there’s room

it’s cool to see what a year can do.

past-dweller, sorrow-wallower that I am, I’m prone to look at “this time last year” with a sophisticated scowl, all judgment and disgust toward little Anna of yesteryear.

“be gentle with yourself” – a phrase my therapist often uses, and one I’ve adopted to exhort friends in need.  simplistic as it seems, it has changed the landscape of my heart quite a bit in the last year.

learning that God’s timeline for my emotional and spiritual growth bears little to no resemblance to the timeline I put on myself, or even the timeline I perceive from others, has caused me to slow down in many ways.

there’s no supposed-to’s, no should’s in this life of temporary, preliminary and prone to the eternal.  faith is not a systematic means to moral perfection or healing.  I have to keep remembering that God wants my heart.  He wants my heart, He wants my heart, He wants my heart.

my desire to honor Him, serve Him, love Him can only grow out of the love that holds my heart.  my healing can only thrive if it is grounded in the love that holds my heart.

with the slow but certain softening of my heart in the past year, I can look on “this time last year” with kinder eyes.  I can speak of Anna from “this time last year” with more gracious words.

yeah, she was silly and overbearing and she chased after things that pulled her away from Jesus.  but she was young, she was hopeful, she was hungry.  and I forgive her.

it’s strange that we keep an account of all our scariest and most shameful denials of Christ when He’s promised us our debt is paid, and we are free.  and He never looks on us as bound.  and yet we lock ourselves in open rooms and plot our escape through the square and solitary window.

it’s crazy what a year can do.

your story isn’t over, friend.  and I get it – there are days when all you seem to be able to do is go back and re-read and re-read and re-read all those ugly, bloody pages – but there’s more.  it’s not all glamorous.  there’ll be more bad days and wrong turns ahead.  not every paragraph will be pretty.  but there’s always enough beauty, enough reason to keep reading.

there’s always enough room in His magnificent love for all of you – all your raw and secret and not-so-secret parts.  He just wants your heart.

love,

anna grace

I will learn to love the shears

even-ifs are harder to hold onto with sweaty palms.  sometimes I dig my heels into the dirt just to see if earth will give in to my stubbornness.

what-ifs slide easily down my throat and break down submissively in my stomach acid.  they’re stack-able, portable, mass-produced, never out of stock.

I’ve built most of my life on what-ifs.  recently I’ve been staring down the barrel of the most frightening what if I’ve encountered so far in my twenty-one years:

what if I never reach “equilibrium”?

there’s nothing like physical discomfort to remind us how very fragile and powerless we are.  this small, weak vessel destined for death is full of malfunctions.  how intimately intertwined our minds, bodies, and souls are.  they move in congruence and sometimes in dizzying dissonance.

perhaps this is part of why I find our culture’s harsh separation between body and mind so deeply troubling.  how could I say that my body is just flesh, just form, just subject to my fallible definitions and parameters?  how could I say that my body doesn’t matter when it feels, heaves, reels in accordance with my mind?  how intricately one effects the other, pulling and pushing.

I have had my fair share of physical, mental, and spiritual unrest.  when I lived abroad for a year I struggled with stomach pain almost on a daily basis.  it became so overwhelming that it was the first thing I thought about when I woke up and the last thing I fretted over before I fell into wearied sleep.  for a few months when the pain was at its worst, I spent most of my free time isolated in my room, so uncomfortable and humiliated by my body’s distress. my stomach has always acted as barometer for underlying emotional turmoil.  and though I often claim to “not feel stressed at all!” my parents love to remind me that I may be “unconsciously stressed.”

and so it has been with my mental health.  it was not something I could name for many years.  it’s been an achingly frustrating battle, but it’s gotten better since I’ve learned to name it.  since I’ve learned to call the little rascal that hijacks my brain “anxiety” and the sopping-wet-heaviness that slinks into my skin “depression.”  it’s gotten better since I’ve asked for help, since I’ve been given direction by doctors, therapists, friends.

I wish I could be happy Anna all of the time.  I love happy Anna.  she’s hilarious.  she’s energetic.  she’s outgoing.  she’s creative.  she’s faithful.  happy Anna has silly ideas and big questions.  happy Anna is spontaneous and sings really loud and can sit still and listen.  happy Anna goes on runs and reads her Bible and she doesn’t really care if her socks match.

