Nobody’s Life Is Perfect.

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It’s a trap that ensnares us daily.

Thanks to social media, we know so much about everyone’s lives.

Too much really.

I go on almost anyone’s Facebook page and I see the perfect marriage, the perfect job, the most exciting adventures, perfect kids, perfect skin, the perfect outfits.

What I don’t see is the marriage struggling with distance and infidelity, the job slowly tearing a family apart, the adventures that aren’t quite as glamorous as they look, the parents struggling with a behaviorally challenged child, the flawless skin and perfect outfit hiding the brokenness behind.

How much do we really know about the people we think we know everything about?

Social media gives the illusion that we know everything. 

And so we assume that we are the odd ones out. 

We are somehow so different from everyone else out there who somehow got it right.

We are sitting on the other side, completely alone.

So not even close to true!

I just spoke to a girl from college on the phone for over an hour.

She’s a lover of rawness and vulnerability as I am, and talking to her was so incredibly refreshing.

She’s unbelievably cool.

But what struck me the most is that she thought the same thing about me. She thought I had the perfect life and had no idea that I didn’t until I told her.

So I thought she was perfect, she thought I was perfect, and neither of us are.

Why do we keep falling into this trap of assuming we’re the only people around who are a hot mess pretty much all the time?

Not only that, but why do we feel the need to project perfection all the time?

It’s like we all need to prove something.

Regardless of whether or not we are ready to admit it. We want other people to think that our lives are perfectly wrapped with a bow on top. No messy stuff. We have it together.

Social media is so much fun. It can be a beautiful thing. A beautiful way to connect, keep in touch, learn.

But, I have to ask myself: why does everyone need to know that Eric and I had delicious Mexican food for dinner tonight? 

Maybe what people really need to know is that Eric and I had mediocre Mexican food tonight, in our house that needs to be vacuumed, lounging in old sweatpants, complete with my greasy hair in a bun on top of my head.

To admit our humanity is not easy; but this world needs more of the beauty within the messiness, not the beauty hiding in front of the messiness.

 

 

 

picture courtesy of Holley Gerth http://holleygerth.com/free-words/ check her out!

Why Right Now Is The Worst Time To Be Stuck In Our Own Little World.

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On Saturday, Eric and I were driving to the park with our overly energetic dog Max. As we drove, my mind wandered to an article I had read that morning about the Syrian refugees. Eric, unable to read my thoughts yet, was surprised when I started to cry as we hit Lisburn Road.

My “save everyone” instinct kicked into full gear as my mind reeled with images of cold, hungry, homeless refugees. I wanted to take in every single one of them immediately. 

These people, who I’ve never met, and may never meet, have ripped me from my own little world. I don’t want to forget about them even for a moment.

And yet my own little world is still turning. I find myself trying to forget what I know is happening to people just like me.

 I just want to curl up in my own little world and ignore what’s going on around me. 

Thankfully it pops back into my head often enough that I can’t forget.

Because we shouldn’t forget. In fact, we need to step out and do something. We need to mobilize.

As children of God we need to mobilize, and as people who are doing life together whether we realize it or not we need to mobilize.

So what do we do? 

if you’re like me and your initial reaction is to find a way to take in as many refugees as you possibly can; you might benefit from knowing there are other ways to help! 

We can all do something! Do not assume that you have nothing to offer!

So far my favorite articles regarding what’s going on and how we can help are this one by Lynne Hybels and this one by Ann Voskamp. Seriously guys, read them, you won’t regret it.

Let’s stay alert to what’s going on around us. Stay humbled at the life that we are living. Stay open to what God has for us in this crisis. 

Because all of us matter.

Every. single. one.

 

 

 

What We Don’t Talk About When We’re Engaged.

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We wait our whole life to be engaged, right? 

Even if we say we aren’t or we don’t really care, in some way or another we all are waiting for that concrete moment when another person says they want to do life with our messy, unorganized selves.

It’s a moment of happiness, it’s a sigh of relief, it’s a “thank God that I found you” moment.

But it’s also a lot of other things, and I think we don’t talk about them enough.

