"He's not the sun. You are."
If you saw the last Grey's episode with Christina leaving, you know what this quote is from. Referring to the relationship between Meredith and her McDreamy, Yang gently reminded her person of her place in the world. And it worked. Grey channeled her inner sun and stood up for herself and all that she wanted out of life.
I love this quote because I feel like it is so reflective of how we operate in life. We have our "sun". The thing that our hearts and minds revolve around, that dictate who we are and what we believe to be true about ourselves. It's usually very draining and extremely blinding to reality. And we can't see around it. We devote all our energy to our sun, forgetting ourselves in the midst of it. Making ourselves smaller. Less bright. Less beautiful. And we let it happen again and again. We watch that sun set and rise and convince ourselves that it's the way it must be.
And we become discouraged. We feel out of control and powerless to the patterns that run us. The sun seems so powerful, too strong to overcome. And in all honesty, we don't want to try. We are afraid that if we do we will have to acknowledge that what we have been running after is not as significant as we have made it to be. That it does not fulfill us. Rule us. Shape our days and nights. And that's terrifying, because who are we when we can't define ourselves by what we do?
Our suns fail us. They do. And they always will because they were never meant to be the center of our universe. Who we are was never meant to be dictated by the things we accomplish or the people around us. By our suns. In the same way that we could never exchange earth for the sun, it is absolutely useless trying to shove anything but ourselves into the role that we were meant to play in this life. We are valuable. We cannot be replaced. Why do we spend so much time trying to be someone we are not? Paying attention to the things that are unimportant? The things that are mere stars in the vastness that is our own galaxy?
People fail us. Professions fail us. We fail ourselves. But that is a component of the things that happen, not the core of who we are. We do not have to listen to our suns! We do not have to keep circling around the things that make us smaller, that diminish our own light and keep us from being all that we were meant to be. I'm not trying to say we should be narcissistic. I am trying to say that we have a choice--a choice to believe that we are brilliant and powerful and capable of changing the world. Of taking hold of our worthiness and believing it over the things that will eventually pass away.
Let your sun rise today. Push everything else back into place. You were meant to be you--shine bright.
Monday, May 26, 2014
Thursday, May 22, 2014
Even if you were told.
"Look out at the nations and pay attention! Be astounded! Be really astounded! For I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told." Habakkuk 1:5
We are unstable creatures. As much as we want to believe and hope that we are less crazy than the next person, by and large we all have parts of us we fear being exposed. We are vulnerable. At times, we are afraid to trust in good things. To accept joy because we aren't sure where it's going to end up in the long run. We wrestle. We attempt to control, to brace ourselves for the fall we feel is inevitably coming.
I learned long ago that we aren't promised the life that we imagined. We aren't guaranteed the white picket fence, or whatever it was we were putting all our dreams into. In America, I think we hide this better. We have things that can mask our pain, that convince us that we are full and happy. We can pretend. Not always, but we can at least work at pretending, assuring ourselves that we are satisfied with what has been given to us. And I think at times we are. Sometimes we have been fighting so long to keep our head above water that when we can finally stay afloat, we think we have achieved our goal. So we go on floating, struggling to keep the waters from overcoming us once again.
We wonder where to hope. I have gone through seasons where I felt nothing but despair, where I seriously questioned the goodness of the God I claimed to believe in. I have seen so much pain, and at times it seemed that there were no answers that could ever account for the injustice I witnessed on the behalf of others. Eventually, I became so emotionally distraught by the prospect of such continuous suffering that I became severely depressed. Nothing made sense to me anymore.
These feelings hit me particularly hard as I worked in a classroom with children who had multiple disabilities. For some of them, life would never get easier. This was their world--doctors appointments, medications, endless therapies, death. To see them suffer was to feel the weight of everything this life was not meant to be. It was soul crushing. I was helpless. I became bitter towards God.
