[exhale with a smile]

Ahhh.


Last night was my first full night's sleep since the 23rd and
I 
  feel 
    great.
I feel quite grateful to have one fewer monkey on my back.


The office is now empty and I have a coffee and bagel on my desk. My socks are warm, my Chucks are comfortable, my to-do list looks pretty (I used markers because why not?), and my God is glorious.


Hmm.. that's probably the most presumptuous first-person singular possessive article of all time, eh? My God, indeed!


Before I left the house I was actually feeling stressed about how much there is to do, more stressed because I had allowed myself to sleep in. But now... but now when I'm making my to-do list with plenty of diligence AND grace, it seems OK. Also having no one else in the building is freeing me up. (I don't even have to close the door in order to think!)


I consider New Years celebrations. I'm thinking about tonight, today, tomorrow, and how our calendars work. I'm thinking about who the Lord will shape me into in the next twelve months (if He gives me twelve). I'm not going to make fine crystal resolutions but I do want to take some time to meditate on (even daydream about) the woman of God that 2014 could morph me into.


This ambitious streak in me, I daresay it's timely.


I'm thinking about I Peter and about the sermon series our local church will be led through in the coming months. I've had dormant excitement about this series since I was told about it months ago, that excitement was roused when I was given a brief outline of the first two sermons a few weeks ago, and then since last Thursday when I started putting the services together, it seems like the sermon series and the text and what the Lord will do to/with/in/through us is my seventh thought every day.


I'm so excited.


And the first sermon in the series, the one preached two days ago, it was the craziest combination of perfectly fulfillingly delightful, and incalculably torturous teasing. I AM SO EXCITED. [Those words look dumb. "So" is appallingly overused in this culture. But they're the words I have!]


It made me so happy that this opening sermon (almost a prologue) was preached on the last Sunday of the year, not the first. I like that it had a palpable "what's to come" feel to it--which of course also tied in perfectly to the content of the sermon, that we are not who we should be yet but by God's grace we are not who we were.


Oh, selah.


It's going to be a good day. By God's grace it'll be a good year. I'd better get to work!

I think better with my door closed.

(How about you?)


I feel good today. I just came from breakfast with my sister and I'm excited about my work week. I feel OK. I like the color of the shirt I'm wearing. Maybe it's salmon.


I feel relaxed and ambitious. Today I will probably eat many frogs. Today will probably be the day I get in to looking for work and other important life-big things. Hmm.  I'm like...threatening to burst with good.... somethingness. I'm going to try to funnel it all into my Church music work because let's be serious. Excellence is a thing.

I would like to write a blog post

but I'm not sure what to write.

It's been so long since I came here and I've written so many blog-like emails and letters recently that I seem to be tapped out.

I've been given some really fun gifts for Christmas and I like how loved it makes me feel. I liked re-opening and re-looking at them when I got home Friday after three nights away. Re-opening the gifts and properly processing them was one of the few indicators I've seen since Friday that I really was ALL there with my family over the holidays. Yes, all the unanswered text-messages and all the unprocessed things that came flooding in as soon as I dropped off the car I'd rented, it was a lot.

I wasn't thinking about work, I didn't journal, I didn't write more than one or two emails per day--and those were emails about the trip.

I like that I was given gifts which show how people know me. A journal, six pairs of earrings, some fun music things, coffee shop gift cards, and a book about grace--they stand out in particular.

The music things interest me. Two mini percussive instruments and two oversized paper clips with a treble clef on one and an eighth note on the other. WEIRDLY... weirdly, weirdly, weirdly the paper clips are building in me some kind of creative ambition. I looked at them, the instruments, and some socks with a keyboard printed on, and thought, "I could be a real piano teacher soon."

Maybe I don't mean a handful of students for a few hours a week. Maybe I mean it would be nice to have more room to express myself musically. I looked at the little gifts and was reminded of how much of my music passion is suppressed so I can get through the day.

But then I think music isn't Kingdomful enough, not for my heart. I think I'd always rather fit music in around whatever else I do. I could have it suppressed and pinched and less if it means I'm on the front lines in another real way.

Music makes me happy. I love my job. I want to be creative. I am creative. I will always have creative touches in every vocation I have. But, oh, to be let loose??

Could I be paid to spend hours a day crafting art? Crafting pieces of writing? Shall I be an art-er by trade whose Kingdom work is done in every waking moment, vocational and not? Who am I? Who shall I be?

I'm interested. I'm eager. I'm cuspy.

I want to have big ambitions. I want to work hard. I want many things. (I hope at least one of them is good.)

"Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ."

