Comfortable in my own skin

i went backpacking on the Appalacian Trail this last weekend.

2 days notice.

hardly any forethought.

just because i had told myself about a month ago:

you should look into taking a backpacking trip.

so i said yes.



the most physically challenging thing i've ever done.

carrying a backpack about a third your weight will do that to you.

and borrowing hiking boots that give you blisters only contributes.



but none of that stopped me from probably having the best experience i've had since moving out here (besides going home to michigan). i don't think i have ever felt more comfortable with myself among such a diverse group of people in such an incredibly short period of time. completely unexpected



the possible discomfort of a trip with complete strangers didn't even cross my mind until i pulled up to the lodge thursday morning. then it was, oh shit, what did i get myself into?
but after the initial awkwardness of the first day, i found a group of people who found me funny.
go figure. me-funny. my sarcasm was actually appreciated/understood. and my forgetfulness/clumsiness, a group joke, not a curse.
haven't had that in a long time.

i found a group of people who i could learn from; yet were still willing to learn. i was reminded of what it's like to be with educators. we never stop learning.

i found a group of people who took care of me. it was essential. i couldn't take care of myself. they noticed me. and did something about it. they were incredibly present.
do you know the last time someone took care of me?
the last time someone really noticed me?
noticed and did something about it?

i haven't been seen, really seen, in years.
i haven't allowed myself to be.

the last time i really let myself be seen and taken care of, it was all wrong. the privilege was taken from me by persuasion and guilt, handed over reluctantly. never given freely. i've been hesitant ever since. i hide behind responsibility, duty, everybody else's ignorance, and lies. quite honestly everyone else is just too busy to see through the facade. and even if they notice, they all too often don't have the time and/or tools to do it well.

i love to play; to discover and create. i want to be free. but life gets in the way. i long to be childlike; unassuming; space to move and just be. i shouldn't be put in a cage.

backpacking let me be just that.
the people let me be just that.
free.

1500 miles later....

After
1500 miles &
3 weeks,
I'm left with a
1/2 filled gas tank
1 runny nose
2 bleary eyes &
1000 memories.

Here I stand--correction: kneel,
grateful for all that I have been given.

My life will never be the same.
Old chapters are closed with a sigh of relief.
New doors are opening.
Hope is on the horizon.

I never expected life to be thrown into such utter contrast and sharp clarity. I never expected to be so broken and so healed--cathartic. And I most definitely never expected to find home.

It's funny how we say things even when we're not really sure we mean it. I do it all the time--exaggerate, excuse, boast, bemoan. And then I kick myself because I really do like to mean what I say and say what I mean. But the more I think about what I say and who I have become, it seems to be more of a self-fulfilling prophecy, a proclamation once spoken that must come true. I recall vows I made or words I felt that I spoke rashly in the last say 5 years and then I evaluate my life and realize maybe I wasn't that far off.

Example: Last summer when introducing myself at church, I named my hometown as Lawton MI. I'm not really sure why I said it to this day and afterwards I regretted it because of the comments and jibes I received. But after these last two weeks, I realized how true it is. And I realized that's what I've been running from.

How dare I find the place I want to call home before I've lived hardly anywhere else. How dare I
settle on a relatively small town in the Midwest in one of the states with the worst economy in the nation. How dare I move in with a family after I've moved out of my own. That just couldn't be. So I ran.

If I hadn't ran, I would never have considered going back contented with the reality God has called me to. Had I not ran, I would not have returned confident in who I am a part from any job, friend, or family. Had I not ran, I would most certainly have never learned the absolute value of people. I would never have been given the unique opportunity and privilege to choose lasting relationships over adventure, success, and power, fully aware of the decision, not paralyzed by fear but empowered by grace.

If I am to say, as I have always said somewhat prophetically, that I am about people more than about a job, success, power, money, or anything else this world has to offer, then I cannot treat individuals as disposable. I cannot be this person that floats in and out of people's lives. My nature is to wedge myself into people's lives, leaving an indelible mark, even when I try not to. That was my theoretical paradigm but I have realized my theory and reality didn't match. A paradigm shift was required. 6 months ago, looking for a job, I said to myself, I can love any kid, any person anywhere. I will move wherever I please and just work with the people there for that time and then move on. Essentially, adventure and experience trumped people and relationships. I was willing to sacrifice meaningful relationship to the god of I've done this and I've been there; be jealous. So here I sit. Alone. In a place that makes me long for somewhere called home, having once again left the real relationships behind. God has had His way with me.
I am meant to be somewhere, not just float by.
I will open myself to the possibility of the long term.
I will consider quality over quantity.
I will stop trying to save the world.
I will just be me, a person who needs the support and love of a solid Christian community of all depths and ages to be the best that she can be in a simple, beautiful world uncomplicated by time, deadlines, and the race to success with wide, open spaces to breathe.

