Agoraphobes and hitchhiking

 

I know the tiles on my kitchen floor by heart, even the minute brush strokes that differentiate their twirly fleur de lises. I could tell you which of my yellow windowsills is peeling the worst, the sounds the porch makes when there’s a thunderstorm, and the exact number of posts in my white, wooden fence that barricades my land from intruders. I know my wood floor's creaky planks by heart too. I can walk across the living room without making a sound, which is a feat if you’ve ever trotted across my groggy floors.

I’ve memorized the ocean’s horizon from my western kitchen window and the country meadows that starkly transform into mile high mountains on the eastern side. I know the ridges, valleys and patches of purple and grey by heart, and sometimes I wonder what it would be like to roam those wild hills and experience whatever mysteries hide beyond them, but then the kettle starts to whistle and I jump. My heart stops and I’m brought back to reality. 

I never venture off my land. There’s no room to make mistakes and do stupid things whose outcomes can’t be predicted. Control, predictability, responsibility and perfection have been my closest companions for longer than I can remember—I can’t imagine how I would exist without them. And, as a result, my soul has lived most of its life behind my hazy yellow and peach colored walls, securely guarded by my white fence and a world of wonderfully familiar order. My days are simple and “right” in all the ways that you can do things “right”. In fact, I’m obsessed with being right (Its so bad I could be the first born who has the identity crisis whenever she steps off her 10-speed performance treadmill.)

Last week I realized that while accomplishing all of my "work" I've missed sunsets. Many sunsets. I’ve only seen one or two sunsets where the pink melted into yellow and purple and orange and then trickled into gold. I was so busy being productive and so afraid of wasting time that I never felt freedom to allow myself to absorb them. 

And I’ve missed the warm rainy days too, where the air smells sweet. I can’t remember the last time I danced like a crazy women from a long lost tribe of Eden, letting my gratitude spill out of my feet and into the soil. I’ve been deterred at the thought of unnecessary messes and mud stains and leaving the doors unlocked for too long and getting behind in real and profitable “work.” But I think that beneath all of the practicality I’m really afraid. It’s funny how practicality is an easy guise over wounds that go too deep…

So I’ve stayed glued and chained to my twenty square foot block of existence, calling it my “duty” when it’s really my codependent counterpart. Familiarity, I think, is the best disguise of all… a true counterfeit. Familiarity it robs us of the joy of the journey, beckoning us to feed in its shadows, whispering that we’ll be ruined if we ever leave its clutches. The weird this is that we’re never really happy in it’s cozy little hide, just afraid that it will be taken away from us. I know that fear because it’s the second wall that surrounds my house, never letting down its guard, except for the wee hours of the night.

I had a realization two weeks ago: I live to maintain my pristine and unscathed slate. In fact, I often get so caught up in doing the right thing and being productive that I completely miss out on the beauty in front of me. “Don’t do this,” “don’t do that,” “go here,” “don’t go there…” Suddenly, I saw my life stretched out before me and it ended with this tiny shriveled woman. Her shoulders were hunched, her brow furrowed, her neck jutted out and her gaze was down. She had lived in the house with yellow and peach walls her entire life. She’d never, except on one or two very rare occasions, stepped beyond the borders of the white fence. She spent every day worrying if she’d made the right decisions, wondering if God was pleased with her, pacing back and forth, looking out the windows, doing dishes and knitting, knealing and praying and talking to herself. She was ever and always wrapped in a cloud of anxiety and fear.

The picture made me shutter but before it ended someone else appeared. She had rosy sunburned cheeks, bright, warm eyes, and a voice that laughed at fear. She wore tall boots and a backpack with a goofy mountaineering jacket. She danced down the house’s front porch unlatched the white gate, blew the front window a kiss and stated: “I’ll come back to you once I’ve had my next adventure.” She stuck out her hip, lifted up her right thumb, and found a ride to the next city in the back of a flat bed truck. And I don’t know all the places she went, but there were many places and some mistakes, but she lived more in one day than the old woman had in an entire century.

Rocks, pearls and hot messes

“Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.” 

