space and grace.

Suffering has a way of silencing us, shrinking us down and making us smaller until we wish to no longer exist. Our ability to torment ourselves and perpetuate this pain is a universal disease that continues despite our circumstances. We do not need to be in hell to experience it within ourselves.

For those of us who struggle with mental illness, the battle is often unseen. Our brains lend themselves to self-deprecation freely and with no questions asked. What you may see on the surface is usually only the smallest indicator of what is going on underneath—our emotions have the capacity to bring us to the darkest place you can think of, and then a little further. It is no surprise to me that those of us who wrestle with our own demons become too tired to carry on. Living can take an extraordinary amount of work.

In my own life, I have been fortunate enough to have a patient therapist and a community of people who have allowed me the space to suffer freely. Medication also helped, and I have no shame associated with that which allowed me to heal when nothing else seemed to work. I have come so far from where I was just six years ago, and the hope I have experienced has been my anchor in seasons of despair. I am grateful that I was taught to lean into joy and peace in the smallest moments (thanks Shauna Niequist), because those memories have served as a reminder that goodness still exists when the ache in my soul tells me differently.

However, despite our emotional growth, we still have battles that seem to arise again and again. Pain that has not fully healed has a way of resurfacing, and I find this to be true not only in my own life but in the lives of those I work with as a therapist. Becoming whole, it turns out, is a lifelong process that we have the privilege of uncovering only a step at a time. This can be frustratingly heavy, and yet, this is what it means to be human—perfection escapes us this side of heaven, no matter how hard we try.

And yet, we keep on trying. The irony of this is that what we want for ourselves is often found in the opposite of doing, and nobody likes to hear that. We like being able to fix things, we like the idea that we can earn our keep and rebuild our tired bodies by running faster and farther than before. I cannot tell you how many times I have heard a client relay to me the extraordinary hurt they have experienced, only to finish the pain-filled telling with a solitary, resolved question:

“So, how do I fix it?”

I generally look back at them with a mirrored empathy, for I too am familiar with the particular yearning that comes from wanting desperately to be something other than what I am in the middle of my mess. But the gentle truth that has been relayed to me over and over is that healing can only come from acceptance, and that our struggle against ourselves only serves to imprison us even further. It is a beautiful paradox that wholeness can only come from picking up all pieces—how we put ourselves back together is up to us, but if we choose to leave out the difficult parts of our narrative we will never quite be able to make the pieces fit.

Recently, my sister introduced me to a healing practice called The Alexander Technique. I don’t fully understand it, but I know it has to do with the way in which we carry and move within our bodies, such as our posture. As she was examining the way I stand, she noticed that I tend to shrink into myself, moving everything inward and down until I am almost hunched over. To remedy this, she asked me to widen my shoulders. In response, I thrust my chest forward presumably to straighten my back and open up my shoulders. She shook her head at this and said,

 “No, not open. Widen.”

Sometimes, I think that this is the response that we have to healing. We are open to the process, but we must remain wide to really feel the effects. We ask for tools and read up on all the steps, and we apply them dutifully almost as if we are following a treatment plan. And it works.

For a little while.

But slowly and surely, we wither back into our suffering because we think that it is the truest reflection of ourselves. We very physically mirror our pain, and all the openness in the world does not change that because our openness must also be wide.

To me, wideness means that we are filling up space, that we are saying we are allowed to be in the room with everyone else. It says that we are OK with who we are and where we are at, and that those things do not denote or negate a seat at the table. It means that we are permitted to be in process, but that we are committed to believing we are capable of change.

Open says “can I come in?”

Wide says “can I stay?”

We often walk through the door but become frightened by our sense of belonging, we fight the feeling that it could be possible we are actually worthy.

One of the most powerful examples I have seen of being wide came from a former client.  She had lived most of her life small, trampled by the abuse of her family and internalizing the shame of her past. She wanted desperately to fix and forget, but was beginning to be open to the possibility that she was valuable even in the middle of her fragmented heart. I remember her telling me about how someone had said an offhanded comment to her, and how the words hurt her even though she knew that they were not intended to. She came in so excited one week because she had pulled that person aside and gently but courageously told him how and why she was bothered by that exchange. The person responded with such humility and respect, and thanked my client for being so open and honest about her feelings.

When my client told me this story, she was bursting with joy because she had finally been able to see and accept that she was worth speaking up for. She was open, yes, but she was also wide. She allowed herself to take up space and create a safe place for herself. She internalized self-compassion and love, without beating herself up or digging a hole of hate. She could have easily internalized the incident, blaming herself for being too sensitive or reasoning away the situation so as to avoid conflict.

But she didn’t.

She was wide, and in doing so, she found healing that took root in a soil that would not rot or erode away. She planted herself in worthiness because she was able to recognize that her wounds did not make her unworthy. They would heal, but she would have to let them, and to do that she would have to believe that she was worth the healing even when she was in pieces still.

You see, when we place all of our wholeness in being good or controlled or behaved or perfect, we really aren't planting ourselves anywhere healthy. The second that something or someone comes along and triggers us, and all those emotions come back up, the shame cycle starts again.

But when we can open ourselves up to grace and then let it widen our souls, it won't matter when we feel and fail and fall down and shatter again because we know that those pieces still belong to a whole being, they belong to a person who is growing and changing and learning to love all the parts that have brought her to where she is today.

When we are wide, we are honoring our pain and making space for our prosperity.

We are wishing ourselves well, even on our worst day, even when we feel like we don't deserve it.

And isn't that the point of grace after all?

To call the unworthy worthy?

To bring peace to those sitting in darkness?

To open up the doors and invite us in, and to ask us to please, please stay.

Because there's a seat at that table.

And no one else can fill it.

No one but you.

Don't make us wait until you have it all together...if you're anything like me, it'll be awhile.

Besides, you'll fit right in with the rest of us who don't know where we are going.

But we do know there will be grace.

So let it lift your head and ground your feet.

Your space will be waiting for you.

Don't waste any more time trying to earn it,

it's already yours.

forgiveness and belonging.

Loneliness kills. I don't say this to be dramatic, it's a scientific fact. According to the American Psychological Association, recent research has shown that being isolated presents a greater health risk than obesity, and can lead to an earlier mortality rate by 50%.

Being in community matters. 

We know this, as people. We were designed to be connected, to belong. It's one of our earliest longings, to be held and comforted by someone safe. We desperately want to hold on to this feeling. But somehow, as we get older, it becomes harder to grasp. 

We lose ourselves in the process of living. 

Maybe it was the pain of a broken relationship, or maybe you were the one doing the breaking. Maybe it was both. Regardless, we find our way to being alone by default or by choice, and allow the distance to numb us out until we no longer feel vulnerable. 

We protect ourselves from the inside out, and yet our souls are crushed by the heaviness of our armor.

And so we find that loneliness kills more than our bodies, but our spirits, long before it is our time.

I am finding for myself that forgiveness often precipitates belonging. Brené Brown states in her research that in order to belong to others, we must first belong to ourselves. Turns out that it's very hard to be open to acceptance from others when you cannot accept yourself. It's also extremely hard to be gracious towards others if you can't be gracious towards yourself. 

We must be champions of self-compassion.

If you are like me, you may think that the key to becoming a better person is to challenge and poke and prod and punish yourself in the right direction. So many things about American culture reinforce this, not to mention our sense of religious obligation. Many of us grew up in the rhetoric of the church that taught us very well how to be very ashamed, and emphasized a sort of spiritual self-masochism. 

I find this a dangerous dichotomy, this splitting of good self and bad self, this fear of our darkness and this lack of a genuine understanding of grace.

Listen, in order to love yourself, in order to accept who you are where you are, in order to find that belonging that you yearn for with every fiber of your being, you must understand that we are all capable of bad things.

