Here I am, writing because I said I would. Writing because when I do I render my world shattered yet all the more whole.
This has been a year where so many words have been stuck in my head. Swirling about, longing to be captured and crafted onto a page. They’re stored in my visions, glimpses of inspiration from fleeting moments all around me. That’s why I’m sitting here, writing because I said I would. Writing because I thought it would pull the words out of me and onto this page but I guess when they’ve been left unsaid, or unwritten, for so long, they’re not going to let me off the hook quite that easily. I could keep writing from my stream of consciousness like this but I set to out to write something good. To try to create something of beauty from all that I have learned, felt, and lived over this past year that has had me reaching for pen and paper with every fear, every inspiration, every victory, and every doubt; producing melodramatic journal entries that sometimes make me raise an eyebrow at myself like I do in my head when someone is publically letting their own crazy show. Yet, right now felt like a good time to write because it’s one of the few times this year I’m not hell-bent on escape from all of the things I’ve been called to in this life that I oftentimes just feel so unqualified for. Though, right now, I feel an eerie comfort in the contentment of staying in this tension. It’s strange, but I’ve been here before. Maybe it’s all of the unexpected voices this year that have been affirming my diversity. The voices that make me stay every time I want to run when it all just becomes too much. How do I always forget that tension means I’m doing it right? The whole reason I liked you in the first place was because of your faith. Because of how you live out your beliefs with grace, intelligence, and respect. I fell for your passion and confidence. Your growth over the past few years has been my inspiration. I love your spirit. Never let anyone kill that in you. You write with such rawness and humility. You need to do that more. It’s strange to me. Having people see me. Really see me. The truth is. I don’t know how to not be myself. I never did. In elementary school, I never cared about being friends with the popular crowd. I just wanted to unapologetically get straight A’s and be better than all of the other kids at kickball. Don’t judge me, we all have our struggles. Or judge me, it’s fine. That’s your burden to bear. In middle school, I left the popular lunch table when a friend said, “Oh, we can totally make her so popular,” about the new girl. Even at 12 years old, something about that just didn’t sit right with me, and next day I had joined another lunch table. They did make the new girl popular, but at what cost to her individuality, I still wonder. I didn’t care about trying to go to all of the best parties in high school and didn’t worry about what I might have been missing. I wasn’t romanced by social hierarchies. I never really understood the purpose of them anyway save for marginalizing those whose value we’re too blind to see. The complexities of hanging my life like bait for the taking was not a hobby I was interested in pursuing. I just wanted to be whoever I was supposed to be, even though I had no idea who she was or where to find her. I thought I did though. I thought I did until I met God in a mid-morning haze seeped with empty promises and cheap alcohol and found that He had disqualified me from the race of notoriety and belonging and fitting-in with the world. “My love, you have forgotten who you are.” Today I meet God in the perfect faces, laughter, and hugs of my students. I meet God with empty hands raised on Sunday morning, reaching but never getting close enough to the one who gave me this spirit and confidence that everyone has been complimenting. I meet God in my dramatic journaling and in my failures and anxiety. I meet God in early morning song on my way to work and in tears when it’s all just too much. I meet God with weakness, gasping for breath on the floor of the gym as I break myself down to make me that much stronger. How grateful I am that He broke me down spiritually in this same way. How grateful I am that He met me in the depth of my brokenness so I can now meet Him in glory and power. How grateful I am that He continues to do that every day I draw from the breath He has put in my lungs. And God still meets me. God meets me in my doubt. In my joy. In my anxiety. In my certainty and in my restlessness. He meets me in my questioning. He meets me in a current of tears as he tells me that just like He set me apart from this world, He has also set me apart from the human confines of a religion that tries yet consistently fails to truly follow Him. He meets me when I learn that nor do I know how to truly follow Him either but it’s not going to be by listening to others without remembering that their perspective is also flawed and incomplete. All the while He reminds me that I can trust Him. That He loves me. That because I have been faithful with little, He can continue to entrust me with much, and although I perceive it as something that will break me, He reminds me that I’ve been here before. That I’ve never been broken by anything He has commissioned me to do. Rather it’s always the astounding opposite.
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Author4th grade teacher. Writer. Justice-seeker. Encourager. CrossFitter. John 11:40. Archives
July 2017
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