--Frederick Buechner

I once read a book where a woman talked about her life experiences in terms of "waiting." She said that each season of her life was defined by waiting for the next impending, major life event. As a young girl she was waiting to become a teenager, as a young teenager she was waiting to turn 16 and get her driver's license, as a high school student she was waiting to go to college, as a college student she was waiting for graduation and a job, and as a post grad she was waiting to have a family and get married. As a result, her heart's fulfillment seemed ever set in the future. Again and again the same voice whispered, "Once you arrive at this next major landmark, then you will truly be satisfied and happy." Unfortunately, she had no such luck. She'd get the keys, cross the stage, say her vows and feel satisfied for a moment but then the aching would come back. In addition, she was faced with a whole new set of expectations and agendas and life went on. Her solution to the madness was simple--embrace the present. She gave the metaphor of life as a string of pearls, each pearl representing  a sacred moment worthy of investment. It's a lovely thought and picture, something you could put on a handmade card with a vintage picture of pearls and then write in frilly cursive ending with a dainty ellipses but, alas, my life tends to be so much more complicated.

I have that pearl quote written down somewhere in my heart, but it's not on a romantic Etsy greeting card. Instead it's on a grimy Whole Foods napkin I've used to clean up scalding tea, blow my nose into in the dead of winter and wipe away tears in the parking lot outside a friend's celebratory party. The pearl picture makes sense when you're hiking in the woods and rowing on a lake at dawn but what about all the in-between moments? What about scrubbing the toilet, chopping up vegetable and slicing your finger, sitting with a friend who's wrestling with an eating disorder or crying yourself to sleep because of chronic pain that's lasted a decade? Those moments don't seem like pearls but grains of sand to me--rocks strung around my neck that I have yet to see dazzle with luminosity. Ugh. Blah. I find myself feeling the pressure to make these rocks into pearls. For some reason I feel the need to smile and pull myself up by my boot straps and call a rock something it has yet to become... yet my gut grumbles that this mentality is "off".

I'm sick of pretending things are pearls when they aren't yet-- I can't make myself do it anymore and I don't want to. It's like those moments when you haven't washed your hair in three days, have no makeup on, are strung out exhausted and wearing sweats with a big stain on the leg, not to mention you old tie dye shirt from 7th grade camp. Oh yeah, and your eyes are swollen from crying. You just want to be alone but unfortunately you see someone at the library printer or maybe the check out line in the grocery store. Please don't pretend like everything's fine or try and encourage me by saying, "But you're beautiful!" after I say that I feel like a hot mess. Ugh. I am a MESS. Let's just accept a grain of sand for a grain of sand. Usher me to a tub with lavender and a warm bed with wool socks, don't give me a speech about hope. Maybe you can encourage me tomorrow afternoon but no now. Just let me be. Why can't we just accept the process and ruminate in it, even when it's disheveled and crusty?

In these moments, stout-hearted Frederick Buechner consoles me. He reminds me that blood, sweat and tears are part of the journey and that pain and ecstasy are equal nonnegotiables. Seeing things for what they are brings the real revelation and insight--honest analysis, in some ways, is like the dissonant pressure necessary for a grain of sand to become a pearl in a clam's mouth. I think Fred would whole-heartedly agree with Sabrina Ward Harrison's life perspective: "bless the mess." Ultimately, the mess is what shapes and forms us. In fact, I'd say that the mess is part of what makes our precious moments of felicity authentically glorious.

In college, I had a professor who planted his soap box on similar principles. Without relent he would tell us: "Dissonance is the birth place of growth. If you're not uncomfortable or feeling stretched, you're not growing." It drove us all insane. Those words meant nothing to me at 2 am when I was tying to finish two papers, study for a test and then wake up again at 6 am... and they meant nothing to me when I was driving home from small group feeling overwhelmed and exhaustingly confused about my future all the while yelling at God through sobs. In fact my professor's words offended me and made me grumpy. "Who gives a flip! Ugh!!! I HATE process! Why can't it just be over?!! I'm DONE with the stupid process!!!" And I felt that way for a long time... I often still do. But with each passing day, the older I get, the more Dr. Davis' words make sense and the more I realize that we never arrive at the "end" of the process. Unfortunately, that's where my hope arrow has been aimed. I'm realizing that my "waiting" isn't rooted so much in being fulfilled by a singular moment such as getting a dream job or getting married, instead my waiting's fulfillment is focused on finding and entering a season of life doused in static stability, unchanging and eternal peace. I think that when I arrive there, then I will truly be fulfilled, without a want in the world. Yet, if life has taught me anything, it has shown me that the seemingly "unchanging" seasons bring little, if any, fruit or growth. In fact, they get boring rather quickly. It's like summer vacation in middle school. You spend all of May and finals week counting down the minutes till that final Thursday unleashes three months void of homework or responsibility... yet Thursday comes and goes, along with the ecstasy. You sleep in, go to the beach and movies with friends, watch TV, and stay up late, but it all gets old after a couple weeks. After a while you're ready for some new project and challenge to come along because bumming around isn't all it's crack up to be.

