Even if.

/in , ,

I’ve always known I had a choice. I can live in constant fear of the worst happening, or surrender to the fact that I have no control.

This is the lesson that I have been learning my whole life in various ways, but parenthood has really slapped the icing on the cake. Because now there’s this teeny tiny person who relies on me for everything and yet I ultimately have very little control over her life. Yes I make choices that affect her on the day to day, but in the grand scheme of things, her life is out of my hands.

It happened on day one. I had already been wrestling with how my relationship with God might navigate parenthood. Pregnancy had brought with it more anxieties then I had expected. But when Lilah was born she was taken to the NICU. This was it, the moment of deciding what kind of parent I was going to be. Eric and just looked at each other and I said, “I guess this is parenting. We don’t have control of this.” And we didn’t. She only spent five hours in the NICU and ended up being okay, but at the time, we had no idea what was happening. I wasn’t happy about it, but I knew that if I was going to survive the rest of my life without fully breaking down mentally, then I was going to have to learn to take things as they come.

That’s always been quite hard for me. I come from a long line of senseless worriers and so I come about it honestly, and have lived most of my life walking in the ever pacing footsteps of my anxious relatives. But I’ve always wanted it to be different. Deep down I know that the only way to live a life free of deep worry is to open my hands and say “God, even if, you are with me”. Ugh but that is hard. Because how can God really be with us if the worst is happening all around us. If God is good, and just, and loving, then why is there so much pain and suffering? Well I don’t claim to be the theologian in the family but I can tell you that on my best days I believe God is all those things despite the horrors that may unfold around us. I believe that there is more to the story than we will understand. I believe that God mourns with us. But on my darker days, I can’t imagine how any of that make sense. And that’s okay too. Wrestling with these things is crucial, I believe.

But this is what I know without a shadow of a doubt. That even if, for reasons we may never understand, God does not heal your loved one, or prevent that hurricane, or stop that shooting, he is there in it all. When we hear stories of joy and goodness coming out of pain, that is Jesus. That friend who lost a loved one, but feels a strange sense of peace, that is Jesus. It may not always make sense, but we see it, right? We can feel it.

While the questions still remain, I can offer this: Even if, God sees you and is holding you and loves. If you don’t believe it that’s okay, I don’t always believe it either. But I do cling to it, because I’ve experienced it and seen it and choose to believe that it is true.

When your joy has jumped ship.

/in

What a loaded season. For all of the joy and festiveness, there is equally as much pain and sadness. Wounds are that much deeper around the holidays. The loss of loved ones, sickness, mental health struggles, financial struggle, relationship hardship, loneliness. The holidays seem to open the wounds and pour salt directly on them. For many, the holidays are a time of memories and tradition, so when that is lost or doesn’t feel like it used to be, there is much pain.

I’ve experienced both types of holiday. The ones where joy and laughter abound, and the ones where I can’t keep my head above water. But as a general whole, I always feel stressed around the holidays. Expectations are high, and consumerism is rampant, and my heart gets bogged down with it all-trying to find balance, rest, and peace in the midst of it.

What happens when our joy has jumped ship? When we’re trying to find that bubble of wonderment in everything we do but it’s just gone missing? The messages around us are clear-do more, be more, buy more. I wonder what would happened if we moved into the lack of joy. If we didn’t find fear in it or judgment, but just acknowledged its presence. Could we find the bittersweet? That place where pain, joy, and gratitude meet? Could we honor the journey and not wish it was something different?

It’s okay if your joy has jumped ship. In fact, it’s normal. Most of us are faking our way through the holidays in one way or another (and life for that matter). Its just not human to keep it together all of the time. I would even argue that we were created to journey, not just to arrive.

Having joy in every circumstance is a tall order, one that gets a bit misunderstood I think. It’s more than a smile and a warmness in your belly. Joy can be a distant understanding of Gods ultimate goodness, or a fractured memory of a loved on peeping through the darkness. It might not look like you have any joy, but I bet it’s there-looking so much different than the Christmas decorations say it should look. It might be tattered, broken, dusty, dirty-but it’s there!

