to them!

Who were you to think you would do better?

When Evan gets mad and says, “You’re the worst mother…ever.” it slices deeper than it normally would or probably should.

Meet my shame.

Shame has lost so many avenues into my heart but not this mothering one. It still owns quite a bit of property in my heart when it comes to my kids.

When everything is quiet, shame taunts me with whispers of deep fears, What if you never get better? What if it strangles everything good in you? What if they end up just like you? You are breaking them.

I grew up midwest, charismatic, christian. Sometimes in my family and in my church, there was an unspoken and sometimes spoken idea that if you are faithful, if you take it to God, you will not need counselling. After all, Jesus is called the Wonderful Counselor. The havoc-wreaking shame and stigma say if you are capable-enough, faithful-enough, God-loving enough, you and God will be able to manage it. Shame digs in so deep and we miss God’s tender and healing mercy for our humanity pretending we aren’t like a cat just burying our shit.

Shame tells me not to write this. Shame keeps its slimy fingers around my throat as long as I don’t say it out loud. Shame screams that you will pity me. And ohmygosh…there is nothing that makes me recoil like pity. Shame tells me I have really stepped over the line this time. That this is a private struggle I really shouldn’t share let alone on the blog. Shame is an enemy of my soul in every possible way because it wants me to disconnect out of fear of being seen; disconnect from my own deep heart, my God and my people.

But shame and I have done battle for several years now. And I refuse to let him win and wreck the beauty of my life. For the most part, I recognize his voice now. Mostly I recognize how my skins feels like bugs are crawling. My heart nearly pounds out of my chest. I want to run and hide...or go shopping. It’s my first impulse. I feel small. My people-pleasing instincts kick in. I want to do whatever it takes to quiet the shame and keep him from screaming my secret to everyone.  

But I have learned a little about this enemy over the years. I know that if I do these things, these first impulses – he wins. He gains more ground in my heart. “Shame keeps worthiness away by convincing us that owning our stories will lead to people thinking less of us.” Shame loves perfectionist (raising my hand now, Hi! I’m Shanna and I’m a recovering perfectionist.) because we are so invested in having everything look just right. Countering shame fundamentally requires vulnerability. It is the weapon shame fears. It also strips shame of his power. 

So this post is about stripping shame of its power in my heart. It is humbling. It is good. Life is not all mountaintops. I recently told my spiritual director that this season feels like a desert. Not the kind you irrigate or sight see. But the kind of desert that feels dusty and dry. The days feel long. The road winds and I’m not sure where it ends. It is a desert where you keep walking, one foot in front of the other. I want to be faithful in my desert. What will this look like?

“The ordinary acts we practice every day at home are of more importance to the soul than their simplicity might suggest.” Thomas Moore

So I have a new therapist we can’t really afford but really, we can’t afford not to. Not because I’m falling apart at the seams (though some days I am) but because I want to live my life alive to it. I’m a high functioning person. I get out of bed, I make meals, I go to work, I do all of the things most of the things I need to do. I find joy in my life. But it’s harder some days. And I don’t want this season to become my normal. I don’t ever want to go back to the way I lived before – disconnected from my soul and people and afraid of God. I don’t want my short fuse to become my new normal as a mother. I don’t want to wear masks – they suffocate. So I go to therapy. I write this shame-busting blog post. I tell my fears to a few trusted people.

I am working to not be ashamed of the depression.

I remind myself that at least I feel something. For so many years before the kids were born I functioned so far out of my heart. I was calm, cool and collected because my childhood depression became a low-grade constant companion in my life. It grew with me so I never noticed it. I thought I was just very even-keeled.

I also remind myself that I do not everwant to deaden painful emotions because the price for that is just too high. I’ve been there done that, don’t ever want to go back. I have fought hard battles and seen little miracles on my journey out of that.

My neurologist tells me depression is a normal part of illness, expected even. Is it the chicken or the egg, I wonder? Which came first? Does it even matter?

A must-read for me is Weavings: Journal of Spiritual Formation. The last edition was entitled Resilience.

What a beautiful and overused word. Over the past several months, personally and with clients I have come back to one article, Gifts from the Holy Resilient by Steve Doughty. Others have walked this desert road and share the gifts of their journey. Grateful.

When subjected to the fiercest pressures of change, the holy resilient do not just endure or bounce back. They become more: more compassionate, deeper, simpler in their desires, and more focused in how they use their time. Resilience... is not simply about getting back to normal nor is it about adjusting as well as they can. It is about transformation.