Which means that you are also capable of good things.

Sometimes, I think, we get stuck feeling like we should just be good no matter what. We like to think that the world doesn't shape us, that all our pain and suffering doesn't go into what comes out of us, that we are OK despite the fact that very little in this life does not contain at least a sliver of ugliness.

But the truth is, we ALL have the capacity for both good and evil.

And beating ourselves up more, shoving our own faces in the dirt?

Punishing only leads to purgatory. 

So.

We must forgive. 

And part of forgiveness is acknowledging that we have done things we are not proud of.

It takes a lot of strength and a great deal of courage to look our demons in the face.

But more than this, it takes love.

We must we must we must be rooted in love to forgive, both ourselves and others.

We must know our own value, our own worthiness to truly stare down our darkness and take hold of the light. 

Grace requires that there be something to forgive.

And forgiveness can only be found when we tend to what has been broken, both inside and outside of us. 

We have made mistakes, yes.

We have damaged and destroyed and been promoters of our own self-harm.

I know it's scary to think you could be something different, something good. I know it feels untrue to believe that you aren't the sum of your shadows, that forgiveness feels like you are letting yourself off the hook for all the violent storms you've created.

I know. 

But grace, oh grace. Grace never starts with punishment. 

But it is capable of driving out fear.

Fear of ourselves, of others.

It's strongest in the face of adversity, failure, and shame. 

It can bring us out of isolation, if we let it.

It can propel us into belonging, but we have to let it in.

We have to acknowledge that our search for wholeness is directly linked to our ability to forgive ourselves, our ability to accept love in the places we feel the most unworthy, the most broken down. 

And to do that we have to face our pain. We have to recognize our own propensity for hurting.

And we have to allow ourselves to heal.

To take a deep breath, kneel down towards our suffering and say, 

"I forgive you. You are loved. This is not who you are, won't you come into the light?"

In my years of working as a social worker for men recovering from homelessness, the most successful clients I worked with were those who had a solid understanding of forgiveness in light of what they had done. Some had messed up in big ways like murder or violent crime, some in other ways like substance abuse or unhealthy relationships. And I will tell you, that the clients who had messed up the most were the ones who also loved the best because they had no choice but to face their struggle and forgive. Their lives literally depended on their ability to show compassion to themselves in the midst of their own suffering and the suffering they had caused. They knew that if they wanted to transform, it had to start with love, not hate. 

They had accepted that they had not been and would never be perfect, but loved themselves anyway.

We have all done and will continue to do bad things, yes.

It's human nature, after all.

But.

We don't have to stay there, and we don't have to keep reliving our own versions of hell.

Face it.

Forgive it.

And show yourself the compassion that God himself has shown you all this time.

Remind yourself of who you are despite of what you've done.

Because the truth is, all that kindness you are showing yourself? 

It multiplies as you open up to others.

We cannot belong to others until we belong to ourselves. 

And we cannot belong to ourselves until we forgive.

Don't waste another second of your precious living on imprisonment anymore.

The truth about who you are is waiting for you.

But you must be free to accept it. 

the good in goodbye.

You know when you’re watching a movie and one of the characters has been through it, and their life is in shambles and they’re talking to a complete stranger and their main sentiment is, “I never thought this would happen to me”?

Well, that’s pretty much been my life this year.

I really don’t think I’ve had my ass handed to me more than I have in the past 12 months. I found myself in a place I truly thought that I wouldn’t be, and that’s saying a lot since I tend to err on the depressing side of things. In other words, despite my knack for predicting and anticipating unfortunate occurrences, I managed to somehow still screw up the few things I thought I could never break—and man, I really never thought it would happen to me.

So, what did I do? Well, something else I was really good at:

I gave up.

Not at first though. At first I tried to figure it out and fix it and beat myself up and cry until I just felt nothing at all. Helpful tip for you—these options only work for a limited time and actually don’t move you to a better place. Wish I had known that, but I guess misery loves company, or maybe I just loved being miserable and didn’t want any company. It’s hard to say.

Either way, I did the whole angst thing for a while before I realized that I couldn’t actually fix all the things I had broken by continuing to try and fix myself. I guess I just thought that if I could just be better than my life would be better. And sometimes, I do think there are seasons when we are working on ourselves and problem solving and getting to the root of processing healing and growth. But for me, during this time, that didn’t seem to be working. Everywhere I looked, endings were happening despite my best efforts to bring things back to life.

Goodbyes became my new normal.

I think it’s no coincidence we call them goodbyes. It struck me as I was leaving one of the places that I loved most, a place where I really grew up: camp. I had been with this camp for almost ten years of my life. It’s where I spent my summers as a college student, and where I started my career as a professional counselor. It’s literally the reason I moved to NYC, to be closer to the kids and friends I had come to call family.

Camp was who I was.

But camp was ending. Adulthood had settled in and we were all moving on.

The goodbye was here to stay, whether I was ready or not.

If you were to talk to my camp friends, they would all tell you that I am notoriously bad at goodbyes. I would become despondent and sullen about a week before camp truly ended, because I was that sad to leave. So, imagine my extreme anxiety and panic at realizing, ten years later, that camp truly does have to end. I remember walking off camp grounds, remembering all the times I had said goodbye before, not knowing that I would still be standing on that very ground as a 28-year-old, professional counselor. And this time, truly saying goodbye because I had finally quit my job and decided to move forward with my life.

It was a bittersweet feeling, and here’s what I am learning—that good byes are in fact good. They signify growth and change, they signify new life. You cannot simultaneously hold on and let go, you have to do one or the other. And I was trying so hard to hold on, terrified of losing this community, of losing myself. Of not knowing what was ahead, if it would be as great as what was behind. Of not knowing who I was outside of this life I had created for myself.

In his book Necessary Endings, Henry Cloud speaks on goodbyes as a natural and healthy part of living. He says that oftentimes when we delay goodbyes, when we try to avoid endings, it can make us sick. We find ourselves stagnant and frustrated and incredibly unwell.

Boy did this sound familiar to me.

You see, I had been trying to go back and fix the problem, time and time again with no success. But the truth was, I could only solve it by moving forward. I needed to take the tools I had developed over the years, the lessons I had learned and the growth that had occurred and keep walking. Even if I didn’t know what I was walking towards, I needed to stop treading water because I was tired and it was slowly sucking up all my energy until I found myself physically drowning.

I needed to swim out of there.

And because God is gracious even when we are quite stubborn, a door opened at just the right opportunity. I got a new job—a new chance at living. It wasn’t easy, and it involved some risk—some not knowing, some change. And no matter who you are, change is scary.

But goodbyes, they can be good.

And no one ever started something new without having to leave something behind.

So. I’m embracing the goodbye. It doesn’t mean it isn’t painful, that it doesn’t involve grief. It is letting go of something that was sweet, after all. It lets us know that the thing we are leaving was powerful and meaningful enough to carry us to where we are today, and strong enough that it laid the foundation for us to do what we are still meant to do. It was in itself, good.

But its time has ended.

So say thank you.

Soak up the memories.

And swim towards new horizons.

It won’t be the last time you have to say goodbye.

But who knows what waits behind that next hello—

And what treasure you may find at the shore. 

punishment and parties.

I'm sitting in a coffee shop in West Harlem, four stops from my colorful and quirky apartment in the South Bronx, sipping a latte while watching the people of NYC zoom by. I have had three years in this brightly lit, never sleeping city. Three years where I have had the privilege of living out so many of the dreams that were on my shelf for so long--I've gotten to spend time with the people I love, people I never thought I would be just a five minute drive from. I've made new friends too, friends who have suffered with me through pain and danced alongside me in celebration, friends who have hunkered down with me through the seasons of life. I've worked harder than I thought possible, laughing real tears of joy and crying deep tears of sorrow with those I have come to call family. I've coached running teams with brave and fearless girls from the Bronx who have made me smile so big with pride I thought I would burst. I've gotten my clinical license, achieved professional certifications, and started a (small) private practice.

