walking on water.

I have a friend who says that people only find out who they are in moments of desperation, and I think to some extent this is true. It’s easy to be our best selves on our best days, and much harder to be so on the days that are filled with wondering and doubt. It is no surprise to me that I learned about being a person of grace and dignity, of hopefulness and truth, in a season that left me with more questions than answers. And it was God’s supreme wisdom to place me in this space with fellow travelers—people whose very lives hung between the living and the dead—people who were just trying, to start new.

When I’m asked what I do for a living and say that I work with men recovering from homelessness, I always get a variety of the same responses. Usually it’s some form of awe or shock, or a statement that it must be very hard and challenging. And these things are true. It is certainly one of the most difficult jobs I have ever had, but more than this, it has been my greatest teacher. You see, the men I spend my time with don’t need my compassion—they deserve my respect. And they have shown me this, time and time again. They have shown me in their eyes, sure and ready, determined to change things around and start living. They have shown me in the way they walk, their pride and their humility all at once, on display for everyone to see. And they have shown me over and over and over in their love—their love for God, their love for others, their love for me.

They have shown me grace in my times of desperation.

They have seen me struggle to come in, and struggle to get out. They have watched, as I’ve learned and grown and failed and gotten back up again. And they have trusted me with their story. They have come into my office, empty but full, afraid but holding on to promises they are fighting to keep. They have bad days and terrible days and even worse days than that but they keep moving forward. They don’t stop. They don’t let their circumstances determine their worth, they don’t let anyone tell them that they are less than they are. They will not let you pity them.

I asked one of my clients the other day how he’s doing. He responded, with great conviction—I’m walking on water. He said that he didn’t know where life was going to take him and he wasn’t sure about all the chaos that seemed to define his present circumstances—but he was trusting and hoping and looking up. He was believing that even though the waves threatened to take him under almost every day, that he could still walk on water.  

Desperation had come and he had found out who he was.

A person of strength.

And a person who was very afraid.

But he was learning to walk on water.

And life is like that I think, in the sense that it calls forth what we are made of. We can see the storm and go back, or face the waves and move forward. We don’t know if we’ll sink and we don’t know what’s on the other side, but we know that turning around is not an option.

I think the most meaningful thing I have learned from working with these men is that life can be so hard, so uncontrollable, and yet so full of light. And while this light is sometimes a far off beacon and more often than not you can barely see it, we can still walk on water. We can still choose to have faith in the face of insurmountable desperation.

And that even in our desperation, we become who we were waiting to be.

Not all at once and certainly not at first, but if we let it, our storms can be our greatest stories yet.

They can be our defining moments.

But we must look up and out, we must look to that which gives us hope.

Most importantly, we must look to one another.

We cannot walk on water alone.

We need each other, we need a hand to reach out into the depths and pull us back up and look us in the eyes and say YOU CAN DO THIS and YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

I don’t have all the answers.

I’m still figuring out the questions.

But I’m here.

With you, in the middle of our desperation.

You can hold on to me as I hold on to you.

Look up.

Look out.

Miracles still happen.

And together we can say—

I’m walking on water. 

shadows and light.

Sometimes, I feel as though I am fading into gray. I am stuck, watching my body slowly turn from the outside in, the ashes painstakingly taking over until I feel like I am suffocating on the shadows of my soul. It feels like I am disappearing, dissipating into a nothingness that leaves no reminders, no question as to whether I was actually ever here.

I am being consumed, by this nothingness.

By this feeling, that I cannot feel anymore.

This need to be apathetic, to be uncaring, is strong.

It is a protective measure, a measure of disassociating, that is easier and safer and--

cold.

It is lonely, the process of disappearing, The letting go of colors, the attempt to make ourselves smaller and smaller until there is nothing left.

But we do it anyway. Because the alternative is to feel, to love--

to break.

to fall.

to hurt.

To be afraid of losing.

And we must not, at all costs, experience loss.

But we do anyway.

We lose ourselves.

We stop participating in our own lives, we stop feeding our souls. We starve ourselves as a way of preparation, convincing our hearts that we don't need anything but the necessary to survive.

We fall asleep, I think.

We lay down and say, please, please please don't make me take anymore.

I don't want to see anymore.

I can't hear anymore.

So let me be here, alone.

Let me go.

Let me drift through this life unaware and unharmed, let me be free from the responsibility of sorrow.

But we cannot.

Jesus wept.

So do we.

Jesus felt.

So do we.

And we must not, must not lose heart.

We must not lose courage.

We must not let ourselves turn to stone, let ourselves willingly numb and dull and disappear into the night.

We must feel.

We must remain human.

We must love with everything we got, we must hold on to one another in the dark. We must reach out and reach in and pull pull pull for the light.

We must not stop dreaming.

Not stop hoping.

And while we may feel as though the darkness will surely, surely win, we must remember that it has not. 

That for every ounce of us that has been taken over by the dark, there is an ounce more that has been saved by the light.

That it is as true as ever that even the tiniest spark can illuminate the night sky.

We are that light.

