send

Posted on January 16, 2015 by

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My index finger stopped just above that blue button. I was pausing. I was unsure. Was I not only ready to send this but ready to deal with the response?
 
This is the world we live in today. An impersonal yet somehow personal way of connecting with each other… instantly.
 
I remembering reading several years ago that gmail was instituting a change in their email policies. If it was a certain time of day (late hours of the night) a notice would pop up after you hit “send” and asked, “Are you sure you want to send this?” I think it was called the “drunk email” something – with their goal to prevent stupid things from being sent if you weren’t in control your capacities.
 
What is so bad about that, anyway? Not the drunk part, of course, but the idea that we wouldn’t have time to write a perfectly constructed response to a real person? A live person with feelings and a heart and eyes that you can’t ignore. The idea that we could say what was on our heart and that the person sitting across from us would, too. And I would know it wasn’t entirely edited. And they had to respond right away… instead of waiting for minutes, hours, even days for a response.
 
When I hit send, most of the time my heart is wishing that I was sending this while sitting right in front of you. In your presence, feeling what you feel, seeing the look behind your eyes… the tilt of your head, the position of your shoulders, whether or not you were avoiding my eyes. I want to send these words in your presence, while looking at you, so you know what I mean, and there is no misunderstanding.  You can tell by my tone and from the look in my eyes just how much love there is there.
 
You can be sure. 
 
This. This I love.

 

I’m so done with “send”.
 
 
 
This post is part of Five Minute Friday, a link up of awesome bloggers.

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Posted on January 10, 2015 by

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I was in a hotel room after the first day in Milwaukee, journaling. It had been a very long time since I’d sat down with paper and pen to journal about my “feelings.”  I’ll journal here, typing furiously or sometimes painfully slow, depending on my emotions in that moment. And I journal through books of the Bible sometimes as my devotional. I write down notes on paper in meetings, at conferences. But I’ve stopped the “Dear Diary” kind of moments.

Looking back at that entry today, I understand why.

You don’t censor yourself when having that journaling moment. And I mostly don’t censor here, I guess, but there are details left out “to protect the innocent.” So the words in that red spiral notebook hit me hard today. It was December 4th, the Thursday night of one of the worst weeks of my life, professionally and personally. I needed to process my day but the feelings I’d left back in Arizona kept returning. So they were weaving very carefully into what I wrote that night about my day in Milwaukee. Then soon they took over almost completely.

The entry is about regret, being scared, disappointment and hurt.

And I admitted something to myself that I’m still not sure has validity, but it’s true because it was how I felt in that moment. And reading it now also helps me know it is still true (in the emotions) and that is causing me to pause.

How much of our prayers, our desires for something beautiful on this earth, are simply a result of wanting something redeeming and good and lovely to be born out of our pain? How much of our anxiety and the chaos around us cause so many overwrought feelings, that while on some level are truth, have been magnified because of the brokenness that surrounds us? I just wanted something beautiful to happen in the midst of a horrible situation… but would I pray for that same thing if the situation weren’t so painful?

This is the ache of living in the already and the not yet. This is our consequence for taking that forbidden bite. We know how things ought to be. But we will never have them on this earth. Yet we long for them anyway. How much of the sorrow in my prayers is just about relieving the pain rather what is actually true?

This is one of those “search the heart” and ‘search the mind” moments. I getting pretty tired of them.

 

falling in love

Posted on January 4, 2015 by

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While I have taken the time to identify who and what I must fall out of love with this year, I also must take a moment, with my words and my heart, to remind myself of those I plan to stay in love with.
With my heart open, trying so much to let others love me and know me and be there for me (and hopefully I’ve been able to be there for them in the way they deserve, too) I have found those who have been good to me. Those who have been careful with my heart, who’ve taught me what grace really looks like, what the inconvenience of friendship looks like, and if I’m being completely honest, what true love looks like.
It looks like calling me every morning while I’m putting on my makeup to remind me they are there for me.
It looks like bringing me coffee or flowers. Just because they know it will mean the world to me.
It looks like those who’ve grieved with me, lamented with me, prayed with me when neither of us felt like it, but Jesus made it so.
It looks likes text message not just asking, “How are you?” but asking “How can I help you?”
It looks like laughter and forgiveness and grace and understanding and confusion and talking. Oh, the talking.
It looks like a nearly dead phone battery by 4pm.
These are my people.
The ones I fell in love with and the ones I intended to stay in love with. My people. The ones who get me. The ones who’ve been there even though I don’t deserve it. And have been there because I do. The ones who are willing to lean into the hard it all is and give me a small and significant place to be hurt, to feel, to be who God made me.
With grace. Oh, so much grace.
Thank you. You know who you are. I am a better person because of you. I owe you my heart.
I will hand these people a needle and thread. And slowly, painfully watch as they move in and out of my soul, wading around in the muck and mire. Jesus will help them put me back together again because that’s what he does. He gives us people to break and to bind us.

