Tag: questions

You Won’t Forget: Thoughts on Letting Go.

It happened again the other day.

One of the last times I remember it happening was when I was sitting in the hospital. I was on a different continent entirely and I kept going back and wondering if I would always feel this way.

That sinking feeling and those same thoughts always come in waves.

This story should be different. I shouldn’t have to tell it this way. I should be somewhere else. I wasn’t supposed to feel like this.

Rewind.

Back to the night that my phone read 1 New Voicemail.

I’m standing outside of that restaurant, the neon sign above my head. The voice on the other end was angry. I was afraid. I knew that nothing was ever going to be the same.

It took years before I deleted that message. But when I finally did, I was hoping that somehow it would erase that night entirely. Fix it or fix me. That I would somehow come to terms with the truth about all the words that we said, the ones that little device held, words that never really told what we needed to say.

So, what about now?

I often ask that question as the blinker of my car flashes and ticks its familiar rhythm; as I weave through the lines of the highway.

What about now? Because I can’t go back. We cannot go back.

I have a secret that I’ve been trying to keep from God. One that I think if I shove it far enough inside, we’ll both forget about it and He might let time heal these things.

Letting go, it seems to be the thing people most often ask me about.

I’m no expert. I can’t say that I figured it out when I finally pressed that button. I can’t tell you that it’s that easy, that there’s a simple formula for moving on or a way to rewind and get back the time.

But what I can tell you is that you’re not going to wake up one day and have the quick fix, it doesn’t happen. You won’t suddenly open your eyes and feel changed, whole, free. Pain, like I’m talking about, doesn’t just fade. I wanted to believe it did. God knows that I hoped after I hit erase my memory could do it too, my heart could do it too.

But we are not creatures who forget. I’ve spent days and nights clawing at the insides of my mind and begging God to give me a mind that forgets. But we’ve got memories and reflexes, we are tied to old times. Thank God. Thank God that He doesn’t answer the prayer for me to let go in the ways I want to let go. I don’t get to let go by means of forgetting, of pushing it into the dark.

We let go by means of forgiveness. By remembering but choosing to lay it down. I have to lay it down—put it in a different place, stop holding it in these hands. I can’t keep gripping it, I have to unfurl these clenched hands, sometimes finger by finger, day by day. I have to know that white knuckling this thing won’t get it back. It hasn’t gotten it back.

This story will be different. I don’t have to tell it this way. I can be somewhere else. It doesn’t have to feel like this.

Stop going back to the night where my phone read 1 New Voicemail.

Stop going back, that’s what I can tell you. It doesn’t mean you’re going to forget, because you are not going to forget. We are not creatures who forget.

Lay it down. Keep laying it down. Stop holding it in your hands. Stop telling the story the way you do. You don’t have to tell it this way. You can be somewhere else. You don’t have to keep going back there.

You don’t have to learn how to live inside of that story without flinching. You just have to learn how to lay that chapter down and say, “Okay, I can’t re-write that part. I can’t keep re-reading that same chapter and hoping the characters do something else. I can’t keep flipping back and wishing that it went another way. I have to keep reading. I have to see where this thing goes and who we become. It’s going somewhere, but I can’t keep being disappointed with what happened back there. The rest is still worth reading. One sentence can make all the difference.”

It can, you know. One sentence you aren’t expecting might make all the difference.

But if you keep re-reading all the same ones you’ve read, looking for something back there to change, you’re just going to come up disappointed. The past is set in print, so let it go. The rest of what’s about to happen is absolutely worth reading.

Lay it down. Let it go. Stop telling and reading the same part of the story. You can read somewhere else. You don’t have to stay there.

We don’t have to stay there. You are not meant to live inside of one chapter, no matter how good or hard the words, promises, or sets of eyes. You don’t have to try and figure out where the plot line went wrong. You don’t have to keep pouring over those pages in regret and wondering if you could have changed that last sentence. You don’t have to dread the next chapter.

Just start with the next line on the next page.

One sentence can make all the difference and it might be just a few words away.

 

 

 

 

Let Your Heart Break and Find Out Who Stays.

