Into the Fold

I cried at work today.

We were doing our morning devotions, and today, we decided to do a devotional thought over "O Come O Come Emmanuel", which happens to be my favorite Christmas song.

It also happens to correlate with my favorite Bible verse, which had been weighing on me heavily for the past week or so. This is what I shared and what brought me to big tears of remembrance and of thankfulness and humility.

It re-appeared in my heart last Thursday. I was sitting there beside my boyfriend, our mothers, and our fathers, in the Candlelight service at my university.

As I sat there, I marveled at how far removed and redeemed both our families (and us) had been in the past two years. In the past two years, both our parents had been at places where they thought they had lost their children to darkness forever.

We had thought the same about ourselves.

And in the past two years, we have been restored to joy, to God, and to our families. Granted, more work is yet to be done, but God is so good.

My heart felt full to burst, and the words of Psalm 126 pushed their way into my thoughts:

When the people returned to Jerusalem from captivity in Babylon, they became as those who dreamed. Their hearts were filled with laughter; their tongues with shouts of praise. The people of Earth said to them, "The Lord has done great things for you." Indeed, the Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy.

That's the verse I shared this morning after we sang.

I reflected on my own "return from Babylon" two years ago tomorrow.

I was broken. I was ugly. I was beyond all reckoning.

And my parents opened their arms up and loved me. My aunt, my uncle, my cousin, my grandmother. They loved me and took me as I was: broken. ugly. lost.

And yet, and yet!! the Lord has done great things for me. 
Though Decembers cause me to get way too deep in my head and heart and ache with the past woundedness, I know too of the deep joy of restoration to hope and light and life.

The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy.

Crucified at the Crux

We are a culture and a people of extremes.

Obese or anorexic.
Unshutupable or brick silent.
Dramatic or dead pan.

When I go to my work twitter or Facebook and read all my students posts, they are full of the feels. Just...all the feels. All screaming, "Notice me notice me notice me!!!"

They post about:
Loneliness
Not fitting in
Feeling stupid
"Love"

I am not saying their posts don't reflect their reality, but I think they make us believe that we're seeing the total reality.

Because the kids we're hearing from are the ones we expect to hear from, because they're the ones who never stop whining about how lonely they feel instead of wiping off some of their makeup and trying out their own skin. A lot of times, it's part of their identity to be misunderstood.

Don't get all huffy; I'm not being a jerk. If you find me offensive, it's probably because you were once one of those kids. I work with kids, I was a kid, I am a kid. I know kids. Let me talk.

What we don't get is the honest look at the structural identity of other human beings.

We either stigmatize to the point of normalcy or we cloister problems into oblivion.

Let's have an honest discussion about what happens when you come to "the crux."

"The Crux" has been on my mind today because we have been going through our promotional material for re-vamping. Several of the smiling faces on our shining boards are students I knew very, very well.

And they aren't here anymore.
They didn't graduate.
Their cruxes crucified them.

That doesn't make them lesser people, and that doesn't make them failures. They just lost that one particular round of mental monopoly.

Yet there they are, smiling, holding a stack of books, pointing to a white board, reading with friends, about to sing another original song.
They are literally our poster children.
I'm sure they can think of nothing more ironic.

In one sense, it's the perfect example of "putting on your church face".
We obliviate their stories with glossed on smiles, whether that's our goal or not.

At the same time, I don't find it ironic at all for them to be our poster children. I actually love that we didn't choose all the seemingly perfect students. Because that's not who we are. We're all broken people. Their "cruxes" just made that more obvious.

"The Crux" is the moment when what you have been taught and raised to be drops off, and you have to grow new skin all on your own. The Crux is when you are faced with something so personal, so intimate, that 20 years of "life lessons" are insufficient to suffice for an answer.

We search. 
We listen.
But who do we listen to?

Though we would like to say, "God", like a good Sunday schooler, often we can't.
It's hard to admit, but we can't listen to him. We aren't ready.
More than that, maybe we truly do not yet have the capacity to hear the decibels he's speaking in.

