Faith Bigger than Fear

Fear has been a common theme in my life. Fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of not being good enough, fear of forgetting something, fear of being lost, fear of being stuck, fear of spiders, fear of spicy foods, fear of embarrassing myself, etc. My parents used to say when I was really little I wasn't afraid of anything. I would just walk off with people I thought were nice or I would dance in front of a crowd, or walk right into a pool before I knew how to swim. No fear, at least until I hurt someone...and until someone hurt me.

Then I learned to listen to fear to keep myself from hurting anyone else and to keep myself from being hurt. In the right context fear is very good and is a gift from God to us. Scripture even calls us to fear the Lord, not in a hide under your covers kind of fear but a deep deep awe of his magnificence and majesty and glory. Something inside us to tell us what is good for us and what is bad for us. Such as it is bad for us to turn from the Lord to do our own thing. Or to stick our finger on something that is too hot. It is meant for our good, and sometimes it keeps us from stepping into what God wants for our lives.

A little over a year ago I was just exiting a very painful season of my life. It was probably the sixth such season in just a few years and it seemed that the majority of my adult experience was consumed by pain. I remember holding onto faith during the difficult times, speaking truth to my fear and growing in some wonderful ways and when the season came to an end I grew numb. It took so much effort to walk through that difficult time, and now looking back I realize I had tried too hard to control my fear. I tried using my faith like a leash, tightly tied around fear's neck trying to keep it from running off or getting too far ahead. Wasn't that what I was told to do, to not fear?

In my psychology training I came across this concept about secrets, that if you try to resist thinking about a secret it will often keep popping into your head. The more we stuff it the more we struggle and the more it begins to consume us. The best advice is confession or asking yourself what this thing is trying to tell you. When I struggled with a severe bout of insomnia a few years ago I learned that the thoughts running through my head were there to help me remember the things I needed to get done. The only problem was they were getting in the way of my sleep. So I learned to catch the thoughts and tell each one "I know you're important and I need to deal with you, but this is sleepy time. I will put you in a drawer until sleepy time is over and then I will deal with you." I put my worries to bed every night until I somehow grew out of the insomnia.

In my own me and Jesus garden, I have a lake in there that is surrounded by rocks of various shapes and sizes, and on each rock is written a different fear of mine. Once in a while Jesus and I will go over each and every fear and He will tell me to hold each rock in my hand and speak the Father's love over each fear. Once in a while He will tell me to put the rock/fear in a drawer on the cross because we need to talk about this fear. And when the fear disappears or no longer hinders my life I'll toss it into the lake.

Acknowledging the fear, recognizing it, naming it and giving it a place to dwell until the fear is no longer needed has been a profoundly helpful technique for me. I often think of my faith as a blanket and I envision the thing I'm afraid of is like a baby that is crying out for comfort. It needs faith wrapped around it to feel safe and secure so it can sleep. Even if the fear is unreal or is irrational it still needs to be acknowledged and named. But instead of scolding it, the fear needs to be loved and listened to. Faith is the anchor in the storm, the fence that keep the cows in, the spigot on our faucet of emotions. Faith is that which gives us courage to move beyond and see deeper than our fear will let us. "Courage is not the absence of fear, but the knowledge that there's something greater than fear" ~ Princess Diaries.

The courage to believe that even though the bank account is empty that God will provide. That you are not alone in your loneliness; that the friend will still stay after saying some hard but loving things to them. That God is with us; that the tools in our hands and the gifts we have can be used to do amazingly powerful things. That nothing is too small for God to use. That no act of kindness, no matter how small, will go unrecognized. That faith as small as a mustard seed will move mountains.

That fear, when comforted by faith, really will settle down, grow silent and small and take it's rightful place.

A storm, a boat, and a sleeping Jesus

It's been a few months since I last posted. In that time frame, I've celebrated 7 months with my boyfriend, was sick for 2.5 months with rolling viruses (tonsillitis followed immediately by bronchitis), was nearly broke, almost quit my job about five different times, finally found a roommate, visited my best friend, spent two different weekends in a hotel, and for some strange reason have managed to not have a single mosquito bite.