My heart says YES! This is what I long for. I can see how my health concerns and depression have become a place not just for getting back to normal but for transformation. Doughty shares a cluster of questions for discerning in our seasons of change. In this season, they are helping me find perspective, to anchor, in this space of life that holds lots of questions, hard days when I feel so unlike my normal self and beautiful gifts in the middle of it all.

Thought I’d share the questions from the article here. These questions are reminder that we do not have to dismiss or pretend hard places/suffering do not exist by encouraging people to simply have more (better) faith. Faith is expressed in the honest heart acknowledging hurting/broken places and inviting faith-filled transformation. 

1.       What must I/we let go of?

Even asking the question can be painful (it has been for me). The answers are seldom better. They point to everything from abilities we cherish (“good” mothering), to  comfortable ways of ambling along, to life itself. Demanding as these circumstances might be, this much is clear: only if we ask the question, and only if we seek God’s grace to act on the answers, will we grow in new ways.

2.       In the midst of this change that is taking place, what abides or what sustains?

What continues when so much is altered? Is it my capacity to love? Is it the Loving One I turned to in prayer, even if my prayers are angry and confused? Do special memories endure and bless me with their presence? Is some larger purpose I long valued now inviting renewed attention? This question, “what abides?” restores perspective. It also opens us to growth.

3.       What of Christ am I invited to put on?

During a confusing change in my (Steve Doughty) life a friend counseled, “What grows within you during this time may be more important than all the changes whipping about you.”

4.       What fresh glimpses of God’s grace do I/we see amid all that is going on?

  We may quickly find answers to this question. We may have to ask for a long time. Either way, as we live with the change it is important to remain sensitive to the tiniest sign of God’s fresh blessings.

5.       What models of faithful change can I/we look to?

This is a good question not just in change but when everything seems settled. What people do we know that grew through change? What lessons do they teach us? If we watch for models along the way, we are more prepared when our turn comes.

6.       How might what I am learning help others?

This question turns us outward. The changes we deal with may consume all our energy while they are taking place. Ultimately, though, the lessons we learn along the way are not just for us. To be attentive to how our experience may help others is not prideful. It is an act of compassionate remember. It is recalling how God has helped us in a multitude of ways and then remaining sensitive to how what we have received may aid others.

Friendship, Fight & Fallout

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Female relationship has been a very fragile place in my life for … well, always. Because of this I did not trust my instincts near enough. It wasn’t until 27 or 28 that I first started realizing how some of my friendships give insight into my  sense of worth.

From a young age, I developed a core belief that said you should never walk away from relationships. That to do so is selfish and immature. And there is some truth here because it certainly is easier and immature to throw away something messy and start over with someone new- a clean slate- rather than being vulnerable, risking more hurt or disappointment by being in a relationship with imperfect people. It’s easier to wash our hands and walk away, to look for the next best thing that makes us feel good than to keep plugging away with the one who has wounded you as well loved you. But it also robs us of depth and intimacy. It robs us of opportunities to see ourselves and the other in a new way. It robs us of the opportunity to forgive, to see our need for forgiveness and seek it. It robs us of joy in restored relationship.

I also developed a core belief that said if something was wrong in the relationship and the other person said or thought it was me than it must be.

About two years ago, I noticed a couple of patterns in my life:

1.) Because I have made my life here, without my family, I hoped and believed I had built and grown into a family system of friends. Two years ago, I finally realized they had their own sisters who were their actual family. It trumped the friendship. Blood is thicker than water. And that's okay. I just needed to realize it.

2.) If I stopped working tirelessly toward some of the friendships I have – in other words, if I stopped attending to the person’s needs and making them feel special and important and listened to, the friendships basically fell apart. More times than not, I would go through a small grieving at the loss of the friendship and what I thought it was but now realized it wasn’t. That’s probably too simple but anyway… I would sometimes get angry and have emotional conversations with them in my bathroom mirror. I would talk it out with Jason for weeks. Then, I would eventually let it go. I released the person from my expectations of them and my own needs in the friendship. I would protect my heart by backing away slowly, very slowly until there was enough room that I no longer felt vulnerable in my needs and how they were not meeting them or seeming to notice. I backed away without working through the process with the other.  Most of the time, I was content to receive them on the terms they came (which were also my terms) after my little grieving process. I accepted the friendship for what it was. I think I also realized that no matter how much legwork I put in, the result would always be the same.  At this point, they usually started noticing that I was not giving them all they were used to. This is when they started noticing and becoming upset with me. They started feeling their needs going unmet and resented me.  And then a vicious cycle began of me feeling obligated to engage on their terms, them feeling more happy because I was doing so and me feeling confused. I would hear the old tape in my head telling me that I was selfish and immature if I did not re-engage in ways they wanted. Their cold shoulder would trigger all of my childhood stuff to start working hard again to regain their love and approval. And on it would go.