When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, "Brothers, what shall we do?"

Peter replied, "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off--for all whom the Lord our God will call."

skewed.

Power outtages are funny things! I like the challenge of finding the maximum normalcy within the newly imposed bounds.

Today I was able to get some real work done without my computer, the photocopier, or artificial lights. Made me happy to be so un-limited. Grateful also for this freeing me up a bit the next two days. 

But I always find it funny that moment I realise I've forgotten that something needs electricity to run or that something doesn't need electricity to run.

Today it was that I had to ask myself whether I could still use the hole-puncher. And I laughed at myself.

It's gorgeous outside.

I picked up the phone a hundred times. I called a hundred times. I reached out a hundred times, explained a hundred times, and felt a little better a hundred times.

But we didn't actually talk 

because you didn't pick up.

I didn't actually call;

I haven't touched my phone.

I just can't do it.

Lately I have found myself stripped of the willpower to ask for help. I steep in sadness and try to speak to the Lord about what hurts. I can't find the words. I sit and I spiral, thinking of the people who would take my call and would be strong for me.

But my iPhone, from across the room it looks like an expensive, rubber-encased portal to something even more uncomfortable. Last night I could barely look at it.

Eventually I cry and call it a draw.

These are the days I would relapse. These are the days I feel pressed, alone, confused, frustrated, and pent up enough to engage my coping mechanism because it brings relief. I hate it and I might be able to explain why it's terrible but I'll never say it doesn't yield temporary relief.

These days I can't do it because my heart's changed. But I know this territory. I know this "something needs to come out or I'm going to lose it" feeling that leads easily into a relapse because it's how I express. I can't say it so I enact it. 

And boy, does it feel good. Start to finish I'm glad I finally feel something I understand. It's only when the adrenaline runs out and the disconnect ebbs (usually the next day) that I start to feel worse, to feel remorse, and to wish I was free of the cycle.

And so now, without this option for relief or release (it simply doesn't figure in my mind) I feel even more cagey. My go-to escape hatch has been boarded up. Is a bad outlet better than no outlet? I can't tell. 

maybe we will linger

I wonder about more than I can say-

always

it rolls out, it moves

I try to pen it all but I miss

it's staring me in the face,

sitting on my chest,

pinning my hands, 

flooding my brain,

keeping me up,

tiring me out;

it's killing me.

it's killing me and I'm explosive--


straight-forward shot,
a beam, a canal;
a shot, straight ahead

it's stuck and shaking


out
out
out

Series: Transparency, History and Identity (Epilogue)

Subtitle: Janus

Ups and downs, cloudiness, swirling identity maybe, BUT--

I am definitelty not where I used to be.

Even reading some things I wrote in September and early October, I can see there's a difference. I'm not quite like I was. On a day like today I want to say I'm all better and then just carry on with real life but I don't actually have the legs to do that yet.

            ---

  When peace like a river attendeth my way,

  When sorrows like sea billows roll;

  Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,

  "It is well, it is well with my soul."

The Lord,

    the Lord Himself 

        who made the Heavens

            and loves me completely,

has been teaching,

   rebuking, and

changing me on

•getting help

•being loved, and

•being unable to thwart His work.

He amazes me. Daily He amazes me.

   . . . How great is the love the Father has lavished on us that we should be called children of God--and that is what we are!

                                  I John 3

}}So many times my jaw has dropped because at just the right moment, the Lord brings someone to show me incredible love. It's usually a small thing they do--a token. But someone will do exactly what the Lord has led them to and it works on me.

More than once I have recieved a card, a gift, an email, or a text that has made me break into tears. I remember one touchy evening in my darkened office in the empty building, slumping to the floor in tears asking, "What am I supposed to do with this??" 

I held out the timely, tender card someone had slipped me and shook it in the air at my Father. What am I supposed to do with this??

Another way of putting it would be: OK so You love me. Now what? I was frustrated. I couldn't get it.

He has so worked on me. He has changed me without my consent. (Fair enough since my life is His. He paid a high price for me.)

  My sin-- O, the bliss of this glorious thought,

  My sin-- not in part but the whole,

  Is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more,

  Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord, O my soul!

}}So many times my jaw has dropped because at just the right moment, He has interrupted or blocked me from engaging my coping mechanism. Only the Lord could have timing that impeccable. Only the Lord would know what's in my mind, and only the Lord could draw to me anyone He chooses, the exact right person to intervene at His bidding.

And so? If the Lord keeps sending people to intervene then it must be that He doesn't want me to do it. He must want to protect me, to preserve me. He must care.