In that time the fear and temptation to run away, give up, grow numb, and doubt have been real entities in my life. I don't understand this season and I feel the waves on the stormy seas tossing me back and forth and I'm frustrated to no end that Jesus is sleeping as I feel I am drowning. And once I scream loud enough at him then he wakes up, just tells the seas to calm and then says "Why are you afraid? Do you still have no faith?"

All frustration and smart responses aside, it is hard to see how God is still in control even when he sleeps. It's easy to doubt that his promises are still true, especially in the seasons where it seems that God is not doing anything. "OK God, I'm holding to faith and believing that you will do something, that you are still in control and that you are still good." And the months roll by, and the loved one in the hospital deteriorates, and the bank account dries up, and friends don't call, and the tissue boxes remain empty and the anxiety and frustration is rising, and the bank keeps calling.

And the boat keeps sinking...and still Jesus sleeps.

There was once a point in my life where I believed that if situations were not changing then we needed to pray harder, fast longer, repent deeper, analyze my for every sin that I committed as to why God isn't answering my prayers. Just press in a little more, maybe if I change then God will love me enough to answer my prayers. As if answered prayers had anything to do with the amount of love that God has for us. The two don't go hand in hand; God doesn't use unanswered prayers to punish us for sins we've committed. The flaw I learned in that perspective was that God now sees me through the blood of Christ; he doesn't see my sin. I still sin, but I am washed clean.

The true miracle in that story was that Jesus was with them in the storm. He could have walked out of the boat in the middle of the storm, he could have called down a million angels to rescue him from the sea, he could have even gone off on a different path all together rather than going out into the sea. But he stayed and he slept and he calmed the sea. It also reflected to every man in that boat how they handle stressful situations and just how far they have to grow before their faith becomes a part of them. Do they turn towards fixing it themselves or doing what needs to be done on their own, or do they turn towards seeking Jesus in the midst of the storm? The story doesn't say anything about the disciples repeatedly calling out to Jesus before he awoke and calmed the seas. Had they sought him out sooner they could have been spared so much anxiety.

God doesn't always change our circumstances, however. One prayer I've been doing is "Lord, help me to seek your face before I seek your hand." This prayer has been so challenging to me in this season because there are so many things I want God to do or to change. God cares about our circumstances AND he cares about us. His response or seeming lack of response to whatever it is we are walking through has nothing to do with the amount of love he has for us or even that he genuinely likes us. Because the truth is he is there WITH US, going through it WITH US. He also cares about our transformation and development; as beings made in the image of God we have a unique calling and design for our life to be drawn into deeper intimacy and connection with our Heavenly Father. I think Jesus knew in the midst of that storm that there was something way more sacred in developing the disciples' faith instead of assuaging their anxiety.

Which is why no matter what we are walking through there is always hope. Hope that God is going to redeem the brokenness, that he is not going to leave us stranded but is instead there with us in the storms in our lives. Hope that the circumstances in our lives are opportunities to transform us and draw us into deeper intimacy with God, letting go of that which hinders us from stepping into all that God has for us. Hope for those of us that scream out "I don't care about being transformed in this moment, I just want to be spared my suffering!" that God will comfort us and calm our storms. That he holds us in his arms and doesn't let us go. Ever.

Faith and Hope are wrapped up in this reality: God is with us.

It's Here! Graduation and Personal Thank Yous

Tomorrow I graduate.

It's surreal that graduation is finally here; it just feels like the end of another term and I'll start up classes again in 6 weeks. Nope, this is the end. Time to hop off this ride and step into a new journey of life. As I'm sitting here texting my closest cohort members "Ahh we graduate tomorrow!!!"

I've been sitting here the last week pondering the journey I've been on these last three years. A journey that began with completely changing directions and stepping into the unknown. This wasn't part of the plan.

Tomorrow could have been my Doctorate graduation. I was going to do medical missions and change the world. Maybe even cure AIDS in Africa. I had (and still have) a dream of starting an orphanage and bringing hope and love to the nations. Tomorrow is my Masters graduation. Although I don't have as clear of a plan, part of that is purposeful because I've learned that God doesn't always do things according to our plans, if ever. The more I try to plan the more frustration I enter into so to save myself the frustration I just learn to trust instead.

This journey has really been a journey of dialectics. It has been a journey of a thousand tears and a thousand smiles and laughs. A journey of anger and of redemption. A journey of brokenness and of healing. A journey of old and new. A journey unlike anything I ever could have planned.

