Be Found Again.

For years I sought out healing as a way to fix myself. I lived with the belief of “what is wrong with me” as a deprecating soundtrack to my life. I looked for ways to reinforce that belief, subconsciously so, to prove I wasn’t enough – not for my family, not for myself, not for a man. That belief fueled my motivation further to fix whatever I deemed as broken.

Then I woke up one day to my incessant hypervigilance. My constant detection of perceived threat or neglect had taken me on a path that, yes, had brought some healing but also extreme exhaustion and a loss of identity.

I would read in the gospels of the bleeding woman who suffered for 12 years and no doctor could cure her. Until she approached Jesus in a crowd with the belief he could, so she touched the hem of his cloak and was healed. In spite of her desire to remain anonymous he felt the power go out of him, “who touched my clothes?” She confessed weeping before him that it was her and in response he called her: Daughter.

He gave her more than a cure. He gave her an identity. And more than an identity, he gave her belonging.

All those years I sought out being fixed were a coverup for how unchosen I felt. All those years in the pursuit of healing never touched the hollow lie inside that told me I didn’t belong.

It wasn’t until I came to the end of my stubborn self did I realize my path was meaningless if I didn’t believe in my belovedness. I was lost and didn’t know it. Orphaned while proclaiming God as King.

Now, anytime I notice my passion to heal what’s wounded I remember the bleeding woman and how I’m like her – that even the pursuit of something good and righteous can become an idol.

I look at the culture around me and I see desires for healing from disease, from trauma and emotional pain. None of it is wrong, just vastly incomplete. We divorce healing from the one true Healer and call it growth – then wonder why it doesn’t feel enough. In our search for wholeness we forget the One who’s already made us so, simply by calling us His.  Our identity as being chosen by God and our birthright of belonging is the cure before all other cures.

We are a society orphaned. We need to be found again

Sitting here with half a glass of wine and half opened eyelids, tired beyond belief and yet my heart is restless.  Restless because I’m such a processor and words have a way of rinsing out the build-up in my heart like a once soaked, ringed out towel.

I’d love to sit down and articulate beautifully crafted sentences about what this last year has been and yet I still feel too close to it.  You know that feeling?  Like you just got your heartbroken and a friend or family member asks about it, but you’re just kind of: blank face.  You try to utter the explanation about what happened and you can’t because it’s too soon, wound still fresh.

Sometimes there is no vernacular – there is just silence.  A mere being.  I suppose that’s where I’m at.  Then it dawned on me the other day.  Light bulb on, tears fall.

This is what mourning feels like.

And if there’s mourning, there was suffering somewhere.

Maybe it’s the wine or maybe its wisdom, I’m not sure, but the older I get and the more of life I experience, the more sad I feel for people who don’t go through stuff.  By stuff I mean STUFF.  The hard knocks, you know?  The struggles, the really freaking gut-wrenching hard ones.  The ones that take you deep and you stand there wondering how in the hell this is going to come out good on the other side.  The kind of pain that quite literally makes your heart ache.  The depth of sorrow that tempts you to run and never return, as if somehow you could outrun it – far, far away.  The kind of suffering that takes you to your edge, where maybe you even question God, you question it all, because things aren’t adding up; disoriented, disbelief, disappointment.

So much of life is what we do with our disappointments.

What we make up about them.  The kind of person we choose to be because of them.

Disappointments – they’ll make us bitter or make us better.  We choose.

Disappointments – ironically, hold the power to greater freedom.  We choose.

But back to suffering. It does something, doesn’t it?  It’s like it refines edges I didn’t know I had. It confronts me with fears I thought I’d done away with.  It assaults my peace when I thought I had that box checked.  People (Christians) love to reference Job.  He had the absolute worst hand of cards dealt to him and yet as Christians say “he was still faithful.”  Well, yes.  But let’s not forget about the tons of chapters in the middle where he was flat out angry at God.  Let’s not conveniently forget the messy, unpopular scene when Job was desperately and emotionally honest.

I remember once I read an article by John Piper where he titled it: “it’s never right to be angry with God” and despite my eye roll, I read it (begrudgingly) and left deflated and frustrated.  It’s articles and titles like that, that have most Christians rolling around in the muck of their unknown unforgiveness toward God because they don’t believe they can be honest with him about what they’re feeling.

Getting angry with him does not make you irreverent – lets just be clear.  However, pretending not to be, just might.

With suffering comes mourning and I feel like I’ve had a decent share lately.  I can’t help but believe that we are always mourning – on some level.  Losses of loved ones or losses of some other kind: a loss of who we thought we’d be, the family we thought we’d have, the divorced family, the child innocence taken, or how about this one: the loss of what we thought life would look like and turns out it doesn’t look anywhere close. Loss changes us forever.  So whenever we think about it, when something reminds us of it, when it’s the anniversary of something… we remember – and we mourn again.

I used to think mourning meant something was empty in me, like the loss had taken a part of me that I couldn’t get back.  I used to think “I’m crying about this AGAIN? I already did this,” and that meant something was wrong with me and with my process.  Little did I know that’s what mourning is – it’s continual, not a one time thing.  Each time the hurt bubbles up, I feel it again, sometimes fresher than the last time, sometimes less so – but either way I acknowledge it, I befriend it, as if to integrate it further into my being so my heart doesn’t fragment.

I realize this may sound dismal, but hang with me for a second.  Sometimes I wonder if our world/culture/people are as angry, bitter, resentful, and unforgiving as we are because we haven’t learned to mourn.  Because we’ve chosen to distract, numb out, live on the surface, and run from what’s painful without really confronting it.  So we stay stuck.  Stuck in our pain because we’ve chosen to deny it’s there therefore living out of it, and passing it onto others.  As a favorite of mine Richard Rohr has said “If we don’t transform our pain. We transmit it.”

I believe mourning sparks the process of that transformation.

And mourning means sorrow – and sorrow and joy hold hands.  The deeper the sorrow, the deeper the joy.  So if sorrow is the doorway to joy, then how come we don’t have more joy?  Because there sure is enough sorrow from where I sit.

What if mourning bridges the gap between the two – what if the feeling of the sorrow (the mourning) is what’s required for joy to take hold? What if mourning rings out the soaked towel in a way that movies, drugs, travels, food, work, alcohol, porn, shopping (and all those other ways to numb and avoid) cannot do.

Becoming a mother has triggered a deep mourning in me – deeper than I ever could have imagined now that I’m on this side of things.  At first I felt so thrown by it – like there was no way I could be a good mom with all this emotion running through me.  Until I realized that I (and only I) get to choose how to be with it.  Either it has me, or I have it – because Lord knows the emotion isn’t going anywhere.  And emotion channeled is good, powerful even, and I want my little girl with her big feelings to know its okay to feel them.