And we are still burning, still fighting, still finding a way to breathe in the air to keep ourselves running.

We may feel the night.

It may be well worn and easily traveled.

But we have not let go.

So hold on.

Hold on and push back and believe, believe believe in the light.

It is yours to hold.

Let it make a home in your heart.

The shadows may still be there.

But without light, there would be no shadows.

It hasn't gone out yet.

identity and comparison.

“There are no norms. All people are exceptions to a rule that doesn’t exist.” 
― Fernando Pessoa

Sometimes I wish I wasn’t myself. I think we all wish this, at times. We wish we were smarter, more motivated. We wish that we were prettier, more full of grace. Stronger, happier, healthier. We wish. We dream. We sink.

We drop, farther and farther down, until we no longer know who we are anymore. We spend time trying to be someone else, trying to be anything else but the person we are afraid we are. And in this, we know what we do not want to be. We fight, frantically, to avoid what we feel is inevitable. We shrink away from our past, away from our shadows. We worry that we are not enough. That we will never be enough—or worse, that we will be too much.

We compare and contrast, we poke and we prod, we shame and we hide and we hope that we can pull it together enough to be acceptable to someone.

We spend so much time trying not to be ourselves.

We look around and say let me be this or let me be that, but please oh please, do not let me be me.

And I wonder, when it became a bad thing to simply be.

To let ourselves fall apart.

To say, I’m glad you’re this, but I’m that.

We try to force ourselves into performances and cultures and groups and is it possible to be yourself in a world that is asking you to categorize your soul?

I am ME. I don’t fit anywhere or belong to anyone or know who exactly it is I am becoming.

I am here, trying to figure it out.

I’m going to meet people who don’t like it and people who are uncomfortable and people who tell me 

I’m doing it all wrong.

I’m also going to meet people who are telling me I’m doing it all right.

But I am learning, to listen.

To listen to the small, growing voice inside of me and the big big God who tells me be still.

To stop striving.

To remember that I am I am I am enough.

I am changing.

I am growing.

And I am loved.

I do not have to be anyone.

I do not have to wish I was different.

I am messy and cranky and tired and loud and even a little bit mean sometimes.

And I am hopeful and joyful and compassionate and full of love some other times.

I am becoming.

And that is OK.

So I am learning to rest.

To stop the tug on my heart that is screaming SHAME and DISAPPOINTMENT and FEAR.

To stop trying so damn hard to fix myself.

I am learning, instead, to open my hands and my heart and whisper—you are OK.

I am OK.

I am being held.

I can let go.

I can hold on.

I can rest knowing my twenty-six year old self is exactly who she should be—

Herself. 

bitterness and grace.

I write about fear and love and emotional vulnerability because those things are easy for me. They are getting a lot of attention in the media, and the new thing is to be brave in our feelings. And I think this is great. We are making space to view courage differently, we are saying that it's OK not to be perfect and all glued together. We are making room for community and reaching out and holding on to each other when the going gets tough.

I am trying, to connect in this way. I am trying, to be OK. And I am finding, that it is very very hard.

Because what I am learning as I feel the fear and do it anyway is that under my fear is a load of bitterness and rage.

Yup, I said it.

Bitterness and rage.

I want to be the "love" person. I want to be the gracious and compassionate, the hugger. The one who everyone needs and everyone adores, the one whom not a soul has something bad to say about.

I want to be wholesome and steady and pure.

And instead, I find myself dirty and cranky and side-eyeing the crap out of everyone who comes near me.

I find myself jumping when someone leans in for a hug unexpectedly, and cringing when neediness rears its head. I hear myself saying things I don't like, doing things I don't respect. I wake up in a bed of self-loathing and regret.

I wake up stuck.

I've seemed to have lost the meaning of grace, for both myself and others. It's like I've misplaced it, or like it never existed to begin with. I've seen grace, I know what it looks like. I would even say that much grace has been extended to me, with open and forgiving hands.

It's just that I haven't managed to accept it.

We know grace. We are supposed to live it. And I think I practice it, or at least try to. I know that I can have compassion for the hurting, love for those in need.

But at the end of the day, grace has not found a steady home in my heart.

It lingers, at the door, waiting patiently to be let in. And I, like a faithful hostess, refuse the company until I can have the place a little more together.

Being open and vulnerable and honest is hard, but actually believing that you are still valuable in the midst of that is harder.

It's impossible, sometimes.

To fully acknowledge and lean into your own goodness.

To believe in the power of grace.

Because we say we do, but then delegate our self-love to a corner and tell it in so many words that is is not welcome here.

That we are not worthy.

That our bad stuff outweighs the good.

We tell ourselves this over an over, and we tell ourselves that we are incapable of change.

That we are not loving enough, happy enough, stable enough.

That we are not enough to make someone stay, but surely enough to make someone leave.

And we buy into this story until it becomes the only one in our head, until we think it's the only one worth telling.

But it's not.

It's the wrong part of the story.

The real story is that love is not performance-laden.

The real story is the one of grace.

The grace we are refusing to accept for ourselves, but quickly hand to others.

