then love some more.

From a very young age I have always helped people. I grew up in the Christian faith, and was told to love my neighbor as myself, so I did. It was always a part of my life, this loving others. Turning the other cheek was also a part of my Christian tutelage, and while this one was much harder, I lifted my head high and did as I was taught. I wanted to be a good Christian, and being a child, I wanted to be loved for being good,  period.

There's nothing wrong with being good, you know. But the problem for me was when I couldn't be good, when I couldn't love the way I was supposed to or I wasn't quite patient enough. These feelings haunted me, left me feeling uneasy and unlovable and well, bad. And bad isn't a great place to dwell for a seven year old. So I tried with all my might to be good.

As I got older, I gave up. As is the case with most adults, I realized that perfection is quite the fleeting reality. I continued to do my duty and love, because I knew there was something to be found in it, some meaning that I couldn't quite capture but knew was important. I learned things from loving others. I learned that people had much more to them than meets the eye, I learned that pain and suffering often leads to beauty, and I learned that hope is the most intangible, tangible item out there.

I also learned that in my human state, it was impossible to love all the time. Sure, it's easy to love for a day or even a week, to sit with hard people and hard things when you know you can leave at the end. But what I was finding was that relationship was hard. That when push came to shove and I had to stay, things quickly got ugly. I found I didn't have as much grace as I thought, or that the nice feeling I got from helping quickly faded when I had to be still, when I had to love in the face of surmounting difficulty.

And so, I began to despair. I began to dislike that I wasn't as gracious and loving and compassionate as I thought I should be. I became bitter towards God and the church, for making me feel like I wasn't enough, for making me question my goodness. And because of this, I feel into a deep depression. The kind of depression that's so far down into the pit that light is impossible to find, the kind of depression that takes a fight to get out of.

I remember God meeting me there. I remember reading the story of Jacob, and how he wrestled with God. I remember thinking that God was saying that I was going to wrestle for a long time, that it was going to be excruciating and hard and dirty, but that I was going to wrestle and overcome. 

I didn't know it then, but that was the start of my healing, the start of really knowing God for the first time in the way I was supposed to--not for some performance or cultural expectation or even because the Bible told me so--but because God wanted me to see Him. And he wanted me to know that love surpasses my ability to do good, that it's not about doing good at all.

He wanted me to know grace.

The grace that wasn't earned, contrived, or expected. He didn't care how well I could practice loving others, and he knew that when I did that, I wasn't in fact loving them very much at all. I was doing some good, yes. But mostly, I was looking to fill a part of me that could only be filled by someone else.

I love that when we look at the gospel, Jesus met the lost, the least, and the last first. I love that he met them where they were at--that he saw them and knew them and filled what they needed at that time. If they were hungry, he fed them, if they were lonely, he hugged them. It was all very basic really.

I am learning, to love, basically. I am learning to see the people around me and care for them because I am cared for, deeply. I am learning to celebrate life, to value the stories I get to be a part of, to look people in the eye when they are in pain. I am learning to stay and to hold on and to not give trite answers. I'm learning how to question and sit in doubt and cry out why with the people around me.

I am learning to love, and then love some more.

People idealize volunteer work in so many ways. I know I did. I lived off the high I got from serving in Nicaragua or feeding the homeless for a day. And these are all good things, I'm not saying they aren't. But I have found that it wasn't until I sat with broken things, day in and day out, that I truly understood what love is.

I had to re-learn love, because I was doing it backwards. I had to stop striving, because my striving wasn't genuine, and it was slowly killing me. And thank God I did. I remember looking around me and seeing the people who loved best, the people who I knew cared on a deep, authentic level. I remember that most of them were different than me, different faiths, different faces, different backgrounds. But I remember thinking, they are loving me because they want to, not because they have to.

Was I loving because I wanted to, and not because I had to?

I want to see people, really see them for who they are. I want to listen and hear and know what it is that they are looking for. I want to not be afraid and turn away, to not be sure and try to fix.

There's a quote that says, the deeper the sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

I want to love, and love some more because I am finding that the more I do this, the more joy I can contain. The more I know God, the more I know myself and the meaning that is found even in the sorrow of living.

Loving is scary and hard and unpredictable at times. It hurts, to hurt with others.

But the alternative is death.

Death of the heart.

Death of the soul.

Death of the body.

I think I'd rather reach out for love.

To look for God.

To know love in the most basic, true way. Love that doesn't require anything, love that has no stipulations or requirements or rules.

To stop striving.

To rest.

I will never forget the most powerful example of love and light that God brought into my life. It was right smack dab in the middle of a season of depression that left me gasping for air and looking for answers. And in this season, I worked in a multiple disabilities classroom. I worked with small children who were wheel-chair bound, seizure prone, and very sick. Children who would face a short lifetime of suffering and difficulty and hardship, children whose families did not even have time to ask why or wish for something different.

It was the most difficult job I have ever loved. There were more hard days than good ones, more days of crying in the closet and questioning and unbelief that life could be this hard, this unfair. But in that space, I learned what love was. And it wasn't me who gave it. It was these children, who entrusted me with their lives and believed in me and gave me hope. These little people, who knew what it meant to live, to love.

I named my blog "Overjoyed" for a very specific reason, or actually, for a very specific person. In the MD classroom there was a 8 year old girl by the name of Joy, who definitely lived up to her name. Joy was partially blind, couldn't walk without assistance, and had about four words in her vocabulary--one of which was "cookie." Joy would get so mad she would shake and scream and bite you and fall over on the floor. And then, within five minutes, she would squeal and laugh so hard that she cried and fell over on the floor again. She would give me hugs and slobbery kisses and make me feel unbridled, pure LOVE.

She taught me that love is messy.

That there is no formula, no perfection, that can ever replicate this all consuming, give until you have nothing left, love.

She didn't care what I looked like or what I said or even what I did because she didn't live in my world. I think she lived in God's world, where the only thing that mattered was showing up and being yourself.

We used to say in that classroom, "I'm over-joyed" whenever we needed a quick break. It was our way of letting the other know that we had reached our limit, that we needed some space to recoup and try again. But I also think it was our way of recognizing the weight of what we were seeing, the joy and the pain, right next to each other in that room. Our way of seeing life come from death over and over, our way of feeling the joy and love and sorrow all at once.

So today, I am trying to remind myself that while love has a cost, it's a worthy one. I am fighting to stay and to reach out and to not give into selfishness--not because I have to or I should, but because I know that when I do I find joy.

Real joy, that lasts forever and ever.

Joy that looks darkness in the face and says, not today, friend.

Because love, well. Love goes into the darkness and comes out light.

I don't know anything else that can do that this side of heaven.

Love.

And then love some more.

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.