I am (oddly) thankful for the resurfacing of old pain spots, and even the arrival some fresh ones, because few things wake the heart up more.  I’m learning how to be with it.  And by “it” I mean, me.  Being with Cortney when I’m feeling the sorrow, when I’m feeling things I’d rather not feel, without moving to fix it or hide it.  To deny the mourning is somehow to deny my humanness – as if I’m supposed to be unaffected (or only affected temporarily) by the fact that this world and the people in it are not perfect and that reality hurts sometimes.

Jesus was called the Man of Sorrows.  Acquainted with grief.  I can’t help but think how reachable and relatable it made him – in a world, in a time, when there was enough pain to drown an ocean, he came with his compassion, meaning “to suffer with.”

Mourning means the basin of my heart can expand and stretch for greater compassion and empathy.  And as much as the hurting hurts, I want compassion and empathy.

Mourning means I’m alive; it means the loss gets its  necessary attention no longer carrying the power to recycle pain and transmit it elsewhere.

Mourning means I’m human.  It means I cry, I wail, I question, I get angry, I feel sad.  Sometimes all within 10 seconds.

And my favorite one – mourning means joy.  I don’t get how it works, but it works.  And it’s a kind of joy only a mourner can know.

 

 

 

 

Livy Love

A Birth Story.

I was kicking the sand as I walked along the beach while my husband swam in the water.   Something in my heart knew that it would be my last walk pregnant, my last walk carrying company within, my last walk as wife and Cortney as I knew it.  I would never be the same after this.  My heart, forever taking a different, larger shape, expanding its capacity for joy, pain, and love.  There is something incredibly powerful about female intuition, it cannot be explained or tamed.  It’s a wisdom all its own, often misunderstood by the world, doctors, and even the woman herself.  When a woman “knows” – she knows.  She and others would be better off if we all trusted it.

So much went down in my heart in those moments.  As I lied on the beach towel to rest my body, pulling my hat down over my face, I saw the sun beams peak through my straw hat.  I kept hearing God say “I’m going to let the light in… I’m going to let the light in.”  My entire pregnancy, I worked on and through some things that were altogether difficult and rather painful.  I didn’t want to enter into labor, or motherhood, with some things taking up so much room in my heart.  I didn’t want to enter in hindered.  There were things that happened as a little girl that seemed to continually taint my idea of womanhood, of what it meant to be a mom, and I certainly never learned or was taught to embrace my body for the insane gift that it is.  Being pregnant allowed me the healing to realize this body, this vessel, is inherently good, sacred, and without stain.  And even more so, it carries within her a wisdom that forever remains a mystery to me.  The body knows what to do, how to do it, and it’s better left untouched so she can have her way.

I watched my husband swim in the waves, like he’s done so many times before.  And our entire marriage up to that point flashed before my eyes.  All the laughter, the conflicts, the tears, the laughter, the wrestling.  All the first-time’s we had would soon become last-time’s.  An end was upon us, and every end is a new beginning.

All change is loss, and all loss must be grieved.  Even good change.  As much as we couldn’t wait to meet her, we talked a lot about mourning… mourning the end of a season, this husband and wife thing that was just us.  We wanted and prayed for her, she literally surprised us with joy the day I found out I was pregnant, and yet still, the end of an era points toward necessary mourning, or else the new season upon us would be heaped with the burden of the loss of what used to be.

I realize some people may think that sounds depressing, though we didn’t mean it as such, and it certainly didn’t feel depressing.  Just a necessary wringing out of life, of these final months, and weeks and minutes of life together.  I think so often, we rush from one season of life to the next, never fully letting go of the season passing, that we end up carrying with us unnecessary weight into the next.  We don’t release and embrace.  We were so aware this could happen – and so we spent our days recognizing this truth, excitedly preparing our hearts for the lifelong change about to happen.

I kept feeling a powerful force radiate in and around my hips, a spreading, a widening – but like so many times before, I was quick to try and convince myself this wasn’t it.  Between 4 and 6pm, contractions grew more steady, 15 minutes apart.  And by 6 o’clock in the evening of May 9^th, they were suddenly 7 minutes, then 5, and by 7pm, they were a short minute to a minute and a half apart.  I called my doula and best friend, Jennifer, to which she said “I’m 99% positive you’re in labor.”  Even then, there were spurts of denial rising in me.  “I can’t be… can I?”  I hung up the phone and surrendered.

Surrender.  No word describes my life in pregnancy and postpartum quite like surrender.  Surrendering expectations, my way, my body, my everything.  There is no such thing as forcing it or making it happen, the greater I resist, the harder it all gets.  It’s a constant yielding that sometimes I ask myself “is this the last time?”  And I quickly remind myself, no, not ever.  Something about having a child teaches you surrender like maybe nothing else does.  It highlights all your selfishness, all your desire for convenience, all your entitlements, all your “what about me.”

I made my way to a spot on the floor in my bedroom that I go to whenever I need a good cry.  Something about the floor grounds me in ways few other things do.  For some reason, this has always been my safe piece of ground in my house. I talked with my husband in-between contractions as we waited for Jenn to arrive. I was excited, unafraid, and honestly, not one bit nervous.  I felt an immense amount of peace.  In no point during my labor did I feel like things would go wrong – and I only felt fear for about 60 seconds during which my incredible midwife asked me “what do you feel afraid of?”  My answer: pushing her head out!  She responded with empathy, as if she felt it with me, and that was all I needed.  The fear passed as soon as it ended and into the next surge I went.

Long before I was ever married, I knew I wanted to have a homebirth.  I also knew that whatever man I married was going to have to be an open and willing one, because I just couldn’t see myself giving birth in a hospital – and frankly, that option scared me more than my own living room. Every woman is different – and I’ll never pass judgment on a woman for choosing what’s best for her and her baby – but this was my choice, and I’m beyond grateful I had the gift in doing what I hoped for.

I can’t not share this story without talking about my husband Chris. A man who is willing to step into a homebirth is just that: a man. I remember when I first told him this is what I wanted, his face turned slightly white and he replied “I’m open.”  It is rare, I believe, for a husband to labor with his wife, to whisper in her ear, to breathe with her, to rub her back, to hold her hand, and… wait for it, to get in the birth pool with her. In our medical world of curtains and fluorescents and hospital gowns and latex gloves, we find ourselves at a sterile distance from life. Armed by fear we miss out on the vulnerability that birth brings, which does something to the human heart I cannot explain. Chris’s words before she was born “can I catch her” constantly ring in my ear. I know he will catch her forever – from trips and falls, heartaches and struggles. He’s that dad.

I could not have labored without him. Between every push, I rested back on him like my life depended on it. Sweat dripping down my face, pain radiating throughout my whole body, fatigued to no end, and feeling like I could pass out from exhaustion in between pushes… he was right there, all along. To say that this choice in a home birth stretched him is an understatement. I’ll forever be grateful to him.  I believe something was birthed in him too – he endured through faith and with courage in something he felt intensely vulnerable through. As someone who is prone to find the fracture points in things (which has it’s strengths too) he had to choose faith – to trust – not just God, but himself. He is my hero. And no other person deserves that title.