Who do we listen to?
Them.
Whoever our "them" is.
And we "run to the things they said could restore [us]//restore life the way it should be".

And it doesn't work.
It doesn't work and doesn't work and doesn't work, and we're trapped in this horrible Dante-esque second circle of Hell running running running .

It breaks us.
It broke my friends.
It broke me.

Brokenness is ugly and unspoken.
In our shame, we hide because that's what feels correct to do. Because a snide "nobody loves me" comment on Facebook is one thing, but the genuine vacuum in our hearts, the kind that feels unrecoverable, isn't one you can post.

We publish the present.
We present the version of ourselves that we feel reconciled with, even if we don't love it. We can deal with it. We can stand by it.

The intimate pain is something we can't own because its muchness has too much muchness. That means, when we are sucked under the current, drop out of school, overdose, attempt suicide, no one sees it coming.

In times I have felt the most alone, the most broken, I have ached for someone to tell me they've been there too and not another God-awful repetition of Jeremiah 29:11 or a "I felt sad once, but I'm better now".

I wanted to read someone else admitting, with humor, hope, and honesty, that they were there as well.

At the same time, I am most usually unwilling to be that person for other people. The closest I've ever come to it is attempting to speak the truth of myself in my posts.

We're broken, but we retain such a capacity for forgiveness, for partnership, for love, and for redemption. We are capable of connection, to make pain into partnership, to turn someone's "I hope I can do this..." to "We can do this. I know we can do this."

How often do we opt to halt our thinking about our public images in deference to thoughts of how we can love other people through letting them in on the truth of our pain and of our regrowth?

We need the in-between.
That's what we're missing.
No more attention-seeking, connectivity-defying Facebook statuses of how nobody understands but no more hiding either.
Rather, with patience, with humility, and with discernment, let us all practice letting people join us where we stand. Or sit. Or kneel. Or are crawled up in.
Let's practice letting ourselves be seen.

But is it? Is it really?

One single concluding paragraph separates me from fully completing my first semester (and first half) of my Master's degree.

I can't think of anything at all to say in that concluding paragraph, though. At one point in my academic career, this would be call for a total meltdown of failure. 

Not only would that be an absurd response from me right now, as the paper is actually quite good other than its lack of final statements, it also wouldn't fit with my current ideas of failure. 

Failure or the fear of failing is ultimately what drives us in our interactions with other humans, or even in our personal decisions. 

I don't think what we view as failure is an accurate description of what failure is. 

We think that if we're not good at something or we totally tank in an attempt then we are failures or we have failed. I just don't think that's true, especially when we are making those statements in comparison to other people.

Not only do we all have varying skill sets, we also have varying degrees of experience. 

In order to "fail" at something, there has to be a certain degree of experience already gained in that area. 

Think of it like this: If you've never tried something before, it is as though you are standing on the solid ground. If you aren't stellar at your first try, so what? You've nowhere to fall really. 

It's when you've practiced at something, gained skill and ability, that you walk up the stairs. Then, if you a horrible job, you actually fall pretty far. That is failure. 

Am I making sense? 

There's got to be cognizance and awareness. 

For instance, I used to say often what a failure of a friend or girlfriend or person I was. 

However, I wasn't at a place where I could understand what it meant to be good at any of those things. I knew nothing other than what I was doing. It wasn't for lack of trying. It wasn't failure. I wasn't a failure. 

Rather than thinking back and saying, "I failed" then, I think it's more accurate to say that I was not yet at a place where I could be able to succeed. 

I was yet to be equipped with the strength, stability, maturity, or even information at how to be good at any of those things. 

Maybe a better example would be academia. If I'd started this program at Queen's at the age of 18, I would have flunked out. 

Well duh!! I was 18 and without the brutal writing boot-camp Patty Kirk put me through during my undergraduate degree. I would have "failed" at Queen's because I did not yet have any of the training necessary to succeed in a Master's program. 