•••This is so unsettling. A few times I have found myself literally frozen in holy fear when He stands so huge in my path, blocking me from self-destruction. Wow. What a God. What is man that you are mindful of him? The son of man that you care for him?•••

}}I don't feel great all the time; I don't feel stable or whole but I am incapable of giving up hope. This verse expresses it perfectly:

  Though Satan should buffet, tho' trials should come,

  Let this blest assurance control,

  That Christ has regarded my helpless estate,

  And hath shed His own blood for my soul!

     Whatever may come, Lord, I'm Yours.

}}There is still loads of confusion, and loads of work to be done but I'm so inarguably on the mend, I must believe He'll take me all the way. 

I don't know how to deal with people, I don't know how to be with people; I often don't know what to do at all. I don't know how to get the voice in my head to stop insulting and bullying me. I get overwhelmed by frustration (without being able to determine the root) several times a day. Too often I long to sleep or euphemistically "sleep" to escape the pain and mystery. 

But have I stopped worshipping?

Have I doubted His character, even in my darkest moments? Have I stopped declaring His praises and marvelling at His work? I still have some fight left in me.

  And, Lord, haste the day when the faith shall be sight,

  The clouds be rolled back as a scroll,

  The trump shall resound and the Lord shall descend,

  "Even so"--it is well with my soul.

It is well with 

 my soul.

    It is well, it is well 

 with my soul.

                                  Amen

Series: Transparency, History and Identity (Part 10)

Subtitle: dross

  Come, ye sinners, poor and needy,
  Weak and wounded, sick and sore;
  Jesus ready stands to save you,
  Full of pity, love, and pow'r.

  Come, ye thirsty, come, and welcome,
  God's free bounty glorify;
  True belief and true repentance,
  Every grace that brings you nigh.

And how does one put to words the feeling of being hollowed out?

It's like all the fractured bits of myself need to be cleared out before the Lord can begin rebuilding me as a whole person, as a whole woman.

I daresay I don't know who she is. I'm so thoroughly dismantled I couldn't begin to tell you what I'll look like when I've been rebuilt.


I'm a bit amazed that I'm able to get through each day as some sort of productive adult. I don't have the same output nor the same bright eyes but I'm carrying responsibilities as best I can. There's enough. Just Tuesday night I told the Lord that while I'm in this season where I sometimes want to tear my hair out because I'm so frustrated by my lack of moorings, direction, and vision, that I can at least continue to read His Word, I can continue to do my job of leading the Lord's people in corporate worship, I can continue seeking and seizing opportunities to share the Good News, and I can continue to try to turn everything in my life out for His glory. There isn't much else in my life after that.


So... fine. So, we are fine.


But then there's the grapefruit spoon. Then there's the jagged scoop efficiently designed for digging, ripping, tearing, removing... How may times I have cried these last eight weeks. I lose count. I know it's several times a week and often feels like it's every day. I know I am always alone (once or twice I've been on the phone), and I know it hurts.

I don't cry. I'm not a crier. I used to be very proud of that fact, that I could go for months or years without a breakdown. And now, as of this moment, I've gone approximately fifty-seven hours without a breakdown. (Didn't even see Tuesday night coming. I was feeling angry and frustrated; I started journalling and put on some music and then BAM, the emotion welled up and came out my tear ducts.)


More than a month ago I expressed to my pastor my bewilderment and mild annoyance at how often I was shedding tears. (I think I had thought the Big Cry was going to be enough.) My pastor's reply comes with simplicity and confidence I didn't expect. "Well, you have a lot of tears stored up." Tenderly put and profoundly accurate, the evaluation has stuck with me.


So, I consider the tears a conduit. I take it that in this new light of reality, I'm catching up with my past. I'm responding to hurt several years on as if it were as fresh as yesterday.


In fact, there have been four cases where I responded to hurt as if it were as fresh as real-time. I've written about the phantom hands being so intense, realistic, and relentless that I weep in anguish...but I haven't written that I think this is part of my repayment.

Yes, it seems like responding to the violation as if it's a violation is healthily syncing up some disconnected parts of me. When I'm unclouded and able to respond properly to what happened, to what was taken, it feels good. It's not good like it's pleasant but it's good like it's right and fitting. It feels good because I missed it the first time round.

I want to go on but I'm not sure I can improve the explanation. I have been learning to cry and learning to feel real things.

In Part 8 I briefly mentioned a big relapse Friday followed by a peculiar Saturday and what made it peculiar to me was the tight turn-around between gross sin and defeated self-loathing, and suffocating, permeating love and acceptance from God on high against Whom only have I sinned.