This restaurant, this table, knows all our worst heartbreaks.

If the walls around it could speak, they would repeat back to me some of the hardest words I’ve ever said, attached to some of the strongest love I’ve ever felt.

One day when we’re older and have maybe learned what it means to let go and let God, I hope that our daughters find a spot like this to console them. Especially on nights woven with the kind of pain that you wish a good Taylor Swift lyric and a bite of cheesecake could cure.

But pain like this—it’s not a thing we can scream out, sing out, shake out of our systems with the volume turned up and the windows rolled down, not this time. Not tonight.

Tonight we will do those things, but we will know that tomorrow it will still hurt. It’s going to hurt and the two girls who used to make plans about how long we would let heartbreaks last, tonight we lay down our pens. Because we know that tomorrow it is still going to hurt.

Let it hurt.

Because the thing about pain that I have learned from all these years back and forth at this table is that it helps you find the people who stay.

Pain breaks us, pulls out all our worst pieces. It puts our worst parts on display, drags out all the mess and presents it to whoever is standing at the door.

It also makes us, teaches us how to pick up those pieces, look at our mess, and decide what part of us isn’t something we want to keep hanging around for another rainy day.

The people who stick around through that, who are still standing by the door when you’ve finished breaking and making sense of it all, those are the people you end up back at the table with again.

Let your heart break. Learn the good things. Let it hurt and find out who stays.

Someday when we’re older and we’re happy, (I know I said that happiness isn’t the point, but I still think we will be happy) I hope that there’s still a table that can hold our heartbreak. That you will still be there to remind me of all the reasons why my heartbreaks have made me worse and made me better.

That you’ll be the friend that fights to remind me that we all are human. We all falter. I might try to have all the pretty words, but I will still get it wrong. That it is okay for me to mess up too. But grace keeps coming back to the table.

We keep coming back to the table. That’s grace. True grace says, “Even if we have to keep having this same conversation a hundred times, this seat is still open for you.”

I hope that someday when we’re older, we move to a bigger table. I hope that our little two-seater doesn’t fit all the love that we’ve been storing up. I hope that all the years of grace we’ve been learning to grow finally finds its home in people who will show up with some of their own. I know it will. I know they will.

Someday when we’re older, even though we feel old today, we’ll look back on tonight and maybe we will still cry. But I hope we cry only for tonight’s girls who didn’t know just how big Grace really is. For all the plans He has and had. That there are walls around us that speak, but not in the ways we think. They are the ones He put up to save us, to stop us, to keep us from places our grace-filled hearts thought might be our destiny.

Someday when we’re older, we’ll talk about the night that changed everything, about coming back to the table, about the grace that we didn’t see coming, but God knew we would need.

 

 

 

Make Better Plans + Forgive Yourself

Not once in my childhood did I ever daydream of running away and joining the circus.

But when I reached the shoreline, felt the burning heat of summer, the sticky sand and salt clinging to my skin, I started to long for a haphazard kind of life.

Because I realized I still don’t know how to stand steady in front of eyes and a mouth that don’t speak the same thing.

Sometimes in the mirror, I realize those eyes and that mouth belong to me.

Tattered denim and golden hour covering our shoulders, someone recently told me that my face often betrays me first. It always has.

No one sets out to be a liar. Little girls don’t daydream of becoming personified apologies.

Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. This becomes the constant word of someone who makes plans and breaks them. Because good intentions don’t make for worthy plans or promises. And poetic sentiments are sometimes better left on the movie screen. But if and when you put all your best words on the table, that doesn’t mean you have to sit with them forever. Sometimes you leave them there. End scene. Cue credits. Go home.

I wish I’d learned this sooner.

Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. It’s time to sit in the word that you must finally say to yourself. Apologize to the one person you have not. For the fact that you did not believe you are beautiful. That you pulled and tamed your curls. That you covered your face. That you bit your tongue. That you hid your tears. That you let the mark of a red pen define you. That you do all of these things still.