That was the longest year of my life, and it was only a portion of theirs. Despite my wariness, I kept questioning. Kept looking for hope. Kept wondering at the purpose of it all. For them, for me. To find meaning again.
Slowly, God answered.
And it wasn't all at once. I wrestled. I cried. I ate lunch in the closet. I prayed quite a bit. I asked God to show me where he was in the mess, in the unfortunate realities that seemed to be the only realities there were. He didn't answer directly, but in a very tangibly intangible way. He didn't change my circumstances or the circumstances of those around me. He changed my heart. He changed my perception. He allowed me to see the beauty and hope that was being created within myself and the lives of those courageous children. In the millions of moments we shared, good and bad, as we struggled through that year together.
They were my hope, and I was theirs.
They taught me to struggle well. Sometimes I would look into their eyes, and I would just know that God was peering back out at me. Tenderly. With great concern. And most of all with understanding. They understood. They knew. They loved me. On my good days, on my bad. They had patience. And I want to say I believe they had hope. Because they knew where to place it--not in their bodies or in their brains or even in their doctors. But in love. In strength. In the belief that while the things of this earth would pass away, their bright spirits would not. And so they lived.
And so did I. I came to realize that God does promise to be with us--not always in the ways that we want but most certainly in the ways that we need. He is there in our emotions. In our crazy moments, in the darkness that we are so afraid to peer into. And He sees our light. He believes in it so firmly, no matter how far the distance, and is willing us to look. To come and see our scars, because He is working even now to heal them. To know that though things may look broken and beyond repair, He is present and unwavering, standing in the gap until we are ready to believe in hope again.
There are no easy answers to suffering. To our own battlefields of the heart and mind. But if there is one thing I know it's that God does not deny the pain, but quietly and compassionately gathers it up into his arms, whispering new life and healing into that which we believe to be eternally damaged, until one day we look up and realize we have reason to hope. We have changed. We have found those things that are stable in the midst of instability, and they can never be taken away from us.
We have hope, are hope. And I would never have believed, even if I was told.
We are unstable creatures. As much as we want to believe and hope that we are less crazy than the next person, by and large we all have parts of us we fear being exposed. We are vulnerable. At times, we are afraid to trust in good things. To accept joy because we aren't sure where it's going to end up in the long run. We wrestle. We attempt to control, to brace ourselves for the fall we feel is inevitably coming.
I learned long ago that we aren't promised the life that we imagined. We aren't guaranteed the white picket fence, or whatever it was we were putting all our dreams into. In America, I think we hide this better. We have things that can mask our pain, that convince us that we are full and happy. We can pretend. Not always, but we can at least work at pretending, assuring ourselves that we are satisfied with what has been given to us. And I think at times we are. Sometimes we have been fighting so long to keep our head above water that when we can finally stay afloat, we think we have achieved our goal. So we go on floating, struggling to keep the waters from overcoming us once again.
We wonder where to hope. I have gone through seasons where I felt nothing but despair, where I seriously questioned the goodness of the God I claimed to believe in. I have seen so much pain, and at times it seemed that there were no answers that could ever account for the injustice I witnessed on the behalf of others. Eventually, I became so emotionally distraught by the prospect of such continuous suffering that I became severely depressed. Nothing made sense to me anymore.
These feelings hit me particularly hard as I worked in a classroom with children who had multiple disabilities. For some of them, life would never get easier. This was their world--doctors appointments, medications, endless therapies, death. To see them suffer was to feel the weight of everything this life was not meant to be. It was soul crushing. I was helpless. I became bitter towards God.
That was the longest year of my life, and it was only a portion of theirs. Despite my wariness, I kept questioning. Kept looking for hope. Kept wondering at the purpose of it all. For them, for me. To find meaning again.
Slowly, God answered.
