What I learned mowing my lawn. In the dark.

This week, I decided to mow my lawn. In the dark. I grabbed my headlamp, headed out the door, and revved that beautifully red rusty machine up at approximately 9:15 PM. I'm not sure what I was thinking. Maybe I wasn't. All I know is that mowing the lawn brings me peace and clarity, however strange that may be. And after a particularly long week, I knew I needed to sort things out--to center my reality and stop my mind from spiraling wildly towards the point of no return. For some people it's running. Journaling. For me it's mowing. I love it. I don't know why, but it works.

So there I was, blindly making my way through the jungle that had became our backyard and praying to God I wouldn't chop off my feet as I stumbled through the foliage. You never really notice how many particles are in the air until your headlamp highlights all the possible debris you could be ingesting in the dark of the night. It's quite alarming and also sort of surprising to acknowledge that the air you are breathing in isn't exactly clean. It makes me wonder what else in my life is unhealthy that I don't see or choose to pretend is not there. Bad behavioral patterns, comfortably uncomfortable relationships. Things that keep me from being all that I am trying to be. Things that aren't true. It's much easier to inhale and suffer the consequences. Unfortunately the long-term effects usually outweigh the immediate satisfaction.

That air made it hard to mow. You know what else made it hard to mow? The dark. I could see approximately five feet in front of me, and had to rely mostly on my memory map of our yard to make sure that I was actually headed in the right direction. Plus I couldn't be sure that I wasn't actually mowing the same patch of grass over and over again. So I did the best I could. I stuck with what I knew, didn't stray too far from the path, and kept moving forward. And isn't life like that sometimes? We aren't sure what's ahead and we sure as hell don't want to look behind, so all we can do is keep pushing. Keep trying. Keep using all our resources, everything we have, just to pick ourselves up and make it through our day.

We are uncertain. We are afraid. We feel the pull of "not enough" and perhaps the greater tug of "enough already". I'm not cut out for bright and shiny. I can stay about as positive as the next person, but sometimes living is just plain hard. Fact. Our seasons wax and wane, and some are better than others. We cannot be our very best selves year after year. All we can be is our best selves in the moments that are offered to us, and at times that will feel like failure. But if you are trying to mow your lawn in the dark and all you have is a headlamp to light your way, you may as well cut yourself some slack. You can't control the sun or the fact that the grass may look massacred in the morning. You do the best that you can with what you have. And so you keep mowing, praying that the God of the universe is holding your hand in the ultimate game of blind man's buff.

And that's really where we learn to put our trust. I think we fear that God will let go, that we will somehow wander too far for him to ever bring us back again. That we won't be strong when push comes to shove, when it's time to be brave and courageous. That we will be afraid of the dark. And you know what? We probably will be. We are human after all. But here's the thing--God knows how we are when we cannot see. He knows that we are prone to panicking, to doing foolish things in order to maintain control. To doubt. He knows. But that does not make him turn away. Love us less. Shame our actions or ridicule our mess. He sees what we have made in our struggle and gently reminds us that there is grace. And that with that grace comes redemption. So that even when we mow the lawn in the dark, we know that when light hits the horizon we have a chance to make everything new once again. Because here's the thing--the grass will regrow.

And so will we. We are not alone in the dark.

And the sun will always, always rise again.

Revolving.

I am constantly trying to outrun my future. Like, constantly. Constantly planning, constantly managing, constantly fighting against what seems to be gravity's intense intent to pull me back down into all that I do not wish to be. It gets tiring after awhile. All that struggling. Stressing. Worrying. I want to believe that if I just try hard enough, I can fix it. Fix me. Save myself. I want to believe that I am in control. Because if I'm not, then what happens? What happens when shit hits the fan and it's my fault? What then? I'd like to think that I won't self-destruct one day but who knows really? Sometimes life smacks us in the face and there's no guarantee we'll get all the way up again.

