a word on mountains and valleys

Moments of joy never come without what lies behind, and I want to take a second to share this journey I have traveled. This has weighed heavy on my heart this week--this sense of being in the valley for so long and suddenly finding all of the pieces finally fit. There is considerable joy in this,and yet, there's part of me that feels a little like wrestling that joy to the ground, because what just happened? Why NOW? What changed, God? I've found myself wrestling with that joy...because I just got out of a hard season and the intimacy and self awareness it brings, and actually this feels a little lonely. Maybe part of me liked being in the valley, the intimacy, the self awareness, the pure dependent survival mode...I don't know... but right now, if you're there in that place, this is me leaning over, grabbing your hands and saying, "Don't. Please don't. You're not alone and I refuse to leave you here. I see you. I'm with you and for you and let’s keep walking together."

Y'all, go read this first. I read this this afternoon, and something in me said "It's time."


Link


The reason it's a little hard to digest the sheer crazy of today, this week and this job, is that it is only an (amazing, rocking, dream come true) part of the story with a community and a job beyond anything I could ask for or imagine. God is good, amen? But sometimes it feels like acknowledging his goodness now is only a reaction to the fact that things are finally going well for me. He is just as good on the other side of the story---in the last six months as I wrestled with my purpose, my identity, and watched my plans, my way of doing things crumble. Last night, I couldn’t sleep. I closed my eyes and watched scenes from my time student teaching—the eagerness of the first day, the time spent getting to know the incredible community of teachers and students, and the words that I wrote as a blog post came back to me…about grace, about worth and value, about how Jesus sometimes comes closest when you take the longer way around. I realized that, yes, I wrote all of that and believed it as truth…but the biggest lesson I learned from that whole semi-hellish fall was that I thought of myself as having a deep, functional faith, an awareness of who God is, a growing understanding of who I am…but when it came down to it, there was still a part of me that didn’t believe what I wrote at all. I thought it sounded nice, I hoped it was true, but somehow there was a disconnect between what I claimed as truth and what drove me when those truths seemed to fall apart around my ears. 

I don't ever want that kind of shallow living. I don't want to claim a truth that is only true when I feel like my story sounds good...to the point where I don't wholeheartedly embrace what I believe. That's the beauty of the last six months--that somehow at the end of my rope, I found that the world didn’t end—but part of that grace was the tender revelation of the ways I was still hungry and lacking something good. I found nuances of thought and speech and action that pointed to the thousand ways I needed God to move still deeper into me. Through student teaching, I saw that my sense of self was still so wrapped around what I did for a living that a lesson gone awry would cause existential crises, that I depended on being useful and right in any and every circumstance. I was terrified of failing and shaken when all of the effort I put into my lessons still wasn't enough. Every single strand led me back to some strand of who I understood God to be and how it had twisted. That Sunday, that fall, that whole senior year of college (and arguably much of what came before) was the beginning of a series of circumstances that hadn’t changed but stretched to make room to breathe. I was bruised and bleeding and fractured into a million pieces as the result of this long, slow unraveling, and then. And then. Through a thousand faces and careful circumstances, God created a space around my heart for me to breathe, told me that it was never about performance or putting on a face but rather the simple fact that He loved me and that his heart was broken for my twisted and fractured and bruised and battered one. I am not without fear for this next chapter of my life, because anxiety is NOT part of my personality, but it is an ingrained habit…but I know that God was faithful last Monday and last May and last summer and I know that it is safe to step forward into Him.


This year chewed me up and spit me out in a thousand ways that left me a shell of who I was, and yes, I would now 100% sit across from anyone and tell you the whole story if it helps you on your own road...but the long and the short of it is this: I lay in the mess, shuffled around trying to pick up the pieces, fell over them, threw them, spit on them, hid them, did everything I could think of to make sense of how my life--SIX YEARS of dreaming and hoping and investing---had come to what felt like a big cosmic joke. He was there as I questioned anything and everything these last four years at Taylor University and endured my identity as a disillusioned special education major, my passion turned thorn in my side, as I questioned and cried and spent a considerable amount of time crumpled on the floor, angry and wondering if He had left me, if any or all of this was wasted. This apartment, this job, this church come despite (not because of) anything I am or did. A MONTH ago, y'all...I dreaded graduation, resisted people who were at all excited or prepared or had any answers whatsoever for the months after graduation. There were days, weeks, months where it took all of my energy to get out of bed in the mornings and show up to class and act civil and He was there when I cried out that it was all too much. How do I know all of this? Because I woke up on the mornings I didn't want to, because my roommates and apartment mates found me when I couldn't stand, because when it felt like I couldn't get out from expectations I had coffee with a professor I had always wanted to have in class who told me my story was still worth telling. And that's not even half of it... (There is a special place in my heart for those who made room for my growth there…you know who you are!)