 Selah.

It's hard to explain. I wasn't coping well. On the first of November I was feeling immense pressure, anger, frustration with this journey and with my state. I was tired of fighting. So, I gave in. 

Disgusting and intense, I submitted to my coping mechanism and heaped graphic verbal abuse on top for good measure. (Truth be told: I find it almost impossible to relapse without verbal abuse--that's how I get to feel small and deserving enough.)

And then I left my office to go home. In the seven-minute walk, someone found time to roll down their car window and yell profanities at me, tailored for a woman. It shook me. And I had two polar, simultaneous responses: one self said, "See?? Even strangers can see how worthless I am!" and another self said, "No, I'm not! What's wrong with that guy?? He doesn't even know me."

And the latter response did win out. What lingered was the feeling of indignation. I was almost able to laugh at the absurdity of his choice.

But then night settled in, no one was home, and I found myself slipping back into the dark, both literally externally and internally.

And I submitted again. I borrowed the profanities from the man in the car. I tried to make his words fit. 

I don't know how I slept but I know I woke up in the same cloud. I woke up slowly, feeling like death.  I didn't feel like getting up or moving or doing anything or doing nothing. I was able to summon the energy to submit to my coping mech again but this time it gave way to sadness, not numbness and anger.


I engaged and then I wept. I knew. I just knew it wasn't helping, it wasn't good.


I tuned into the sermon I mentioned in Part 3, the one that completely got me. And this time, when things weren't too raw and I wasn't completely caught off-guard and overwhelmed by a sermon that seemed tailor-made for me, it was piercing. It was utterly piercing. The Holy Spirit drove an awl through my heart and obligated me to understand the truth.

That morning it seemed the Holy Spirit had unearthed the other half of the Gospel that I'd never studied. It seemed that the Gospel says He saves us from our own sin but He also saves us from the ravages of other people's sin against us. WHAT??!

That's YOU, Lord Jesus? You do that??

Imagine getting to understand the Greatest Good News there is TWICE in one lifetime. Wow. I was overwhelmed.

  Come, ye weary, heavy-laden,

  Lost and ruined by the fall;

  If you tarry til you're better

  You will never come at all.

I stayed in my room, very uncharacteristically unbothered by being undressed, unshowered, unbreakfasted, uncoffeed, unoutside-worlded for three hours. It was like a filibuster. I felt I wanted to finish this. I wanted to get what I should get. I couldn't relapse this hard and then just go about my day. I stayed until my hip socket was touched.

And do you know how I cried? Do you know how hearing about the Jesus ready standing to save me from my weak and wounded, sick and sore self broke me? I cried like I had found a Savior. I cried like the right Someone was going to take care of me more completely than I could fathom.

In the tough bits, the parts that made me slump over or hang my head, and say to the Lord, "I can't... I can't..." as I convulsed with tears, I also asked Him to show me how to let Him have His way. I struggle to describe what that's like. Accepting holy relief is awkwardly painful.

I listened to the highly connective bits again, (to make sure I heard it all), prayed again that the Lord would help me let Him help me, and then I finally opened my bedroom door.

It was that tender-loud-soft-quiet-subdued-amplified feeling again. I showered unrushedly and dressed flatteringly. (I was trying to steep in grace.) Then I left the house and felt amazing in a funny way. I had sinned against God but instead of turning His back on me or killing me on the spot, He sat with me while I cried (I really knew it that morning, that He was with me), He told me He loved me, He showed me a glimpse of my future with Him, He taught me, He showed me His glory...

He did everything an injured party wouldn't normally do. Such forgiveness, such grace, such love.

And so when I left the house, realising profoundly that it was only by His grace or for His good pleasure that I felt any good at all (and good in my own skin, somehow!), I was delighted. I actually felt delighted in.

Yes, the backdrop of pain and confusion was still present and it made the "amazing" feeling all the more poignant but the Lord was taking me on a Princess Date that Saturday afternoon because He loved me like a daughter... and it was going to be great.

  View Him prostrate in the garden;

  On the ground your Maker lies;

  On the bloody tree behold Him;

  Sinner, will this not suffice?

  Lo! th' incarnate God ascended,

  Pleads the merit of His blood:

  Venture on Him, venture wholly,

  Let no other trust intrude.

  Let not conscience make you linger

  Not of fitness fondly dream;

  All the fitness He requireth

  Is to feel your need of Him.

Series: Transparency, History and Identity (Part 9)

For His returning we watch and we pray;

we will be ready the dawn of that day.

We'll join in singing with all the redeemed

cos Satan is vanquished and Jesus is King!