I have learned how to live in both plenty and in want.

I don't think it's possible that any more emotion could be packed into three years of living. There were days that I was so depressed that getting out of bed was a success, nights where anxiety badgered me mercilessly. I also experienced an alarming amount of anger, white hot rage that would pulse through me and make me think dark, dangerous thoughts. I became bitter for weeks, months at a time, a bitterness that demanded answers yet couldn't even get it together enough to formulate the questions. I flailed hard against the endless, random cruelty of living.

And yet, I got back up. I faced my demons and confronted the shadows that followed me everywhere.

I found out that many things were out of my control.

But I also found that some things were not.

I think that when we are faced with challenges, when obstacles block the way towards living, our instinct is to go back. Where did I go wrong? How did I get here? What could I have done differently? I have found that when hardship smacks me in the face I am quick to look at my faults, who often look like friendly ghosts. For me their names are depression, anxiety, fear, and shame. They like to pop in as often as possible just to let me know they're around in case I need them. And the truth is, at one time I did. At one time these unpleasant emotions were useful because they let me know that something was wrong and that I needed to pay attention to it. But after I did all the hard work, the years of therapy and dutifully taking my medication, I found that I often turned to them too quickly. I turned to them to tell me something about myself that they could not, something that they couldn't speak to because they had come as far as they could with me on the journey. They had brought me safely through the woods and it was time for them to send me off.

It is really scary thing to expect more of yourself after 28 years of self-deprecation.

And yet, this is where life and all its emotions had brought me--to a season of change that required me to, as my therapist put it, level up. It was time to apply everything I had learned and grown in, it was time to bloom.

You know what I thought to myself when I heard that?

What a relief.

There's a story about a son who is given his inheritance early and squanders it completely. He finds himself literally eating with the pigs and realizes that he royally screwed up, and that his only option was to return home. Like any disobedient boy, he expects to be in big trouble. His plan is to go to his father and beg for forgiveness, and even to ask to work as a servant in his house.

He expects to be punished.

But instead he gets a party.

He comes back and his father is so overwhelmingly overjoyed that he pulls off the most extravagant welcome home event of the century. He is treated like a prince and showed immense grace and love, far beyond what he deserved.

He expected to be punished but instead he got a party.

How often do I expect some bad thing, some terrible punishment to happen because of all the things I think that I deserve? How often do I make choices to stay in unhealthy situations because I'm afraid that I don't have enough grace to cover me, because I've failed over and over again and so I must not be valuable enough to receive something good?

How would my life look different if I looked for the party instead of the punishment?

Leveling up.

If I want more I have to expect more. If I want love and wholeness and freedom and hope I have to look for love and wholeness and freedom and hope.

I cannot keep looking to my shadows--they have already shown me the light.

I just have to walk towards it.

Embrace it.

Look for it in me and in the world around me.

So.

This is where I am at, in the tiniest cafe in the heart of this big city, the city of dreams.

The same dreams that brought me here will be the same ones that propel me forward because I now know what is possible.

I don't have to carry out my own punishment.

And I can't wait to see the party that's waiting for me yet.

anxiety and goodness

I remember about five years ago, the principal of a school told me that I was "an impressionable young lady". I  was working there at the time, fresh out of college, afraid and ashamed that I hadn't made the grand mark on the world I thought I was supposed to be leaving. My graduation was followed swiftly by a crippling depression, paired with an exhausting anxiety, and finished off with a break up that I truly thought would end me. At the very least, it was the worst year  of my  life.

At the best, it was the beginning of it.

When I heard that principal call me that word, I didn't understand what it meant. I recall seeing my coworker and boss at the time looking incredibly uncomfortable, avoiding eye contact just enough for me to realize it wasn't a positive association. I looked it up later:

Easily influenced because of a lack of critical ability.

Well, shit.

I was shook, but not shocked. It was no secret that I was barely holding on to anything that year--to give you a picture, I ate lunch in the closet every single day. And my lunch was cereal because I was so poorly paid I couldn't afford lunch meat. And if you think that's an exaggeration, I was making exactly $13,000 a year, or about 6 dollars an hour. Before taxes.

It was rough. Physically, emotionally, relationally. I was bankrupt in every sense of the word. And that word, that word he called me? That was true too.

You see I spent most of my life looking to others to tell me about myself. Was I good enough? Pretty enough? Smart enough? Obedient enough? If I wasn't I adjusted and tried again. Fortunately for me, I was home-schooled the first portion of my childhood, and missed the memo about fitting into social norms--I was spunky, creative, and unafraid to call a little attention to myself in the name of fun.

But.

I was also very afraid. Unsure. The irony of it was that while I looked to others to see a reflection of who I was, I really only accepted the image that fit with who I thought I was.

And at my very core, I felt broken.

So, I became permeable. I let opinions flow in and out of me, attempting to use them to fill the spaces in which I was unable to fill for myself. Because I viewed myself as defective, I thought I couldn't be trusted in any area of my life--not in my decisions, not in my thoughts, and definitely not in my emotions.

This is a very dangerous way to live, this giving of the self so freely for others to frame. It means that you are responsible for every single person's reaction, every belief that they have about you or the world around them. It makes you beholden to their emotions, their behaviors in relation to you.

It's exhausting, and eventually, you break.

You become confused, bewildered and incredibly afraid that you are going to shatter anything and everything around you by simply breathing. You feel like you can't have an opinion, a single thought about something else because you are probably wrong and who are you to bring something smart or different or good to the table? 

It turns out, impressionability is deadly.

It's a parasite, feeding of the truest and most important and valuable parts of who you are in order to hijack the system completely and make you someone else.

Or in this case, everyone else.

But you.

Needless to say, I got tired of this way of living. Or rather, this way of living became impossible to sustain, pushing me closer and closer to the edge of  the cliff until really I had to make the decision--who was I  going to be and could I even continue this way?

The answer was no. I remember very clearly, so very clearly kneeling on my bedroom floor with my head to the ground and crying. Realizing that I was either going to stay stuck and depressed and wanting to die indefinitely, or that I could do something different. I could reach for life and maybe even reach for the true me, the real me that had been standing on the other side of that cliff forever, hand extended and head cocked to the side asking,

Well, what took you so long?

I took the leap. I'm actually still taking the leap, even up to the minute, five years later. I've learned so much about my unbelief in myself, about my mistrust of myself and my own experiences. I'm grateful to say that I've moved from impressionable to an ability to leave an impression, though my voice still quivers when I do so. This is not to say that I am brave and assertive and confident in all situations, but rather I have slowly and certainly moved towards self-assurance.

Here's what I've learned:

I have a voice, and when I don't use it, I'm doing everyone a disservice. I deserve to be heard. It's amazing what working in an all men's environment will teach you about voice and power. And I am, powerful. I have found that if I don't speak up, there is a chance the truth won't be spoken at all. That every time I choose to silence my inner voice, I am missing an opportunity for growth and advocacy for the people I serve, as well as those I serve alongside with.

We are meant to sharpen one another, and if I continue to let other peoples' impressions determine my steps, none of us will ever finish the race completely whole.

Not only this, but my choice to silence my own voice for the voice of another has a cost, and that cost is always anxiety, depression, or some other unpleasant emotion. It may not come at first but it will come, unrelenting until you listen to it--to its complaint at you choosing not to be who you were made to be. Peter Palmer talks about this in his book, Let Your Life Speak. He says of those who remain silent that "no punishment anyone might inflict on them could possibly be worse than the punishment they inflict on themselves by conspiring in their own diminishment."

