I refuse to continue censoring my soul to impress the people I’m with.
I love my community. I love Drew. I love my family. I love the girl who sits next to me in class. I really do. But here’s the thing: I feel like 99.9% of me is buried underneath the surface, seen by no one, and bottling up my soul only causes frustration for me and damages my relationships. So here goes.
Who am I? Who I am changes depending on the circumstances, depending on my surroundings, depending on who I’m with–because it’s what I’ve always had to do. I’ve had to be adaptable, resilient, because that’s how I’ve survived thus far without going completely insane. I’m a survivor, damnit. And now my survival skills are catching up with me and getting in my way. It seems adaptable isn’t always good.
I want to scream and yell and let out twenty-two years of bottled-up opinions buried by conformity. You know what? I like turkey bacon and I don’t care who the hell knows it. Some time ago I decided I didn’t like bacon because it seemed like one way I could be “unique” and cool (also, I had never really tried it). But you know what? Every time I think of turkey bacon, I practically drool. Fuck conformity; I love bacon. You know what else? I’ve never felt comfortable at parties. I used to drink myself into oblivion at them just so I could avoid the uncomfortable suspicion that I didn’t fit in with this room full of rebels and hard-asses. And you know what? Since I’ve begun loving Jesus I haven’t missed those awkward drunken parties one bit. On the other hand, there’s something else: I’m not near as super-spiritual as half of my closest friends and nowhere near as “spiritual” as I’d like them to think I am. I don’t want to join them for “evangelism,” and I certainly don’t want to wake up at six a.m. so I can have “quiet time” and feel like I somehow love Jesus as much as they do. Don’t get me wrong: I love God. He is my source, my deepest joy, my refuge, my closest friend. Jesus is really and truly the only name in the world that sends a sweet shiver down my soul. I have always, as long as I can remember, felt inexplicably drawn to God–drawn to the knowledge that he is infinitely more than anything I can comprehend. But hyper-spirituality and “Christian subculture” frustrate me to no end. I love the grit and dirt of people. I love messiness and raw honesty and occasional cuss words because I don’t feel anyone can fully appreciate redemption without completely feeling the weight of The Fall. I love art for art’s sake, simply because God is a creator and is breathtakingly beautiful. “Christian music” tends to annoy me because, quite honestly, it’s often not very good either lyrically or musically. There’s no grit, no reality, no humanity to it, and therefore it annoys me because it’s a bad representation of the Creator. I want beauty, and I want freedom, and I want a raw, naked-in-the-Garden-of-Eden kind of humanity. Because really, I see Jesus’ beauty best in a gut-wrenchingly honest Eminem song; I see it in a drive through the countryside; I see it in a deliciously crispy piece of turkey bacon; I see it in morning coffee and conversation with a good friend. It’s much harder for me to see Jesus’ beauty in a four-hour-long “prayer and encouragement night” or in super-spiritual lingo or in a cliche “Christian song.” I know for some people, that does it; but for me it does not, and, as I said before: I refuse to continue censoring my soul to impress the people I’m with.
August 19, 2011
Into Minnesota May 10, 2011
I started a new blog today just to document my summer adventures in Minnesota for my family and friends! Check it out: Into Minnesota
The Next Chapter April 25, 2011
I’ve begun packing boxes to move out in two weeks. My house–the first place that’s ever been mine–and I can’t believe how much has changed since I moved in two years ago. The walls of my house have observed me through all of it; they probably don’t recognize me as the thoughtless girl who first unpacked these things.
My bedroom carpet has been soaked with tears more times than I can count; but lately the only water that has reached the floor is the rain that trickled in through my bedroom window yesterday as I joyfully watched a spring rainstorm. I think I’m glad to leave this house and live no longer in walls that remind me of the past. I am thankful for the chance to live under a roof of new beginnings. As I’m moving out, I’m simplifying–giving away material possessions that I don’t need, and surprising myself with how little I actually do need. It’s not much. A place to lay my head, a few simple pairs of clothes, and books to keep my soul alive. What I do need is the people–the friends who have seen more of me even than these walls have–and the presence of God. Really, I’m finding, that’s all.
March 26, 2011
Tonight I’m reminded of the Lord’s patient love through Drew.
This isn’t the first night in my life that I’ve let myself be overwhelmed by selfish emotions; it’s a place where I’m most broken and most in need of the Lord’s grace. It’s also a place I’ve seen incredible transformation, not because of myself but because of God’s work in me.
So tonight, when I’m already vulnerable and I begin believing the enemy’s lies, everything within my flesh tells me to run away because suddenly things aren’t easy. It’s all I’ve ever known. It’s like when I was twelve years old and would run away from home and spend the night in the laundromat whenever my parents would fight. It’s like every relationship I’ve ever known: run away when things get hard because if I don’t leave first, they will.
So tonight I left. I walked out through his back door without saying goodbye and sped away in my car with him standing under the porch light, a scenario I’ve felt a hundred times. I felt like I was ten years old, locking myself in my bedroom closet, buried under a pile of blankets and pillows so I can’t hear the fighting. Except that tonight, for the first time in my life, running away didn’t feel right anymore. I only made it down the block before I felt the pull on my heart: turn the car around, go back inside, and admit you’re wrong.
Where I expected to find anger, I found gentle and patient love. I heard Let’s talk about it instead of silence. I felt the Lord beginning to unravel the patterns I’ve always known to make something new, something healthy and beautiful.
So this is my way of saying thank you to you, Drew. Thank you for showing me gentleness and so much love, even though I’m weak and so often wrong. I’m so blessed to have you in my life. God teaches me so much through you.
March 8, 2011
I am absolutely, incredibly floored by God’s grace right now!
I got a letter in the mail today from the people I’ll be working for at the Mayo Clinic for my internship this summer. I had told them that I would work on absolutely any unit; just the chance to work at Mayo was enough for me! I’ve also been praying ridiculous amounts about this internship; praying that God would set up divine appointments with patients and other nurses and doctors so that He can minister to them through me. I’ve been praying that, throughout this entire summer, nothing would be about me, but that it would all be about bringing Him glory and seeing people healed in miraculous ways because of His goodness.
If you know me, you know that when I was fourteen I spent a couple of months in a mental hospital healing from anorexia nervosa, and was later re-hospitalized after a suicide attempt. I’m not ashamed of this part of my past because God healed me completely from both my eating disorder and depression and it’s by His grace that I’m here today. He has used this–the weakest and most shameful part of my life–to show His goodness to other people, and so I’m not ashamed of it today because it brings healing to others.
I told the Mayo Clinic staff that I would work anywhere, and I told them nothing about my past. Today I got a letter in the mail from them: I’ll be working on the Adolescent Psychiatric Unit. Of all the places in the largest research hospital in the world to work, I am working on this unit.
Tell me that’s not the hand of God.
Thank you, Father, for your incredible goodness. The ways you work are beyond our understanding.
March 2, 2011
your kisses were bookends
hello and goodbye
and i felt them in the deepest way
one can know such things
if ever there was a time for this
it’d be a long ride with no water
and the barest feet with barer souls
but you held my hand with one
and hers with the other and i
was too busy picking apples to see
that you were like that old Chinese place
you took me to three years ago
delicious, but it didn’t satisfy
February 12, 2011
Man, I’ve just been taking one beating after another from the enemy this week. It has been so rough.
But praise God anyways because I know he’s up to something.