Those are just my vague, procrastinatory thoughts, but I think that mental shift in definitions is worth further consideration. 

Following Jesus is Putting on Pants or “Structured Depression”

This past summer, I waited on tables for a bit. And, except for the excessive weight and sleep loss, it was a really good experience.

One thing I learned from it is that one crappy table does not make for a crappy day. It makes for a crappy table. Your next table might be the best table ever. Check in with me every 45 minutes or so, and my day assessment would be completely different each time.

That principle is the same with my current struggle against my depression. A morning of exhausted defeatedness doesn’t resign my whole day to the same. It’s hard to maintain that perspective and not sit down in my grief and stay put.

I thought, being home, I would be better, that I would leave this dampered state in Ireland or in Arkansas, but I didn’t.

And I see my siblings and their kids and my parents and I want to be engaging or ecstatic to be with them, but I can’t get there. I feel trapped. I so want to be fun and chirpy or even pretend to be, but I can’t even manufacture that like I used to be able to.

I’m frustrated with myself.

I’m frustrated with who I’ve become, and I don’t want to talk to my friends or “my people” because I don’t want to be such an unending killjoy. Or I don’t want to talk to them because they hear my semester’s story and miss the point. They hear only the superficial struggles, easy to fix and apologize for or only the parts which are congruent with their own delusions of reality, but they don’t hear my heart.

And then, out of nowhere, the plexiglass that stands between me and everybody else melts, and I can hear them and feel happiness and have fun and let go! So wonderful!

Then one comment or well-meant question trips me off again. “Oh you live in Ireland? So jealous. You’re so legit.” You couldn’t be more wrong, but you so don’t want to hear about it.

This was not the plan! This was never the plan! The plan was I go to Ireland and have adventures and the experience of my lifetime, then spend a few days alone, then reunite with people I love for a while, and then come back to my rose-colored life on the emerald isle.

Extended and strangling anxiety was not in the plan, nor being forgotten, nor hatred for almost every moment of my life there, complete aloneness, rejection, replacement, depression, constant misunderstandings, a worry to my family and friends, a worrier for friends who are broken and breaking themselves and, finally, being sent home in disgrace and failure because I just couldn’t take it anymore.

I’m not supposed to be here yet! This was not the plan. I failed. I failed and I’m not getting better. What is the big picture? What is my “why”? And when will I see it?

Being alone, you can be in bad shape and know it to a certain extent, but it’s when you’re surrounded by people that the mirror of reality is shoved in your face.

For instance, I knew I had lost some weight, but I didn’t realize just how much. I’m currently two pounds under my thinnest weight of my thinnest summer, and this the result of “I gained it all back I swear”. No telling how low I got this past semester. Food and I aren’t getting along.

Neither are sleep and I. My sleep schedule has been all kinds of everywhere, but not until I’m around people with normal sleep schedules did I see how odd I’ve been allowing mine to be. 4.5 hours here, 12 hours there, never a pattern, never the same.

Following Jesus is putting on pants; it’s building a steel structure of normality for my fog, and forcing my will and body to cooperate. Like sleep and food. Like making some progress on my looming papers (oops…) or leaving the house. Following Jesus means giving up the last piece of my dignity and self-dependence and getting some help.

I pray so dearly that I never again become so self-important and callous that the Lord has to bring me back to this place.

One More Time With Feeling

I had a dream once. Not like Martin Luther King Junior. The real kind. The kind your sleeping self creates.

In this dream, there was a path. A silent man to my left, but to my right were two people standing with their backs to me talking a ways down the sloped road. But I walked past them, walking straight and toward a hill.

I walked with big strides up the pathway, hooking my feet into the creases in the cracked dirt and making good time.

The hill got steeper, though, and as I looked forward, I saw it wasn't a hill at all but a mountain. The nearly ninety degree up kind, and the air was thinning. I got slower. Still long strides, but with so much more effort and not enough oxygen to keep up even that pace.

