My Second Family

     The first time I ever attended Salem Church was on Mother's Day, seven years ago tomorrow if my memory is correct.  In those years, I've grown from a teenager into a young adult, and I've grown in other ways too. I've grown from someone who simply showed up on Sunday mornings and Thursday nights, into a member of the church who is more aware of and sometimes involved in the details of what keeps a church going.
     I have my spot in the parking lot, and my pew where I like to sit.  I have even slept (or tried to sleep) there during a youth group lock in. I have been there through three pastors and various youth leaders, through births and losses, one of those losses being especially personal to me. I have laughed there, cried there, eaten there, and learned there. My church has become a part of my life, and a place that feels as familiar as my own home. My church family has become almost as familiar to me as my own family, and it is not an exaggeration to say that I love them.
     But like all families, church families are not perfect. They are made up of people with unique personalities and perspectives, people with different life experiences that allow them to see things in very different ways sometimes. When I'm 45 minutes into a meeting that is getting too intense, and considering converting to the Episcopalian church, or when I'm sitting in the pew one Sunday morning and can feel a tension in the air that sometimes hangs around for a few weeks. those are the moments when I start to understand friends I've met who have left the church because the people who are supposed to be known by their love all to often become known by their conflict.
     Perhaps I'm just too much of an optimist who is seeing my church through rose colored glasses, but at the end of the day, I love that place. It has stood in it's place through countless historical events both good and terrible, and and has never crumbled because of an unstable economic or political climate. It is not perfect, but I choose to embrace the imperfections so that I can also embrace the love, the friendship, and the feeling of home that I get from my church. For better or for worse, I am a proud member of Salem United Methodist Church. To borrow some words from the tried and true Sunday morning order of service, Thanks be to God.

Even If

    I still remember the humiliation I felt when someone called me a show-off because of the way I answered a question in English class when I was in eleventh grade. I remember the book we were discussing, and I remember the answer I gave, which I was very proud of until I was quickly shot down by this comment from a classmate. Most of all, I remember what it felt like step out and share my thoughts with other people, only to be met with hostility and criticism. It is experiences like that one, combined my sensitive nature that I can't seem to shake, that make it hard for me to share certain things sometimes.
     I've had a feeling for a few weeks now that there's something I should write about. I've tried to shake the feeling by telling myself that hearing the same song over and over again is not necessarily a message from God, it's just something that's bound to happen when you listen to the same radio station for all forty days of Lent. But Lent has been over for a week now, and the beginning of the infamous pledge drive has prompted me to change the radio station, but the feeling still remains. There's something I feel like I need to say, and I'm probably not going to be able to write about anything else very well until I say it.
     Right now, I am waiting to hear if I have been accepted to be a part of something that is very exciting to me. It's become so important to me that I haven't wanted to talk about it with many people. First, because I don't really want to talk about the very real possibility that it might not work out. I have no idea how good my chances are, and for all I know they could have thrown my application in the trash as soon as the interview ended. The second reason I don't want to talk about is it is that it's just too sacred to me. I care about it a lot, and the outcome, good or bad, is going to affect me.
      But I feel that I need to acknowledge, to myself as much as everyone else, that even if this doesn't work out for me, I will be okay. It's difficult for me to even say that because I desperately hope that this opportunity does work out in my favor. It is difficult to say, but I do believe it. There have been many times in my life that I have not gotten the outcome I wanted, and it's always painful in the moment. But looking back, I can say that I have always been okay. I have been sad, even heartbroken. I have struggled more times than I can count with not understanding the way situations have worked out in my life. But I have never been completely hopeless, and I can't shake the feeling that I need to acknowledge that feeling during this time of waiting, when I don't know the outcome yet.
     When you get down to the root of it, I think that's what makes me a person who has faith in God. Being involved in mission work is very important to me, and I love my church family dearly. But at the end of the day, those things are not the reason for my hope. Those things are not the reason that I can hand a malnourished baby back to his mother in a third world country and not come home hopeless. Those things are not the reason that I can hear of the death of two precious children I met in Honduras, and still have hope that I will see them again one day. My hope comes from my relationship with God, my faith in Him. If this opportunity works out for me, I will be overjoyed. But even if it does not, I will still have hope.

Stop Rubbernecking!

