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.