NICE

1. pleasant; agreeable; satisfactory

Certain words have burrowed their way into my psyche, taking up residence there, shaping the things I do and say for years before I stop to examine them.  Once examined, I may try to uproot them, attempting to rid my mind of an influence better left unplanted.  One such word: nice.  For years, I have longed to be nice, been exhorted to be nice, been told that nice was important.  In order to be seen as nice, I have set aside my own thoughts, feelings and desires.  I've swallowed words, turned the other cheek and melted into the background.  All for the elusive nice.  I say elusive because can we ever really be nice?

Only recently have I begun to ponder the contrast between nice and kind.  As a parent, I encourage my children to be kind, but I rarely admonish them to be nice.  The difference in my mind is that nice refers to outward appearance and perception by others, while kind is about the heart.  One word describes an action, the other sees the motive behind the action.

The definitions of these words bear this out.  If nice is pleasant, agreeable and satisfactory, kind is having a friendly, generous, and considerate nature.  Nice is about how others see you.  Kind is about who you really are.  I want to be kind.  I'm not so sure I can continue to try to be nice.

If I am going to learn to sit with my feelings, I can't be preoccupied with what others think about those feelings.  I can't be unwilling to feel something that is unpleasant or disagreeable.  In fact, as I've begun to examine my feelings, I often find them less than satisfactory.  I have far more fear than I ever would have imagined.  Have I been repressing that for so long because it wasn't received well by those around me?  Perhaps.

I find it interesting that without even realizing why, I gravitated as a parent to encouraging my children to be kind rather than nice.  It's not that I don't want them to be nice - I do.  I want them to be pleasant to be around.  I want others to find them agreeable.  But I want these things to flow from who they are, not result from a pressure to conform to an outward standard.  When I get right down to it, I would far prefer that my daughters be honest and true to themselves than be nice.  I love it when the two things converge, but they don't always.

A friend recently said, "Jesus was kind, but he was not nice."  Pause and think about that for a minute.  Do you conflate nice and kind?  Are you one but not the other?  Which do you want to be?  Jesus was not worried about what others thought about him.  He did not fear being judged different or outlandish.  But he was kind - oh so kind - to those who least deserved it, to those who needed it most, to those overlooked by the higher-ups in his world.

I want to be kind - to others and myself.  I want to allow those around me the space to be who they really are, without fear that I will judge them or belittle them.  I want to be generous with myself and allow my feelings room to expand and be seen without overtaking my rational thought.  I want to be someone who is unafraid of being kind and unconcerned with being nice.

I want to plant words in the hearts of my daughters that allow them to grow into who they are.  I don't want to leave vines labelled "nice" running up their hearts and constricting them when they should be free to beat away with kindness, generosity and abandon.  I want words that are about who they are, not just what they do, to be the ones that burrow in to stay.

FEELINGS

1: an emotional state or reaction

I don't know about you, but sometimes fear can point me to areas I need to think about.  

Yesterday, I was talking with a friend whose counselor suggested she journal her feelings daily.  My immediate thought was, "I would hate to do that!"  I was honest and shared that thought with my friend, but I also set it aside mentally for some further consideration.  

I know this about myself: my emotions are buried deeply and my emotional reactions to situations are often on a time delay.  If I encounter something unexpected or traumatic, it takes me about 24 hours to know how I actually feel.  This isn't necessarily a bad thing - I think it's just part of who I am and it does enable me to be calm in a crisis because emotions aren't getting in the way.  That being said, delaying and stifling are two different things.  It may be a natural part of me to not feel my emotions until later, but not feeling anything at all should be a red flag that encourages me to look deeper.

As a part of my conversation with this friend, I told her about a list of emotions that another friend uses in her spiritual direction.  I told her it's easier for me to know what I'm feeling if I have a list of emotions to choose from. I offered to send her the list, which I did this morning.  Here it is:

Human emotions are neutral and guide us in knowing God and ourselves.  We experience emotions as movement either away from God or towards God.  Each emotion is listed below preceded by (impaired version) and followed by (gift of each emotion):

(depression/resignation)  ANGER  (passion/healthy boundaries)

(anxiety/control/rage)  FEAR  (faith/wisdom)

(resentment)  HURT  (courage to seek help or forgive)

(apathy/boredom)  LONELY  (intimacy with God and/or others)

(self-pity)  SAD  (acceptance, honoring precious loss)

(paranoia) GUILT  (freedom)

(inadequacy)  SHAME  (humility, empathy, knowing limits)

(indulgence)  GLAD  (hope)

Take time to notice your feelings.  Feel your feelings.  Tell the truth about your feelings.  Invite God into your feelings.  Stay with your feelings.  Let your feelings lead you to God.

After sending the e-mail to my friend, I sat and prayed for her.  I tried to notice what I was feeling as I did so and I felt sad - sad that she is hurting and walking through a difficult time.  I also knew what my heart's desire was for her and that was for God to comfort her in her pain.  Not because I want God to "fix" her, but because I want Him to meet her where she is and I want her to feel loved and valued.  It was worth noting that I knew what I desired for my friend as I prayed.  I don't often know what I was for myself, even when praying.  But I had a very clear idea of what I wanted for her.

Tears rolled down my face during and after my prayer.  As I sat there in my bedroom, I looked over at the piece of paper listing the emotions. What was I feeling?  In that moment, I could only feel the sadness for my friend, but hours later I sat outside my daughter's ballet school waiting for her rehearsal to finish.  It is a lovely day, so I was sitting in the shade with my eyes closed, trying to quiet my mind.  In that quiet moment, I asked myself what I was feeling.  I decided on sad, angry and lonely.  Sad for how broken our world is.  Angry with myself for not being in touch with my feelings (although this might better be named shame? I'm not very good at this, so I'm not sure.).  And lonely.  That one was a bit of a surprise since I was in the middle of a day with my family - a day filled with lunch out, a spring football scrimmage and sunshine.  But the loneliness was there.

So I sat with it and explored it.  I think my loneliness stems from how overextended I feel right now and how alone I feel in facing down and doing the jobs before me.  I'm a little embarrassed to even write about this because I feel like I do so much less than some people do.  But between wrapping up a year of homeschooling, researching next year's courses, starting a tutorial, planning for a month away from home and managing more than twenty volunteers weekly, I am feeling adrift.  I think each of these things is important and all of them are jobs that I believe are meant for me.  But I sometimes feel like they are meant only for me and that I therefore must do them alone.  All of the doing leaves me lonely.

I feel most connected to people when I am with them quietly - listening, talking, sharing and receiving.  Working alongside someone doesn't give me the same sense of connection.  We are bound by action, not by words, by an end goal, not the journey together.  When working, a part of me is always focused on the task at hand and it is nearly impossible for me to be fully present to the person I am with, much less my own feelings.  I am running on autopilot to get the job done.  I don't think this is true for everyone, is it?