     It was a foggy morning, there was a steady drizzle falling from the sky. I was behind the wheel of the drivers-ed car, carefully navigating down the road while my teacher entertained me with funny stories from the passenger seat, interjecting every once in a while with minor corrections and reminders. "Remember to check your rear-view before you merge...watch your speed, it's not a race." Everything was going smoothly, until we came upon an the aftermath of an accident in the ditch. It wasn't even a major accident, but the flashing lights of the police cars caught my eye.
     Without thinking, I instinctively took my eyes off the road and turned to look at the commotion happening off to the side. It was then that I got an important driving lesson that doubled as a life lesson. "Stop rubbernecking, keep your eyes on the road. I can't tell you how many accidents are caused by drivers who take their eyes off the road to look at an accident that's already happened."
     To rubberneck, according to Google, is to "turn one's head to stare at something in a foolish manner." That day years ago, I had literally taken my eyes off the road, which is something I like to think I don't do often now that I am a more experienced driver. But in areas of my life that have nothing to do with driving, I am a rubbernecking repeat offender. Most of the time, I have good intentions. I believe that God has a plan for me and I start off focused on following that plan, but it doesn't take long before my I get distracted from the road in front of me by the flashing lights on the side. Flashing lights that come in may forms; the "what-if" scenarios about every possible thing that could go wrong, the little things other people unknowingly do that damage my fragile feelings, my bad habit of comparing my life to the lives of my peers. If I keep giving in to all of these distractions that compete for my attention, I am eventually going to end up in a ditch.
      If I had been scolded and criticized when I made that beginners' mistake back when I was a new driver, I think I would have had a much different reaction. But the firm yet gentle reminder that I got was exactly what I needed, and it has stuck with me for all of these years. Perhaps when we become distracted by the flashing lights along the roadway of life, we just need that gentle reminder to keep our eyes focused on the road ahead, no matter how tempted we are by the drama and distractions happening off to the side.

Holding on to Ashes

     If you've read the past two or three posts I've written, you may have noticed a theme, one that's not particularly cheerful. If you're wondering what is going on to cause all of these pensive thoughts I've been expressing, there's really not much to tell. It's just the season that I have been in, but I'm at the place now where I think I can spot the end of this season on the horizon. I believe all seasons of life have a purpose, and maybe the difficult ones are meant to teach us something. In finding my way back to a more cheerful side of myself, I have learned some important lessons. A verse that has been particularly comforting to me over the past few weeks is Isaiah 61:3 ...and provide for those who grieve in Zion—to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor.

     As I say frequently in my writing, I'm not a theologian. You know by now that I write from my own perspective, which is one of a person who has had no formal training in the area of theology and is just sharing her thoughts the best she can For the sake of clarity, here's how I'm defining ashes in this context of this blog post. In the literal sense, as I'm sure you already know, ashes are the remnants left over after everything else has been burned up in a fire. Figuratively, in this verse, ashes are the things we wrestle with internally when we go through hard times in our lives. 

     Why would I hold on to ashes? Shouldn't getting rid of the negative junk on my mind be something that I look forward to? In some ways it is, but I have found that the process of trading in my ashes has not been without it's difficulties. I've learned that the first and most difficult step to trading ashes is the act of acknowledging that I have them, which can be a problem for a person like me who has a tendency to shove negative things to the back of my mind instead of confronting them head on. I also know that there is someone, devotional writers like to call him "the enemy" but his street name is Satan, who knows that this process is bringing me closer to God, which is the last thing he wants. The more I try to trade in those ashes, the more he tries to make me believe that it would be easier to just keep holding on to them. He even tricks me into having a twisted sense of pride about my ashes, tempting me to believe that I can use them as proof of some sort of personal strength I have as a result of going through hard times. In reality, the only thing holding on to these ashes is doing is preventing me from seeing the beauty that comes from trading them in. And so, I have decided that I no longer wish to keep them. I am making a trade for something better.   

     Sometimes, getting rid of your ashes is a very personal and private process, and there's nothing wrong with that. I happen to be someone who processes things by writing about them, and the results are blog posts like this.
      I'm trying to get rid of all of the ashes, and I have found that it's not as quick or easy as I would like for it to be. But I feel like it's something that needs to happen, and if I can get some good writing material out of the process, I just consider that a bonus.