You don't realize what a good thing you had until you've lost it.

answers

I always answer. always.
whether I should or not, I always do.
God, why can't I just keep my mouth shut?

That's all I've been doing the last 6 months.
answering.
looking for answers.
running from answers.
forging my own answers.

forging.
there's a great word to describe my answers.
forgery.
I don't actually have the answers so I make up my own.
and they fail every time. but sometimes it takes awhile for them to fail--a week, a month, a few months. or rather I talk myself into my answers so well that I really do think they are the answers. until they slap me in the face. repeatedly. because after all, I can't get it the first time.

that's where I am. slapped. repeatedly. empty handed. dreams ripped out. abandoned.
who would ask for anything more?
apparently, I do.

I have nowhere to go. and yet everywhere. I have no answers and yet all of them. I know You have them, but You are strangely silent, letting me wander around, knocking on every door, following my own pursuits in utter frustration. I don't know how to do anything else.

I have been humbled.
I have been brought to the depths of utter despair, fully aware that all of my answers have brought me there. my search for adventure, excitement, experience, power, money, success, and pride. I am without any answers. I feel as if I have tried everything I know.
and found lacking.

it just adds up sometimes

you know what stinks about life?
that there are always dishes to do,
the clothes don't fold themselves,
and EVERYTHING always gets dirty.

always. without fail.
and I have to take care of it. me.
I hate taking care of those things
because it's a problem that never solves itself.

where's the sense of accomplishment in washing the dishes if right after you finish, you prepare dinner and make more dirty dishes? there is none! and by the time I finish eating, I'm too tired to clean up. And who wants to do dishes in a sink that is under a stairwell anyways?
bah humbug.

don't even get me started on doing laundry.

why does life have to be consumed by these details? why are they such a chore? why can't I stay on top of them? why is it an endless battle with myself--one I'm constantly losing?

in so many ways these last two weeks I have felt like I can't see past these details. not just in my housekeeping, but in everything. I am consumed by the small things: the heat, the humidity, the laundry, the dishes, what my next drink should be (I literally calculate how and what I should get from which coffee shop or store that will satisfy my particular craving the best), what time I should go to bed, what time I should get up, how much gas I need, how much money I have for gas, what clothing I should wear, how much I need a hair cut, where I should get a haircut, how much money I should spend on a haircut, and the list goes and could become incredibly minute in detail if I allowed it. It is insane. It's tunnel vision at its worst. It's tunnel vision to the point where I become so frustrated with a student because I can't see past the sweat dripping down my back and can't bear to think of driving yet another block around this wretched city, just to satisfy her endless craving to be with me. A craving that I can never fully satisfy. It's tunnel vision because I can't bear to think past the details to the larger implications. I can't process what it means to that student that I let her down yet again--for the hundredth time in a world where all she has known is disappointment. Not because I am not capable--because I am quite capable.
No. I have had too much of reality. too much. I have seen too much. I have heard too much. I know too much. And I just can't take anymore. I cannot ingest another injustice. I cannot stomach another heartache. I cannot absorb any more abandonment. It's nobody's fault. And yet everyone's. I have taken it from every side. I have been stretched beyond what I thought stretchable. And I am still here. But I feel as if I can't take another step. I feel as if I can't care for another heartache no matter how small. I feel as if the battle has been decided before it was ever fought. and I've lost. until...

Until she sits on my lap, lays her head next to mine and whispers in my ear.
Until he grabs my hand in fear as he climbs his first mountain.
Until she compulsively reaches for a hug because words are not enough.
Until she says "I'll call you later" and really does.
Until he smiles for a picture you never thought he'd take.