The way our culture cares for (or lack thereof) women in pregnancy and labor is astounding to me.  It’s the most vulnerable, out-of-body, mysterious, all-encompassing experience and women are often treated merely like a pregnant belly.  If there’s one thing about midwifery care I can say – it’s that I felt cared for from the inside out, not just at appointments, but in-between too.  I wasn’t just a pregnant belly, I was a person with a soul, with a heartbeat too, who was experiencing the full spectrum of emotion as my body grew.  More often than not, I sat in my (incredible) midwife Lindsey’s office at my appointments, talking about the state of my heart and not the state of my belly.  She encouraged me as I shared my story, to meditate and speak life over my body throughout the following months… and so I did.

I grieved for the ways I’d not trusted my body, I released the negative narrative I’d believed for so long of “my body is against me.”  As my belly grew, my trust grew – trust that this God-given creation of my soul with skin on was a grand gift to be cherished.  I got my eyes and ears on every POSITIVE birth video and story I could.  I read countless stories of women who brought life into this world without medication, intervention or interruption.  Those stories, to this day, filled my soul – and they instilled in me a mindset that I too, could do this.  That me, my little girl, and God’s grace would grant us the courage and strength to endure.

I went from floor, to birth ball, to living room, to standing, to shower, to couch, to birth pool.  6 hours of real labor and 2 hours of pushing – and we met our little girl on May 10^th at 2:17am.  Labor is a trippy experience.  I don’t know how else to put it.  The body knows, and it does its thing.  I found that the more I embraced the pain, without fear, the more constructive the contraction.  I didn’t do a birth class, as I spent more time dealing with any emotion or trauma that was still living in my body, which I knew could potentially hinder my labor.  At times, I worried if I was prepared because I didn’t take some class.  At times, I worried if I had the physical stamina, being an athlete all my life, but found myself sedentary for much of my pregnancy due to torn ligaments in my ankle, which left me on crutches and in physical therapy well up to my due date.  But Jennifer continued to remind me it was all mental.  She was right.

I’ve never experienced pain and struggle like that – and I’ve also never experienced glory and joy like that.  There has been no greater gift thus far in my life than to reach down and feel my little girl as she made her way between two worlds – out of the one that created her, and into this one.  The surges of labor are other-worldly, as if a power from within rises up and greets you with a sacred strength you didn’t know you had.  As silly as it may sound, I’m thankful I felt it all – it felt like a right-of-passage, something woman have done since the beginning of time.  I felt connected to all women – a holy bond.  If they could do it, I knew could do it.

As I think about birth, I wonder if at times the pain we feel in seasons of difficulty are really birth pangs.  What we see as struggle, is merely preparation for something new, something greater.  God and his ways, ripening us for what’s next, exercising our heart and soul to be ready.  Like labor, every new beginning –and the transformation before it- is birthed through struggle and wrestle; through that cocoon like state where the butterfly beats its wings against its home in order to build the colors and strength to fly.

Birth is happening all around us, all the time.  Not just birth from womb to world, but birth and re-birth of relationships, marriages, and even the human soul.  Life is often found in a state of transition – in-between destinations and events.  The moment we reach one stop, we are off on another.  Life is full of long waits and then suddenly’s.  The birth of a little life is such a profound picture – a woman carries a baby from seed to full grown, births him or her through the pains of labor, and then out comes joy.  If that’s not like life, I don’t know what is.  All things start small, as tiny steps or seeds, and then through great care and intentionality (and often struggle or pain), they grow. And then, at just the perfect time, something new is born.  And at that moment, the former season forever passes, and a new one begins.

I remember Lindsey telling me “reach down you can feel her head”– I could feel the top of a tiny head and soft hair.  It was surreal.  There was a soft lit glow in my apartment, my eyes had been closed for most of labor, and I’d softly open my eyes at times in between surges.  I remember Lindsey’s voice, Jenn’s voice, Chris’s voice – I remember their encouragement, their support, and their love.  Midwives do such sacred work – and doulas are right there beside them.  Every woman needs such an advocate.  These women will forever be sealed on my heart for the peaceful presence they brought.

I remember thinking: this is it, we are going to meet her, and it was everything in me to push through.  You go somewhere else in labor – to some other place in your mind, and all I could think of was the minute I was in – whether it was a resting minute, or a laboring minute.

At times I could picture my little girl inside, making her journey downward.  We would meet soon.  What did she look like?  What was the sound of her cry?  After waiting and hoping so long, the moment was here.  It felt like a blip, like these 34 years of life flew by and now here I was, birthing into motherhood like I’d desired my whole life.

Olivia Grace Hubbard, our “Livy Love,” slipped out head first with a left arm raised by her head (probably sucking on her hand those 9 months!) at 2:17am on May 10^th.  Into the hands of Lindsey, and then Chris and I, as we scooped her up and onto my chest.  All I could think and say, in utter shock, “Oh my gosh she’s real.”  There’s nothing like seeing a life you grew inside, land on your chest as she breaths her first breath.

Heaven cracks open in that moment.  And I swear, in the face of my little girl, I saw the face of God.  Eyes alert and expressive, she lied on my chest as we made way to our bed – and she rested on me for the next hour – the sacred hour.  It was hard to believe that I’d done it – that we’d done it- and she was finally here.  No one can prepare you for that moment.  The moment you become a mom to this little life that is now outside your belly.  The filters you once looked through all change – life is different.  It’s as if the lens widens and expands and certain things come into focus that never were.

I’ll never forget those first minutes and hours taking her all in.  Fresh from that watery world she lived in for 40+weeks.  Swollen eyes and perfect skin.  The high is unreal.

All of this is in the rear-view mirror, now 3 months later.  Postpartum has had its own ups and downs, which may take me months to process as its proved to be much harder than labor.  All that to say, this story will forever be a memory now.  This experience is over – and if I’m honest – a part of me didn’t want to write this yet, as it somewhat feels like closure to the experience.  As hard as it was, she will continue to grow up and older and she and I will not pass that way again.  It’s bittersweet.  I look forward to what’s next, I miss what was, and I enjoy what is.  I love her with everything – and I tell her every day.

The miracle of life is astounding.  The divine design behind humanity is not only creative, but perfect, beautiful, and without error.  I still pinch myself that I got to be a part of growing such a gift.

And to any woman, pregnant or yet to be, here’s to you and your story.  Choose the kind of birth you want – and then give the power to no one, but that voice inside you, telling you what’s best for you and your baby.   Whatever your story may be, however it may look, whether it goes as planned or not, you’re a good mom.  You deserve the best care, the utmost support, and a strong love from those around you.

 

Diving Deep

The last several weeks have been some of, if not the hardest of my life.  They have brought me to my knees in ways I’ve never experienced before.  Very few people have closely walked this journey with me, maybe 3 – one of which is my husband.  It’s been lonely, scary, and maddening.  It’s been a bunch of the opposites too – but this entry is not about those.