I found that when I learned to speak my own words, when I did not conspire in my own diminishment, my peace increased. I was able to operate from a sense of inward truth rather than outward uncertainty, and that made all the difference.

So today, I am working on leaving an impression. I am believing that I have something to offer that is good, because goodness lives within me and is just waiting for the opportunity to be let out. And that goodness is God given, that my gifts and talents were designed to be used and that if I do not use them no one else will because there's only one me. 

Your words matter.

You matter.

You have a right to the table.

So use it. 

Don't be afraid.

Do not let the waves of the storm wash you away.

Be the storm.

Change the direction of the wind.

But don't ever let it drown you out.

love and depression.

Depression.

It's hard to describe what it's sticky borders feel like, difficult to put into words because it relies so heavily on the senses. Or on the assault of the senses, that is. Depression raids every last bit of the brain and body until all that's left is a hollow space, but not the kind that you can fill. It's different for every person, but for me it's always felt like a shroud, one that I  can't take off or seem to be rid of. I am still able to connect to the world, still able to reach out and see and feel and touch--but not fully. Not completely.

The darkness limits me.

I've been thinking a lot about my depression  recently, the constant companion that it is. I know I am not alone in my suffering. It doesn't take a therapist to see that our world is filled with broken spaces, interrupted only by the broken people who choose to occupy them. And I say choose to in a loose sense--some of us are more impacted than others.

We all experience this darkness so differently, and yet so acutely the same: living makes us tired. I remember being so young as ten and feeling so strongly that I was unafraid of death--it was the staying alive through all that suffering that terrified me. It was never ending, my pain. It gave no relief, no day off, accepted no excuses. Depression was my drill master and I was the recipient of its deprecating orders.

I have always viewed my depression as a foe, though a much apart of me as my heart or lungs or any other breathing part of my body. This meant that I saw myself as a foe, a broken arrow that never hit its mark quite right. Everything pained me. I felt it all so deeply, so astutely that it would knock the wind out of my lungs. Not gasping for air but just releasing it, hoping that the stillness within my chest would quiet the cries of sorrow that constantly, constantly rang in my ears.

The older I have gotten the more I have come to recognize my depression as a fellow traveler, a sensitive friend that interprets the world around her in terms of loss instead of gain. I think that those of us who suffer with depression see things that cannot be articulated, cannot be processed in simple terms. As a therapist, I know that we categorize depression in a specific way, that medication can be helpful in softening the edges of a harsh reality that has been difficult to overcome. I know because I myself take medication that keeps me from spiraling too far down the hole.

And yet, depression lingers.

Many times, we characterize depression as a sense of hopelessness or criticism, a belief that life cannot, will not get better. We view it as misfire, a mistake of perspective.

And this is true, somewhat. Depression shifts our lens and makes it hard to see what hope lies ahead.

But.

I also think that depression, and those who experience it, are feeling something that cannot be explained away by positive thinking or behavioral exercises. They are feeling something true, not something imagined or conjured up. They are feeling a loss of life, not a failure to see it.

I am coming to understand that this grief I carry with me is a result of the very thin membrane separating my pain from that of those around me. I feel it because I'm aware of it, and that awareness sets a weight upon my shoulders that burdens my weary soul. You see, it's not that I have come to find life not worth living--it's that I have and am mourning the loss of it all over.

I think that depression wears on us not because we don't think life is purposeful, but because we loved life so deeply and are eternally bereaved by the loss of it, no matter the form. We are heavy because we breathe in sorrow as air, and often hold on to it for others.

If we are able, we learn how to carry it better, how to lighten our load so that it doesn't take us under. But if I'm honest, if I'm really honest, I don't think that my depression will ever entirely leave me. And if I'm honest, really honest, I understand why it will not--

Loss is apart of life.

Even Jesus grieved the death of Lazarus.

So while I will continue to fight for hopefulness, for joy in the midst of suffering, meaning in the middle of chaos, I will also show respect for my pain and the pain of those around me. I will grieve because grief is simply a tool to communicate that what I loved has been lost.

But not completely.

Because there's still some love left in me.

Some hope left to share.

And all darkness does is point us to the light that's still shining.

We haven't lost it completely yet.

context and identity: developing past your environment

When I was in the fourth grade, I started public school for the first time. Having moved around quite a bit as a child, my mom had chosen to home school us up until that point, rather than pull us in and out of classrooms. I was excited to go, but very scared.

Two things happened that I can remember.

One, because this was my first time in school, I had to take a standardized test to determine my level of education. I was a very anxious child, and I remember being terrified of this stranger sitting in front of me, asking me to answer endless questions and grimly timing my response.

I did average, and they placed me in an average class.

Two, as the year went on, I gained more confidence and my grades reflected this. So well, that my teachers wanted to place me in a gifted class.

I remember this day so clearly.

I walked in, looked around at my peers. They gave me some worksheets to do. I nervously observed the other students. Everyone was zipping through the assignments, finishing quickly and moving on to the next set of tasks.

I was overwhelmed, and this feeling consumed me. Shame ate at every edge of my newly built assuredness, shredding my self-worth and promptly handing it back to me like garbage.

And in this state a little voice spoke to me, quietly but surely enough:

You are not smart.

I  took that voice in, placed in in the middle of my chest, and continued forward with my life.

As the years went by, I still did well in school. I still took classes that were above average, still got good grades. But the voice, and the anxiety, they were always there. They teamed up like too old friends, kicking me down if I got too relaxed, feeding me fear to keep me in line and on my toes at all times.

This thought, this feeling, this identity, this not being smart--it followed me. I believed it, I spoke it, I let it dictate exactly how many chances I was willing to take.

Or rather how many failures I was not willing to endure.

It kept me in a box.

Fast forward past college, grad school, and into my first year of work as a clinical counselor in NYC. My coworkers are all of varying intelligence, some graduating from Princeton and others not even high school. But here's the difference:

I am the only clinician besides my boss.

I am the first female to ever work in this organization as a counselor for men recovering from homelessness.

I am the solitary person under the age of 50.

And because of all these things, the odds should have been stacked against me.

But.

The context had changed.

I was now a valuable asset, something unique to the team. I was young, I was educated in the field, and I was a woman. There wasn't anyone else like me there, and the knowledge I was equipped with was new to everyone else.

I was seen as smart.

Bright.

Capable.

And people would tell me this. And  I would shoot them down. I  would say it's only because  I am a woman or young or because no one else is trained. I would say trust me, if I was anywhere else I would have had my ass handed to me several times by now.

But still, people persisted to tell me this thing, this thing I was sure I wasn't allowed to believe.

After about three years, my curiosity started to rise. What if I was smart? What if I was capable, was bright? Could it be that all these people are wrong?

I went back and thought through my life, through all the situations I had been in, all the different learning environments. And it was true, in some places, I was not even close to the smartest person in the room. And in others, I was most certainly at the top.

It depended on the context.

So, what did this mean for me? About how I was going to label myself moving forward?

Because in some contexts, I was a brain child.

And others, slow as a sloth.

Did it make a difference?

The answer is, in no uncertain terms, yes.

But not so much whether I was intelligent based on my IQ or my ability to succeed in assessments.

But what I believed myself to be.

You see, once I started identifying myself as smart, I took more chances. I was able to answer questions more easily, I found I could memorize things quicker and process information at a higher level. I went after more challenging courses, tried my hand at solving problems no one else could solve.

I did more simply because I  believed that I could and because my anxiety wasn't eating at my brain.

Because a new context had taught me something that an old one did not.

And the truth was that while one environment pushed me to shrink and the other to grow, my capabilities would have been the same in either context.

But I read the wrong context clues.

I made the wrong inference.

And I limited myself because of it.

So, what have you based your identity on because of the context you are in?

How are your surroundings benefiting or binding you?