Not a nice cycle.

These are beloved people I’m talking about. They are beautiful people and they are loving and witty and fun and selfish and they are wounded and they have their own stuff they don’t even see. Just like me. I love them and they love me. But they are also human. They aren’t perfect. Neither am I. The relationships won’t be perfect. I am okay with this now, these imperfect flawed relationships where feelings sometimes get hurt and expectations are in the wrong place.

But what is the point where I place my God-breathed worth and my heart above what other people want from me?  

I live my life "out loud" in some ways. I value authenticity and being real pretty much more than anything. People (me too!) tend to like this in others and in me. Sometimes people take advantage of this without sharing their own. Yet I continue to try. Am I foolish? I’ve been wondering lately. I’m not sure how to sort it out.

I have ever only walked away from 2 friendships when the person wanted something from me.

The first one was easy. My brother had just died and a girlhood friend (early teen years), who in hindsight I can see kept me as a secret friend from all of her “cool friends” because I was somewhat of an embarrassment wrote me a sympathy card. In the card she mentioned how we had really drifted over the years and she would like to be close to my family again. If I stand outside the moment as a mature 31 year old woman, I can see this as an honest expression of her compassion and longing. I can also see it as I did then as an insensitive effort to gain access to a front and centre tragedy. To be in the know. It’s this using me to be in the know that bothered me most.

The second one was about six or seven years ago. It was heart-breaking and messy with a woman who had befriended and been a support to me throughout my teen years. It came to light that she had done something horrific toward a child. I was asked by the child – now teen – to be a part of the process. I was ill for days. How could this woman I knew and loved do something so hideous? But I also knew the girl and knew she wasn’t lying. I flew to Kansas City to talk with my friend. To confront her with this violation of a vulnerable one and hear where her heart was. My heartsick self was a wreck. When I met with her, she did not deny it. She minimized it. She brushed it under the rug. As she made excuse after excuse throughout the conversation, I felt my heart fall. So I asked her, would she commit to taking steps to avoid putting other vulnerable girls at risk? The short answer was NO. She wanted to continue to live without consequences, without safeguards – real safeguards. So with much grief in my heart I told her that if she would not make a choice toward wellness for herself and safety for other young girls, I would not continue to participate in friendship with her. She chose. The friendship ended. I have no regrets about that situation. I will not be a part of unrepentant evil. 

Those two – those were simple in their own ways. They were hard too because I knew those people saw those rejections as my fault rather than their own behavior resulting in loss of friendship

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There is a tension here for me. As a Christian I am called to lay my life down, to put others before myself. I am also instructed to guard my heart – the wellspring of my life. Some days the way this should look is clear and sometimes its murky. God has given me an immense gift in the tenderness, empathy, compassion, discernment, vulnerability of my own heart. I am responsible to care for it in a way that honors what He has given me.

Over the years, I have fought for relationships. It’s not hard when things are smooth sailing. But in the muck and misunderstandings, I have fought for relationships that seem to be going down the tubes. I fight because I value people that have roots in my past and mine in theirs. I think they are worth working out. I believe it makes the friendships stronger, deeper. I fight because of those distorted core beliefs I learned as a kid. I fight because they are my people and I love them. I fight because I’m scared of being lonely. I fight because I fiercely believe in a faith-life that loves – even when it costs me something. I fight because I have known the power of restoration in broken friendships. I fight for so many reasons.

I’m kind of tired of fighting (I’m kind of tired in general these days but still…). J

Today, I want to choose my own heart. My own needs. I want to let myself rest and be. I want to see if the friendships matter as much to them as they have to me. I don’t know if this is right or wrong or if there is even a right or wrong in this. Still I’m wondering …  

Will they fight? Will they blame me? Will they put themselves in my shoes? Will we fight to keep our hearts open toward one another?  Will we allow each other to be human? Or will we go on pretending nothing is wrong and everything is normal when the emotional current that runs underneath the niceties is deep and charged.