The man wrapped his fingers into my rib cage. He was having no problem keeping a consistent pace and now steel-grip, half-dragged me up along with him. I could feel his fingers bruising into me.

Feet no longer catching hold but slipping. Air coming less. Rim of sight fuzzing, darkening. Dizzy. Still those fingers in my ribs pulling me up.

We came up and I saw the burning edges of the sunset over the crest of the mountain. And passed out.
_________________________________________________________________________________

There was one more chapter to my pain. I left Siloam perfect. My memories there, perfect. And they needed to be rewritten into reality.

I prayed extensively beforehand, knowing that I was to be watched and knowing I would face questions.

Lord, What do I say? How am I to be gracious? How am I to speak the truth? With what words do I fill my mouth?

Then came the moment when I fully grasped it: No matter what I say, no matter what I do, others will believe what they will believe. I cannot make for myself my reputation. It is the Lord who writes my name.

Therefore, whether it makes me look weak or undone, I will speak the truth. I will speak the truth with deep humility and without shame. "The Lord has dealt with me."

In Siloam, I learned of more betrayal, of secrecy, of broken, broken journeys, and of pain.

I was left with nothing but compassion and a deep ache, knowing of self-destructive bonds forged out of ignorance. You  know not what you are doing, but it is your journey. Not mine.

To my supervisors, professors, and friends, I told the truth of my current state and of my own journey. Never have I been not more open but more raw or present in my answers. Never have I been less lovely.

And yet, and yet, the Lord was seen. In the wreck that is my body and my life, the ones who know me spoke over me favor. I, who have sought my whole life for that favor and respect; I, who have twisted myself mangled to achieve honor; I, who have always fallen short of what I wanted, am only to receive it now, when I am the least deserving of the words I once fought so hard to win.

Then, I walked away and didn't look back. I did not get my closure. I did not seek my closure. I chose my closure. I chose to walk alone and allow The Lord to do his own work without me putsing about in somebody else's path.

Muted by pain and so present in my pain, but I am so thankful.

My future husband and children and friends will bless, bless, bless these past four months. I myself will bless these past four months.

I am changed, told I even look it.

My story is not my own. The Lord has closed my journal and opened a new book, writing my pathway with blood and tears and truth.

I am home, but I am not better yet, and that is difficult for me to accept. However, a whooped boxer doesn't spritz away dainty after his rounds. He is taken out of the ring, cradled away, and nursed back into battle mode.

I have been taken out of my ring. I have been cradled. And now, I just need time to heal.

At the end of the day: Jesus.

At the end of the day: soundness of mind, right alignment of body and spirit, grace, humility, forgiveness, love, compassion, shameless truth, and the deep recognition and value of friendship and of being human.

At the end of the day: hope.

Pre-Release Reflections

While I've been here, every single thing has gone wrong.

An aspect of each and every one of my most deeply seated fears has come to pass from my nightmare dreamscape and into my reality.

Every single one of my figurative bones was fisted and crumbled in the hands of my God through people and circumstances I had put faith in.

And I did not come out a phoenix.

I came out as blubbering, desperate, shaky, pale, unrecognizable pulp, asking "Who have I become here?"

I have experienced great darkness in my life before. It is terrible and has brought me to moments of unbelievable agony I once felt I could never escape.

This was different.

It was not suffocating darkness but a sword of light.

Lies didn't stick to me. Anxiety didn't overcome me. There was nothing for me to "overcome" necessarily.

Rather, I was being loved so fiercely that He couldn't allow "me" to survive. Good doesn't always feel good.

And then I hit the end. I spoke hope to myself and wrote hope on my blog (or tried to), but I absolutely could go no further.

And it was then, only then, when I was pulverized and defeat had been announced on every front, that God exploded into my life and provided for me a way out. 

The fight that's been so always present in me was beaten out. My hope, my faith in myself, beaten out. Even when I thought everything that could be beaten out was beaten out, God found more.

And yet, I would choose this all again.