Your joy hasn’t jumped ship, it’s just in a different package than expected.

Love you guys, wishing you true peace and rest this holiday season and throughout your lives.

**special note. Let us be sensitive and overwhelmed with awareness and empathy for those around us suffering this holiday season.**

The thorn in my side

/in , , , ,

This thorn in my side anchors me to Jesus.

My eyes wander, my heart flutters to other things to fulfill it; but my anxiety, that thorn in my side, it is the most uncomfortable blessing. It keeps me clinging to Jesus because I have no other choice. Even when I’m unsure of my faith, the theology surrounding me, my place on earth-there’s this still small voice experiencing something greater than myself.

When I was a teenager I was sure I wouldn’t live to be 21. In fact, I didn’t want to live to be 21. For someone whose life felt like constant turmoil, It seemed like an absurdly long time to be alive. Childhood trauma had festered into wounds I had no idea how to heal. I was self-medicating and limping my way through life. Christianity was a muddle of “dos” and “donts” that I couldn’t keep up with. I felt deserted by the God that was supposed to be with us in our pain. But regardless of it all, I still found myself clinging to Jesus in the recesses of my subconscious, on the off chance that he actually existed and cared. And so it’s been my whole life.

I’m 28. I’ve lived well past my 21st birthday. In many ways, I am so different than I was 10 and 15 years ago. But even though I’ve worked through so much emotional pain, I will always be an empath, sensitive to others and the world. Earth will always feel a little unsettling to me. But when I find myself seeking comfort in things that ultimately give me no true joy- like endless shopping, seeking the illusion of perfection, self-medicating. I am reminded of the gift that I’m too much of a mess to ever think I can do it on my own. Thankfully. If I didn’t wrestle with daily anxiety, emotional ups, and downs, chronic OCD and perfectionism, I can’t say I’d cling to God in the same way or be able to acknowledge my need for that relationship regardless of whether or not I am angry at God in that moment.

I’m not in love with Jesus all the time. I ask lots and lots of questions and demand answers from God which may or may not include a few expletives. I am daily confused by modern Christian theology and cannot stand the constant use of Christian buzz words.

I’m just figuring it out. Still navigating through past traumas and shame, still experiencing panic attacks and dark days and lots and lots of messiness. But I do know that whoever God is, whatever he or she is really like. It resonates deeply in my soul. So when nothing else makes sense and I don’t know quite where I belong, I just cling to that.

Trust me.

/in , ,

I’ve been wrestling with anxiety over something I can’t control.

There’s really no statement that better describes my life struggles. It always comes back to this need for the illusion of control, to know the outcome before it happens, to be prepared for every uncomfortable thing.

Anybody else? I hear a chorus of “Amen!” Out there. Because life is a series of events that we don’t see coming and cannot often prepare for. Some of those experiences are breathtakingly beautiful and others are much more difficult, steal our breath away, leave us feeling like the shell of who we thought we were. And while we can often find pieces of beauty in life’s difficulties, it doesn’t always make it that much easier. Maybe for a moment. Maybe we feel a deep peace in the midst of the darkness, but the pain still comes in waves.

So it makes sense that life feels scary at times. I sometimes feel so attacked by the “what-ifs” that I actually freeze for a few moments of time, unable to function for fear of all that could occur.

But recently a still strong voice has followed my anxious thoughts. “Trust me”, it says. I know it to be God’s voice, the certainty is not my own. For no matter how much I stir up on my quest for Jesus. No matter how frustrated I may become with the old traditions and ways of thinking. I believe in a good good God. One who walks with us through this journey of life. I don’t believe he saves us from pain, I think He respects us more than to shield us from heartache. And while it often feels confusing and scary to me to serve a God who allows (as I see it in my limited understanding) the pain of this world; Something deep within in me just knows it all makes sense somehow. “Trust me”, He says. “For the love, just cling to me as the world falls apart all around you, as it all seems so scary and daunting. Feel your feelings, feel your doubts, but somewhere deep inside that wrestling heart of yours, “just trust me”.”