It started with a whoosh - within 2 months I started my first ever full time job, moved into my first apartment, and started grad school. WAY too much transition within a short period of time. I suffered a major breakdown that eventually almost led me to quit my life all together, but what ended up happening was a deeply painful fall out with my best friend, and after 9 months of a difficult job taking provider calls for 8 hours a day I put in my two weeks notice with no back up job. It was during this season that God brought several new friends into my life who have become my confidants and community throughout the last three years. And were the ones to help me move three times in less than a year - woohoo!

After my freak out came a long season of anger and confusion. While I worked to recover from feeling like I was just beaten to a pulp I began to study about being an incarnational example of Christ in my line of work. I started working with children as an in-home skills worker and found so much joy and calling doing this line of work. Difficult but immensely rewarding (hey another dialectic). I studied the human mind, about culture, microskills, the intersection of psychology and theology, and I found there was nothing quite like actually walking it out to give my life joy.

It was also during this time that God began to heal me of my PTSD. Although my story is deeply personal and not many actually know what happened, I found God slowly beginning to break away the walls I had built up and chisel away at my rough edges and odd behaviors. Nothing like being called to minister to others to know you needed your own ministry. I grew close to several wonderful friends and even thought I had fallen in love at one point. Starting EMDR on top of my normal weekly counseling sessions was one of the most rewarding experiences I have ever walked through.

Every week God and I met in the garden, where lies and fears were faced, I grew more aware of my own body and the beauty found within. I discovered myself...well more my selves and learned to listen to what they were speaking to me, and slowly over time I began to become more and more free.

When the burglary hit I think everyone else held their breath. They all knew me and my tendencies to freak out. I was surprised to find peace (minus the first day, the first day I didn't function well at all). God met me and held me and spoke love and peace over me in exactly the moment I needed him the most. This incredibly scary situation has left me doing some odd things to protect my property, but I never lost the love for my home that I had when I first moved in. And was given so much insight into God's heart even for the burglars.

A lot of these last three years have included on/off seasons of intense anger and confusion - anger at myself, God, others, and being deeply afraid of people leaving me. I clung to my anger and brought everyone else into it to help solve my anger issues. At some point I finally decided that I really needed to forgive. This forgiveness was followed by peace, followed very quickly by stepping into my first relationship.

It feels like we've been dating forever but it's not even officially been 5 months yet. Things moved very quickly and suddenly I found all the free time I used to have was gone, and all the loneliness was gone as well. As well as my fear of men, my body image concerns, and all my confusion about particular passages of Scripture was even gone. There was something certain and confident that arose up in me and I became more assertive and sure of where I stand on things. There was a whole new role I took on, and a new side of me came out. Part of me was like "FINALLY!" and led me to throwing myself into this relationship maybe a bit faster than I should have. It has been a wonderful ride!

Practicum and the CAPSTONE paper...let's just say it was much easier than I thought it should have been. Hearing other people's stories about their journey with this makes me feel like I got off easy, slightly making me ponder if I might have done something wrong but everything passed with flying colors.

This journey has been nothing like I planned. Yet I wouldn't trade it for the world! I am not the same person who began this program three years ago. This program and the life that happened during that time taught me so much about myself, others and God and how to walk with joy and thankfulness in every season. When I walk, I will be walking holding all of this in my heart. Pondering the tears and joys, anger and peace, confusion and assurance, intensity and calmness, brokenness and healing, mistakes and redemption. All of this walks with me as I go across that stage. And when the mantle of my hood is placed upon my shoulders, I will remember that Christ has experienced all of this with me. The streaks and pictures painted upon my canvas were really painted on His canvas as well.

In all of this I do have a few people I want to personally thank:
*   Mom and Dad: I would not be at this point in my journey without you two. Two of my most true rocks and the glue that worked to keep me going. I never feel like I can adequately thank you two for all of that you have done for me. This is your celebration as much as it is mine! I love you two so much!!

*   Chris: Chris, you were the one who encouraged me to pursue this path for my life. Your example, peace, patience, humor, kindness and your steady presence supported me week after week after week through all of this! Working with both me and God to help me keep taking steps forward towards my future and having your office be my place of safety and refuge. My place of healing. I think you are the one who knows the best what I've walked through these last three years because you sat with me in my pain and stress and showed me what it meant to be valued in a very personal way! Thank you!