Context can shape you.

But don't let it define you.

The place where you are the smartest? Bravest? Most full?

That is who you are.

It is what you carry with you no matter the context you are in, because the context is only a clue.

The answers are already within you.

just as he said.

Things are, very rarely, just as we plan them to be. We can guess, we can try, but life often shows up instead--politely mocking what we thought was the ability to control our circumstances.

We get let down.

I have a client who refers to this as the "expectation gap", and as far as psychology goes, she's not too far off the mark. There's a certain type of enmeshment that we talk about in counseling, where we become entangled with others in such a way that we feel we are them. Their emotions become our emotions, their experiences our experiences. And because of this, expectations are usually high and frustration tolerance is low. In short, we say:

 event+expectation=emotion

So when we plan something, and our expectation is that it will go exactly as we planned, we become emotionally dysregulated when it does not.

The expectation gap.

The irony is that the more we fight things not going our way, the more reactive we become. We literally make it impossible to enjoy an experience because we can't let go of the fact that it is not how it is supposed to be.

Our job.

Our relationships.

Our life.

It's all terribly messy.

And rarely does anything happen in the way we wish it to.

Nothing is just as we said it would be.

And I love this for several reasons.

The first is that rarely have I ever had the foresight to choose things for myself that were good. I have a long history of poor choices, mostly wrapped up in who I thought I was supposed to be or what  I thought I was supposed to do. Thankfully, my feet have found the path I needed to go on, versus the one I  thought I was supposed to. And I am healthier, more whole for it.

It's not to say that the paths were easy, or even comfortable. Most of the refining times in my life have been in the fire, and now is no exception. Growing is hard because it means we have to let something die, let something go. And this is never uncomplicated. There are so many parts of ourselves we have fought to protect because we didn't know who we would be without them, and at times this has heeded our growth.

It's scary to die to yourself, in whatever capacity that may be.

But it's almost always worth it.

There's this story in the bible that talks about when Jesus was raised back to life from the dead. We've all heard it a thousand times, and whether you believe it or not you most likely know it--Jesus died on the cross to save us from our sins, and three days later he rose again.

The scriptures say that Mary and Mary (his close friends) were among the first to see the empty tomb. As they got there, still mourning his death, they were surprised to find he was not there.

An angel said to them:

He is not here, He has risen, just as He said. 

Just as he said.

I'm not sure why I have never noticed that phrase before now, or why it's suddenly gained so much meaning for me--but the truth of it stops me in my tracks in its stark simplicity.

Jesus didn't promise that he wouldn't die, that he wouldn't be betrayed by the people he served. He didn't say that it would be easy or that he would take away the painful process.

He died.

And then he rose again.

Just as he said.

You see, the hope doesn't come in just the cross or just him coming back to life. He could have promised to only die, but that wouldn't have been meaningful--just sad. And he couldn't promise to come back without having gone somewhere, it wouldn't make sense.

He died and promised to rise again.

And it was just as he said!

Do you know how many times in the course of my life I have doubted that hope would come through for me? That desperation was the only tune I knew how to sing? That death after death after death made the possibility of life seem like a cruel dream?

But.

I walked through the flame.

I was burnt, ashes to ashes.

And found beauty on the other side.

It was just as he said.

So today, I am resting in the fact that while my expectations may not be met, it's not because everything is just dying.

It's that everything is coming back to life.

My expectations are not high enough.

And I don't mean circumstantially--in a physical sense.

I mean eternally.

There is a hope that has been set before me, and despite what is happening in and around me, it is there--just waiting for me to grab on.

And when the time comes, when my walk through darkness is over, I will be able to look back at my suffering and forward towards the joy set before me and say:

It is just as he said.

He has risen.

And so I have I.

For the joy set before him he suffered.

So that I could have the joy. 

AND IT IS JUST AS HE SAID.

Though the suffering may be unbearable.

And the fire impossibly hot.

Hope is the unshakable, unwavering expectation placed before me.

So when I can't feel anymore, or when I feel too much.

I will remember the joy.

I will remember this thing, this promise that was made in dying, so that new life could be raised up.

Because in the midst of my doubt, my faith has yet to fail me.

And it has always been, never as I said, BUT always as hope said--

far beyond and above the expectations of my soul:

and straight to the heavens.

shame and security.

There is a darkness hidden deep in my heart that I am not proud of. It makes me selfish, a character trait often born of the strange mix between vulnerability and pride. This shadow makes me bitter, it makes me angry towards myself and others. It makes me feel like a professional hater, which is mostly a projection of self-hate onto others. I’ve never understood people who were so confident in their right-ness, people who would go down fighting, people swearing through and through that they are correct. This idea is so foreign to me, this complete and utter loyalty to self-preservation, this certain belief in one’s own goodness.

Psychology has a great deal to say about our fight and flight from self, most of it rooted in attachment theory. We either understand that we have a secure base or not—and this leads to different forms of attaching to self and others. The ideal attachment would be that we can see ourselves as primarily OK, and others as the same. But so often this balance gets hijacked, whether by life or circumstances or the chemistry in our brain. Because of this, our attachments are skewed. We may think that we are OK, but no one else is. Or we may think that we aren’t OK, and no one else is either.

More common than not, we believe that we aren’t OK, but that everyone else is.

Our okay-ness is wrapped up in the other, defined by what we perceive and believe to be true about the goodness of those around us in comparison to ourselves.

Silence perpetuates this myth. As humans, we aren’t exactly in the habit of sharing our secret darkness with others. We are so afraid of this part of ourselves that we can’t even bear to bring it into the light, lest someone discover who we really claim ourselves to be.

So, we go on believing, behaving, and becoming based on our assessment that we are not good—while strongly clinging to the idea that everyone else is.

We call this shame.

We keep on weighing our faults, our failures, more and more heavily until all that’s left on the scale is a heaping pile of self-loathing and guilt, with some bitterness sprinkled on for good measure. And the weight of this becomes so heavy, so hard to carry, that we give up all together.

We isolate, we numb, we go to sleep.

Because the thought of living with ourselves is just too much.

And the idea that we could believe something different is out of question.

That we could believe that maybe, just maybe, we are OK?

Never.

I have shame to carry, don’t you understand? It’s mine, no one else’s, and I did it to myself. If I let it go, it’s like letting myself off the hook, like believing something that’s not true.

What?

When did our mistakes start outweighing our successes?

When did our propensity for bad start deciding that we are no longer good?

That we are no longer worthy?

Where did the grace go?

The truth that says we are loved, forgiven, whole despite our sufferings?

Sometimes, when I get this way, I like to pretend that God is in the room with me—and He has a voice. I ask God, what do you think about this, this ugly thing I did? This thought that I had? This badness within me?

I say, it’s wrong that I’m angry, sad, bitter, depleted, fed up—aren’t you disappointed in me? 

Ashamed of the way I’ve been reacting? Carrying on? Responding?

And God says to me—what are you responding to?

So, I get quiet for a moment and think:

Everything, I whisper. The brokenness, the fear. The uncertainty of life. All of it. I’ve been pushed down and kicked around and labeled and ignored and I’m angry all the time.

And God says, me too.

I know how you feel.

And I’m angry too.

With me? I ask, afraid to look up, worried to see the disappointment in His eyes.

And God, takes me by the face, looks at me with love, and gently says:

Remember the cross?

And I say, well, yeah. I know a thing or two about grace.

But God looks at me knowingly, at the words and mess and shame that I’ve laid before him in this moment.

And that look says, you do not.

You do not know about grace, because you haven’t accepted it for yourself.

You may think that others deserve it, that it is a gift for them, but.

 It was also a gift for you.

A gift that was given because God himself was angered by the suffering of the world.

By your own suffering.

By the fact that you kept acting like you were bad, when God knew that you were really good. 