Make the LEAP.

/in ,

For 16 months I attended an all girls boarding school. It was so damn hard, but I crushed it. As I was preparing to graduate and go out into the world, back into the chaos, I completed two action plans, assignments to help me set my mind on what is to come. I stumbled across them today as I attempted to navigate the great abyss that is my computer desktop. 18 year old me, so long ago, and yet in an instant it all comes flooding back.

            As I get ready to leave SRA I take away the ability to feel my emotions, but not let them overwhelm me. I have the motivation to complete my schoolwork on time and I have more confidence in my ability to do the work well. I am very well aware of my creativity and have confidence enough in my creative abilities to pursue what I love to do in college and probably even beyond that. I eat now to strengthen my body, and I run because I love how my muscles feel when I do. I am aware of my body and what it feels like when I dance or run or play a sport. I look in the mirror without cringing and usually I smile at myself. Things with my family are still pretty rough, but I have learned that I can’t change my family and also from that I have to accept them the way they are. Honesty is the best policy, even if it’s hard and even if someone else lets what I have to say hurt them. Relationships are still hard for me. Although, I have worked on being honest despite what others think and working on not using other people to validate my self worth. I like to lead, but sometimes take charge when I don’t need to. I’ve found my voice and am using it to stand up for myself and to just say what I need to say. I’ve also learned that life goes on until you die and that things just aren’t perfect, I’ll be making mistakes, learning and working my whole life.

Emotionally, I’ve found emotions that I never let myself have, like happiness and excitement. I’ve been able to see my intelligence as something enjoyable, not just a useful thing during the school year. I have found my creativity and use it to do really relaxing things, like paint on a sheet and get all messy or even just coloring in a coloring book. I’ve also taken to reading children’s books to myself which helps me connect with the little Elizabeth inside and also helps me to relax. Well, like I said above, when I dance and run I like how I can feel every inch of my body filled with energy. I love the way it feels. Corny, but it’s almost magical how I feel like i’m floating; once the adrenaline starts flowing my muscles just relax.  Really though, I’ve learned that there’s no magic wand in life. Yeah, sometimes things feel magical, but life isn’t a fairy tale. I have to work for what I want. That concept is magic in itself.

                       I see doubt as my biggest challenge after SRA. When I doubt who I am then everything just falls apart from there. I also think that isolating will be a big challenge because it’s still a lot easier for me to not tell people how i’m feeling or what I’m thinking especially when I’m at home with my family. Keeping commitments has been really hard for me recently and I think it will continue to be a challenge. Especially the little commitments are hard, like going out to dinner, or attending a graduation party. When I don’t keep my commitments I start to feel bad about myself, but I also hurt other people and sometimes even lose their trust in me to be there when I say I will. I still tend to be pretty judgmental, especially of guys, which is one of the ways I avoid intimacy. It’s like an automatic reaction when I meet someone or I feel like we’re getting closer. When I get depressed then I spiral down from there, which goes along with the isolating kinda. As I write this I feel like there are a whole lot of challenges after I leave SRA. Some of them I probably don’t even know about yet. I’ll have to take them as they come.

                       When I’m faced with challenges I know that I have my friends from SRA. I can call them anytime and they’ll talk to me and help me see things from another perspective. They’re just great girls and a really great resource. I like to have a lot of inspiration around my room. My contract is on my mirror, my bulletin board is motivational and I really like quotes so I try to put things like that around so that I see them and they remind of who I am and all that I’m capable of accomplishing. Depression is more like a signal really. It tells me that there’s something that I’m not sharing, not addressing, that I’m holding back. I think mostly, it will be about using my resources; the people I trust in my life, and what I’ve learned.

