Anxiety

From the ear buds the soft monotone voices speak slowly enough for sleep to come to me. Silence is too full of the unknown for my tired mind to manage.

Asleep like I am in a race. Running from thought to thought. From dream to awake to the places still and dark between them to running again.

The sound of the dogs breathing heavy, the train in the distance, horn blaring into all the places of the town. long wailing horn rising over fence and building and dumpster and on into the night full with their miles of Winter bare fields. Every sound heard and felt and sending mind to wander and run and search and never find.

Tiny and not so tiny people creaking in over the planks and into our bed wedging themselves into the spaces between he and I. My body unable to turn right onto my back. Unable to fully extend my legs unless I turn and twist myself diagonal.

Words in the smoothest script on so many pieces of paper tossed into the air fall to tables edge and metal chair and hard-wood floors and the scramble begins. Decide what to do, do and decide again what to do.

Anxiety

16 Dec 2020

all the heavy hard

If I could just not feel like a failure that would be good. That would be such a nice change of pace. I have struggled with not being okay for decades. Decades. And that is just not fair. I sound like such a baby. I’m just so tired. Why does healing take so long?

Why can’t I just be better already? This inner battle has ruined me. It has made me a bad friend, parent, wife. Why can’t I just be even keeled and patient? I am so angry and frustrated- most of the time. I think I am worse as a person as I ever have been.

I’ve looked back at my childhood traumas. I’ve forgiven. I’ve prayed. I’ve searched for meaning and tried and decades have passed and I am still so stupidly needy for your affirmation and admiration and I don’t even know you.

I need a stranger to tell me that I am okay or good or something significant to be those things. Not my husband though. Or my friend. Or Jesus because I just can’t believe them. I’m broken. There is something wrong with me and I just cannot figure out what it is and frankly, I am just so tired of trying to figure it out.

I try. I work hard. I delve and listen and read and try and nothing. Just more words inside my head. I am no different. I am still a mess. No better. In fact all these decades of all this work leaves me more frustrated than ever. Makes me angry. Makes me worse than I was before.

And here I am. Unable to really change. Unable to really be enough. Unable to really believe. And done. Lord, I think I am just done. I don’t know what it means. I don’t know where it takes me. I know that for decades I have been trying to be okay. Satisfied. Enough. And I am still none of those things.

I also know- somehow- that for the decades and all the time before and for all the time after- You, Lord. The God who made everything- have been and will always be faithful. And for me. And I don’t really know how I can hold on to this as truth and feel the way that I feel today but there it is.

This. Is. All. I’ve. Got.

And then it is not. Hope slips up into my limbs from my dry ground like dew covering so much grass. There was nothing and then there was so much. I am not my feelings. I am not my feelings. I am not my feelings. Sometimes feelings lie. Like the devil. Like my hungry stomach. Like my woman body. Like my sleepy head. Like my fears. Like my weary soul.

Lord, take all of this. I lay it down. These worries for my kids. For my marriage. For all the heavy hard in the world. How I never feel good enough. Your work on the cross made me good enough. Not anything I do or have done. None of it. You answer all my prayers. I know you have healed me. The ashes proof of so much fire. I trust in Your Holy love. I do. I’m just tired Lord. I know that You know it and that You can handle my weary whiny messiness.

You are Lord. You are Lord. You are Lord. Jesus and I put my trust in You.

2019 A List Of Longing

When I close my eyes and think back on this past year I see mud on shoes from days and months of rain. Too much for our soil to take in. Heaps and heaps, rivers of rain. Storms that opened wide the skies and emptied themselves out all over our little lives.

I hear the sound of falling feet smacking the wet earth all around me. Mud splashing, mess making, sticking earth to clothes and skin and hair. Raindrops mixed with burning tears on cheeks, of heads aching and faces flushing. 

I see seedlings, green and stretching, springing up from watery earthy places seeking the sun. I see willows weeping, hanging heavy from too much growth. Branches reaching down from the desert skies so blue and pale. I see muscles expanding and spaces widening. The kind of stretching that can leave us hurt and sore and questioning.

I ache now for sun and warmth and the comforting sounds of gentle springs treading over miles of smooth stone. Of lying body onto soft grass and of sun on cheeks, warm and still. I crave the slow breath of Summer swirling lazily through trees covered in hearty, clinging leaves. Of slow shade traveling across the flat green landscapes, we walk. The sun slowly moving from one end of our earth to the other.

I’m eager for comfort. For warm spaces and cozy pillows and handmade blankets made in every color. I don’t know if 2019 will be so gentle. I hope so very much that it will be though. More than that, I pray for that for this year. Comfort Lord, please.

I won’t be so brave or so foolish as to make a list of resolutions. Every year I fail them. But I’ll make a list of things I long for just now. As I sit in the quiet of my sleeping rooms. Christmas tree lights and the sound of Ray Charles songs sung in his honor by so many different voices on the television screen.

My list is not the kind of list I’ve made before. It is the kind of list that grew from a year of so much deep work and the uncovering of what is really important and the discovery of what is not.

In no particular order, this is my list of longing for 2019.

