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.