How can I work effectively and efficiently and still be a present, fully alive person?  

How can I feel connected to people and stay committed to the work at hand?

I'm not expecting you to actually have the answers for me.  (Although feel free to offer them if you do have them!)  What I do hope is that I can slowly but surely learn to check in with my emotions and that I can find a way to be present even when I feel overwhelmed by the tasks at hand.

On my last spiritual retreat, I was sharing with my spiritual director that I had recently been feeling envious.  I felt like I was making a confession, but she was unbothered.  "Emotions are amoral," she told me.  "They are neither good nor bad.  They are just something we should notice and bring to God."  It was news to me that emotions are neither good nor bad.  I definitely think of them as bad - I think I am at my best when I can keep my emotions at bay, either by offering a rational response or by being still, receiving what others offer me without judgment, just holding their words and feelings for them like I am a vessel.

If nothing else, I think I need to explore my relationship to my feelings.  It may sound obvious but I think feelings should be a part of who I am and I shouldn't work so hard to contain and repress them.  What this means practically, I am not sure. For now, I'll look for those kernels of fear that point me to things I need to tackle.  And I'll spend a bit of time each day trying to name my emotions.  Maybe I'll even muster the courage to write them down in a journal.

FERVENT

: having or displaying a passionate intensity

Are there certain words that are a part of you?  Words that reside deep inside you, that hold a special place in your heart? Are there words that bring to mind a vivid mental image each time you hear them? Or perhaps words that instantly come to mind anytime you see an image?

As I was walking this morning, I happened upon a dead squirrel.  I was startled, quickly adjusted my stride to miss the poor creature and, within seconds, was contemplating the word fervent.  You might rightly be wondering why.  It was because the squirrel was stretched out, like a football player reaching for the goal line with every ounce of his being.  For me, this posture of stretching beyond our natural or safe boundaries will always be equated with the word fervent.

Years ago, I was studying the book of Peter with a group of women.  Being the Word Girl that I am, I looked up the Greek origins of the words of the verses as we went.  There is a verse that says, "Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins."  Another version says, "Keep fervent in your love."  I read a commentary that described how the Greek word ektenes means wholly stretched out.  That was interesting - and painted a rather vivid picture of how God wants us to love each other - but I might have only remembered that in passing had the word not been called to my mind later.

At a spring women's retreat about five years ago, I experienced my first moments of silence with God.  It was a directed silence and only lasted a couple of hours.  I can remember leading up to this retreat that I was so excited to try sitting in pure silence with God.  I had a list of things I wanted to pray about and I was ready.  I got my blanket out, laid down in the sunlight, opened my Bible and my mind and heard God say to me, "Those things you wanted to talk about?  You already know the answers to them, don't you?  Here's what I want to talk about.  I want you to love me fervently."  I was not planning on hearing that, I can assure you.

But that conversation with God prompted me to look at my relationship with Him and see how head-oriented it was.  I loved looking up the Greek for the verses we were studying, loved reading commentaries on the verses, loved diving into God's word.  And God wasn't telling me there was anything wrong with that.  He merely showed me how very safe it was.  Because studying something and falling in love with someone are two very different things.

That first taste of silence whetted my appetite in a way I never could have imagined.  And I'm sure it's no coincidence that it was in that silence that God asked me to think about loving him in a stretched out, vulnerable way.  Because that's what loving fervently is - it's vulnerable, it's exposing and it is risky.  I saw that part of it right away and, quite honestly,  I still struggle with that aspect of living and loving fervently.  I want desperately to be authentic, to be real, to be fervent.  But I Do. Not. Like. Being. Hurt.  And when I open myself up to give and receive love, I'm allowing for the possibility that good and bad may either one come - pain or beauty might walk in the door of my heart.

I want the strength and courage to die like that squirrel I saw this morning - stretched out to give and receive all that life has to offer.  I don't want to live and die curled into a ball, safe and secure - but I fight these tendencies every day.

I have been feeling overwhelmed this week, day after day, moment after moment.  My mind has been skittering from item to item on my to-do list.  I have worried about everything from scheduling time for my daughters with their friends to scheduling a parent meeting to what I should do about standardized testing.  I have felt stretched thin, but not stretched out in an "I claim this life as mine" kind of way.  

This morning, my daughter A read to us from the Jesus Storybook Bible as we ate our breakfast.  She read us the story of the Israelites and the parting of the Red Sea.  After she finished, I read the girls one of my favorite verses from this story, Exodus 14:14. It says, "The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still."  

I think this might be the key to living fervently: letting God do it for me.  On my own, I am hesitant to stretch myself out, fearful of being not enough, afraid of being hurt.  Sometimes I need to just be still and let Him doing the fighting for me.

JOY

1 a: the emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune or by the prospect of possessing what one desires : delight

What do you think of when you hear the word joy?  Do you have a mental picture that personifies joy? When I think of joy, I get two images.  One is of a person standing in the rain, arms stretched out, face up to catch the raindrops, laughing.  She may be wet, but her joy is not dampened.  The second image is of a person getting on in years - her hair is silver, her face creased.  But she is engaged and interested in those around her, listening intently, delighting at each new thing she sees, hears or experiences.  Laughter comes quickly to her and she nods along eagerly as others share their life and views with her.

For a while now, I've thought joy isn't really something for me.  Last fall, I went away for a weekend to hear Richard Rohr and Russ Hudson talk about Grace and the Enneagram.  As I was preparing to leave for that, I was thinking about two other women in my life that are also Enneagram Nines.  I could see some similarities between each of them and me, but they are both funny, lighthearted people in a way that I am not.  I shared this observation with a friend during the conference and was able to articulate that I feel like I'll never be able to be joyful - I'm just too scarred, too wounded to ever recover the joy you see readily flash on the faces of children.  I cried as I told her this, both out of sadness for this thing I do not have and out of fear that I am not worthy of joy.

Before Lent, I was talking with a friend who said she longs for joy.  She longs to enjoy her children more, to delight in them and alongside them.  To this end, her Lent was about learning to stop at regular intervals in her day.  She was learning to make space for joy.  

I don't actively long for joy like this friend of mine.  If anything, I long for peace and contentment, things which I suspect are vague shadows of joy.  I settle for these rather than risk seeking the real thing and falling short.  Yet I think peace and contentment are companions on the road to joy because I envision joy as more pervasive, more persistent, less mutable than happiness.  I imagine joyful people have an inner peace and contentment that their circumstances can not ruffle and can not take away.

I picture joy as something nearly tangible, something you can grab and hold on to and feel it alongside you, underneath you, beside you.  And when I think of it this way, I wonder about how closely joy and the Holy Spirit are interconnected.  Because when I think of the Holy Spirit, it's as a swirling, comforting presence all around me.