I had no idea what would what was in store for me. The harsh lessons learned in college, the emotional turmoil as I began to realize that the therapeutic work I had done didn’t even begin to scratch the surface of what I needed to face. But then again, I also had no idea how I would TRIUMPH! And never in a million years would I have been able to imagine the life that I have now, the person that I have become, and the many things that I have learned over the last 10 years. Cheers to you, my brave 18 year old self.

Why We Do Hard Things.

/in , , ,

I’ve wondered for as long as I can remember: Why do we have to endure hard things? Why can’t life be just a little bit fluffier, easier? Is it really necessary to suffer? I don’t presume to have all the answers, but through the years I have realized one thing: hard things are so necessary.

Yesterday Eric, Lilah, and I flew to Florida. No big deal right?

WRONG!

I hate to fly. I hate everything about it: the teetering above the clouds in a metal contraption, being stuck next to strangers in a small space, not being able to move around with ease, tiny cramped bathrooms. I’m a claustrophobic control freak. You do the math. Flying is not for me. And in case you don’t really believe it’s all that bad, I once got out of my seat during take off and demanded that the stewardess land the plane immediately (and no that wasn’t yesterday, I was 16 at the time).

This wasn’t necessarily a trip that I HAD to go on. It was a three day work trip for Eric, so it might seem a little odd that I would want to take my neurotic self and teething 16 month old to tag along. But something inside me knew I had to do it.

I knew it would be really really hard. I knew that I might have a million panic attacks, and maybe barely get through it. I knew it might be miserable. And deep down inside I just wasn’t so sure I could handle it. Especially with a baby. And I’ve been challenging myself to push back against those lies that I won’t make it through hard things. So here we are, in Florida. Yesterday felt like a nightmare, but we did it. We boarded that bare bones, possibly made of tin foil, aviation contraption, and we lived to tell the tale (I’m nothing if not dramatic FYI).

But why the hard stuff, right? Why the pain, the suffering, the adversity? If God was really good, wouldn’t He/She lighten things up a bit? There can’t really be a point to all this madness. Listen, I’m not going to get into the black hole question that is “why is there suffering”. But I think it’s important to note that without suffering we would be empty shells. The hard things are what teach us who we are, and who God is.

Anyone who really knows me knows that I believe in a complete correlation between knowing and loving ourselves, and knowing and loving our God. They work in tandem. And how do we really learn about ourselves and our God? By journeying through life’s ups and downs and realizing that we will make it, that God is with us.

Please hear me, I am not suggesting that this is in anyway easy. As someone who struggles with anxiety, depression, and has been an empath my entire life, I pray daily for “easy”. I still don’t want the hard. But when I take a deep breath and dig down deep, I know that it is the key to so much of what I am searching for in my restless soul.

What can you do today to embrace the hard? Can you let yourself feel sad, heartbroken, disappointed, angry, and still leave your hands open to what it is teaching? Can you take a deep breath and lean in, knowing that it might be the hardest thing, but you can do it. We will be more empathetic, more whole, more in tune with ourselves, more in tune with God and the world around us, because we have chosen to press into the hard.

Much love you on this journey my friends.

Thank You. Love, Me.

/in , , ,

I was 16 years old. Sitting alone in the middle of an international airport. I knew my dad would catch up to me soon. I’d just escaped a plane ride to a destination I greatly feared. I had every intention of bucking up, bravely enduring the trip and what was to come after, but in the end, the fear was too great, I had to get off. He had followed me, I know he had, grabbing our bags in the process. I knew I was in trouble.

I was ashamed, still afraid, trying to get control of a situation I had zero control over. You see just 24 hours earlier my parents had told me I’d be going to Georgia, to a therapeutic wilderness camp. I’d looked it up online, researched my fate, made peace with it. But as the hours passed, It felt too scary, I wanted to be brave, but I couldn’t.

Back at home after our first attempt to go, the fear overtook me. I sobbed, I self harmed, I screamed a million obscenities at everyone in my path. I was 16. Bigger than a child, but yet still a kid. And I was scared. Scared I would never make it through a wilderness camp, scared of what life looked like ahead of me, scared I would never live a life of peace and joy.

