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.

Raw Grief: Unravelled Remembering

It was a cloudy day.

A Sunday.

A normal Sunday. 

I remember Jason checking the caller ID and his surprise at the 913 area code.

Weird, I thought, How do my parent’s even know Jason’s number?

I remember Jason’s face tightening as he listened to the voice on the other end. He wouldn’t look at me. He handed me the phone and said, “It’s your mom. I don’t think it’s good.”

I remember my hand trembling as I took hold of that stupid black phone.

My growing dread nearly lifting my feet off the ground.

I don’t remember any words before or after, “Ryan is gone. He passed away early this morning.” She tried to say them gently. In some ways, I hated the gentleness of those death-filled words.

A pain explosion.

The Long Road From Sorrow To Joy

Here’s what I have learned and am learning in grief: It’s a broken hallelujah (see Leonard Cohen).

A few weeks ago, Laura (spiritual director) and I were talking about suffering and the often missing theology of suffering in our churches and in our culture. I told her about this article and my sadness and outrage at the misrepresentation of what it means to believe in a good God while walking toward death or living with grief.

Then I recently read this…

“Today’s (north American) churches and Christians have chosen to become shallow, entertainment-oriented, and therefore irrelevant in the face of massive suffering… the vision of God in today’s churches in relation to evil and suffering is often frivolous.”

In our own ways, we all do this. Hopefully we're trying not to do this. The heart of God must break watching us twist the Gospel to fit how we want to live. 

God is not a candy machine where you put in your fifty cents and choose A6 and out pops a healthy baby, a marriage that lasts, great kids, a big house and 2 cars, or life without loss. But somehow even those of us who don't profess the prosperity "gospel" sometimes reduce it to this

I wondered how have we moved so far from the Christ we claim to imitate? Ghandi said, “I like your Christ…but Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”  

The point of giving up something for lent is not so we can feel victorious in our self-righteous ability to hunker down and be sacrificial. It’s to understand that we are powerless on our own to overcome the things that rule and break us.

Easter is profound for me. Lent. Sorrow. Desperation. Sunday morning. Joy. Promise. Hope.

Unlike much pop-christian theology, in Scripture and God in human form, we are shown over and over again that living a faithful life does not mean we will not be broken, but that we are held, accompanied, blessed and journeyed with in our suffering.

The Road to Emmaus is a familiar Easter story. Henri Nouwen writes that it is also a story about the movement from sorrow to joy. 

Jesus invites the travelers, “Tell me about your pain. I want to hear your story.” He doesn’t say “It will all be okay. Why can’t you see that? Look, I’m Jesus, what are you so sad about?” Nouwen writes that the travelers could not see that their losses are what would enable them to receive the gift of life. The grain has to die to bear fruit, loss is the way of salvation, of hope and re-creation. Of redemption! Jesus took their story of loss and put it in the larger story; joy hidden in the sadness.  

A Time to Mourn and a Time to Dance: A Meditation on the Movement from Sorrow to Joy by Henri Nouwen.

Jesus came to sing a dirge and say: “Cry with me.” Jesus came to play a pipe and say: “Dance with me.” There is a secret place in us where the Spirit brings new life. There is a crèche where the Child is born in you. There is the broken soil of your soul where the seeds of grace can grow in you. The Spirit of God within us says, “There is a time to mourn and a time to dance.” The spirit of healing that makes us mourn is the same Spirit that makes us dance. The mystery of the dance is that its movements are discovered in the mourning.

A Time to Mourn

Mourn, my people, mourn. Let your pain rise up in your heart and burst forth in you with sobs and cries. Mourn for the silence that exists between you and your spouse. Mourn for the way you were robbed of innocence. Mourn for the absence of a soft embrace, an intimate friendship, a life-giving sexuality. Mourn for the bitterness of your children, the indifference of your friends, and the hardness of heart of your colleagues. Mourn for those who hunger for love brought them AIDS, whose desire for freedom brought them to refugee camps, whose hunger for justice brought them to prisons. Cry for the millions who die from lack of food, lack of care, lack of love….Cry for freedom, for salvation, for redemption. Cry loudly and deeply, and trust that your tears will make your eyes see that the Kingdom of God is close at hand—yes, at your fingertips.

A Time to Dance

To heal is to let the Spirit call us to dance. Can you feel the freedom that rises up in you when you have been stripped naked and have nothing to inhibit your movements anymore? You can dance as David danced in front of the Ark. Can you notice in your innermost being the joy of living that comes from having nothing left to lose? Can you see the soft, beautiful smile that appears in the tearful eyes of your mourning friend? Jesus enters into our sadness, takes us by the hand, pulls us gently to where we can stand, and invites us to dance. And as we dance, we realize that we don’t have to stay on the little spot of our grief but can step beyond it into the unknown, spacious territory, until we finally know that the entire world is our dance floor. Yes! Leave—leave your father, mother, brother, sister, and friends; all the world will be yours, and you will catch people wherever you dance.”

Acknowledging my brokenness allows me to see the Kingdom of God close at hand … in my own life and in the lives of others. For this reason and this reason alone, I want to embrace my brokenness, letting it be transformed by the hand of a loving God who transforms and redeems all things. 

Death: Gift of God?

These thoughts are probably a mixture of tuning my heart into the Lenten season, a friend's dad recently diagnosed with cancer and my too quick tendency to give answers, and the approaching anniversary of my brother's death.

 

Photo Credit

I once listened to a native american storyteller talk about his life and wisdom. He said, "We all earn our wisdom. It don't come cheap, that's for sure."

I have a soul friend who often cavalierly says death is going to happen to everyone eventually ... it's a normal part of life. He implies it's something to simply accept. Each time he says it, I feel myself cringe as if he is scraping his fingernails down a chalkboard. After several times of his off-handed comments, I genuinely and quietly asked, "Have you ever encountered death personally...at your core, with someone you love?"

When I hear a cognitive, tidy, in-the-box discussion about death and faith, I usually start by feeling mystified, then frustrated, until the very end where I realize, "Oh. This person has never felt death's grip around their throat or the throat of someone they love. They are talking about death intellectually." Either because they have not yet experienced it or they have not let themselves feel it. The piece of wisdom I have gained most from my experiences of grief is that death is the total opposite of our God. The comfort of this for the brokenhearted is beyond describing. 

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

.

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?