Our culture does such a grave disservice to human pain.  We pass over it.  We dismiss it with “it will get better” and “look at the bright side” and even “it’s not that big of a deal.”  Empathy is lost on us. We don’t get into the trenches with people, standing ground with and for them. We merely peer down  from above every now and then (through text message) and ask “are you doing okay down there?”

We are full of solutions and problems to be solved, of fix-its and trite responses and Christian clichés.  Sometimes I don’t think we realize we’re doing it – living at arms length from people, too busy, too distracted, too out of touch with ourselves, that we lose touch with them.

Emotional pain, those deemed “negative emotions” get such a bad rap.  They are seen as invaders of the psyche – enemies.  People may not admit as such, but our collective behavior often points otherwise.  We are scared of people who are hurting.  We don’t, or may have never, done a thing with our own hurt – so to enter in to another’s is far too daunting.  We’ve either boot-strapped our emotions, shut them down, or numbed them out it seems.  So, perhaps indirectly, we communicate to others to do the same.

Not everyone has been through a ton of heartache – and I suppose it’s a blessing.  Except compassion is born out of heart sufferings.  I can’t help but wonder what kind of people we’d become if we sat with what hurts, without moving to fix it or rush it – I wonder if we went to the heart of what aches, when the aching comes, and simply let it be what it is, if we’d be a more compassionate people.  To find God in that dark place, in the Immanuel, instead of in God the rescuer with our feet outside the pit.  How often do we glance over the things that prick our heart because we don’t want to be the “downer” and we don’t want to dwell.  There’s a big difference between self pity and victim of self, and someone simply willing to feel what hurts and be honest about it.  We miss the well that’s hidden in sorrow.  It’s deep, it’s down there, and we pass by it when we aren’t willing to feel it all before coming out the other side.

I’ve said in conversations before that people who lack empathy are those who haven’t fully felt their pain, so they can’t enter in to someone else’s.  Compassion is stunted, and therefore so is the relational connection.  Not everyone can be your “in the trenches person” but you need some, and if you have a few, you’re rich.

There is something deeply empowering and cathartic about diving to the very heart of what hurts, and naming the pain.  I mean, specifically naming it.  I think most of the time we generalize stuff, we speak vaguely about it, because specificity causes us to feel it more, while generalizations keep us at a distance.  Naming it all never looks very pretty, its unedited, its raw… it’s a complete unraveling.  We are wired to not feel what hurts, we are wired for survival, by default we avoid discomfort… so diving into the heart of things, while specifically naming it too, its hard – no, its more than hard.  It’s… painful.

Until we deal with our own, we cannot be with another in theirs – not fully.  And isn’t that in part what Jesus came to do?  The Man of Sorrows, who wept when others wept.  In his with-ness, his Immanuel, he healed.  He didn’t offer solutions, he didn’t offer a fix, he offered his heart – an incredible definition I’ve heard on compassion reads, “your pain, my heart.”  If only as a people we could be that in touch.

One of my favorites, Pete Rollins once said, “Contrary to what people think the key to easing peoples suffering is not in offering some insidious theodicy, but in allowing a place for people to mourn and to meet others who know what it is to have been burned by that black sun.  Ths is not about providing an answer or a solution, but rather offering a site where we can speak our suffering.  This may seem a little depressing, but such spaces are really sites for liberation and light.”

Because light is on the other side of dark, healing on the other side of pain.  But we can’t rush people, we can’t overlook their cries – we cry with them, we hold them, and we tell them we’re here every step of the way.

Naming the pain takes an insane amount of courage.  Which means those who can sit with another in heartache, and simply just be – in what’s called “the ministry of presence” – are some of, if not the most courageous people in the world.

Many of my circumstances have been out of my control.  So far this path has felt chosen for me – the amount of tears and prayers have been sky high.  I don’t know what to make of all of it – and in the throes of it, I realized last week that on some foundational level, I don’t feel loved, not by God, and certainly not easily by others.  When I survey some of the things that happened as I grew up, it makes sense why I feel that way.  Saying you love someone versus actively loving someone are two very different things.

But I have had to do my interior work – in the chaos of most of my day to day – I have moments of breakdown tears.  I hand my baby off to my husband and go weep in the shower.  I drive home from a quick coffee break and hit the steering wheel.  I cry and I cry out.  I am not all the way through this yet – there is another side, I trust that – I just don’t know where or when.

Skating over all this sounds pretty nice right about now – passing it over it, talking myself out of it, giving myself pep talks about how “so and so has it worse.”  Dismissing myself.  But I can’t and I won’t.  As the trite saying goes, “it is what it is…” for now.  So I sit in the midst of it, giving myself permission to feel all the things I don’t want to feel, and I believe some day, some other woman will be in this place – and I’ll look at her and weep, and climb down into her trench and help her take cover.  Because I think that’s what love would do.

 

To Send Away

I believe that real relationship isn’t truly possible without continual forgiveness. I say continual because the reality is we hurt each other all the time.  As humans, we are a mysterious paradox: we are capable of the most atrocious evil and we are also capable of the most magnificent beauty.  Not one of us is above reproach of falling into either camp.  And most often we fall somewhere in the middle.

The more I have confronted the ugly in my own heart, the more compassion and empathy I have for the ugly in others.  I realize we are not as different as I think.  It’s only when I get high and mighty and deceive myself with self-flattery and conceit that I can easily turn others into an enemy and fail to see my own crooked ways.  The older I get, the more I realize that another’s wrongdoing toward me, big or small, is a result of their brokenness.  Just as my wrongdoing toward another is a result of my own brokenness.  The hurt may be big, like betrayal, or it may be “small” like a friend flaking out on lunch plans.  Whichever the case, both invite me to forgive.  The only other option is to stuff it, to lash out, to dismiss my hurt, to merely excuse the other, to retaliate, and ultimately – to resent.

Forgiveness is such a practice.  It is a way of being, a disposition of the heart.  Yes, God said we must forgive others as he forgave us.  Easier said than done.  I think some of us, mostly Christians from what I have seen, hold forgiveness as a task, an obligation, a “something I have to do because it’s the right thing.” And in doing so, I think we’ve missed forgiveness altogether.

Sure, it is the right thing – and it’s so much more than that.  It’s a giant well of freedom, of healing, and it ushers in the possibility of creating a new story, instead of the story we continue to tell ourselves and others, wrought with resentment and bitterness.

Depending on the fracture and the hurt, the forgiveness process is usually quite messy and painful. There is no time limit on when we have “fully forgiven.”  It is not merely an act of the will either.  It may start there, even with a weary willingness to walk the path, but will alone does not heal the wound.

 I believe that to forgive, I must feel the hurt first.  I must touch my pain.  It requires I go to the heart of it, and give name and expression to what aches.  It means I have to be specific about the detail of it all – the when, the what, the who, the how, the where.  The more detailed I get, the more pain I usually feel, and I know I’m on the right track.  It’s not fun and I don’t like it.

Ultimately, forgiveness means I must grieve.  And grieving can feel like a scary black hole – does it end?  And when?  It can be tempting to turn it into an intellectual exercise “am I doing this right?  How do I do this?”  There is no right, there is no how – there’s simply expression.