*   Jenny: Sweet Jenny! Oh my goodness what do I say to the bestest friend this girl could have! It has been quite a journey between us two - you into motherhood and me into more school and yet we worked to stay close. You are a diamond in my life! We may not talk as much as we used to or even see each other as much, but you have been such a sweet friend and a wonderful support through all of this!

*Brooke, Katie, Casandra, Megan, and Amber: You ladies all deserve a lot of credit for putting up with me these last few years, and loving me immensely.  For constantly bringing me back to God and pointing me to Scripture. For crying with me and being the ones to listen to (and even experience) my anger and frustration. You all have been such a gift to me!! Thank you!!

*Women's Bible Study: Ladies, you all mean so much to me!!! I couldn't have made it without your love and support all these years. Praying for me, feeding me, sending me Scriptures or pictures to cheer me up! I have been so blessed by you all and I can't thank you all enough!!!

*   My roommates (Brooke, Laurie, and Grace): Thank you for all the grace and mercy you have shown me over these last few years! I was almost a constant mess and very stressed yet you all kept giving me smiles and hugs, and all the late night talks! You are the best!!

* Ryan: Last but not least...You came into this journey with me right at the tail end and chose to sacrifice your time and energy and desires for our relationship right as it was starting to let me have the time, energy and space to be able to finish this marathon. You loved and encouraged me, bought me flowers, held me when I cried, comforted me and helped banish my fears all while facing your own stuff and trying to make a future for the both of us. I love you so much Sweetie! Thank you!!

Ultimately, I give all the glory to God. This has all been for Him and I pray will be used by Him to bless others and to bless my life. All praise, honor, glory, power and dominion belong to You alone!

Thank you!!!

Brokenness in Community

I wrote this first part several years ago while I was still in college. I found that it still rings true today. None of the original words were changed.

Brokenness in Community

I have seen and known the beauty of brokenness. But what is this brokenness that I’m talking about? When many people hear about being broken before the Lord they think of people wearing ashes, tearing their clothes, and being all together miserable. But what they fail to realize is the true meaning behind brokenness. Brokenness is being brought to true humility before the Lord and before the Body of Christ. And humility is not thinking less of yourself but thinking of yourself less. Brokenness and humility go hand-in-hand with each other and they both lead to a beauty that is so indescribable that it can only be God.

Again I ask you, what is brokenness? Brokenness is coming before the Lord with what little you truly have and offering it all to Him. Brokenness is bowing down before God and acknowledging Him as Almighty God, King of all Kings, and the Lord of all Lords. Brokenness is coming before God with all your sins and depravity, placing it all at His feet and knowing through faith that He has already destroyed your sins and forgiven you, and has replaced all those faults with His unfailing, radical love. And brokenness is healing.

But what does brokenness have to do with community? I will tell you through my own personal application.

When I first came into Bethel I had my own certain view of the world, a certain view of people, a certain view of Christians, and I was firmly grounded in that view. But along with all my clothes and books that I brought with me in my suitcase to Bethel I also brought with me all my prejudices, judgments, viewpoints, and even my own sinful struggles. I saw myself as being a pretty good Christian – I mean I didn’t listen to single secular song, I didn’t watch the movies with murderous or sensual scenes in it, I didn’t swear, and I didn’t purposely try to act prideful. But Bethel being a pretty liberal university placed me into a whole new world where I was surrounded by Christians who did not all act like me in my conservative, strict ways and it kind of shook me up. Amidst this shaking God brought me into a safe haven with Pray First, where I was surrounded by people who eagerly wanted to learn more about prayer and to pray for other people. This was my community that I ran to whenever the pressure was so great I could collapse.

But what I found in this community was a group of people who saw me for who I really was along with all my faults and failures and still did not judge me. I found a community where you could go up to someone when you were struggling with sin, confess it to them, and have them look at you with this love that can only come from God, confess how much they love you, and then gently correct you through prayer and scripture. There was no condemnation, there was no judgment, and there was no rejection. This community accepted me just as I was and I have experienced freedom from so many wounds, so many prejudices, and they have taught me how to love with a God kind of love.