The Holy Spirit is the aspect of the Trinity that I most long to be like.  I don't want the responsibility or inspired devotion of God the Father.  Nor do I long to be the ever present teacher that Jesus is.  But a soft, encouraging presence that points others to God, to truth, to beauty?  These are traits I want to embody.

Last night as we sat around the dinner table, we discussed the transition from Lent to Eastertide.  We talked about what we learned during Lent and what we hoped to delight in during Easter.  I asked these questions before fully thinking through my own answers to them, so it wasn't until later that I realized that while my Lent did not go as expected, I did make very real progress towards beginning to identify the desires of my heart.  And if joy is evoked by the prospect of possessing what one wants, perhaps this is a good first step towards joy.

Easter day did leave me feeling oddly lighthearted - not as a result of any one experience but from thinking about a series of small truths seen together: truths like the realization that love must be very strong indeed to have defeated death and that our biggest blessings often come just from lingering near God, not from any activity on our part.

Maybe this is how joy is found - by following the trail of breadcrumbs God leaves for us, each one leading us closer and closer to the realization of how much He loves us and how immutable that love is.  Because when we grasp that His love for us cannot and will not change, joy is the only possible response.

UNMET

: my expectations for Lent

In almost every way, this Lent has not been what I expected.  That began early, when the timing of Lent snuck up on me and I didn't feel led towards a specific, easily enforceable discipline.  Instead of something straightforward like, "Give up caffeine," or "Walk every day," or even "Pray the hours," I felt a need to open myself and be receptive to the idea of being led daily to the well I needed to drink from.  This idea was a little scary to me, but I wanted to be responsive and receptive, even in my fear.  So I was blindsided, hurt and left reeling when I posted about Lent and received a snarky comment about Lent being a time for penitence.  The implication was that my discipline of seeking creative and restorative outlets was selfish and inappropriate.  That, combined with a reticence on God's part to direct me, left me stumbling through Lent rather than following along, walking near Jesus' side.

Perhaps the stumbling along can be traced back to the first whisper I heard to write during Lent.  Because I have done many things over the last forty days, but very little writing.  Taking a step away from writing has been somewhat unintentional,  yet I've been aware of the slippage and allowed it to happen.  Like a workout routine left undone for too long, it became easier and easier to not write.  I certainly had plenty of other things to fill my time and my soul gradually quieted and stopped asking questions that needed to be processed in writing.

But even as that form of communication quieted, longer form writing ideas pursued me - everything from an idea for a novel to an idea for a children's book series.  I have not written one word towards giving birth to either of these ideas, yet they circle in my mind and leave me fearful and frozen.  That's what fear does to me - it freezes me.  My mental and physical muscles clench and I feel unable to fight or flee, regardless of what they tell you adrenaline is for.  So the blog sits for days, then weeks and my writing muscles atrophy, then stop even asking for the release of exercise.  Thankfully, it was in just such a moment of fear induced frostbite that I went on silent retreat.

The Ghosts of Leah and Rachel

As my retreat began, Leah kept circling in my mind.  Maybe you've heard of her?  She's the one who married Jacob, when he intended to marry her sister, Rachel.  Her father tricked Jacob into marrying her, probably because he thought this was the only way he could marry her off.  Jacob never really loved Leah and I've always thought her story was a sad one.  She was on my mind because I had read about her in the Jesus Storybook Bible to my daughters.  Here's how her story ends in Sally Lloyd-Jones' rendition:

One of Leah's children's children's children would be a prince - the Prince of Heaven - God's Son.

This Prince would love God's people.  They wouldn't need to be beautiful for him to love them.  He would love them with all of his heart.  And they would be beautiful because he loved them.

Like Leah.

Leah wasn't loved because she was beautiful, she was beautiful because she was loved.  God blessed Leah in a way the world saw as blessing - he gave her children.  And not just children, but sons.  There was no greater gift, no more sought-after role than to give birth to sons.  But at first, Leah misinterprets God's blessings.  Each time she gives birth to a son, Leah thinks this will make Jacob love her.  She says, "God has seen my misery, now Jacob will love me (Reuben).  God has heard my cry, now Jacob will hear me (Simeon).  God has given me three sons, now Jacob will connect with me (Levi)."  And that does not happen. 

Jacob does not love her.

Not ever. 

But finally, Leah sees that someone does love her: God.  So when she gives birth to a fourth son, she says, "I will praise God (Judah)."

Judah is the line of Jacob's family that Jesus will be born into.  It's to a town of Judah that Mary will travel to give birth.  And Mary, like Leah is blessed by God.  But she's blessed in a way that the world would never, ever expect.  She's blessed with an out of wedlock baby, a son who leaves her to fulfill his ministry and who she ultimately watches die on the cross.  While Leah may have been blessed in a way the world acknowledged and valued, Mary's blessing from God was not what she - or anyone else - was expecting.

But both were blessed.  God loved Leah and Mary, even if the outward signs of his love were vastly different.

My expectations for Lent have gone mostly unmet this year.  I haven't felt closer daily to Jesus.  I haven't had an outpouring of creativity or seen with clarity a habit I need to break.  But even if my expectations have gone unmet, I have been met.  I've been met by the Holy Spirit, who hovers in and amidst my pain and confusion.  I've been met by Jesus when I've had the space and grace to invite him in.

I have been met with Leah and Mary and how their stories help me see my own story more clearly and more compassionately.

Whatever expectations, hopes and dreams you have that are unmet, may you meet Jesus, especially on this cold, dreary Easter weekend when we are reminded of how much we all need Him.  And may meeting Him propel you to action and move you out of the place of fear, than can keep us locked in and frozen.

PRESS

4 a: to exert influence on : constrain

A little over a month ago, I read a fiction book that got me asking deep theological questions.  In the world of this book, there are three gods.   When the gods go to war, one god wins by imprisoning the other two.  (Question #1: What happens to our own faith when one part of the trinity is minimized or emphasized over the other two parts?  This one's for another post.)  The main character, Yeine, meets one of the imprisoned gods and comes to know him as more than the god of chaos, he's also the god of creativity - and don't those two nearly always go hand in hand.  Yeine has been brought to the capital to be used as a sacrificial lamb and she's talking with the imprisoned god about how she can't change her reality.  He tells her:

You are what your creators and experiences have made you, like every other being in this universe.  Accept that and be done... The future, however, is yours to make - even now.  Tell me what you want.  [As for me,] when I am free, I will choose who shapes me.

Question #2: If I get to choose what shapes me, what am I choosing?  What am I pressing in to?

