So...a lot of this is taken from this post. Because sometimes I can't find words on my own. Because sometimes what I'm thinking feels so far removed, so irrelevant to what's going on in the moment that I can't find words to fit what I'm thinking into what the rest of the world is doing. Because I've been muddled lately, but this post and this week is slowly opening my eyes to what's happening in this place, the kind of work He has been doing all along.
What's happening is that you all are teaching me how to love and be loved. What's happening is that you are teaching me that life goes on and I am loved and the world will not end, God will not give up on me no matter how much I might want him to. How much I might have given up on myself. What's happening is that I might finally have found a band of misfits, each of whom are a single, remarkable kind of beautiful that is all their own, and who tells me that I belong to them. To Him. To a community of believers who see me on the shore and tells me to come further up, come further in.
You guys, an enormous part of me isn't ready for that...but I want to be. I want to believe that I can be loved by both the God I can't see but knows me and the mess that is myself and the people that I can see who only know what I tell them. What they see. I want to believe that sin doesn't make me a monster. That anger no longer has the power to ruin relationships, but instead, to build them up. That I am not too much to handle, and you all are pulling me out onto the cusp of believing that. You are rebuilding my ideas about what it means to be loved, to be brave, to be known. God is causing an earthquake in my heart and life and you all are teaching me that maybe there is something, some part of me it can't touch. That maybe there is a love that can take all of me, that is not shaken by the ugly, that makes room for the emotions and the uncertainty and the questions I hadn't really let myself ask yet.
I don't know how much of this will ever come out in conversation. I don't know how much of my story I'll let spill out of me. I don't know if I'm ready for this kind of love yet. But this week, today, I'm thinking that maybe it's possible. Maybe I want it more than I know, and maybe it can happen.
I'll start with this. This morning, I was journalling, and I thought I had come to an answer. I thought I understood that nothing can shake this love--and then I thought of something I hadn't thought about in years, something that has been in my life for years, lurking at the back of everything, and I brought it to the front. I showed it to God and showed it to myself, and it shook me. It shook every good thought, the revelation I had just experienced in the paragraph before, and had me wondering all over again how He could love me. It ended with that. With me writing, screaming, crying that I gave up. That if all this was a lie, if He had walked away and if you or my family or anyone else knew, that you all would walk away...that the charade could end now. I went upstairs, waited the five minutes for the world to end, for me to disappear---and I didn't. And I was kind of disappointed, because I was imagining that I would just disappear, that all this would be over, and I was tired and overwhelmed from a whole week of feeling eighteen years of everything I've been trying to run from. But I didn't disappear. The world as I knew it didn't end. I kept breathing and went to lunch. And now I'm sitting here, trying to figure all this out. Trying to figure out why the world didn't end when I thought it would, why I'm loved when there's no reason I should be. How, somehow, life goes on and I'm still loved and I should have been hit by lightning a thousand times over just this week alone, but I haven't been. How He is here, and you all are here, and I am here in the midst of it all. I'm still trying to figure out how this is possible. So, mostly, I want you all to know how much living with you is teaching me to be a little braver in a way I haven't been before. To dive deep into the mess I have spent a lifetime running from, to sink more deeply into His love, the community I'm sometimes so sure there's no way I can actually belong to. Living in this place, sharing life with you all, seeing God and myself through your eyes, through His eyes, is slowly making me brave, healing me in a way that I don't totally understand. In any case, I love you all, in the best, deepest way I know how. Somehow He is making all things new.
What's happening is that you all are teaching me how to love and be loved. What's happening is that you are teaching me that life goes on and I am loved and the world will not end, God will not give up on me no matter how much I might want him to. How much I might have given up on myself. What's happening is that I might finally have found a band of misfits, each of whom are a single, remarkable kind of beautiful that is all their own, and who tells me that I belong to them. To Him. To a community of believers who see me on the shore and tells me to come further up, come further in.
You guys, an enormous part of me isn't ready for that...but I want to be. I want to believe that I can be loved by both the God I can't see but knows me and the mess that is myself and the people that I can see who only know what I tell them. What they see. I want to believe that sin doesn't make me a monster. That anger no longer has the power to ruin relationships, but instead, to build them up. That I am not too much to handle, and you all are pulling me out onto the cusp of believing that. You are rebuilding my ideas about what it means to be loved, to be brave, to be known. God is causing an earthquake in my heart and life and you all are teaching me that maybe there is something, some part of me it can't touch. That maybe there is a love that can take all of me, that is not shaken by the ugly, that makes room for the emotions and the uncertainty and the questions I hadn't really let myself ask yet.
I don't know how much of this will ever come out in conversation. I don't know how much of my story I'll let spill out of me. I don't know if I'm ready for this kind of love yet. But this week, today, I'm thinking that maybe it's possible. Maybe I want it more than I know, and maybe it can happen.
I'll start with this. This morning, I was journalling, and I thought I had come to an answer. I thought I understood that nothing can shake this love--and then I thought of something I hadn't thought about in years, something that has been in my life for years, lurking at the back of everything, and I brought it to the front. I showed it to God and showed it to myself, and it shook me. It shook every good thought, the revelation I had just experienced in the paragraph before, and had me wondering all over again how He could love me. It ended with that. With me writing, screaming, crying that I gave up. That if all this was a lie, if He had walked away and if you or my family or anyone else knew, that you all would walk away...that the charade could end now. I went upstairs, waited the five minutes for the world to end, for me to disappear---and I didn't. And I was kind of disappointed, because I was imagining that I would just disappear, that all this would be over, and I was tired and overwhelmed from a whole week of feeling eighteen years of everything I've been trying to run from. But I didn't disappear. The world as I knew it didn't end. I kept breathing and went to lunch. And now I'm sitting here, trying to figure all this out. Trying to figure out why the world didn't end when I thought it would, why I'm loved when there's no reason I should be. How, somehow, life goes on and I'm still loved and I should have been hit by lightning a thousand times over just this week alone, but I haven't been. How He is here, and you all are here, and I am here in the midst of it all. I'm still trying to figure out how this is possible. So, mostly, I want you all to know how much living with you is teaching me to be a little braver in a way I haven't been before. To dive deep into the mess I have spent a lifetime running from, to sink more deeply into His love, the community I'm sometimes so sure there's no way I can actually belong to. Living in this place, sharing life with you all, seeing God and myself through your eyes, through His eyes, is slowly making me brave, healing me in a way that I don't totally understand. In any case, I love you all, in the best, deepest way I know how. Somehow He is making all things new.
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