Tag: fear

Plan B Girl: Five Years of Strange Fame

I once wrote a blog post that was read around the world and I secretly spent my early twenties hating that it will likely be the most popular thing I’ll ever write.

I wanted the most impactful article sitting next to my name to be something meaningful like my thoughts on God, war, history, poverty, politics. Not why you should refuse to spend your life waiting around for some guy who doesn’t want you.

But alas, here we are, that’s what I’m known for: the girl who told everyone that they’re not “Plan B”, not second best.

And to this day I still get e-mails from girls saying that those words sat with them and taught them to walk away.

I often find myself transported back to that young girl fiercely typing those words in ignorant bliss that anyone would ever find them, soak them in, bookmark them, print them, tape them to their wall.

I continuously ask myself why, of all the things I’ve ever written, those were the words. They were certainly not my most eloquent or well crafted. They were not planned or edited well, definitely not crafted to perfection. But at the time, they were heartfelt, sincere, relatable. They were words to a handful of friends who were standing in those shoes; and words to myself, words that I wanted to say but that my mouth had been afraid to speak out loud.

They were words I wanted someone to say to me because they were ones that I needed to be true. They were a permission slip that I needed to fight back, to claw at the hands gripping my neck.

The world is full of people who are afraid that they’re going to end up alone. The world is full of people whose greatest fear is that loneliness.

It’s scary what kind of life you’ll let yourself get trapped inside of when loneliness stares you down on the other side of walking away.

And that’s why I wrote the words: “Better to be alone than taken for granted. Better to be alone than to be a placeholder.”

And those words followed me for years and tested me. Did I believe them? Was I willing to see that through?

That kind of loneliness is not the scariest thing you’ll ever face.

Hands gripped around your neck, in a life that you can’t escape, in a facade masquerading as love, that’s a fate far worse than loneliness ever could be.

I was once ashamed that I wrote a piece on not being second best. That I’m the one who told every girl she’s not a backup plan kind-of-girl. But now I’ve come to see that’s not exactly all it was.

I am someone who sat down and wrote herself a permission slip to stop fearing loneliness and a bunch of other women came to the table over the years and said, “I think that’s me, I think I need that too.”

So, here’s to five years and the thousands of you who also needed that permission slip.

You do not have to fear loneliness. The truth is you are never alone. You are worthy of more than an illusion of love that’s built on excuses. Knowing your worth, that’s just as important as war, history, and politics. You are worthy of good love. You are not a backup plan. And someday I hope that we can all write more permission slips and be unashamed to hold them up in the air and wave them with joy and say, “Look at that, I’m learning how to fight fear and I’m inviting everyone along!”

These days, I’m trying to write more of them for myself. Today, my new one starts something like this:

“I hope you know that your bones were built for bravery and that your heart is crafted with courage. You don’t ever have to be ashamed of the weight with which you carry people and the intensity of how you love them. What a shame it would be to have been given a heart and only use it partially. Not you, that’s not the kind of love you’ve prayed to know. Use it. Use it and wring it out because there’s always going to be more where that came from. ‘Love is not a finite thing’ always remember what it has taken for you to learn that truth…”

I Used to Run Away

The first thing I thought was, “God, I don’t want to do this.” But then I said beneath my breath, “Yes, I want to do this. I want to do hard and holy things.”

I want to do the thing that’s kicking me in the gut right now. That is making me feel fearful and unworthy. I want to do that. I want to show up to my life—whatever it looks like. I don’t want to run from it anymore. I don’t want to wish it away, wish it was something else. I want to be in it fully and faithfully.

God, I want to know that if my heart rips out of my chest, you’re in that with me. That you know that feeling and you’re close to that kind of brokenness. That you don’t run from it, so help me not to run from it either.

I used to pray for escapes, for ways out, solely for deliverance. Now I also pray for character, for strength, for endurance, for stronger knees.

I used to want to run away. Now I want to run toward.

It reminds me again of the summer weekend we spent at the cabin in the woods of Tennessee.

The chatty woman at the Visitor’s Center warned us of bears. I knew in my gut we were going to find one waiting for us. We did, we came face to face with a black bear.

I ran away, while I watched other people run toward. They stood around him with a sense of awe. Shoulder to shoulder with something that could rip their heart out.

Sometime after that year, I became determined to start running toward. Because I hated the idea of a life that misses the awe-inspiring and wonderful because of fear.

The fear of pain is something that I’ve wrestled up and down every mountain I’ve ever climbed. The fear that the view won’t be worth the pain. That one second of beauty isn’t worth the excruciating agony it might take to get there.