Last week as I was walking one morning, I pondered this question.  In my mind, I saw myself pressing in to my enneagram nine ways of living.  For me this means withdrawing (primarily emotionally) and sitting back in the reality that this world is broken and shattered.  And it means feeling incapable of changing the inherent brokenness that I sense.  The alternative felt like a choice to press into the Holy Spirit - that whirling softness that brings comfort, yes, but also growth and uncertainty about what lies ahead.  I ended my walk that morning determined to choose growth over stasis.

Then I went on a silent retreat - those lovely weekend interludes away with God that fill up my emotional tank and recenter me.  On this retreat, I imagined myself in the cleft of a rock.  There I saw the choice of what I press in to is not so clean cut as I initially thought.  I thought I faced a simple choice between doing things my way or doing things God's way.  Instead, I think my choices are more intricate, more compelling, more fluid.

I need both the quiet darkness of my nine space and the light and space of growth.  Like a seed that needs time in the dark recesses to prepare for growth, so my soul can't be constantly exposed to the light and sun without withering.  It's hard to remember that God made me the way I am and I don't need to change myself to conform to some idea I have of what growth looks like.  Growth for me will look different than for anyone else because we are all made differently.

I'm not saying my growth will happen naturally, without me doing anything to encourage it.  My job is to press in, both to the sheltering dark and the swirling hopefulness of the unknown.

YOKE

1 a : a wooden bar or frame by which two draft animals (as oxen) are joined at the heads or necks for working together

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” -Matthew 11:28-30, New International Version

Thanks to chapter 11 of Matthew, I've been pondering what it means to be yoked for the last five days or so. When I read through the passage, I was using the lectio divina method of reading scripture, so I read it through several times and then tried to picture myself talking to Jesus about it.  In my mind's eye, I saw Jesus guide me into a room both welcoming and beautiful.  Once there, I settled in on a sofa with a blanket tucked around me.  When I thought about the word "yoke" I felt clearly that what this word meant for me was "write."  This might seem contradictory since I have been doing many things - none of them writing - over the course of the last three weeks.

It's not that I haven't thought about writing - I have.  But most of my ideas lately have been of the fiction variety.  And who has time, energy (and talent) enough to tackle that?  Not me.  So I've been mentally filing away the writing ideas and instead pouring my time and energy into planning for our next school year.  While that may seem a long way away, the knowledge that I will be homeschooling all three girls again next year has propelled me to move from dreaming about an idea to actively pursuing it.  Starting in August we will have our very own neighborhood tutorial offering science, literature/debate and possibly a math enrichment option.  Since January, I have been working steadily to find tutors, work out the timing and get everything arranged.  Sunday night I took the somewhat scary step of presenting the plan to other families via e-mail.  Nearly all of them want to join us on this adventure.  I am pleased, excited and a little terrified.

I've been dreaming of doing something like this since my first year of homeschooling, but I've also been waiting for the right time.  Last fall, I accepted a job at my church overseeing the elementary Sunday school classes and volunteers.  Just recently, I agreed to expand that role to the preschool classrooms as well.  I've been treading carefully through all of this, taking it one month at a time.  But I have prayed for guidance at each step and I've honestly found the work quite easy.  A few months into the job at St. B's, it occurred to me that it might help prepare me for starting a tutorial.  Many of the skills I use for that role, including communication, volunteer management, setting clear expectations and supporting the people in the classrooms, could help me set up a homeschool tutorial.

How does all of this relate to being yoked?  I see it as being about my yoke because there have been times in my life when I've strained against my yoke, pushing ahead and pulling God along behind me.  There have also been times when God has had to encourage me to take a step instead of staying rooted to the spot.  But these jobs have felt like a natural outflowing of who I am and what I do well.  While I wouldn't say I have exactly felt like I am working alongside God (I haven't felt enough closeness to him to describe it that way), I can say that when I look back I feel like I have been gently led to where I am standing - and there has been very little need for pushing or prodding.

The hardest part of being yoked isn't being asked to work - I am finding that if I wait for God to show me the jobs that are meant for me, they are rarely hard.  He knows my strengths much better than I know them myself.  All three of the current things that occupy my time and energy - homeschooling, coordinating at St. B's and setting up the tutorial - require skills and interests that I have (in abundance).  So doing them isn't the hard part.  The hard part is believing that I've made the right decisions and having confidence that I can do these things.  So I'm trying to remember that I don't have to do all of this on my own.  That's where it's helpful to see myself as yoked - I'm only doing part of the work.  The Message version of Matthew 11:28-30 says it this way,

Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly. -Matthew 11:28-30, The Message 

When I hear the word "yoked," I may worry about being asked to do things I can't do or being pulled along to a place I'm not ready to go.  But these words paint a different picture.  Live freely and lightly?  Learn the unforced rhythms of grace?  Yes, please.  And I can see this in my life.  The work I am doing feels unforced.  That makes me desire even more to walk with Jesus and watch how he goes about his work, in the hopes that I can do mine in a way that likewise blesses other people.

PAIN

2 b: acute mental or emotional distress or suffering : grief

One night last week I was praying for a friend as I went to sleep.  As I was praying for her, my mind shifted from seeing her standing on the shore with God to seeing myself seated in the sand with Jesus beside me.  For a while, we sat companionably but then he moved into the water and invited me to join him.  Before I joined him, he was clear about one thing: moving into this water would hurt.  Not because the water was cold (though it was) but because this water was the pain of the world.  I was afraid.  Would anyone head into something containing the pain of the world without at least pausing?

But I wanted to be near Jesus, so I went.  There wasn't anything for me to do with all of this pain, just bear witness to it.  And as I stood in the midst of the pain, the water shifted.  Standing there beside Jesus, the water immediately surrounding us changed from murky brown to turquoise, aquamarine, sky blue.  Instead of sitting stagnant, it shimmered.  This beauty didn't mean the pain went away.  It was still there, but with beauty amongst it.

Since that prayer, I have tried to choose moments to stand in the pain instead of avoiding it.  Perhaps it is not surprising that I've found it is easier to stand in others' pain than my own.  My own pain, especially when accompanied by anger, makes me feel shame.  One reason I wrote about my frustration, disappointment and sense of abandonment surrounding our magnet school application process was as an attempt to stand in the pain.

I tend to deal with pain in one of two ways: I let anger fuel me and push through it belligerently or I gloss over the pain, moving as quickly as possible to a place where I can see the good instead of the bad.  These are not necessary poor ways to cope with the world: seeing things positively does make me more content and pushing through the pain gives (at least the impression of) strength.  But there is a difference between coping and growing.  I do a lot of the former.  I want to do the latter.  Choosing to stand in the pain?  That's not my typical approach.  It requires patience.  It requires that I acknowledge everything is not OK.  It encourages me to feel deeply.  And it hurts.