Some days I'm scared to dream because I don't know if I'm strong enough to carry out all that I want to in this world. I'm scared. I want to be brave, to be courageous. To push forward when everything is telling me to run in the opposite direction. I'm afraid. Afraid I will succumb to the voices that are whispering, "You are not good enough." And most of all, I'm tired. Not just physically, but mentally. Every night I go to sleep with a list of things that I didn't do right and wake up with a list of things I feel I will never be able to accomplish. At best I feel below-average. And below-average makes no promises, contains no hope.

At least, in my reality. But in God's reality--well that's a different story. And it's surprising to me how often I forget about this whole other truth, this whole other plan for my life. One of my favorite songs right now is "Revolving" by this little band called The Assemblie. I had never heard of them, but their song came on my Pandora last week and jolted me out of a slew of negative thoughts. I've pasted it below so you can take a listen.

http://theassemblie.bandcamp.com/track/revolving

I know I’m a mess and You’re constant
Always here come rain or shine
Life is fast and You are still
I could never outrun You.

We could never outrun Him. Think about that. No matter how hard I fight or try to resist failing, He is constant. He is greater. And He is within us. So that means there is HOPE. Hope for change, hope for healing, hope for a future. For wholeness. It means I can stop running. Because the greatest thing that I have learned today is that I cannot outrun the maker of the universe. I cannot outsmart Him, surprise Him, or convince Him that I am not, in fact, the person He made me to be. 

My small group leader in college would always talk about how sometimes we are running around this track as fast as we can, trying to "do" our way into being loved by God and others. And God is over there in the sidelines like, can I get a word in? And we are all like NO NOT NOW GOD, I'm busy. And then God yanks us off the track, makes us pop a squat, and tells us something about ourselves. And that something is that we are LOVED, we are REDEEMED, and we DO NOT HAVE PROVE IT ANYMORE. We are enough! We are enough. And out of that enough-ness flows our real accomplishments. The ones that matter. We are His plan A. And His plan B. We cannot write ourselves out of His script in a way that will make Him give up on us. He won't. 

So keep revolving around Him. Give up on absolutely everything but Him. Know that you could never outrun Him. Stop trying. Listen--and hear the voice that is cheering you on towards everything you were meant to be.

Becoming the sun.

"He's not the sun. You are."

If you saw the last Grey's episode with Christina leaving, you know what this quote is from. Referring to the relationship between Meredith and her McDreamy, Yang gently reminded her person of her place in the world. And it worked. Grey channeled her inner sun and stood up for herself and all that she wanted out of life.

I love this quote because I feel like it is so reflective of how we operate in life. We have our "sun". The thing that our hearts and minds revolve around, that dictate who we are and what we believe to be true about ourselves. It's usually very draining and extremely blinding to reality. And we can't see around it. We devote all our energy to our sun, forgetting ourselves in the midst of it. Making ourselves smaller. Less bright. Less beautiful. And we let it happen again and again. We watch that sun set and rise and convince ourselves that it's the way it must be.

And we become discouraged. We feel out of control and powerless to the patterns that run us. The sun seems so powerful, too strong to overcome. And in all honesty, we don't want to try. We are afraid that if we do we will have to acknowledge that what we have been running after is not as significant as we have made it to be. That it does not fulfill us. Rule us. Shape our days and nights. And that's terrifying, because who are we when we can't define ourselves by what we do?

Our suns fail us. They do. And they always will because they were never meant to be the center of our universe. Who we are was never meant to be dictated by the things we accomplish or the people around us. By our suns. In the same way that we could never exchange earth for the sun, it is absolutely useless trying to shove anything but ourselves into the role that we were meant to play in this life. We are valuable. We cannot be replaced. Why do we spend so much time trying to be someone we are not? Paying attention to the things that are unimportant? The things that are mere stars in the vastness that is our own galaxy?

People fail us. Professions fail us. We fail ourselves. But that is a component of the things that happen, not the core of who we are. We do not have to listen to our suns! We do not have to keep circling around the things that make us smaller, that diminish our own light and keep us from being all that we were meant to be. I'm not trying to say we should be narcissistic. I am trying to say that we have a choice--a choice to believe that we are brilliant and powerful and capable of changing the world. Of taking hold of our worthiness and believing it over the things that will eventually pass away.