Grief feels like toxins leaving the body.  And when not done – when the hurt is simply “passed over” with a trite “I forgive you” (because it’s the “right thing to do”) and no matter how many times its said, the forgiveness is only a veneer for the rotting going on beneath.  Brene Brown has said “… with forgiveness, there has to be blood on the floor.”  In other words, something must die.  That’s the only way rebirth can happen.

Maybe it’s the death of the relationship as you’ve known it, because it’s the only way a new one could be born – if reconciliation is on the table.  Maybe it’s the death of being right, remaining nuclear welded to your version, your perspective, your experience, without the willingness to see there were other variables at play.  Maybe it’s your own self-pity, your woe-is-me, your “I had it so much harder” story you’ve told yourself and others countless times.  Maybe it’s time for a new story, a different way to tell it, which means death to the one you’ve found comfort and identity in for so long.  Whatever it is, forgiveness costs you something – or else its not forgiveness.

I think people bypass this grief.  I get why, I’ve done it myself.  That’s the part that hurts, that’s the confusing piece, the out of control place, that’s where emotions surface that make you want to rage and scream and throb and weep.  And yet the only way out is through.

I can’t forgive someone if I haven’t felt the hurt first, if I haven’t gone to the heart of it.  I have to get alone and cry, wail, and get angry.  I must get out the poison in my car, in my room, in my journal.  I have to confront what hurts.

Except I cannot stay there.  If I do, it’s not forgiveness – and I’ve only made myself a victim.  Even though I may have been victimized by someone, I determine whether I become a victim – that part is on me. 

In the aftermath of my expression, if I continue to dehumanize the other, it’s a resentment red flag. As difficult as it can be to see, this other person has a story too.  They have experiences and wounds and ways of orienting their life that led them to cause harm, even if that harm was unintentional.  They were most likely acting out of their own brokenness, out of their own unexpressed grief and stuffed pain – knowing their story doesn’t make what they did okay, and it won’t take away my hurt, but it does provide context.  It allows me to turn them back into a human being again – instead of what I’ve turned them into in my own heart.  Then I begin to see them in a larger landscape.

You see, you and I and the billions of people in this world are not that different.  As I have heard it said quite perfectly, “we are uniquely the same.”  If I were born and raised in Islam and through various experience found myself a part of the radicals, I don’t know what kind of person I would have become, the evil I could have committed.  I like to think I wouldn’t have, but I don’t know for sure.  I am not above reproach.  And neither are you.

We are all capable of the cruel and we are all capable of the beautiful.  And the more I place people in that context – as humans – the more grace and room in my heart I find for the pain we can cause one another.

Forgiveness comes more naturally when you’ve done your own interior work.  When you’ve grounded yourself in love and grace, you’ve had to make room for your own darkness – so making room for the darkness in others isn’t as hard, it isn’t as surprising.  Forgiveness makes you bigger – in other words, you’ve taken something hurtful and instead of passing it back (revenge) which keeps you small, you’ve allowed yourself to open-up, to make room for the immensities of human suffering and the ways we inflict harm on one another.  Forgiveness increases your capacity to hold pain and to hold grace, which is going to make you a more compassionate and empathetic person.

Revenge and retaliation are the only other options – which roots its justice in you and me and what we deem the other “deserves.”  And all that does is lead to resentment and bitterness, which will eat anyone alive.  Not only that, but resentment makes it practically impossible to be present.  It splits you between this moment and the moment of the wound and all the moments in between.  Forgiveness brings you to the present.  Which is one of the many reasons it’s so freeing.  That person and that event no longer take up rent-free room in your heart.  Hearing their name doesn’t make you shirk and eye-roll.  You no longer want to fight back and demand they ask for forgiveness and be remorseful.  You may never get that from them – and forgiveness isn’t contingent upon it – or else it’s not forgiveness.

More than anything, the process is for you and for me.  It’s for your freedom, your healing, your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being.  Scientists are now discovering effects of unforgiveness on the brain – its astounding.  I can only imagine what unforgiveness does when it lives on and festers in the human body.  There is no doubt, it is detrimental to the human spirit.

We hold on so tightly to our hurt, it literally becomes a part of us – and then we live out that hurt and inflict it on others the same way it’s been inflicted on us.  We pass it on – our unforgiveness circulates the pain.  You see this in generational family lines all the time.

Forgiveness in the Greek literally means “to send away.”  When someone harms me, this hurt they give me, I get to send it away.  The process isn’t overnight and the path of forgiveness can be lifelong depending on what it was, but without actively sending it away, it lives on in me and it is I (and those I love) who suffer.

I’ll never know what it felt like for Jesus to pay for all my wrongs by dying on the cross.  That kind of forgiveness and atonement astounds me.  It’s difficult to grasp, but it’s as real as can be.  Without it, real relationship with him wasn’t possible – and even in all my wrestlings with him over these last few years, I never want to know what life without him feels like.

He tells us to forgive – and I don’t think it’s merely because it’s the right thing or the holy thing – I think because he knows we’ll die inside without it.  Bitterness, resentment, anger and revenge will nag and gnaw until we’re a shell of a person – that and quite difficult for others to be around.  I’ve seen too many relationships end and too many families and marriages divide over a lack of forgiveness – quite honestly, it fills me with sorrow.  I’ve had my own journey on this road and it’s broken my heart.

I certainly don’t have all the answers and God knows I have a long way to go, but one thing I am committed to, and have been convicted over countless times in my adult years, is that I don’t ever want to become an embittered person.  I don’t want to get older and more narrow in my reach for people, for relationship, and for the difficulties and differences and glories and grandeur they can bring.  I want to continually deepen and widen in my capacity to hold human brokenness – in others and in myself.

It has been said that “those who forgive much, love much.”  I think that’s so true – our love is most provocative, most scandalous, most vulnerable and selfless when we learn to love those who have wronged and hurt us.  And oddly enough, that is what frees us.  Forgiveness then, is not some intellectual, scriptural-command protocol – it’s an act of love, perhaps the highest kind.

 

 

 

 

choices

Life is a series of events.  And life is a series of choices.  Not either.  Both.

Some things happen to us – a loss of a job, a loved one, a painful tragedy.  Sometimes life circumstances can feel like they’re spiraling downhill, one unfortunate blow after another.  We feel helpless to make it stop.  Victimized by another and the way they’ve harmed us.

Perhaps one of the most beautiful and powerful truths amidst it all is that we have a choice.  We always, always, always have a choice.  Not necessarily to change the circumstance – but a choice in how to BE in it.

For us humans, we love to blame the other, the situation, the victim narrative “I can’t ever catch a break” or “these kinds of things always happen to me.”  Those people live life powerless, like life happens and comes to them, as if they have no say and no part in creating what they want – even when things look bleak and dire.