I think life's like that too. I wouldn't call each moment a pearl, but I would agree with Buechner and say that each moment is sacred. Glory dwells in the ordinary. I don't want to be blind to the significance and abstract beauty of pain and process. The birth of dreams is always preceded by labor pains. Don't feel ashamed to acknowledge and embrace the rocks strung around your neck-- maybe our honest embrace is part of the dissonant pressure that transforms our calloused, rigid stones into pearls.

Time Goes Away

"I am afraid to speak or move for fear that this wonderful beauty will vanish like a broken silence." - L.M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island

The winds have been changing this week. Not a lot, but just enough to notice. The thick flush of summer is fading like the dye from my once bright teal shorts and the sun is starting to bow behind tree lines 20 minutes earlier. It's subtle but it makes me sad.  It makes me want to hold onto time like a kid grasping a rope swing for dear life. It’s like that feeling you have when you’ve been laughing for 8 minutes straight--you’re crying, and convulsing with joy while all the anxiety, fear and insecurity evaporates or that feeling you have when someone truly sees, accepts and loves you without condition... you just don’t want it to end.

I want to stop time and rest in these sacred space forever, but time goes away. Sooner or later fall comes and the laughter eventually stops. You get off the floor, take a couple deep breaths and straighten out your jeans T shirt. The overwhelming affirmation eventually collides with the phone ringing, the laundry machine beeping, and stacks of dirty dishes growing taller. Everyone sinks back down into the “reality” of composure and social norms and agendas and responsibility. Blah. Who wants that to be their reality? Maybe I’ve been identifying with the wrong "reality"... but then why does the really sweet, pure and beautiful reality come and go so quickly?  Sometimes I feel afraid to absorb a moment's beauty and goodness because I know that I can’t hold onto it forever... it just hurts and cuts so deep when things change and a sacred silence is broken.

This is something I haven't been able to put into words until this week. I was soaking in the tub on Monday night with a miserable headache when a Rosie Thomas songs came on and gave the vague, pervasive feeling a name: time going away. It's well worth a listen:
http://grooveshark.com/s/Time+Goes+Away+Album+Version/4kBUU3?src=5

This vague, unnamed feeling that makes our eyes misty and our hearts sad and always seems to come up when "time goes away" is yearning. It's a yearning for the fullness of love, not just romantic love but the sincere love of family and friendship. It's a yearning for true and unadulterated connection. A yearning for the fullness of beauty, joy, peace, and goodness... it's a yearning for a higher reality, an unnamed space and Love whose fullness can't be articulated.  C.S. Lewis explains this phenomenon in The Weight of Glory:

“In speaking of this desire for our own faroff country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter... The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”

And maybe that's what the last weeks of summer are... the sweet and drifting aromas of a sacred flower we've never held but strangely hunger and thirst for all the same. Maybe that's the response that truth and beauty awaken in the human heart--a gut-wrenching awareness that there must be more. We can't even name the more but we sense it's presence and know it's fragrance: "It was when I was happiest that I longed the most... The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing... to find the place where all the beauty came from" (C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces).

I know the Source of the longing.  I've seen glimpses of His face in the eyes of children and an old blind man with a guide dog. I've heard His voice in the shower and on long drives.  I've felt His presence in my dreams and on the beaches of the Pacific.  I could list out Bible verses and theological principles that explain who He is and how He fulfills the longing but I'm not going to do that. I'm weary of wearing a mask and pretending that I believe all that stuff in my heart. I don't have it all together. And what bothers me most is when people list verses and principles as a means to convince me that I shouldn't feel the longing: "just trust God," "have faith," "rest in the promise," and "don't be discouraged." Throwing around truths in that manner significantly cheapens them. In fact, their prescription implicitly communicates: "You feel the yearning? Still? You must be doing something wrong. You shouldn't feel longing anymore. Just do x, y and z and the yearning will disappear." And that simply isn't true. The aching for more is supposed to be there. 