Let your sun rise today. Push everything else back into place. You were meant to be you--shine bright.

Even if you were told.

"Look out at the nations and pay attention! Be astounded! Be really astounded! For I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told." Habakkuk 1:5

We are unstable creatures. As much as we want to believe and hope that we are less crazy than the next person, by and large we all have parts of us we fear being exposed. We are vulnerable. At times, we are afraid to trust in good things. To accept joy because we aren't sure where it's going to end up in the long run. We wrestle. We attempt to control, to brace ourselves for the fall we feel is inevitably coming.

I learned long ago that we aren't promised the life that we imagined. We aren't guaranteed the white picket fence, or whatever it was we were putting all our dreams into. In America, I think we hide this better. We have things that can mask our pain, that convince us that we are full and happy. We can pretend. Not always, but we can at least work at pretending, assuring ourselves that we are satisfied with what has been given to us. And I think at times we are. Sometimes we have been fighting so long to keep our head above water that when we can finally stay afloat, we think we have achieved our goal. So we go on floating, struggling to keep the waters from overcoming us once again.

We wonder where to hope. I have gone through seasons where I felt nothing but despair, where I seriously questioned the goodness of the God I claimed to believe in. I have seen so much pain, and at times it seemed that there were no answers that could ever account for the injustice I witnessed on the behalf of others. Eventually, I became so emotionally distraught by the prospect of such continuous suffering that I became severely depressed. Nothing made sense to me anymore.

These feelings hit me particularly hard as I worked in a classroom with children who had multiple disabilities. For some of them, life would never get easier. This was their world--doctors appointments, medications, endless therapies, death. To see them suffer was to feel the weight of everything this life was not meant to be. It was soul crushing. I was helpless. I became bitter towards God.

That was the longest year of my life, and it was only a portion of theirs. Despite my wariness, I kept questioning. Kept looking for hope. Kept wondering at the purpose of it all. For them, for me. To find meaning again.

Slowly, God answered.

And it wasn't all at once. I wrestled. I cried. I ate lunch in the closet. I prayed quite a bit. I asked God to show me where he was in the mess, in the unfortunate realities that seemed to be the only realities there were. He didn't answer directly, but in a very tangibly intangible way. He didn't change my circumstances or the circumstances of those around me. He changed my heart. He changed my perception. He allowed me to see the beauty and hope that was being created within myself and the lives of those courageous children. In the millions of moments we shared, good and bad, as we struggled through that year together.

They were my hope, and I was theirs.

They taught me to struggle well. Sometimes I would look into their eyes, and I would just know that God was peering back out at me. Tenderly. With great concern. And most of all with understanding. They understood. They knew. They loved me. On my good days, on my bad. They had patience. And I want to say I believe they had hope. Because they knew where to place it--not in their bodies or in their brains or even in their doctors. But in love. In strength. In the belief that while the things of this earth would pass away, their bright spirits would not. And so they lived.

And so did I. I came to realize that God does promise to be with us--not always in the ways that we want but most certainly in the ways that we need. He is there in our emotions. In our crazy moments, in the darkness that we are so afraid to peer into. And He sees our light. He believes in it so firmly, no matter how far the distance, and is willing us to look. To come and see our scars, because He is working even now to heal them. To know that though things may look broken and beyond repair, He is present and unwavering, standing in the gap until we are ready to believe in hope again.

There are no easy answers to suffering. To our own battlefields of the heart and mind. But if there is one thing I know it's that God does not deny the pain, but quietly and compassionately gathers it up into his arms, whispering new life and healing into that which we believe to be eternally damaged, until one day we look up and realize we have reason to hope. We have changed. We have found those things that are stable in the midst of instability, and they can never be taken away from us.

We have hope, are hope. And I would never have believed, even if I was told.

The best thing I never had.