So much in my past that makes me cringe to remember, that causes tears to roll down my cheeks when I write about it. “Who even was she?”, I wonder aloud. “Thank God I’ve grown,” I commend myself, “I’ll just forget about it all, leave it in the past, cover it with this newer model of myself. One that is a little more mentally stable, more sure of herself, more socially acceptable”.

God, no I hope I never do that. I hope I never forget, never stop sharing, never stop thanking little me for everything that has come before now. I’ve been fighting since I was a teeny little thing. Fighting for a better life, for hope that I knew deep down existed. Battling mental illness, and traumas that rocked my little epathetic self. How brave I have been. How dedicated to my future, to the real me that lives deep down inside, to exposing the mess and embracing the truth. So brave.

It’s so much easier to blame the past isn’t? Or to mourn everything that the past could have been had we only done something different. But we didn’t. We have done the very best we’ve ever been able to do in order to survive. The “me” we are today has everything to do with all that came before, the person we’ve been, the choices we’ve made. We are they and they are us.

I’ve been brave. I’ve been strong. All that I am has brought me to this place.

Thank You. Love, me.

? Marisa Kinney photography


I’ll leave you with this, my friends:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3Y_YiZp6gM

“I am the Lord your God, I go before you now
I stand beside you, I’m all around you
Though you feel I’m far away,
I’m closer than your breath
I am with you, more than you know”

When your joy has jumped ship.

/in ,

What a loaded season. For all of the joy and festiveness, there is equally as much pain and sadness. Wounds are that much deeper around the holidays. The loss of loved ones, sickness, mental health struggles, financial struggle, relationship hardship, loneliness. The holidays seem to open the wounds and pour salt directly on them. For many, the holidays are a time of memories and tradition, so when that is lost or doesn’t feel like it used to be, there is much pain.

I’ve experienced both types of holiday. The ones where joy and laughter abound, and the ones where I can’t keep my head above water. But as a general whole, I always feel stressed around the holidays. Expectations are high, and consumerism is rampant, and my heart gets bogged down with it all-trying to find balance, rest, and peace in the midst of it.

What happens when our joy has jumped ship? When we’re trying to find that bubble of wonderment in everything we do but it’s just gone missing? The messages around us are clear-do more, be more, buy more. I wonder what would happened if we moved into the lack of joy. If we didn’t find fear in it or judgment, but just acknowledged its presence. Could we find the bittersweet? That place where pain, joy, and gratitude meet? Could we honor the journey and not wish it was something different?

It’s okay if your joy has jumped ship. In fact, it’s normal. Most of us are faking our way through the holidays in one way or another (and life for that matter). Its just not human to keep it together all of the time. I would even argue that we were created to journey, not just to arrive.

Having joy in every circumstance is a tall order, one that gets a bit misunderstood I think. It’s more than a smile and a warmness in your belly. Joy can be a distant understanding of Gods ultimate goodness, or a fractured memory of a loved on peeping through the darkness. It might not look like you have any joy, but I bet it’s there-looking so much different than the Christmas decorations say it should look. It might be tattered, broken, dusty, dirty-but it’s there!

Your joy hasn’t jumped ship, it’s just in a different package than expected.

Love you guys, wishing you true peace and rest this holiday season and throughout your lives.

**special note. Let us be sensitive and overwhelmed with awareness and empathy for those around us suffering this holiday season.**

Even if.

/in , ,

I’ve always known I had a choice. I can live in constant fear of the worst happening, or surrender to the fact that I have no control.

This is the lesson that I have been learning my whole life in various ways, but parenthood has really slapped the icing on the cake. Because now there’s this teeny tiny person who relies on me for everything and yet I ultimately have very little control over her life. Yes I make choices that affect her on the day to day, but in the grand scheme of things, her life is out of my hands.