Because he had once created that good in us.

And believed that we could be whole again.

So He brought down that goodness in the form of grace and gave us a secure base. 

He wanted us to know, we are OK.

That He knows how we feel and is also angered by the suffering we've endured.

The suffering we've placed willingly on ourselves.

So, he responded.

And his response, His grace speaks louder than our feelings.

Than our thoughts.

Than our behaviors.

Sometimes, I  think God is more offended by our lack of belief in His grace than our everyday shortcomings. 

More angered by the shame we let ourselves endure when the weight of glory is right there, ready to change the scales for good. 

Because, in this world, we will feel.

Sometimes bad, sometimes good.

We will act.

Sometimes bad, sometimes good.

But ultimately, the good wins in the end.

Grace wipes it all out, leaving nothing but light behind.

I want to live out of that light.

I am free to believe that I am OK.

That I am light shining in the midst of my sufferings.

Not darkness.

That I don’t need to be uncomfortable with the goodness that God sees when He looks at me.

I can run with my arms wide open and my heart to the sun.

You’re OK.

I’m OK.

May we live out of this security each day.

help me cross.

This is a story about listening.

The other day, I got off the train in my neighborhood, headphones in my pocket and fully tuned into the buzzing sounds of the Bronx. I've been trying to hear more lately, connect more with what's going on in and around me. As I plopped off the platform of the two train and down the stairs, I saw a blind man, alone and on the corner of the sidewalk. He was tapping the ground with his cane, grappling for direction and intently observing the area around him through sound. I  smiled to myself as I thought, if there's anyone who knows how to listen well it's certainly him. I kept walking, curiously watching him from a distance.

I  had almost rounded the corner to my street when I heard his voice, one that sounded like vulnerability wrapped in braveness--authoritative and afraid all at once. His words made me stop and take notice, made me turn around and go back, and they were so simple:

HELP ME CROSS!

There was something in the sincerity of his plea that led me to answer his call, a plea that I'm sure he makes several times a day. As I approached him I asked him where he needed to go. He paused for a minute and tilted his head, looking at me and through me and around me all at once. He said:

Wouldn't you just look at that. I call out to God and he answers straight away! I'm making my way to the corner store, and I need you to help me cross the street. Just grab on to my arm and I'll tell you where to go.

And at first I thought that this was your typical "when we are lost and blind God steps in and leads the way even though we can't see" experience. But, much to my surprise, he directed me. Left this way, a few more blocks, OK now right. As I held on to him and gently accompanied him on his journey, I  realized that while I knew where we were going, I  didn't know how to get there.

But he did.

And he just needed me to help him cross.

Oh, aren't we all just like this on our own journeys?

You see, there are times where we are blind and cannot see.

But then there are times were we can see and are afraid.

Times where we know where we are headed, but don't know if we are going to get there.

Times that we feel hopeless, exhausted...

alone.

So we cry out to God and say HELP ME CROSS.

We say that we know the way but we aren't sure  if we are up  for  the challenge. We say we aren't strong enough, smart enough, brave enough, good enough to do what we've been called to do, that we will surely be run over if we even try. 

And God looks at us.

Tilts his head and says:

But I know what you can do.

And you do know the way.

Listen to me.

Hold on to me. 

I'll help you cross.

listen and live.

Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and you will delight in the richest of fare. Give ear and come to me; listen, that you may live|| Isaiah 55:2-3

There are not many people in the world who don't interest me. I can find a story around any corner, and life becomes more and more beautiful the more I listen. It's so easy to miss the mystical in the mess of the mundane, so easy to trade the everyday magic around us for perfection and plastic smiles. I find that these days, the more I fight for success the more I lose it, and the harder I rage against powerlessness, the more helpless I become.

So I learning to listen and live.

And I am astounded by the difference.

Recently I went on a trip to Miami and all I wanted to do, all I told anyone I was going to do, was lay on the beach in the sun and read. From morning to night, I did not want to move. I wanted to be so still that people would mistake me for a freaking sitting Buddha. This, I  declared, would solve my burnout. This would fix my weary soul, this stillness.

Wouldn't you know that for the two days I was in Miami there was a wind advisory so strong that we literally could not even stand near the beach without wincing in pain? That the weather was so incredibly chaotic that the sand itself became mother nature's own personal weapon against humanity? In the words of every teenage girl in America, I simply could not.

I wanted to be still and instead I spent my vacation in a wind tunnel  where everything was constantly moving. Where all my intricately designed plans were literally blown  to pieces, right before my very sad, very tired eyes.

And yet, what was there to do? I could flail against it or let  it fill  my sails--the choice was mine alone.

Turns out when you  go to a beach town and you can't go to the beach, the only other options are eating and making friends with strangers, which happen to be two things I'm very good at. I encountered so  many, fully alive, enthralling people.

I got to listen to the ramblings of a woman in the airport, who was convinced that her flight was cursed or blessed--she really couldn't quite put her finger on it. After arriving at the airport three minutes past check-in, she was placed in row 33, and our flight was slighted to leave at 8:43. She quickly called her sister to fill her in, superstitious and wide-eyed and slightly panicky. "Should I get on the flight?" She pondered this question up until she set foot on that platform, and her circular worrying followed her all the way on to the plane and that fateful seat of threes.

In the terminal I also got to see a group of young college girls, giggly and excited and annoying in the way only a group of recently graduated adolescents can be,  as they ventured on their first collegiate spring break. I also got to see the less giggly but equally excited posse of college bros, slyly checking out their counterparts and carefully calculating their chances. They watched each other from across the room, the tension mounting until finally one of them had the courage to just walk up and start a conversation. In teen mating rituals, this was an act of pure courage, especially  in the public arena of a major airport with all parties watching. But initiate they did, and what fun it was to witness and remember the simple joy of talking to your crush for the first time.

Then there was our barista at our hotel, a skinny little thing not a day over 25, with a handlebar mustache to boot. Always smiling, always greeting you with a warm hello and a hot cup of coffee. Whenever you thanked him for anything, no matter how small it was, he replied sincerely and with great earnest, "you're very welcome", as though your simple gratitude was a gift and he was the happy recipient. He taught me the power of appreciation, of the contentedness you can experience by merely delighting in the satisfaction of others. He wanted nothing more than to see us well cared for, and that in itself was enough for him.

Next was the uber driver who also moonlighted as a champion for the elderly. In our pool ride he picked up an old woman so kind and so naively sweet that you couldn't help but love her. She recounted to our patient chauffeur the woes of ever changing technology, and stated that she once loved her uber driver so much that she braved navigating the uber app for the sake of giving him a good rating. However, she somehow mistakenly gave a one star rating, and was so incredibly committed to righting this grievance that she spent hours on the phone trying to contact the company to change it. Our present driver remained respectfully reflective during this story, until this concerned, thoughtful abuela lifted her hands in  exasperation and said "he was just so nice!" to which our driver responded emphatically, "well NOW he's probably driving around Miami looking to RUN  YOU DOWN!" To which none of us knew how to react but to collapse in a fit of laughter.

Finally, there was another uber pool with a mom and daughter, come to Miami together to celebrate the passing of midterms and a well-deserved break. I wouldn't have guessed they were related in this way, as they were both happily chatty and high-spirited, likely by way of Jack Daniels. Not surprisingly, they were from New York, with the daughter studying at a prestigious college in Pennsylvania--who also made it very clear that she was not in Florida for your typical spring break. Every time the daughter spoke the mom would finish her sentences, and vice versa, both increasingly excited to share the high-brow adventures they had embarked on since landing in Miami--all museums and fancy bars and historic hotels. They insisted that we visit this one restaurant because it was "to die for", and quickly pulled up pictures on their phones to reinforce their opinion. We dropped them off and promised to go, and then promptly returned to our own hotel to eat ice cream in bed and watch a TV movie. At 7:30 PM.