I am reluctant. I want to jump into my old way. The only way I really know. The way that makes peace. The way that denies my own needs and hurts for the sake of friendship equilibrium. When is it a matter of taking my ball and playing somewhere else (petty and immature and guarded) and when is it okay to simply acknowledge it’s not my turn to fight?

What am I afraid of? That they will simply take their ball and play somewhere else? Maybe.

But I think it is more than this. After writing this post and leaving it for an hour, I realized why this issue has been so unsettling and painful for me of late. It is really the question of my whole life. I’ve been asking this question before I even knew it.

Will you love me even if I am not who you want me to be or who you think I should be?

Will you love me even when I don’t please you?

Will you love me, stay committed to me and to our relationship, when who I am is rubbing wrong with who you are?

Will you love both of us enough to be honest and to receive my honesty?

This, I think, is real love.

Maybe I can only attend to what is in my heart -  what I am doing.

Whether I am being honest with myself, for myself and for them.

Whether I am being honest with them, for them and for myself.

Whether my heart is guarded or open toward them.

I want to be patient and grounded. Not scurrying and afraid. I want to own what is mine and leave what isn't. I want to be courageous in vulnerability. I’ve had some opportunities to practice it lately. It’s H.A.R.D. It’s raw. It’s exciting. It is liberating. It’s also messy. Maybe it’s the perfect time to read the book that has been on my reading list for a bit. It's written by Brene Brown. She is an unpretentious vulnerability and shame guru. I am encouraged that there are people so much further down this journey of an authentic life.

I just checked my local Chapters. It’s in store. Getting my coat on. 

Learning to Love

Today, I was watering the plants and the kids were playing in the backyard. Most days, I think the lane behind our house is a godsend of privacy and space to my backyard that shelters and nurtures me. This day, the alley gave me a glimpse into ugliness in my heart.

Our neighborhood is one I never thought I would live in. In the arrogance and ignorance of my early 20s, I swore to grow my family in a neighborhood marked with diversity – at least color. In retrospect, I think I believed living in such a place meant it would be authentic rather than what I thought were the plastic, sheltered worlds of many of my friends who lived in the suburbs. I have grown to see, a part of me also felt like I didn’t belong anywhere else. 

I grew up in a neighborhood marked with struggle. Falling asleep to sirens or gunshots was common. I thought it didn’t bother me. But as with everything in life, it formed me. There were carefree days of building backyard forts with wood we salvaged from the junk pile behind our fence. Roller skating, bike-riding and walks to the local grocery store with my siblings and neighbor-friends, games of HORSE with my Dad. These are joys of my childhood. I was formed by these too. My street was a inner-city mix of black, white and Hispanic. Low-life, thug-life, mid-life and young-life all lived together there. 

I thought growing up there made me compassionate. It did.
I thought it made me aware that life is not always easy or perfect or insulated. It formed this in me too.
I thought it made me tough. But now I know it mostly made me afraid. 

I trained my body to run and not grow weary
I worked and I read how to raise a better family
I bought a house on the safe side of town because I could
As long as my life stays like this I’m good

These lyrics by Christa Wells catch me every time I hear them. 

I have two kids now. 
We couldn’t live in a more different neighborhood than I grew up in.
Jason and I are doing the best we know how to raise these kids to grow up well. And I feel relieved that I live on the ‘safe side of town’. Gone is my adamant determination to expose my kids to that struggle.
I’ve wondered about this quite a bit, my change of heart…

Maybe it’s because I know now that life and hard places go together. If we’re lucky, they go together. My kids will know their own struggles in time. And part of me hopes they do, because I know this is what will really open their hearts toward the Only Place they will know FULL LIFE. 
And maybe I also just like the feeling of easy, peaceful and plenty, even if it is plastic. 
I like the idea of sheltering them from pain, even if its an illusion.

The thought has crossed my mind that my kids might become the kind of kids I mocked inside myself when I was a kid because they were unaware of what I thought was the “real world.” Then I think, "a little snobby but whole?" I’ll take it. The truth is, I hope our kids can grow up with whole hearts that allow them to love and be loved and feel compelled to share Love. 

I am beginning to see it’s all the real world. The real world is here in my ‘perfect-seeming’ neighborhood just as it was in my old rundown and raw childhood street. You just have to look a little harder. It’s easier to not see the brokenness. To look away. Or worse, to turn your nose up at it. To think you’re better than “those people.” 