And then you think and pray I will never be enough for these children but Lord, may I just be a piece, a piece in their puzzle, because they are already a huge one in mine.

eager expectation with hope

i need to write something--
but i'm too tired.
i need to make sense/put something down in carbon
but i've been dragged through a ringer.

life requires that we process what has happened to us--
or so our generation says.
sometimes i wonder if the silence to which the previous generations adhered wasn't such a bad idea.

not that i talk.
no i just think.
and i'm exhausted.

i have thought about more things in the last 2 months living alone than i have ever in my entire life.
no joke.

it is good.
it is necessary.
it is healing.
but it also leaves one feeling incredibly exhausted, wondering why. because after all, what have i done but sit.

i like being alone. alone with my thoughts. alone with myself. even if i don't always spend it well. i don't write enough. i don't paint enough. i don't pray enough. it will never been enough. yet i still wait in eager expectation with hope.

hope that some day
it will bring peace.

sitting on my hands

I am so incredibly impatient--and I have asked God to teach me patience.
So I am trying to sit on my hands.
far easier said that done.

I've quit my job: some because I don't like it; some because I'm exhausted; mostly because God asked me to. because I am NOT a quitter. damn it, I'm not! I will stick things out until I like them, even if I never really do. That's how much of a non-quitter I am. But I am a square peg being shoved into a round hole. I could stay, but I've experienced this once before quite strongly and while I loved that place and its people more than life itself-still do, it made me weep. still does.

Sometimes we are asked to give up our dreams so that God can give them back to us in better form than we imagined.

But right now I just feel like throwing a fit.

I sat on the boardwalk on Staten Island, mesmerized by the tiny lights of vehicles creeping along the Verrazano Bridge and the glow of the city, waves crashing and wind blowing. A teenager on the bench next to me bickering with her mother on the phone. If you really loved me then you'd give me what I want. I've never asked you for anything. Just give me this one thing. A sense of entitlement. I see it every day in my children. I hear the same arguments, the same exact words. Uncanny.

How many times have I had that same argument with God?

And then He gives me my way--as if to say here, you try it. Tell me how it goes. So I go to work. I look at the possibilites. I search. I dream. I plan. I am like a child on the floor, amongst a giant puzzle, trying to put the pieces together but the pieces are too heavy for me to lift. No amount of planning and scheming can give me the strength to move them. I have to wait for them to move. And then when they move I become frustrated because they don't move in the order I want! As if I had any control over them in the first place.

If I had not planned, I would not have been frustrated. I would have rejoiced in their movement, fascinated by how they came together with divine timing.

So I am trying to sit on my hands. I am trying desperately not to plan. That's a huge reason why I try to fill my life to the brim, so I can't plan. Now I am learning how not to plan in the silence. When every bone in my body says, you must remain on top of things. The voice of my mother echoing in my head. You should've been prepared. You should've left more time. You should've thought of that. So I plan. I prepare. And I'm still frustrated. BECAUSE I CAN'T MAKE THE PIECES MOVE!

I can't make my home in a place where my gifts aren't used.
I can't work in a place where I am taken advantage of.
I can't live with someone who doesn't understand me.

But I want my home back. I want a place where I feel safe and capable, a community to love and be loved. I want to work to my full capacity, to make the most of every opportunity, to be everything that I can be. And I want to live with someone in companionship and love for life.

My attempts have failed. So God sent me to Newark New Jersey. The only thing that really makes sense so far is the thing He has sent me out here to do--work with urban youth. And all my plans to make the other pieces fall into place have been frustrated. Far sooner because I listen at least a little bit better than before.

So I sit in the middle of the puzzle pieces of my life--waiting. waiting for the pieces to move and desperately trying to just be. to stop checking the job sites. to stop thinking about the future. and just reside in the present. but it's hard.

God teach me patience.