And it wasn't all at once. I wrestled. I cried. I ate lunch in the closet. I prayed quite a bit. I asked God to show me where he was in the mess, in the unfortunate realities that seemed to be the only realities there were. He didn't answer directly, but in a very tangibly intangible way. He didn't change my circumstances or the circumstances of those around me. He changed my heart. He changed my perception. He allowed me to see the beauty and hope that was being created within myself and the lives of those courageous children. In the millions of moments we shared, good and bad, as we struggled through that year together.
They were my hope, and I was theirs.
They taught me to struggle well. Sometimes I would look into their eyes, and I would just know that God was peering back out at me. Tenderly. With great concern. And most of all with understanding. They understood. They knew. They loved me. On my good days, on my bad. They had patience. And I want to say I believe they had hope. Because they knew where to place it--not in their bodies or in their brains or even in their doctors. But in love. In strength. In the belief that while the things of this earth would pass away, their bright spirits would not. And so they lived.
And so did I. I came to realize that God does promise to be with us--not always in the ways that we want but most certainly in the ways that we need. He is there in our emotions. In our crazy moments, in the darkness that we are so afraid to peer into. And He sees our light. He believes in it so firmly, no matter how far the distance, and is willing us to look. To come and see our scars, because He is working even now to heal them. To know that though things may look broken and beyond repair, He is present and unwavering, standing in the gap until we are ready to believe in hope again.
There are no easy answers to suffering. To our own battlefields of the heart and mind. But if there is one thing I know it's that God does not deny the pain, but quietly and compassionately gathers it up into his arms, whispering new life and healing into that which we believe to be eternally damaged, until one day we look up and realize we have reason to hope. We have changed. We have found those things that are stable in the midst of instability, and they can never be taken away from us.
We have hope, are hope. And I would never have believed, even if I was told.
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
The best thing I never had.
I love Beyonce. I mean really, who doesn't? This isn't the first time I've written a blog about one of her songs and I'm sure it won't be the last. Recently I was driving in my car and her amazingly sarcastic song "Best Thing I Never Had" came on. I found myself being unusually pumped by the lyrics as I loudly and proudly sang them off key in my car. It was sort of confusing though because I didn't have any recent exes to speak of that I felt particularly better off without. So with my counselor self I took a moment to examine what was going on inside me and realized that B's words were moving because there was something that I felt triumphant to be moving on from--and it wasn't a man.
It was my old life.
I know this sounds cheesy and perhaps even a little far fetched, but I needed to write it because it signals to me how far I have come. There is something within me, that is now a definitive part of my makeup, that knows I have moved on to better and brighter things. I remember so distinctly a time in my life when all was dark. When I thought my world would not get better, that my days had been numbered and all that was left was more pain and sadness. More fear. A time when I really believed I was going to end up alone and hopeless, without a future and barely clinging to the present. And now, that time is gone. That future that I held on to with such conviction and loyalty turns out to be the best thing I never had--and I can't help but joyfully sing about it.
I was so certain of where my life would go, the type of person I would emulate. I thought I knew what I wanted, what relationships I needed in order to be able to function. Truthfully, my world was small. I was confined to a box that I had built around myself and was so sure that no other reality could possibly exist. I couldn't imagine a better life for myself because I couldn't see all that I was--a bright, beautiful young woman full of hope and resiliency. Capable and strong. Worthy.
How often do we do this? Define ourselves by what we think we deserve. Quietly deafen our screams for something different because we are too afraid to hope. Believe that we are invaluable and disposable, that we could not possibly matter to the world. Give up or make ourselves smaller.
I want to look back on my years and realize that I chose to let go of that which only served to bring me down. To triumphantly realize that I did not settle for a life that was less of me and more of everyone else. To know that I fought for goodness in the midst of difficulty, that I tried with all my might to let my light shine brightest even in the darkest of storms. To recognize my potential and live with unconditional confidence in my ability to change and grow into all that I was meant to be.
To acknowledge who I thought I would be as the best thing I never had.
Today in the midst of all the doubt and uncertainty remember that you get to choose where your path goes from here. Don't give up. Don't surrender. And wave goodbye to the past in true Beyonce fashion.
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