You see, I had this grand idea that I would rest and remain in solitude this trip, that I would be still and listen to my heart and all that crap. And you know, I even had this idea in mind of how I would do this. I had found a letter  I had written, almost a year ago, when packing for this trip. This letter contained some of my most painful feelings, some of the hardest parts of my life to let go. I had decided I was going to bring this letter to the beach, that I was going to make a big dramatic ceremony of it--that I was going to rip it into pieces and let the sea carry it away. But here's what happened instead:

I got to Fort Lauderdale, where we landed and were going to take a cab to the much more glamorous Miami. I went to the bathroom. I placed my book on the counter, which also contained the letter.

And I left.

I  forgot it.

I abandoned it in the bathroom of Fort Lauderdale.

And I was so sad. I hadn't even read this letter fully, waiting to digest it and process is and leave it on the serene beaches of Miami. I was going to prepare myself, slowly cleanse myself of everything that had been dragging me down for so long.

And I left it in THE DAMN BATHROOM OF FORT LAUDERDALE.

This was not how it was supposed to go.

Nothing goes how it's supposed to go.

And well, if there was ever a tagline for my life, that would certainly be it. I fight, and I wrestle, and I try so hard to grow and challenge and change myself, day after day.

And it. is. exhausting.

I'm exhausted.

And I  thought that I could just manage my rest and rehabilitation the same way, that I could "do it" right, that I could control it in a way.

But healing, oh healing is not controllable.

Healing is wild and slow and unpredictable, it takes time and unexpected resources.

It never comes the way we think it will.

So this trip, I learned to listen.

I learned to not spend money on what is not bread, and my labor on what does not satisfy.

I learned to listen, to eat what is good, and to delight in the richest of fare.

I learned to listen and live.  

I let my healing come in the wind, changing as ever, chaotic and constantly moving and at times threatening to knock me down. I let its powerful whisper call me and overwhelm me and tumble me about, because it was only the wind that could fill my sails and gently push me forward.

I had to listen to find what was good, I had to stop pushing and pressing and fighting to let myself settle into what made me whole. 

And most of all, I had to connect.

With those around me, with nature, with myself.

What gifts I received in return, what simple beauty found in the stories of everyday people.

I never want to miss out on listening again.

I don't want to miss out on living, for the sake of fixing myself, when the answer is so often the same:

We will never know the answers if we don't listen.

And we will never listen unless we learn to let go of what we wish to hear.

So let go.

Listen,

and live. 

problems and prosperity.

Life happens to us in extremes. We have good seasons and bad seasons, and sometimes these seasons happen at the same time. I have come to accept that for every joy there is the potential for immense sorrow, and for every problem, a chance for prosperity. Our success sits itself squarely between these two seemingly oppositional forces, asking us to both accept and change, to both move and be still.

In the mental health world, there is a whole treatment built around the idea that we must integrate opposites to survive, aptly called dialectical behavioral therapy. It asks the client to find balance in a body where emotions are intense and present and dialectical, where feelings indicate reality and can be difficult to overcome. And isn't life just like that? Full of happiness and sorrow, hope and despair. The dialectical oppositions pull at our souls, demanding an answer and a response, asking us to both stay and proceed forward.

One of my favorite stories that represents this concept is where God leads the enslaved Israelites out of Egypt, and towards the promise land. It was not an easy journey by any means, and the Bible is full of examples of their faith and doubt, over many, many years. From the very start, they really had to trust that God was leading them somewhere good, somewhere better than where they were. It says that when they left Egypt, the Lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night. It also states that He wanted to take them on a shortcut through Philistine land, but knew the Israelites may turn back if faced with war. So.

He went ahead of them and led them by the safest route to the Red Sea. And when the Egyptians pursued them, He went behind them and kept them safe. Ahead and behind, forward and back.

Problem and prosperity.

Can you imagine how frightening this time was for the Israelites? How confusing? To be led out of slavery only to have their enemies pursue them? To be taken out of captivity only to be trapped by the Red Sea? To not be able to see how they were going to get to the promised land, and to face incredible, seemingly impassible opposition?

But God did not falter. He took their circumstances and their doubt and their desperate belief that there was prosperity to come and he balanced it. He kept them safe, despite their situation, and he led them forward, though they didn't know how or where or even when.

He taught the Israelites to face their problems.

But also to believe in prosperity.

He taught them that while life may be dark and messy and uncertain, there is a light leading them, going ahead and following behind.

He taught them that He would fight and that they need only be still.

And in dialectical behavior therapy, it is the same. We teach our clients that it's OK to be where they are, as they are simultaneously growing and changing into who they wish to be. We teach them that we can't change that which we cannot accept, we cannot will ourselves out of a place we don't wish to acknowledge in the first place. We have to stop fighting because change does not come from a place of hatred, a place of spite for ourselves or our circumstances.

It comes from acceptance.

And it happens in the spaces between problem and prosperity.

I am learning to stand in the middle of the sea, in between everything I wish to leave in the past and everything I hope for in the future.

I am learning peace in the present, right where I am, in the midst of all that propels me forward and threatens to drag me down.

Because I know that there is light.

Leading me forward,

and protecting me from behind.

I don't have to choose between the ends of the spectrum, because they both make up a part of me, they are both a part of life. 

I will have problems.

But I will also have prosperity.

And I don't have to fight.

I need only be still. 

obstacles and opportunities.

My mom was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer two years ago. There have been many uncertainties during this time, but only one thing has stayed consistent--my mom is alive. Despite everything, despite the statistics, the questioning, the status of her health--she is still with us. Still breathing, still encouraging. Still fighting for her life.

None of us have the answers. We don't know what's ahead of us, what there is to come. But my mom has hope. She has faith. She has not given up, not thrown her hands in the air in despair. She has accepted the challenge in front of her and resolved herself to surviving, and because of this, she is alive.

I've been thinking a lot about obstacles and opportunities, what it means to step up to the plate and take responsibility for what's been placed before us. Our time on earth can be so daunting, and at times it takes everything we have to uncover our eyes and ears to see and feel all the pieces of life--full of chaos and frenzied brilliance. I often find myself running away from the weight of all that is mine to carry, mine to fulfill. For some reason I thought that most people ran towards the option  of more--more power, more control, more recognition. But as I look back on my nearly 28 years, I have found that at every chance I had, I hid.

We tend to look at people in leadership positions and think that they always wanted to be there. That they fought for that promotion, carefully planned out their rise to success. Recently, one of my bosses reminded me that in history, God rarely chose men and women who wanted to be leaders--more often than not, those chosen resisted a great deal. They were too weak or too old or too disabled or too poor, they pleaded with God to pick anyone else. Now, I always knew that God chose the humble, the least likely to succeed. He chose those from whom his power could be displayed, and the idea was that their shortcomings demonstrated his grace and mercy, his ability to change the game from hopeless to eternally hopeful. And this was true--Moses had a stutter, Abraham and Sarah were old, many of his disciples were fishermen. Jesus loved the lowly.

But.

The lowly were not always excited to be chosen. They didn't want the perks that came with leadership, because the risk was too great, because they were afraid they would fail. Because it hurt, to carry people along with them, it hurt caring for the cause of the oppressed, for those stuck in slavery. It was uncomfortable and inconvenient and uncertain and couldn't God just find someone else?

He could.

But he chose them.

So.

I'm trying to stop fighting against who God is calling me to be. And while I may not know how or when or where I do know who. And the responsibility is heavy. But as much as I may feel it, I'm not carrying it alone.

I'm not walking alone.

Though there may be times I look ahead and behind and see nothing but desert and emptiness--

I have not been abandoned.