Hope was indeed breaking through.

        Analysis

In the next couple weeks, I started building my Reaching Out muscle and my Letting People Help Me muscle. I can't put into words how utterly unpleasant I find it. (Cough syrup, right?) I'm not sure I've found it getting easier so much as I've found myself cornered or desperate enough to have no choice but to go to the gym. Sigh. One day.

Also at this time I noticed the Good Shepherd repaying what the locusts have eaten through responses of other people, and that a wide cross-section of people. He gave me a handful of family members, some coworkers, some dear friends, and several ladies (and some strangers!) in our local church congregation. (As to the latter, there was a flood after I shared a transparent chunk of this story during a Women's Ministry event on the second Saturday in November. That experience could be a blog series on its own but I don't know if I'll ever be emotionally able to unpack it.)

Learning from other people, having them weep for me, be angry for me, be without words for me, and make that twisted-up "you didn't deserve that" face for me, it's difficult but occassionally borders on elation. (This is why I think it's the Lord doing it.) It's really worked on me. 

Hey! analogies work: it's like people are picking up pieces of my heavy load. I think it's like I could feel my spine unbend or my knees unbuckle. Hmm. It's something to have a caring someone hear you struggle, whip round to see the massive weight in your arms and exclaim, "Oh! I didn't know you were carrying that!" and then bolt over to take some of it or to shoulder up under it. It means something to be recognised where you are. 

It's hard to describe what it feels like when the same caring-type someone asks, "How long have you been holding that??" with that tragic I wish I had known tone that breaks my heart whenever I see it unfold with others. Broke my heart for me, too, but it's lined with hope and relief.

[Editor's note: Now I see why I've been putting off blogging. Rolling true things around in my head so I can synthesize some prose means I need to internalise the truth a little bit. I need to look at it in full light and take it all in so I can send it back out well. And me, I believe these words that I'm writing. These words are the opposite of the words I tried to use last night to coax myself into relapse. Ah, Sovereign Lord... You're too powerful and unrelenting.]

        Narrative

On the first  of November, I walked back to my own office from my boss', feeling weary and sad because I had confessed for the eight-millionth time to doing something I shouldn't do.

Our conversation had been cut short because someone had come to speak with him. I easily took the opportunity to slip out because I didn't really want to continue on the topic. I walked to my desk, sat, put my head down on my arms, and just breathed. My mind was swirling as it always is after such a confession.

A little while later my boss appears to try to console me, which I didn't deserve.

I didn't have much to say for myself but I did have something to say about a recent discovery I had made. Something was growing on my desk. My Easter lily died in April because (I assume) I didn't take good care of it. After it withered significantly, I pruned it as best I could and tried once or twice to revive the thing.

Then I let the pot of soil sit on my desk, not sure what I would do with it. One day I decided that one of the other thriving plants on my desk could do with a re-potting so I moved to clear out the lily's pot. I discovered that the bulb within was much greener than a dead bulb should be. So.. I left it, to see if the thing could be helped. I probably watered it another few times during the summer as I remembered.

Then at the beginning of November, at least six months since this plant should have died, I noticed a very green, very alive shoot protruding from the soil. I remember freezing in my tracks and my jaw dropping when I saw it.

I may have exclaimed something like, "Who does that?!" And I rambled to my boss, brandishing the pot, "Look at this! This should be dead! I've watered it twice since April and now it's growing! God makes dead things alive!" I think I sounded almost angry because I was overwhelmed by the hopefulness of the image or the metaphor.  Lord... You just do stuff.

On that day when I really needed to see a glimpse of His power, orchestration, timing, life-giving-ness, He let me see that this Resurrection plant was regrowing when I hadn't tended it. Amazing.

I've started tracking the growth because it seemed to be progressing at an abnormal rate. From the two-and-three-quarter inches that first Friday, it grew to three-and-three-quarters by Sunday. It was at five-and-three-quarters within a week and as of the time I'm typing, the plant stands a proud eleven-and-one-sixteenth inches. I don't know how fast lilies are supposed to grow but this one should be dead and instead it's quadrupled its height in four weeks and I'm impressed. 

I like gazing at this hope memento on my desk sometimes and I like knowing that I didn't make it grow. I didn't nurture it, I didn't help it. (Since I saw the shoot, however, I have been very attentive because I would like it to last.)

Next post? The grapefruit spoon.

Or, the wringer.

Or, why I long for the end.

Sing to the King who is coming to reign;

glory to Jesus, the Lamb that was slain.

Life and salvation His empire shall bring 

and joy to the nations when Jesus is King.