Or, the grace we haven't internalized, and thus cannot externalize it to others.

And this makes us bitter. Angry even.

But today, today it must stop.

We must know grace to know our self-worth.

We must believe that we are accepted and loved, we must know this first before we can give it to others.

We cannot make others feel that which we have not experienced.

Grace.

Don't give up on it.

Don't give up on yourself.

You are worthy despite your bitter and aching heart.

And grace?

It's waiting, just outside your door.

what i learned in the forest of fear.

Halloween is supposed to be a scary time, but if you ask me, most of life is scary. Real stuff happens out there man. We like to think we can protect ourselves from it, harden our hearts and shield ourselves from the constant arrows flying through the air. The truth is, it's not that easy. We are messy, and our mess gets everywhere, splattering the walls and turning our insides out for everyone to see.

I make a practice of not being vulnerable. I am a safe person. I'm very skilled in this area. If I do not show fear, if I don't move too quickly, maybe I won't scare everyone away. Maybe I'll be more attractive this way, more appealing to those around me. To me, emotions are bad. They're scary. We are supposed to be cool and uncaring, confident in ourselves and sure of our worthiness in this world. But mostly, I'm scared.

My guess is you are too.

I'm scared that I'm alone. I'm scared that who I am is too much or too little to make someone stay or leave. I'm scared if I love too hard, my heart will be broken into a million unmendable pieces. I'm scared, all the time, of everything. 

I work with men who have experienced unspeakable, irreversible trauma. Their scars are the loudest thing about them, presented by a silence so deadened you wonder if they've ever heard love at all. But they come, to my office, and slowly let me see them. Sometimes only for a minute, sometimes longer. And what I learn in that moment is that their scars are the most beautiful thing about them. In them there is truth written, real truth, truth that changes everything. There is meaning that inspires and encourages, tears that show hope and promise that even in the pain, even there, something is being made. 

Something is alive. 

And I've come to find, that we cannot do fear alone, because fear feeds itself in isolation. 

This weekend, I had the joy of taking a weekend trip with some of the best people I know. We decided to go to a haunted forest for fun, braving the woods for a thirty minute walk through a literal forest of fear. And I thought to myself, this is my chance to prove how brave I am, to show that I can overcome my emotions, to show that I am unafraid, unfazed by it all. 

To show that I can't be hurt anymore.

So I began the journey in, huddled with my best friends who have become my family, taking the lead and pridefully saying, I can do this alone. 

But what I saw in those woods was not fearlessness, but love.

I was surrounded, both in reality and metaphorically, by people who know me inside and out, by people who have seen me through thick and thin, by people who have embraced me in my pain.

People who love me, sacrificially, wholly, and without exception.

And as we moved forward, together, we let our fear of the forest become a courage rooted in love.

We found ourselves not hiding our fear, but expressing it, accepting it, and encouraging each other through it. We made sacrifices as to who would go first and face the path in front of us, and who would go last and watch our backs. We laughed and we got frustrated and we yelled at each other and we almost cried but we did not leave one another behind.

We stayed. 

When it was hard. 

When it was unpleasant.

When we ourselves were afraid.

When the insane people chased us with chain saws and the pumpkins came to life and that shirtless man threatened to cut off my face.

We stayed.

And this, this is what life is about. Not hiding, not covering up. But loving. Moving toward. Showing up and not letting go.

Perfect love drives out fear. 

And we are all very afraid. 

But love...

Love changes things.

Love is brave.

Love is vulnerable. 

Love feels.

And courage?

Courage is found in community. 

Let yourself be afraid.

But never walk alone. 

gratitude's gift.

"We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures." Thornton Wilder

Gratitude feels like your whole world is so full it could burst with color and light. It feels like love in its purest form--like laughter that never runs out and hope that never runs cold. It feels like everything in the universe has come together and you can see for miles and miles things which you could never have seen before.

It feels whole.

These days, its hard to be grateful. I am the first person to say that more days than not I find reason to see something wrong with my life. When I was younger, my nickname used to be "Debbie Downer". I'm not joking. It was in my nature to see impending doom before it ever arrived on my doorstep. I wanted to be able to prepare for the worst--to see it coming and accept it happening so early on so that if it actually did, I wouldn't be thrown for a loop. I lived a great deal of my life this way. I still do, in many respects.

But what I learned from all those years of fear is only that fear keeps us from being able to live fully in the moment. It robs us of our joy, and in doing so, can rob us of our reality. While we can very easily spot and label the reasons to give up hope, we can also do the opposite. Listen, I know this world is a shitty place. I have many examples that I could share with you that seemingly create a strong argument for why we should believe that the darkness has certainly won. I have seen things my eyes cannot unsee, experienced shadows that we don't think exist until we have touched and felt them, until they have become apart of our immediate existence. I have seen my loved ones suffer and children cry out for mothers who aren't there and unspeakable injustices that permeate entire generations of people.

I have seen what the world should not be.

And I have seen what it is.