And  I take great comfort in this. I take comfort that though there will be times I am physically by myself, that impossible decisions have to be made, decisions that involve lives that hang in the balance--I am still not alone.

God is with me.

In one of his sermons, Tim Keller talks about how the hero of a story never wants to own up to the responsibility of his destiny--the kingship, the rescuer, whatever. As a whole, we are afraid.

And he goes on to say, Jesus himself was afraid. He begged God to let him skip out on the cross. He sweat blood, real actual, stress induced blood. The responsibility of what was ahead of him caused him to be under such extreme duress that his physical body reacted.

But he went.

And we too, must go.

We must remember that though the weight is heavy and the risk is high, our call remains the same. 

Stand up a little straighter.

Look up a little farther.

And see the promise of heaven shining on the other side.

The promise of hope.

You may have to cross the desert.

But you will never walk alone.

Because:

"The one who has called you is faithful,
and he himself will do it."

1 Thessalonians 5:24

the companion of pain.

Pain has a way of repeating itself, though the circumstances often change. I had a good friend once tell me that I gravitate towards depression, that I enjoy it in some way. At the time I was offended, confused even. Why would someone choose to be depressed? Why would I want to feel this way? 

As I got older, I came to understand what he meant. The depression wasn't willfully brought on, but I certainly felt a natural pull towards it, a need for it its familiar borders. My life has been sorrow after sorrow, grief upon grief. It's been the constant of my soul, this settling into pain. Like an old companion that comes up to greet me, all the politeness faded away from years of friendship. And I welcome it in, with little fanfare and no surprise, because I have always known suffering as intimately as I know myself. 

I think this openness to pain has been helpful in my field. Hurting people are everywhere, and mostly they want the affliction to stop. I find it interesting that so often, our suffering is a reflection of the state of our being, of the core of who we are. This is not to say that we are our suffering, just that it serves as a mirror for what lies beneath the surface. And because of this, we often suffer the same thing twice, though it may look different from the outside.

Suffering, then, is rather circular. 

I am learning that so much of the pain I have experienced in life goes back to the same source--back to my fear of abandonment, back to my feelings of shame and vulnerability. The people may change, the setting may evolve, but the suffering stays the same.

None of us are free from ourselves, as much as we may try to deny it. We are our own prisons, and we keep the lock and key just out of reach because avoidance is so much easier. Because trying to fix it from the outside is so much easier, because we want to believe that it is not us who are broken.

But I am broken.

And this attraction towards pain, this tug towards the well-traveled path of desolation? Well.

Maybe it's just a call for healing. 

So often, I look outside of myself to fix what is wrong.

I ask myself questions that reflect my powerlessness, because the truth is I have given my power away. I have let myself fall into patterns of depression and worry and fear because these things are familiar to me. They make sense, they let me know how to survive. 

They tell me what I want to hear--about myself, about what to expect from others. 

What a defeating game we play, this circular suffering. It can feel like we are moving backwards, or like we haven't moved at all. It spins us around and confuses us, it leaves us in the dark.

And sometimes, we convince ourselves that we have just enough light to see. 

But.

Suffering can only steal what we let it. 

And the pain of life is the promise of hope waiting to happen.

I want to live out of the promise. 

These wounds, these scars that keep opening back up over and over again are just a sign that I haven't cleaned the wound out properly. They are telling me that there's something I'm missing, that there's a place I'm avoiding and covering up. And I don't want to circle around to this place again anymore--I don't want to live haunted by the sorrow of a shadowed life.

Suffering, then, is just the pathway to peace. 

When I turn around to look into the face of that which I have been so careful evading, I am forced to come to an understanding of myself--I am made to tenderly examine my hurting places, I am allowed to be broken and that brokenness is allowed to heal.  

I spend so much time convincing myself that depression is a part of life, but comfort is not. 

That I don't deserve the healing, but that I am deserving of the pain.

Life hurts.

But I do not need to hurt myself to go on living. 

My suffering does not have to be circular. It can be linear, growing and changing as I learn to accept and care for myself. As I learn to speak softly to my broken pieces, as I learn to let others love me well.

Do you believe it? 

Can you perceive it? 

That you are worthy of healing, of compassion and grace? 

You have permission to be broken.

And you have permission to heal. 

So let yourself go.

The freedom that was bought for you was made for such a time as this. 

Soak it in. 

Let it fill you up.

Pain will always be apart of life. 

But so will grace.

So will love.

And I want my sorrow to reflect the great hope that swells within me--

rippling ou, bringing the dead to life once again. 

Resolutions and rubber bands.

"The dark does not destroy the light; it defines it. It's our fear of the dark that casts our joy into the shadows" Brene Brown

2016 stole more from me that I intended it to--in little ways at first, and then all at once. It was a year of loss, a year of struggle, and a year of troubled chaos. I was in crisis for most of it, sometimes as a result of circumstances, and sometimes, as a result of me.

Every year has the potential to bring us down. I can think of a handful of ways I almost let life destroy me this year. I stumbled through it, stricken and blinded by the confusion, desperately seeking a way out. At times, I didn't think I would make it. I learned that when I am hit hard, I don't hit back. I crumble. I start to disappear, and I get sucked under. 

Have you ever felt your brain slipping away from you? It's an unsettling experience, drifting farther and farther from your own soul. You try to grasp hold of anything, everything. But your hands just miss the strands of wholeness that would ground you to yourself, and you watch in horror as it all floats away. 

You turn up empty handed, when you were trying to hold on to so much. 

What I am finding is that life, yours and everyone else's, is like a rubber band. You are stretched and stretched and stretched, and as you expand you're just trying to hold everything in. But the thing about elastic is that once it's stretched, it never goes back to it's original shape, and you are bound to lose some things in the process.

You think you are going to snap, being stretched like that. And you think all the important things are going to fall out, fall away forever and ever, and never come back. So you keep shoving more things in, trying to fill the space but also trying to hold yourself together. 

And this is life:

Stretching and filling.

Fearing and falling. 

The thing about rubber bands is that if you stretch them too far, they pop.

And if you don't fill them enough, everything falls out.

So you have to find a balance, and you have to be wise about it. 

This year, I let way too many things in that filled space in an unhealthy manner.

Stress. Worry. Chaos.

Fear.

And I let too many things drop out that would have kept me together.

Love. Hope. Joy.

Grace. 

My rubber band teetered between popping an collapsing,

and I was not better for it.

Because I was not careful enough about what I let in.

So.

In the spirit of the new year, I am not going to make new years resolutions in the traditional sense.

I'm not going to decide what I'm going to do.

I'm going to decide what I'm not going to do.

Because this year, I made a mess out what was already messy.

I made everything more confusing, more stressful, more toxic. 

I want to let go of the things that drove me into darkness. 

You see, I didn't have much control this year over the things that happened to me, and sometimes they felt like a cruel, cosmic joke. But. I did have control over how I reacted to them, how I chose to acknowledge and clean up the mess, how I decided to move forward.

Over what I decided to add and what I decided to take away.

I don't want to walk into a storm and stir the waters.

I want to calm the sea. 

I want peace. 

I want my rubber band to expand in great expectation, and to hold what's good and right and pure.

Because once my rubber band is stretched, I get to choose what to let go of, and what to keep. 

I get to decide what I'm going to let push me, 

and what gets pushed out.

So.

Rubber band your life. Let yourself  be stretched and pulled and pushed towards growth.

But don't fill the space with what doesn't need to be there.

And when you are ready, get rid of what's heavy.

What may cause you to pop.

Because when there's enough space for more, it might as well be what's going to fill you up.

What's going to light you up, from the inside out.

What's going to make you whole. 

Stretch, grow.

Let things fall out. 

And then do it all again.

Except, this time, differently.

This time, with unwavering peace.

We already know you can make it. 

So this year, make it good.