But that’s where I realized I value my own life too much—my own comfort over God’s heart and beauty. Because that second of beauty reflects something that connects me to Him in a way that nothing else ever has, ever can.

“Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere; I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked” -Psalm 84:10

Better is the one second in His risky beauty than the thousands I find in my self-preservation.

Better is the moment of colliding with awe and wonder. Of leaving the fear behind, than the long trek back down the mountain in my self-soothing fearful life of safety.

God, I want to do hard things. I want to run toward. I want to value your beauty over my best-laid plans of self-protection.

God, I want to choose the hard things, not because I think you always require it but because I know there’s something worthy in fighting the fear. Because I know what it is to walk back down the mountain having missed a chance at seeing another glimpse of you.

Fear and All His Friends

“You’re like a potted plant—you take your roots with you.”

Suddenly I felt like a sturdy, hefty, bright and nourished pillar that someone could turn toward and say “look at that, doesn’t she just brighten up this space?”

After years of everything feeling temporary, transient, impermanent, her words made me realize that no matter how much I’ve moved, it doesn’t mean I haven’t been growing roots, or haven’t been healthy and thriving.

Fear is a liar. He knows nothing about gardening, but he memorized a few words in a Botany textbook and tried to spin them to convince me he is an absolute expert.

Call him out. That’s my advice to you about Fear when he shows up and goes on endless rants that try to shut you down and make you feel helpless and hopeless. Bring someone else into the conversation and call him out, find out if he knows what he’s talking about. Because chances are when bring some other people to the table they’re going to see through the facade and they’re going to prove it’s absolute nonsense. Fear is going to be the loser, the one walking away in defeat.

I’ve been carrying this lie around for so long now, and Fear had me convinced it was true. I kept thinking I’m just wanderer—a flaky nomad and people with white picket fences and strollers just see me passing by and think “Oh, that poor drifter, there she goes again rootless and barren…” 

But then I got sick of it. So I grabbed Fear and drug him by the ears to one of those white picket fences. We rallied the neighbors and called his bluff. That’s when they called me a potted plant: growing, healthy, rooted, but still moving. And then Fear ran back home crying; his friend Comparison had to scoot along too.

Sometimes you just need to rally, to grab someone else, to stop listening to the thing that sounds true, but that shuts you down leaves you voiceless, helpless, restless. Pull someone else in to say the thing you cannot see, the thing that Fear and his friends just keep talking circles around.

Because Fear wants you to believe he’s smarter than you, wiser than you, more experienced and better equipped. But really he’s just long-winded and loud-mouthed. He knows most of the headlines, but none of the substance.

Don’t let Fear dominate the conversation, be the center-of-attention, steal the show, stifle the party. Fear and his friends are the house guests I give you permission to always show the door. And if and when they’re rowdy, grab some friends, some experts, (maybe some moms with strollers) and kick them to the curb. If for a second you see him or hear him speaking up, he has overstayed his welcome, go tell him his time is up.

 

 

 

Hungry, Angry, and Sitting With God

My life these days is sunshine warming my face in my childhood room, mid-morning coffee, memories of soggy streets in South America. Silence lulls me to sleep, along with the smell and burn of menthol on my back and legs. This is home, with its cold autumn air and slow traffic on the streets that never seem to change.

I tell myself that I am not angry, but I am angry.

Anger for me is like a pair of well-worn blue jeans. It fits in a comfortable but sloppy kind of way. I’ve never figured out why I keep shoving it back in my closet.

Hollow is another word that comes to mind. It sounds scary and dark, but it’s not really that. This kind of hollow is just quiet and achy.

I am fumbling for pill bottles, waking up countless times, checking my weight to make sure I’m eating enough. I sometimes lie awake and wonder if God is still around to hear the million sighs I make during the night.

“It could be worse,” is what I say through clenched teeth and a smile.

Those words are true. I am trying to be grateful. It could be worse, so much worse.

But it hurts and is painful and the thing I’m most afraid of is that one more person (including myself) will keep saying something like it’s going to get better. It doesn’t help.

Because right now, I have to sit with God in this.

I have to sit with Him. I just have to sit across this table from Him until we’ve finished this thing He’s preparing for me. I just have to sit here until we’re finished and He picks up the tab. I have to fight the urge to walk off in my impatience. I have to fight the urge to ask someone else to bring me an appetizer to fill this hunger. I have to wait on whatever it is that He says is on the way. It will get better, but I have to stay here for however long the space it between those words will get and better takes.