I have seen love that cannot be broken, strong and true and generous to the core. I have heard laughter in the midst of sorrow, felt the hope rising in the room. I have been cared for, deeply, by those who know me and those who do not. I have seen the kindness of strangers and the compassion of the poor, I have known the sacrifices of parents who want the best for me and the embrace of friends who will never, ever let me sit alone in the dark. I have known hope so real and so tangible that it echoes throughout my soul and down to my feet and then back out through my fingers in such a way that I feel I might explode with light.

With peace.

And this is what it means to be grateful. It does not mean that we ignore pain or grief or sickness or death. It means seeing the darkness and light at the same time, recognizing that beauty is rare but present, that our pain is even now creating a promise for someone else. It is saying "I'm afraid" but believing that our hope is strong. That our patience in affliction, our reaching out for all that is good and bright is not wasted. That we will continue to fight, continue to press on, continue to look up when everything everywhere is shouting for us to look down.

When we stop being afraid of loss we become open to the life that is in front of us, right now, right here. We shift our perspectives and see the things that are hidden--the things that are real. The things that cannot be taken away from us no matter what happens, no matter how bad it gets.

Fear empties us.

Gratitude makes us full.

And we cannot exist without it.

the secret of the poor.

Though I have known for many years, somehow I had forgotten that to give your life away is to gain it. I think that sometimes, this world gets the better of us. It is very easy to self-sacrifice and to serve when things are easy, or when it is popular to do so. I spent the better half of my years going on trips to Nicaragua or working at a camp for low-income kids from the city. At that time I didn't know any different--I couldn't imagine my days any shorter or simpler or less crazed.

And part of this was good. It was good to learn how to live within the minimum of my needs because it left all this space from which to experience the tangible intangibles of life--love, joy, peace. I remember when I went to Nicaragua our trip leader spoke about "the secret of the poor". How young orphans gave away their last piece of cake or clothing or shoes just so another could taste and see and feel the comforts of life. These kids knew how to gain life, and it was through giving it away. 

Now I think sometimes, we confuse what it means to give ourselves away. Sometimes we start to do so because we are motivated by fear or by being good enough, or because we can't sit still with ourselves. This type of sacrifice is dangerous and prone to burn out. I think there's something to be said about living out of the overflow and not from the drought, about loving others through grace and freedom and because they are who they are, where they are, and not because we feel like we have to. 

I think also that sometimes we forget that the giving is also messy and hard and requires deep sacrifice. We want to believe if we just donate the money or visit the people or serve the poor every once in awhile we are doing enough. Now I'm not big on rules or regulations or telling people that what they are doing is not adequate. I lived in that space for awhile, and I will tell you it's neither healthy nor life giving for anyone.What I am saying is that there is this special, vulnerable, worn out space where God meets our desire to give and our passion to live--where he honors our sacrifice and where we touch the outskirts of heaven.

I have learned that is is very possible to do good things with good intentions and never actually see the beauty that is inherent in them. I have learned that you can do this for a very long time and eventually feel dead inside. But I have also learned that when I stop striving and start being, when I bring balance to my life but also work hard to sacrifice for others, I see miraculous things happen and feel a deep sense of peace. 

All the people I have helped, all the darkness I have seen, all the hope that I have experienced has shown me over and over that to lose your life is to gain it. And while it is great to follow this rule based on knowledge, it is far better to experience it based on love. And if this year has taught me anything it is love. What a difference it makes. 

I work with men who experience homelessness and kids living below the poverty line and as much as I want to believe that I am a good person, what I have come to find out is that I am the luckiest girl on the planet. For the first time maybe in a long time I have discovered what it means to love without ceasing, to show up again and again and again no matter how badly behaved, crazed, or difficult a person may be because I have seen what is on the other side. I have seen people change, I have seen whole lives turned around in a different direction. I have seen healing and wholeness and brokenness and pain and at the end it has all been well with my soul. 

Life does not stop being hard. It is full of sorrow and seemingly hopeless situations. But if we are still and hold on and stop waving our hands frantically in the air we will see the secret of the poor. We will see that is is not our works or our skills or even how many hours we log into our day--it is our love. 

Our consistent, thoughtful, crazy love that changes this world over and over again. I can share story after story of the love that I have experienced, the bravery I have witnessed, and the compassion I have observed that has certainly not come from me. But these stories, these people I have come to admire and respect and care for with every part of who I am have taught me everything I could ever want to know about life.

And that is the secret of the poor. 

To love, even when it doesn't make sense.

Even when you are tired.

Even when it's not gratifying. 

Even when you want to run.

Stay. 

Love.

And experience life to the full.

the light that will not go out.

"It's not about being saints or sinners or good or bad, Fancy. It's about being both. You know? About being complete." Slice of Cherry, Dia Reeves

We were born out of darkness, with a light inside of us just waiting to burst forth into the night. Our eager souls were sure they could escape their fate and run on a cloud of dreams and glory until the very end. And so we avoided our shadows, despite the fact that they crept silently behind us for as long as we could remember.