Eric and I got engaged on a Saturday in late November. It still seems like a blur when I think back to it. He got down on one knee and said some stuff and I sort of cried but also kind of couldn’t get a grasp on reality at the same time.

And then we kind of didn’t know what to do next. One moment we were sitting next to each other on the couch, looking at my ring and being all in love, and the next minute we were both on our phones, calling our parents, following the socially acceptable agenda of a newly engaged couple.

And that was when I first realized; being engaged sucks sometimes.

I hate decisions. And everything about a wedding is about decisions, down to the very person you are marrying.

People would joke around saying things like “you can still get out” or “you better be sure”.

Yeah okay…don’t say that. Especially not to someone who can’t even pick out a box of candy at the movies in under 10 minutes. 

My room became a shrine to our future wedding. Magazines everywhere, various DIY projects not even started. 

My Inbox was equally a mess. Wedding emails from more vendors than I could count. 

Instagram was my worse nightmare. I kept seeing all my cute future bride friends posting pictures of themselves on the couch, surrounded by coffee and invitations. #planningtime #lovethis. Meanwhile I am crying over the 50th email from my linens lady inquiring about napkin texture.

As our wedding got closer I began to feel a tad panicked. 

The business end of things was going quite smoothly. All vendors booked. A DIY workshop in Eric’s garage. I was feeling quite proud of myself.

It was starting to hit me. I was getting married.

Eric is everything that I didn’t even know I wanted in a husband. He is selfless in a way I have never known anyone else to be. He is patient, and thoughtful, and the funniest person I have ever had the pleasure of communicating with.

But you know what? I kind of freaked out about him not being the one. 

What if I am choosing wrong? What If I think I love him and then I actually don’t? What if he has some really awful habits I know nothing about? What if in 10 years it falls apart and we get divorced. 

WHAT IF?

(have I mentioned I am the queen of what-ifs?)

I was scared. 

With the help of Eric and a lot of other people I love and trust, I walked through the fear. 

I married Eric a little over a year ago; the wedding of my dreams and then some.

But I really wish someone would have told me that it’s okay to be scared when you’re making the biggest decision of your life: “I know you love Eric. But I also know you’re a little scared. And those things can exist together and be equally true.”

So for all of my engaged friends out there, wrestling with deep love and deep fear. It’s okay.

Work through the fear, listen to it, talk about it, embrace it. 

Then go ahead and let it fall away. Step into this new journey with hope in the one who made you, the one who protects you, the one who will walk with you always.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mourning The Person I No Longer Am.

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Every year since graduation, when I see wide-eyed little 18-year-olds all around me start college, I totally envy them. I get all nostalgic and text old pictures to my college friends with overly emotional hashtags and stuff. 

I have a little habit of re-living the past, wishing for the past, wishing I could change the past. It kind of keeps me living in the past a lot, which takes a lot of attention off of the present.

This year’s pre-college-graduation-nostalgia took me back a little farther than I usually go.

Unlike the average teenager, I never really experienced high school.  

I spent my high school years in a wilderness program and then an all girls boarding school. Thus I missed out on prom, a real high school graduation ceremony, and a lot of other things that probably only seem so glamorous because I didn’t experience them.

Among one of the greatest things that I feel I missed out on was the career I dreamed of. 

In middle school I started seeing a voice coach who had many students on Broadway. 

For many years, I was determined to be one of them.

Going into treatment took the wind out of my sails. Once the young girl who believed she could do anything, I no longer had the energy to really pursue an arts school. 

I applied to only one school; my parents’ alma mater. 

Now 7 years later, something in my heart aches for the life that I could have had.

Maybe I would be deep in an eating disorder, barely paying rent in my one-bedroom apartment in NYC, Surrounded by drugs and the madness of other artists while I tried to find my place in an industry crowded with other hopefuls like myself.

Who knows where it would have led me.

Still, the feeling nags at me. Will I ever rest having known that I never even tried? Did I miss my chance? Who is this person I have become? Where is that girl I used to be? How do I get her back?