It’s time to say “I’m sorry” to the one person you haven’t forgiven. For never getting it quite right. You. For being too much, too little—or some combination that jammed the lock. That kept you from the places your biggest dreams planned you would go.

If you want, you can finally make better plans, worthy promises. You can walk away from the table of good intentions, poetic sentiment, the plans that turned you into a personified apology. Plans change and you didn’t always know who you were and who you would become when you made them.

I’m sorry to the girl who is still trying to show up for old plans and the promises she had to break. The circus probably won’t take you and running away has yet to save you. You’re the most beautiful you’ve ever been and it’s okay to hold the brokenness in your hands and not try to fix it. I’m sorry that you’ve apologized around the world, but never where it started. That your good intentions and broken plans were all because your mouth betrayed your eyes. Your head betrayed your heart. You did not believe that you were the right combination and that you could go where that little girl dreamed of.

You’re the most beautiful you’ve ever been and it’s okay to hold the brokenness in your hands and not try to fix it.

 

 

 

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.

Faith is Not a Pillow at Cracker Barrel

The last thing I thought I’d have rolling around in my head this morning is something that is probably a quote on a pillow at Cracker Barrel.

But there it was, flashing through my mind as I tried to fall back asleep.

Sometimes I act like faith is “shooting for the moon and hoping I land amongst the stars”.

I know this sounds ridiculous, but stick with me, we’re going somewhere.

It’s like I aim as high as I can, at what sounds really good, hard, noble, important. That’s usually when I think “yeah, that’s probably God” and force myself, no matter how awful, to do it.

Faith, when I’m trying to do it on my own, is like this awful combination of running a marathon and eating endless bowls of kale. “It’s good for me,” I groan. I try to force it down, hand it out, all the while I think people can probably see that I’m bent over looking nauseated and angry.

Following God is nothing like that.

Sometimes I treat him like my professor. Like he’s the guy handing out the syllabus who pushes up his glasses and says, “My grading rubric is really not that hard” but is actually just keenly unaware of how uneducated the rest of us are.

But that’s not Jesus. When He said that line about the load He gives being “easy and light”, He wasn’t this out-of-touch guy who thinks we’re further along than we actually are.

Right after that, He tells us He is gentle and humble in heart.

Which brings me to yesterday, when I told multiple people that I have a really hard time thinking Jesus is gentle.

I think He’s good. I think He’s patient. I think He is a lot of really wonderful things. But I think He’s about as gentle as a hurricane in a blazing oven. I don’t even know if that can exist, but regardless, it’s unfortunately how I often see Jesus.

“I am gentle and humble in heart,” If I’m perfectly honest, I kind of wanted to throw something across the room as I thought about that line this morning (because clearly, I am the picture of gentleness).

Gentle and humble in heart. Like a scorned housewife, I poured my coffee and tried not to roll my eyes. Well, your actions say differently, dear!

This is where you have to be really glad we serve a super gracious God who doesn’t send lightning bolts in these times. Because that’s when Father God was probably up there miming the sign for the cross and turning up the volume on “Amazing Grace”.

But there I was, slinging my breakfast around and judging his gentleness and boasting in my brand of Cracker Barrel pillow faith.

And Jesus just kind of stood there in the kitchen with me, “I didn’t tell you to shoot for the moon.” He says those kinds of things, loud and clear if we’re willing to stop ranting and listen for a second.

There is a list of things that I’ve got rolling around in my brain that I think sound noble, noteworthy, healthy, “good for me”.  There is also a list of things that other people “need” and demand, that I’ve picked up along the way. They sound really good, they even sound like they could be God. But they also sound a lot like me trying to be the best version of myself. They sound like me trying to shoot for the moon and hoping I hit something that resembles a star. It’s striving for an A, hoping I get a B, and worse case scenario, thinking I’ll at least probably pass.

But faith isn’t a project, a paper, or quiz. It isn’t this throwing out your best attempt and hoping you “do alright”.

It’s mornings in the kitchen slinging around your coffee and asking Jesus if he’s gentle and waiting around to find out.