We divided our world into categories--good and bad, saints and sinners, light and dark. We did this to make sense of things, to help our minds justify what our hearts were screaming to set right. It made us feel better, knowing what we could and could not be in a world so tightly wound in grey. I think our colors faded because of this, the ashen aspects of our days settling lazily on our bones, despite what we did to dust them off. We wanted to appear perfect and bright, almost as much as we wanted everyone else to.

I think somewhere we forgot that even the brightest star cannot exist without the darkness of night.

Our quest for light strained our capacity to make it. All the fragments that frayed my life, all the shattered glass-- it buried me. It buried me because I could not exist in a place that threatened my sense of control, in a place that was not bound up in rules and regulations, stipulations for goodness that I could strive into with all my might.

And so in my reckless fight against the night, I inevitably lost all the light I had ever tried to hold. I watched it spinning out further and further until it was swallowed up by the darkness--not the darkness that was natural to my existence, but the darkness that was wrapped up in avoidance and regret, shame and vulnerability.

I let the darkness define me, instead of finding a way to define the dark--I let my light go out.

This world will never exist without darkness, but we are mistaken if we think that we must exist without it. Even in darkness the light gives ways to all that our souls were created to follow, it allows for illumination and healing and joy, it lets us see all that is beautiful in this world.

We must not avoid the darkness for fear of the night. We must walk boldly forth, calm our nerves, quiet the voice that says, "this must not be" because in truth, it already is.

Often, our best qualities, our brightest lights, are also our darkest companions. The magic within us that allows us to breathe and create and connect can also be our greatest downfall. And yet, we must use all of ourselves in the battle, we must acknowledge the darkness in an effort to grab onto light.

And when you really think about it, we need a bit of the darkness within to face the darkness without. We cannot extinguish what we do not understand, and when we do, we must trust that our light is already there. We must trust because one cannot exist without the other. Where there is dark, there will always be the capacity for light.

In the beginning, God created the light, and saw that it was good. From the very start, he imagined a world where we would never be without light--without hope. And while he has promised to bring us into a land where tears and sorrow are known no more, he stands with us in the dark. He is there, even when we feel we cannot bare to face one more night. Even when we feel our light is fading, when we feel we cannot go on.

We have the capacity for dark and light--but this does not make us saints or sinners. It makes us stars, shining so bright in a universe of darkness that illuminates all the hope there is and ever is to be.

Do not be afraid of the darkness--of your darkness--let it only point you to the light of the heavens that will never, ever go out.

vertigo.

It's all spinning. Around and around and around. I see the pieces moving through the air, intricately entangled, beautiful in the dazzling light of summer. And yet, when I reach out, I grab hold of nothing. I see it there in front of me but somehow it remains faintly out of reach. I sink farther down, watching as my world passes me by.

I wonder what it would be like if it all stopped, frozen and glittering in the sun. What it would be like to sort through all the fragments, to examine them one by one. To know each part of my life intimately, in a way that brings understanding. Sometimes, I think I have finally closed my hand around something, I think I have finally stilled just the smallest part of my ever spinning galaxy. But alas, it wiggles just out of my fading grasp, just short of being contained for even the tiniest fragment of time. And I watch it quickly spin back into orbit, whizzing into the familiarity of the unreachable and unknown. 

I see it all happen around me, and I feel distant--cold even. The madness does not feel like it belongs to me, that it is even a part of my reality. It's both fascinating and frightening to observe, all those pieces flying about. It seems as though they should catch each other, collide with a brute force that is bound to blow up the entire universe. It seems that it all is headed for impending doom, for a black hole so deep and so dark that no light will ever escape it.

And then, silence. A pause. Stillness again, all those particles floating about, each in its own place, with its own journey, its own purpose. However could they all belong to me? No one person could contain all the burning stars, all the fury that these lights and litter contain. They can't be mine, they shouldn't be.

Then, with no warning, it begins to reverse, to spin around in the opposite direction, to turn everything upside down and impossibly backwards. It's all a jumble, a wild turning abyss that threatens to swallow me whole. I reach out to stop it, to flail wildly at the wind, to cover my eyes, my ears, my face, to pretend that its not really there at all. 

I find the lever. Push it back, turning turning turning with all my might. I set things forward, but not right. It's not the same. It cannot be. It will not be. 

But on and on the spinning goes. And so I recline, fade back into my existence, into my place as spectator. As removed from the calamity as I can be. I open my eyes. 

Vertigo. 

to be raised from the dead.

When we fight back with joy, we embrace the deepest reality of our identity, which is not a weary-beaten-down one but is a beloved-joyful-one//Margaret Feinberg

There's a thing that happens when you cry, or rather, when you are trying to keep yourself from crying, where your throat closes up and you feel like you are slowly being choked to death. The brain and body disagree, without reaching a true compromise--your thoughts commanding the tears to go back up into their rightful place, with your eyes mercilessly noncomplying. And you are fighting, tirelessly, to hold it all together. It's exhausting, this task, and at times you wonder if is worthwhile to keep trying.

It is from this place that I have slowly learned: you cannot shut your emotions down without killing a part of yourself.