1. Words. To read them and write them.

2. To do rather than speak about loving others well. Especially when it comes to my kids and husband.

3. To mend. To teach my children to treasure and save rather than the alternative.

4. To make and create with my hands.

5. To slow down and tackle the things that bring me joy, one at a time and finish them.

6. To sing a new song.

7. To love God with all of my heart, mind, and soul.

and just like that

“Once I had gathered Psyche’s bones then, it seemed, all that concerned her would be over and done with. Already, even with the great act still ahead, there was flowing in upon me, from the barren years beyond it, a dejection such as I had never conceived. It was not at all like the agonies I had endured before and have endured since. I did not weep nor wring my hands. It was like water put into a bottle and left in a cellar: utterly motionless, never to be drunk, poured out, spilled or shaken. The days were endless. The very shadows seemed nailed to the ground as if the sun no longer moved.”  ― C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

I wonder what it means that the words pierce me so.  A dagger between the ribs, ripping its dangerous way to my inner parts. Blood rushing to escape. Face hot and sweating at the shock. Hands desperate to stop the red river from pouring out of my side.

I think that I feel like Orual somehow. Lost, swimming in a past that is agonizing towards an even more agonizing future. Like all that I was ever good for had been done and the rest is only emptiness. Hopeless. But feelings lie; I balk at the setting sun, rebel against the weighted day and the storms that I see coming. I believe that my eyes do deceive me. Because my hope is in the Lord.

Bloodied fingers laying everything at nail-pierced feet. He kisses my brow gently. My hair a sweaty matted mess; His holy lips don’t mind. He loves so very completely- this the only wise God. King of everything. Friend of sinners and lover of such mangled beasts as us.

His grace drapes and covers all my (our) tattered mess. He is ever good and perfect. I am ever His. Servant. Daughter. Friend. Unworthy. He makes me (us) worthy. He and His holy blood. His sacrifice much more than enough for all who were or would ever be. He is enough. And just like that, a tap on the shoulder and a whisper in the ear, I am reminded. All my storms and motionless shadows are nothing in the light of Him. I shall go on.

From March 2016   

things i thought then

and now…
#oldposts #onmovesandnewhomes #churchfamily

new town new church
From January 25, 2016

we came to the old place a little nervously
on a dusty cold Sunday
new places and new faces always terrify me
this introvert who needs to get out of her own rooms

we entered in
there was such sincerity in the worship
faces of all places and the sunlight mingle
the pain that this joy-filled place touched inside us screams

Jesus in these hallways
Him in these rooms
shining back at us in the humble eyes that greet us
crushing the fear and doubt

we won’t be comfortable here
there will be no hiding in pews and finding quick exits
the brain says run away
everything else in us needing to stay

——————————————————————————————————————–

feels like dawn
From February 2016

Heads bowed low. The boy under my right arm. The girl next to him gently puts her hand on his shoulder- trying not to scare the shy boy that he still is. Her kindness makes me smile.

My left hand sits small inside my husband’s hand. His left hand is on the shoulder of the man in front of us.

And I think to myself, “So, this is community.” A quiet statement to myself rather than a question.

During worship, the songs are sung.

All the words are thrown into the air with abandon. I don’t even care if they sound nice. They mean too much. So much that sometimes the words explode into the air dressed in all of their meaning as a shouted whisper spat from my lips.

The song now my cry to the God whom they are meant for.

This Is Worship.

He Is King.

Our Jesus who walks so boldly and so gingerly in these isles. Slipping through us. His hand brushing against this man’s back and that woman’s shoulder. His finger there on that heart, just there in that mind. Changing people. Growing them. Healing them. Loving them.

It is here then when the burdens begin to loosen. They slip from my shoulders like great boulders and I feel the full weight of them leave me. I am weightless. Weightless I say!

Great heaving sighs burst from my lungs. I am free. And all of this sudden freedom feels like dawn. The light from the sun slipping over the horizon and all of the darkness dissipates.

Who said this burden was mine to carry?! What do I even call it? This belief that I must do all. Be all. Never fail. Do better. Hold it all together. Juggle all the balls in the air and never be less than. That I am worthless.

Less than what?! Less than whom?!  Under what lies have I been living!?

But here there is freedom. I feel His love and I am embracing it! It IS for me! I exclaim. It IS for me this perfect, Holy, all-consuming, gift of love. Gift. Because-of-His-Grace-Love!!! My soul is shouting now.

The music plays on. The people sing. My heart remembering something forgotten. There is the red carpet beneath my shoes. Sunlight drifting in. White walls staring. Cars driving past. Dust settling. Heartbeats beating. Trees as still as stones and I AM LOVED by the King of everything. We all are.

Yes. We. Are.

reassess

we were all gung-ho
we were determined
we were more than a little brave
we were going to go
and change the world
we did our best
we started families
we made our decisions
and now we’re left with this

it isn’t bad
it’s even beautiful
but it isn’t what we thought that it would be
and we are not equipped
for all that must be filled
so we must make decisions
must start again
must reassess

30 OCT 2018

I wrote the above poem in 2006 I believe. We would have just been married. I think that it must have been winter, or at least that is the feeling that I get when I read it now. I remember that it hurt to write it and that it hurt my husband when he read it. We were both fresh from big life changes, from dying dreams and from the birth of new ones.

I come back to this poem every few years because we keep stumbling into new territory. Life is the moving into new phases, new seasons. As the days and years pass and the kids grow and change and as we do as well, there are waves of mystery and unknown and the new to navigate. Starts again, again require the stepping back and reassessing, again.

It is a discipline really, one that I hadn’t noticed we’d developed until the years piled atop themselves and my heart grew weary and yet so filled with hope. Dichotomy being the friend of the creative. Oh, that last line would have been a great blog title. Next time.