This is brokenness within community. It’s being able to go to each other, confess your sins, and confess that you need help, tell how wonderful or how poorly your day is going, and have the other(s) lavish God’s love on you in such a way that walls can’t help but come crumbling down. It’s speaking truth to each other, it’s speaking life to each other, and it’s expressing God’s fierce and radical love to each other.

What is sad, however, is that this type of community is pretty rare. How many people have tried to go to someone for help and ended up getting judged and walk away wounded. This is NOT the love that God wants us to lavish on each other. 1 Corinthians 13 says “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres. Love never fails.” This is what love is, God’s love. I myself am convicted of not loving in this way. In fact, I have sinned by not loving in every possible way listed above. I have been impatient, unkind envious, boastful, proud. When my “enemies” are hurt I have rejoiced in them being hurt instead of rejoicing with the truth. I have not protected, I have not trusted, I have not hoped, and I have given up. But praise God we have a God who truly knows how to love and has forgiven me of every wrong I have committed.

How many of us claim to be Christians and yet do not love with the God kind of love? How can we say that Christ lives in us if we do not show God’s love to others? I had a girl approach me with tears the other day during Vespers because she was confused as to why the church could not love her just because she was a little different. And it broke my heart. Have we as a community, as the Body of Christ, strayed so far from love and truth that we have to turn around and hurt our brothers and sisters? This is not the love that God intended to be in the church. And I am truly sorry if you have been hurt by Christians because of their lack of love.

Now, I know it seems like I’ve taken a bunny trail but I actually turned a corner here in what I’m about to tell you. You see, God intended community to be a safe haven from the sins and turmoil of the world around you. And how can it be a safe haven if people are thrown out of the haven because of their faults and sins and differences. Matthew 7:1-2 says “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” To say it bluntly, don’t judge because you yourself are just as guilty of sin as that other person is. Sin is sin. But God’s love is radical and life changing.

If we as Christians ALL learned how to live within community with brokenness and humility before God and each other think of how incredibly powerful this would be! I mean if Jesus could love with God’s love (being only one person) and give an entire humanity freedom and salvation from sin and acceptance into this radical kind of love how much more can an entire population of people who love with God’s love do to this world. This may sound completely impossible, because after all we are human, but it all starts with your own brokenness and your own humility before God. And out of that brokenness the love that God lavishes on you will spill over and into the lives of everyone you are in contact with. Imagine, a whole world freed from every sin, every pain, and every wall of injustice and selfish ambitions; and imagine a world where brother could go to brother, sister to sister, and even brother to sister and everyone giving each other this kind of radical love and being broken before each other. This is the beauty of brokenness in community.

Being

It was several years ago I came into an awakening of sorts. An awakening of me, an awakening of others, and the experiences I had walked through for most of my life. I would look at myself in the mirror and hate what I saw peering back. My eyes were clouded by lenses I believed I should have been wearing, dictated by what was around me and what I believed was right and wrong. I used to spend so much energy trying to fit myself into who others believed I should be and my reputation was held with such high priority that I learned to constantly be concerned with what people thought of me. I built myself a pedestal and stood up on it believing that was where I was supposed to be and thought I was being the dutiful, obedient, well-mannered young woman that I always dreamed I would be. And yet I hated who I was. I couldn't even allow myself to enter into being human, the experience of enduring humanity with all of it's foibles and frailty and beauty.

I recently saw "Wonder Woman" and it it was this message of whether man is good but deceived by an evil being or are they truly inherently evil and just tempted by an evil being. And if they are inherently evil are they worthy of being saved? It's a question worth pondering. Just talk to any parent and they will tell you that humans are inherently sinful. Worthy of being saved? If we were to truly look at ourselves, see ourselves staring back in that mirror would we be able to say that we are worthy of being saved? Maybe some would question the reasoning behind needing to be saved. Maybe some would question why worth is even a question. But it is still a question we each have to ask. Are humans worthy of being saved? Am I worthy of being saved?