The yearning is part of what makes us human and keeps us trailblazing forward. The sadness and disappointment of a moment lost and time "going away" is what draws us out of our technological bubbles and materialistic caves and sets our hearts on pilgrimage. It's what makes us aware of the human's need to encounter the supernatural. Matthew 5 says, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven." I think "the longing" is synonymous to that poorness of spirit. It's a desperation that drives grown men and women to their knees and into prayers marked with heaving tears and shouts. It is the desperation that births cries for revival and restoration and redemption. When ignited, this yearning opens the flood gates of heaven and raises up an army of radical warriors who will willingly lay down any and everything, all for the hope of being in the presence of the yearning's Source for eternity.

So, the yearning is real. The yearning is real and shouldn't be stuffed, ignored and denied. Quiet walks through the woods, long soaks in the tub, wild tears and crazy brush strokes are moments worth investing in because they help us experience, embrace, and name the yearning for what it is.

 

Another thing that helps me embrace the yearning is food. Yes, this is somewhat trite, but also very true. On days when seasons change and deep things shift, hearty soul food is a necessity. Thick breads, soups, and pasta dishes makes me slow down and reflect. This week, my soul food was slow cooker chili with dense short grain brown rice and homemade sweet potato fries with rosemary.  

I got the chili recipe off yummly.com and changed a few things (here's the link http://www.yummly.com/recipe/Slow-Cooker-Chili-Ii-Allrecipes). 1) I didn't use the bean "liquid" because bean juice grosses me out. Instead I drained all the beans and added a cup and a half of chicken broth. 2) I switched a can of kidney beans for a can of black beans. 3) I renamed the chili from "Slow Cooker Chili" to "Cowboy Chili" because sojourning days require sojourning food descriptions :)

As for the sweet potato fries, it's a mixture of a friend's recipe and my own reckoning:

1) Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2) Cut a sweet potato or yam into fries.
3) Melt 2 tbs of coconut oil on the stove and then pour over fries and mix thoroughly in a bowl.
4) Place fries on a cookie sheet and sprinkle with sea salt and rosemary.
5) Bake in oven for 20-25 minutes.

Enjoy good food, take time to do what brings you life, and don't feel ashamed or isolated from the world when "time goes away" and your heart feels sad.  It's okay to feel the yearning--light a candle, draw a bath, let the tears come and embrace it.

Here is my song...


Let me be perfectly honest with you: I spent an hour writing and editing this first post and quite frankly I've had it. I deleted everything I initially wrote. That's exactly why I resisted friends encouragements that I start a blog. I'm a first-born, performance driven, Wheaton graduate, and perfectionist, and a blog is the perfect place for all that stuff to come out and wield wild control.  Well, I'm in the process of leaving that old life and identity behind so maybe this will help me move forward. But I'm still kind of confused about what a blog is. Is it an online journal? Who's your audience? Isn't it weird that anyone can read your stuff? Is it copyrighted? Questions in need of closure... well maybe this is part of the healing process too. I'll let you know right now that this blog isn't going to be perfect but I can assure you that it will be real.

The bottom line is that I have met and encountered the love of Jesus and decided that I have no choice but to follow Him with everything inside of me. I'm not talking about going to church every Sunday, being a nice and civil person and knowing a lot about God. No, I've been there and I can tell you right now that it will drain and burn you out. What I'm talking about is a personal, daily, constant relationship with Jesus that seeps into everything you do, from the way you fold your laundry, to the way you check emails, to the way you talk to the flight attendant who helps you check your baggage. This isn't a relationship contained by four walls for Sundays only; it's a crazy, wild fire love that will consume everything from your bitterness, to your past, to your obsession with being in control. Thus far I've found it to be a mountain climb of adventure, joy, and healing but also a low road of humility, pain, and lots of messiness. Yet, at the end of all things, I've found it to be the path of Life. When you really encounter Jesus, you are forever ruined for anything less. So beloved, whoever you are, wherever you are, and whenever it is that you read this, I want to invite you on this journey with me.

I'll leave you with the lyrics that inspired the title "Freedom Song":

"Hope" by Kristene DiMarco

There is a song I will sing
That angels only dream of singin'
A song that moves the heart of God
That only the redeemed can sing

It's the song of the storm ceasin'
The song of the dawn breakin'
It's the song of the undefeated soul
Comin' forth from the fire

There is a song I will sing
That angels only dream of singing
A song that moves the heart of God
That only the redeemed can sing

It's the song of my rescue comin'
The song of my last tear fallin'
It's the song of the undefeated lover
Comin' forth from the fire

All of our lives have a song to sing, and I hope mine can be that of a captive-set-free whose life is a testimony of abandoned worship, the song of an undefeated lover coming forth from the fire.