The only time I willingly stand in the pain is when I have no choice.  (I'll let you decide whether that really qualifies as "willing.")  There are times when what I am feeling is so big, so encompassing, there is no pushing through or glossing over.

The circumstances surrounding B's school options for next year are not nearly so big as that.  There is much I appreciate and enjoy about homeschooling.  I treasure the time with B and the flexibility our family will continue to enjoy.  But rather than go straight to the silver linings, I felt it was important for me to actually see, dwell on and process the way this particular disappointment has brought pain to my heart.  As always, it has been illuminating.  (I think pain tends to function as an internal spotlight, showing us the places we neglect, the unkempt corners of our souls.)

What I have seen this time is that I believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, that God takes some pleasure in causing me pain.  I know this particular idea of who God is comes from my earthly father.  He always seemed tickled when I did something wrong or stupid.  Why this is true, I am not sure.  I hurt for my children when they make a mistake or feel shamed.  But that wasn't my own experience.  I'm not the only one to confuse God the Father with an earthly father.  Richard Rohr writes:

After years of giving and receiving spiritual direction, it has become obvious to me and to many of my colleagues that most peoples’ operative, de facto image of God is initially a subtle combination of their Mom and their Dad, or any early authority figures... The goal, of course, is to grow toward an adult religion that includes both reason and faith and inner experience that you can trust. A mature God creates mature people. A big God creates big people.

I hope I am growing toward a mature faith, but allowing my image of God to change is no small task.  Awareness is hopefully the first step, but I imagine I may only have my toe on the first step of a processes comprising many flights of stairs.  For now the only thing I know to do is try to sit with the pain and hope that staying in it will allow beauty to enter and commingle with the pain, thereby transforming me in the process.

1 : not genuine
2a : intentionally untrue

I am in the process of reading an exceptionally good book right now.  As with most good non-fiction books, I am taking it slowly.  Not because the writing is dense nor difficult, but because there is so much truth there for my soul to soak up.  I need to read it slowly and give each truth time to settle down into my soul before moving on.  The book is When the Heart Waits by Sue Monk Kidd and it recounts the author's own spiritual crisis and the process of active waiting she embraced during this time.  As she attempts to discover who she really is, Monk Kidd investigates and names her false selves:

...I began a process of "naming" my false selves, a process that spanned many weeks of looking within and reflecting on my life.  By naming the inner patterns that imprison us, we come to know them more fully and obtain a certain power over them.

Finding and naming our false selves enables us to answer questions like: If all of my roles were taken away, who would I be?  If not wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend, who am I?  What are the masks I wear and who do I don them for?

My bookmark has been sitting on the precipice of the section Naming False Selves for days.  Not because I don't want to read more, but because I think I need to at least make an attempt to see my own constructs before reading Monk Kidd's.  So as I took a very brisk walk yesterday in colder than expected weather, I contemplated what masks I've worn to get through my life to this point. 

Valedictorian
The first one that popped to mind was valedictorian.  If you've only known me for the last five years, I'm not sure whether it would be surprising to know I was valedictorian of my high school class.  I'd like to think you would be surprised - not because you'd think I'm not smart enough to have been so, but because you might see that I am not a person given to competition nor am I particularly achievement oriented.  As I've come to know myself better, I've realized that I don't like competition because competing divides people whereas I long for unity.  My healthier adult self doesn't long to be better than or smarter than other people.  I don't pursue things in order to stand out, but because they interest me or help me grow as a person.

I wore the mask of valedictorian because it was expected of me, even demanded of me.  Without pressure would I have been first in my class?  I think it's unlikely.  I think I still would have had good grades and done well on standardized tests, but I might have been able to relax a bit and enjoy school rather than seeing it as a place where academic performance was of the utmost importance.

The Misfit
Welcome to my college years.  If I felt pressure to be perfect in high school, that fell away the first semester of my freshman year.  I brought home three B's and a C that semester and felt no shame about it.  What I felt instead was a decided case of not-belonging, which persisted right through graduation.  Some of this was borne of being a middle class scholarship girl in the midst of wealthy private school born and bred peers.  Some of it was simply my discomfort in my own skin.  For most of my time at Vanderbilt, I felt like everyone there had been cut out with the same cookie cutter except me. 

I think this is a mask that still appears regularly in my repertoire.  When I'm wearing the misfit mask, I struggle with a desire to fit in that collides with a desire to be seen.  Because if I'm really fitting in and blending in, I'm not being seen for who I am.

The Bitch
Hopefully many of you have never seen this incarnation of me.  In the post-valedictorian, post-misfit years, the bitch was how I coped with working full time, excelling at that work and never feeling very fulfilled by it.  I wanted to understand my work, do it with excellence and help my clients and co-workers.  I felt such pressure to perform and my employer's solution to any complaint I voiced was to throw money at me.  This was not particularly effective.

So I set aside my feelings and hardened myself.  It worked fairly well and in some ways it looked a lot like the valedictorian mask, only with harder lines.  I learned a lot from a very demanding boss, I honed computer skills that still serve me well years later and I compartmentalized my self to be who they needed me to be.  This was not particularly effective, either.

The Conformist
Then came the evangelical years, when I wanted desperately to respond to God's voice and to be accepted by the women in my church as one of them.  I can still remember the hurt of a group leader who strongly disliked me.  In my desire to conform and be accepted, I couldn't tell whether she simply didn't like me or God didn't, either.   Then there were the theological collisions.  I spent years attempting to reconcile the church's belief in the inerrancy of scripture with my own heart and mind's objections that you can't take the portions of scripture on women literally, but ascribe passages on slavery to being from a different historical context.  To conform, I tried to hold back the parts of me that didn't fit my church's image of who women should be.

That was working reasonably well until I gave birth to three diverse, strong girls.  If I could accept the shame thrown upon my shoulders week after week, I could not saddle my daughters with it.  After seeing one daughter labeled as not enough one too many times, the mask of conformity shattered and I let go of the myth that there was only one right path to God.

I'm sure there are other masks in my closet, but I think identifying these four gives me enough insight into myself to move forward with reading about Sue Monk Kidd's false selves.  As I look at these Shannons that used to be, I feel more frustration and shame than compassion.  But I want to be compassionate to these selves that shielded the real and fragile me from the world.  Because they weren't constructed as intentionally untrue.  Instead, they simply took one aspect of my personality and magnified it past the point of being genuine.

What I want for the next decade of my life is to be the things required of me as wife, mother, daughter and friend, but hold tight to a sense of who I truly am, separate from what I do.  May I have compassion on my many selves, both when I fail and when I succeed in seeing the real me.