Lessons on Bravery from an Unlikely Teacher

     Having a blog can be a really strange thing sometimes. I, or anyone else with access to the internet, can write about whatever I want, and send it out into the universe for anyone to discover and read. There are no rules, unless I choose to set them for myself. Most of the time, I don't worry about it very much because I don't get a ton of feedback, and the things I write about aren't typically scandalous or shocking. But seeing the number of views on my last post, compared to the numbers on other recent posts, was a reality check for me. While I was very happy that so many people were interested enough to read what I wrote, my eyes were opened to the fact that I am putting my feelings on the internet for the world to see, and the world, or at least a part of it around me, is taking notice.
     Obviously, being real and honest and vulnerable is something that people connect with. I try my very best to write from a place of authenticity, and I'm usually quite open about the things I share. But as open as I may seem when it comes to writing, there is a side of me that is not so comfortable with people knowing so much about me. Many of the people who read this blog are people I know in real life. I might see you in the grocery store or at church after you've read all about my feelings, and I would be lying if I said that doesn't make me feel a little uncomfortable at times.
      As I've been thinking about the impact of being so vulnerable so publicly, I looked at many bible verses, devotions, and articles about vulnerability, and also this issue of guarding my heart that keeps coming to my mind whenever I worry that I am sharing too much.  In the end, the thing that helped me find my answer didn't come from a Bible story or academic article. It came from one of my childhood heroes, Franklin the Turtle. Franklin starred in a TV show and also a series of books, whose opening lines are somehow still etched into the farthest corners of my long term memory. "Franklin could count by twos and tie his shoes..."  I remember when I had to have a minor surgery when I was probably four or five, and my parents gave me the book Franklin Goes to the Hospital. For some reason as I began writing about vulnerability that book came to mind, so I decided to revisit my childhood and look it up. Something that fictional, animated animal says is exactly what I want to say."Everybody thinks I'm brave, but I've just been pretending." What if, after reading that I've really been struggling with my feelings, people who once thought I was brave now start to change their minds. Now, instead of a brave young woman who's gracefully endured hardships throughout her life, I'm just another "snowflake" millennial talking about mental health and feelings on the internet? For the record, I believe that talking about mental health is very important and something we should do far more openly and often, but that's a topic for another day.
     This is not the first time I've worried about losing my bravery badge. I have felt that way so many times, since I was very young. Is it brave to endure life with a disability that makes me different, and the struggles that sometimes come with it? Maybe, but I don't exactly have a choice in the matter. I did not choose to be born with a birth defect, it's just who I am, and since it's not going away, I try not to focus on it. I'm not sure if that's bravery or just a coping mechanism.
     Is it brave to travel to a foreign country alone, and stay there for three weeks? Some people say so, I say it was an experience that I loved. To me, the issue of bravery only kicked in once I returned home and had to face the ways I had changed. When I had to realize that I had returned different than I left, in ways that I don't yet know how to fully describe.

     As strange as it may seem coming from a person who has endured some pretty gruesome medical drama and traveled to two foreign countries that aren't exactly tourism destinations to do mission work, I think the bravest thing I've ever done was to be open and honest about my feelings. I am still struggling to find a balance between guarding my heart and allowing my weakness to be on display, but here's what I know for sure; If my struggles can help someone in any way, even if only to let them know that they are not alone, then I believe it is important to share my experiences as honestly as possible. It can be scary for me to be so honest sometimes, but I know a thing or two about bravery thanks to a book from my past about a beloved cartoon turtle.
     What part of your story are you keeping to yourself, because it feels too risky to share? You never know who needs to hear the chapter of your story that you've always left untold.

Sadness is Not a Sin Part II : Find What's Best

Around this time last year, I was inspired to write a post entitled "Sadness is not a Sin" that I ended up being glad I decided to share. In it, I mentioned that I have experienced periods in my life of what I believe to be depression. Today, almost a year later, I feel that I should return to that subject again, because I feel like although it's an uncomfortable subject to talk about, it is important that it is indeed talked about.