No question. No hesitation.

I am not afraid of next semester. After my time of restoration and recuperation, I will come back to the tepee of a life that God and I have built. It will be so good, and I'm even a little excited about what could be in store.

One day, one step at a time.

Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret.

That clip is from my one of my all-time favorite movies. More than anything I could write, it sums up my semester here. Less bitter and defiant on my part, though. Probably. God may disagree if you asked him.

Happy Friday the 13th, y'all.

Highlights from today?

ha. I don't even...where to start?

It ended?

That's not fair. I went and saw a movie tonight with Naomi and her boyfriend/not boyfriend/on and off boyfriend Craig. Frozen. It was just good, clean, sharp wit. Hilarious. Loved it. Then back to hers for gingerbread cookies and, of course, tea.

Got Indian food with Elaine this afternoon and brainstormed a wider band for one of my paper topics. I simply cannot write 5,000 words on an argument for bipolar disorder in Ulysses' Molly. Even if I could, I need a secondary text.

The new topic is "Trapped: The Gap Between Desire and Reality." It's over the juxtaposition between literal entrapment of Lois in her home in The Last September and Molly's bedriddenness. And how it relates to them both relationally, communicatively, and psychologically. An argument for depression in Lois and one for bipolar II in Molly.

A note on Elaine and Naomi.

Often I feel awkward around both.

However, Elaine and I need each other. And, in so many ways, we're experiencing the same kinds of things. Wanting to be known and connect and just have someone there, but not having "our person" there. And she and I have had an incredible amount of struggle--I remember telling a friend's mum earlier on in the semester that an act of God needed to happen in that relationship before it could be even tolerable--but the God who moves mountains deals also in hearts.

Over the past month or month and a half, she has been the one the Lord provided for me. She is not what I asked for or expected--our current church sermon series right now is "The Expected from the Unexpected." Could not be more true here.--but she has been here physically for me. That alone has flooded me with...I dunno...relief? Comfort? Humility? Thankfulness?

And Naomi. Such a lovely girl, but I am just so awkward around her for some reason. But she's also the kind of person I know cares after my aliveness. We don't have that "I must be your friend or will languish in eternal agony" like some of my other best friends and I, but she's loyal and pursues me. I know once every week or two I'll get a text asking for my schedule. A "when" not "if" no matter how busy she is.

So thank you, God.

I also had a wee chat with a guy in a coffee shop today over the existence of God (me and coffee, I swear). I wasn't up on my evangelistic game. However, I neither believe I was going to change his mind forever after it had been hardened right there and right then nor do I think that my sad answer was going to confirm his atheism. It was just good, friendly craic.

He asked me what evidence I had to believe in God.

My answer was something to the effect of my very continued life, that sometimes, you just need to believe in God because that's the only answer you have.

It isn't kosher (I would know. ex-Jew center employee) to reference your own writing, but saddle-in. I'm about to.

My senior thesis was a long work of creative non-fiction called "WaterWorks." It was a chapbook, comprised of a whole bunch of styled, structured essays over a mutual theme of water.

Several them are quite immature and silly, or at least laughable. Some are serious. Some are trying too hard. Some are too vulnerable to actually be in there (thus no push for publication), I think, but it exists nonetheless (feel free to ask after it. I'll email it over, sure).

One of my favorite pieces (though not my professors) is an etymological study behind the word "tear" (the wee eye rain, not paper-ripping). Etymology is just a fancy way to say a study of word origins. I trace it from its root and variations, then bring it from scientific to specific. I like it very much.

I bring it up because the last line of it, which I stole/based-off a line of a poem of mine I didn't want to burn, has been playing in my mind. It's rather worthless to bring up here because you haven't read it, nor would it make sense to take it out of context and reproduce it here, but I've just been thinking about it.

The image it conjures is one total, broken, tears-in-hands, collapse before the spirit of the living God. It's the moment when all you can think to pray is Lord, have mercy. 

Inexplicably beautiful and wretched at one time.