I don’t wanna be sad Anna.  I’ve gotten to know her fairly well.  she thinks a lot of outlandish things.  she thinks she’s uniquely disadvantaged.  she thinks she’s somehow outside the reach of what she sees as “normal” people.  she feels like an exile.  she opens her filing cabinet of bad memories and meticulously thumbs through each page, grinding all the mishaps and hurts deep into her being because she can’t forget them.  she thinks they’re her story.  she has to stick to it.

but the point is, friends, that both happy and sad Anna live inside this body.  this body houses me.  and to say we love someone without loving their body, without holding it in high esteem by honoring its needs, its fragile health, its fearful and wonderful anatomy,  without recognizing its limitations and the mystifying intention of its design, we don’t truly love that person.

perhaps nothing more than the saga I’ve been through the past four months has proved to me both the earthiness of my physical body and its longing for restoration.  in early April, my body began exploding with hives, daily taking on different forms and showing up in different places.  soon the hives were paired with swelling and joint pain.  there was no pattern, no apparent cause, no permanent remedy.  over the past four months I’ve seen doctor after doctor, only to be faced with the gloomy words “chronic” and “idiopathic.”  essentially meaning, they don’t know what’s causing it and they don’t know when it will go away.

there have been quite a few days when I’ve been indescribably uncomfortable in my body, wishing for nothing more than a detachment between mind and flesh.  the swinging pendulum that has been my immune system has caused, in tandem, emotional and spiritual waves, all driving me to the verge of panic and defeat, forcing me to at last confront this blazon gold idol I’ve carved in my heart from years of wishing all could just be well in my mind and body:

what if I never reach “equilibrium”?

and I guess I realized one day a few weeks ago, lump in my throat, that it’s probably true.  I never will reach this much-longed-for “equilibrium,” not on this side of heaven.  oh, this body aches for freedom.  this mind aches for clear skies.  this heart aches for home.

and so, I turn my what if born of doubt and fear and distrust to an even if of faith and hope.

God, even if I never reach equilibrium on this earth, even if You do not take away these physical struggles, even if You do not cure me of anxiety or depression, even if I continue to face trials of every kind,

still, I will praise You, God of my salvation.

“God, the gardener, when the autumn comes, I will not seasons fear.  With the pruning, a branch is stronger.  I will learn to love the shears.”  – Sarah Sparks; “Gardener”

life doesn’t make narrative sense

I wanted a happy ending, the kind with ribbons or wedding bells, but I had already written “sorrow” where the resolution was supposed to be, and the words were too stubborn to rearrange.

I wanted retribution, because everyone cheers when the villain gets his just desserts.  but he was more complex than I wanted him to be.  he was sometimes kind and achingly real and I couldn’t leave him to fossilize inside my concrete lines.

I thought the heroine was stronger than she was.  I built her of solid things but those solid things were malleable.  and she was soft.  and that was better than strong.

the story ended with unbalanced scales.  the window was left open.  the kettle was on.  the villain adopted a dog.  and life went on as usual.  and it hurt.

I wanted the earth to shift just a fraction.  just so I could know that the story mattered.  maybe the sun would dull a degree.  maybe the birds would shift their migration pattern.  but it didn’t.  it kept going, and that was good.

the world doesn’t stand still for pain – mine or yours.  thank goodness for that.  in our myopic worlds we write with hasty and vindictive vigor, neglecting to step back and see a wider canvas.  because we cannot see the whole, we do not even crane our necks to see a part.

but it’s because we cannot see the whole that we must ever so lightly, carefully, humbly, surrender our narrative judgment.

to all the selves I’ve loved before

here again?

I always seem to sigh and/or scream at the self who confronts me in the dark corridor of my mind when life is still and quiet.  I have never quite mustered the courage to speak to her face-to-face.

maybe it was all those bildungsroman narratives drilled into my psyche from elementary school, each somehow always describing the same thing:

you are born, you suffer, you grow, you metamorphose into solid things.

here again?

I am still made of fragile things.  where did I go wrong?

I’m not so sure anymore how to define “growth.”  I used to think it was something akin to walking up a mountain – though, I grant you, slowly and laboriously – each day revealing a grander and grander vista.  now I wonder if it isn’t more like picking your way through rubble: progress is sometimes only detectable by avalanche.

I’m equally unsure if all those dog-eared mantras I’ve used for what feels like ages are anywhere near true, let alone comforting:

it will be okay.  perhaps, “all shall be well.”  it will get better.  on this side of heaven?  it seems such a flimsy phrase.  it’s not as bad as you think.  nor is it as good.  anticipation is often greater than reality.

here again?

the “poet with his face in his hands.” what do you regard me as?  hopeless?

I am not.  I am hope full.  I am weighty with it.  you could tie it to my neck and drown me.  there is so much of it even in the parts of me which have denied it.  it is heavier than half-truths.  loftier than self-affirmations.

here again?

yes, I am here again.  thank God I am here again.  here where I can’t breathe, can’t stand, can’t even bring myself to fumble for the light switch.  here where I can’t be anything but clay, feathers, dust.

still life

I shrunk.