Then there are others – those who in spite of all odds, health challenges, enormous setbacks, betrayals, and heartbreaks, they keep going on, shifting their attitude and choosing how to respond even when life knocks them around.  You know someone like this – maybe a bunch of someone’s.  You wonder how in the hell they got up from that last thing and chose to go again, to choose life, to remain soft and open, willing to recreate even in painful trials.

My guess is that most of us fall somewhere in between – maybe we start out with a woe-is-me and we shift into a more resourceful stand “considering the circumstance, now what? Who do I choose to be?”

I think I ask myself that question on the hour these days.  It reorients me – even if the feelings don’t immediately follow.

We either spend our days letting life happen or we spend our days making life happen.

By “making life happen” I don’t mean we play God, sovereign over all life events – I mean we were given the power to choose.  We are not puppets.  We are not victims to life circumstance, that is unless we live like we are.

We were given the divine quality to create, to respond, and to get back up.  I know the second I feel helpless to my situation, I’ve become victim to it.  Which leaves me stuck and powerless.  Contrary, the moment I choose to step out of that internal conversation and into the “wow, this sucks, this hurts, and who do I get to be now?  Who is God for me in this moment” my reality doesn’t change, but my attitude soon does.  I realize I’m not helpless or stuck – I stay there only if I decide to.

There is always help and a way through, even if I don’t see or feel it yet.  This way of responding to trials and the countless things each day that don’t go how I think they “should” breeds imagination.

We get to harness our disappointments and our anxiety into creativity.  We get to partner with God, once again.  We get to get off ourself and step into something new.  We don’t do so perfectly and maybe we’re gritting our teeth at first – maybe we’re even angry.  Good!  Use it.  Use it like fuel as you set your intention to who you want to be in this moment, in this circumstance, and let it propel and energize you.

That is power.  That is someone who’s choosing life – over and over – rather than living in pity, giving up, or resigning altogether to “this is just how it is, o’well.”

You know those people who have lost limbs, who are paralyzed, blind, deaf, or live with terminal illnesses and yet they become the most incredible humans.  They write music, paint, sing, perform jaw dropping athletic ability, they inspire, create, and motivate.  They have what seems like inconceivable outlooks for being so “limited.”  Yet they don’t live limited at all.  They don’t play small or stop dreaming or make excuses for why the can’t.  I’m sure they have their hard days, just like the rest of us.

But we love these people and their stories don’t we?  We write books and make movies about them.  They lift our hearts, remind us of what’s possible and more than anything, they breathe hope.  I think we all need more hope.

These people chose the “who do I choose to be now, given this reality?”  They didn’t let it define them, they defined it.  They chose to live empowered, instead of disempowered.  These people have spirited vibrancy, they’re thriving, despite the physical or mental limitations, even though none of us would blame them if they chose otherwise.

So where does this leave us?  You and me and our life trials and circumstances that will continue so long as we’re breathing.  What do we do with pain and heartache, loss and disappointment?

I don’t have the answers or a how to.  But this I do know: we respond.  We don’t shelf the feeling, we feel it.  We let it move us.  We mourn, we grieve, we scream.  We go to the heart of what hurts.  We name it.  We give it expression, we give it air.  We let it out.  For if we don’t, it will come out elsewhere on someone else completely sideways.  If we don’t our life gets smaller, so we get smaller to avoid the disappointment and pain.

To feel takes guts and courage – it opens us back up, it enlarges our capacity to experience life.  And in this midst of this raw, honest wrestle and feeling it all, we get to choose.  Not at the “end” of feeling it, because emotions don’t work that way, but IN the feeling of it.  Our feelings are the fuel, and our choice – our vision for who we want to be – is the driver.

In this sense, I believe, we are living whole-hearted.  Integrated.  As in: in integrity with our heart and what’s true for us.  We aren’t compartmentalizing, avoiding, or escaping.  We are diving head first into life and all it holds.

I wonder if this is how Jesus felt in the Garden of Gethsemane.  Tormented and heartbroken, grieving to the point of sweating blood.  Terrified, betrayed, confused. Weeping.  He didn’t want to go “let this cup pass from me.”  All his feelings pointed otherwise.  They were real, honest, and fully expressed – he did not hide from them.

But for your sake and mine, for the atonement and salvation of mankind, for US – his vision – he chose.  He chose to go through the passion and his realization of what would be, pulled him through – even though his very last words were full of questioning, forsaken anguish.  His emotions were the fuel.  His vision – his love for you and me – the driver.

I believe we have the same call.  Of course, not even close to the magnitude of Jesus.  But we get to choose – not a “have to” but rather, a “get to.”  That is our power – that is his creative, imaginative power in us.  

We are not crushed.  We are not in despair.  We are not abandoned and we are not destroyed.  Life is at work in you.  Life is always at work in you even though you may feel otherwise.  (2 Corinthians 4:8).  Choose that life – respond to the hard hits and sharp turns with it – pull from it.  Do not lose heart.  And do not give up.

Vegas & Mourning

I don’t even know what to say today.  I’m at a complete loss for words as I imagine every American is.  What do we even do with this news?  How do we function in it?

Do we plunge into despair with a “what is our world coming to?”  Do we protest “no more guns” like so many have on the heels of such a tragedy as if that will fix the brokenness of humanity?  Do we lose faith and trust in the good of people in the aftermath of a meaningless, evil act?  These are all valid questions, living in shock after something so tragic. I am not sure what to do.  All I know is my heart aches.

The only step that feels clear is the call to grieve and to mourn – the air is thick with its invitation.  There is something about public grief that gives people permission to feel in ways they otherwise wouldn’t dare.  

So today, I say feel it all.  Feel the heartbreak, feel the loss, and feel the pain.  We humans can be pretty good problem solvers – going straight into “how to fix it,” all the while floating above the event, studying it, trying to understand it with logic, as if there is anything to understand.  Mourning doesn’t need logic, it is not an intellectual exercise.  It’s less about analysis, and more about expression.

I imagine righteous anger is at the forefront for some – angry over something so heinous, angry for those who were directly affected.  And even still, the sorrow must be felt.  The sorrow for those who lost their lives, those who lost a loved one, those in critical condition, or those who escaped, forever imprinted by this trauma.

Today, for them, I choose to stand in the gap.  To feel with and for, to pray with and for, to hold the tension of what happened and what in the world do we do next.  To stand and say perhaps a very unpopular phrase today: I still believe in the goodness of the human heart.  Even in the face of this, knowing I’ll be inevitably disappointed again,  I still have hope.

And in that hope, I grieve… this makes no sense.  And it never will.  And that mystery is a difficult one to live into today.  Before we make any movement to problem solve as if we can assure this from ever happening again, I say we enter into the loss – we allow ourselves to feel and mourn the weight of it.  To put life on pause, even if for 5 minutes, and to redirect our hearts and bodies toward intercession for others.  It’s so not easy, it doesn’t come naturally, and yet I believe it’s the way through.

a backpack of rocks

The wilderness can feel like a lonely place. Being out here all alone. No street lights or signs of civilization.  No communication in the hustle of the world.  Just trees, dirt, rocks, and the great expanse of the sky above.