LIBERATE

1 : to set at liberty : free; specifically : to free (as a country) from domination by a foreign power

Yesterday the girls and I went to see the Emancipation Proclamation. (If you live in Nashville, I highly recommend you go.)  Before we went, I looked up a bit about the document online.  I found this article on the National Archives website and read it aloud to the girls as we sat around the breakfast table.  It was good background for all of us to understand the limitations of this document that proclaimed freedom for some, but not all.  Yet the thing that stuck with me was this sentence: "Moreover, the Proclamation announced the acceptance of black men into the Union Army and Navy, enabling the liberated to become liberators."

Did you catch that?  "enabling the liberated to become liberators."  What a gift: allowing freed slaves the opportunity to fight for the freedom of others.  Because freedom, once gained, begs to be shared.  I find this a powerful concept to ponder and explore on Ash Wednesday, especially since today's second lesson included a favorite passage reminding us that we are God's ambassadors.  If I'm God's ambassador, what country do I represent?  An enslaved one, held captive by lies?  Or one that is filled with light and truth?

We all need to be liberated from something.  Whether it's an addiction, a fear, a deeply rooted sin, a predilection for numbing the pain in our lives with screen time or the belief that we don't matter, we are all either enslaved or liberated - or both.  Having one set of chains broken often leaves us passionate about the areas of our former enslavement.  Once free of shame, we want others to see and name that demon for what it is.  Formerly blind to the prison of objectification, we long to help other women see that they are more than the cells, ligaments, tendons and bones that comprise their bodies.  Freedom begs to be shared.

But when we are trapped, we can resent the freedom of others.  Addicts cleave to addicts, whether the addiction is alcohol or pessimism.  Emotionally unhealthy people surround themselves with others in similar circumstances, if only to better shroud their hurt and pain.  I am certainly guilty of surrounding myself with people like me.  Currently, that means I want to be around friends who are self-aware, who know their own strengths and weaknesses and aren't afraid to share both.  I crave time with women who walk with a limp from the ways life has broken and bruised them - but not defeated them.  I want friends who wear their scars proudly because scars do not form on the dying.

That hasn't always been the case.  For many years, I didn't see how broken I really was.  I went through life shoving all of the hard feelings and hurts deep down inside.  I wanted to be around people who didn't go too deep, who were content to watch a football game with me, but never push past the surface level.  That got lonely.  And I grew restless, tired of the same old me.  I wanted more and sought people who want more.

I'm not sure whether I could qualify as liberated yet.  There are still chains encircling me, many of which I don't even see holding me back.  But I will tell you this, I long for freedom for myself and others and I am thankful for the blinders that have been removed from my eyes.  I hope my daughters are never enslaved to the idea that they are not enough.  I want mothers to resist efforts to shame their parenting, who instead revel in not having it all together, who can laugh over their inefficiencies and flaws.

Last night a friend who is walking a long, dark and muddy road shared her story.  There was pain, anger and bleeding, but also hope: hope for a deep and lasting healing.  And I saw in my friend a liberated woman who will tell her story to liberate others.  There is nothing more beautiful than claiming the pain in our lives and using it to sow seeds of beauty and freedom.  May we all have the courage this Lent to face, walk through and embrace our pain in order to be both liberated and liberators.

LENT

: the 40 weekdays from Ash Wednesday to Easter observed by the Roman Catholic, Eastern, and some Protestant churches as a period of penitence and fasting

If you don't come from a faith tradition that follows a liturgical calendar, the idea of church seasons might seem odd, useless or even suspicious to you.  (I once had a friend tell me she wouldn't consider observing Lent until someone could show her the Biblical precedent for it.) Yet the longer I participate in a spiritual life structured around the liturgical calendar, the more I realize how well it suits me.

Lent snuck up on me this year: this week is chock full with Shrove Tuesday today, Ash Wednesday tomorrow and Valentine's Day Thursday.  By the end of the week, we won't know whether to celebrate or contemplate.  Which is perhaps the very value that the church seasons bring us - reminders to pause and reflect on both the beauty and the pain of this life.

A friend posted an Abraham Lincoln quote on Facebook today.  It read, "Life is hard, but so very beautiful."  The same could be said of Lent.  I often find it hard from start to finish.  I want to choose the right discipline - one that is meaningful, one that will change me, one that is what I need, not what others are doing.  Once chosen, I want to embrace the discipline, however difficult that may be.  Last year, I committed to take a morning walk every day of Lent - and we promptly went to Green Bay, WI the second week of Lent.  So I bundled up and walked anyway.  The year before that, I gave up caffeine, which was even harder than a morning walk in Wisconsin.

I've had the most success with Lenten disciplines when I've prayed and asked God to show me what to give up or take on during Lent.  So when I realized ten days ago that Lent was fast approaching, I was worried.  I smile a bit at myself about that - do I think God can't answer quickly?  That I'm going to catch him asleep on the job?  That I must get my request in with a two week minimum? I think it's partly that I don't trust myself to hear well or quickly, but there is also an element of my faith that thinks I need to give God time to get around to answering me. 

My worry did not abate when I prayed about Lent and the first thing I heard was, "Write."  Write what?  Write everyday?  How?  When will I find the time?  

But as I explored this thought, I realized how bereft of creative outlets my life has become.  I don't blog as often as I'd like.  My journal is filled with white space.  I rarely take out my collage materials.  I haven't made anything at all since Advent projects with the girls.  More than just writing, I see in my life a need to create and to make the space for that to happen.  If my daughters will live what they see modeled, they aren't going to be taking very good care of themselves in two or three decades.  I need to put on my oxygen mask first if I want them to know, use and flex their creative muscles.

So I had the first piece of the puzzle: something creative.  As I thought and prayed and pondered some more, my mind kept circling all of the various pursuits I am currently neglecting.  Productive things like writing or art, but also restorative things reading and taking long baths.  As I thought about all my heart was aching to do, I realized that might be my discipline: to create space to fulfill my heart's desires.  The beauty and pain of this will be the need to constantly rely on God to show me my heart's desire for that day's allotted time.  Because while some of you may know immediately the desires of your heart, I have done an excellent job of burying those desires deep within me.  It's like an excavation project to get to them.  I can tell you what any of the immediate members of my family want, but when asked what I want, that requires a long and thoughtful pause before an answer emerges.

I am approaching tomorrow's start of the Lenten season with some trepidation.  Does my discipline sound more self-serving than God-honoring?  (My daughter B wanted to adopt a "Lenten discipline" of eating dessert after every meal.  I gently re-directed her.)  Am I willing to face my own desires with eyes open?  Can I bear the pain of seeing desires that will go unfulfilled (since this is why I hide them away in the first place)?  Most of all, will I emerge transformed at Easter?

Because that's what I want: transformation.  I want to listen and see with a willing heart, a heart willing to walk through pain for the beauty.

The word Lent comes from lengthen because it arrives at the time of year when the days are growing longer, stretching out to give us more light with each sunrise.  I want my heart to stretch and lengthen and be grown this Lent.