Thus, an action that was meant to protect from vulnerability becomes a weapon disguised, Because something will always replace the emotions that you are trying so hard to forget, something will steal your hope. Will turn you into someone you don't recognize, will hollow you out until you become unfeeling and cold, devoid of the joy that was meant to light up your soul.

We become impenetrable and heartless, because the world has convinced us it is too much to bear.

And this is why, I think, our body responds the way it does when we try to keep ourselves from crying. From responding to the pain around us, from feeling every ounce of feeling this life has to offer. Our souls are screaming, out to our fingers and down to our toes and everything, everything hurts. We are connected, and love is a cost that does not come without loss. But our body knows the difference--knows that to keep it in is to deny truth, knows that we are breaking our spirit, suffocating the thing that makes us human.

And yet, it feels safer to kill hope. To walk through life with power, control firmly within our grasp. To know that we cannot be crushed if we simply do not believe in anything--if we take no chances on ourselves and others. We hide. And in doing so, we die.

Hope is a terrifying word. But in this time, at this hour, in the light of all that I have found about God to be true, it weighs so beautifully upon my shoulders. Because if I believe in the cross, if I believe...then my hope is not in vain. My feelings are not unanswered. My tears do not fall without purpose.

Because all the pain and sorrow that this world has thrown and has yet to throw at me shows me that there is something that is worth fighting for. That the battle to exchange hope for safety is an illusion, a poison that kills and not protects.And everything in me, even my tears, is telling me that I cannot deny hope the power it so undeniably has in every corner, every crevice of my heart. A heart that has been saved irrevocably by grace.

And so, I must choose hope to live.

One of my favorite stories in the Bible is the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. When his dear friend passed, Jesus responded with an all-encompassing, deep seated, excruciating sorrow that he did not try to stifle. And yet, he knew that he would see Lazarus alive and well, he knew that he would bring him back to life. He felt the pain, but fought back with life. With hope. He did not let his present reality rob him of the joy he knew was coming.

Don't let your fear of vulnerability win out. Let your tears come, messy though they may be.

It's the season for bringing things back to life.

Let your heart be the first of them.

the flavor of life.

I burn food a lot. Not intentionally, obviously--but while cooking, and often. Pasta, omelets, fish, quesadillas—there isn't a culinary quintessential that I haven’t royally screwed up.  It’s remarkable, really. I swear that I set out with all the best intentions and plans, but more often than not I cannot NOT burn something at least a little. The other day I put a sweet potato in the oven only to have the kitchen fill up with smoke ten minutes later. Turns out a cookie had dropped during my last baking expedition, and was now ablaze and impossible to retrieve. I had to let it burn out, which was both terrifying and also sort of beautiful, in a campfire kind of way.  

Since I’m human (and being so we like to accommodate to our weaknesses), I like to think of that toasty layer of my food as a “special seasoning”. Oh, you didn't want a dash of smoky flavoring? Sorry, and, eat it anyway. You think I would be better as a somewhat well-adjusted twenty five year old, but whatever. Usually I am the only recipient of my food and lucky for me I’m not a harsh critic. It’ll work itself out eventually.

In reality, however, the burnt nature of my food often spoils what could have been a pretty good meal. It cuts through all the other flavors, masking the careful effort I put into each layer of my dish. It prevents the food from being what it could be.

And what I realized is, fear is like this.

Life is offered to us, beautiful and whole and bright, and fear spreads like wildfire and burns it to the ground. First slowly, so that we don’t know it’s happening, then all at once. And our confidence is shaken. We stare sadly at the last of the glowing embers in front of us and wonder, how; how ever did that happen? We lose ourselves and turn up like burnt toast—dry, and ashen, void of all the flavors that we once held dear.

Now, I believe that there is a place for fear. It keeps us safe in many situations, warning us that there may be danger ahead. But sometimes, fear gets a little too bold, a little too comfortable in our bodies. It starts to spread to areas it’s not welcome, starts to impede upon our truth. It becomes almost a second language to us, telling us lies about ourselves and the years to come.

And we react to this in a myriad of ways. Some of us run, avoiding anything that may be too risky by making ourselves smaller than we really are. Others of us push forward, terrified that if we don’t keep producing the world will deem us unworthy. So we fluctuate between the two extremes, never whole, never stopping to realize that perhaps our fear is telling us the wrong thing.

Fear lets us know that something is worth fighting for. It alerts us to the sense that there is something that we love, something that we long for, something that we absolutely do not want to lose. This is why so many people fear death, failure, relationships, and much more. We don’t want to watch what is meaningful to us burn down; we don’t want to experience loss in so many ways.

And that is OK. Being afraid is OK. It’s not weakness, but incredible strength. The trick is not to let our fear get the best of us—not to let it be our reality. Emotions come and go like the weather. A storm does not indicate that the world will always be dark and grey, and fear doesn't either. We get to choose what our fear tells us, how we wish to use it.