It has been a journey to say the least of finding beauty in the brokenness, finding worth in the filth, and believing ashes could be turned into diamonds. Learning to look in the mirror and find worth and beauty in the flaws and imperfections of all of my being staring back. Being honest about the truth of what is in my heart. Honest about what it means to have this body and it's humanness. Discerning about my tendencies versus what I truly desire in every way - body, mind, spirit, will, emotions, etc. Radically accepting my story as my story, that it is a part of me and makes up my present experience. But that I am more than my story. Which means the present sadness, anger, happiness, excitement, bitterness, etc., that I am currently experiencing isn't where I'm going to stay. Nothing brings me more joy than knowing that God can use any of it and all of it for something beautiful. I just have to surrender to Him.

There have been recent events that happened that revealed to me that even painful things can produce beautiful fruit. Like a friend's hurtful words, spurring me towards making some changes that God has been speaking to me about for some time. Or an anxious spell that revealed several beautiful gifts in my life that I didn't notice before. Or my PTSD pushing me to dig deep into God's heart so I can be set free to be me as a woman of God. You learn a lot about yourself and about God when suffering has a place at the dinner table.

I have a tendency to find my life in the extremes. But what I noticed was so do so many other people. And I think it's because we try to avoid the pain, the suffering and the brokenness. We don't know how to take it by it's hand and let it be a close friend. Instead we are afraid, chaotic, confused and full of shame. Pain, suffering, brokenness becomes too much on top of that. Just as the Israelites cried out for God to deliver them from Egypt, they had to endure more pain and suffering for them to be rid of their slave mentality. God desired for them to enter into the Promised Land, but first they had to learn to be who they really were. And that took stripping away their current identity for their true identity - a Light to the Nations.

"It is suffering that has the realist possibility to bear down and deliver grace. And grace that chooses to bear the cross of suffering overcomes that suffering." ~ Ann Voskamp One Thousand Gifts.

Joy and grace are found in the suffering, in accepting that to live is to endure pain. And just as Christ bore the pain of the cross for our freedom, so too must we enter into His death so we can enter into His resurrection. The brokenness in our lives become breaks in the veil to peer into the Holy One's heart, an invitation to draw near to Him and listen closely to His voice. It causes us to be transformed as it slowly strips away pieces of ourselves so that God can fill the voids in our lives with His love and grace. The pain and suffering may not go away, we may have to endure our entire lives with an ongoing place of suffering. "God is our refuge and strength, always ready to help in times of trouble. So we will not fear when earthquakes come and the mountains crumble into the sea." Psalms 46:1. Without God our suffering has no meaning. There is no purpose to the pain and troubles that come into our lives without the Cross, without God's redemption. To know that the pain and brokenness in our lives has a purpose and can be used by God offers us a profound hope in the midst of our darkness. Even Jesus had to suffer so we could be set free. We are not alone.

God can do something beautiful with it in the midst of our suffering. Only in accepting  and making room for our pain, suffering, brokenness, frailty and failure will we ever be free to truly live and be. Only in surrendering and accepting the pain, brokenness and ugliness of the Cross can our pain be redeemed and made into a mosaic of beauty.

Summer Breeze

Today I sit before the cross. It's something I used to do a lot up until just about two years ago, before everything got crazy, confusing and conflicted. So in a rare moment, I come before the cross, kneel down to the floor and my heart cries out with words and emotions my face and body are too exhausted to process. A warm breeze gently blows against my face as if the Father has bent down and tenderly lifted my face so I can stare into His eyes of love. It's something. It's a start. It's a moment of rekindling. The breeze is my reminder of what is true and real, this connection to the Eternal.

A few weeks ago I pushed through the end of my Spring term and am now into my last year (supposedly) of grad school. Time has flown and I'm not sure I've done enough wrestling and studying to really know what I'm doing. But it's a start. At the same time I have been in a season of redeeming my past. For reasons beyond what I can understand I've found myself remembering different passions and desires I had when I was younger. What plans and dreams I had for my future. And I've been rekindling, slowly, some of those same desires and passions once again. I've also found relationships with people who used to be in my life coming back into my life once again. Those who seem to be messengers from the Lord at just the right moment, coming to speak to me and remind me who I am to get back on track with where God has called me.The other day I ran into a friend I had grown up with, a friend that I had lost because of the broken relationship with my former best friends. Both of us recounted memories from our childhood, the struggles we experienced through our adulting process, the ways we have changed, and it was a gift. It restored to me many of the years I had lost in the pain of the betrayal and anger I felt over my former best friends walking away from a friendship that had been established since we were very young.