COCOON

1 a : an envelope often largely of silk which an insect larva forms about itself and in which it passes the pupa stage


A friend gave me a book I've never read for my birthday and the title immediately intrigued me: When The Heart Waits.  The book itself has intrigued me even more.  It's a book to savor and read slowly.  I'm reading one chapter at a time to let the words, thoughts and images sink down into my heart before moving on.  In the first chapter, Sue Monk Kidd talks about being in the midst of a spiritual crisis moment and crying out to God for a sign, for an answer.  Instead of an answer, she turned around to find a cocoon hanging in a tree.  From there, she saw butterflies and cocoons everywhere - in a childhood book remembered, in an art gallery, through a gift from a friend.  "Sometimes God is funny about pointing things out again and again," I thought to myself and smiled as I read.

Ahem.

Shortly after that I realized I had been seeing butterflies everywhere myself: in Flight Behavior, in birthday art created especially for me by a friend, in the When The Heart Waits book.  Since 2009, I have associated butterflies with faith.  That was the year B found a monarch caterpillar and brought him home for us to witness his transformation as a family.  I wrote about that experience back then (if you follow the link, start at the bottom and read your way up) and as I re-read those posts this morning, tears came.  I am still awed by the contrast of my fear and B's quiet confidence.  She had complete faith that her caterpillar Artie would emerge as the butterfly he was meant to be.  And she was right.

So why am I seeing butterfly imagery everywhere lately?  (I will confess I am wearing a dress with butterflies printed all over it as I type this - completely unintentional.)  I suspect God is trying to tell me something.  Sue Monk Kidd's words about waiting in her book have certainly resonated with me.  I want to be patient in the waiting, relinquish my own desire to control the outcome and trust that what emerges will be transformed.

That is more difficult than it sounds.  I do long for this decade of my life to be about transformation.  I want to be what I was really made to be, not what I think I should be.  I want to see myself truly and live boldly.  But in order to get there, I have to give myself over to the waiting in the cocoon.  Even that is harder than I would like for it to be.  If I could slip into a chrysalis and hang there all alone for a few days or weeks, that might be easy to settle down for.  Instead, I have to give myself over to waiting for transformation while teaching, chauffeuring, parenting and managing my family.

Will it be worth it?  Can I wait patiently to become someone worth knowing, loving and doing life alongside?  Can I really change and stay transformed?  Because as I read those posts from 2009, I am feeling much the same way right now - low on solitude, like what I need is distasteful to others and hard to come by, afraid I won't ever emerge from this season.  Am I even ready to emerge as a butterfly at the other end of my time in the cocoon?  I'm not sure a butterfly is the animal I would choose to represent me, but I do love that butterflies move lightly and quickly through life, touching down gently, leaving a small wake of beauty as they go.  That I could buy in to.

CELEBRATE

2 b : to mark (as an anniversary) by festivities or other deviation from routine

I turned 40 forty-one days ago.  I know this with such precision because last night I marked the event with a 40 years + 40 days party.  While I had the idea for this party over a year ago, I struggled with its execution.  I had been in a such a dark and lonely place I wasn't sure I could summon the effort to prepare my house, the food, myself.  But when I talked it over with J and he asked me what I really wanted, the answer my heart gave was to have the party.  So we had the party.  And J made it all so very easy for me by telling me to hire a caterer, pay a housekeeper and buy cupcakes.  These things made a world of difference.  I found myself able to read a few chapters of my current book before guests arrived last night - unheard of on a party day.  Logistically, it all went well once I made the decision to move forward.

My heart was not so compliant.  After months of silence from God, I finally began to hear the still, quiet voice I have missed so much.  And one of the first things he said to me was that maybe the people in my life see me better and more accurately than I see myself.  That planted the seed for a journal that joined last night's festivities.  On a table in the living room sat a leather journal with my favorite pen atop it.  Friend after friend took a turn sharing how they see me and what they see in me.  Amongst my last thoughts last night before I fell asleep was the gift that it was to have friends willing to sit at a party writing in a journal for me - not exactly your typical party behavior.

Yet the journal idea almost didn't happen.  Between the seed planting stage and its fruition at my party, I worried that I was merely shirking my own responsibility to learn who exactly I am.  Was it wrong to try to see myself better by asking others how they see me?  In the midst of my indecision, I shared the idea with a trusted group of friends - the Ish Girls (so named because we want to be Christ-ish).  They were encouraging - one said the words would only penetrate my heart when I was ready, another said I can only go about learning who I am in the way that suits me - trying anything else will be fruitless.

I've only read a few entries in the journal.  They aren't appetizers to be consumed quickly, but a series of feasts to feed my soul.  When I tried to take a similar approach to opening my birthday gifts by stretching it out for several days, there was a general outcry from my children.  So the gifts were opened in just two sessions - leaving me overwhelmed at how well my friends know and love me.

Also overwhelming was the word "celebrate."  It just kept coming up.  Several friends said in their RSVP that they were looking forward to celebrating me.  Now, I love to have parties.  I'm much more of a party-thrower than a party-goer.  That's because when I host a party, I know everyone there, I like everyone there and I love seeing all of the disparate parts of my life come together.  But I don't have parties in order to be the center of attention.  I don't have them to celebrate myself.  I have them to celebrate all of the wonderful people we know and having a home we can share.  The idea of celebrating myself is, in fact, a little frightening.  But it kept coming up - which always means I should stop and listen.

When I imagined this 40 years + 40 days party, I thought I would pick a charity and have friends donate in my honor - or find some other way to make the focus on something other than just me.  But as I pondered those ideas, I felt that same still, quiet voice say to me, "No.  Let this be about you.  Just you."  Hmm.  Really?  "Yes."  Every time I prayed about it or even just thought about it, I could not get away from the idea that this party was mean to celebrate me.  This required much setting aside.  Setting aside my own expectations.  Setting aside the judgment others would have about me.  Setting aside my traditional mode of operating, whereby I deflect attention from myself.

A few days before my party, a friend e-mailed to say her plans had changed and she couldn't make the party.  In my reply, I confessed my fear of the word celebrate.  She replied, in part, "You are honoring the truth that God in you is real, good, and something to treasure. I will pray for you, as I know it isn’t comfortable. These things he leads us to rarely are. The things he asks are often what we would never choose for ourselves in our own willpower, but you are brave, and I see that in you even when you don’t see it yourself."

Did you see that word brave?  I did.  It stood out to me like it was written in neon.  I had never even thought about celebrating myself as being brave.  I was just trying to walk where God was pointing me, even though it wasn't where I expected to go or how I expected to get there.  When I stop to think about it, that is a pretty good definition of bravery.