I was tight-wrapped, freeze-packed,

You could fit me in the back of your pocket.

 

I liquidated.

I was fluid, full of flowing phosphorescence,

You could reach past me.

 

I sunk.

I was translucent, ghostlike,

You could see right through me.

 

I allowed.

I was blame-taker, sorrow-swallower,

You could bend me over backwards.

 

I levitated.

I was no longer earth-bound and needy,

You could walk beneath me.

 

I hollowed.

I was empty-bellied with bones like birds,

You could climb inside of me.

 

I evaporated.

I was wisps, smoke, starlight,

You could wish me away just by breathing.

 

I undressed.

I was blank-slate, white flesh,

You could slash me to pieces with color.

 

I reflected.

I was exactly nothing, mirrored motion,

You could tell me your deepest horrors.

 

I stood.

I was still-life, silent-life,

You could paint me as apple.

worst fears

recently I had a profound moment of experiencing God’s love.

on the one hand, as a Christian, I am able to see and understand God’s love on multiple levels every day.  on the other hand, as a person who grew up Christian, God’s love is prone to becoming fossilized in my mind, or a distant echo of earthly love, or something I know but not something I live.

I don’t know if you’ve ever had an experience in which all your worst fears were confirmed.  maybe it was something you did or something that was done to you.  maybe it was something you wanted that you didn’t get or something you loved that you lost.

I’d say I had an experience in the last year of my life in which most of my very worst, very scariest, very fundamental-est fears were each confirmed for me in painful ways.

and it was only about two weeks ago when another wave of grief and fear overcame me.  I was still stuck tethering my worth to this one situation that was in my past – that no longer belonged to me, that I did not belong to.

my instinct was to double down, to white-knuckle my fear, to retreat, to let it make me feel small and worthless, to weigh the very value of my life, my heart, my body, on its scales.  my instinct was to accept its terms.

but, in a grace I never quite understand, God let me stare deeply into this fear.  this distrust of His love.  this acceptance of a horrible, ugly lie.

by looking at it apart from me – apart from what I had perceived as its attachment to me – I was set free.  it had nothing to do with my worth.  not a single thing.

my worth – our worth as divinely imprinted humans – is always and ever inextricable from God’s love.  and always and ever beyond the bonds of fear.

this weekend I was at a huge Christian conference in Pittsburgh.  there were thousands of people there.  the room was cavernous, the lights and smoke and voices and music  overwhelming.  I felt disembodied, far away.  I couldn’t seem to connect myself to my surroundings.  I couldn’t bring myself to sing or dance or raise my hands.

and all I wanted was to feel small.

I closed my eyes and felt a presence right in front of me.  my God was bending down to be near to me, His face so close to mine, so full of beauty I couldn’t look up.  I was a little girl again, gazing into my Father’s eyes, singing to Him and for Him with a quiet kind of hope.

hope comes to us not when we finally figure it all out, or when we can show empirical evidence that we’ve healed, or when we’ve tidied away our sinfulness into neat little piles, or when the ebb and flow of life finally ceases and we think we’ve reached equilibrium.

hope meets us in our very worst fears.  in the way there is still more of us even after our fears come true.  in the way there is more abundance, more beauty, more life in Him than in anything we held onto.  than in any love or lack of love we thought we had.

hope meets us when we are vulnerable.  when we are small – small and beloved.  when we look up, when we lament that this is not how things were supposed to be, when we say “but, Daddy, you promised.”

when we trust that He is who He says He is.

 

you were always meant to be free

I remember one February evening when I was living in Amsterdam, and I was feeling overwhelmed by the world and the people in it and the immensity of my own heart.

I left the house to go for a walk and it was very dark and very cold – not as cold as I’ve known but certainly cold enough to sting my eyes when the wind blew (which it did quite frequently).  I walked to my usual spot.  I walked across the bustling Haarlemerdijk, under the bridge, past very old very tall very brightly lit houses, past bikes and canals, past boats, onto the very edge of the pier.

I sat down and let my legs sway over the dark water.  I did something very peculiar there, something I’d never done before.  I unzipped my coat, unbuttoned my polka dot shirt, and I sat there, staring across the harbor at the industrial north side of the city, bare.

I let the wind push against my skin and offered up to God my deepest shame, my deepest fear, my deepest loneliness.  I laid my hand, palm facing up, next to me.  Wishing more than anything that He would hold it.  That He would hold me.  That He was here, in body.

Unfortunately for my critical brain, there is no systematic way of healing.

If there’s anything that this memory – tinged with a kind of ache that is both familiar and foreign to me now – teaches me, it’s that faith is relatively simple.

I said simple, not easy.

I avoid God when I fear I have nothing to bring.  I avoid God when I fear He’s grown tired of my mess.  I avoid God when the world feels so big and so evil and so against me that I have absolutely nothing to say to Him.

