A Picture of God

Several years ago when I was in confirmation class before getting baptized, I remember one specific moment that really stuck with me. We were instructed to draw a picture of God, and I remember being completely dumbfounded by this assignment.

Up until that point, I had always pictured God as an old man with a beard wearing a white robe. But when faced with the task of committing the image to paper, my vision suddenly seemed childish. 

I think I ended up drawing some flowers and a sunrise, which still didn’t feel right, but it was the best I could do at the time.

I am a different person now than when I drew that picture. I have moved across the country from the place where my faith began, and I have begun to see that things are much more complex than I realized back then. I no longer believe that the image of God is always flowers and sunshine.

If I was given that assignment today, it is not a bearded old man that I would draw, but a series of moments when I saw God’s image reflected in the people around me.

I would draw a huddle of children from complicated backgrounds facing daily challenges, staring in wonderment at the biggest rainbow any of them had ever seen.

I would draw the Alaska Native elder who gave me, a white missionary, an Iñupiaq name.

I would illustrate the moment in which a teenager who refused to say one word to me for the first six months I was here ran to greet me with a hug when I walked in the door of the Boys and Girls Club to visit last week.

I would draw the moment when my fellow US-2 who moved here with me asked me to be a bridesmaid in her wedding, when she will marry the guy who was my first real “non-missionary” friend in Nome.

We have experienced layers of emotions and stress together that I have never had to experience with another friend. I have not always reacted well to those emotions, and she has seen the worst parts of me. Because she possess enough grace to realize that the way I handle negative emotions is not who I really am, we have been able to forge a solid friendship, and that is something I can only describe as holy.

When I started my two year mission, I felt very confident about the state of my faith. After two years of challenges and experiences that were nothing short of life-changing, I realize that everything is far more complex than I realized back then. I am losing my black and white, good and bad, right and wrong view of the world. I am learning to explore the discomfort of the grey areas.

I may have come through this journey with more questions than answers, but there is one thing I know for sure; If someone asked me for a picture of God, I would know what to draw. 

What Do You Do with the Mad That You Feel?

When I worked at the Boys and Girls Club, one of the programs I was in charge of was the behavioral health curriculum. It was my job to occasionally plan activities about feelings and emotions, and the way our brains work, and I loved it. One of the things I implemented as part of the program was the “Today I am Feeling” board. Youth could come in and write their name by the emotion they were feeling, and sometimes it led to some really important discussions. I loved watching children of all ages pause in front of the board, and stand quietly for a minute as they examined their inner thoughts and identified how they were feeling. I have a theory that the world would be a better place if adults had a feelings board like that.

One of my favorite memories associated with that board is when a teen girl came in one day and without saying a word, grabbed a marker and wrote her name in bold letters beside “angry”. She then gave me one of those crushing glares that only teenage girls are capable of, as if she was daring me to challenge her. I asked her if she wanted to talk about it, and she said no. I then told her “Anger is a valid emotion, and you’re allowed to be angry, as long as you’re not hurting yourself or anyone else, or being destructive.” She seemed surprised by my response, and sat quietly be herself for a few minutes before joining her friends and moving on with the day.

That was the day I learned that something really significant happens when you give people, especially teenagers, permission to be angry. We are often taught to suppress our negative emotions, and be ashamed of them. I’ll never know what she was angry about that day, but I believe I gained a new level of respect when I validated that emotion that is so often viewed as an inherently bad thing.

As much as I loved that moment, I still have a lot to learn when it comes to my own anger. Out of all of the emotions, anger is the one I  am least comfortable with. Whenever I feel it, it is followed quickly by shame. I have been trying for so long to figure out how to write about the past two years without mentioning anger, and I have finally come to the conclusion that I just can’t get around it. Like I did for that teen that day, I have to give myself permission to be angry.

I couldn’t, and still can’t say much about my work experience during my time as a US-2, because I worked for a very prominent nonprofit in a very small town.

What I can say is that I experienced a lot of anger about the way I was often treated, and the fact that I felt like I was held to a completely different standard than other people simply because I was a missionary. I also watched the kindness of people I cared about be constantly taken advantage of, and that made me even more angry.

But as much as I could rant about the injustices I encountered in the workplace, I can’t deny the fact that the person I have become the most angry with is myself.

Because I couldn’t fix everything I wanted to fix in two years. Because even though I had the title of missionary, I was no holier than before. I still got cranky when I was overworked, hungry, or things just weren’t going my way. I still said things I regretted in moments of frustration, almost every day.

Because when people tell me about bad experiences they have had at a church and ask why they should go back, I do not have an answer. Because I go through phases where I ask myself that same question. Because even though I worked as hard as I could for two solid years, there are still countless insurmountable problems in this community that I now call home.

As I reflect on all of this, a quote comes to mind from my favorite philosopher, Mr Rogers. It’s actually a song that he sang, called “What Do You Do with the Mad That You Feel?”

Since trying to ignore the anger that I felt and hoping it would just go away did not work, I now have to figure out what to do with it. I could use it to try to inspire change, but I have learned over the past two years that change is often a painfully slow process.

And so for now, I will start by simply acknowledging it. The thing about anger is that, at least in my experience, it starts to lose it’s power as soon as it is brought into the light. Even as I write about the work related trials I faced, I think of all of the children I worked with, and how much joy they brought me. And when I think of all of difficult things I went through, I know that it was worth it to get to know them. They are some of the best people I have ever met.