It aches and it carves its way through my heart in a way that I don’t always know how to talk about. I am disappointed. This place doesn’t have a menu. When I walked in, I didn’t see what I could expect posted in a bold and elegant font. I’m here and the fact that He’s brought me to this table tells me that He intends to fill me, but I can’t really give you much else. I can’t really tell you what that means or how long it’s going to take.

And sometimes my hollow hunger makes me angry, makes me frustrated, makes me wonder if I should have gone elsewhere. Sometimes I bang my fists and tell Him that I don’t even smell anything, that there’s no sign anything is even coming.

But He’s here, we are here and that has to be enough. If we finish 2017 in this booth with mediocre coffee cupped in our hands—it has to be enough. Even if Christmas lights look duller this year and my breath is still labored after simple tasks. If that fortune cookie is a liar and I cry on my twenty-sixth birthday, it has to be enough.

Breath lodged in my throat, shoulders heavy with truth, it has to be enough. Because He invited me to the table. He invites us all and somehow I saw the invitation in the middle of the darkness. Not everyone does and not everyone comes. Not everyone chooses this table and I’ve seen the pain in both His and their eyes when they sit somewhere else.

There is a table and we are here. For now, for both of us, I think it is enough.

 

 

 

The Road In-Between

God asked me the one question I prayed He wouldn’t.

It was a sweet moment, though my knees were knocking and my shoulders shivering. The winds were cold, the roads daunting, the trees sprinkled with fresh snow. I took a deep breath before I answered Him, not even sure what would come out of my mouth

But He knew my answer before I did and that was the reason He asked; He knew I had to hear myself say it out loud.

I leaned against the car, my back pressed hard against it, staring up at the mountains. She told me this would happen. This complete stranger, who when she looked at me, smiled like she’d known me my entire life, told me: “He’s going to give you perspective up there, when you’re standing on top of that mountain.”

I knew she was right. Her words stayed nestled in the pit of my stomach and the whole drive up I just kept wringing my hands and shifting in my seat. He would be there, He would have something to say.

I saw and heard exactly what I hoped for and everything I prayed I wouldn’t.

I’m learning that’s the pattern of the road in-between. It’s a mix of hope and intimidation; something wonderful might be waiting, but the way there might require some uncomfortable and unnerving things.

The night before, I was in one of the most terrifying situations of my life. One of those moments where you choose to trust God, or to just lay down and give up. It was one of those moments where I wanted to run away; everything inside of me wanted to be rational, to make the safest choice and call it wisdom. But safety isn’t always wisdom. Safety isn’t always God.

And that’s never been my outlook on life. I’m cautious. I am cautious to the point that I make most grandparents look dangerous and reckless.

But cautious is not a synonym for right. I’m not always right in being cautious, I’m actually seeing that I’m more often wrong.

I made it.

And the next morning held my favorite kind of laughter, the kind that shakes your entire body, that leaves your eyes with tears and your gut in pain.

I’m realizing that’s also the way of the road in-between. It’s a lot of risk and praying. It’s a lot of crying out and holding steady, even when you just want to stop right there, and never move again. And you keep thinking there’s no way you’ll get through this and laugh again, but then somehow you do–somehow you get there. 

And it wasn’t safety that necessarily got you there, it wasn’t because you constructed the most cautious plan. It was because you did what you had to, you trusted, you prayed, you realized that your own cautious plans wouldn’t have ever guaranteed your safe arrival anyways.

Sometimes, you’re required to pry your hands from controlling the outcome of everything around you.

You can’t control it, even with all of your best and carefully laid plans. Nothing teaches you that more than the road in-between. You’ve already left where you were, you’re going somewhere else and you get three choices: stop and give up, turn around or move forward.

You’re already moving, you can’t change that. Once you move, you have to make some hard choices. The best choice for me was to move forward, even though everything inside of me shouted “turn back!” 

We shouldn’t always listen to that. Yes, there are times to trust your gut, but there’s also a time to shut it up, to tell yourself that your past experiences lied. Just because you’ve seen a road that looked like this before, doesn’t mean you’ll end up at the same place.

I write all of this, my bags still packed, my hair unwashed, my eyes stinging. I write this after just telling my roommates, “my experiences are my truth, that I have to make my choices based on past outcomes.”

But I knew on that mountain and I knew an hour ago, here in my living room, that to live believing every road lined with grass and trees takes you to the same destination is absurd.

The roads might have similar markers, but it doesn’t mean your destination is the same.