It’s not safe, but it’s good.

falling out of love

Posted on January 4, 2015 by

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My word for 2014, though I’m only realizing it now that it’s over, was courage.

As I think about what I want and hope from 2015, there is a phrase that keeps running through my head.

“falling out of love with what isn’t good for me”

The phrase, “falling out of love” might be controversial, especially for those of you close to me and didn’t know that I actually fell in love. I only recently realized it myself. (A couple of weeks ago, to be more precise.) Perhaps I didn’t fall in love in the traditional sense. But I did, indeed, fall in love. And I fell in love with some things that weren’t good for me.

There was a lot of heart work done in 2014, where I resolved to be more honest with those I love. And honest with myself. I wanted to be less closed off to the hard experiences and feelings that life brings. And less closed off to let others know me and love me, so I could more fully understand the love of Christ.

And it was pretty awful.

I am gladly leaving 2014 behind.

See, no one told me that it would be painful understanding love more. No one told me that if I let others know me that it would hurt so much. I guess I was hoping that the love of Jesus would make all that hurt go away. It doesn’t. It’s just sits there, painfully aware of the rejection and the dashed hopes and the “I’m not good enough” words whispering in my ears.

Uncovering an idol does this to you. It did it to me.

In the process of letting others know me, I “fell in love” with some people who chose not to treat my heart well. I fell in love with the idea that people make me whole. I fell in love with the idea that Jesus was not enough… and dove, happily, head first, into love with others that turned out to be really good at hurting me.

So.

If 2014 was the year of open heart surgery on my soul, then 2015 must be about stitching it back up.

I must fall out of love.

And when I get some kind of clue as to what the heck that means, I’ll let you know.

pieces

Posted on December 18, 2014 by

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I had stopped at a cute display of wine-themed gifts when it happened. As I stared at the mustache-shaped drink marker, I felt it. The pieces all tumbled out from my core and landed on the floor. They scattered all around me.

I made a fist with my left hand and pressed it up against the hole that was left in my chest, and tears gathered at my bottom lids, then quietly and carefully dropped onto my cheeks. I felt my shoulders rise and fall, with deep breaths attached. Not again, I whispered to myself. I actually began to wonder how there was any way I still had tears left.

I looked down at all the pieces, unsure of what to do. They lay there, to my left. My shopping cart to the right. I gently leaned over and began to scoop them up. A woman stepped around me. “Excuse me,” she said, and I barely glanced up as the shame overcame me and the tears continued to fall. I stood up and wondered where I was supposed to put the pieces I had gathered, and realized these pieces weren’t what you might expect from a heart. These were grey, beaten-up looking.

Almost like they were dead.

I’ve had a broken heart before. This one feels different. Grief comes in the ebb and flow of life, just like the waves obeying the moon. One crashed over me last night as I pulled my car into the garage when Cherry Blossoms came on and I heard In my soul I’m aching to grow/Longing for a love I’ve never known. It happened this morning when I read momastery’s blog right when the words I was trying to un-break broken things entered my heart.

They came last night when I was on the phone with my counterbalance and while I don’t remember what was said, (something about not being punished) I just remember lots and lots of tears. And then daggers to my heart.

Two nights ago when my oldest friend and I were talking, the tears came when he made me laugh about Oreos. I know.

But as I stood in the middle of World Market holding these pieces, I couldn’t figure out where to put them. They wouldn’t fit into my purse. My cart had Christmas presents in it. My pockets didn’t seem very practical.

I left the store and I honestly don’t know where they ended up. But I do know that when I turned into my neighborhood, I said to myself, I have to get over it.

But I also need a safe place to fall apart, to grieve the loss of this love, maybe just lose it all and then cry this pain completely out of my body. The problem is I don’t want to do it alone. But not anyone will do. The one with the daggers, the one whose chest I want to beat on even while my eyes are spent with weeping. The one I want, but not the one I need, to be this safe place. But I am too proud to let this happen yet at the same time can’t imagine anyone else understanding.

I’m still wondering where those pieces ended up.

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