I no longer really want to pursue the life of an actress (maybe a few community plays here and there), but I almost feel as if I need closure. I told a good friend the other day that I feel like I am “mourning my acting dream”. But then I realized. I don’t know If it’s the acting dream that I am mourning.

I think that It’s the person that I am mourning.

I am mourning the girl who believed that she could do anything. The girl with a fiery passion that could not be stopped. The girl whose future was full of adventure and unknown.

In so many ways I am still that girl. But I am passionate more like a flame and less like a firework; strong but contained, wiser than before.  My life is bright and beautiful, but not quite as glamorous as I had once imagined. 

I can never go back to being that girl. I know too much. I know now that there is no fairytale. That if I were living that dream I would ache for the cozy house on South 15th Street and the wonderful husband walking beside me. 

Life is mundane speckled with wonderfulness. Can we be okay with that?

Sometimes we have to mourn the dreams we once had, the life we thought we would be living, the person we were when we dreamed it all up. 

What a beautiful person we were then, and a beautiful person we are now.

And so, I no longer am mourning the life I “missed out on”, but the girl who wanted that life. The girl who knew so much  and yet nothing at all. The girl whose decisions both complicated and saved my life. 

She has become the woman that I am today. A woman with different dreams, deeper thoughts, deeper peace. And that cannot be traded, for anything in the world.

 

 

 

Why I’ll Never Be A “How To” Blogger.

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I love “how to” blogs.

Just the other day I learned how to reuse my plug-in air fresheners thanks to Pinterest and a “how to” blogger.

But when it comes to my writing, it will never be a “how to”. 

We need less “How to’s” when it comes to life and more “this is how it’s going for me’s” and “let me just sit with you in this pain” . I know full well that I have very little advice to give as I stumble through life just the same as every one of us. My only hope as a writer is that when I write about the things I walk through, someone else’s soul can rest in the peace that they are not alone.

I am still working on sharing all of the nitty gritty…

Even as I write, there are five or so drafts sitting in my blog folder, just waiting for my courage to finish and then publish them.

Ever since I was a little girl, writing has been my favorite way to reach people. As a young teenager, my mom and I wrote letters back and forth in a notebook when we couldn’t quite get along. When I finally went to boarding school, I wrote letters every waking moment, sharing my life with the people I loved back home.

There’s just something about writing.

For me, the journey of writing is about sharing my life in the hopes that other people who feel the same way can take a great big sigh of relief and know that they are not alone.

You are not alone. Many of us feel the same things every day, over and over, and feel like we’re the only people who have ever felt that feeling or carried that burden. There’s always someone else out there who is feeling or has felt the same exact thing as us.

There is so much beauty in sharing life with each other. It’s not a competition. It’s not a race to the finish line. It’s a journey that we are on together. 

 

 

image courtesy of http://holleygerth.com/free-words/

A Not So Simple Time.

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I am forever feeling like I should have been born in a different decade…or century.

I know that we’re all born at the right time to the right situation, and we will never feel like we belong completely because this isn’t our home, and blah blah blah blah, but sometimes I cannot help but feel like I totally don’t belong in the now.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what it is that I am doing with my life right now.  You know that question. It looms over me every waking moment. Do I go back to school? What’s the point? When we have kids in our house I want to stay home anyway. Do I quit everything and just write to my hearts content? That’s not practical. Do I find a job totally unrelated to anything I’ve ever done and just work for the money? That sounds boring. You get the picture, right?

So much to think about.

Not to mention that the world around us is always buzzing with something new. New electronic device. The new thing in hair care.  This gives you cancer. That leads to Autism. boot-cut jeans are out, now they’re back in again. This just in- tumeric is a superspice (news flash India has known that for years). How can anyone keep up with anything anymore? 

Sometimes I just want to zoom back in time and pick grapes all day in a vineyard in the Mediterranean while wearing an animal hide skirt and no bra. 

I wonder how women felt about themselves back then.

There was no social media interaction. Way less things going on to make you feel bad about yourself.

Men had one job- hunters, women had one job-babies. None of this “figuring myself out” madness.