I love Beyonce. I mean really, who doesn't? This isn't the first time I've written a blog about one of her songs and I'm sure it won't be the last. Recently I was driving in my car and her amazingly sarcastic song "Best Thing I Never Had" came on. I found myself being unusually pumped by the lyrics as I loudly and proudly sang them off key in my car. It was sort of confusing though because I didn't have any recent exes to speak of that I felt particularly better off without. So with my counselor self I took a moment to examine what was going on inside me and realized that B's words were moving because there was something that I felt triumphant to be moving on from--and it wasn't a man.

It was my old life.

I know this sounds cheesy and perhaps even a little far fetched, but I needed to write it because it signals to me how far I have come. There is something within me, that is now a definitive part of my makeup, that knows I have moved on to better and brighter things. I remember so distinctly a time in my life when all was dark. When I thought my world would not get better, that my days had been numbered and all that was left was more pain and sadness. More fear. A time when I really believed I was going to end up alone and hopeless, without a future and barely clinging to the present. And now, that time is gone. That future that I held on to with such conviction and loyalty turns out to be the best thing I never had--and I can't help but joyfully sing about it. 

I was so certain of where my life would go, the type of person I would emulate. I thought I knew what I wanted, what relationships I needed in order to be able to function. Truthfully, my world was small. I was confined to a box that I had built around myself and was so sure that no other reality could possibly exist. I couldn't imagine a better life for myself because I couldn't see all that I was--a bright, beautiful young woman full of hope and resiliency. Capable and strong. Worthy.

How often do we do this? Define ourselves by what we think we deserve. Quietly deafen our screams for something different because we are too afraid to hope. Believe that we are invaluable and disposable, that we could not possibly matter to the world. Give up or make ourselves smaller.

I want to look back on my years and realize that I chose to let go of that which only served to bring me down. To triumphantly realize that I did not settle for a life that was less of me and more of everyone else. To know that I fought for goodness in the midst of difficulty, that I tried with all my might to let my light shine brightest even in the darkest of storms. To recognize my potential and live with unconditional confidence in my ability to change and grow into all that I was meant to be. 

To acknowledge who I thought I would be as the best thing I never had. 

Today in the midst of all the doubt and uncertainty remember that you get to choose where your path goes from here. Don't give up. Don't surrender. And wave goodbye to the past in true Beyonce fashion.

On letting go.

There are so many cliches on this subject that it almost feels unnecessary to write about it, but there are so many of them for a reason--we all need to let go of something every once and awhile. I have been thinking about this concept quite a bit lately and what it means for my life at this time, in this space. Let go. Of what? Bad relationships? Perfectionism? My dreams for the future?

All I know is that is has been gnawing at me, tugging on my heart and my head in small ways that have been difficult for me to acknowledge. Mostly this was because I didn't know what it was that I was supposed to be letting go of, and I was scared of what it would mean for me if I did. We all know that letting go is hard, and there are so many valid reasons for this. We don't like the unknown, for one. But what if the unknown is better than the known? What if by letting go we are actually latching on to something instead?

I have struggled with depression my whole life. It is familiar to me, almost comforting even. There is something about my sadness that is very grounding in its nature, letting me know who I am and how I feel, however miserable that may be. And I like it. I like the predictability of my depression, the constancy of it. I like knowing how I feel and what to expect and how to view myself. It's comfortable. It is safe. It's easy. And in some dysfunctional way it feels right, more true to the unassuming reality I want to believe in order to stay in my box. But it's not accurate.

I am a beautiful, strong woman. I have gifts and talents, compassion to offer the world. But I'm scared. I'm scared that I'm being too confident, too hopeful in the future that I have planned for myself. I'm terrified to let go of the identity that I spent 24 years carefully protecting. The identity that was defined by who I thought I was, rather than who I was not. And let me tell you what I am not--I am not weak, shallow, or unworthy of love. I am vibrant, full of life and joy and laughter and ready to embrace these qualities as TRUTH. This doesn't mean that I don't have my days of sadness, my moments of doubt in myself and the people around me. What it does mean is that I am willingly letting go in order to hold on--to hold on to hope, goodness, and the knowledge that this world is waiting for everything I was born to be.