It’s digging through the questions and realizing that even if you’re getting it all wrong, He’s still there. He isn’t holding a syllabus and he isn’t going lash back when you try to start an argument over breakfast.

The first part of that verse, the one where He talks about being gentle. Where he talks about how the load He gives is easy and light, He doesn’t say “shoot for the moon”.

He says “Come to me.”

And when He says “Learn from me, my load isn’t heavy”, I don’t think He’s the out of touch professor saying, “Go figure it out, it’s not that hard!”

I think it means something more like, “You don’t have to aim high and hope. I’ve already done it. I know right where to go, right where to aim. I’ll help you, walk with you the whole way.”

There’s a gentleness in someone who bears the weight of the load. In someone who goes first, maps it out, tears down all the limbs, patches up all the dangerous holes, goes ahead, walks it out and then comes back for you and guides you through the whole thing again. Doesn’t get weary when you complain. Doesn’t throw up their hands in frustration when you whine about the heat or the little thorn you got, when they had the worst journey imaginable before you. They just keep going, keep walking, keep laughing. Letting you take the easy path, fixing your wounds and making good jokes and being a good shoulder when you get distracted by something and fall over your own feet. That’s about as gentle as they come.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke on you and learn from me, because I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and my load is not hard to carry.”-Matthew 11:28-30

How to Catch the Light

I hope the fireflies show up for you.

Like they did for us when our feet ran through the damp grass of my grandparent’s backyard on summer evenings. When we reached the walkway, the little pebbles would dig into our heels. I still have a scar on my left hand from the branch that snapped during one of our adventures through the woods.

I used to think that their back porch would always be there, that those same faces always around the table to greet me, playing cards in hand. That I would spend all my years running through and slamming that screen door.

I sometimes still wonder if the fireflies wait for us there, think we’re coming back and scoop them up in our little mason jars. But time doesn’t stand still, the light of fireflies fade, and not everyone who used to sit around that table could still be there if we went back.

But I’ve been realizing even after all those people are long gone, the thing that will be stuck with me, is all the light they left. Those are the fireflies still hanging around when we’re all grown up and the tables have changed.

What I remember most is the way those people loved me, the way they kept me laughing. I remember how my Great Uncle took us outside and bent down close, taught us how to gently guide the light into those jars. He taught how to hold onto it, but then how to set it free. When the world was busy, he stepped outside with barefoot children and taught us how to catch the light.

Last week I met a stranger while buying a book. I laughed harder that day than I have in a long time. We didn’t change the world with political ideologies, theological debates, lengthy equations, chemical experiments. We simply found ourselves laughing over something inconsequential. We left one another with beaming smiles and kind words.

I drove around that night telling God that sometimes I feel like I’ve been missing the point.

Inside of me sits a little girl who remembers standing in the hallway of her elementary school, hearing the whispers of other kids, “Why does she always stare at the ground? Someone told me she was mute.”

I remember learning back then, what I am learning now: I don’t want to waste this voice. Or try to give God the excuse that that using it is harder than it is.

Because really, I think it is just fighting to become brave enough to open our mouths. It’s just looking up from the ground and saying something kind, something intentional. I don’t want to live with a mouth, voice, a chance and only ever use them when it feels easy or convenient, or when I deemed the opportunity or person worthy of my effort.

Sometimes it takes getting over the hurt, the fear, the things that followed us for years. It’s knowing that value is not always the big things that everyone applauds. Sometimes it is learning how to make someone else feel like they’re funny, interesting, worth listening to, a good storyteller.

It’s just teaching little ones how to catch fireflies. It’s just making a joke with a stranger. It’s just love. Teaching someone else how to catch the light.

Sometimes that seems so small, so insignificant and yet, if that were the case I don’t think it would be so hard. But when confronted with the challenge of loving difficult people, strangers, sometimes even those closest, it’s hard. It’s hard to put down our phones, clear the schedule, say the apology, reach for the hug, sit with someone in grief, knock on their door, be inconvenienced, feel awkward. If it was so small, or easy, more people would do it and the world would be different.

It matters. And every time you do the thing that feels so incredibly uncomfortable and insignificant it changes them and it changes you.