And this "being better" was in my heart when the black mark on my street marked up my lovely life. Just around the crescent (so mostly out of my sight), there is a house I’m pretty sure is involved with dealing drugs and maybe even some sexual exploitation (prostitution). When you’re 2 year old walks by and says, “What’s that smell?” It’s a helpful indicator. :) Today, while watering my perfectly planted garden, the drug house pit bulls were out in the alley and were trying to break down our back gate to get in. They were vicious. This was the second time in a week. I erupted. I stomped my stuck-up feet down the sidewalk and unluckily for her (and me), one of the girls was sitting on the porch. I gave her a piece of my mind about the dogs and the alley and safety and my kids. But behind my logical, protective-sounding words was pure ugliness. The viciousness of the dogs didn't hold a candle to my own.

My heart really held this: I am better than you. We’re all better than you. You don’t belong in this neighborhood. Get out! You are marring my safe and perfect little haven. Go somewhere else so I don’t have to see it. I don’t want to think about you and your pain and why you are probably bound to a pimp to sell yourself or what it must to do to you to live in this hell-hole of a house.

As I walked away from their porch, my adrenaline and superiority evaporated. I felt ashamed and brokenhearted that this ugly stuff still oozes out of my heart. I am grateful for the work of God in my life but sometimes it’s hard to see myself. I realized my responsible-sounding words were a cover for what was really in my heart. 

I am coming to know I am Beloved. I am also dust. My heart is learning that the heart of God loves me completely. And He loves everyone else just as completely. I mar the love of God for me and for others when I carry/allow that un-love in me. This hurts my heart that is being healed and made whole by Love.

Humbling. It’s something I am getting to know. Being humbled stings. Every.Single.Time. But in the end, I am always grateful. And so I walked back down the sidewalk … A LOT slower this time … Cara asked to come. And I agreed because I realized I will raise snobby kids who don’t see real life in their neighborhood if I don’t lead the way. I knocked hesitantly. When the girl opened the door, I took a deep breath and told her I was wrong and I was sorry and I asked her to forgive me. The asking for forgiveness was hard because somewhere in my heart, I still think I’m better, that I matter more. There is no other explanation for how I could treat her that way. Then I asked if I could speak to the guy who owns the dogs (did I not mention, I also gave him a piece of my mind?). Again, like pulling out teeth, I lowered my voice and told him I was wrong and offered an apology. A sincere one. One that was working to change my heart to see that me and them, we are the same: Made in the image of God with brokenness in our own unique places. I have been lucky. My life did not lead me where theirs has led them. And that has little to do with me. It is grace that I was not born into their life. Simply a gift of God that His love has found me. How will it ever find them as long as I’m carrying my superior, sinful chip around on my shoulder? We are the way God has chosen to work His love into this world. What were you thinking, Lord?  I am the way God has chosen to work His love into those in my small world, my street - me a sinner. O God, don’t let me be a stumbling block to people seeing Your high and wide, life-giving Love! 

What about you? Where/What are the places it's easier to look away - either from yourself or from brokenness around you? 

Scared of Sacrifice

"We can do no great things, only small things with great love." Mother Teresa

I’m not entirely sure why, but people who have little, sit very close to my heart. Insidemy heart, actually. I think about it a lot.

When I’m standing at my sink washing dishes with clean, easy water - I think about it.

When it's storming outside and I'm cuddled up with a blanket and heat and a fireplace - I think about it.When I fill a glass with fresh water from my ice-and-water dispensing fridge - I think about it.

When I plop down on at our neighborhood beach, I feel like it’s my safe zone from the barrage of bombs sometimes going off in my life – stress, kids, work, myself, fill in the blank. "Finally, some peace" I think in a first world kind of way. But often, the thought crosses my mind that some people have never known (external) peace. They live in constant vigilance of a real bomb that might knock down the walls of their house and wipe out their families or an exploding bus on their ride to work or school.

Standing in front of my fully-stocked fridge…

Making meals for my family and thinking of other mama’s who have nothing to feed their equally precious babies…

When I drive 10 minutes and take my kid to the doctor…

…I think about it. How crazy lucky and blessed I am.

When I write our sponsored-friend, Melody, I hesitate to write what is true about our life without seeming inconsiderate of hers. I basically don’t write her half because of this and half because I find it easier to send a cheque than to give of myself.