I mentioned that I had struggled problems that were most likely some form of depression, even though I say again that this was not an official diagnosis, and I had not sought out any kind of diagnosis at that time. My problems did not manifest in the ways that our society is comfortable with. The way I see it, we live in a society that is largely uncomfortable talking about anything having to do with mental health, so we either make it a joke or avoid talking about it at all. We casually armchair diagnose people, even entire political parties, with mental illnesses when we can't comprehend why they do the things they do. I'll admit that I've done that, thankfully in private conversation and not in a public forum. We make fun of celebrities and public figures for "acting crazy", because that's more comfortable and more fun than acknowledging the very real issues that people deal with.
The reason I bring that up is that in a world where we observe other peoples behaviors for entertainment, the behaviors that I have experienced when I've gone through hard times are not entertaining at all. I did not become a fun party girl, or take long road trips to find myself. I did not write whimsical poetry or make art. Instead, I became stuck in my own cruel cycle, bored and withdrawn. I sat I the same chair for hours, doing nothing of consequence, racking my brain in an attempt to figure out how I had reached this point. When I go through my low points, the effects are embarrassing to talk about, so I usually don't. It's only on rare occasions like today that I've been comfortable enough to share a little bit of myself that is usually not revealed.

There's a song I've been hearing a lot lately, even though it's been around for a little while. There is a line in the song that says “Lay down what’s good and find what’s best.”, and I feel like that describes what I am trying to do currently. Right now, I’m okay, some of the time I can even pass for good. But I have decided that good isn’t good enough anymore. I am ready to be the best version of myself, and if that means that I have to do things that make me feel a little uncomfortable, then so be it.
I have found that for me, trying to pretend that I'm okay when I'm not only makes things worse. If you're not really okay right now, that's okay. I am writing this in hopes that, even if you take nothing else from reading this, you will realize you are not alone, because that seemingly simple realization has helped me tremendously. There's no shame in the way you feel, and there are steps you can take to help yourself feel better again. I took one of those steps myself earlier today, which is what prompted me to write this.
I'm so thankful for that Psychology professor I had who was so open about being a Christian, and at the same time so unafraid and unashamed of encouraging us to take care of our mental health. I'm also thankful for the other examples in my life of good Christian people who have encouraged me to take care of my mind just as much as I take care of myself in all of the other ways that our world hasn't attached shame and stigma to. I am taking steps to lay down what's good and find what's best, and I encourage you to do the same. If I can do it, so can you.

Loose Gravel and Other Temporary Problems

     An interesting project took place on some areas of the road near where I live earlier this week. I'm no engineer, but as far as I can tell it involved spreading a somewhat thick layer of small gravel on random stretches of the road for no beneficial reason other than to make my personal driving experience less enjoyable. Obviously, that was not the real reason for this project, but that hasn't stopped me from being annoyed by it, and expressing that annoyance to anyone who will listen.
     The saving grace of this mysterious gravel project is that it is temporary. Eventually, that layer of gravel will be dispersed by cars and the weather. It will make it's way to the sides of the road and eventually into the ditch, and all that will be left is the memory of that time the road was covered in gravel and I didn't like it. It is a temporary problem that will have no long term affects on me, unless I allow it too.
     Obviously, a road work project that I don't understand is not really a big deal. It's just a silly thing that gets on my nerves, but is still easy to laugh about. It's the bigger annoyances in life that I find more difficult to let go of. When people say and do things that hurt my feelings, or when I am faced with circumstances that seem unfair, my natural reaction is to hold on to my hurt feelings until the situation is resolved in my favor. I can recall a particular time I was treated unfairly in kindergarten, and even though I can see some humor in it now that I am an adult, I still get worked up about if I think about it too much. That's how good I can be at holding on to my hurt feelings, and it's not something I am proud of.
      While I think it is probably natural to want situations to be resolved so that my feelings can be mended, I have to realize that it is not beneficial to me or the people around me. I don't want to spend my whole life being angry and bitter, which means that eventually I have to swallow my pride and just let things go. It's hard because it doesn't leave me feeling justified and satisfied, but it is better that the alternative, being permanently bitter.
     Clearly I'm not going to stop driving on the road for the rest of my life because of this temporary project I don't agree with, so why should I give up on relationships and positive connections because of temporary problems? One day, all of that gravel that annoys me so much right now will be long forgotten, and the minor things that hurt my feelings today won't matter anymore. What will matter is how I chose to react to those things, because that could be the difference between ending good things in a moment of hurt, or choosing to see beyond the moment and realize that hurt is only temporary, and simply moving on.