And so, I am learning to push through the storm and fight back the fear. I am learning, as Susan Jeffers put it, to “feel the fear and do it anyway”. We must keep cooking, even when it all turns up burnt. We must exercise our right to believe in ourselves and the supreme goodness that is living and falling and getting back up and doing it all over again. Most importantly, we must not be afraid of fear. 

It’s only a little smoky flavoring, after all. 

worthy of our sufferings.

"They must not lose hope but should keep their courage in the certainty that the  hopelessness of our struggle did not detract from its dignity and meaning" Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

I feel that my life has been stolen from me. It didn't happen all at once, but so slowly and in much the same way that a plant dies. The petals fall day by day until finally, all that is left is a sad, lifeless stalk that once seemed to radiate with beauty.

I blame New York for the thievery. I came here on a dollar and a dream, so sure that this is where my life would actualize. So sure that this was were I would become my truest self, where I would buy back all the years that I felt were wasted on a person that was only waiting to be born.

But the opposite has happened. And honestly, who of us can look at our life and feel that we are where we thought we would be at this time? Life is full of regret, and very little satisfaction. We wander, restless down to our bones and unsure that we will ever be filled. We search, earnestly, for that which can bring us life.

We search.

And sometimes, we remember. We find that which we clung to in difficulties before, we find what our souls were made to take comfort in. But we also find that we have new questions, new sufferings. We think we have learned, adjusted to the path that we have journeyed on for so many lonely years. But this is life, and we never will get a perfect score. We keep learning, keep growing, keep facing new challenges until we realize--life does not get easier.

We must get stronger.

So we linger on the other side of resiliency, staring at the road before us and trying to find a way to cut corners. We want anything but to go through it, to face whatever it is that we fear most, We want to be able to look it in the eye and proudly stand straight and tall--to go into battle with our heads lifted high, but this is no easy task. It's certainly not for the faint of heart or for the easily distracted. It requires determination and focus, it requires fortitude. It requires us to look beyond ourselves and our immediate sufferings, to realize that our sufferings can impact change. To acknowledge that though our pain threatens to take us under, it is our pain that eventually leads us to rise.

And in this place, it is not hope that propels us forward. It is faith. Faith that our suffering does in fact produce perseverance.  And that perseverance, though it bleeds us dry, will eventually construct character out of the dust our weary feet have left behind.. Because hope is not born out of knowing where we are going.. It is born out of not knowing anything at all, except that light always overcomes the darkness.

Frankl speaks constantly of "being worthy of our sufferings". And in this small insight, he has named our entire existence--to have courage, to hope in the face of insurmountable odds, to believe that there is dignity and grace and meaning that makes our struggle worthwhile.

This week, one of my clients said (with little words and profound wisdom) that our time spent wandering the desert would come to a close much quicker  if we just acknowledged why we were there in the first place. Though I've studied Isaiah many times, there was something about the sincerity of this statement and the humility in his understanding of it that struck me by surprise. Not necessarily why we were there, insomuch as the things that may have edged us closer to our own particular  wasteland. But why we were there--the meaning for our lives and the lives of those around us. What we were meant to accomplish in the desert, what we are meant to create.

Because, to grow something out of pain--to see a bloom rising up out of the cracks and in spite of its environment, that is true hope. It is one that has been firmly rooted and is ready to weather the elements.

It is hope that cannot be taken away from us, for generations to come. It can be passed down, passed around and instilled in those around us.

And just like wildflowers, once it takes flight, it cannot be stopped. It is infectious and true in the best possible way, it is all-encompassing.

So that very slowly, but with great certainty, the desert is outgrown--leaving behind a garden bursting with more life than we ever dreamed or imagined--leaving behind evidence of what we so craved and never thought we would achieve:

a reason to hope.

strength to strength.

Blessed are those whose strength is in you, whose hearts are set on pilgrimage. Psalm 84:5

If I had to describe my current state to someone, I think I would say my soul is paralyzed and my body is on permanent auto-pilot. I would say that I feel nothing, but that would be a lie. These days I seem to feel everything, so acutely and in such a deep manner that it makes it hard to breathe. Feeling is excruciating sometimes isn't it? Our emotions rub raw until our heart is bleeding and our bones are aching, and we don't think that it is possible to take in so much pain. But then we do, and every time we aren't quite sure we are going to escape alive.

I used to jump into those emotions, feel everything naked and free. I didn't know how to boundary myself, how to separate from the burdens of others. Some days it felt like I could feel every nerve, every flinch of the emotional whip that kept my counterparts running for safety. Because isn't that what we all want? To feel safe and loved, to know that our hurts can be contained by another and not rejected, to know that someone is still reaching out with an open hand despite what we've brought to their doorstep?

Either way we journey on, holding our sorrows as if they are our prized possessions--afraid to put them down lest we lose ourselves to the chaotic tide that threatens to pull us under. We are delicate, on edge knowing that at any moment it may all be washed away around us. So we find ways to be brave, or rather to put ourselves back together just long enough until we can fall apart once again.

And we call this living. 

Going from one thing to the next, until we realize that life does not get easier--we just learn better survival skills. 