It happened on day one. I had already been wrestling with how my relationship with God might navigate parenthood. Pregnancy had brought with it more anxieties then I had expected. But when Lilah was born she was taken to the NICU. This was it, the moment of deciding what kind of parent I was going to be. Eric and just looked at each other and I said, “I guess this is parenting. We don’t have control of this.” And we didn’t. She only spent five hours in the NICU and ended up being okay, but at the time, we had no idea what was happening. I wasn’t happy about it, but I knew that if I was going to survive the rest of my life without fully breaking down mentally, then I was going to have to learn to take things as they come.

That’s always been quite hard for me. I come from a long line of senseless worriers and so I come about it honestly, and have lived most of my life walking in the ever pacing footsteps of my anxious relatives. But I’ve always wanted it to be different. Deep down I know that the only way to live a life free of deep worry is to open my hands and say “God, even if, you are with me”. Ugh but that is hard. Because how can God really be with us if the worst is happening all around us. If God is good, and just, and loving, then why is there so much pain and suffering? Well I don’t claim to be the theologian in the family but I can tell you that on my best days I believe God is all those things despite the horrors that may unfold around us. I believe that there is more to the story than we will understand. I believe that God mourns with us. But on my darker days, I can’t imagine how any of that make sense. And that’s okay too. Wrestling with these things is crucial, I believe.

But this is what I know without a shadow of a doubt. That even if, for reasons we may never understand, God does not heal your loved one, or prevent that hurricane, or stop that shooting, he is there in it all. When we hear stories of joy and goodness coming out of pain, that is Jesus. That friend who lost a loved one, but feels a strange sense of peace, that is Jesus. It may not always make sense, but we see it, right? We can feel it.

While the questions still remain, I can offer this: Even if, God sees you and is holding you and loves. If you don’t believe it that’s okay, I don’t always believe it either. But I do cling to it, because I’ve experienced it and seen it and choose to believe that it is true.

The thorn in my side.

/in , , , ,

This thorn in my side anchors me to Jesus.

My eyes wander, my heart flutters to other things to fulfill it; but my anxiety, that thorn in my side, it is the most uncomfortable blessing. It keeps me clinging to Jesus because I have no other choice. Even when I’m unsure of my faith, the theology surrounding me, my place on earth-there’s this still small voice experiencing something greater than myself.

When I was a teenager I was sure I wouldn’t live to be 21. In fact, I didn’t want to live to be 21.For someone whose life felt like constant turmoil, It seemed like an absurdly long time to be alive. Childhood trauma had festered into wounds I had no idea how to heal. I was self medicating and limping my way through life. Christianity was a muddle of “dos” and “donts” that I couldn’t keep up with. I felt deserted by the God that was supposed to be with us in our pain. But regardless of it all, I still found myself clinging to Jesus in the recesses of my subconscious, on the off chance that he actually existed and cared. And so it’s been my whole life.

I’m 28. I’ve lived well past my 21st birthday. In many ways I am so different than I was 10 and 15 years ago. But even though I’ve worked through so much emotional pain, I will always be an empath, sensitive to others and the world. Earth will always feel a little unsettling to me. But when I find myself seeking comfort in things that ultimately give me no true joy- like endless shopping, seeking the illusion of perfection, self medicating. I am reminded of the gift that I’m too much of a mess to ever think I can do it on my own. Thankfully. If I didn’t wrestle with daily anxiety, emotional ups and down, chronic OCD and perfectionism, I can’t say I’d cling to God in the same way or be able to acknowledge my need for that relationship regardless of whether or not I am angry at God in that moment.

I’m not in love with Jesus all the time. I ask lots and lots of questions and demand answers from God which may or may not include a few expletives. I am daily confused by modern Christian theology and cannot stand the constant use of Christian buzz words.

I’m just figuring it out. Still navigating through past traumas and shame, still experiencing panic attacks and dark days and lots and lots of messiness. But I do know that whoever God is, whatever he or she is really like. It resonates deeply in my soul. So when nothing else makes sense and I don’t know quite where I belong, I just cling to that.