I also began being mentored and counseled by a remarkable woman of God who has been there for many of my adult years. She stepped back into my life in a moment of need. When I was extremely lonely and those who were in my smaller than I'd like world were not able to be there for me. It was at the same time that my counselor and I discovered I am a third culture kid, existing as a square peg in a world of round holes. Never really fitting in anywhere, never really being understood. This led to finally attacking some of the deeper pain behind my feelings that I am never good enough, the feelings that there is something fundamentally wrong with me and that I am always wrong.

Being able to adjust to many different environments and people but never really belonging has been an immense struggle in my life. And I wonder if others out there have been in the same boat. Never really feeling like you belong. There's something powerful in discovering who God has made you to be and how He wants to use and invite you into His plans. Our identity and gifting are meant to be cherished and celebrated and often times it's not. Satan and the fallen world and fallen humanity will constantly send messages of inadequacy to us. Messages that push us to be the same, messages that shame us and tear us down to the point of being ineffective for the beautiful and powerful call that God has placed over our lives. Even the Church has fallen prey to be the bearer of these same messages, done in the name of God, because we are fallen human beings too who struggle to truly work out our salvation, and are too quick to speak our words and our interpretations before we speak His truth.

It's kind of like this (VERY simply put):
A certain group of people really connect well with each other one day. Over time the sameness that drew them together leads to discovery of differences and uniqueness among all of its members. At that point each person discovers and relates to these differences in different ways and at different times. And some may never come to points of clarity and may continue to stay in confusion about the other person. At that point each person has a choice to accept the tension and choose to work through it and draw closer, or they choose that the tension is not worth it and begin to pull away. 

Some people may never really be able to be related to. The capacity for the other members of the group to work through the tension and begin to accept and draw closer to them is not really there.

I point this out more to offer grace and awareness, especially to those who are experiencing similar things. And I'm here to say that there is nothing wrong with you! Did you hear me? There is nothing wrong with you! Who you are has nothing to do with what you do. Not even your areas of gifting define who you are. For your identity cannot be controlled by you, your mom, your friends, your neighbors, your church, your government, your SAT or GRE score, your athleticism, your work, nor even your body. Your identity is found in the Holy One, who invites you to crawl up into His lap, lay your head against His chest and hear His heartbeat. Your identity is found in the Alpha and Omega who saw you before time began and yearned to be in relationship with you and for you to draw near to Him. Your identity is found in the blood of Christ shed on Calvary. The Prince of Peace who asks you to just reach out and touch the hem of his garment. The Lover of your Soul, who knows every hair on your head.

So the Lord asks us to come together and remember, together, what Jesus did on the cross. Communion invites everyone, every Son and Daughter, to the table to partake. Which means I need you as much as you need me. I need you to be you and you need me to be me so we can come together and enter into the courts of our King with thanksgiving. I think this is something that has been really lost in this generation - unity, community, connection. And I'll be the first to say I am guilty of this. I'd like to believe I do this but the reality is that I don't. Grace upon grace says don't stay there. So if you feel outcast, misunderstood, trampled on, ineffective, or inadequate (and the list goes on), know you are welcome at the Table of the Lord. Here, you belong...we all belong.

Cracks in the Veil: When Your Brokenness Shows Too Much

For the last several weeks my exhaustion and stress has fed on my mind and emotions more than what I'm comfortable with. I started having a sense that I was losing control, my anxiety spiked, and everywhere I looked I was in panic mode. Coupled with the lack of emotional support and the lack of quality people time and it's a recipe for a slip in the psyche, a boiling over of the emotions and a collapse of the body. One more stressor and I felt I was done-for. Having a mental illness adds a certain level of stress onto everyday to the point where you're "normal" is much higher than everyone else's. What was added to this was the silence in response to my cries for help. It wasn't like I was bad enough to be hospitalized but I was bad enough that I shouldn't be alone. The thoughts started pouring in, thoughts of rejection, feeling abandoned, feeling used, feeling like no one really cared about me. It was a breeding ground for Satan to slip a few thoughts in there and they spread like weeds. And my slipped psyche didn't have the capacity to deal with it well. Especially alone.