The Other Side

One of my students that I am particularly close to has taken an interesting turn in the last few days. She can be incredibly intense, prone to yelling when frustrated without a second thought or slamming items down. But she is also one of my most dedicated helpers on a good day. Today though, today was not a good day. Nor was yesterday. I find myself becoming increasingly frustrated with her because I know who she really is, not this angry arrogrant demon child. Yet she insists upon putting on faces that just aren't her. And she knows I know she's doing it. She knows she's pushing my limits because she knows me so well.
As a relationship with a person, especially a child, becomes more intimate, there are things that were excusable at the beginning of the relationship because of ignorance that are no longer excusable. When I first met her, I excused her rudeness because I knew she didn't know any better. Now she knows. Now there isn't an excuse. Now it is a lashing out, not aimed at me personally which I know, but still unacceptable. So now I get in her face about it because I'm sick of taking her crap. She demands respect from me, which I have given her, because she deserves it and she's not getting it anywhere else. But she's not giving it to me. She is also finding that as I get to know her better that I will hold her to the potential that I know she has. That I demand she give me her best and no excuses are allowed and she finds that frustrating. So yesterday was a particularly bad day and she got a lecture for it in the car before her Kumon. A lecture, mind you, not a yelling because she gets that all the time. No, this was a reasonable appeal to the God-given nature within her, the conscience that is there, fed feebly by what few words of Truth she hears at church. After which, she stormed into Kumon.
However something interesting occurred while she was working on her Kumon. This something caused her to come up to me after Kumon and apologize because she felt guilty (she used the word guilty, not me). This was a real apology, something that I haven't received from any of my students before. Sure they say they're sorry but it is not one of genuine repentance. This one struck me. She does that. She says things that are far beyond her years that will strike me; things about herself, responses to my comments, genuine Truth flows from her mouth. That's not something I get from my other students. We talked about it. I told her I forgive her and that there is a clean slate and that that is what forgiveness means. We shook on it and the moment passed.
But later as I was driving home, I realized that I had never received an apology like that before. For the first time in my life this real genuine apology of a child forced me to face the fact that in accepting that apology and genuinely offering forgiveness, I was acknowledging that I had been hurt. I was acknowledging that I am vulnerable. I was acknowledging it and offering real healing for both of us and not shrugging it off saying it's ok whatever, sweeping it under the rug. There is more to forgiveness than just forgetting.
I can forget almost anything. It gives me an incredible capacity to be open to people and life. I just plain don't remember all of the things that have hurt me in this life. It is a defense mechanism, but it also explains why my tendency is to be reactionary and why I effectively cut people out of my life without a second thought once they have crossed that certain line. I may forget what exactly they did, but a wall is established that I will not cross even though I may want to. There are a few friends that I still hope against all hope that they won't hurt me the same way that they do every time I share a real piece of myself because I still believe in that person I know they can be. But time and time again it happens. So walls are established. These walls are like two way mirrors. I, behind the mirror reflect back to whoever the person is, more often than not, what part of me they want to see to whatever extent that will allow them to feel at ease with me. My life and character is so multi-faceted and deep that it is hardly ever a lie of who I am but rather a simplification. A simplification because I feel I'm just too complicated for most people to handle. Meanwhile I am behind the mirror, taking in all that these people are, protected by the reflection, the illusion that they know me when they really don't. But it also backfires on me because then people often have no idea that they have hurt me in the first place. And being the incredibly complex person I am, I did not become this way because life was all sunshine and flowers. This kind of complexity is only sprung out of hurt and pain in a sensitive soul that cause much thought and growth. Hurt and pain that have hardly ever received real apologies because to me how can it be real if that person doesn't really understand how they've hurt me? Therefore I have very rarely offered real forgiveness but instead built the wall and forgotten-or attempted. There are also key severed relationships throughout my life that I have never given them the opportunity to apologize and therefore the chance for me to offer forgiveness. Not that they need to offer an apology for me to forgive, but it shows how unwilling I am to admit that I am vulnerable, let alone continue to be vulnerable in the relationship with the acknowledgment to myself and that person that I am vulnerable and capable of being hurt.
In this job with these children I have had the opportunity to offer real apologies, something I have spent much of my life working up to because it was never said at home where I wanted to hear it the most. Never did I expect from this to be taught such a valuable lesson in forgiveness. Never did I expect to experience it from the other side.
I am vulnerable.
When you hurt me, I will acknowledge it. And in doing so, I will more than likely be asking more out of you than you want to give. I will be holding you to a higher standard than you feel you can live up to. I only do so because I can see vividly the potential that you have been given. And if I don't make that known, then I am not doing myself a disservice but you.
Truth must be spoken.
When an apology is offered, I will accept it. I will acknowledge forgiveness. And when I forgive, I vow to continue in the relationship in loving acknowledgement of and growth from the past, not forgetfulness of it. I will not build the wall.
Love must be lived.