It can be really quiet out here.  Thoughts, breath, the crackle of a fire, the crunching of leaves, the smell of smoke and earth beneath my feet.  The trails are narrow.  Confusing.

There’s a stillness in the wilderness that does not match the rage and chaos within me.  At times it can feel like this place is trying to temper me – to force me to quiet down inside by some external pressure.

No place mirrors the state of my heart quite like the wilderness does.  All distractions and numbing agents no longer available.  Mechanisms and ways of being that used to bring relief, now don’t.  I cannot busy myself with cleaning my house or running errands out here.  I cannot task a to-do list because the only list is to BE.

All my life, I have loved being in the outdoors.  Get me to an open valley or a mountaintop, get me on a trail and enveloped in the trees and I feel God and his connection to us in ways I simply do not experience any other way.  Being in nature, in his creation, is an act of worship for me.  It’s a coming home.  A re-situating of my rightful place in this vast universe.

But when my life on the inside – my heart and soul – finds themselves in the middle of a thick wilderness, the feelings are on the contrary.  I don’t experience God the same.   I’m still here in Orange County doing my life, while my insides are somewhere else completely.  The incongruency can feel like “something’s wrong with me” as I judge the state of my heart.

There’s a lost-ness in the wilderness. This feeling like the compass is broken and I keep passing by the same familiar paths.

Did I take a wrong turn?

Am I making the same repetitive loop?

There’s a feeling of abandonment – like God has left me to my own devices to find the way out.  Every direction seems like the wrong one.  Every step is labored, paired with the beating of my aching and broken heart.

Every self-sufficient, prideful effort to find the nearest wilderness exit puts me further and further away from surrender.

My way doesn’t work. It never works.

Out here I weep often for seemingly “no reason.”  Perhaps the reasons are so deep, so complex, that knowing their detail would altogether take me out – so he keeps them hidden from me – in his goodness and in his mercy.

Out here I throw sticks and rocks at the air in anger.  I kick dirt.  I target the tree trunks as if they were the reason itself…

Why didn’t you protect me?

Why did they leave?

Where were you?

How could you?

There is a deep mourning beneath all the rage.  Behind the rock throws and target practice is a girl who internalized her sorrow and pain, taking it on like a burden to bear.  A backpack of rocks.

Up until now, I thought my wilderness walk was solely to “teach me something.”  A lesson, almost like a punishment.  It’s no wonder why I’m angry.  And though I am learning out here, punishment-belief free (almost), I’m realizing that Jesus didn’t bring me here to “teach me a lesson” as much as he did to give me himself.

And not the Jesus of my fractured belief system, but the real one.  The one who loves me in my rock-throwing, faith-shaking, doubt-carrying, heart-breaking moments.  The one who sees my scars and kisses them as tears fall down his face and mine.  The one who takes my heavy-loaded backpack and carries it himself.  The one who clears the branches, lights the fire, and sets the stars in place for me to gaze at.  The one who journeys with me in my sorrow, in my anger, in my questions, and in the absurd, unexplainable joy found in each.

In his mysterious and upside down Kingdom, Jesus doesn’t reward accomplishments, he rewards the battle scars.  The truth of that reality has depressed me at times, I must admit.  This infamous “Man of Sorrows” came to bring the “good news” and yet at times, the suffering way can feel like carrying a heavy, unfair weight.

But in the quietness of the wilderness, I can translate with my heart the unspoken language of my tears.  I can feel the toxic poison leaving my body as I scream out in anger at the top of my lungs, hearing my yells echo throughout my surroundings.  In my spirit, I can feel the voice of my cries reach him.

The length of this wilderness leg of my journey isn’t knowledge or insight I have.  And I’m still very much in it.  So to end this with a pivot to a pretty, wrapped up Jesus lesson wouldn’t fit – and quite honestly, doesn’t fit with me any longer.

I am in process and will always be.  There will be another wilderness leg at some point after this one.  Struggling is inevitable, being hurt I can count on, loss is a part of this fallen world.  Those are not things I can control and strategize to avoid.  For if I avoid “the bad,” I avoid the good.

I suppose at this point, on this daily-bread day, the Jesus I experience is the one who carries my backpack and kisses my scars.  I feel seen by him – and I had no idea that would be so big for my heart when I’ve spent much of my life wanting to disappear.

He sees me.  And the real breakthrough is: I want to be seen.

How beautiful: there is life-changing breakthrough in the painful, sorrow-filled wilderness.

I call that joy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sky Rocket

The other evening I sat and stared at a blank screen for much too long. My fingers hit the keys to type out words only to lie on the back button and erase. Countless times I moved my cursor over the sentences: highlight, copy, delete.

For months, I have battled with this frustration. The desire to write yet nothing comes out. The longing to put to words the dynamics of my internal world; but they come up short and halfway through a piece I’ve started I get stuck. Call it writer’s block, call it something else.  I don’t know.

And that’s just it: I’m living in the “I don’t know.”

Somewhere within this last year, God jolted me awake in areas I didn’t know I was in slumber. I came into 2016 feeling numb and out of touch with my heart. I’m leaving this year fully feeling and in touch in ways I didn’t know existed.

These last few months have felt like my heart has been floating in space. Like someone blew up the box it safely lived in and rocketed it into the sky, out of the earth’s atmosphere, and into mystery.  

Somewhere in this trajectory, I outgrew my theology. I outgrew the beliefs in my heart that kept me from the real Jesus. For much too long, I’ve projected character traits onto him that resemble something like an imperfect, broken parent (because those are the only parents that exist).   Somewhere in the depth of my hurt not mourned, in my forgotten righteous anger not felt, in my fear of upsetting the Almighty God of the universe, I withheld some of my true feelings out of shame (as if he didn’t know they were there). Somewhere, in my desire to win and keep his love I forgot myself.   There is so much more to the story of how I ended up here: re-learning the heart of the real God and un-learning the one I created.

So much damage is done to the human soul when we believe in a Jesus who is disappointed, upset, or disenchanted by us. I could tell you with great conviction that I know how he feels about me, but to believe it and wrap my life around it is something different entirely. There are pieces of me that have absolutely believed and there are pieces that have been deathly afraid to tell him how I really am and how I’m really struggling – even with him.

It’s mind-blowing to me how long I’ve lived scared of him. Scared to upset or let him down. As if God is a giant thumb and I’m under it. The burden of it is probably what turned me so numb, unable to bear the weight of withholding the parts of me that didn’t understand, grew confused, or even frustrated with what he was allowing.

Which brings me back to my I don’t know.   I don’t know how to relate with this God. Which is why Christian platitudes fall flat and feel fake.  They’re trite because they’re true – and yet their power gets lost in the spoken redundancy of them.  I have to do away with them for now, though I firmly believe on the other side of this, they’ll be a much richer truth to me than they ever were before.