You only had 1 outfit and nobody expected your hair to be brushed. 

No one wore makeup so there was no debating over which brand is best.

Eating organic was just eating.

Tension headaches probably weren’t even a thing.

A simpler life. More difficult in many ways, but simpler.

Can we live a simpler life right now, regardless of all the craziness in our lives today?

I am determined to. 

Despite the choices and the debates and the listening to never-ending opinions of others. I can own my own life amidst all the noise going on around me.

If I’m home all day long burping babies and helping with homework; I want that to be enough. If I’m working 40 hours a week at a job that I don’t totally love, but makes sense at the time; I want that to be enough. If I never become the writer that I have always dreamed to be, but write for the love of words; I want that to be enough.

I want the fact that I am living, and breathing, and loving, and learning in every moment of every day to be enough, even when it seems like a jumbled mess.

So I’m working on it.

 

 

picture courtesy of Viktor Hanacek. www.picjumbo.com

Taking Care Of Myself.

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What does it mean to take care of ourselves?

I asked a few fellow Starbuckians, who kindly answered me (the stranger bothering them while they’re trying to read and drink their coffee).  “Eat right” ….”exercise”….”sleep 8 hours or more a night” …”don’t drink soda” …”don’t smoke”…”go on vacation”

I LOVE that last one!

All great ways to take care of ourselves physically and emotionally, but what if there’s more?

Sometimes taking care of ourselves means saying NO.

I have a tendency to overbook myself. In work, in church, in extracurriculars. Not to mention that I am an easily stressed person in general who can barely handle 1 commitment a week. So instead of running around like a chicken with her head cut off 365 days of the year I am learning to say NO. 

This past week I have said NO so many times that I almost believed that the earth would stop spinning…but it didn’t, and I feel free as a bird.

And the fact of the matter is that there is nothing that you cannot say NO too.

There may be consequences to not going to work tomorrow, but you can still say NO. You may hurt some feelings if you don’t go to the birthday party, but you can say NO. You can say NO to adding another small group to your already insane week. You can say NO to watching your second cousins baby when you really just need some couch time. 

What I have found, is that people don’t really care as much as I thought they would If I say NO to things. And the people that do care, usually have their own issues to work through.

What I have also found, is that the more I say NO, the more I want to say YES to the things in my life that are important. 

I am not so run down from trying to do EVERYTHING, but instead, I am enjoying the few things that I choose to do.

FREEDOM!

Now in regards to “eating right” and “exercising”, I have found both to be extremely important when taking care of myself both physically and emotionally.

BUT…sometimes ice cream is exactly what the Dr. ordered. And sometimes going for a run is not as important as taking a nap. 

Part of taking care of myself is being able to really focus in on what I need in each moment. What do I want. What do I need. What feels good for me.

Sometime all three of those things feel different, and that’s okay. It’s incredible to me how much our own bodies tell us about our needs.

Taking care of ourselves is really an art. Some people will never really know themselves, and that makes it hard to truly take care of yourself. 

Ask yourself this: Beyond the worlds standards and the expectations I put on myself, what is it that I need in this moment…right now.

Maybe it’s an ice cream cone. Maybe it’s a nap. Maybe it’s a bath. Maybe it’s a good cry.

Listen to yourself. 

Take care of yourself.

 

Is God Still Good When Our Prayers Aren’t Answered?

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The other day I was driving home from work with the radio on lightly in the background. After managing a bunch of preschoolers all day, I was exhausted and dazed as I followed the familiar roads home. The host came on after the ending of a current hit, ready to share a listener’s story of God’s grace and love.

This listener was overwhelmed by God’s grace and love, the host read, when after years of prayer, her sister was cancer free. “Amen”, the host said over and over, then went on to reiterate God’s goodness, his faithfulness.

As tired as I was, my head and my heart were now quite awake. What would that email have sounded like if, after years and years of prayer, her sister had passed away due to her cancer? Would she still have been overwhelmed by God’s grace and love? Would God still be as good? As faithful?