But faith, really, only requires our bareness.  Laying ourselves before His feet, again and again, bare, broken, barely breathing.

We try to do all the holding, all the lifting, all the healing.  And that is what makes it so frustrating when we look ahead or behind and see so little hope or progress.  But our gaze was always meant to be fixed higher than our own hands.

You were always meant to be held.  You were always meant to be free.

i want to say: a confessional

I want to say that I am forgiving.

That I pushed every blood-clot memory through the sieve of grace,

And what I now call past is so refined as to no longer hurt me.

 

I want to say that I am desiring of reconciliation.

That I released the anger I kept hidden in my balled-up fists,

And what I now call then is so distant as to no longer define me.

 

I want to say that I am full.

That I learned to choose abundance instead of lack,

And what I now call living comes so swiftly and easily as to no longer burden me.

 

I want to say that I am loved beyond reproach.

That I disentangled my heart from the subjugation of man’s opinion,

And what I now call freedom is found in being an absolute value, alone.

 

I want to say that I am fine.

That I no longer wonder, worry, wish, or weep,

And what I now call hoping is wholly fixed on Heaven.

 

I want to say that I forgive you.

That time, space, grief, and praise have healed me,

And what I now call identity is inherent and not named.

 

In all of this, I am earnest.   I will continue to trust a God who is so unlike me, so beyond me.

2018: a litany

to lion-hearted, silly, not-so-organized-as-you-seem, wild romantic, waxing and waning, sleepy, hungry, full but not always satisfied, high-maintenance, beautiful, sometimes kind sometimes not, wordy, quiet, loud-mouthed, sensitive, restless, risk-taker, sorrow-swallower, naive, jealous, healing, bruised, control freak, little girl, almost-woman, beagle-cuddler, trying to feed that body mind heart soul well, often failing,

beloved child:

what brought you through this year? grace.

let me tell you something about it.  I could not make up my mind January-April.  where to go, what to do, who to be next.  next, next, next.  meanwhile, grace said: here, now.  dizzying the amount of meandering a person can do when she thinks she’s in control.

what did you discover when you stopped navel-gazing? abundance.

a whole world to gaze at – beauty, horror, depth.  people to love and hurt.  people, people, people.  not all of them life-giving.  but precious nonetheless.  every life worth honoring, worth knowing, worth being a part of.

what did you do when you felt too much? cried for water.

there were moments, I assure you, when the abundance still felt like wilderness.  and my heart felt like arid soil.  and I had no strength or courage to ask for rain.  but there was water, still, even here.  it came in friendships, in phone calls, in long walks, in songs, in the cradling arms of family, in doctors, in keeping my gaze fixed on the Lifter of my Head.

when joy returned, how did you hold it? without fear.

I stopped questioning it and if I deserved to have it.  I wept when I felt like weeping.  I laughed when I found the skewed lightness in the world peculiarly funny.  I stopped wondering if this tiny life would be swallowed up the moment I stopped carrying it.  I stopped carrying.  I live with open palms now, mostly.  I let myself be frail.

what if your heart breaks again? it will.

oh, it will.  but there was more to me, I found out.  I came to the end and I didn’t turn to dust.  I kept existing.  I am made of fragile things, sure.  but more than those things, I found out I am strong, pursued, desired.

how will you start the story? I fell.

fell in love? fell apart? fell away? fell in place?  is fell the right verb?  I don’t know.

what captivated you this year? grace.

the way I could be pulled away by my own desire, and still You wanted me.  the way I could deliberately try to live apart from You, and still You called to me.  the way I could love something other than You, and still You held me.  the way I could worship an idol while calling You Father, and still You welcomed me.  the way my heart could break – a thousand times over – and still Your voice spoke gently over me.

what do you hope for most in the new year?

“Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old.  Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?  I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”  Isaiah 43:18-19

love, always,

anna grace

how to fall back in love

slowly.

the way spring comes.  it will take some time for the ground to soften.  it will take some time for old life to be pushed out by new.

there is no rush.  look at the world and its abundance and you in it.  there is enough time, there is enough space, there is enough beauty.

honestly.

the way the ocean breathes.  hold nothing back.  move your whole self and make your presence known.  be a multitude, a mass, a mess, a multiplicity.

there is no boundary.  look at your own sorrow and your own hands and how you are still weak and craving.  there are enough words, there are enough tears, there are enough stars.

searchingly.

the way youth leaves.  it is okay to ask questions.  it is okay if you’re unsure whether this soul-rumbling can be satisfied.  it is okay to be met with silence.

there is no answer here.  look at even this pale, stretched out feeling.  there is enough grace, there is enough healing, there is enough.