Because it's all a wilderness, and safe havens are hard to find. And we want to bunker down, build a fire and watch the flame burn out till all is dark, all is safe. But we can't, because we have to survive. We have to pick ourselves back up, find ways to go on living.

And we are so very afraid. We feel frayed around the edges, vulnerable and exposed, as if all our skin had worn thin and there was nothing left to protect our fragile bodies from the elements. It seems as though everyone is looking, waiting, watching as we become wide eyed and hysterical, tumbling through the wreckage of our lives looking for anything that will ground us, anything that will remind us, anything that will let us feel like the world is not spinning out of control. 

Everything feels impossible in this place. The resistance alone makes us feel that we would rather die than try to fight the fear that courses through our veins with such intensity, poisoning every hope we had that life could be manageable. It seems that we cannot change, cannot grow courage out of the hollow space that has only ever echoed our firm belief that we will never be enough. 

But what if instead of choosing to believe that we aren't we choose to believe that we are? What if we always, always choose hope over despair, promise over prosperity, life over death? Would it be a life wasted, if we only found out that it was all dark in the end? Because hope doesn't always mean an outcome, sometimes it is a state of being. That there is hope in our ability to withstand pain, and keep on grasping for joy and light and life even when death threatens to squeeze it all out of us. Even when it feels that the walls are closing and the truth is setting in and it's not worth it to go on trying anymore. We must listen to that still, small voice, we must go from strength to strength, we must set our hearts on pilgrimage. 

Though the journey is long, and our heads are heavy, we must put one foot in front of the other and keep looking up. We must hope beyond hope--we must believe that our moments matter. That the outcome does not define the journey, that though we don't know what the hell we are doing we refuse to rest in the confines of hell. 

Feel the fear, but reach for courage. Build a shelter, weather the storm. We need the rain to keep growing, though at times we feel we will surely drown. 

God never wastes our pain. Let's not waste our hope. 

make hope.

I've lost myself these days. I feel my soul drifting farther and farther away from everything around me, falling silently into a fog that thickens every day. I'm not sure what to blame it on really. So much has happened in these last four months that it's hard to place the blame. All I know is that I woke up today and felt like a shadow of myself, and I'm not sure how to get back to living.

It's different than the depression that I've experienced in the past. I'm less surprised by the feeling, black and sticky and suffocating like always. I don't feel panicked by it, I'm not fighting. In fact I think I've given up. Lost hope. And it's not that I don't believe there is hope to be found, it's just that I'm too tired to find it. To go looking for it, because sometimes it's so damn hard to find. I've given up the battle and I'm too weary to even wave the white flag of peace.

So I lay down, and stare at the world as it passes me by.

Sometimes, I miss who I was. I look back at the two years I had before here, and I see such joy, such ambition. Even as I moved to New York, I felt a passion and a promise that I was where I was supposed to be.

Then the universe met my belief with a resounding knock-out that left me face down and heartless. The hope that I had splattered the walls around me, dripping down and drying out, the last reserve of what was left. And so I died. Inside and out, as everything within and around me became grey and lifeless.

So I walked in this fog, seeing but not feeling, taking in but not touching. And what I saw did not move me, but left me paralyzed instead. I stopped engaging, because to engage meant to hurt. It meant I had to reconcile and change, it meant I had to work. And I did not think that I could work to watch one more thing fail, to see one more loss in my life.

Because to lose what you have worked so hard to keep is like losing air to breathe as you drown--you see it happening yet you can't do anything to change it, watching all you love go to waste as you die.

But the thing about life is we only have two choices--to succumb to the waves or find a way to stay afloat. It's not about whether we live or die--that's all relative. It's whether we are choosing to swim or not--whether we choose to move forward towards land no matter how dismal the chances we will make it may seem. Because either way we are going to die--but I want to die living.

People often tell me I have a pretty smile. It's a nice compliment, and I try to take it gracefully. Most people don't know that I have nine cavities. I went for twenty-three years of my life never having one, and then somehow managed to gain almost a dozen in one visit. I still to this day wonder whether or not the dentist was a liar--seeing damage where there actually was none. I should have gotten a second opinion. But the fact is I didn't, and now I live with nine metal fillings that will one day lead to what I am sure to be a full set of dentures. But none the less I take the compliment and smile anyway because really that's all there is to do.

And isn't life like that sometimes?  We smile even though it's not real. We want to pretend and play along with others, so we do what we need to get through the pleasantries. But inside we are screaming, gasping for air. Asking anyone to save us, to make us feel anything. To lift the fog and pump blood back into our veins, to shatter our paralyzed features and warm our souls once again.

But no one else can do that for us. Only we can.

And we will. Because when we are all alone in the middle of the deepest waters, we remember what we are made of. We find the strength to move forward in the shadowed corners of our being, and we begin to swim again. And while we aren't sure if we'll make it and don't know what we'll find once we arrive, we will know that we did not waste our living. We did not throw away our precious breaths or still our beating hearts willingly.

We made hope where there was none, and let it be the anchor for our souls.

And thus we believed once again.