To “come as you are” has taken on a completely new meaning and look (ie: messy). The depth of that invitation has allowed me to experience a love I’ve only read about in scripture. I’m learning to not simply stumble, but to fall flat on my face in failure before him and to wrestle to express the depths of my heart, being honest with what’s there. I’m learning that I no longer like “holding it all together,” and if people see my mess then so be it. I’m learning that I don’t have to have the right job, the seemingly perfect marriage, or the life-changing words to matter.

Theology is such an illusive field of study because the closer I get to Jesus, the bigger he gets and the more I realize I don’t know nearly as much as I thought I did. The ways in which I have humanized him is such a tragedy of idolatry – I suppose he was done with my golden calf.

So in my desperation to feel as I begged him to un-numb my heart, un-numb it he did. And in the process, pain has ensued, but a necessary pain: the evidence of things coming alive. As the blood rushes back into my veins and pumps the life-blood to my heart, I’ve never felt more out of control, more alive, and more disoriented in all my life.

The Jesus I thought I believed, I believed only in part. That is why this place of mystery and I don’t know, this feeling of heart floating in space outside my safe little box is wildly different. To go from one (false) belief to a true one takes time. And residing in the in between requires a trust in him that I don’t think could be built any other way.

I think of the unknowns of the universe. The billions of stars, countless galaxies, the planets, suns, moons, and infiniteness of it all. I think of the money spent on space exploration, “pioneering” the uncharted territories to discover something new. I think of it’s grandeur and how majestic the sights of various galaxies must be close up. And I realize, even in all our explorations we’ll never fully know, grasp, or see it all. And I suppose that’s the beauty of it – for the mystery is what makes it beautiful.

I’m starting to get it, this little piece, I’m starting to believe in the goodness of letting the mysteries of God remain as such as I learn and draw close to him, being fully Cortney. There is something precious and valuable in the ‘I don’t know’ seasons of life. It’s when God breaks down our box and sky rockets our heart into space. Into mystery.

An Open Letter To God

(Swear warning).

 

God I don’t know if you’re real anymore. I just don’t know.

I yelled and cursed at you the other day – so loud, so angry I scared myself. As you know, that’s not a common occurrence for me and I find myself now, days later, having no clue what to do with it.

I told you I hated you. I told you I wanted nothing to do with you anymore. I told you I don’t want to follow you another step. I screamed, I cried, I hit my steering wheel, and I went home and fell into heaving sobs. In those moments overcome by anger toward you, I realized the god I’ve believed in is false – merely an idol of the lies I’ve adopted about who you are.  I also realized that my honest and raw feelings toward you leave me right smack in the middle between what I know about you to be true in my head versus what I believe in my heart.

Not long after my car conversation with you, I asked if I could take it all back. “I didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean it;” there I go again, back pedaling. I caught myself, wondering why I felt the need to placate you, the Almighty God of the Universe, and then it hit me: I don’t believe I am loved in my anger. In my understanding and experience, anger is not allowed to be felt or expressed, let alone at you.

It feels so wrong to be so angry with you: someone who’s done nothing but good.  Though I know you can take it, it’s something I prefer to avoid – which I have… up until now. Anger is a signal that something’s wrong – and something here is very, very wrong.

“Do you believe He still loves me?” I asked my husband a handful of hours later. I couldn’t get it out without crying. If I tell you how I really feel, if I tell you how I really am and how this Father, Daughter relationship is in total breakdown for me, I then question if your love has reached it’s limit in the throes of my honesty and doubt.

In my arrogance over all these years, I somehow thought I would hurt your feelings if I ever got mad at you. In my fear of conflict and being out of right standing with you, I thought you’d get angry back – you know, all the defensives and ‘how dare you’ and ‘I didn’t mean it that way’ – kind of like how people do. Kind of like how family did growing up.  If I ever asserted myself that mirrored to them their own shortcomings, the shit hit the fan – so I learned to shut up and stuff it.

That’s not working for me anymore.

In fact, I stuffed so much anger I didn’t even know I was angry. “Who me? Angry? No no… you must have the wrong person.” After all, “angry women” are those women we don’t associate with – they’re the bitches of society and there was no way I was going to be her. So I learned to be the “nice girl.”

So here I am, Father, almost 33 and as mad as I’ve ever been… at you. The great divide between my head and my heart feels like such a Grand Canyon chasm I am absolutely terrified of how the gap will ever be closed. The God I’ve always known and believed in, the Rock I have built my life on, now feels like quicksand. The Word I’ve girded myself with now feels empty and hollow.

So where are you, huh? WHERE ARE YOU?

It feels like I’ve reached the bottom of the bottom of the bottom of my soul. I have been in some dark places before, but never in a dark place of faith. Even in times of heartache, depression, crisis, transition, and distress, I’ve never doubted your character – but these last few days, I doubt it often.

In the last few days I’ve heard people tell me “oh wow maybe you shouldn’t swear at God, or maybe don’t tell him you hate him… it’s okay just ask him for forgiveness.”  Christian platitudes make me want to vomit.  I feel them pushing me into some place I’m not ready to go. Pressing me toward being the “nice little girl” daughter because heaven forbid I tell you how I really feel. I suppose it makes them uncomfortable – but surely not as uncomfortable as it makes me.

Not just uncomfortable, but deeply painful. It’s taking all the courage I have to allow myself to feel this. Heart-wrenching, beating out of chest, where is home, who is God, who am I kind of painful. Down here in what feels like the pit of my soul is loneliest place I’ve ever been – you feel absolutely nowhere.

I’ve not been here before and I don’t know where to go from here. I don’t know how to reconcile my head and my heart. I don’t know how to believe the things I so desperately desire to believe. I don’t know how to reach for you when all I do is push and pull, cry and groan.

I do know that at the end of this there will be some forgiving I have to do and forgiveness I’ll have to receive, but I don’t know if I’m there yet. I want to be there right now as it feels more comfortable to quickly skirt along the surface, to make nice, so as to not feel the tension of this – but I choose to believe that until then, you honor my wrestle with you.

I choose to believe that you are here and that as I doubt, question, wonder, wander, and tell you how suffocated my heart has felt, you will love me still. I choose to believe that this is true intimacy –  exposing to you my deep and inner parts, however messy, embarrassing, and screwed up they look and feel.  I choose to believe that you welcome my honesty, no… that you cherish it and you’re not frightened or alarmed by it.  I choose to believe that you want authentic Cortney over some nice-girl image and never-rock-the-boat-or-tell me-how-you-feel-kind-of-Cortney. I choose to believe that in the upturning of all the trash I’ve believed about who you are, I’ll come to embrace the real God, my true Father, in ways I’ve feared longing for until now.

And yet in all my anger, in all my frustration at you – I can’t type without weeping.  Because even though I’m mad, I want you so badly, but not the you I’ve settled for.  Behind swollen eyes and a distorted cry face that looks like a punching bag, I long for the real you and not this bullshit, copout crap idolatry I’ve settled for. I long for true relationship where I can tell you how I’m really feeling and get mad if I need to.  Beneath all this anger I long for you, in all this anger I long for you.   I refuse to leave this wrestle until I get all of the real you.