learning how to stay.

Grace seems to be an unending theme in my life these days. And as with most things, I am learning that grace has an opposite. And for me, that opposite is bitterness.

Some days bitterness covers me so heavily and so completely that I don't even feel like a person anymore, but a thing. A thing that is dark and brooding, a thing that is bringing death and not life. Bitterness it seems, can take on an identity of it's own. It can eat away at you and move in on you and make you feel like you'll never experience light again.

Bitterness is ugly.

And it makes me feel ugly.

So instead, I have turned to grace. And grace is not easy by any means. It's not something we wake up and feel, it's not something that's automatic. Grace is messy and incomplete and in the middle. Grace doesn't categorize or give you answers or show you a calculated way of doing things.

Grace is a practice.

I had a friend that once told me "love expects the best".

I am finding, these days, that I mostly expect the worst.

The worst of people places and things.

The worst of God even.

I am constantly preparing, constantly protecting myself from everything.

It turns out, that grace only goes with vulnerability.

And it turns out, I can't offer it to others unless I offer it to myself.

And it turns out, I can't offer it to myself, unless I accept it from someone else.

And you see, this is where the bitterness comes in.

Bitterness tells me I can be angry and unforgiving and selfish because people have been angry and unforgiving and selfish with me.

Grace says the opposite.

Grace says our value does not come from whether we are bad or good, but that we are loved where we're at.

Grace says we don't have to have it figured out. It begs us to drop our expectations, to believe in love and faith and beauty and life despite despite despite EVERYTHING.

Grace says this world is a mess.

Grace says I am a mess too.

But it also says that it's OK to be messy.

So, these days, I am learning to practice grace. To practice letting people in, to stop seeing flaws and start seeing souls instead.

Bitterness has worn me out.

I'm tired.

But grace?

Grace is warm and inviting, grace is opening the door and looking up and out and saying--

I see you.

I see you and I care about you.

Grace is moving toward.

Grace is not giving up.

It's learning how to stay, even when we are afraid.

Bitterness is moving back.

We are the equalizers in this world.

We are the vessels of God's grace.

We get to decide when we are going to stop valuing people based on their goodness or their confidence or their looks or their talents or their popularity.

We decide.

I'm going to start letting grace seep deep into my being.

To stop demanding perfection of myself and those around me.

Grace.

It's not a novel concept.

It's rather old actually.

But somehow, I forgot.

And it has become a tune I long to hear most, a familiar verse that bears the resemblance of home.

That bears the resemblance of hope.

And oh, how beautiful hope is to our weary, wandering, broken bodies.

Practice grace.

Practice healing.

Grace is accessible to us.

Carry it with you, every day.

And leave bitterness behind while you're at it.

walking on water.

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

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

They have shown me grace in my times of desperation.

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

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

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

A person of strength.

And a person who was very afraid.

But he was learning to walk on water.

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

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

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

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

They can be our defining moments.

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

Most importantly, we must look to one another.

We cannot walk on water alone.

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

I don’t have all the answers.

I’m still figuring out the questions.

But I’m here.

With you, in the middle of our desperation.

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

Look up.

Look out.

Miracles still happen.

And together we can say—

I’m walking on water. 

shadows and light.

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

I am being consumed, by this nothingness.

By this feeling, that I cannot feel anymore.

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

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

cold.

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

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

to break.

to fall.

to hurt.

To be afraid of losing.

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

But we do anyway.

We lose ourselves.

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

We fall asleep, I think.

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

I don't want to see anymore.

I can't hear anymore.

So let me be here, alone.

Let me go.

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

But we cannot.

Jesus wept.

So do we.

Jesus felt.

So do we.

And we must not, must not lose heart.

We must not lose courage.

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

We must feel.

We must remain human.

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

We must not stop dreaming.

Not stop hoping.

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

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

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

We are that light.

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

We may feel the night.

It may be well worn and easily traveled.

But we have not let go.

So hold on.

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

It is yours to hold.

Let it make a home in your heart.

The shadows may still be there.

But without light, there would be no shadows.

It hasn't gone out yet.

identity and comparison.

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

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

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

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

We spend so much time trying not to be ourselves.

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

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

To let ourselves fall apart.

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

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

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

I am here, trying to figure it out.

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

I’m doing it all wrong.

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

But I am learning, to listen.

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

To stop striving.

To remember that I am I am I am enough.

I am changing.

I am growing.

And I am loved.

I do not have to be anyone.

I do not have to wish I was different.

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

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

I am becoming.

And that is OK.

So I am learning to rest.

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

To stop trying so damn hard to fix myself.

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

I am OK.

I am being held.

I can let go.

I can hold on.

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

Herself. 

bitterness and grace.

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

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

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

Yup, I said it.

Bitterness and rage.

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

I want to be wholesome and steady and pure.

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

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

I wake up stuck.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's impossible, sometimes.

To fully acknowledge and lean into your own goodness.

To believe in the power of grace.

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

That we are not worthy.

That our bad stuff outweighs the good.

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

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

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

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

But it's not.

It's the wrong part of the story.

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

The real story is the one of grace.

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

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

And this makes us bitter. Angry even.

But today, today it must stop.

We must know grace to know our self-worth.

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

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

Grace.

Don't give up on it.

Don't give up on yourself.

You are worthy despite your bitter and aching heart.

And grace?

It's waiting, just outside your door.

what i learned in the forest of fear.

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

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

My guess is you are too.

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

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

Something is alive. 

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

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

To show that I can't be hurt anymore.

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

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

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

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

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

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

We stayed. 

When it was hard. 

When it was unpleasant.

When we ourselves were afraid.

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

We stayed.

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

Perfect love drives out fear. 

And we are all very afraid. 

But love...

Love changes things.

Love is brave.

Love is vulnerable. 

Love feels.

And courage?

Courage is found in community. 

Let yourself be afraid.

But never walk alone. 

gratitude's gift.

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

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

It feels whole.

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

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

I have seen what the world should not be.

And I have seen what it is.

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

With peace.

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

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

Fear empties us.

Gratitude makes us full.

And we cannot exist without it.