I want to practice letting go in order to hold on. Releasing the things that are toxic, the doubts that threaten to take me over, the shadow of my old self. It's not easy. It's uncomfortable. It feels like maybe I'm doing something wrong by willingly letting all this light into my soul. But if I can so easily believe the dark, what is stopping me from doing the same with its counterpart? If I am going to anchor my heart somewhere, it better be a place that will be able to weather the storm. Because the waves will come, and at times they may seem higher than what we can manage. But if we can latch on to the belief that we are worth fighting for and that we are capable of the fight, than the only thing that will sink are our doubts.

 Let go. Hold on. Allow yourself the opportunity to experience the best things in life, the ones that require vulnerability and courage. There will be storms. There will be wreckage. But there will also be a lighthouse to guide you through because you lit it yourself. You may not make it right away, and it may feel better to turn back. But the darkness does not define the light--you do.

Let's risk the ocean. There's only grace.

Unconditional confidence.

“God would seem to be too occupied in being unable to take His eyes off of us to spend any time raising an eyebrow in disapproval.” 
--Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart

I want to be loved. Actually, I want to be known and loved, and we all know these are two very different things. There are parts of me I don't like. Parts of me that seem too dark, that I try to hide from others. I am guarded. I will share absolutely anything with you about my life, but there is a difference between knowing someone and knowing them.

Sometimes, I look at the people in my life and I think, "If they really knew". If they really knew who was under here, who I was at my core, they would run. I feel that I am unlovable. That the parts of me that are accepted are just some misrepresentation of myself that others are tricked into liking. That I could never be enough, will never be enough, just as I am. 

But then I look at the people in my life that I love, who I have loved over the years. I look at the people I have helped, and who have helped me. Some of them are ordinary by the world's standards, but are still extraordinary to me. And then some of them are extraordinary by the world's standards, but still have ordinary problems underneath. Who decides what is extraordinary anyway? And how do I see beauty in so many others but fail to see it in myself? What makes me so extraordinarily ordinary compared to everyone else? 

But seriously. When someone says they love you, why is it our immediate reaction to assume that there is some SECRET PART of us that they could not POSSIBLY LOVE and have somehow NOT SEEN in the millions of years that they have known us? We must be really good actors. Good for us. I'm not sure how that works out in the end though, when our friends do see those parts of us and SURPRISE--they don't take their love back.

Or maybe, like me, you have people who have rejected you in the midst of a hard season. People who have told you that you are, in fact, not enough. That you are too messy, too much to be loved. And it has stuck with you. It's hard to shake, that feeling that you are broken, not together enough to be accepted by the ones who are important to you. There will always be those people, the ones that make us feel small, that reinforce the lies we want to believe about ourselves so that we can say--SEE? I told you so. 

I'd like to argue that those people are not truth-tellers. That there are parts of them that they are afraid of, that they don't want to be reminded of, that they can only encounter with judgement as a way of protecting themselves. The truth is that we are all imperfect. Who said that means we aren't valuable?

I have a friend who once said  he had unconditional confidence in my goodness. I love that. Unconditional confidence. That no matter what I did or how I screwed up, it did not change his knowledge of who he knew me to be. That I did not have to be defined by my failures or my successes, that I was worthy right were I was, in the middle of my mess. 

Believe the people who believe in you. The ones who know who you are when you can't remember anymore, who refuse to give into your very convincing argument that you are not, in fact good enough. But more than this, believe in yourself. Believe in yourself because you aren't doing anyone any favors by living in the shadow of all that you are. And you ARE so much to this world. You have so much to offer just by being you, right where you are. 

Researcher Brené Brown says, "Until we can receive with an open heart, we're never really giving with an open heart." As much as I don't like to admit it, I think this is true. It is necessary for us to learn to love and accept ourselves if we are going to make a life out of loving and accepting others. To continue to reject our positive qualities, the gifts we have been blessed with, the fact that we are enough--it is to live a lie, and there is no honor in that.

So step into the light. Embrace the truth of who you are, living with unconditional confidence in your own goodness. Let yourself be celebrated by the world because after all, you are the only one we've got.