One day you wake up and you realize that saving your words and efforts for bigger and better things, waiting for more, waiting for that one big bright moment was just a trap to stop you from all the light surrounding you right here and right now. It just takes catching all the little moments right there in jars. Because all of the little chances, if you grab them, make a great big light.

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

California: Letting Go of the Blueprints

California.

I thought it would be all sunshine, warmth, orange-hued days and lightweight laughter.

But the air had a chill, the clouds were heavy with rain, the days thick with prayers and an ache for something more.

From the moment the plane drifted below the clouds and I saw the sun setting over the land full of big dreams, I thought to myself, maybe this is a place I can believe for the impossible.

Tucked away in those California mountains was a cabin. For a few days, I found myself squeezed in between its walls with a group of strangers. A million times I had been in this same scenario, but with different paint colors and couches; rooms with strangers, Bibles in our laps, hoping that after a few days we would have a handful of good stories and memories to look back and remember when God sifted through some dirt in our hearts to remind us of the gold.

But something felt different. Something felt entirely offbeat inside my chest that first morning after breakfast and I couldn’t seem to catch my breath. I’ll never forget my feet running up the stairs, my knees hitting that carpet, my hands clenching into fists. God shook me right in those first few hours. There was a moment coming—something that was going to change everything.

That night God showed up in a way that only He could. He came barreling through that basement door, arms full of everything we were so desperately in need of.

Sometimes I think we are like children with Santa Claus, terrified that if we go He isn’t going to know where to find us. We’re so tied to plans, people, callings, dreams, years, the things we’ve spent using to build our lives that we can’t imagine what God would do if we were shoved inside of a basement somewhere unfamiliar. Because we have all these plans we’ve made and promises we are begging Him to keep.

But He did more than I expected, asked, was even prepared for. And right there, just after I let out a sigh of relief, thinking He had emptied His arms and I’d seen it all, He leaned against the wall and whispered the very thing I was least expecting. He pulled out from behind His back the best thing, the only thing that could have knocked the wind completely out me.

And all the years and months of fighting, drowning, begging, came racing across the country and crashing right there at my feet. He put the nail in the coffin of the thing that has nearly caused me to lose it all, over and over again. When I looked at it, in my tiny hands, I realized how many times I’ve gone searching for those same words in the office of principals, guidance counselors, in the arms of my parents, sister, friends. God said to me the only thing that ever really mattered to me, the thing that has driven me from birth, in every decision I’ve ever made. Its kept me from sleeping at night, made me terrified and paralyzed to make nearly every choice. In a simple little sentence, He said the thing that I’ve looked for in the voice of every other person I’ve ever known.

I realized at that moment that until God Himself spoke the words I needed to hear, and I finally heard them from Him, I would never be full, never be entirely free.

When I left for California, I figured that a southern girl out west was going to feel unknown, off-balance, a little out of place. But isn’t that just like God? To stick you in the middle of strangers and show you just how much He knows you, sees you, can say the thing you need to hear in the most unexpected and hidden place?

It was about letting go of plans, people, and the way I’ve held God to His promises. The way that I tell Him that He has to do it the way I always expected. That He has to shout those words through a certain microphone, say them through a certain mouth, in a certain place, through a set of circumstances. That He has to fulfill it how I always thought He should. Humbled and grateful, that He didn’t do it the way I demanded. That I didn’t get those words the way I expected, begged for, from the people that I argued with or demanded them from. That when I stopped fighting, clawing, stomping my feet, painting the town with instructions on how to fulfill my hopes and dreams, that God picked me up and put me on a plane and did it his way, a better way.

When I got home, slept in my bed, filled up a coffee mug, drove around this town, I heard Him whisper again: let go of the blueprints.

Because when our hands are filled with rolls of our blueprints, we can’t hold any of His. We can’t see the thing He wants to build. And what I’m starting to realize is how often His plans have elements of the things I’ve asked for, prayed for, hoped for, but His blueprints are so much bigger, more efficient, better planned than mine could ever be.