This questioning was in no way a judgement of this woman and her joy. It was a question of whether or not prayer really changes things. Can we put that much weight on prayer? Does answered or unanswered prayers somehow prove God is listening? Do we need obviously “answered prayers” in order to believe that God is good even in the midst of this fallen world?

I have always struggled with the idea of prayer. As a little kid I got the message somehow that if I just asked God for something, I would receive it. This set me up for many years of feeling disappointment in God; questioning His goodness.

So what If we pray for something fervently, without ceasing, and God doesn’t “answer our prayer”? What do we do with that?

First, I think we need to look at what prayer is. Is it kneeling by the bed as a child in a blue flowered nightgown? Is it face down on the bathroom linoleum, blinded by tears? Is it a rambling car conversation with the Almighty on the commute home? Is it a simple “thank you” when you walk away from an accident unscathed? Yes. It is all of these and then some.

Prayer is communication with God. It is a gift from our Savior who wants to have a relationship with us. “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” {Matthew 11:28}. “Sing joyfully to the LORD, you righteous; it is fitting for the upright to praise Him” {Psalm 33:1}.

Sometimes my prayer is a mantra that I repeat over and over on a day riddled with anxiety. Sometimes it’s silence while watching the Master’s masterpiece of a sunset over my house. Sometimes it’s a call to action, a desperate plea for God to answer my request. Only sometimes are those call to action prayers “answered” in the way I would have liked them to be answered.

Maybe I am too busy waiting for my specific answer, that I am missing His divine and perfect answer.

 I also think we need to re-define what it means to have a prayer “answered’. For many years I took the “ask and you shall receive” approach to prayer. I ask and God grants my request, much like a genie. However, when I felt as if I wasn’t receiving what I asked for (which was most of the time) I became angry and discouraged.

As a teenager, I prayed, almost exclusively, for freedom from debilitating anxiety. I was suffering greatly, and prayed until I was blue in the face, that God would take it away. I searched the Bible for answers, empathizing with Job, which fueled my anger at what I perceived to be God’s silence.

As I have continued on this journey to peace in the midst of anxiety, my unanswered teenage prayers have become much more clear. While I was praying for my pain to disappear, God was using my pain to strengthen my faith, my empathy, my love, my character. He had bigger plans than my own. Answering my prayer would been incredibly debilitating in my journey to the heart of Christ.

God knows what he is doing. He really really does.

I will leave you with this devotional from Oswald Chambers:

My Utmost for His Highest

Prayer is not a normal part of the life of the natural man. We hear it said that a person’s life will suffer if he doesn’t pray, but I question that. What will suffer is the life of the Son of God in him, which is nourished not by food, but by prayer. When a person is born again from above, the life of the Son of God is born in him, and he can either starve or nourish that life. Prayer is the way that the life of God in us is nourished. Our common ideas regarding prayer are not found in the New Testament. We look upon prayer simply as a means of getting things for ourselves, but the biblical purpose of prayer is that we may get to know God Himself.

“Ask, and you will receive…” John 16:24

We complain before God, and sometimes we are apologetic or indifferent to Him, but we actually ask Him for very few things. Yet a child exhibits a magnificent boldness to ask! Our Lord said, “…unless you…become as little children…” Matthew 18:3

Ask and God will do. Give Jesus Christ the opportunity and the room to work. The problem is that no one will ever do this until he is at his wits’ end. When a person is at his wits’ end, it no longer seems to be a cowardly thing to pray; in fact, it is the only way he can get in touch with the truth and the reality of God Himself. Be yourself before God and present Him with your problems— the very things that have brought you to your wits’ end. But as long as you think you are self-sufficient, you do not need to ask God for anything.

To say that “prayer changes things” is not as close to the truth as saying, “Prayer changes me and then I change things.” God has established things so that prayer, on the basis of redemption, changes the way a person looks at things. Prayer is not a matter of changing things externally, but one of working miracles in a person’s inner nature.

Admitting To The Dark Places.