The road in-between isn’t easy for any of us, and it will likely require you to answer the hard questions and to choose to hold steady when you’re determined that the only way to survive is to stop or turn around.

But survival was never the goal in the first place.

And what would it matter if you made it back, but never got to hear the whisper that was waiting for you if you had just gone a little further.

That Was The Night That Broke Me

Honestly, I didn’t think I would make it out alive.

I remember that the sky was black, the darkest I’d ever seen it. One hand on the steering wheel, the other holding the back of my neck. I was screaming and sobbing. I was fighting for my life and at that point, I felt it could go either way.

The streetlights were blurred by the ache in my head and burning tears in my eyes. My vision went in and out of focus. There were moments when the pain pushed through me so fiercely that I’d find myself leaning over the middle console, praying from the depths of my soul. There’s no earthly explanation for how I kept my car on the road.

My tiny foot ramming into the gas pedal, I was racing down I-85. All I knew was that I had to keep going. With every mile marker I passed, the pain grew worse and fear tightened his grip.

My phone battery was blinking, just a few minutes and my phone would be dead. I turned it off, trying to save what little life it had left. I just kept telling myself to get somewhere safe: anywhere but there. If I could just find a safe place, I could call for help.

I remember pulling into that restaurant parking lot, picking up my phone and shakily dialing. “This is where I am. I’m in this town. It’s at this exit, please come.”

Immediately after those few sentences escaped my mouth, my phone died.

That was the night that broke me. I convulsively wept until I was choking and gasping for air. I waited. For hours, I waited and I cried. I slept a little in my car. Then, I went inside the restaurant and I ate yogurt, drank coffee, laid my head on the table and mumbled a prayer of very few words.

I’ll never get that picture out of my head. The image is burned into my brain: the look on her face when she got out of her car. The pain, the worry, the relief on her face when she finally grabbed me in a tight hug.

When my eyes opened the next morning, I only laid there in my childhood room and stared at the blank white wall in front of me. For hours, I just laid there.

There were a lot of mornings after where I did the same.

In the months that followed, I remember mostly one thing: everyone just kept telling me to move on.

I’d tell my heart, my limbs, my head to listen to them, to strengthen themselves and to get up, to move on. But they didn’t and I couldn’t. And every single time I saw those old friends again, they’d say the same words: just get up and move on.

But I couldn’t stop thinking about my ribs hurled over that console, my head screaming at my body not to stop fighting. I just kept thinking about how no matter how hard my foot pushed, I couldn’t go fast enough. I kept remembering her face, that look that said, I wish I could have gotten here faster. 

It took a while to recover from that.

But there was one thing that never helped, that never eased my pain: someone telling me to “just get over it and move on”.

Yes, I know they were trying to help and that it killed them to see me in such grief and pain. I’m not even saying they weren’t right, but the truth is it didn’t help. 

So, I’m not going to tell you to get over it and move on.

Because I wasn’t there.

I wasn’t there when you went through your darkest moments, your longest nights. I wasn’t there when you felt your deepest pain, gave your hardest fight.

And maybe you’re like me, and you have a story that only you, God and a stretch of highway will ever really understand. Maybe there are some things you’ll never find words for, moments you’ve lived that you’ll never be able to whisper out into the world.

I’m not going to tell you that you have to tell that story.

Because you don’t. It’s yours, to hold and to give. You get to be the one to hand out permission slips, invitations for someone to walk in and know the details of your pain.

But what I will tell you is that,  I hope the day comes when you let someone in.

In the core of my being sits this certainty that every little thing we’ve gone through has powerful potential. If we use them, they can bring light to someone who is now sitting in that same place of darkness.

Our songs may never be the same, but the fear, the pain, the fighting and the rescue all have the same tune. We all, in some ways, live ours lives hearing the same melodies. Sometimes, we just need to sit together and share the different words.

So, I’m not going to tell you to get over it, move on, let go. Because I already know that day will come. You’re a fighter and grace got you this far. I’ll just grip my coffee mug and clench my fists and pray that the same God who undoubtedly drove my car down the highway that night, also grabs ahold of you in your grief.

Sometimes, it takes weeks before we can walk again. For some stories, it takes years to heal. I’m not going to be the one to give you an expiration date for your pain.

But our stories, if we let them, have light to give. When people come broken, I don’t want us to simply tell them to get over it and let it go. My hope is that we grab ahold of them, and that for whatever stretch of time they limp, we let them lean on our shoulders.

May we be unafraid to tell our stories, and may we use them as a light. May we selflessly help others through the dark places in which we ourselves have already been.