California, it was the place I thought maybe I could learn to believe for the impossible and the place where He did exactly that.

 

 

 

 

Heartbreak Was Inevitable

My back slid down the wall of that hotel lobby, tears streaming down my face. The knife in my heart dug deeper as I stared at the monotonous opening and closing of the elevator doors.

It was happening all over again.

The grief of repeated patterns. The pain of I’ve been here before and somehow I’ve gotten stuck reliving this same nightmare.

I started replaying every single detail of choices that got me to that filthy floor. I started plugging plans in place of the variables and wondering if there was any way to change the outcome of what was about to happen.

Every option led me to the conclusion that complete heartbreak was the inevitable end result.

I peeled myself off the ground, limped to the elevator, wiped my face, and forced myself to press the button. I shoved all those painful feelings into my pockets. I guess I was saving them for a day when I had more time and fewer eyes watching.

My pockets were already stuffed with things from the months before, it was all piling up.

There is a hallway that holds the truth about desire and wisdom. It was where I learned how to sink my feet into the painful choice of not doing the thing I wanted to do for the sake of doing the thing I knew I needed to do.

Because there is an ever-present cry inside of me that tells me to avoid heartache at all costs.

-It tells me to storm into the room and say what I want to say.
-It tells me to avoid the hard conversations.
-It tells me to hold on longer than I should.
-It tells me that I deserve better than crying on the floor of a hotel lobby, to make choices that might leave someone else crying there instead.
-It tells me to put myself first.

That was how I knew heartbreak was my inevitable result because every other option would have led to someone else, besides me, crying on that floor.

Am I willing to break my own heart for someone else? It’s a question that I wrestled with in the days that followed. I continued to be confronted with the reality that there are some pains so much worse than not getting what you want, one of them is getting what you wanted only to realize you sacrificed every other good thing along the way.

So while I wanted my prayers to be answered, justice to be served, my heartbreak to end—I wasn’t willing to get those things by breaking everyone else around me.

We live in a world that tells us we deserve happiness and “better”, but really I’ve stopped asking what I deserve and just started choosing love. Sometimes that means crawling to the elevator silently, sometimes it means having a hard and truthful conversation knowing it may break my heart if they walk away. But it has to mean putting others first—even if it results in not getting my way or getting the thing I thought I wanted.

Throughout these months I have been unloading my pockets. I’ve been pulling out all the things I stuffed in there: the words, the laughter, the tears, the things I didn’t say, the prayers, the timing, the day on the couches, questions that only God might ever have answers to.

I have to be honest, I find that there has been no gold medal waiting for me. There has been no phone call from that hotel praising my “selfless act”. Many mornings I wake up, look at the scattered contents and say, “I’m not really sure where to put it all, what exactly the point of this was.” Nevertheless, there’s settledness in me that stays, it is present during my morning coffee and on my afternoon drives.

And isn’t that the great thing about love? That even when it breaks us, it builds us in such a way that we find ourselves steadier, settled, and willing to look at those scattered contents again? That even if we can’t understand it all, even if there are no gold medals, and even if no one saw the limping to the elevator, holding our tongue, or the hard conversation, that we eventually show up with something in our hands and say “it hurts, but I’ve got something to tell, something to give away”. I think that’s the gold. I think that’s the medal. I think the fact that we keep learning, keep showing up, keep unloading and trying again. I think that’s actually the point. That love shows up with a story to tell; that it says, I’ve learned what it means to give my heart for others and to show others what that means, even if I’m still limping. I think there’s so much gold in that.

Heartbreak isn’t the worst thing, I promise you that, but it isn’t easy and sometimes it is an inevitable result. Crying in hotel lobbies, well, that might just be for me. But love? That’s for us all. If we keep showing up, keep unloading our stuff, we will realize we’ve got more room for it than we ever thought possible.

 

 

 

all the light that came after.

Shoes by the front door, a stone fireplace with stockings that looks sturdy enough to brace my shaky frame against.

I stand there half expecting myself to blurt out the words everyone keeps telling me not to say.