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A few days back one of my sweet cousins texted me in panic. “Pray”, she wrote, “My friend has a history of pain and depression and he’s missing. They can’t find him.” I immediately responded that I would, even though God and I were having a little bit of a spat and I didn’t feel like talking to Him (well I was spatting, God was doing whatever it is God does when I am being ridiculous).

Shortly after receiving the text, I was in my car on my way home from work; sunglasses on, breeze on my face, sweating hamstrings sticking to the leather seats of my RAV4. I was very aware of all of my senses; the fact that I was alive, experiencing so many things all around me. So many things in life are beautiful.

But sometimes life is too much. I think of my cousin’s dear friend. Ive known that feeling all too well in my lifetime. Sometimes life is too much. Sometimes there seems like no way to escape the aches that settle deep within ourselves. The ache to run away is strong, urgent, unwavering. Sometimes it feels like there is no other option. 

For those of us who carry the burdens of the world like an infant at our chest, life is never easy. When we are not carrying our own burdens, we are limping with the weight of someone else’s. We are overwhelmed with joys, and crushed with pains. We live life in extremes that both energize and unravel us. A gift that can be hard to navigate.

I cannot stop thinking about my cousin’s friend. The loneliness he must feel navigating a world that doesn’t see everything that he sees, or feel everything he feels. I know that loneliness, as many of us do. What if he knew that? What if he knew he isn’t alone.

I love raw vulnerability. It’s like water for my soul. But it is terrifying when it’s your own raw vulnerability, your story out in the world for everyone to see, your heart strung out on the clothesline.

But this is important friends. We don’t need to tidy up our lives, we need to bring them messy. Come as we are. 

Earlier today my cousin texted me that her friend had been found. He had checked himself into a hospital to get help for his depression. I don’t even know him, but I am so proud of him. So proud of his rawness, his strength, his acceptance of who he is. “Tell him that he’s not alone,” I texted my cousin, “make sure he knows that he is not alone.” 

Sitting On The Lost Side Of Loss.

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Loss is excruciating.

Loss of life, loss of love, loss of job, loss of dreams.

Loss doubles us over, knocks us down, and sits on our hearts.

It follows us into every corner of our lives, every crevice of our hearts, never-ceasing, never resting.

It’s not something that you fight. there’s no winning such a battle.

It’s something that is thrown at you with such force that you have no choice but to catch it.

A lot of people that I love very much are struggling with loss right now. And so, I too, am struggling as I mourn for them and with them. There are no magic words to heal or comfort,  no wand to wave it all away.

 I do believe there is something important for all of us in the midst of loss,  gifts of sorts that we can grab ahold of. We cannot always bear to look for them right away as we are trying so hard to just survive. But as the raw baby skin on our hearts begins to flesh over, we start to see the little gifts we received along the way.

Last night I lay in bed, surrounded by my bible, my journal, and two devotional books. I was looking for comfort, for answers, for peace. I cam across this quote, chicken scratched onto a tiny piece of paper, and pressed into the the pages of Job:

“Knowing that God suffers with us doesn’t make our pain disappear or explain the enigma of suffering, but it does enable us to keep trusting God and believing in His goodness, even in the midst of the inexplicable. We may not be able to trace God’s hand in what has happened, but we can still trust God’s heart. And trusting God’s heart encourages us to turn toward Him, instead of away from Him, to turn toward the cross and the road we must travel to get there.”

{Stephen Seamands in 

Wounds that Heal

}

I often feel abandoned by God in seasons of pain and loss. When I see others walk through it, I am angry at God for abandoning them. I forget over and over again that He is near us always and that nothing can separate us from His love. How quick I am to doubt His goodness, His sovereignty. I forget that He lived a life of alienation, carried His own cross, gasped for breath mounted to its splintering wood, wore a crown of thorns dripping with His own blood, drank vinegar from a nasty sponge. He suffered big time, more than the Bible could even describe.

He gets it.

So I sit here cross-legged on the rug, contemplating loss and the pain that it brings, I am humbled once again by how much I try to understand and how little I actually need to understand.

Though we may suffer, He is present. Though He may feel so far away, He is near.