I prayed and cried out to God. I meditated on Scripture and claimed it over my life, my body, my mind, my emotions and my environment. I asked for help. I tried my hardest to focus enough to figure out what to do. I wanted to run. Literally. I wanted to pack up the car, drive to another state, change my name and all of my history and have a complete do-over and maybe, just maybe this time I can have the community I am looking for. Maybe then people can understand me. Maybe then I can finally find a place in this world where I can be loved and fit in. All the while continuing to pour into these young children who have real desperate needs in their life. All the while hearing them complain and complain and yell at me as if I was the one who abused them. As if I was the one that marked their souls. All the while sitting in that pain with them, wondering how much of my own pain am I really able to handle on top of theirs?

Then another wave of anxiety came. I knew I wasn't safe and I really shouldn't be alone. I really needed people in that moment. I cried out to God with all of my being, asking Him for someway that this can work out. What I got from some of those I cared about was "Stop depending on people so much. You need to depend on God more."

I share this because I think so many people walk through experiences like this - this hidden struggle with mental illness. This hidden struggle wondering who you are with this illness...this hidden struggle with faith in the midst of dealing with some form of mental illness. And people don't understand. A lot of people judge. I've been around church communities even who describe mental illness as a result of sin or possibly a Satanic attack...we demonize mental illness or any sickness really and surround it with a lot of shame. It's bad, it needs to go away...and then it morphs into a description of who that person is - "If your faith was stronger, you wouldn't struggle with ____" "If you just prayed more or believed more God would heal you from ____."

When in reality it's just another factor of the brokenness of the world around us.

Just because it shows a little more than the brokenness of other people doesn't mean that you or I are any less. That's something I've personally struggled with my whole life, the message of I am "not enough" and I know I'm not alone. I think many of us who secretly struggle with these sorts of issues can really get hard on ourselves. We have a whole slew of feelings about letting this side of us show. We feel shame for letting our brokenness show. We feel embarrassed or angry or anxious. We want it to go away. We feel that it hinders us from being effective followers of Christ. And maybe some of us feel that if other people knew, if we were authentic and vulnerable that we would find ourselves even more alone. So we get desperate and do whatever to try to control it.

When in reality that's not what God has for us.

There was once a time in my life where God really redefined the meaning of "sin" for me. Growing up I believed that sin was a shame thing. I heard from several adults in my life this "Shame on you for ___" message - shame for making a mistake, shame for not being perfect, shame for not knowing what I was doing because I was young, shame for embarrassing me, shame for ____. It was a cycle of control that I'm still struggling to get out of. But that was my definition sin = shame. It wasn't until I came across a book by Brennan Manning called Abba's Child where God redefined sin as this:

Sin is what keeps you from walking in the complete freedom and joy that I have given you. Sin is what keeps you from Me.

God wanted the sin out of my life not because it was bad and therefore I was bad, but He wanted it gone so that I could be free, so I could enjoy the gift He had given to me.

And by constantly bringing this part of me before the Lord, this part that is sinning, He would pour His love over that piece of me and slowly over time it would become smaller and smaller and quieter and quieter. And I would be more aware of God's presence and would be satisfied and at peace in my life because I knew His love. That side of me is never going to go away this side of heaven, it just wont. But what will happen is it will stop ruling my life so much because I know the Voice of Love. I know I am His Beloved. I know that He wont leave because of my sin or mistake or brokenness. He just wants me to let Him love me. He just wants you to let Him love you. And He wants you to know that even if this problem never goes away He has a plan and a purpose and a hope in the midst of it.

Let me tell you, there have been so many times I have found my depression to be a real gift. Ponder that for a little bit. :)

If you're really struggling at this point in your life, whether that's a mental illness or a sickness or a financial struggle or a struggle with your faith. Whatever it is, I want you to know that it's OK to not be OK. I want you to know there are safe people and safe places where you can go and find love and acceptance. When your brokenness shows too much it's not because you are any less than if that brokenness wasn't there; it's just a byproduct of this fallen world. And when your brokenness shows too much that's when you need more love and more acceptance. When you need someone to speak life to your soul.

Because you are worth it.

If you are reading this and need some prayer or further help please feel free to contact me. The comments you leave on here I get to determine whether I will make it public or not, so you can know that it will remain confidential if you say you want it to.

Blessings!