So I am trying to be brave, to read the words of my friends with a heart that is ready to receive, to keep my eyes open to seeing who I really am.  I tried last night to celebrate with a clear conscience and willing heart and I will confess it was fun.  And therein, I suspect, lies much of the lesson - that our bravery in listening to God's direction leads us to joy and celebration.

SMALL

:the size of the steps I am taking of late

I feel like I am finally on my way out of the desert, but instead of striding confidently to an oasis, I am trying to take very small steps, so as to not lose my way.  One small step has been taking time after breakfast with my daughters to have a tiny bite of Jesus Calling sandwiched between silence and candles.  For many (better) parents, this may seem like a very small step indeed.  But my daughters are as different spiritually as they are in every other aspect.  Want-to-get-it-right A likes devotionals that give her the answers to how to live her life the "right" way.  Want-to-never-be-told-what-to-do B hates devotionals that point her in one direction.  Can't-hold-a-train-of-thought-to-save-her-life K just needs something short.  I am most like B in this regard, so I decided that if I've been able to read the adult version of Jesus Calling for over a year and enjoy it, perhaps this would be a book to try.  It's short, meeting K's requirement.  It's direct, meeting A's.  But it's not directional, much to the delight of B and I.  So far, we are all enjoying it.  

There have been tweaks along the way.  I found out the first morning that you can't let your children eat cereal for breakfast and read them a devotional while they eat.  They can't hear you over the crunch.  A's cereal sat there getting soggy because she wanted to do the right thing and didn't tell me to wait until she'd eaten.  So we try to finish breakfast and then each light a candle.  Silence before or after the devotional was another question I had.  Each girl wanted something different, so we do silence on both ends.  (The not eating breakfast during silence helps everyone concentrate and enjoy the silence that much more.)  I'm not changing the world or my life by adding this little segment to our day, but I have desired something like this for years and this it the first small step I've taken that hasn't led me straight off a cliff with children protesting as we slide down the hill.

Small step number two is adding running back into my thrice weekly morning walks.  The stress fracture that wouldn't heal has finally healed.  (I remain certain that stubborn fracture has a great big spiritual lesson wrapped up in it, but I am equally doubtful as to what I was supposed to learn.)  I've been gradually phasing out of wearing my brace and gradually walking more consistently and for longer distances.  So yesterday I threw caution to the wind - along with a quick pray flung up to heaven - and ran for a few minutes.  My ankle didn't give out and seems fine today, but I am loathe to re-injure myself, so I am taking it slow.  Tomorrow's walk may remain a walk, with additional running left until Monday.

Small steps can be frustrating for me.  I can be slow to act, but once I act, I'd like the benefits, thankyouverymuch.  This going slowly, trusting that even one peaceful day of Jesus Calling is worth it, is hard.  My daughters aren't suddenly fighting less.  They aren't quoting scripture.  They are still exactly who they were - and so I am, sadly.  But my hope is that these tiny small steps will eventually lead us all to someplace new and lush - a place where ankles are whole and healed, where God can be felt and heard, where our eyes are open to seeing who we really are.

Maybe taking small steps instead of giant leaps will help me remember my own smallness and be thankful for it, instead of resenting the limitations it brings.  Maybe small steps will keep the fear at bay and allow me to keep moving instead of hiding under a rock (which I sometimes very much want to do).  Maybe sometimes the only step I can take is a small one and that is just OK.

ANGER

1: a strong feeling of displeasure and usually of antagonism

I am not friends with anger.  I don't like feeling it.  I don't like expressing it.  I would rather bottle up my anger than let it out and risk hurting someone because I don't like to hurt people.  I would much rather hurt myself than risk hurting someone I love.  So I tend to just let my anger swirl around inside me, causing me pain from its safely contained nexus in my soul.

But for the last month, God has been showing me, bit by bit, time and again, that I am angry.  I'm angry with family members who don't respect me or my boundaries.  I'm angry with people who take advantage of me because I am too mild to stand up for myself.  I'm angry at people who have used a national tragedy as a way to catapult their personal agenda into the national debate.  I'm angry with God for drawing me close to Him and then leaving me out in the desert all alone to fend for myself.

A few weeks back, I was talking to a friend and saying that I just don't see the purpose of anger.  Why do we even feel it?  It seems pointless.  It makes me feel exhausted and defeated.  My wise friend said, "Oh, anger is useful.   Anger is all about change.  Without anger, women wouldn't be able to vote.  Civil rights would never have happened.  Anger makes us want to change things."  If she's right (and I think she is), I find myself stuck in this vicious cycle where I feel defeated because I don't think I can affect any change in my world, yet I am unwilling to express my anger because I feel defeated.  What's the point? I wonder.  Why even deal with the anger when it won't change anything?

I've been trying to ask myself lately what I am angry for.  It's easy for me to see anger as being against something, but I think part of its purpose for me (and perhaps others?) is showing me what's important.  It points to something inside me that rears up and says, "No!"  As I've examined when and why I am angry, a clear pattern emerges.  What I've seen time and again is that I am angry for my time.  I resent it when people impose on my time.  I get tired, cranky and downright angry when I don't have voice in or control over my time.  When time is in short supply, I feel cornered, trapped, like I am the garbage compactor with Han, Luke and Leia, just waiting for life to crush me.

Even knowing this about myself, I'm not sure what to do with it.  Sometimes self-knowledge only gets you so far.  I haven't written consistently in months - partly because I haven't had the time and partly because I've only been sad and angry and had nothing good worth saying.  It's gone on so long that I'm now afraid to write.  As J and I planned out our day today, I said that I wanted to get some school planning for January done and that I should write a blog post.  "Isn't should one of those shaming words?  Aren't you supposed to avoid doing what you should do?"  While that holds true most of the time, I think I have avoided writing or any type of creativity for so long that it is making me more miserable than I otherwise would be.  The anger, sadness, despair and confusion need a way out and creativity is nothing if not an outlet.

So here I sit typing by the glow of a Christmas tree that speaks of a season supposed to be filled with joy.  I never quite got there this year.  Joy seems to be something that lives in a land across an ocean in a distant land populated by people who are nothing like me.  Joy is not on my landscape.  My landscape is painted angry reds and desolate grays and it is lonely.

I turned 40 earlier this month and in addition to being angry about so very many other things, I am angry that I am trapped in such a hard season of life.  What I want is to celebrate a new decade, grab hold of a chance to find out who I am, find time to settle into my skin instead of fighting it.  What I have is a stubborn determination to celebrate even when I feel so defeated.  Maybe tenacity will help me cling to a hope that I will not always feel this way.  Maybe surrounding myself with those I love will help me believe they love me back.  Maybe 40 will be the year I can let go of who everyone else thinks I should be and begin to find out who I actually want to be.  Maybe I'll find out it's OK to be angry if that shows me what I stand for, not just what I rail against.