I want our kids to really know something about this. I say it to them already, gently reminding them that they were lucky to be born here…in Canada. I want them to know they did nothing to deserve it. It was a gift or random luck, I’m really not sure. What I am sure of is this: Because they were born with much, they must think about their responsibility to respond to the needs of those who were born with little.Because really, those who were born with little did nothing to deserve that either. I want to do this in a way that sparks passion, not creates a burden. I want them to know that it is a joy to have this privilege. This is becoming real in my own heart. And that's good because it starts with Jason and I and our example.

By Canadian standards, our life is good but not lavish. But to most of the world, we are wealthy. Still, at this stage of our life, it doesn’t exactly feel easy. The responsibilities of life and family make Jay and I feel that perhaps we should start searching for the infamous money tree. Especially when the washing machine breaks and our car decides it is D.O.N.E. and preschool fees are due… and on and on. I’m pretty sure you know what I’m talking about. 

I don’t usually have to remind myself these are first world problems. Sometimes, I have to remind myself these are first world problems. But this reality lives in my heart too. Not in a dark, black kind of way, but in a way that feels connected to our world – the joy and pain and of it. We belong to each other. But these are still my first world problems. And sometimes I get stuck in knowing what to do with them.

To be honest, I struggle to pray for these things. Not pray as in, “God-genie, please give me a new washing machine...or a new car.” I might be wrong, but I don’t really believe in praying like that. I don’t believe God is at my beck-and-call like a bellhop. I mean, pray as in take my tangled-up heart and these grey and muddied questions before the One who made and holds the world. I do believe He knows our needs but what do I need? I think I struggle with this because people all over the world are praying for food today. Or water…so they can live. Literally LIVE – as in STAY ALIVE. This puts my own “needs” into perspective. The washing machine – let me be honest, it feels like a need to me.  But the car – did I mention it is our second car? It doesn’t feel right to say we need it. Like it? want it? Yes. Convenient? Yes. Need it? Not so sure. How to balance all of this with the fact that I do live in North America and have North American needs? Is that even fair to say? See my confusion?!

So maybe I see a prayer about our car as something that I shouldn’t put too high on my list of prayers (or should I?) because I don’t really need it. Maybe I could transfer that prayer-energy to the foster kid in my friend’s class whose life looks like a hell-hole. Or my drug-dealing neighbor who has lost himself, even if he doesn’t know it. Or my own heart still needing so much-shaping to not hoard and have things at the cost of other human beings.

Honestly, I feel a little confused and scared of this growing longing in my heart. I feel a joy and compelling. It's all jumbled. I feel scared of making choices for our life that are not really socially acceptable. In our culture and in my heart too, it’s radical to think of living for something more than your own four walls or four people (or whatever your number). I’m talking about sacrifice. Not the pat myself on the back and return to my mostly self-centered way kind of giving. I’m talking about a way of living: Love that sacrifices. Love that gives up some things in response to the needs I see in my little world. I've seen it in others and I am wowed by it.

Love that really is barely an echo of the Love we’ve been given.

This growing conviction and longing make me nervous because it isn’t really culturally or socially acceptable to live like that. We I think there is something a little off or radical about people who think or live this way. It scares me. It scares me because I know what it feels like to not be acceptable, to feel like I don’t belong. For a lot of my life, I worked hard to be good enough, to be acceptable, likable. As a girl, I never felt I fit. My family was a weird hybrid of homeschooler. Other homeschoolers thought we were wild and my parents too permissive. My church (public school) friends thought we were sheltered and a little strange. They all lived in the suburbs, they thought I lived in the ghetto. In my teenage job, I was often the token white person. And even in my family, I felt I didn’t fit sometimes. I’ve wondered if I was born missing a layer of tough skin other people have. I’ve always been more emotionally vulnerable and sensitive. I embrace this beautiful part of myself now, but it made growing up hard at times. But here’s the thing… I know belonging now. I know I fit – in my own skin, in my life and with others. So when I think about making sacrifices that leave people scratching their heads or clucking their tongues, it reminds me of the life I lived before I knew I was enough - acceptable, beloved. I don’t have to reach too far to remember what it felt like to not belong. And I feel afraid. Oh me of such little faith. I believe. Help my unbelief that doubts whether He guides us gently and wholly into the way of Love.

So there it is... the pulse of my heart right now. I don’t really know what to do with it. I’m just sitting with it. Being gentle with it, with myself. Listening. Wondering. Discerning. Don’t worry, those who love us, we're not planning to sell all of our earthly goods and move to Timbuktu!