Because the words that pour out of the radio this time of year are, “let your heart be light” and as we know from last year, I’m a sucker for trying to figure out exactly what that means.

My eyes scan pages and pages of my textbooks for final exams and I’m trying to cram in all this information about how the first stars came to be. The authors tell me about what happened when they exploded, about all the light that came after.

I keep thinking about God and how His first words of creation were “let there be light” and I know there must be something to that.

I keep wondering if I explode or speak if some kind of light comes after.

Because maybe the magic of this whole season, the reason that we’re all obsessed with Hallmark Christmas movies is that they are scene after scene of people saying a bunch of horribly strung together sentences of things we’ve never had the nerve to say.

I’ve never felt I lacked nerve, but I’ve hoarded silence in the moments that seemed to matter. I’ve felt like a lover of lost causes in moments when it felt improper to say the thing that sits heavily on my shoulders.

Timing. Timing has never been my strong suit and it always seems that Christmas comes at precisely the time in which I have an armload of things I need to say and a crowd full of people and thoughts saying, it’s probably not the best time.

Because Christmas is cozy, quiet, a soft piano in the background of a department store. It’s chunky scarves, rosy cheeks, passing babies, wondering why everyone doesn’t get together more often. It’s silent nights, holy nights, it is good words written and stuffed inside gold foiled envelopes.

But I am the last minute shopper, donkey locked out of the stable, little off-beat drummer girl. I once demanded to be the angel in the Christmas play holding a stuffed beagle. I am the Barbara Robinson novel come to life. I am the girl who once nearly cut off her circulation and had a purple arm trying to buy Christmas presents in a Christian bookstore.

All is calm, all is bright. I am not good at calm. Sometimes I get the bright, but I rarely get the calm.

I find that I’m so occupied these days with sewing up my mouth, putting on my Christmas best, and hoping that no one notices me leaning against this fireplace holding back all the things that Ralph and Hugh (the writers of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas) missed when penning that song. Like sometimes gathering faithful friends and dear ones do not make my troubles feel miles away or out of sight. Sometimes, it makes me have to bite my lower lip because I do not know how to let “the fates allow”. Who are these fates? I do not know if I want them to allow. I think maybe I want to step in and decide some things and say some things before these fates get tangled up in this whole thing.

How am I going to have myself a merry little Christmas when this whole thing is left up to these vague fates and I’m just supposed to be hanging some star and figuring out what it means to “let my heart be light”?

Let your heart be light? I keep going back to that. Is that up to me or those fates? If it’s up to me, I want to say all these things that people tell me not to say. But then again, what if that makes us all heavier?

So then I’m supposed to hang some shining star. Well, that seems possible. I read about God and how light was His first priority. My textbooks then tell me those first stars exploded into all these other stars (according to science).

Well, then I think maybe if I just start with one thing, just one bit of light, more will come.

So maybe this blog is just about hanging that one star. Maybe it’s about saying that one thing, throwing out that one light and hoping that it explodes into a thousand more little lights.

We all have heavy things weighing on us and we all want this moment, this time, this season to be magical. We want it to be healing, something that brings us hope and helps us believe in goodness again.

Maybe you’re like me and you’re a little shaky, holding some things that you wish you could say, fix, change, or make happen. Maybe you’re a little lonely, tired, terrified, broken, confused. Maybe you just wish you had more time or capacity to enjoy it and feel it all.

Whatever it is you’re holding, I’m not going to tell you that all your troubles are going to be miles away. Your troubles are where they are. I’m not going to tell you it’s “a bright time or the right time to rock the night away” (mostly because I don’t even know what that means). I’m just going to tell you that I don’t know if any light will come after we say things we wish we could say. But there was the best Light that came, that stayed, that’s still here. It was here before the first words of “let there be light” were ever even spoken. And I don’t know what fates Ralph and Hugh were talking about, but I can assure you of this, the Faithful one who gives us all this light, well He’s tangled up in all of it.

A couple thousand years ago, He hung another star and regardless of what our shoulders might hold, we have to remember all the light that came after. It allows us to all have ourselves a merry little Christmas, even in this, even now.