In the midst of all of this, there came a Sunday where the band played NEVER ONCE by Matt Redman and I crumbled, saw how I had frantically been trying to scoop up the pieces and tried to write a story that fell short of what He had for me. I asked Him to pick up the pieces, to begin where I ended. Obviously, given the windy, longwinded nature of this post, grace does not always take the path of least resistance or go straight from point A to point B. It bounces off people and circumstances, and in the right light, grace can be seen in even the most difficult places and faces. Papa God delights in kneeling to our level, lifting our chins, and saying "I know, dear heart. I know it hurts. I know it's awful and difficult and the worst. I'll let you be angry-- I can handle it." So. I came to this point when they played NEVER ONCE in church one morning where I was just tired and done with everything, with moving forward and the work it took to show my face when it felt like every step was a face-plant. I will never say that moment changed everything (like, what, those three minute testimonies? God's just like oh, honey, you don't even know...) BUT I did this simple act of lifting the pieces to Him. That's it. Everything I've said here, messes I haven't even gotten into. I just sat there on the floor and curled my heart around these things and said everything I could think of to say about them...and waited. Said, okay, God, I've tried and I'm done and I'm in the middle of all of these unwon battles. I feel them, they hurt, and I need you to lift these pieces and fit them back together. Your way. Your story. In your eyes, what is my story going to be? 

The answers?

Again, did not come quickly or easily or instantly

Still the same times and places and faces

But it started with this:

You are loved

You are enough

You are a writer--(and for the love of ME, would you stop brushing that under the rug?)

You are not what you do or say or who you hang out with

You are not your compulsive need to do everything right

Look! Look what I have for you--are you ready?

Come tell your story--and fall apart just enough to be caught and held

Come bring dark thoughts into light--and watch their darkness flee!

Come name death grips evil has on your heart and mind and hand them over to me

Come name what you need and see that death is exchanged for life

Come be held. 

Come see.

Okay, I whispered, but first will you

come (farther) in?

In the process, I bumped into men and women who didn't have to know me ten minutes before loving me in a way that fit the pieces back together. To my new family at the Gathering...you all are numerous and irreplaceable and I still cannot quite believe the gift that is getting to call you all home now…

Thank you for treating me like an old friend when I was a little more than a stranger, for being first to step with me into the darkness I was overwhelmed by (Meagan),

for telling me that I was seen and heard and treasured in a moment that, for me, was the pinnacle of insecurity. And, you know, bringing Malachi Sherck into my life at exactly the right time (Stephanie) 

Malachi and his family...a whole other story in and of itself. Somehow through this guy, God found the softest, most responsive part of my hardening, angry, bitter heart and laid it open. It was Malachi who tossed me a life raft when I was drowning in performances and expectations in student teaching. It was Malachi who drew me in when I didn't want to show up, didn't want to do anything besides distance myself and retreat and protect myself from more interactions, more people. He was the one who got me to name this voice in my head who always had to get it right, do right, be right and led me into the center of a community of people who saw me as already enough.

Leo Flores, I'm looking at you :) Thank you for asking why I was doing what I did and taking no as an okay answer, showing me that I didn't fall apart when my calling did.  

Andrea Repogle, for seeing my restlessness and anxiety and general discomfort with 20/20 vision and making room for me to breathe..

Renee Cruea... for walking a similar journey as mine and helping me see the next step and showing up every time.

Joshua Brandt for being unlike any pastor I have ever known, for taking away my fear that my problems weren't big or significant enough for someone who stood on stages for a living to be bothered with, for loving every person in your church as if they were the only one. That...is supernatural and it breathes room into hearts. 

...and the list goes on, because He is just that good...

So here’s my goal, and, yes it sounds simple, but bear with me—to live what I believe. To claim the truth that I have tried on for size. To step fully into the truth of who God is and who that makes me to be, to cling even closer when shaken, knowing that I am secure and in Him and there are no surprises that can change that. To live generously, with open doors and let abundance make me brave. I want to get to the end of this year, the first year on my own, and can say that I became more fully myself, that I prayed harder and believed more and lived bigger and loved more fiercely because I know who and Whose I am. This process is hard and there are details to nail into place and things that I need to figure out, but I'm going, not as an independent adult but as a trusting child held fast by her doting Father. Come travel with me?